A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two poems by Mike Cole

Mike Cole, Ahwahnee, California, USA

 

Junction Butte

—where the north and middle forks

of the San Joaquin River come together

 

 

Down washed out rock strewn switchbacks

through shoulder high rhododendron and ceanothus

sweetening every breath, tiger lilies flaring above ferns,

 

to a knoll, beyond loggers’ reach,

where twin sentinels,

a ponderosa and a sugar pine,

have stood since a time

when nothing that wasn’t wild

moved, or grew, or flowed here,

follow the heavy columns

up to sunlight flaring

in their crowns,

 

down to the snowmelt rumble,

water so cold it numbs and reddens flesh.

Squint against the stinging glare,

then rest in shade beneath the metal bridge

arched above this place where shepherds

coaxed their flocks across.

 

Take up the backpack again, climb

the high stone steps of the Mammoth Trail.

At a cedar marked by rusted nails

find the faint depression in dry grass of a path

that rises to the top of a ridge.

Stand above the canyon of the middle fork

of the San Joaquin opening so deep and wide

the distant view urges flight.

 

Two more hours sliding down

pine needles and oak leaves,

then out onto slabs of sun-brightened granite,

side-stepping and slipping across sloughing sand,

crust of lichen, past mounds of bear scat,

wide around undercuts of rock

where rattlers might rest in shade.

 

Bone deep pain in hips and knees and toes,

step out onto a sandy flat

bounded by the constant thunder

of the two rivers becoming one.

 

                        *

 

In lengthening shadows make camp,

lie staring up into the play

of light through new leaves.

 

As the day fades,

silhouettes of pines and cedars

rise against the graying sky

 

like spires of smoke or spirits.

A shattered black oak stands,

two limbs raised like arms 

 

beside the sheared off trunk,

now a head thrown back

to chant warning or celebration.

 

Beneath the river’s tumult,

the heavy beat of drums,

a rhythm that filled this canyon

 

for nights and days in ages

when those who fell asleep

and awoke to that water sound

 

like a powerful wind knew

that any talk of a distant sea

or of men with skin pale as snow

 

was the product of a dream.

Move for an hour unseen

through a dream

 

of cedar bark houses that tangle the sky

with braids of smoke,

the early morning voices of women,

 

men’s dark hands shaping blades

and points out of stone brought here

from the black glass mountain to the east.

 

                        *

 

Wake again to the rush of the river

toward a sea it can no longer reach,

to sadness and calm that make this a place

where everything has been resolved.

Sit quietly and listen

to torrents falling over rock.

Know all that has been lost,

but know too

that this is the place,

the one place, to wait 

for whatever takes flight from the body

to leave for the journey

in which the rivers

always find their way

to the sea.

 


Tuolumne Campfire

  

Phil brings his paintings,

the one from today of the bridge

beginning to dissolve into 

a scarlet tinged darkness,

and the one of a mountain

that becomes a nude woman

emerging from the landscape, 

and he has his song books 

from the Santa Cruz ukulele society.

We wander among Willie Nelson, 

Sarah Vaughn, the Beatles,  

Johnny Cash, the Mamas and Poppas,

but we can’t get Janis Joplin’s Bobby McGee 

to untangle itself so pause 

while Phil’s friend with the wooden flutes 

tells of being in line to audition

for Big Brother and the Holding Company

until Janis’s hungry heart 

made any other voice immaterial.

He tells how she wandered in and out

of the house where he slept, an ephemera 

that like the woman in Phil’s painting

was on her way to outgrowing this world,

says he went on to sing 

in hashish informed tongues

for a trio of sitars.

 

We go on to King of the Road, 

Peggy Sue, You Are My Sunshine,

until the fire dies to a pile of bright nuggets,

the camps around us sinking into silence.

We turn off the lights we needed for music,

tell a few more stories in near whispers,

then dissolve into our separate

rooms of the cold dark.

 

Mike Cole is from Fresno, California (USA) where he attended Fresno State College and earned a pre-MFA Master’s Degree in Poetry. He was a high school teacher of English, Spanish, and Creative Writing for 30-plus years. He now lives and writes in Ahwahnee, California near Yosemite. Over the years, his poems have appeared in a number of magazines, most recently in The Red Savina Review, Stirring, Front Porch Review, and in the anthologies Highway 99, by Heyday Press and Yosemite Poets, by Scrub Jay Press. He is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

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