From Whence I Came

Water and seeds—like the nature I’d come from,
a thought which becomes a repeated mantra as I march through wet dune grass, a trail I seem to be alone on, the little, brown bird, sweet as an Easter peep, the only creature to speak.

Lost in the woods

On a new trail I really have no idea where it ends? Will it circle round or must I turn and march the same line back? Out here in matching nature, I think of cigarettes and red slurpee’s, the glitter and bright paints we humans use to dress up brown birds and seeds and water and isn’t that the beauty of our art? Man-made twinkle and day-glow-toxic Hanford waste, red-dyes and sprayed on taste?

For what is art, but failed attempts at Godly creation?

Surrealist, sliced and cubed, for isn’t it impossible to see the wind unless it carries with it particles of dust or smoke?

A sign for Sleepy Hollow in fluorescence took me to a brown swamp (no photographic filters). I had to turn from time and seek the reflecting ocean, sort out, to appease my inner child. Now, she does see and we have turned, a bigger me, leading with two conflicting maps.

Still, a chance for swing sands and deep of water, I think as I squat and pee, but a crow speaks to me in the forest of hobnobbed hemlock, their broken arms draped in woodland greens reaching at no great length for me.

I like circles better than straight lines. I count twenty-seven and one half rings on the freshly sawed fir. The brand-new sawdust smells of childhood camping exploits. Why do we like the smell of death? Felling with feeling, beach trees?

Handfuls of ground casings that smell so good, just as pigskin frying or the way my body goes electric when he kisses my butt. Why it feels in the darkest spots of woods, that fingers of sunbeams create in the coldest corners the steam of these holy spots?

Way out here, where there is no trash, a soaked black beanie cap with a Raiders patch is stretched wet on a log, waits for the one who will never come back to reclaim it.

My ancestors were farmers, poor, proud, who kept their children clean wrote joyfully in their journals of the positive comments bestowed by the wealthy, those who used mine in need of their own atonement, inviting such lesser’s in, thrice a year for two candies, one coin.

Yes, they were artists too, first with elaborate vegetable gardens and second the knitting of baby bunting and floppy, cloth-headed dolls, third self-trained painters of oil portraits depicting Christ and his disciples hung in made-in-Mexico frames, purchased from Swaner Markets’ discount bin, fringed and unimportant because real art must have no practical uses.

Turning back

These relatives relegated to FOLKS, and my spit test says I am pure white, my feet a bluish hue after stripping off socks and boots for the inevitable winter wade-through of slough, I come to posted warnings, beach-approach-five Danger! I, in feverish pursuit, have wandered into a cyclone, topped with raze-wire, Impact Area, U.S. government-owned, strip of beach reserved for army games.