Seafarer

And learn O voyager to walk
The roll of earth, the pitch and fall
That swings across these trees those stars:
That swings the sunlight up the wall.

And learn upon these narrow beds
To sleep in spite of sea, in spite
Of sound the rushing planet makes:
And learn to sleep against this ground.

-Archibald MacLeish, 1933

Tonight I packed my bags, packed my car, with everything I'll need for the next year and a half, two years. Skis, snowshoes, bike. Coats, scarves, pants. Shoes, boots, shoes. Pots, pans, muffin tins. The list: it goes on. I also packed my spare iPod with books on tape and podcasts, and mom mixed up a bag of gorp (good old raisins and peanuts, plus m&ms, which don't make the acronym) for me, and all told, it looks like I'm ready for this road trip thing.

This blog was started at the end of 2008, in preparation for my first adventure in studying abroad--a five month stint at the University of Otago in New Zealand. I posted a Walt Whitman excerpt in my last post before leaving the states, and although there's another poem scheduled for Wednesday, I thought I'd throw this one up again in light of the journey I'm about to undertake (my alarm is set for 5:30 tomorrow morning). It's fitting, I like a little repetition in my life, if the shoe fits, wear it, etc., etc. Here we go:

from Song of the Open Road

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well for where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)

-Walt Whitman, 1860

Remember this post? Here's another for the anuran series. (Except the horned toad isn't an anuran, or even an amphib--I know, but I don't really know how to deal with that right now.)

To Whom it May Concern
---for Harry Cobb

Soon I’ll move to Norway.
If that’s a bitter pill,

well, swill, swallow. I’m going,
and I won’t wallow, not in Norway,

where they’re so beyond
slave labor, with laws that say

a clerk must work within five
meters of a window through

which she can see a tree
and by that tree be seen.

My mind’s made up.
I will be Norwegian with Norwegian

trees. I’ll be seer and be seen.
It’s a scenic scene, it’s

how it goes, I’m going.
Tell the top brass, if

they ask, I don’t give
a damn about their asses.

But I will miss the beeches and the ashes.
It’s not their fault I’m leaving.

They’re only trees, and
leaving, I’m Norwegian.

-Andrea Cohen, 2010

County fair time again.

If you don't know what this is, you haven't been to nearly enough fairs. (Here's a hint, if you need it.)

So yesterday after work I stopped by a stump on the property and picked up some mushrooms. Picked some mushrooms, actually--Chicken of the Woods, which I ate for dinner. Sauteed to a crisp in a pan with garlic, it did taste a lot like chicken.

As you can see in the picture below, I also cooked an egg. I sliced it up and put it in the bowl with the mushrooms, actually.

(A caveat, for my parents and potential mushroom hunters: Chicken of the Woods is one of the easiest edible mushrooms to identify, and this was my first time collecting them, but someone had confirmed the identity of these particular mushrooms for me already. Also, I washed the mushrooms and threw the attendant beetles out the window, and so far I seem to be fine.)

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

-Gary Snyder, 2003

Sent to Ch'ao, the Palace Reviser

You polish words in rue-scented libraries,
and I live in bamboo-leaf gardens, a recluse

wandering each day the same winding path
home to rest in the quiet, no noise anywhere.

A bird soaring the heights chooses its tree,
but the hedge soon tangles impetuous goats.

Today, things seen becoming thoughts felt:
this is where you start forgetting the words.

-Meng Hao-jan

Homing

That things should happen
twice, and place
share the burden of remembering. Home,
the first cliché. We say it
with aspiration as the breath
opens to a room of its own (a bed,
a closet for the secret self), then closes
on a hum. Home. Which is the sound of time
breaking a little, growing slow and thick as the soup
that simmers on the stove. Abide,
abode. Pass me that plate,
the one with the hand-painted habitant
sitting on a log. My parents bought it
on their honeymoon – see? Dated on the bottom,
1937. He has paused to smoke his pipe, the tree
half-cut and leaning. Is he thinking where
to build his cabin or just idling his mind
while his pipe smoke mingles with the air? A bird,
or something (it is hard to tell), hangs overhead.
Now it’s covered by your grilled cheese sandwich.

Part two, my interpretation. The leaning tree
points home, then
past home into real estate and its innumerable
Kodak moments: kittens, uncles,
barbecues. And behind those scenes the heavy
footstep on the stair, the face locked
in the window frame, things that happen
and keep happening, reruns
of family romance. And the smudged bird? I say it’s
a Yellow Warbler who has flown
from winter habitat in South America to nest here
in the clearing. If we catch it, band it,
let it go a thousand miles away it will be back
within a week. How?
Home is what we know
and know we know, the intricately
feathered nest. Homing
asks the question.

-Don McKay, 2004

My life has a funny way of finding its way to me, and I tend to just roll with the punches. Less than a week ago I received some news, and in the past six days I've made a decision that in some ways felt already decided. What I mean to say is that a question I've now posed twice (via poem) in this here illustrious blog has been answered.

The little ouzel bird has spoken: I'm going back to the university. Although perhaps I shan't call it back, because this fall I'll be bound for someplace entirely new. I hear it's cold in Saskatchewan.