New Poem in Seawolf Journal

 

A poem from the manuscript,

THE SOLSTICE BOOK,

has been posted

at

The Seawolf Journal

 

 

Connected to Seawolf Books, an independent bookstore and 

creative writing center in Port Orford, Oregon.

In early fall of 2023, Michaela and I were traveling down the Oregon Coast, between Lincoln City and Florence. We stopped at a place just south of Depoe Bay where we usually stop to use the public bathroom and possibly catch a glimpse of some gray whales. 

 

It was not whale migration time, but there’s at least 200 that live along the coast from California to British Columbia for 11 months out of the year and some of them are particularly fond of the Depoe Bay vicinity. And so…

 

As I was walking back to the car, in the cold rain, feeling somewhat grim and down, I caught something at the corner of my eye, at the bottom of a wave battered cliff. The rest is in the poem. 

You can find the link here.  

Here's the opening... 

 

Another Surfaced

 

Tired and sad, we walked to the edge.

A freezing drizzle fell on cliff grass,

 

onto my hood-visor; grim winter-

speech from gray waves tossing nets

 

of torn kelp onto the rocks below. Our

feet and hands, so cold, distant from

 

each other, from ourselves. Pale green

foam flew from a deep crevice, hung

 

above the ocean’s sweep…

 

You can find the poem here. 

 

Check out Seawolf Journal and Seawolf Books: 

https://www.seawolfbooks.com/

  

Also: previous blog about Gray Whales written long before I lived in Oregon.

 

 Near whale siting spot

  

 

 

Starry Night Over the Rhone

 

Paging through the Taschen compendium of Van Gogh’s complete works a couple of weeks ago, it brought up a poem that will appear in the new book, The Next World (out in January 2025) from Shanti Arts.

 

I have a memory from the the end of second grade where I am standing in the Musee D’Orsay (it may have been the Jeu de paume back then), mostly bored, and suddenly found myself in front of one of Van Gogh’s star-oriented paintings: Starry Night over The Rhone.

 

Starry Night - ink sketch/study

 

And something happened.

 

There is something that happens to me, probably to most of us, when we encounter a work of art that speaks to us. I usually call it an “illuminating the nervous system” moment, when everything inside me suddenly lights up. Sometimes it’s a cool light, sometimes it’s a warm light. I like to believe that I walked away from that painting inexplicably changed.

 

For years, I believed the painting had been the more famous Starry Night that is now in the MET. 

 

 

But when I was writing the poem I did some research and found that the only one with starry patterns that would have been in Paris during my childhood was the Rhone painting. Interesting. When I found this out, I began to question the memory itself.

The memory was vivid, and yet…

 

Starry Night Over The Rhone, 1889

 

Starry Night Over the Rhone

(by Vincent Van Gogh)

 

Harsh yellow gaslight sent gold ribbons across the Rhone.

I followed those ribbons up into Ursa Major’s seven

 

aquamarine-soft haloes: seeing as spinning out every-

where threads of light. Look: the hands, green stars.

 

Look: the heart, gold gas. I was eight and I heard him

say: night is richer in color than the day. I was eight, and

 

for one second, maybe two, I knew someone else who

sensed night in the same way. And I reached up, almost

 

touched the thick paint, and for one second, maybe two,

my muscles were freed from fear, could articulate how

 

dark and light feed, and are fed. I stood on my toes and

made starlit ripples in the air, mimicked the feedback

 

loop between my finger bones and distant star-gas threads.

And I saw the couple, almost in shadow, maybe an after-

 

thought, maybe in love, at the bottom of the painting,

walking back to their hotel, to get out from under that

 

intense mirror of their hearts, hands, eyes. And I knew,

for one second, maybe two, that there is no escape, no

 

matter what we do. Is this memory true? Night is richer

in color than the day.

 

(This poem originally appeared in The Wilderness House)

 

Night is richer in color than the day. The quote from Vincent came from a letter that he sent to his brother, Theo, while he was painting Starry Night Over The Rhone. It can be found in Vincent Van Gogh, The Complete Paintings (Taschen, 2020).