July 29 - August 4

July 29, 2005

I happened to turn on NPR this evening, and on “All Things Considered” they featured Stanley Kunitz, who turned 100 today, reading one of his poems. I was quite moved hearing his ancient voice read his poem “The Long Boat.” It was one of those magical moments of serendipity, and I sat there afterward wondering what made me switch on the radio when I care so little lately about the news of the world. Maybe I wanted to catch the weather report or hear some update on the wildfires, but I like to think there’s something more to it. Hearing Kunitz read, I remembered the time a few years back when I attended a reading of his at a tiny church during The Dodge Poetry Festival. I was late in arriving and the only seat left was directly in front of him. I could have reached out and touched his green wool sport coat, which I found myself imagining would fit me. Then I had the fantasy that he was my grandfather and that when he died I’d inherit that coat. He was in his mid-90s then, and still traveling around doing readings. Now he’s 100, and today he was to spend the day at his house in Provincetown with family and friends celebrating. Here’s a poem I wrote for him:

The Salt Marsh

—for Stanley Kunitz,
on his 100th birthday, July 29th, 2005


Beyond his garden
and down the long path
above which herring gulls
toss like angels
and through the tall
spartina and beach
plums, he sees what
for a hundred years
he’s come to see:
evening setting the water
aflame; a hermit crab
waving its one good arm;
a cormorant diving
and surfacing and diving
again; a rowboat waiting
as if for its ferryman;
and the moon, like a coin,
on the horizon.

July 30, 2005

A giant salmon was swimming around in my thoughts this morning, so while it was still cool we packed a bag and took a walk down Lang Cook Trail to the creek. The trail was much improved after my Roundup treatment on the poison oak, though there’s still that big fir tree across the trail. But we weren’t to be deterred. I lifted Gus onto the huge trunk of the fallen tree and he jumped down onto the other side. On the cliffs above the creek mouth, I peered down and, sure enough, there was Mr. Chinook, all 20 or 25 pounds of him swaying around. But I was foiled by the damned rafters. As I was tying on a big, gaudy, orange fly, rafters floated by. Then before I could make my first cast I saw a fishing line fly. And there was the dumb rafter standing two feet above the pool and chucking a huge spinner around. I don’t know if he saw me up above him, but I know his cohorts on the other raft did. I felt like trying to hook him with my fly, but I didn’t. I let him finish scaring away the fish, then I went into a shady overhang of rock and ate my lunch, shad salad in a wrap and a plum, and waited for the salmon to think the coast was clear. When I went back to fish, I couldn’t see him at first. I surprised myself with some nice casting, working the fly along the shady water. Then I could see him swishing around. I threw the fly down about sixty times, letting it drift, jigging it. No luck. But I’ll try again some other time.

I thought all the wildflowers had been obliterated by the hot summer days, but on the river trail making our way to the beach, and I encountered this beauty. Again, my wildflower guide fails me. Looks like an orchid to me:


Having been out here a while, I sometimes forget the majestic beauty of the canyon. Today the view was crisp and clear, and I shot this Rogue vista:


Mama bear and cub have been regular visitors to the homestead driving Gus (and hence me) a bit crazy. As soon as Gus gets a whiff of them or hears them on the property, he runs around the cabin barking incessantly, getting himself just as worked up as he used to do with the chicken. When we’re outside and he catches wind of them, he runs right to them and tries to scare them off. And when he finally comes back, he’s covered with burrs and I have to spend the next half-hour combing them out, a painful process for both of us.

Here’s a shot of Mama bear from last night:


Even as I type this, she and the cub are out feasting in the blackberry patch behind the woodshed. Gus is presently doing a time-out in his crate. I’ve also added a drop of Rescue Remedy to his water to help calm him down. As much as I hate to do it, I’ve instituted a part-time leash rule. If while in the cabin Gus gives any indication of bear-agitation, I keep him inside and take him out on the leash to do his business. I’ve never seen him bark so much as he has in the last few weeks here. When I first got him, he almost never barked. Apparently he doesn’t like black bears, which is too bad, because I kind of like having them around.

July 31, 2005

Last day of July, and I’m glad the month’s over! I hope August brings with it rain and clouds and happier days. I never thought I’d get sick of sunny weather, but enough’s enough. I need a change of pace. It was another day around 105. Right now, though, at 10:43 pm, there’s a nice cool breeze coming through, and I think it’ll drop into the low 50s overnight. Maybe this is the beginning of a cooling trend.

I’m sick of being alone, and I’m looking forward to my reading in Bend in two weeks. It’ll be nice to be among the literati there.

I wrote this poem this morning.

The Lion’s Share


He wakes with dusky colors in his eyes,
tuned to shadows, warm in a bed of ferns.
A yawn erupts from where his hunger burns
without fuel. Soon he and the moon will rise

together to the task predictable
as sex or weather. Meanwhile the meadow
closes slowly around a grazing doe,
a spotted fawn. It’s just as possible

they’ll be gone by the time he’s near enough
to sense them; chance, as ever, left to chance.
In a house nearby a similar dance:
wild eyes of the weak; hands, teeth of the rough;

a human drama with its human laws.
I bring you back to the meadow to feel
the savage beast’s savage strength and the squeal
of something warm struggling in its claws.


Tonight I tallied up my output since I’ve been here:

I’ve written 29 poems so far. None of those has been accepted yet, but not many submissions have come back. The poetry world moves at a slow pace. I’m confident that a good number of those poems will be published in magazines and journals, and I hope that most of them will fit into a new collection, which I haven’t even started to think about organizing. I did receive an acceptance last Thursday, from Crab Orchard Review. A poem entitled “These Last Ten Years.” I’m excited about that. Crab Orchard’s a nice journal, and my friend Peter had some poems accepted for the same issue.

I’ve made 30 new crossword puzzles here, and only one of them has been accepted so far. That’s a bad average, considering that the responses come back quickly from newspapers (except for The New York Times). But I’m learning a lot about the business. It’s all about a good theme!

I’ve written two short stories, one of which has come back rejected from The Atlantic Monthly and North American Review. The other story I haven’t sent out yet. A third story stalled at about 20 pages. And a fourth story, which I’d hoped would shape up as a novel, stalled at 42 pages. I seem to have lost all confidence as a fiction writer. :-(

I probably should have produced a lot more in three and a half months, but at least I’ve written something. And, as my faithful followers know, I’ve written many, many words in this blog. I’m hoping to find a way to print the blog when it’s all done, and leave a copy here at the cabin. It’s a tradition here that the resident writer keep a journal. I’ve spent quite a few hours reading through the hand-written entries of former residents. I don’t want to submit future residents to the torture of trying to decipher my handwriting, and there’s no way I’d rewrite everything just so it’s in the “official journal.” So, I’ll find some way to print the blog, maybe bind it even, and leave a copy here.

Mama Bear and cub were back again this evening, getting Gus all riled up. They’re making the rounds of the blackberries. I went out and picked a large yogurt tub full before they eat them all. My plan is to make a cobbler or some kind of pastry with them.

My garden’s giving me tomatoes now. I’ve eaten several and today I sliced up a few Romas and put them in the dryer. Yes, I’m making my own sun-dried tomatoes. If they dry nicely, I’ll pack them in olive oil in canning jars and take some home with me. It would be cool to preserve some of the bounty of this place and over the long winter back in New Jersey remember my time here. I’ve got a good supply of bay leaves, mint tea, and chamomile tea already. I’ll can other stuff when it’s cooler.

August 2, 2005

The heat wave finally broke! Yesterday and today the weather was just right; it never got hotter than 85 degrees and there was a nice breeze. The cooler temps raised my spirits, but I’m still feeling a bit bored and lonely. Cabin fever. Solitude blues. I’ve been thinking that maybe we should take a drive to the coast. I’m so close to it that it seems silly not to go see the Pacific, even if it’s too cold to swim in it. Maybe we’ll go to Brookings on Thursday and spend the night and then return via Grants Pass to get mail and groceries.

I finished the novel Midwives today, and boy was it a page-turner. It has such a cinematic structure that I’m surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie yet. I’m sending it to my sister, who, if she wasn’t busy raising three kids, would probably be a midwife. I know she’ll like it.

Last night I watched some of the new Paste DVD, and there was a great short movie entitled “The Great Cheesesteak Debate,” a documentary set in Philly that consisted of countless people making claims about which cheesesteak place is the best in the city. Some of these places operate right across the street from one another, and they all do a booming business. Even at two o’clock in the morning, the line goes down the street. The movie was a riot, but by the time it was over I was dying for a cheesesteak! So today I defrosted a sirloin I had in the freezer, and for dinner I sliced it thin, cooked it in a frying pan, melted some American cheese on it and slid the greasy pile into a nice seeded baguette slathered with mayonnaise (healthy heart be damned). Man, was it good!

August 3, 2005

Last night, for the second night in a row, I had a hard time falling asleep and, gazing up through the skylight at the stars, saw a long, bright, orange-white meteor flash past. The strange thing about these two sightings is that I’ve been wanting to go out and watch for shooting stars, but the mosquitoes and bears have made me reluctant to go lie out in the field, where I’d have the best view. I could watch from my deck, but it faces east. I think the best place to see shooters is in the north. I wonder if these shooters I’ve seen through the skylight are bits from the Perseids. I need to check the date on that occurrence, for which I’ll most definitely don the long sleeves, long pants, and mosquito repellant and take to the field with my pal Gus.

It’s taken me a few days to work this one out, but I think it’s done now:

Transit


Around the world on trains and buses
fuses

real or imagined wait to spark this
darkness

to a brief flash at the speed of an idea.
I hear

what comes before as much as after:
laughter,

cameras clicking, a girl snapping gum,
some

young men discussing football scores,
doors

sighing open or closed, a cell phone’s
tones

playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”
Not a

single seat unoccupied. And maybe
a baby

has started crying and the soothing word
heard

is Arabic or French. Now some other
mother

offers a piece of advice. Streets outside
slide

by like a movie. Even in the bright
light

of day, for every rider the vast, black
back-

of-the-mind reminder that nothing’s hum-
drum

now. But still, O God, we climb aboard,
we climb aboard.


Steve Edwards, a DHIT alum, emailed a request to take a photo of the bench up at the pond, which he built during his stay here. Apparently his mom didn’t believe he was capable of such handiwork. I warned him that now, four years later, the bench is in a state of disrepair, but I assured him it’s still sturdy enough to sit on, which I do every time I go up there. Here it is:


On the walk back from photographing the bench, I found this dead cicada. I had a really great ending to a poem about cicadas in my head, but by the time I’d walked back to the cabin, I’d plumb forgotten it.


While I was eating lunch today a hummer landed on the chair out on the deck. Scarce as they’re becoming as the summer plods on, I couldn’t resist:


Once again, Mama Bear and cub were back for their evening plunder of the blackberries. This time I got a nice look at the cub, who scrambled about thirty feet up into a tree. The cub’s not much bigger than Gus, and is probably only seven or eight months old (I read somewhere that black bears usually give birth around January).


We spent the afternoon at our beach, where I started reading Joe Klein’s biography of Woody Guthrie lent to me by my brother Michael. I’m loving it.

The heat has returned. High 90s when we got back from the river. Tomorrow we might take a drive to the Pacific.

August 4, 2005

Here's a shot of the wildfire burning downriver from me. I took it on the road this morning: