Poetry

     Last month Barb and I went to Spokane for my fiftieth high school reunion, and one day beforehand we drove up to Colville, a town of about 5000 75 miles north where my dad grew up and where I was born and lived until I was five.  My dad was a policeman there.

     There’s a big C on Colville Mountain made of white stones, and a white cross, and Dad always told the story that he had put the C up there.  When I was a boy, I just assumed that was true and didn’t pay attention to the details, but now that my dad and mom are both gone, and everything around us seems to be nothing but lies, it was important to me to find out if that one story at least was true in fact.

     So Barb and I went to the historical museum in town and asked, and they took me back into the archives, and after about twenty minutes or so, they found an article about how the C got up there.  And the first name I saw was my dad’s.

Not Everything is a Lie        

Dad always said he put the C on Colville Mountain,

and he did, when he was student body president,

in 1948.  We drove to Colville and asked.

We saw his name in a book.  He led the group

that gathered the stones and painted them white

and laid them out in a great half-circle.

Later a tall white cross was raised above the C,

though now the town has moved it

to the side onto private land, but you can

still see them both from miles away as you come

around the bend from Chewelah, by the barn

that has always been falling down.

Further north the lakes

are cold and clear.

     Of course, like every other poem in the world, and like every important moment in our lives, this poem isn’t just about what it’s about.  The details always point a great mystery, to the mystery of the cross on the mountain, to mystery of a single letter, to the mystery of the lakes further north where the water is cold and clear.

     It’s not hard to think of signs and symbols when you’re coming around a bend and see a giant letter and a great cross—a cross, he symbol of all the symbols we most hope is true, however we have moved it to the side.

     So there’s a paradox here, for me and for all us, because though I long for something I can pin down and prove, what I really found on this trip is something much larger.  What I found is the mystery, something greater than my own story or my dad’s story or yours but that we are all a part of.

My first thought is, how did all these houses

get up here?  I used to climb the road

on my Schwinn to look out over the city,

cranking up the long, steep slope.

The sky was the sky, the fields the fields,

dry as notebook paper.  Then I remember,

it’s been fifty years!  The houses are big,

with various gables and sleek black cars.

The streets broaden and curve.  It’s evening,

after a hot summer day, and as I walk by,

a man on one side and a man on the other

stand in the half-light, in the evening air,

and water their front lawns by hand,

calling out to each other like friends.

video

It helps to look at the branches of trees

when you tire of all the actors who have played Jesus

and all the paintings, all the beards and ribcages

and knees.  Look at the sky.  The clouds in the sky.

But these, too, are moments.  Are temporary.

Everyone has a body.  The students come up

one-by-one, whispering what they want us

to pray for, and we put our hands on their heads

and call the Spirit down.  Pray for my anger.

Pray for my grief.  Pray for my loneliness,

one young woman asks.  She has been crying,

and she leans in so close I can feel

the warmth of her tears.  A wisp of her hair.

video  

A priest goes to a village in Alaska

to anoint a dying man.  Maybe he flies there

in a Cessna.   But he’s forgotten

the Oil of the Sick—he left it on the counter

in the sacristy, hundreds of miles away—

and when he asks the son for what he has

he brings him a can of Valvoline.

Forty-weight.  But the priest goes ahead.

He anoints the man with motor oil,

forgiving his sins and getting him ready

to die, wiping off the excess

with a paper towel.  It’s not a problem.

All the way home he’s smiling,

bumping along in the low clouds.

for a video click here

My first car was a 56 Chevy, pockmarked

and rusted, faded red and white.

They only wanted three hundred dollars for it,

but Dad checked it out and it always ran great.

I could take you right now to the exact spot

along the river where the sheriff found it

the morning after it was stolen,

nose first, halfway down the bank,

and the river would still be flowing,

the beautiful, the beautiful river.

for a video

What happens at mass is that a single point

explodes into a billion, billion pieces, and the pieces

fly away at incredible speeds, and they become

atoms, then gasses, then stars and planets,

and on one planet amoebas appear, and the amoebas

become fish, and the fish become dinosaurs,

and the dinosaurs become monkeys and dogs, everything

is always becoming something else, until finally

the universe comes to consciousness of itself

and we’re standing there looking around thinking wow,

this is really beautiful.  This is really sad.

When Jesus appears in the flesh

we don’t recognize him at first.

We think he’s the gardener.

An old man and an old woman

walk down the breezeway with a baby.

They must be in their seventies, maybe their eighties.

The old man is bowlegged and wearing jeans.

He looks like he’s worked his whole life.

The old woman has wrapped a shawl around her head

and swaddled the baby, but it’s the old man

who is holding the baby as they walk.

She is four months old, they tell me.

Her name is Alice Rose.

You baptized her, the old woman says, smiling,

a couple of months ago.

The baby’s head is smooth and soft

and there is a band around it, and on the band,

in the center of her forehead,

there is a little white rose made of cloth.

What happens at mass is that I keep watching

the old man as he sits in the pew

looking down at the baby and smiling,

rocking her in his arms.

We were having mass on a hill above a bay.

This was after a storm, and through

the windows the rain still glistened on the alder.

And at just the moment of the consecration,

as the bread was becoming the Body of Christ,

a great flock of geese came clamoring

over us, honking and clattering.

It must have been enormous.

We could almost hear the words.

for a video, click here

A hundred years ago the smiling man

in the wheelchair wore the same gown

his great-grandson is wearing now.

It is made of white cotton, softened

and yellowed with age, and goes

all the way past the baby’s toes.

The family has been telling stories,

but quiets now and gathers around.

The mother holds the baby in her arms.

The old man is smiling, and his eyes

are clear and aware.  He knows

what is going on, and for a moment

I do, too, and I stand at the font

and cup the water in my hand.

 for a reading of the poem click here

Riding my bike to school I see a whale.

It surfaces quietly, sleek and black

in the oily water, broad back glistening.

I am standing on a metal gangplank.

In the distance the spires of the city.

I am waiting for the lock to fill and the boat

to rise before I continue on my way,

to my seminars and my books and all I am

trying to do.  But now something sleek

and black has broken the surface—

a Pilot Whale, caught, big as a pickup—

curving and diving, curving and diving,

until the lock finally lowers and it can

swim away, back out to sea.