1. 92% of Japan’s three million ton import of soybeans comes from the U.S.
2. The U.S. has 6% of the world’s population; consumes 1/3 the energy annually consumed in the world.
3. The U.S. consumes 1/3 of the world’s annual meat.
4. The top 1/5 of American population gets 45% of salary income, and owns about 77% of the total wealth. The top 1% owns 20 to 30% of personal wealth.
5. A modern nation needs 13 basic industrial raw materials. By AD 2000 the U.S. will be import-dependent on all but phosphorus.
6. General Motors is bigger than Holland.
7. Nuclear energy is mainly subsidized with fossil fuels and barely yields net energy.
8. The “Seven Sisters”-Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, Standard of California, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell.
9. “The reason solar energy has not and will not be a major contributor or substitute for fossil fuels is that it will not compete without energy subsidy from fossil fuel economy. The plants have already maximized the use of sunlight.”—H. T. Odum
10. Our primary source of food is the sun.
[Today with Zach & Dan rowing by Alcatraz and around Angel Island]
sea-lions and birds,
sun through fog
flaps up and lolling,
looks you dead in the eye.
sun haze;
a long tanker riding light and high.
sharp wave choppy line—
interface tide-flows—
seagulls sit on the meeting
eating;
we slide by white-stained cliffs.
the real work.
washing and sighing,
sliding by.
in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.
Earth a flower
A phlox on the steep
slopes of light
hanging over the vast
solid spaces
small rotten crystals;
salts.
Earth a flower
by a gulf where a raven
flaps by once
a glimmer, a color
forgotten as all
falls away.
A flower
for nothing;
an offer;
no taker;
Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt.
Night herons nest in the cypress
by the San Francisco
stationary boilers
with the high smoke stack
at the edge of the waters:
a steam turbine pump
to drive salt water
into the city’s veins
mains
if the earth ever
quakes. and the power fails.
and water
to fight fire, runs
loose on the streets
with no pressure.
At the wire gate tilted slightly out
the part-wolf dog
would go in, to follow
if his human buddy lay on his side
and squirmed up first.
An abandoned, decaying, army.
a rotten rusty island prison
surrounded by lights of whirling
fluttering god-like birds
who truth
has never forgot.
I walk with my wife’s sister
past the frozen bait;
with a long-bearded architect,
my dear brother,
and silent friend, whose
mustache curves wetly into his mouth
and he sometimes bites it.
the dog knows no laws and is strictly,
illegal. His neck arches and ears prick out
to catch mice in the tundra.
a black high school boy
drinking coffee at a fake green stand
tries to be friends with the dog,
and it works.
How could the
night herons ever come back?
to this noisy place on the bay.
like me.
the joy of all the beings
is in being
older and tougher and eaten
up.
in the tubes and lanes of things
in the sewers of bliss and judgment,
in the glorious cleansing
treatment
plants.
We pick our way
through the edge of the city
early
subtly spreading changing sky;
ever-fresh and lovely dawn.
“A snake-like beauty in the living changes of syntax”
—Robert Duncan
Kai twists
rubs “bellybutton”
rubs skin, front and back
two legs kicking
anus a sensitive center
the pull-together
between there and the scrotum,
the center line,
with the out-flyers changing
—fins, legs, wings,
feathers or fur,
they swing and swim
but the snake center
fire pushes through:
mouth to ass,
root to
burning, steady,
single eye.
breeze in the brown grasses
high clouds deep
blue. white.
blue. moving
changing
my Mother’s old
soft arm. walking
helping up the
path.
Kai’s hand
in my fist
the neck bones,
a little thread,
a garland,
of consonants and vowels
from the third eye
through the body’s flowers
a string of peaks,
a whirlpool
sucking to the root.
It all gathers,
humming,
in the egg.
It warms my bones
say the stones
I take it into me and grow
Say the trees
Leaves above
Roots below
A vast vague white
Draws me out of the night
Says the moth in his flight—
Some things I smell
Some things I hear
And I see things move
Says the deer—
A high tower
If you climb up
One floor
You’ll see a thousand miles more.
I dream of—
soft, white, washable country
clothes.
woven zones.
scats
up here on the rocks;
seeds, stickers, twigs, bits of grass
on my belly, pressed designs—
O loves of long ago
hello again.
all of us together
with all our other loves and children
twining and knotting
through each other—
intricate, chaotic, done.
I dive with you all
and it curls back, freezes;
the laws of waves.
as clear as a canyon wall
as sweet,
as long ago.
woven
into the dark.
squirrel hairs,
squirrel bones crunched,
tight and dry in scats of
fox.
Standing up on lifted, folded rock
looking out and down—
The creek falls to a far valley.
hills beyond that
facing, half-forested, dry
—clear sky
strong wind in the
stiff glittering needle clusters
of the pine—their brown
round trunk bodies
straight, still;
rustling trembling limbs and twigs
listen.
This living flowing land
is all there is, forever
We are it
it sings through us—
We could live on this Earth
without clothes or tools!
Wind dust yellow cloud swirls
northeast across the fifty-foot
graded bulldozed road,
white cloud puffs,
juniper and pinyon scattered groves
—firewood for the People
heaps of wood for all
at cross-streets in the pueblos,
ancient mother mountain
pools of water
pools of coal
pools of sand
buried or laid bare
Solitary trucks go slow on grades
smoking sand
writhes around the tires
and on a torn up stony plain
a giant green-and-yellow shovel
whirs and drags
house-size scoops of rock and gravel
Mountain,
be kind,
it will tumble in its hole
Five hundred yards back up the road
a Navajo corral
of stood up dried out poles and logs
all leaned in on an angle,
gleaming in the windy April sun.
Shaka valley—chickens thousands
murmur in sheet walls
past plaster house of welder-sculptor
shakuhachi pond,
dead grass golf-course bulldozed on the hill
pine Dragon Benten
ridgetop—far off Kyoto on the flat,
turn in to deeper hills toward himuro, “Ice House”—
cut-back Sugi—logger shelter—
Low pass, a snow patch still up here,
they once stored ice for summer,
old women stoking bath fire
white plum bloom
Old man burning brush, a wood sheath for the saw
Over the edge & down to Kamo River
white hills—Mt. Hiei, Hira—cut clean
reseed patchwork, orchard fir
Muddy slipping trail
wobbly twin pole bridges
gully throat
forks in
somebody clearing brush & growing tea
& out, turn here for home
along the Kamo River.
hold it close
give it all away.
Far above the dome
Of the capitol—
It’s true!
A large bird soars
Against white cloud,
Wings arced,
Sailing easy in this
humid Southern sun-blurred
breeze—
the dark-suited policeman
watches tourist cars—
And the center,
The center of power is nothing!
Nothing here.
Old white stone domes,
Strangely quiet people,
Earth-sky-bird patterns
idly interlacing
The world does what it pleases.
Washington D.C. XI:73
for Michael Aldritch
Gravel-bars, riverbanks, scars
of the glaciers,
healing and nursing moraine—
tall hemp plants followed man
midden dump heap roadway slash
To bind his loads and ease his mind
Moor to Spain, Spain in horse-manure
and straw, across the sea
& up from Mexico
—a tiny puff of white cloud far away.
we sit and wait, for days,
and pray for rain.
Well the sunset rays are shining
Me and Kai have got our tools
A basket and a trowel
And a book with all the rules
Don’t ever eat Boletus
If the tube-mouths they are red
Stay away from the Amanitas
Or brother you are dead
Sometimes they’re already rotten
Or the stalks are broken off
Where the deer have knocked them over
While turning up the duff
We set out in the forest
To seek the wild mushroom
In shapes diverse and colorful
Shining through the woodland gloom
If you look out under oak trees
Or around an old pine stump
You’ll know a mushroom’s coming
By the way the leaves are humped
They send out multiple fibers
Through the roots and sod
Some make you mighty sick they say
Or bring you close to God
So here’s to the mushroom family
A far-flung friendly clan
For food, for fun, for poison
They are a help to man.
An owl winks in the shadows
A lizard lifts on tiptoe, breathing hard
Young male sparrow stretches up his neck,
big head, watching—
The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green.
Turn it sweet. That we may eat.
Grow our meat.
Brazil says “sovereign use of Natural Resources”
Thirty thousand kinds of unknown plants.
The living actual people of the jungle
sold and tortured—
And a robot in a suit who peddles a delusion called “Brazil”
can speak for them?
The whales turn and glisten, plunge
and sound and rise again,
Hanging over subtly darkening deeps
Flowing like breathing planets
in the sparkling whorls of
living light—
And Japan quibbles for words on
what kinds of whales they can kill?
A once-great Buddhist nation
dribbles methyl mercury
like gonorrhea
in the sea.
Père David’s Deer, the Elaphure,
Lived in the tule marshes of the Yellow River
Two thousand years ago—and lost its home to rice—
The forests of Lo-yang were logged and all the silt &
Sand flowed down, and gone, by 1200 AD—
Wild Geese hatched out in Siberia
head south over basins of the Yang, the Huang,
what we call “China”
On flyways they have used a million years.
Ah China, where are the tigers, the wild boars,
the monkeys,
like the snows of yesteryear
Gone in a mist, a flash, and the dry hard ground
Is parking space for fifty thousand trucks.
IS man most precious of all things?
—then let us love him, and his brothers, all those
Fading living beings—
North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders
who wage war around the world.
May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves and elk
Rise! and pull away their giving
from the robot nations.
Solidarity. The People.
Standing Tree People!
Flying Bird People!
Swimming Sea People!
Four-legged, two-legged, people!
How can the head-heavy power-hungry politic scientist
Government two-world Capitalist-Imperialist
Third-world Communist paper-shuffling male
non-farmer jet-set bureaucrats
Speak for the green of the leaf? Speak for the soil?
(Ah Margaret Mead … do you sometimes dream of Samoa?)
The robots argue how to parcel out our Mother Earth
To last
a little longer
like vultures flapping
Belching, gurgling,
near a dying Doe.
“In yonder field a slain knight lies—
We’ll fly to him and eat his eyes
with a down
derry derry derry down down.”
An Owl winks in the shadow
A lizard lifts on tiptoe
breathing hard
The whales turn and glisten
plunge and
Sound, and rise again
Flowing like breathing planets
In the sparkling whorls
Of living light.
Stockholm: Summer Solstice 40072
under damp layers of pine needle
still-hard limbs and twigs
tangled as they lay,
two sixteen foot good butt logs took
all the rest, top, left
and this from logging twenty years ago
(figured from core-ring reading on a tree still stands, hard by a stump)
they didn’t pile the slash and burn then—
fire hazard, every summer day.
it was the logger’s cost
at lumber’s going rate then
now burn the tangles dowsing
pokey heaps with diesel oil.
paying the price somebody didn’t pay.
In June two oak fell,
rot in the roots
Chainsaw in September
in three days one tree
bucked and quartered in the shed
sour fresh inner oak-wood smell
the main trunk splits
“like opening a book” (J. Tecklin)
And slightly humping oak leaves
deer muzzle and kick it,
Boletus.
one sort, Alice Eastwood
pink, and poison;
Two yellow. edulus
“edible and choice.”
only I got just so slightly sick—
Taste all, and hand the knowledge down.
for Tom and Martha Burch
Lightly, in the April mountains—
Straight Creek,
dry grass freed again of snow
& the chickadees are pecking
last fall’s seeds
fluffing tail in chilly wind,
Avalanche piled up cross the creek
and chunked-froze solid—
water sluicing under; spills out
rock lip pool, bends over,
braided, white, foaming,
returns to trembling
deep-dark hole.
Creek boulders show the flow-wear lines
in shapes the same
as running blood
carves in the heart’s main
valve,
Early spring dry. Dry snow flurries;
walk on crusty high snow slopes
—grand dead burn pine—
chartreuse lichen as adornment
(a dye for wool )
angled tumbled talus rock
of geosyncline warm sea bottom
yes, so long ago.
“Once on a time.”
Far light on the Bitteroots;
scrabble down willow slide
changing clouds above,
shapes on glowing sun-ball
writhing, choosing
reaching out against eternal
azure—
us resting on dry fern and
watching
Shining Heaven
change his feather garments
overhead.
A whoosh of birds
swoops up and round
tilts back
almost always flying all apart
and yet hangs on!
together;
never a leader,
all of one swift
empty
dancing mind.
They are and loop & then
their flight is done.
they settle down.
end of poem.
for Drum and Diana
The end of a desert track—turnaround—
parked the truck and walked over dunes.
a cobbly point hooks in the shallow bay;
the Mandala of Birds.
pelican, seagulls, and terns,
one curlew
far at the end—
they fly up as they see us
and settle back down.
tern keep coming
—skies of wide seas—
frigate birds keep swooping
pelicans sit nearest the foam;
tern bathing and fluttering
in frothy wave-lapping
between the round stones.
we
gather driftwood for firewood
for camping
get four shells to serve up steamed snail
in the top of the cardón cactus
two vultures
look, yawn, hunch, preen.
out on the point the seabirds
squabble and settle, meet and leave;
speak.
two sides of a border.
the margins. tidewater. zones.
up in the void, under the surface,
two worlds touch
and greet
Three shotgun shots as it gets dark;
two birds.
“how come three shots?”
“one went down on the water
and started to swim.
I didn’t want another thing like that duck.”
the bill curved in, and the long neck limp—
a grandmother plumage of cinnamon and brown.
the beak not so long—bars on the head;
by the eye.
Hudsonian Curlew
and those tern most likely
“Royal Tern”
with forked
tail,
that heavy orange bill.
The down
i pluck from the
neck of
the curlew
eddies and whirls at my knees
in the twilight wind
from
sea.
kneeling in sand
warm in the hand.
“Do you want to do it right? I’ll tell you.”
he tells me.
at the edge of the water on the stones.
a transverse cut just below the sternum
the forefinger and middle finger
forced in and up, following the
curve of the rib cage.
then fingers arched, drawn slowly down and back,
forcing all the insides up and out,
toward the palm and heel of the hand.
firm organs, well-placed, hot.
save the liver;
finally scouring back, toward the vent, the last of the
large intestine.
the insides string out, begin to wave, in the lapping
waters of the bay.
the bird has no feathers, head, or feet;
he is empty inside.
the rich body muscle that he moved by, the wing-beating
muscle
anchored to the blade-like high breast bone,
is what you eat.
The black iron frying pan on the coals.
two birds singed in flame.
bacon, onion, and garlic
browning, then steaming with a lid
put the livers in,
half a bird apiece and bulghour
passed about the fire on metal plates.
dense firm flesh,
dark and rich,
gathered news of skies and seas.
at dawn
looking out from the dunes
no birds at all but
three curlew
ker-lew!
ker-lew!
pacing and glancing around.
Baja: Bahía de Concepción, ’69
A friend in a tipi in the
Northern Rockies went out
hunting white tail with a
.22 and creeped up on a few
day-bedded, sleeping, shot
what he thought was a buck.
“It was a doe, and she was
carrying a fawn.”
He cured the meat without
salt; sliced it following the
grain.
A friend in the Northern Sierra
hit a doe with her car. It
walked out calmly in the lights,
“And when we butchered her
there was a fawn—about so long —
so tiny—but all formed and right.
It had spots. And the little
hooves were soft and white.”
Sitting on a bench by the Rogue River, Oregon, looking at a landform map. Two older gents approached and one, with baseball cap, began to sing: “California Here I Come”—he must have seen the license. Asked me if I’d ever heard of Texas Slim. Yes. And he said the song “If I Had the Wings of an Angel” was his, had been writ by him, “I was in the penitentiary.” “Let me shake your hand! That’s a good song” I said, and he showed me his hand: faint blue traces of tattoo on the back, on the bent fingers. And if I hit you with this hand it’s L-O-V-E. And if I hit you with this hand it’s H-A-T-E.
His friend, in a red and black buffalo check jacket stuck his hand out, under my nose, missing the forefinger. “How’d I lose that!” “How?” “An axe!”
Texas Slim said “I’m just giving him a ride. Last year his wife died.” The two ambled off, chuckling, as Kai and Gen came running back up from the banks of Rogue River, hands full of round river stones.
Looking at the map, it was the space inside the loop of the upper Columbia, eastern Washington plateau country. “Channelled Scablands.”
standing in the thunder-pouring
heavy drops of water
—dusty summer—
drinking beer just after driving
all the way around the
watershed of rivers
rocky slopes and bumpy cars
its a skinny awkward land
like a workt-out miner’s hand
& how we love it
have some beer and rain,
stopping on our way,
in Alleghany
Alleghany California, home of the Sixteen to One Mine.
The Dharma is like an Avocado!
Some parts so ripe you can’t believe it,
But it’s good.
And other places hard and green
Without much flavor,
Pleasing those who like their eggs well-cooked.
And the skin is thin,
The great big round seed
In the middle,
Is your own Original Nature—
Pure and smooth,
Almost nobody ever splits it open
Or ever tries to see
If it will grow.
Hard and slippery,
It looks like
You should plant it—but then
It shoots out thru the
fingers—
gets away.
Disciple: “Why is there evil in the universe?”
Ramakrishna: “To thicken the plot.”
What steps.
Philip shaving his head,
Keith looney,
Allen benign,
Dick in charge,
Not magic, not transcendence exactly
but—all created things are of the Mother—
or—the un-created
day by day
stepping in
to the power within.
What steps
In the starry night.
Tārā’s eyes
revolvers clicking
raccoon eyes shine back
lanterns fading
(Bhagavan Das like a National Park)
putting chains on
in the mud.
To turn our mad dance partner spinning laughing
ashes, ashes,
—all fall down.
In the high seat, before-dawn dark,
Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging on Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.
There is no other life.
for Masa
Snowmelt pond warm granite
we make camp,
no thought of finding more.
and nap
and leave our minds to the wind.
on the bedrock, gently tilting,
sky and stone,
teach me to be tender.
the touch that nearly misses—
brush of glances—
tiny steps—
that finally cover worlds
of hard terrain.
cloud wisps and mists
gathered into slate blue
bolts of summer rain.
tea together in the purple starry eve;
new moon soon to set,
why does it take so
long to learn to
love,
we laugh
and grieve.
for Richard and Michael
the dazzle, the seduction the
design
intoxicated and quivering,
bees? is it flowers? why does
this
seed move around.
the one
divides itself, divides, and divides
again.
“we all know where that leads”
blinding storms of gold
pollen.
—grope through that?
the dazzle
and the blue
clay.
“all that moves, loves to sing”
the roots are at
work.
unseen.
—Hsiang-yen
A gray fox, female, nine pounds three ounces.
39 5/8″ long with tail.
Peeling skin back (Kai
reminded us to chant the Shingyo first)
cold pelt. crinkle; and musky smell
mixed with dead-body odor starting.
Stomach content: a whole ground squirrel well chewed
plus one lizard foot
and somewhere from inside the ground squirrel
a bit of aluminum foil.
The secret.
and the secret hidden deep in that.
Death himself,
(Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor)
stands grinning, beckoning.
Plutonium tooth-glow.
Eyebrows buzzing.
Strip-mining scythe.
Kālī dances on the dead stiff cock.
Aluminum beer cans, plastic spoons,
plywood veneer, PVC pipe, vinyl seat covers,
don’t exactly burn, don’t quite rot,
flood over us,
robes and garbs
of the Kālī-yūga
end of days.
Walking home from “The Duchess of Malfi”
Bellatrix and Rigel gleam out of deep pits
Torn in the sea-cloud
blown east from the Golden Gate
Months in the cabin: rain,
cold, hard floor, leaking roof
beautiful walls and windows—
feeding birds
once I
Struck and bit on thought
Of being
Being suffering,
Fought free, tearing hook and line
(my mind)—
Thus was taught,
Pains of death and love,
Birth and war,
wreckt earth,
bless
With more love,
not less.
Berkeley: 55
Six A.M.,
Sat down on excavation gravel
by juniper and desert S.P. tracks
interstate 80 not far off
between trucks
Coyotes—maybe three
howling and yapping from a rise.
Magpie on a bough
Tipped his head and said,
“Here in the mind, brother
Turquoise blue.
I wouldn’t fool you.
Smell the breeze
It came through all the trees
No need to fear
What’s ahead
Snow up on the hills west
Will be there every year
be at rest.
A feather on the ground—
The wind sound—
Here in the Mind, Brother,
Turquoise Blue”