i remember losing a shoe last time this happened

changes.  the more i continue down this path, the more i tap into creative parts which are completely contradictory to writing about running.  and, after weighing the relative merits of maintaining a blog for each (running and not), i've decided to consolidate and write what feels right at the moment under the "lupine and daisy" rubric.  i have a feeling most of this will be poetry.  that's just what it boils down to for me. it's been this way since i was eighteen and i was writing poetry about submarines and a son of mine that still hasn't been born - thank god. i've moved on to flowers and mountains and genitalia (they're all the same, by the way).  but it's still the same basic view of the world.  i don't really think any other way for very long.  i'm starting to think of this forum as one long lieder cycle for me.  i've toyed with taking that to more formal places in terms of maybe doing a long trip and writing a poem each day to document the progress instead of, say, a travelogue, but that seems like too much pressure just yet.  i'll keep it informal.  i do see patterns developing, lupine and daisy each are emerging leitmotifs for me, tropes meant to invoke very specific persons, places.  and i like that.  i like that there might be some digging, some thinking on the readers' part to follow me.  and if there is none of that, that's fine too.  maybe there is something to build on.

i write this of course for myself.  this thought, this change of course is merely an abandoned sand bank.  the course of the river has moved elsewhere. 

i'll see you on the other side.

from THE LOVE POEMS OF MARICHIKO

I

"I sit at my desk.
What can I write to you?
Sick with love,
I love to see you in the flesh.
I can write only,
"I love you.  I love you.  I love you."

Love cuts through my heart
and tears my vitals.
Spasms of longing suffocate me
and will not stop.

IX

You wake me,
Part my thighs, kiss me.
I give you the dew
Of the first morning of the world.

XVII

Let us sleep together here tonight.
Tomorrow, who knows where we will sleep?
Maybe tomorrow we will lie in the fields,
Our heads on the rocks.

XXIV

I scream as you bite
my nipples, and orgasm
drains my body, as if I had
been cut in two.

XXXVI

I am sad this morning.
The fog was so dense,
I could not see your shadow
as you passed my shoji.

XXXI

Some day six inches of
ashes will be all
that's left of our passionate minds,
of all the world created
by our love, its origin
and passing away.


XXXII

I hold your head tight between
my thighs, and float away
forever, in an orchid
boat on the River of Heaven."



translated by K. Rexroth, 1978ish

Falling in Love in the Time of Slime Mold

some slimes (myxomycetes) begin life as protoplasm,
can move, can ingest nutrients, do
show sacrificial behavior, do exhibit group dynamics, can find their
way back together if separated, that is, they
"are no more than a bag of amoebae encased in a thin slime sheath"
but act as though they had "simple brains".  as such
they are no longer classed as fungi.

i saw several Chocolate Slime Molds on Granite Mt.
and found that I had much sympathy for them.
could have been me there on the end of the boot.  and you.  maybe
we were there and will be again. who could say?
maybe we'd grow out of my corpse. that wouldn't be so bad.
that would  be the perpetual spirit carrying on i guess.

i'd lift you up to get at
that leaf, or light, or shove a sporangia right up through me
to make more of us.  and be born again without hubris.
i'd do that.  i'd find you.  i'd hold tight if need be.  i'd let
go if need be too.  i bet we'd laugh as we
rolled around the forest floor shoving our cytoplasm back and
forth like kids inside those roll inside inflatable balls.  we'd never have to stop.

much of what i write is done while listening to music.  which is probably why most of my blog is riddled with mistakes grammatical, syntactical and logical, if not imaginative.  it's hard to see the keyboard sometimes behind tears.  or behind closed eyes altogether.  today's bit was done while this was playing.  go ahead.  get yer kleenex out now.

fairy slippers (Calypso bulbosa)

stopped to pick fireweed leaves for tea
underneath Granite Mountain. tinkham rd.  exit 47.

worked my way up through the avy chutes on the south face
but got a little concerned shortly thereafter

about the fact that there was still a good amount
of snow above me and the day was getting hot.  turned back.

late start.  did see a sooty grouse strutting wildly back and forth.
tail feathers splayed out like a turkey's.  two huge white

rings on his neck, flexing.  sprinted after him to
see if he'd drop a feather in his panic.  nope.

calypso orchids look like something lewis carroll would have
liked. trillium just hitting the upper slopes.  salmonberries

still need a week or two.  all this.  (a sweep of the eye).
"you mean there's a senator for all this?"

I had to go and sit while my brain ran around.
I had to go and sit while it played killdeer.
I had to sleep with my eyes being crows
with my feet being the mountains
with my cock being the spring river
with my hands the stars.
my teeth turned to bark
my mouth to roots
nose to leaves

----

we took off our skins and laid down inside each other and in
the headwaters made
what became in time a third

while down-
stream

---

I watched a junco (junco hyemalis) catch a wasp over the fire pit, go
clean its beak on the vine maple.
I'm staying with them.
They say, "the sharper the knife, the cleaner the line of carving."
They say, learn the names of as many of us as you can.

----

 the night sky was filled with birds

----

the wind moves

the mountain moves

we move

----

The song and the quill and the life given.
All the dappled shade there ever was gathered up at once.
The sound and shape of rising rivers darkening
to umber embankments year after year.
The multitude of ways to say love.

i said to the mountain, "you are the most beautiful mountain i have ever seen".

i said to my love, "you are the most beautiful woman i have ever seen".

charms

And

after letting go of wanting that little Jay feather I went and sat in the park in a golden light yesterday.  I took off my shoes and socks, folded my legs beneath me and resolved to watch the world for a few minutes. No expectations. Sometime into my vigil, I don't remember how long exactly, from the corner of my eye I saw there was a feather flickering in the grass.