August 27- September 2

August 27th, 2005

I got a lot done on my trip to town yesterday. While Gussie was getting his shave-down, I collected my mail, paid bills, did laundry, photocopied the Bend article, made some calls on my cell phone (with my friend Peter, who just returned from a summer in Asia; with Sharen, who was driving a NY state car on I-90; with my sister in Manhattan; with my folks in Rhode Island), got on the WiFi at Dutch Brothers and checked email and uploaded to the blog, shopped for groceries at Market of Choice, and bought a King James Bible. When he was here last weekend, Frank Boyden and I got to talking about Genesis and Revelations, and he said there should be a Bible in the writer’s cabin library. I agreed. He went inside and returned with two crisp twenty dollar bills. “Buy a nice one,” he said. So I did. It’s bound in genuine leather and has large print. It only cost $19.95 (no tax in Oregon), and so I slipped the other twenty into an envelope, wrote “Emergency Fund for Indigent Writers” and tucked it into Psalm 34, where verse 6 reads: “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.” I love the thought of some future writer finding that. Of course, if Emma reads this, it’ll be hers! Among my mail was a package from Stan Flood, one of my English Department pals, full of real estate classifieds from Jersey papers. I made my first round of calls and set up two places to check out, if they’re not already rented by September 8th. As expected, most places don’t allow dogs. One promising rental was a cottage on the Bergen county/Rockland county line (I think in Nanuet). The landlord said she and her husband were reluctant to allow dogs, but I did my best to convince her that Gussie was a great dog and that I was an ideal tenant with excellent references. So I’m planning to have a look at the place. It’s on a property with three other cottages on an acre or so of land. It sounds like an old vacation place, so I don’t know how winterized the place will be, but it’s worth checking out.

All the running round in town and the stress of thinking about the move back East, combined with the long and dusty drive back to the cabin, completely wore me out. After unloading my stuff, I took a two-hour nap. But I was still tired. I spent the evening making a small collage tribute to the newts up in the pond. Then I went to bed early and slept for ten hours! Here’s the collage. It’s made of paper, pastel and pencil. I hung it on a thin strip of wall in the cabin.


Today I wrote a poem to go along with the newt collage. In case you wonder what Sapphics are, they’re metrical stanzas using a complicated pattern of trochees and dactyls. I’ll gladly explain it to anyone who’s interested. One other note for anyone who missed the earlier blog postings about the newts: the rough-skinned newt is one of the most poisonous creatures on the continent. It can exude through its skin a deadly neurotoxin; thus, you wouldn’t want to eat one!

Sapphics on the Rough-Skinned Newt


Toxic swimmers, thousands of them in my pond,
wiggling black-sperm questions for me as I stand
bent and ready, armed with a net and answers
I wouldn’t give them.

Sins of mine—amphibious, star-toed, whip-tailed,
mute transgressions gone unforgiven too long.
Water-borne and treacherous, sedge and dragon-
flies like reminders.

So the net—a Catholic expiation
made of wire and mesh and the need to expose
all my darkest slitherings like penumbras
during eclipses.

Newt on newt. The murky and amoebic water
slick with sex: the jettisoned seed, the poison-
skin’s release, and my uninhibited gaze,
too, like a voyeur’s.

Even netted, even in open air they
cling and shine, and something in me would fling them
far but for the deeper desire I have to
swallow each pair whole.

I found a tiny, shriveled pear on one of the pear trees in the garden and really liked its cracked skin and shape and so tried to get artsy with a couple of photographs:




August 28, 2005

We spent the afternoon down at the river yesterday and again our beach was occupied upon our arrival. Not Boy Scouts this time, but a friendly fortysomething couple from the Bay area. I apologized for crashing the beach and offered to move upriver, but they assured me it was okay, so I planted my chair and umbrella in the usual spot. They’d been floating for four days, taking their sweet time in the Wild and Scenic portion of the river, and were planning for three more days of it. Paul is a wheelchair mechanic. Joyce a musician. I could tell they were good folks and so told them what I was doing out here. I watched their raft for them while they hiked up the trail a ways.

Then they moved upriver to a more level stretch of ground. I couldn’t help feeling like I was ruining their wilderness experience (and I can come to the river any old day), so I read a chapter in a new novel (Falling Angels) and said goodbye, leaving them to the peace of the Rogue. Before leaving I took this shot of the back of Gussie’s head. Ain’t his haircut cute?


Afraid my two huge bowls of tomatoes would go bad, I made another batch of sauce last night. I plan to use half of it tonight tossed with rigatoni and some of the salmon Emma Brown gave me.

When it got dark I watched half of a PBS DVD Jim sent me called “American Photography: A Century of Images.” Great stuff. I’m thinking I can work some of it into my Art & Literature class when I get back to teaching.

Mama bear was in the yard early this morning. Gus told me so. Loudly. When I went out to the car to get his leash, there she was, ten feet away, standing in the blackberries. When she saw me she gave a huge snort, turned and ran. Lucky, too. The car was locked!

With the help of caffeine, I worked out another poem this morning. Many of the new poems, as you may have noticed, pay close attention to form. In the past I sometimes tried to deny my formalist bent, forcing myself to write in looser, free-form lines; those poems are among my worst, I think. Lately I’m embracing my need for order, symmetry, rhyme. If it works…. Here’s the poem, in envelope quatrains.

Pawtucket, Rhode Island: An Interment


Once upon a time it must have been quaint—
old Slater’s place the only industry,
the rest rolling pasture and willow-tree
banks along the Blackstone. No chipped-paint

tenements, no I-95. The bricks
of mills still red clay waiting to be fired—
like the millions who would live and die here.
I see the waterwheels turn like clocks.

I hear the huge looms rattle, the spindles
spin thread down to dowels, the stone-on-stone
knock of building. And dirt flung where the bones
of my ancestors lie. We light candles

in the chapel for our final goodbyes.
Outside a wet snow falls into rows
of graves. The past begins and ends right now,
here where grief powers the machines of my eyes.

Bradley and family, making a trip to California, are coming tonight and staying till Tuesday. I’m going out to pick them a bowl of tomatoes.

A couple of yelps from You Know Who…

…announced the Boydens’ arrival. Outside the upper house we were greeted by Marie, Bradley’s wife, who immediately fell in love with Gus. They used to have wire-haired fox terriers, so when she saw that Gus was a terrier, she cried out with joy. She even considered taking him in while I fly back East instead of me putting him in a kennel, but Bradley nixed that idea. I had a nice chat with the family, and then they were sitting down to dinner, so we left them to eat in peace.

Back at the cabin I finished the recording of what I think is my best song yet. I need to get my brother-in-law Ian or one of my students to lay down a better lead guitar track, maybe throughout the whole song. I think a fiddle or mandolin would sound great, too. With this one, I recorded voice and rhythm guitar together for the first time, hoping for a more authentic sound and experience, and it made for an old-time feel, which I like a lot. I did that track yesterday. The lead stuff in the middle and at the end I did tonight. The song is about an Oregon gold miner.
The Shine in the Sand

It’s a chilly night and the crickets are chirping. Tonight’s the night when Mars is supposed to look big. I heard the whole thing was an urban legend, but I went to check the sky just the same. Figures: clouds, not a single star visible. This after two months of nothing but clear sky.


August 29, 2005

The coolest night and morning since last spring! It was 51 degrees when I got up today, and had to be in the 40s last night. Making a fire in the woodstove, I was grinning like a kid. It’s amazing how much the weather affects my moods.

New poem (strange the places a head full of caffeine will take me):

Black Boy at the White Girl’s Funeral


Lifted up by the rope of the huge bell,
he braces for the deep voice of its dong
and gazes through a window at the town.
A woman on a three-wheeled bicycle

with two poodles in a basket behind
her, a man sawing at a diseased elm,
another ruling with a hoe the small realm
of his backyard garden. Now the long line

of cars with their lights on in the August
sun, and leading the procession the hearse
black as his jacket. It has to be worse
that he knew the girl, but he knows he must

not be sad; the color of his skin is his
and theirs is theirs. And even if the rope
should wear away his palms, there’s little hope
for the rest. Death reminds him who he is.

He rises, he falls. The bell swings and swings.
In his blood the vibrations of it ring.

Never one to pass up a chance at fishing, Bradley suggested last night that we all take a walk to a creek downriver and try for a Chinook salmon. We packed lunches and set off down the Lang Cook Trail, now with a lot less poison oak after my spraying job but still perilous in places because of loose stones and steep drops. Marie slipped and fell once and scraped up her thigh. Aside from that and the annoying flies hovering around our eyes, we had a nice walk. Here’s a neat madrone on the trail with a huge peeling burl:



We couldn’t see any salmon in the mouth of the creek, but Bradley tied on a fly and tried just the same. Meanwhile Marie said she’d like a Christmas card photo of the kids, Hollynd and Wilder, so I tried for one up on the rocks above the creek:


Then we all went down to a wading spot in the creek, where we entertained Gus with tossed sticks. Hollynd and Wilder are remarkable kids. Funny, smart, adorable. I most enjoyed their company.

Here’s Hollynd trying unsuccessfully to wrest a stick from Gussie:


Here’s Gussie peeking out from behind some leaves:


After the creek adventure, we took the river trail down to my beach. The weather was just perfect. In the high 70s. Maybe low 80s. Intermittent clouds. It was one of the best days in a long time. Here’s the Boyden family posing on the trail above the river:


The kids found a katydid floating at the swimming hole and saved it from a watery demise:


We’d planned for a big dinner at the upper house and I’d promised to make an apple pie. With the day getting late, Gus and I left ahead of the Boydens so I could make the crust and pick some apples and get the pie in the oven. The trees in the garden were almost bare, but Bradley had four or five Granny Smiths in his knapsack. Not the best pie apples, but better than nothing. Hollynd and Wilder were excited to use the Apple Machine apple corer/peeler, a gift Lang, Martha and Riley left here last year. It’s a scary-looking contraption, but it works like a charm, coring and peeling the apples and slicing them in neat spirals. Here they are with the Apple Machine out on my deck:


Very good action!

Our dinner was great. Barbequed chicken a la Bradley, corn on the cob, zucchini from my garden, and a nice avocado salad Marie made. The pie came out great, though it seemed juicier than a pie should be. Not sure if it’s because of the Granny Smiths. The mixture was dry when I put it between the crusts, so the apples must have had a lot of water in them. We split the leftovers, so I have a huge slab of it in the fridge for tonight. Giddy up!

While dinner was cooking, the bats entertained us again, thousands of them dropping out of the cedar shakes. This time I had the camera at the ready. Here’s a bat dropping out:



And here’s about a half-dozen of them about to come out through the gap. You can see their ears and eyes:


After dinner we played a four-way partners cribbage game. Hollynd and Wilder both wanted me for a partner. I can only assume that they could sense their dad’s inferior cribbage skills. Wilder won the flip and he and I won the first game. Hollynd and her dad took the second. By then we were all tuckered out from the big day, and so Gussie and I said goodnight.

The stars were thick and it was downright chilly as we drove back down to the dark cabin. Dreaming weather. And I slept. And I dreamed.

With the Boyden family hoping for a mid-morning start toward the redwoods, we had to get in our tie-breaking cribbage game, so Gussie and I walked up after breakfast. Despite many superstitious knockings of cards and Wilder’s inspired sound effects, he and I lost. I attribute their win to Hollynd’s astute strategizing and clever pegging. Okay, her dad had a 14-point hand, too. It was a sad defeat, but I left assured in the knowledge that I still reign as the singles champ of the Dutch Henry Homestead. (Maybe this will entice Bradley out for another visit before I leave in October!)

I had a grand time with the Boydens, each of whom contributed to the goodness of the action. I’ll see them again one week from today, when they graciously allow me to spend the night at their house in Portland before my early morning flight to New Jersey. Should time allow and Hollynd and Wilder not have homework after the first day of school, perhaps the cribbage board will make an appearance for a partners rematch.

Out in the garden there’s a lone sunflower, thanks to a seed left behind by Lang, Martha and Riley last fall. It’s about six feet tall now and stunningly beautiful. Thanks, guys!:




August 31, 2005

Sharen called yesterday to see if I’d heard the news about New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf. I hadn’t. The last I’d heard on NPR the hurricane was still a couple hundred miles from landfall. What a disaster. I’ve been tuning in and catching some of the news and interviews on NPR. I feel so bad for all those displaced people, not to mention the families of the dead. Terrible, terrible news. I feel very lucky to be in this place, with a roof over my head and good food to eat and clean water to drink.

I heard the price of oil skyrocketed because of the devastation, too, with all the Gulf refineries virtually inoperable. I’ll be curious to see what the prices are at the pumps in Grants Pass when I go in tomorrow or the next day. I fear the oil situation is only going to get worse, despite the President’s plan to open the reserves. Maybe I should trade in my car for a hybrid, especially if I’m going to be commuting, as much as I like the on-demand 4-wheel drive in the snow. Something to consider.

While the world has been coming apart a bit more, I’ve spent two pretty lazy days here since the Boydens left. I did do a bit of work today, mowing the grass in the garden and swabbing out the upper house fridges, but for the most part I’ve been taking it easy. Yesterday I finished Tracy Chevalier’s Falling Angels, which one of my students gave me to bring out here. It’s the story of two families in England at the turn of the 20th century and the changing roles of women. One of the wives becomes a suffragette. The point of view shifts between each of the dozen or so main characters. My favorite was a gravedigger boy named Simon. I also printed out my essay “A Heaven We Knew Once” and packaged it up to send to an essay contest in New York. And last night I wrote a new song. Today I started to organize and assemble into a new manuscript the best of the poems I’ve written here and a few older ones that didn’t appear in my book. It’s always a challenge to try to make a cohesive whole out of miscellaneously written poems, and to put them all under one title. There’s a book contest sponsored by The New Criterion for a manuscript of poems paying close attention to form. I was a finalist a few years ago. The new stuff is tighter, better, so I think I’ll try again. Wish me luck.

Tonight I recorded the new song. I like the chord progression in this one. Again, it would sound better if I had some accompaniment, especially percussion. It’s pretty bare bones with just me and the Gibson and my inept guitar playing. But it’s fun! And it’s the songwriting piece I like most.
Home Today

I’ve been fretting about next week’s trip, waking up in the middle of the night and tweaking for hours. I hate to part with Gus, especially after spending five months as constant companions. And I hate traveling on planes. So I need to keep reminding myself that I could be in Mississippi or Louisiana, a refugee in some shelter, my home under water. That’ll help put things in perspective.

One game of Spider Solitaire, then off to read. This time a Ted Kooser nonfiction book about life in Nebraska. My friend Neil sent it to me.

First day of September tomorrow!


September 1, 2005

I began my sabbatical exactly five months ago. Doing this thing has given me a taste of what retirement must be like, and I have to say I think I’m going to love it! Of course, I have many years before I’ll be able to call it quits.

Feeling guilty about the condition of the Corral Trail, I went down this morning with bow saw, loppers and rake and cleared the trail. At one point I dropped the saw and it slid down into a deep ravine. I thought I was going to break my neck going to retrieve it. I scrambled half-way down holding onto roots and then realized I could snag the saw with a long stick. It worked first try. I was completely bushed and soaked with sweat by the time I finished around noon. And with the temperature warmer today (high 90s), the hike back nearly did me in.

Gussie hurt his paw this afternoon. Not sure how. I was sitting on the steps of the cabin breaking down some dried mint and suddenly he was limping and whining in the grass. I took him in and put him up on the grooming table and had a look with a flashlight. His paw was all red in between his pads. I thought maybe he’d stepped on a thorn, but I didn’t see one. I put some Animax cream on the spot. An hour later he was walking fine. Now I think maybe he got stung by a bee or a wasp. He is always chasing and eating them.

In the pantry today slicing up some tomatoes for the solar dryer, I caught this psychedelic-green bug:



New poem:

Sheep’s Skull


I know it is waiting in that storage
garage, wrapped in newspapers in a box,
horned and hollow and bleached by Ireland’s
treasured sun. Gaudy bones. An end for books.

She never liked it. The day I carried
it through the cottage door and held it up—
“Alas, poor Yorick!”—she shook her head, said,
“You know you can’t take it home, right?” I slipped

it in my suitcase rolled in a sweater.
For four years it gazed through the barrister
bookcase glass in our house, a reminder
of Achill’s wasted landscape, our time there,

the hardness beneath our soft flesh. One day
soon I’ll retrieve it and my other things.
At times I’ve thought to give them all away,
start from nothing and see what luck might bring.

But I like those horns, those deep eye sockets,
the passages that once were filled with breath.
I take comfort knowing that I’ve packed it
again. A keepsake of marriage, life, death.