What was; just beyond our reach

For Kari


I. Minnesota Flats: 3 a.m.

Rustling
in your bag, your knee
in my crotch you crawled
clumsily out from our tent.
I drifted,
you screamed—

I stumbled out to save you
to fight back the creature
or shovel the innards back into
your body but you were dancing,
hooting when I saw it;

our familiar broken horizon,
but bathed in emerald light,
a dome-like bubble like from
Atlantis, and sprouting above us,
salmon pillars of light.

We branched up
our arms, twirled
and howled
at the thrumming pulse
in the sky.



II. Smithman’s Ridge

and our ice axes were buzzing.
Your honeyed hair rose,
an electric lion’s mane.

Out of innocence,
out of ignorance,
we giggled and took pictures
before beating Hell to lower ground.

And how, much later,
I cradled your photo
with grieving hands.
I could only see
your shadow.

III. Lactic Acid Peak

Six of us stood on the summit, lungs and thighs burning. To the West- sunset. Peaches and plums, spun sugar clouds sticking to granite faces. To the East- swallowed mountains, meadows, snowfields; the curtain of darkness, flitted with spasmed lightning. We “descended” or tumbled down the mountain, roped together, cursing excitedly beneath fiery black toboggans, cracking the whip of a master.

Time slowed for us overhead… then silence- only
the hissing rope on course summer snow, crunching boots, our own breath. Descending into a cradle of mist- our rope started glowing, and I saw, (I swear that I saw) sparks shoot off from your soles.

In whiteout we leveled, nuzzled into the cleavage of the Bon Bon glacier, fading into darkness. The headlamped throwdown of anchored tents, we crowded in- you in theirs, me in theirs. Halogen flash cube, raindrops shouted down. I could barely hear my tentmates talking, but you, nearby- you were singing, the rise and fall of your voice, hovering above me, Enter in, enter in, enter in—

IV. Solo

And oh how you wished
for the fog and comfort,
wrapped in the earth’s
blanket, but instead,
you stood alone, a high
mountain storm-front whipping
against your jacket’s seeping
skin, fighting off bullets
of rain. True to form, you
tipped your head into the wind.

V. I was leaving you on the dock, and you said

When I first lay eyes on you,
jumps and leaps, involuntary lips—
a silence of fifteen years.

I was teetering on a cliff, imagining
a rush of wind, a landscape
zooming closer, kissing the earth
and I said it, like a benediction

Dear God, I want to die,
Dear God, I need to live,
Dear God, I want to live,

benedicti sancti vita

VI. Giving In

You yielded to it;
the current's added weight
to your feet, more
elemental than the washed-out
sky, as wet clay slorped
at the river bottom, adding
and adding to itself, holding
you earthfast, sinking downward.

You would not
float away with
the ashes of all our prayers.

The Love Poet Reads From My Cereal Box

It's neither your milky voice
dripping from my lips, nor the way
your mouth blooms in edible petals
when you say body--

It's deeper than mere cliche
when the small of my back tingles
as you whisper not a significant
source of riboflavin

while our bare ankles,
bathed in late morning
kiss beneath my kitchen table.

The Beautiful Creatures featured in the SL Enquirer

Here is an in-depth review of the Beautiful Creatures featured in the SL Enquirer, one of the preeminent news sources in the Second Life Platform. They like us. They really really like us!

The faint sound of trumpets, approaching the crest of the hill...

For the entire school year, I have been earnestly praying (yes, praying) for there to be "a new sherriff in town"--- The Honorable Scott Cooper is a judge. My cup runneth over. He is running for a vacant spot on our local school board. Here's what he had to say about our kids yesterday:

"Last night, I attended a meeting of the Crook County School District budget committee. This was the final meeting of the committee before it deliberates on how to cut $3 million to $4.5 million from its $28 million budget. Needless to say, the pain is real. This was brought home to me when I was visiting with a group of high school students recently who very articulately observed: “Everyone is talking about us, but no one is talking TO us.” I took it upon myself to take that message to the school board in my role as citizen (although I very well could have taken it under the Partnership under the banner of civic engagement.) The committee, especially the school board, was oddly reluctant to take on the meeting but finally agreed to do so.



Notwithstanding that, nearly 100 students showed up to speak. By and large they represented not the “jocks and cheerleaders” crowd, most of whom were involved in either a couple major out-of-town sporting events or away serving as camp counselors this week at the sixth grade outdoor school. Instead, those that showed up were but that group of students who perform at the middling level who are typically not heard from. Given the setting, the relative placement within the power structure of the high school of these students and the high level, highly technical, no-quarter-given financial overview with which the superintendent and business manager started the meeting, it must have been terrifying prospect for these kids to line up at the microphone to address their concerns.



But these kids were so motivated out of passion for saving the things they considered important to their lives and futures, that they overcame their fears and testified anyone. It was an awesome display of courage. Tears ran down my cheeks as I watched—not figuratively but literally. I don’t think I could have been more proud of our student body.



Their themes, some delivered passionately, some delivered creatively, some delivered succinctly but all delivered reasonably, responsibility and respectfully (the three R’s that govern student at CCHS) were clear:



They are aware of and concerned about the connection between trade skills learned while in high school and their career potential. These kids are not floating through life assuming the government or Mom and Dad will take care of them once they graduate. Many of them know that college is not in their future, and they know that they need competitive skills if they hope to find jobs and be competitive with a large pool of older workers competing for those same jobs. They rely on their high school to provide those skills from traditional vocational training to computer-aided design to public speaking skills to foreign language to give them the ability to find post-graduation work and they connect the loss of these programs with a diminished future for themselves.



They understand very clearly that they are the upcoming generation of leaders in their communities. They believe that without arenas such as extracurricular activities, school-based community service opportunities and the opportunity to compete on the athletic field that they will not gain the skills they need to provide leadership in their communities when they become young adults.



They understand very deeply and articulate well that success in core classes and the likelihood of their peers attending or completing school correlates directly to the financial stability of the school district and the well being of the entire community. They understand that creative outlets and athletic achievement make for well rounded adults and individuals and better communities. They understand that young people will vote with their feet if their schools are unable to meet their needs.



One girl stirred deep emotions when she explained that she lives in deep poverty and that the only thing that makes her day worthwhile are the two back-to-back drama classes she has in the morning where she can be someone other than herself for two hours each day. And then she added that she knows that when the drama teacher asks her some mornings, “Are You OK?” she’s the one person in her life who really means it. Humbly, she asked the committee not to take away that lifeline from her.



Two girls from FFA gave presentations that were so well polished and so well put together than none of us in this office could pull them off. And they talked about how when they put on their jackets and look in the mirror in their own minds they put on not just an article of clothing but the mantle of role models to other students. Take that away from them, and they simply sink back to obscurity with the rest of the student body.



Two young men from the NJROTC program described how the combination of military discipline and creativity expressed through choir and band class had given them purpose and direction, both in setting life goals and in improving their academic performance. Both have their sites firmly set on career goals of becoming music teachers—something that can’t happen if they don’t have a music program. I know the circumstances in which one of the young men lives. Without the motivation and opportunity that high school provides, his future is challenging.



A THIRD GRADER competently addressed the board and the room of 100 people and explained why her elementary school is special to her and why shutting it down would create discord in her family and her community.



A young man told the board that he couldn’t express in words his concerns. So he played his guitar and sang a song he had written in class expressing his angst over the diminishment of his opportunities.



For three and half hours this went on. It was one of the most compelling things I have ever seen in my public life, primarily because it came from such an unexpected place.



I came away admiring the courage of young people, the awareness that this generation has about how its welfare connects to the welfare of society as a whole and the passion that causes young people to be willing to stand up for something bigger than just themselves. I have administered public hearings for the past 12 years, and I can only wish that the adults in the community had half the skills and approach of these young people.



I can’t wait for the next person to tell me how our kids are underperforming in our schools. If anything, it is the community that is underperforming for its kids."



Scott Cooper

Director of Public Policy,

Partnership To End Poverty

521 SW 6th St.

Redmond, OR 97756

direct dial: (541) 923-9663

cell phone: (541) 420-1998

fax: 541-420-1399

scott@partnershiptoendpoverty.org

www.partnershiptoendpoverty.org

Something in the Wind

When Hope came by, she came
from fingers of the apple-blossomed

breeze. I was tending new flowers, hoping for overflowing
petals. She wore a lemon-yellow dress-

stained with raspberries huddled
in the pouch of her upturned skirt.

With ruby-skinned fingers, she pushed
a nippled berry into my mouth,

smiled and whispered into the fruit
of my ear; her reddened tongue!

"Darling, soon it will all be like this,"
and when she left, like the spring bubbling up

from my irrigation well, sunflower sprouts
peeked out with twin-leaved tendrils,

up from the grave of our slumbering garden.

Prineville Students to Present Poetry from The Nature of Words Creative Writing Program

Darkness and scarcity abound in our district, and yet...check out this article which features our students, as well as the great generosity from a solid local literary festival...

To Ellen Waterston, Margie Robberson and our Writer/Teacher in residence Jamie Houghton, we are forever in your debt.

I Want To Write About the Color Blue

I want to write about the color blue, but no;
rimrock skies are muted with pollen-haze
while pink blossoms burn outside my classroom window.

A weighed-down teacher; instruction disrupts my flow.
There is comfort in box-structured school days.
I want to write about the color blue, but no.

Frozen, fallow, I dream of late-spring snow—
baby-fist snowflakes baptizing my face,
but pink blossoms burn outside my classroom window;

Calamine skin-welts from dive-bombing mosquitoes:
a hairless dog scratching, half moon-crazed.
I want to write about the color blue, but no;

my muse rouses me from her ungodly time zone—
open, pink-lipped, inspiration stays.
I want to write about the color blue, but no;
wild, pink blossoms burn outside my classroom window.