The Trail to Salt Creek

In my grief

            The trail to Salt Creek

            Is guarded by prickly-pear

            And jumping cactus.

I can’t go back.

            I have forgotten

            How to slide down the shale ridge

            To our fishing spot.

How can I find joy?

            I cannot sneak past

            The purple sage on the ledge

            Where rattlesnakes thaw.

I am afraid.

I am afraid.

I can’t go back.

In my grief,

How can I find joy?

I can’t go back.

How can I find joy?

In my grief, I am afraid.

I am afraid; how can I find joy?

I am afraid - in my grief.

I can’t go back - in my grief.

How can I find joy in my grief?

In my grief -

In my grief -

I am afraid.

Afraid - can’t go back, go back.

Find joy - in my grief – find joy?

Go back.

Hokes Post

Your post reminds me, I once hired a grizzled old feller in the Alaskan bush named "Hokes Post"  to ferry me across the bay in his seal-skin umiak.

I had just stepped in when he handed me a rawhide-bandaged old paddle and said, "Here, you take 'Orion' and I'll take 'Explorer' and we'll chew the fat a bit while we work our way across."

He looked Inuit, but he spoke the local dialect with a bit of a drawl and a hint of Texas-like twang. Hokes really liked to talk (also unlike most of the folks around there), but when questioned about that Hoax swore he had lived in the Alaskan wild since the day he was born. Over the course of our two-hour struggle with the surface chop and shifting tidal currents, Post told me a fantastic story that his mother had told him many times about how Hokes' dad had fallen in live with her. The story was that he fell for her after she bravely rescued him out of the belly of a giant bird that had been caught in the teeth of the Great White Lake.  This mythical bird was so big that the White Lake could not digest it all at once, but would take a bite, chew on it when the nights were still long, swallow what it could, then run to the sea and back again with the summer salmon - and just as ravenous. I didn't believe him, of course, but Hokes did spin a nice yarn.

I remember that as we approached the far shore - me, totally exhausted from constant paddling, and Hokes not at all, even with the constant legend telling -  I could see two huge mastiff-like dogs watching intently but quietly from a small berm just above the graveled bank clearing that I assumed would be our eventual landing point. Hokes warned me, "Don't worry about Will and Wiley. They know better than to come down here and bother my customers...unless you got some bacon in your pack. In which case you are own your own and may God have mercy on your soul."

Standard Time

Standard Time, Standard Time
Ev’rybody’s loves the Standard Time
The ground’s still lit and the moon don’t shine
We’s a-goin’ on with Standard Time.

He went off of Standard Time
Didn’t wake up ‘till half-past nine
Lost his job though the clock ran fine
Better get on back to Standard Time

Savings Time around the bend
It comes to the door, don’t let it in
Cost your job and your never gonna win
What do you think of that, my frien’?

Me and my gal, my gal’s son
We got caught in a traffic jam
I don’t even know why we come
Goin’ back when we came from

Standard Time in the afternoon
Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
An hour delay -  a socialist boon
Somebody better get rid of it soon.

Standard Time, Standard Time
Ev’rybody’s loves the Standard Time
The ground’s still lit and the moon don’t shine
We’s a-goin’ on with Standard Time.

____________________
Sung to “Oxford Town”
Apologies to Bob Dylan and serious-minded people

Daylight Savings

Was writing a poem about daylight savings.
I know it's already been done.
I read an hour ago someone
Was writing a poem about daylight savings.

Across the Scree

The approach is a long ridge that is narrow and rounded. It is like walking up a half-buried backbone. The water crossing is also treacherous – along a sheer ledge through the falls, its edges green with deceitful lichen.  It is easy to lose the trail there, for there are no tracks. The snow-melt continually washes the granite floor. It shines now with morning light on a fine polish.  Beyond the creek, a hundred feet or so above the last twisted scrub, the talus field climbs to the base of the cliffs where the remnants of the previous winter have managed to survive in their chilly shadow sanctuary.

There are many trails across the ragged scree – there is no best way. Even the wild things choose – perhaps by instinct – the path that best suits them.  The black bear, elk, mountain goat; the chipmunk – each takes a different path from shelter to sustenance, from bed to bread and wine.

The mountain pass lies ahead. I was told that where it goes, the walls are close and steep and the sandy floor is covered with the sign of many different creatures. That is the place where all the trails come together.

___________

Ps 143:10