NATIVE KNOWLEDGE
With crystal drops, the frost rains off
the roof at dawn – shadows reach
across the canyon, red-chested finches
flirt in a thatch of leafless twigs,
buds ablaze in silence – sweet silence.
There is no other news to know
except for the felling of an acorn swelled
four hundred years or more ago
in a manner of minutes. Chisel teeth
gush sawdust with certain ceremony
of wedges and angles – crack after crack
into the gunshot’s last snap of oak.
The Castros undercut the five foot trunk
that held eagles up above us all, laid
the dead gently down when out of the dark
cavity of broken limb, a snow white owl
leaps for open air like a dove released
in the morning’s deep blue horizon.
Its gray mate rides the timber clear
to crunching ground. We buck it up and
talk respectfully of trees along the creek –
old sycamores and the Valley Oak Dad saved
in ’59 when they built the dam, of the pirate
Drake in for repairs when this was
a landmark for Charlie’s distant relatives.
Like a bear cub in the thick of limbs,
I hear him say how he shook acorns
onto a tarp for native women in Yosemite –
these two strong, tree-climbing sons
doing what they’ve done for centuries.
for Charlie, Gene & Butch
One might consider this poem a companion to “Bull Pen,” posted in January 2007 and included in “Poems from Dry Creek” – physical and symbolic closure perhaps regarding my father. I’d like to break clear of the redundancy of theme however, but my obvious respect for that minority of hands-on folks ‘doing what they’ve done for centuries’ remains in the forefront of my consciousness. The practical mindset is still a dependable retreat from the ‘news’ to have incorporated into this almost ‘out-of-the-way’ lifestyle. Fresh, it’s subject to online editing.
If we manage to slab and cure a part of the trunk for a tabletop, a third poem may be in the offing.