Encounter with Frogs
What is an impression worth?
A frog. And a jar of ruddy leeches.
When I say “frog,” I think “Frogs.
Frogs are good to think.”
The matter of frog experience first floats
Then sinks mostly unknowable, spuriously
Into the spawning pond of memory.
It’s a rich seminal soup, full of eyes,
Magnified, each a natural universe.
These eyes are vocal once they spring
Breaking through the skin of things.
In season, everywhere. Then they’re out.
Wonders of compromise, they extend themselves
To bridge the poles of water world and padded land.
And the extensions can be perceived from the eyes
As orderly change, clear and strange,
As leggy fish with iguana tails,
As animals flying on all fours,
Fully outstretched, twice their size,
Jumping, climbing piggy-back,
Unabashedly clambering onto one another’s backs,
Orange on orange, green on green,
Clinging colorfully, eyes bulging,
They seem a surprise even to themselves.
When they leap
From the dense compact of bone and skin,
The plastic tapestry
Takes shape. As lightning bolts or spotted lilies on fresh
green waters.
Frogs.
Frogs are naturally good to think,
To take inside as part of insubstantial life,
Changing order, cruising the classifications.
Their song defeats the ears, allegro!
The rhythmic noise communicates,
Encroaching on all other senses,
Setting forth reverie:
Bullrushes,
Against the moon and stars,
Spiked grasses on the mirror lake,
Edging the weeds, where
Sedge warblers are sleeping on blue eggs.
The scene you see cannot be forced,
Cannot be tidily arranged
By science or dulling habit.
My eyes within no longer truly see.
There they swim in thicker waters,
As Comets,
Shooting across the neural galaxies,
Where they re-connect icons.
From a blade of grass, the rest:
The moon,
Stars
Pond
Echoing ripples across
Shattering the constellations,
Ruffling the lily pad
And its camping amphibious motility.
Making the connections symphonic, concrete,
Like visiting forgotten shrines,
So much depends on Memory.
Glazed frogs transporting—déjà vu—
Faint essences to flush meadowlarks
From the nesting spirit
To wild flights of fancy.
Each a winged message,
Calling, answering unasked questions.
My gaze, pilgrim in a landscape
Painting itself inside,
Inviting me to choose the color and the brush.
This is a risky business,
Uninhibited mind-blooming,
Thinking
On the odd chance a relevant word
Will leap the illogical impasse.
by David Gilmour
Day
Hike, Whidbey Island
(for Joy)
On
the prairie’s far north side we strike
the bluff trail, wind lush with salt,
with
stories pried from kelp.
Or
have we always owned their song?
An eagle glides forty feet above us,
wings
held aloft without a quiver.
Dark
as anthracite, it drifts toward terrain
only it can occupy, more stunning
than
even the lagoon trapped between beach
and
bluff. When we pause by a stark,
sun-bleached log I see beyond you
the
path it takes, the descent into myth,
a
port I long to visit. No, not visit—
recover.
Fling my net over a dream
claimed
as birthright, a child’s first realm.
Baseball,
fairy tales, hazelnut trees atop
a wild ravine—all food to nourish
the
living no less than a prodigal rain.
Like
this bird’s passive flight. Such
creatures
open us like shells. What tide must
we
invoke to cross the water?
Perego’s Trail at Ebey’s Landing
A few miles
from home, our get-away from months
Of
melancholic habitation,
Dolorous
rounds of merest metabolism,
Out here,
even flat fields lay as still wonders,
Farmed
prairies leveled in spring plantings,
Inspiring us
out of ourfallow bodies like clouds
About to
burst after too much drinking in the dark.
Was high time
for two of us to center on one
From perverse
suburban cycles of delivery and receipt,
To get up for
some other purpose than habit presents.
Across from
Coupeville on the Whidbey map, Perego’s Trail,
Ascending on
the outermost edge of the yellow bluff, took us,
Upward from
Ebey’s Landing, hundreds of feet, treading
The line
between the wild and the good, the lower Straits
Opposite
Dungeness and cultures plats of Sherman’s Land.
Out of limbo
we trod the path toward the north where
Perego’s
brackish ponds limn the narrow strand below,
Heaped around
with drifted logs and scraggly stumps
Once bound
for Skagit mills. Claims in every
direction
Had been
named with history’s lumber, now standing
In shacks and
mansions that coursed down rivers
Into weirs
and settled at last vagabond in tamed banks
With tired
sailors’ dreams for safe landings and boarding
A welcoming
community nestles in.
From the
beach, the trail rose northward up sturdy planks,
Switch-backing
to land, then angling west to the Sound,
Narrowing to
the line climbing the lower bluff’s rim,
Where at
stations crude benches were set for those soon weary.
Our eyes
askance, we strode past turning points, glancing
Out to sea at
fingertip islands and the peninsular thumb
Of the giant
who held the Sound as a mirror in his palm.
Climbing
still to take the trail where the air hummed
In the
pockets of morning sun, music of a million bees,
Dancing on
cello wings, busy among the dog rose, pink
Gems on hedges,
spikey, thick and green against the fields
Of fox tails waving
to the east as we glanced that way.
At first the
swath was worn by companies into three
Tracks: one
clear, black sand; the two beside it, matted grass,
Leading us up
past Sherman’s rich green acres to the right
And higher
over the gray shingled shore to the left, where
Covered heads
and backs crouched low, combing the leavings
By the driftwood
webbing that snagged worthless treasures
Brought in by
last night’s rough tide.
Luminous the
calm waters over Admiralty Inlet spread constant,
Vast splendor
of the fading turquoise horizon of Juan de Fuca Straits.
Gleaming
furrows of the tilled fields had a distant meeting
Beyond the
red-winged blackbird balancing on the fence line.
Rising further,
the path retreated along the wild ridge, stitched
In firs and
patches of Oregon Grape merging on shimmering borders,
The nature of
our minds wakened in the see-saw of thought,
As the brown
buntings we noticed hovering before, alighted
Like
illusionists on the soft silk of fragile stalks,
Waving light
as air, bowing them double with their scant weight,
A moment’s
bare clinging, then snapping like catapults into the breeze.
Emotion
arising, the whistle of the blackbird perched on the post,
Grass heads
brushed against our calves and feather ticked the bends
Of our knees,
as bees led the way before our feet, without a drone,
At controlled
and reasoned distance from our slowing footfalls.
Upward.
Upward.
Throbbing
reflections on the dappled turquoise below met a bluing line
Where a
solitary seal arced over and glided in its elemental quest
Out into the
darker depths.
Throbbing
reflections penetrating the inward currents
Washed the
outer gleam from wide-eyed questioning—
What is that
within me, self-directed in what direction?
Who is behind
me?
Two hundred feet up we
stood to gaze behind
At the
boomerang arc of the strand stretching back.
Here, the
grasses flattened down near the bluff’s edge
Brought us to
rest on the next rise of the narrowing path.
Lying supine,
We closed our
lids to the blue dome.
A purple
ceiling of the temple with a yellow eye pulled away
From my
being, taking all noise, purpose, and thought,
Carried aloft
on an ethereal balloon beyond geometry,
As Apollo
might have lifted off once from his Delphic throne.
She, my wife
not the oracular priestess type, lay suspended
In her temple
at my side, always more practical, stirred
When she
heard the drone of an airplane
Flying too
close to her distant reveries,
or else the
wind came and so the stars began to fizzle
as the breeze
mounted against the cliff and strummed upon the grasses.
Then it grew
quiet as a desert.
The first
fire nearby was a simple, pink rose she plucked
To savor in
her cupped hands the warm, sweet balm
And held it
close for me to breathe, her eyes closing,
Indicating
much more than the closing of the lids, that,
Bending down,
in that floral bowl I watched for stars
Until her
hands withdrew the fiery scent.
Sun at
zenith, dazzled by the sky, righting ourselves
We faced
further north, resuming the rhythm in earnest.
Epics took
place between our feet.
Ranks of
frantic ants crossed the trail, swimming
Through the
dusty track, risking all the tribe.
One loner
clung to the head of an upturned pill-bug,
Writhing like
a many legged turtle, ant legs
Scrambling in
the sandy grains, yanking at its load,
Going, going
nowhere, getting but getting nowhere,
Just like
Sisyphus.
A spider lay
crumpled in the corrugated treads of a biker’s
Tire
marks. A centipede, two inches of coild
black chain
Wound around
itself, a sun spiral in eclipse.
The trail
twitched with injured insects as we rose
To the
bluff’s height, where the wind was harping
A new harmony
among the tattered pines.
Eerily, to
the seaward, as if clawing a my ear,
An eagle held
itself braced on the updraft,
Mere yards
distant, wings rattling like bronze quills.
I heard no
kite like it for stability,
And I saw its
eye, an eye that truly looked,
I watched
that eye looking, seeing, back at me,
Its acetylene
stare, fearless and knowing,
Auspicious,
tranquil as a living angel with a heavy brow,
Whose gaze
transfixed me like alost lamb.
In one
hovering moment, I felt a free-fall
Before the
sky lightened again and turning away
Its beak with
smoother-back white hair,
This propitious
surfer dropped downward toward the shore
Following the
arc of the bay, doubled by itsown gray ghost
Cast upon the
shingle beach below,
Remaining in
the open air, while I walked on in stumbling gait.
The wind
dropped.
The water now
so calm a kayaker might course crossways
Over the
ultramarine veins of the inlet.
Small birds
bobbed in the shallows.
Cormorants
dove and held their search so long
We lost
track.
Gulls, absent
till now, rained down in shrieks of panicked
Consternation,
fighting for a space
In the
feeding ring around the gamboling seal.
Above
Perego’s Lake, the trail ended and turned
Downward
steeply to the beached whales of driftwood.
It was living
on this edge, and transitions were made
In a moment.
Either we
trace back the way we came or one carefully placed
Foot-fall
down and bridge began to form that way.
She held my
shoulders from behind, and together we made descent
As a centaur
might onecehave ventured down a slope
When Triton’s
horn called the dancers to the laughing waves.
