wilderness poems

8/3/2019 Wilderness Poems

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Love and Wilderness

by Ed Frymire

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PrologueThe scribbled pages of the bookflap precariouslyin the still windlike the howling whimper of a struck dogwell after the moon has

sagged through the mute earth.

The myriad things we rememberthe stuttering sound of an empty page.

Why anyone would remembersuchis simply remarkable.I guess,maybe,I dont give a shit about pop.

Where there is no room for lovethere is no space for life(Every time I hear word morality,I feel terrorand I hear the thick crunch of boots)

The acrid warble of the fat summer cicadashangs over the cool dusk lightlike a thick clod of gnatstremoring into the slow stilled night

as a nesting calfsits,chewing into tomorrow.

clouds scudand the wind heralds.

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InvocationThe voice inside the broken earcalls the open earththe animals inside our skins,bear, wolf and deer,call the sun, the wind and the rain

whispering wisdom and love.And a sky of arrows loosedby the pilgrimsturns into a sea of open armsreaching for communion

into the opening earth.

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LamentAs the young cinnamon grizzlypled and beggedfor feeling or foodwe all stood in silent honourof his simple untamed life.

And later I followed that great tamed Columbiapast its sourcewhere it was once wild,years ago.And 2 days later,Im still running with her,that river uprootedand tamed and tamed and tamedand tamed again.Each dam

testament to the absent salmon.Each damtestament to the mute elk.Each damtestament to the wandering bearand the sunken great red cedarsnot to be seen again.The wild in all of ustamed and trained.Our fullest feelings and desireslatched and woven into a cordite leash

unravels through your institutions,your churches, synagogues, and senates,stretched tautly through your parentsand their parentsand their parents parentsand through all their parents parents again.

And our own passionso tamed and chained,our wild so domesticated and bowing,our life so formed

we now name this culture.


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Love and WildernessThe road to the hillsis in your breath.The feralness of your kissin the reaching sway of your lips.Magnificent

and beautiful.Yet you sense a fearas thin as a crevice,a sensual terror.And perception is the culprit.

The whorled, latticed jungle of your fingersbreathesa slow moist skin.Simpleand unperplexing.

Yet an anxiety creepslike the snake in your dreams,insidious and abrupt.

And love is the wilderness,the passionwe, the civilized,have becomeso immensely afraid of.And sensation is the foe.

To annihilate the wild,culturing our surrendering desire.And love is perverse,as byour new nature.

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The Hinge of LightSome days the worldjust drops offand no trees sing*in the hot august skies.

If I could hitch these hands to a promise,that beckoning orange moon,would not this aloneness dissolve?

The salmon now waitfor the fat yellow suns of Septemberand the heralding frosts.

The winsome light of duskis still herein the autumns hurried chilled dawn.

Cougars forageand stalk the oncoming wind.

* I owe this image to the poet, Stratis Havriaras and his novel When the Tree Sings, 1979, ISBN 0-345-28788-6

and its companion novel The Heroic Age, 1984, ISBN 0-1400.7976 9.

They are both fictional accounts of children abandoned (usually by the death of their parents),

during the civil war which gripped Greece after the 2nd world war.

Forsaken and destitute, they were ruthlessly hunted by both the Monarchists and the Communists

and used as propaganda by each faction. It is rumored that 100,000 children were abducted and taken to the

USSR.


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The Anguish of the PastWe cannot hold the worldhostagefor the sins of the pastcommittedupon us.

The sparkling fish cannot withstandthe choking throttled hand of theology.

We cannot hold our pleasurehostagefor the rigidities of the pastdeterminedupon our bodies.The coiled worms,in the black muck,cannot withstand

the rigid stamp of logic.

We cannot hold the waterhostagefor the massive greed of the pasterectedupon the bones of the great plated mantle.The trees cannot withstandthe terse pulsing squall of science.

We cannot hold our tomorrows

hostagefor the vicissitudes of the pastenactedupon our present.The thread of life running through the waves,pulsing beyond our hearts,cannot withstandthe cauterizing authority of morality

The anguish of the past is alwayswelded

to the terror of the future.

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Sustenancethe fastidious spirit of the bearonce deadrises like the travelling arm of a curious lavaand walksstraight into my belly

the fish that feed the bearfeed the airin turnfeed our heartsthe emotional fleshthat feeds our corporaecondensesturns back into liquidthat feeds the fishagain

to sing and wailtrill and growl into the chilled nightonly the silent fixed stareof the fish and the bearunderstandsresonatesthroughinto our bellieswhen we breathefully

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The hollow inside usThe wind arisesstill as the unformed moonalighting over the moist chill of the autumn skythat blues like no other.The still of the world is paused,

as if forever,and love shrinks and shrinkscuz it cannot withstandthis frozen world to come.

At the end of each breathwe find that buttressed hollow,slow quiet,so minute.We are stymied, drawn and stilland we doubt life.

Each breath breathescarving its path through our sensesand further into our fleshlike a worms deliberate coiled motion into the black muck.And we erect an abyssthat will not be filledyet for our anxiety.And our breath is stilledlike a dying rose.We expire in that moment.

The hollow turns into ingots,turns into idols,turns into paper,and again turns inwardand against our bodies.Ourselves, tired,spent by a laboured breathingseeking unity in lovewhere our senses rest against the stars.

The wind pauses against the cragslifts and settles over the rimed valleys,as the river slides down to the seaand the waves roll and shudder upon the shoreone by one by one,the beat of the earths breathing.

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Your Wild KissTheres a great wind beyond the breezethat echoes the deep ecologyof your wild kiss.Theres the clawed trackof padded paws

when your feet,planted surely beside themselves,walk toward those russet hillsof a fading dusk.

With your skinholding me,and this fragile blue worldin compleat wonderI remember the long wild abandon of lovehowling out of our stretched convulsive core

into the mouths of grizzlieseating the red spawning salmonin the slow fall creeks;that creased smudge of autumn.

The rapid strong pitch of our murmured breathis just the mask of the earths deep windmoving all the water,at once,toward this wise worldor another

like yourself.And the flow eddies,ebbs,pulled by the perfect rhythmof your sure beating heart,stretching the skin of loveinto the jagged horizonof the diminishing boreal forests.

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The wave that feeds the heart grows thefleshI am grass.

The tall lithe grass of Kansas and Saskatchewan.

I was burnt away with the natives

and scorched the soils for months

and monthsand I am still here.

Hidden in the boles of oak and maple

a cached memory in the scud of the great western plateau,

testament to a forgotten green time.

I am reed.

The fevered bulrush of the swamps of Carmannah and Cape Breton.

I fall each autumn

settle and rest in the thick wet wintersand rise

bursting green in spring.

I see the midges swarm

and the cobalt dragonflies wing their mandibles

throughout the thick summer hours,

testament to a fervent changing time.

I am amber.

The sentinel of the hewn deserts of Osoyoos and Sonora.I watch and watch

and watch again,

as for centuries I have and will

for more.

I ache for the sun

and she aches inside me

as reptiles growl and slide into shadow,

deeper into night,

testament to a slow stern time.

I am silica.

The grit and granule of rivers and wind from Nome to New Mexico.

I await and slide,

grind each moment

closer to the equator.

And then, I begin the journey again.

I anneal to geometry

as clay fixes to fire.

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I gather water as a future.

Bequeath the Pythagorean monuments

forever into a mute landscape,

testament to a taut, slouched time.

I am wind.

The sense of movement before we move

From the agile Pacific east to the fervid Atlanticand further again.

I glide and fall each day

upon the granite crests of the cordilleras.

And I soar again

as the moon rolls and rolls

and rolls over me.

I sing to the blue curve of space,

aloud my tremmoring pitch,

testament to the equanimity of time.

I am water.

The breath and the wave from Iceland to India.

The feeling before it is blocked.

I ferment in communion

and pasture in wisdom.

I am the wave that feeds the heart that grows the flesh

and in turn

cast ideas fresh upon the firmament,

testament to a time before

and a time to come.

I am feeling.

The sensation and expression from tail to tongue,

the rippling from heart to heart

and star to star.

I exist without reason

and can follow the thread of the past

back to where they are no fish,

where mud meets the sky.

And a brooding dusk

melts into the oddly efferent dawn,testament to a breathing motile time.

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Mist and FormThe glacier,sprawled tween the beckoning mountains,sits gauntand uncommittedto our wavering eyes.

The ice is smugover the Pacific vista,yet still inches toward it.

And the galethat brings the thick pod of rainover the mossed soilslifts a spume of salt over all our lipswhich we rub into our tongueslike thirsty baby animalsin the dry heat of summer.

As we lay under our thick roovesand the rain in the valleys,and the heavy snowshigh above Vancouver,we sleep and slidein and out of the furred skins we inhabited aeons backand our teeth nipped each others peltsas our snouts breathed the great plumed smell of another.

The mist that swallowsthe formmuffles all our growls, warbles,songs,yet a voice answers,lowingclear upon the wind.

A forest of howlsawait the shrouded moons of winter.

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The Snow is Bleedingfor Jenn

She said that the thick magenta algaestitched into the late spring meltis bleeding.She said that the snow is bleeding

and I said that it fed the tiny ice wormsin the red-ribboned mountains of Malakwa.

She said that the snow is bleeding.And the late afternoon pelletal rain of late springflew, riveted,as if waiting for a torrent,over the wide mountains of Malakwa.

And the great black bearssidling edgeways cross the cut-block,wise in the old wild ways,watched with vast dolorous eyeshow the snow bledinto the mouths of all the creeks,the rills of the mountains of Malakwa.

And she said that the fat pink algae on the slabbed white hillsis the snow bleeding.And the great white wolvestraveled down from the tundra,

sat on Gaias gnarled green haunchand howled togetherin honour of the bleeding snow,heralding the pungent springand the fat brown deer of summerin the forests and mountains of Malakwa.

And she sang of the bleeding snowand the great western wind of the Shuswapsblew high into the mountainscarrying the song

of the huge bleeding snows of the mountains of Malakwa.

And she sang about the snows that bled

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and fed the tawny winter deer.And the wolves loped up to herhurling their song into hers.And she rolled in the mudcovering all her bodyhowling her song.And the mud splayed and spit into the airas all of the animals leaptand jumped around her.And the boreal wind took all of their songsblew them over the steep fat mountains of Malakwa.

She saw the rivers of pink algaeand the snows bled wide openduring the great meltin the red-ribboned mountains of Malakwa.

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Fluxa texturetremulousan unfolding of dimensionsdeeper that the whole worlds eyeswider than a nova

and thicker than soundunhinging the abstract

and you know?time is the emotional logic of energya caress longer than any mother couldimaginea voice that flows from way behind the waterfurther than all your molecular antecedentsolder than life itself

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The spread of this earthThe invisible particulatethats spread the sunsetover the wide Pacific horizonrises high into the atmosphereand hikes the winds streamed highway

to sinklater upon the earthslowly burning whatever it touchesto a fine imperceptible dustthat none of us can detectwithout the instruments of the new aristocracy.

The spread of our thick warm feelings,that echo the smeared orange, magenta horizon,somehow escape the scientists meterscloaked in countless digital decisions.

I know this earth is hurtingand squeezed taut in resignation,cuz I feel the biting acid windson my eyes and in my lungs;the great fear of anythingthat moves outside suffering.I know thisbecauseI am anxietyand life is not

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The Mystery of a Glancethe mystery of a glanceand the serendipity of a smile.the feeling that roots inside the feetas if skin grew grassand worms tunneled through our bodies.

I love the rift of our tonguesand the vowels that surround the stilled airin the caverns of our mouths.And when our voices pressoutwardtoward each otherthe sound drips over the nub of the worldlike oil sliding over and into the crevices of our hidessplattering onto the forest floor

and our voices hover in the moist airlike two tiny planetsorbitingand pulling toward each other.

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My heart grows bigWhen the sun falls downthe dark cleft we call space,we are vessels of loveyearning to be tasted,aching to be filled.

When your arms falllimponto the hard dry clay of summerand fatigue and exhaustiondemand that you shut yourself down,I will come and rub my breathinto your bent whispery skin,kiss your body back into sensation,lift your eyes upon the simple joy of perception.And your lips will reclaim your deep deep voicereaching outwardas is our true aim.

And the big fat quiet hand of lovell get youthicker than the full moonand softer than your deep wet breathon your bright wonderful lips.I wanted to write love poems to youbut our lips collided

and we fell into each otheras our long long armsenmeshed andpulled ourselvesinto each other.

My heart grows bigwhen youre around,swells and swellslike the great big evening tide.

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BridgeThe winter winds that bring the Pacific rain,attached like beadsand knotted to your twinning hair,slivers the lost greyed lightupon the mute fallen clouds.

As the rain slices through the aged temperate forests,the animals nest under the thick, dark canopyand dream.Simple animal dreamsthat bridge the topographies of flesh, wood and fire.

At the edge of the still pondthe clairvoyant reedsrest in the wild pulse of time

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Wisdom Swims Down Deep

Through this nightthe moon is stilledand unknown.And all the loons heraldthe thick astral light

as the starsshimmer and swimdown to the water,replacing that old depleted sun.

As the fish rise to the surfacethey leapand pluck the stars from the calm lake.And that light vanishesas quickly as it appeared.

Wisdom swims down deep.

And the big quietude of nightbegins

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Time isTime is magnificent.Time is a vast soft handcrouching overthe spiked form of the great western cordillera,rolls and rolls

and rollsthe dense muscle of the seas,pushing the waves through our senses,as millions of tiny stars appearlike an array of white clustered berriessurrounding the cascading sparks of two lipsmeeting.Beneath:the sensation and the perceiving,time is gods breathing.

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Reachwe move toward freedomthe energy of fleshand the articulation of the heart.

The azure electric quill of the senses

reaches outto the blinking orbits of the galaxythe myriad worlds of unknowingand the wild uncomplicated thoughtinside the deep swell of love.

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We taste earth and skythe wildernessso deep inside usbursting forththe dance and the rhythmreaching

(and the passionate hungerwe attempt to thwart at every impulse)

Holding your taut nipple,cupped in my mouth,I am bearlapping the fat slick salmonin the great gorge of the red riversinside the blaze of autumn.

As I hold you upon me,

our arms woven and threadedround and through each other,we taste earth and sky togetheron the swell of our fat red lips.

Our arms hold our haunchesas the twisted corbelled roots holdthe rock and the tiny wild flowers.And our tongues flurried caresslifts our eyes into the melt,tomorrows glistening light.

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Our Soft Fat Wantfor Kim

Your lips spread,

wide and thick,

into your great big smile

unearth the sky,

immeasurably so.

Our fingers open,

graze and reach outward

off the fortress of our bodies

move and exclaim our soft fat want

to the unassuming world.

And lips to kiss

and skin to melt

Our histories

ask for a still point

for our senses,

assured,

uncomplicated,

resolute.

As frogs tongues leap

and whisper

into the thick muffling fog,so too do I.

And love rests upon the soft melting rain.

These big fat drops

upon these hands.

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dies me lives youone death diesand all death dies,dies medies youdies all of us

dies the insectsand all the animalsdies the frogsand all the trees.and yet all our dying diesand through, outlives melives youlives the seaand lives the windand all the anenomes

lives the reptilesand all the leavesand lives the worldand the worlds begin again.lives the salmon upon the waterthat feeds the treeslives inside the bear, the wolfthat breathe the fishthat walk upon the wavethat breathes into the skythat swims upon the galaxy

and lives upon the starsto fall againwith the lightinto all the great whales mouthsthat breathes and breathesand breathesuntilbreathing stopsand the stars blink outslowly,one by one,

and we all breathe the universe againand again and againand again.

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Governedthe deep reach of your fingersand the vast pull of our skinsends me back,seethed mud and the tensile air,when desire pushes and pulls,

in contact,as is its wont.

the anxiety and wariness of the undefined,the great fear of freedom,the uncluttered space that reaches outto whatever the world would offer.

where once we lived in great abandonand chance,now clothed and cuffed,

ossified in our quiet desparationthwartedstilledand our ancient vast lovediscardedlike all of the feelingsand all the peopledangling

and chanceand wonder

delegated to speculation,consumptionand tourism.our great wild senseleashed andlove-dependent.governed:the authority of our fears.

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Sadness issadness is a weight

and age is no boundary

or limit

perhaps a wisdom

from a future life

sensednow

and our tears

are tomorrows saliva

wet lips longing

lifting out in sweet sweet song

delerious

touching

pulling love in

and sending loveout

sadness sinks into

a quiet wise joy

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Love and Toolstechnology and love

are not antinomous

yet each tool

is a perfect description

terraforming:the act of transforming the earth

into a thing

utile

and anything not a tool

is a bauble

or a toy

or a thing

inscrutable

tools and lovetools and love

tools and love

the exile & destruction of the bear

scars my skin

and all the world suffers

cuz

i am the knife

tools and lovetools and love

tools and love

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The Threatthe decision of fear

determines

the ability of all life

to survive

or not

whole

sensation and perception

denied

at any resolve

is terror

or murder

like the huge mine of anger

the world invests in

life is againonce removed

you always hate

what you fear

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Eclipsefor Erica Jong

an eclipse is about

passage

we pass through age

and emerge into wonderwhich is awe

which is beauty

which is love

love eclipsed

is passage

from life to life

and life to life

again

againremembering

that wild

free

and love

are synonymous

the great levellers

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These Hundredfor Gizella Honig Frymire

on her 100th birthday, March12, 1998

upon this earth

have these legs trod.

I felt my muscles etch the mud.

a hundred years have passedand my feet still carve the ground

into tomorrow.

upon this sky

have these eyes gazed.

I felt the warmth and pull of the sun and moon.

a hundred winds have blown

and my eyes still impress the world

toward joy.

upon this house

have my hands touched

and raised my sons and daughters.

a hundred loves have begun

and my love untangles,

unfurls,

this natal swell

that I breathe for a hundred hearts

and more.

and petals spread outward

welcoming

upon this love

has my heart burst.

I sent my song out across the wild, long prairie.

a hundred smiles and tears have passed

and my well is still full

and the earth knows this.

a hundred more kisses on my lips

is joy returned.

upon my past

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my future pulls

and my rights and wrongs are rolled into one.

a hundred lives have lived

and I roll into them and back again.

love emerges,

as always,

in my core

a hundred times toward tomorrow.

upon this life

I am now alone.

I feel my love just over the edge,

a hundred goodbyes ago.

I feel all that wonder

keep on coming back to me.

and I keep on saying

a hundred hellos

to you.

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Notes/June/98

Sometimes it appears

we must go backward

to move forward.

The vulture is us;

the death of nature

is the eradication of our love

A denouement.

My time is seamless.

What you call minutes

I feel water.

What you call years

I feel stars.My time expands upon the earths great spin.

My time whithers upon the suns demise

again.

My time is full

and stretched

like all the baby animals

breathing and filling their skin.

I speak this place

as I feel this place

And these places are rich

in emotion and memory and time.

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Melt

The summer snow turned the skyto silverand love melted upon your skinAnd you glistenedenormously.

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Grace

As we forgive

yet not forget all of our worn lives

the heart moves our deep howls

across the cordillera

to rest upon the great grassed prairies.

And the rains softly leave the tall grasses

to merge at our lips,

breathing and sighing,

into our changed lives.

As we rage

against all of the hate upon us

our hands tense

and our fingers grip.

The embrace we long for

is the tide that ebbs,seemingly,

forever away.

And we become the mountains

that can abide

centuries.

The dew that feeds the fern and hawk,

slowly and calmly,

erodes rock.

As we cryinside the welt of our long deep sobbing

and forgive our parents

and all their transgressions,

so too the wilderness

gently weeps

and forgives us.

Reseeds love

over and over

again.

Night creases,and the sky turns blue.

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The Wordsfor Terry Crane

The words,

the words that fall upon the floor.

the words that are not noticed by the janitor,

who sweeps and sweeps

and sweeps the sun into the moonand the moon into the sea.

the words that seem to sit

still upon the window

when the wind is light

yet they hold the breath of rain.

the words,

the words that the bears have

and the wolves howl theirs into the sky

which loosens gravity

and all these voices float,drift over the world

in all directions.

these words

those words

and many, many more words

piece the world together

as we discover more words.

the words,

the words that emerge from our mouths

push our lips to kissand our arms to build,

write.

and the sound of the warming air in spring

moves slowly

and surely

toward the thick wide words of summer.

the words,

the words,

the magnetic spark tween tongues and lips.

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A Moist GravityLove is slung on a thick cumulusfalling through the voidbecause a moist gravity gently wieldsthe magnetics of a million lipslowing in harmony

alltoward the song of each others armstrilling the moment ofcontactand communion.

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A Brooding Wild Exuberancefor Octavio Paz (1914 -1998)

As the world did not blast into life,just emerged,so too did we swiminto livingand poetry began.

As the tired, compulsive whip of educationfought with our ferocious uncomplicated yearningsso too the layered disparate imagestook holdin a brooding wild exuberanceand words,indelible upon the page,piled upon us.

As the world seemed to turnasunderand we talked instantaneouslyacross huge, huge gulfs,many of us forgotthe simple words of poetryand devised complex ideologiesin search of that quiet wild voicethat fell from the sunand met that same voice risingfrom the dark unknown ocean.

Now that your books are ashesand your voice has moved beyondwhere we cannot go,we are left with the beauty of the eagleand the sun.And the big rains that come and come again,over and over,wash your poems off the pageand we drink,swallow them deep,feeling you inside usalways.

As the world oscillates,thrums,you are a beaconuncovering the gems inside the pebblesand our sorrow movesinto a wild wise joy.And poetry begins.

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TransmissionIf I elongate the vowel far enough

out of the sentence into the giant horizon

the stars would open

and these voices would curl,

flow into the streaming

chatteringand drifting

cross the blue equinox of perception,

the undulating curve of time.

If I followed your sound

thru the diminishing atmosphere

into the crisp astral light

your image would appear

slung inside that thick muscular prism

of the taut and sliding dusk,later,

rubbing colour into the ashen dawn.

If I spoke my poems aloud

throughout the hinged day

my voices would find yours,

ears slouched, curious and leaning,

eyes searching

the moon and the sun

for my sound coming up and outfrom my mouth to your trembling tongue,

ears and eyes acute and opening.

If I sang and hummed all my voices

through the soft fat clouds of spring

into the big aqua roll of the Pacific swell,

my song would unite with the symphony

of the earths great wide voice,

the air shimmering off that vast beam of lilt

that trills and announcesall our past and futures

to the oncoming uni-verse,

that wild simple poem of love.

wilderness poems

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