July 2015

FEATURED POET: TIM McNULTY is a Northwest poet, essayist, and nature writer.  His work draws from a long-standing engagement and regard for the natural world and its inhabitants. He is the author of three poetry collections: Ascendance, In Blue Mountain Dusk, and Pawtracks, and ten poetry chapbooks, including Cloud Studies, and Through High Still Air: A Season at Sourdough Mountain.  Tim is also the author of eleven books on natural history, including Olympic National Park: A Natural History, From the Air: Olympic Peninsula, and Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park.  Tim has received the Washington State Book Award and the National Outdoor Book Award.  He lives with his family in the foothills of Washington’s Olympic Mountains, where his is active in wilderness and conservation work.  Tim's website is timmcnultypoet.com

MOON, HORSES, AND GROUNDFOG

A corner of dream opened

into night--soft ring

of the bell mare, close

to the open shelter where I slept.

A low fog had moved up from the river,

and the dark shapes of horses grazed

knee-deep in silvery light.

In the hazy reach between sleep

and waking,

I was among them, tasting the fog

that was our ground.  It was cool,

and smelled of leafmulch,

of dampened ash,

and the slow breath of a glacier.

The moon stood still in a spruce tree,

and the sound of the river

moved away over polished stones.

I was midpoint on a journey

I had forgotten I'd begun,

and the dust of winter stars

covered the empty shoes beside me.

― In Blue Mountain Dusk―Broken Moon/Pleasure Boat Studio, 1992

DIVERS

Before practice the divers walk

on their hands along the far edge of the pool. 

Their reflections in the still, blue water

merge with their actual selves,

palm to palm,

hand-stepping delicately along the curb

like mythic creatures—half liquid,

half vapor, long-limbed and angelic—

feeling their way

along the verge of earthly elements.

In minutes they will hurl themselves

swanlike through the unhurried air,

spin like tumbler pigeons

and rip the clear surface water

sleek and powerful as dolphins.

But now, as the girls move delicately

as water striders, bound neither by earth

nor gravity nor time, they are most themselves.

―Ascendance―Pleasure Boat Studio, 2013

WRITE YOUR POEM!

Tao Qian (365-427) lived in China when the word poet conjured up two images.  One was a court appointed position.  In that case the poet was a postal worker or DMV clerk of some stature much like our current federal system for any clerical service of education, health or welfare.  But anybody from the FBI to the meter maid understood their role. 

The other image was that of Han Shan and others who traded celebrity/bureaucrat status for farms and hill country.  Tao Qian knew both worlds.

He was fired when the new administration came in.  He walked away from the bureau. Tao Qian paved the way for later Chinese poets to explore the connection of the poet to nature, much like Tim McNulty does in his essays and poems.  

How much of the poet inhabits the poem?  How much of the poem inhabits the poet? Where is nature in that border.  Seeking to dissolve that line came to be an attempt at becoming one with the Tao.

What is your poem?  Look at it on the page.  Type out two copies.  Throw one in the pond and watch the ink run.  Does your poem invade the world or discover the world?  The questions drive your next line break.  Write your poem.  Hand it to your aunt who has Alzheimer's.  If she smiles then you succeeded.  Write your poem.

RETURNING TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY (I)

Young, I was always free of common feeling.
It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.
Waking up, thirty years had gone.
The caged bird wants the old trees and air.
Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.
Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.
My place is hardly more than a few fields.
My house has eight or nine small rooms.
Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
Misted, misted the distant village.
Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.
No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.
Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
Now I can get back again to Nature.

Tao Quin