ANGER

LUCILLE HAMILTON

Anger is alive in me.

I've swallowed it for so long,

like a sword-swallower,

flaming it down my throat.

I don't recognize it

until its bitter taste

overcomes the soft words of placation

striving to push back the stark,

brutal truth of some injustice

that has its primal root in my being.

Sour, corrosive bile is the price paid

for such denial,

buckling our bodies in a swamp of inertia

and self-defeat.

A choice with no victory.

Recognizing this aspect of myself,

even bowing down in recognition

of the salvation it offers,

breaks apart the strong hold of fear

that expressing anger has,

and let's me learn what service 

anger - and its truth - bring to me

and to all from whom 

I withheld my truth.

2013


Lucille Hamilton - Lucille grew up in N.J., on the cliffs opposite NYC.  Wrote poems as a teenager. 

Graduating college, she worked in London, Rome, briefly living in Vienna beforereturning to work 

as an R.N. in NYC.  Upon retirement, she moved to California and began writing with the Sonoma Writers Alliance.

THE SADDEST DAY - THE DEATH OF THE KING

By Fran Dayan, 2007

Two years ago we were looking for a place to move to from Berkeley, We found it in an ad “cottage near a creek” falling in love especially with the enormous tall Oak spreading it’s branches protectively over the little green house and a curvy path to it.          

We brought our cats who have devoured its wildness, the creek, the open space with trees and squirrels talking. Bringing in the cats at night finally due to wild raccoons or the occasional mountain lion citing.

When we first came the huge trunk of that magnificent tree was simply in close proximity to the house eve. The Oak so tall you had to lean way back to see the branches and so many birds flew above chatting. Everyone who came marveled at it’s magnificent spread of cool in the hot Sonoma sun.

I worried about the branches breaking and hitting the roof in the wind or rain but the landlord said, “I’ll give you $400 to do with it what you can. If you want more I’ll raise the rent.” So we did some but not what is required of a 300-year-old King/Mother. The other smaller oaks ringed it.

Two days ago we saw that the tree trunk was slipping into the roof. It happened that quickly, a large crack at the side of the kitchen window appearing, right opposite the tree. The ceiling seemed to be bulging. That was Sunday.

Monday I phoned the landlord who was in disbelief. “I will not hurt that tree, you will just have to move out while we fix the house. I’ll come by later.” My Native American neighbor said, ‘talk to the tree’ ‘Why are you so worried?’ that was before she saw it. I was nuts, my reality challenged at every turn.

Later that day, a tree man, the landlord and my neighbor saw what we saw. We then heard: ‘It’s too risky’ ‘do not sleep there’, ‘you were right Fran, You were right.’ ‘The whole tree must come out.’ The pathway over roots had killed the roots further destabilizing the tree, even beyond the rotting and the lopsided weight of the branches. How disgusting and repugnant that my warning about the tree being in jeopardy was all true.

The air of death is upon me. Everything around me is painted in death. Everyone who has seen this tree says ‘no not that wonderful tree!’ We walk about numb and dissociated. We will sleep in our R.V. while the forklift arrives tomorrow and begins to break up and chip our tree to dust and fire fodder.

How many people have loved this tree? Our neighbor is talking to the tree fairies who say they are ready to leave the tree.

I think the tree is tired and needs to lie down. They have found a large rotten          opening in the trunk base. The cats are as crazy and as sad as we are. I must think of some positive perspective, some good from this, but I cannot today.

Aftermath

The tree has fallen piece by piece, swung away from the house with ropes, down and hauled away.  Eight days of one man scaling the tree, wrapping the tree piece by piece in ropes. The jarred sawing of a branch or log falling down and men dragging heavy chunks of oak away. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces. The sweet pathway that had killed the roots hauled away and another made, no more tree, no more problem.

Over the years the tree had drifted gently over the house reaching out it’s riotous branches to the light probably for several hundred years. The house was planted underneath it. In the end the house won. This was so traumatic for me, a lesson in change and lack of control. How we will probably hold on to life just like this, not realizing that we are slipping down. If that still gives us 20 years to live, that’s a long time, if our minds and our genetics will hold out. This is bringing me to a conversation about death and how to do it.  But not right now.

Fran Dayan

                                                                                               

A GIANT FELL IN THE FOREST

ROBYN MAKARUK

"Shush", she said to her seven-year old granddaughter, who was badgering her for a story before going to bed.  "I will tell you the story of our people, the Ko-Kwel".

"Our ancestral Homelands once encompassed more than one million acres that included all the watersheds of the Coquille River system from the ocean to its headwaters and along the south Oregon coast as far south as Cape Blanco and Port Orford.

We were a peaceful Tribe.  Most of our permanent villages were located at places where year-round food resources were abundant. Along the coast, estuary shorelines and sheltered coastal bays offered food of all sorts, and travel by canoe was easy. Other villages were located in the interior, where streams and rivers full of fish, and valleys where deer and elk wintered provided all the food we needed.  These villages were where we built our plank houses made of timbers from the densely forested mountains and valleys. One day, a 200 foot giant cedar fell in the forest.  It had been hit by lightning and slid down the mountain into the middle fork of the Coquille River.  When it made its way downstream close to one of our villages we saw it as a sign.  Men from our Tribe guided it ashore and its abundant gifts provided our village with three 20 foot canoes, and enough timber to make four plank houses.

The Seasonal places in the uplands and interior valleys away from the estuaries and coast were hunting and food gathering areas used by our and other Native groups.   When our Ko-kwels and other groups gathered for berry or nut harvesting, or root digging, or at hunting and fishing sites, it was a time for celebration and for renewing old relationships and making new ones.  We returned to these places year after year, and as you have learned, we still celebrate these annual events like the Mid-Winter Gathering, Restoration Day Celebration and Solstice Dances in response to our ancient Ko-kwel traditions.

In 1851 and 1855 when our Chiefs signed treaties which ceded more than a million acres of our Ancestral Homelands to the US Government they were never ratified by the US Senate.  Because of this, our reservation lands and other considerations promised in the treaties never materialized and our People were denied permanent Tribal homelands.   Finally, more than a hundred years later on June 28 1989, Congress passed a law which re-established our Tribe as a federally recognized Native Tribe.  This is known as the Coquille Restoration Act.  This Act re-affirmed our Tribe as a sovereign government and validated its authority to manage and administer political and legal jurisdiction over our lands and resources, our businesses and our Tribal community members. It also restored the Tribe's eligibility to participate in federal programs and to receive federal funding to provide health, education, housing assistance and other services to Coquille Tribal members.

So today, sweet one, you are of the new generation of our Ko-kwel Tribe.  You can show us how to uphold our ancient traditions and be a beacon of light in our Coquille Tribal Government. You have the opportunity to serve on our Tribal Council, become one of its Officers.  You can become a forester, a physician, officer of the law, a lawyer, a teacher, anything you wish all because your ancestors fought to preserve those rights.  Whatever path you choose to follow, you will have your grandmother's blessing".

2013

TEXAS SEASON

LUCILLE HAMILTON

For me, Texas is a mythical state:

Everything there's over:

size or rate.

Girls are prettier,

senators are wittier,

passing the buck,

along with chuck

wagons.

but why can't they let bygones

be by-gone?

Men are taller,

wearing boots.

Someone's always in cahoots,

with the law, still called "wild west."

Sheriffs still wear a vest

with pockets, kerchiefs handy;

always makes 'em look real dandy.

This, despite the famous Texas heat,

'cause it makes 'em look real neat.

Men are courteous,

women southern flirteous

And when the subject comes to oil

it begins with cooking with pure cholesterol;

(It's all that fryin' 

that keeps them dyin').

I'd better keep this up-to-date;

there's some news as of late

about a Senator named Cruz.

Now, he's a one who's a real doozy -

erring on the daft side of reason:

Batten the hatches, it's Texas Season.

2013

LACES

Michael James

          Today I’m tugging on my shoe lace,

               Bending over my left knee

                    The side with the hip that hurts when I stretch.

                         To reach the shoe, I wonder,

                              Should I replace the lace that binds because it’s frayed.

          I realize it’s come to that now: 

               An existential moment concerning a shoelace. 

                    But folded into that question, 

                         Like roads in all directions 

                              Rolled up into a bowling ball 

                                   Which I’m to launch down 

                                        The lane ahead of me, 

                                             Are all the little decisions and changes of direction 

                                                   Forced by an aging frame? 

          Will it be worthwhile to buy new laces? 

               Do I see old men tying knots in their broken strings 

                    To keep the flappers on their feet? 

          The time must surely come when I say, 

                “Enough, no new stuff! It won’t be used,

                     Or at least, not consumed.”

          I remember promising myself that I 

               Would not court death until I was used up, a burned out coal, 

                     My fire given out to heat young minds.

          But the unexpected happened: 

               Parts started wearing out before the whole. 

                   As with your good old car, you replace what’s broken,

                        Fix one thing, patch another,  

                              Live with what you cannot change. 

          Old Lizzie hobbles on 

               Still following those unraveling roads 

                    Which understanding says should converge

                         At the horizon if it’s far enough away. 

          And what if they do? 

               If all roads lead to a point, 

                    Then I’ll finally have to live and die punctually, so to speak, 

          To squeeze myself to a point, 

               Shed accoutrements like fears and personality, 

                    Like hankerings and references, 

                        All things familiar let fall 

                             Is what I think will happen 

                                 When the last lace breaks. 

          January 2012

The Grandmother Tree

Michael Miley

                  You walk south out of the camp at Samuel P. Taylor State Park*   by first crossing a bridge over Papermill Creek. You then cut east again for about 200 feet before you take a right turn up the path and make your gradual ascent into the hills. Parts of the trail are a bit steep, but you only climb through the surrounding redwoods for about 15 minutes before you come to your destination. You’ll then find yourself in a bit of a clearing on the side of a slope. I believe a sign points you in the right direction. You walk about 30 feet west and there she stands, an immense Grandmother Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, in a fairy circle of other redwoods. Perhaps she is 1,000 years old, partially burnt out by fire, with a cavity big enough to hold four or five people. You step over a gnarled root through the opening and down into the tree to find yourself in a kidney-shaped hollow about eight feet long and three feet wide in the widest parts, the burnt-out cavity extending up into the dark, so that unless you have a flashlight, you can’t see to the top of it. There’s another long leaf-shaped opening on the north side of the hollow, so if you’ve hiked in mid-day, both ends are open enough to shed a soft light into the space. It’s best to settle in and sit for a spell and if you’ve come during the middle of the week, you won’t be disturbed by noisy tourists. You can just sit there and marvel at your newfound home, a kind of Redwood cave, with its dry bed of needles with their dusky aroma, imagining how comforting it would be to sleep there overnight, were it not for the fact that local raccoons or foxes might also have the same idea, or half-blind opossums, or even a snake or perhaps a few spiders. But I’d be very surprised if no one has slept there, or couples, for a love-nest. Me—I was content to meditate in the Grandmother Tree during my first visit, to close my eyes and sit there quietly for an hour or so, until my awareness deepened and I was able to sense her vital strength. A living current opened up in my subtle perception and I could sense and see the quantum stream of her life force flow in waves and particles past my closed eyelids and ascend into the upper reaches of her branches, 200 feet or more into the air, only to spout into the sky like a tuft of green hair bending in the breeze that combed down from the mountaintop. 

                   It’s hard to imagine how long she’s been viewing this small circle of woods, how content she’s been to peer into the same wooded diorama of unending Time, watching leaves and needles fall, spying on wrens flitting from branch to branch, tracking squirrels foraging in the nearby ferns, hearing the groan of trunks that have grown together, now rubbing together, peering down at the deer or fox that periodically sniff around the slopes, listening to the wind seethe through the upper reaches of the woods, or enduring the rain in endless cycles of winters and springs. In the summer I imagine she likes to sleep for days at a time and in the fall she likes to reminisce, though all her memories now fold together into the same present moment with only the subtlest of variations—like a quiet chord sounding on an compressing concertina, altered randomly by a little finger wandering over the button board. That said, in her incredibly long, contemplative life, you know that Silence is the overwhelming fact of her existence and as her branches feel into the woods like the fingers of a sleepwalker extended in the air, that Silence is more eternal and encompassing than any chance sound that may flit across the slope, like the wings of an owl beating from tree to tree, or the shuffling hooves of a family of deer foraging in the undergrowth.                    

                     I brought Catherine, who is now my wife, to Sam Taylor’s Grandmother Tree the first time we went out together, back in August of 2001. After the short hike, we stepped into the tree as if stepping back into a womb, two old children playing hide and seek at the beginning of the 21st century, down into a portal one step from the Underworld, from which goblins and elves sometimes emerge in the preternatural dawn, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. In the light that crept into the Grandmother’s womb, I thought Catherine’s old-world face had the cast of a forest healer, a half-witch who knew spells, but whose main expertise was the mixing of curative herbs she gathered in the forest. With her white hair mantling her head, falling softly to her shoulders, the bones of her cheeks accented in the faint light as she gazed up into the burnt out cavity overhead, she was clearly an exile from an older time, a village wise woman respected for the secrets she knew about the flora and fauna in the hills of Northumberland, not far from the Scottish border. I’d brought my camera, so I took our pictures in the half-dark, using a flash that no doubt startled the great Grandmother, so that she no doubt momentarily feared the elves had lit another fire in her belly. Those photos are record of a love that began there that day, watered by the deep stream of the Grandmother’s quietude for more than twelve years now—a mere blink of an eye in the span of her attention. I’m certain we have her blessing. It’s clear that Catherine and I will live out the rest of our lives and die together. The Grandmother Tree will watch us pass, like so many others. She’ll tell new visitors about the day we came to visit her, as they sit inside her, listening intently to what she has to say. She’ll then speak of the Silence that permeates all things. She’ll speak of Time and how it stretches out beyond all memory, even hers; of how her own birth from a seed three millimeters long was a legend told her one day by a great white stag, who rubbed his antlers against her bark before he wandered off in the ferns, gradually hidden by the sturdy brown trunks of her countless sons and daughters, her grandsons and granddaughters.

                       

            *     Samuel Taylor State Park

                            Lagunitis, CA      

            LATITUDE:  38.01959

                LONGITUDE:-122.729548

                 January 2012

© 2012 Michael Miley  All rights reserved

ORGAN DAYS

Robyn  Makaruk

               I climbed the wooden stairs, changed my shoes

               Slid along the bench and flipped the switch

               To hear the grateful sigh of air filling the giant’s lungs

               It was playtime

                     Great, swell, choir and pedal 

                     Sixteen foot stop and others open 

                     Waiting for the tactile opening on the great manual

                     A mordent weighted with a fermata

                     A scurry down to a second mordent 

                     Building anticipation until the pedal enters 

                     With a booming growl, sustained until the arrival of

                     Lacy patterns that chase each other

                     Through the patterns of arpeggios

                     Creating a kaleidoscope of color to a first act end

                     A haunting, fugal stalking begins to gather

                     Its interweaving lines moving to another pause

                     A scurrying recitativo sends shivers through the air

                     Not scrambled but clearly articulated

                     Until the pedal joins the fray in teasing grunts

                     Towards the final, booming, powerful cadence

                     No more production from the beast

                     Just the decay of sound…..on and on

                     Forever captured in the moment

                     Glorious!

                Toccata & Fugue, D minor  J.S.Bach

                     August  2010