Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

-James Wright, 1990

FreshGrass at Mass MoCA this weekend, and there were many good performances, but the two standouts were Valerie June and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. If you ever get the chance to see either live, take it.

And...that's about all I've got to say for myself, this time.

For Poets

Stay beautiful
but don't stay down underground too long
Dont turn into a mole
or a worm
or a root
or a stone

Come on out into the sunlight
Breathe in trees
Knock out mountains
Commune with snakes
& be the very hero of birds

Don't forget to poke your head up
& blink
Think
Walk all around
Swim upstream

Dont forget to fly

-Al Young

A Passing

Coyotes passed through the field at the back
of the house last night–coyotes, from midnight
till dawn, hunting, foraging, a mad scavenging,
scaring up pocket gophers, white-breasted mice,
jacktails, skinks, the least shrew, taking
a bite at a time.

They were a band, screeching, yodeling,
a multi-toned pack. Such yipping and yapping
and jaw clapping, yelping and painful howling,
they had to be skinny, worn, used-up,
a tribe of bedraggled uncles and cousins
on the skids, torn, patched, frenzied
mothers, daughters, furtive pups
and, slinking on the edges, an outcast
coydog or two.

From the way they sounded they must have smelled
like rotted toadstool mash and cow blood
curdled together.

All through the night they ranged and howled,
haranguing, scattering through the bindweed and wild
madder, drawing together again, following
old trails over hillocks, leaving their scat
at the junctions, lifting their legs on split
rocks and switch grass. Through rough-stemmed
and panicled flowers, they nipped
and nosed, their ragged tails dragging
in the camphor weed and nettle dust.

They passed through, all of them, like threads
across a frame, piercing and pulling, twining
and woofing, the warp and the weft. Off-key,
suffering, a racket of adominables
with few prospects, they made it–entering
on one side, departing on the other.
They passed clear through and they vanished
with the morning, alive.

-Pattiann Rogers, 1990

Letter from Maine

Yes, I am home again, and alone.
Today wrote letters, then took my dog
Out through the sad November woods.
The leaves have fallen while I was away,
The ground is golden, while above
The maples are stripped of all color.
The ornamental cherries, red when I left,
Have paled now to translucent yellow.

Yes, I am home again but home has changed.
And I within this cultivated space
That I have made my own, feel at a loss,
Disoriented. All the safe doors
Have come unlocked and too much light
Has flooded every room. Where can I go?
Not toward you three thousand miles away
Lost in your own rich life, given me
For an hour.
-----------Read between the lines.
Then meet me in the silence if you can,
The long silence of winter when I shall
Make poems out of nothing, out of loss,
And at times hear your healing laughter.

-May Sarton, 1983

Trying to write something to go with these photos, and I'm coming up a bit dry. There's no reason for that, though--there's so much I could say. Maybe I feel like I've said it already. Another backpacking trip; another stretch of mountain scenery, another story that's better experienced than told. Still, it was a good experience: bright mornings and cool evenings, occasionally brutal scrambles up rocky trails, sunrise and sunset from mountain ridges.
This time I was in Pemigewasset Wilderness in White Mountain National Forest, which I guess gives me the opportunity to reflect on our national wildernesses, the definition of wilderness, things like that. The Wilderness Act turns fifty this year. Pemigewasset itself was designated in 1984, so its federal designation is only thirty years old--though of course, the land is much older than that, which is perhaps what makes the designation important: it's a decision of leave this be. I passed a rusted out stove from a logging camp back in the woods, a mark of history and human presence--though of course the trails I was walking were also a mark of human presence. But for the most part the forest was quiet, and when I set up camp for the night the silence was a weighted reminder of my distance from roads and people. Whatever has happened, the forest rebounded, perhaps different but still real and vital. 
p.s. For another angle on national wildernesses, head on over to High Country News.

Autumn Aspens: Cumbres Pass

Though stands low on the mountain
remain green as sliced limes,
higher up, midsummer's far gone

in flaming amazement. When wind
riffling a ridgeline grove
fans our caveman sense of fire

as a wonder lovely to own,
over Cumbres Pass gold leaves
spill and spin like doubloons

till flame and coin seem one,
close as we'll come to money
on trees loved for their moment

almost better than money. Just when
have we spent such afternoons?
Less than once in a hundred?

That many? Then stop the car
again. At happiness to burn. Bright
as the life we're still looking for.

-Reg Saner, 1997