The Laguna continued - The Nature of a Place

For this week's poem, we were supposed to try and write a New Yorker poem.  We listened to the Poetry Podcasts and the buttery, smooth voice of Paul Muldoon introducing and speaking with such great poets as Sharon Olds and Phillip Levine.  I tried, but, I didn't write much of a New Yorker poem. Instead, I went back to the Laguna series and wrote about egrets.  I was inspired by the stories I'd read about the inception of the Audubon Society and how their first work was to save the egrets in the early 1900s.  I hope you enjoy this draft. I think the Laguna series is close to being done.  Just two or three more poem-sections to complete the cycle (I think!).

The Nature of a Place

"The nature of the place—whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs—generally gives hint as to its inhabitants."  --John James Audubon

Today, on the Laguna, one can still
see the shock of a white, plumed body mark
the space between a raw, golden field, and
the open question of sky because
somehow, the Great Egret, the Snowy Egret
and the Cattle Egret all survived their beauty. 

By late the eighteen hundreds the Laguna was
the heart of the Bay Area plume trade.
During breeding season when egrets grew
aigrettes, a waterfall of long thin feathers
cascading off their backs, hunters would raid
the giant stick nests built high in the air
in the eaves of oaks and willows to get
$32 –double the price of gold--
for an ounce of feathers used on women’s
fashionable hats.  Spotting an egret
became more and more rare until a man
who had spent his life watching birds, nest, and
eat and rise to flight, who had sat all day,
knee deep in brackish mud, and drawn what he
saw so vividly that it came to life,
was honored with the Audubon society
which was formed to eradicate plume hunting.

By the 1920s the egrets had
begun to return. But, the nature of
the place – the lack of steelhead and salmon
that swim in the deep, unseen waters, the felled
oaks and cleared willows, the waters gone thick
with sediment – tell the story of its
inhabitants.  When you walk smooth paths
of the Laguna today and sight the
white arrow of an egret remember
the quiet, unforeseen hunt that continues
and still threatens his beauty today.

Dear Sebastopol

This week our assignment was to write a letter to a town or place.  It turned out to be more difficult than I thought.  I chose to write to Sebastopol, my home town where I now live.  I write about my town a lot, but this didn't make it any easier to write a letter to it!  But, I gave it a shot.  Here is my draft.

 

Dear Sebastopol –

It’s hard to not get dizzy, here, under
tides of scents—how they grade and terrace the air:
the salt thick tang of wet earth and limestone
against sweet rot of wind fall apples and pears.

Take, for instance, the story of your history:
Little pine sap town on stolen ground. 
Dirt wagon rutted streets.
Lulls of hills lush with redwood and oak cleared to the root.
Then, patchworked into orchards of plums
then orchards of apples then vineyards.
The wide berth of scrub oaks left smoldering
in what was left of the Laguna after charcoal farming.
The train that carried its screaming weight right through the center of town.

Once your silence swallowed me under its glass bell sky.  Now,
I’ve wake slowly, like a good daughter.  Learn to waver in the air
above what I’ve learned until I spot the truth at ground level
and can sense what’s pushing up underneath.  Take, for instance

the WPA mural on the wall of your post office.  For so many years
it framed the idea of you to me: dusty gutted rows of apple trees
flanked by white chicken coops.  This was my sweet, apple town
I carried with me. But, even the Gravenstein is bitter sweet. 

Back from the Dead - 2 Books - And Poem-A-Day!

The past few weeks I haven't been able to post for two very good reasons:  my books!  I have two poetry collections coming out in 2013.  The first, Gold Passage, was the Trio Award winner 2012 and was published by the wonderful editors at Trio House Press.  To buy my book, visit Amazon.

My second book is a chapbook called, The Flying Trolley and it will be out in June from Finishing Line Press. It is currently in pre-sale.  That means, the number of copies I sell now, determines the print run.  So, if you are interested in picking up a copy of my chapbook, I urge you to do so before April 12th (To purchase a copy, click here).  Many of you who are close to me know that in 1996 I was hit by a car as a pedestrian in New York City. Luckily, my injuries weren't life threatening, but they were permanent. This book is about coming to terms with my own injury but more importantly it is about the incredible students who I met while working at Goldwater Hospital, a long term care hospital in New York and how they taught me more than I could teach them. The book is hybrid, containing both poetry and creative non-fiction. 

I also have four new poems about the history of Sebastopol (from last years' April poem-a-day project) published in the journal JMWW.  (You can see them here.)

Finally, speaking of poem-a-daying, I'm going to kick off another April with a poem-a-day project.  Look for prompts and rough drafts of poems posted here daily in April. And if you want to challenge yourself and need encouragement, write your own drafts and post them as comments on this blog.