A balance of nature

poetry by j. paul baron

Hanging the photograph

The glass breaks
as though a mirror shattered.
She looks and finds
the images still there:
the little girl with bangs,
the woman with long straight hair.

I could tell you things
she says: of men
we've loved
and days alone,
and friends
we've called our own.

I could tell you things,
but would you care?

(As in a mirror shattered,
the faces stare).

And I could tell you things,
the girl replies:
of violins
and secrets deep
and dreams we tried to keep
but could not save,
or fully understand.
(And did you know
my Ginny fair,
god still holds you
in His hand?)

I could tell you things,
but would you care?

As in a mirror shattered,
they speak and stare;
(the hour is not so late)
yet the images
will not align, in the reflection
of their fate.

Derwood

On these Oregon nights
there is the smell of musty men
who live too long in cabins
by rivers
with forty cats and memories lost
and teeth turning yellow.

I remember Derwood Ash
and how he used to feed deer
out of his hand with apples,
and pieces of bread;

it was the only story he told
when he came to town,
all the others
were washed away
as rains wash leaves away
after beating them colorless.

He was eighty nine
and lived in the smoke
and slept with old dreams
and called the deer
by their first names.

I remember him now,
tonight, one of the musty men
out there in the dark,
leaving their odors about.

Razor clam shells

The shells of razor clams
crackle
when you step on them.

And though the sound
is small,
you can hear it against the sea.

I told my son:
they crackle.

and he said:
I would too,
if you stepped on me.

A balance of nature

A balance of nature,
that's what we are:

Sun to moon,
moon to star;

water to earth,
earth to sea,

I balance you,
you balance me.

I give you my word,
you give me your hand;

a delicate balance,
like sticks in the sand.

Love is near,
love is far;

a balance of nature,
that's what we are:

sun to moon,
moon to star,

water to earth,
earth to sea,

I balance you,
you balance me.

Merely dust

Home is always pulling
us back
to the beginning
of our dreams.

Destiny is always pulling
us forward to
the end of our dreams.

Home is the place
we always knew;
destiny is the place
we have to find.

One pulls against
the other
like the sea is pulled
between the tides.

Home and destiny:
sun and star;
the mothers are calling us:
Come back! Come back!

Even so, we follow
our spirits
like old hunters
tracking truth,

until at last
the sun merges
into the star
and everything we
ever were is
merely dust.

Blackberry vines

Give me a patch of blackberry vines
in winter and I'll show you
how summers are won.

Blackberry vines in winter
are tough; they dig
their thorny runners into the sides
of rain and wind
and ride out any storm until it quits.

They wear by all their Augusts
and all the purple juice
in their roots
that they'll be back,
(and they will),
packing berries ripe and black
for pies and tarts
and the puckered mouths
of pickers.

You give me a patch of blackberry vines
in winter and I'll show you
how summers are always won.

Meeting in a watercolor

It's a cliff
painted into one of those
watercolors
you would like
because
everything
is where it's supposed to be.
And everything
looks like it's supposed to look.

Gulls fly
on a wind you know is there,
wings spread forever.
Waves suspend
in watercolor greens and blues,
their long white crests
catching
the yellow sunshine.

And you and I are there,
painted into the grassy ledge
we owned
one the cliff,
watching the waves,
reaching the horizon
with our eyes.

You can't see it,
but we're talking:
Time is endless, we say.
Love is endless, we say,

until suddenly
it's three and we
must steal ourselves away,
down the narrow path
we came to know.

The artist lets us go,
painting our small space
with grass green.

And nothing else is changed:
It's a watercolor
you would like
because everything
is where it's supposed to be,

and everything
looks like it's supposed to look.

The couple at 7-11

Rain doesn't ask
the shape or shade of soil,
and soil takes
most any seed;

she has one eye crossed
and he's going bald,
but they fulfill
each other's need.

Backyard talk

The man of me
and the woman of you
were here before.

We sat in the chairs
of these old chairs
and you said: this is the queen's.
And I said: this is the king's then.

And I spoke as king:

all this will be here
after we go.
The gulls of those gulls
will circle and scream:
we say you here!
We say you a hundred years ago.

And the man of me
and the woman of you
will be here
a hundred years from now.

We will say:
this is the queen's chair
and that is the king's
and those gulls, we know them.

The grass of this grass
will grow under our feet,
and the wind of this wind
will blow against us,

and we will mirror
the inevitable repetition
of time and struggle and talk,
just as we do now.

At the UO museum

This is the jacket
of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce;
in this is
the eye of the eagle,
the jaw of the wolf,
the hooves of the Appaloosa.

In this is
the hand,
the heart,
the magic.

Here is the story
that keeps telling itself
in the blood
that will not dry;
in the journeys
of great sorrow
that will not die.

This is the jacket
of Chief Joseph
who led his people
to this place
where he speaks for them
even now.

Wilbur, the Oregon boy

I knew this boy, Wilbur,
and he always stacked wood.

My son would call him up
and say: Can you come over?
And Wilbur would say: No,
I gotta stack wood.

The wood came
from old alders
torn loose by tractors
and cut by men
with big hands and
cold mornings on their breath.
One of the
was Wilbur's dad, Dennis;
big as a barn I always said.

Once, when Wilbur slept over,
he got up at eight
and said as how he had to leave
by eight-thirty; just
time enough
for a couple of hotcakes.

I asked Wilbur: How come
you have to get home so early?
And he said:
I gotta stack wood.

The pond at Shore Acres

The dimes:
they're the hard wishes,
the long wishes;
the wishes that are desperate.

The nickels:
they're the just-for -the-fun-of-it wishes,
the what's a nickel anyway wishes;
the wishes that walk the fences.

The pennies:
they're the throw-away wishes;
the wishes that come true
...... if you let them.

Taking us back

How do we know
time is not taking us back,
past one another,
with faces simply
turned inside out?
How do we know
we have not come this way
before and
said the same things
in different ways?
Where did I know you?
Where did you know me?
And how do we know
times is not taking us back,
past one another,
with faces simply
turned inside out.

The question

She asks the question:
what is love, anyway?

I give her a rose
for the answer;

I cannot say.

We climb the question all our lives
and never reach the top of it.

What is love, anyway?

A rhyme for lovers

It can happen any time:

In our eyes
the words are said,

In out lips,
the fires spread;

In out blood,
the rivers rise;

in our hearts
we shed disguise.

It can happen any time.

Leash law

We keep the old dog
in the back porch.  He lies there
and recycles his thoughts,
or goes up and down the steps.

we keep him there as one keeps an old man
in a side room.

Only at night do we let
him out, then he lies
on the neighbor's lawn
and barks at the people
who are never there.

After we gave the kittens away

Where steam rises
from a pot,
Gray looks.

Where noise emits
from the smallest places,
she listens..

In cracks too thin
for spiders,
she sniffs.

In all the corners
and against all the walls,
she meows,
waiting, without answers.

Reservoir

I kissed her
and she said thank you
and the kiss trickled
into a finger and settled.

I kissed her again
and the kiss slipped
through a crack in a bone.

Thank you, she said.

I kissed her
again and again
and the kisses flowed
and pooled within her.

They swished
in her smiles
and rippled in her eyes;
when she skipped and sang,
they rushed through
her blood
like shining streams
that never dry out.

Than you, she said,
and stored the kisses fully.

From other lips
the kisses came and filled
her every part,
and always she said thank you;
thank you, she said,

though none ever
filled her heart.

Shadow receptacle

I know something
of what you know.

I know the dark river
that runs behind your smile,
and the depth
of your longing.

I have heard your stories
and lived them,
even as you re-lived them.

I am the shadow receptacle
of your spirit
and your dreams.

In this I know
something of what you know,
and I am something
of what you are.

Poker game

We die by nickels
in the smoke
and beer
and potato chips.

We all wear straight faces
in our hearts
and all the women
are upside down in our talk.

When we lose,
we lose small;
when we win,
we win small;
we die only by nickels,
we live only by nickels.

You can sweep us
under the carpet after
the game is over.

We are nickel-dime-quarter men
with jobs, not stars,
to steer us, and dreams
shut away,
and women always waiting
somewhere, right side up.

Don't call our bluff,
we might fold.

I am a mirror

I am a mirror,
let me know your will;
held by your heart,
I am still.

I am a mirror,
reflect in me
your clearest image
and I will hold it
for eternity.

I am a mirror,
speak through me
and I will listen,
and secrets show.

I am a mirror,
love through me,
then shall I never
let love go!

Gravity was always there

Gravity was always there
hanging on to our bones
even as we raced
the machines
through the dreams
and the songs.

Gravity was always there
pulling us toward
our beginning;
before the first step
and the first word
and the first kiss,
toward the dust
and the dead.

We raced on,
oblivious to the easy rider
that clung to us
like minutes
to a clock;

we raced on
until we came full circle
into the shadows
of all we were

and there we slowed down
and felt the center of the earth
stuck to our bones
like mud,
and we remembered birth
was not easy.

Poet takes a name

I take the name Crow;
my spirit is black
and I call loudly
for all my brothers.

Where the wind takes me,
I go!

I eat stones
and pick bones;
when the sun shines,
I shine too,
when the storm comes,
I am hidden.

I take the name Crow
and where the wind takes me,
I go!

A reunion

They walked
in the rain
to their secret place
under the dark green trees,
bring the year
up to date
with their talk.

The chanterelles were there,
as they knew
they would be.

At home, they laid
the deep orange mushrooms,
wet and scented,
on the table,
to be remembered
for still another year.

A minute of the river

A minute
of the river
goes by:
did something there
belong to you?

That flash of silver:
a dream lost?

That bright leaf:
The chance you never took?

That dark stick:
A measured moment gone?

A minute of
the river
goes by;
did something there
belong to you?

Driftwood fire

The long journeys
in them,
having nowhere to turn,
recede inward
toward the cores,
and merely burn.

(Who can say
when in the journeys began,
and why the wood drifted
so far away).

Stories of forests
dark and green,
and muddy rivers raging,
are caught within
the weathered wood,
gray from its own aging.

(And who can say
where the journeys began,
and why the wood drifted
so far away).

The sea salt bleeds
as blood
into the fire's bed,
until the wood and the
journeys are long ago gone,
and long ago dead.

(And who can say
how the journeys began,
and why the wood drifted
so far away).

The farmer at Hurry Back

You play the piano
and I plow dirt
and bring cows in from the field
and fix things in the kitchen
when they need it:
it's all the same.

You use your hands,
and I use mine;
you use your heart,
and I use mine:
it's all the same.

You play Chopin on the piano,
and my boots make noise in the mud,
and the wind turns
the weathervane around all day;

you play your piano,
and I make kids with my woman
and she sighs for me
and gives me strength in a hundred ways.

You use your hands,
and I use mine;
you use your heart,
and I use mine:
it's all the same.

Travelers

When flowers
are played out at the end
of summer,
and the skies begin the sag
with heavy red sunsets
draped around their shoulders,

the dandelions,
like men who seek nothing,
pack up and leave
the lawns.  Their beards
tufted, and their bodies
thin and dry behind them,

they roll out on the wind,
hearts in their heads,
traveling the unknown lengths
of fate, to dream
of love, and loves that wait
in earthen beds.

Boys' voices

Boys' voices change,
like caterpillars
turning into butterflies,
and fly away forever.

Crab leg on the beach

The orange
of the crab's leg
drains
into the cold
dark sand

leaving the leg
white
as a bone
under the hot ice
of the sky.

This is how
everything ends:
bloodless
and alone
in an eternal silence.

At Orton's

In that shop
where pianos await
the ones to play them,

the father keeps his son in hand
and speaks
of tuning and fine care.

The son keeps but despair:
his face white
without use,
his mouth silent
without words,
his heart beating
no melody of its own.

Still, the father
keeps him there
to revere and obey;
nor does the son
betray him

in that shop
where pianos await
the ones to play them.

Sworn statement

We make fires
from women like you;
kindling to burn
with mouths and hands

until the passions
die and we brush them away
like ashes
with lovers' claims,
but no demands!

We make fires
and char our bones
from women like you
who live
by our dying.

Our stories
settle into you
and disappear;
our dreams
penetrate you
and come back to us
in our sighing.

we make fires from women like you,
still you last
and burn again and again,
scented heavily
with love's sweet pitch,
clean as alder stripped!

In the cold shadows
of our obligations
we burn you,
still you are there,
where the hollow moments
against our hearts are tipped!

At the poetry reading

As mother
she wrote his bones
and went before him
as a light and a song.

And always he followed,
his hand in hers;
the obedient boy
who could do no wrong.

Now as poet
he travels alone
from mountain to sea,
earth to star!

Yet even as
she listens, the mother
knows:  the boy
will never stray too far.

Biodegradable

Youth dries up in the bottom of me
like an August creek bed. My teeth
are gone and when I set
my jaw just so, jutting it forward
with lower lip protruding
in exaggerated fashion,
my face contorts
into a preview of itself
after death.

I drink more now
and my organs protest and decay.

In my hands the lines deepen
like ruts in worn paths, and
the wings of raucous crows
beat around the corners
of my eyes.
Was I handsome? I forgot.

The other day
I talked to the mortician
about coffins and costs and burials;
just for talk I said,
and he told me the ashes
in cremation
are not ashes at all
but the bones of the charred
skeleton pulverized
and put into whatever container
the family had or wanted.

Even plastic? I asked.
Sure, why not he said.

I gritted my gums
without thinking about it
and the mortician too
had a sudden glimpse
of my face for any worm
or any fire.

He left me, rubbing
his hands together
in good spirits.
Maybe I'll devise a way
to cheat the bastard;
throwing myself out
beside a favorite road
or a favorite steam.  After all,
I am biodegradable.