Day 9: Tramontane \truh-MON-teyn\ ,

Tramontane

1

At dawn, a rosy light covers new buds
on dark fingers of Gravenstein apple
trees.  Across the valley, a flat scallop
of hills rises into light as if to
claim perimeter. Paradise is this—
what truth we wall in.  But with the dawncome
the sea birds: gulls, cormorants, cranes and all
they carry back and forth between—

2

Before baseball practice, my 4^th grade son
asks me:  Do you know about Ishi Mom?
Of course.  I say.  But I can’t see the perimeter
he’s been told—what’s been walled in to protect--

How many massacres Ishisurvived:
Three Knolls, Kingsley Cave.
How the stones of Deer creek were covered in
blood.  What Ishi must have carriedwalking
out of the dark woods into the arms of
those who had slaughtered all he had loved.
That Ishi was not his given name.  That
it is the Yahi word for man. That his
body was cremated without his brain
and lost for nearly 100 years. And
that these facts are only small pieces
larger truths still not passed into the light.

3
Because the paradise we tend is permeable.
Because the young may not need to know all
but certainly need to want to know all
Because beyond the mountains is where
paradise has any hope to begin.