FEATURED POET: Mike Hiler is a ceramic artist and writer who lives in Washington State. He is a former public school teacher, fire lookout, Wilderness Ranger, and managed National Forest Wilderness in the Washington Cascades for a number of years. His featured book, Listos is the second book he has published with Cave Moon Press and we are excited. Check out Buckskin Larch and Bedrock (2010) at cavemoonpress.com
Elegy for Spruce Creek
Spruce Creek, where the tangle of ridge
and rock are context for
The Raven, high elevation sage,
and a tuft of deer fluff.
You won’t smell smoke
from the sheepherder’s camp fire
or be welcomed by his dogs
across a blanket of Pine grass.
It’s just as well.
The bears here are timid,
the larch snags reach
to the blue sky backdrop
from this bastion ridge
Holding up larger mountains.
Choice:
You have been given a choice
that clearly defines
opposites
and sustains the moment.
You will choose
and your choice will be correct,
the only alternative
among opposites,
Which will someday be wrong
when time
changes the question.
That was the choice
you were given
when you first sought
to understand.
That was the choice
you overlooked.
WRITE YOUR POEM!
"Spruce Creek, where the tangle of ridge
and rock are context for
The Raven, high elevation sage,
and a tuft of deer fluff."
Location, location, location the realtors tell us is the grand value of a piece of property.
The odd thing about poetry is that location can turn into metaphor or just be a statement of witness. Witness to the inner life, or witness to an event, or exterior marker. Rural poets thrive off of Whitman's dictums about grass. Urban poets find a different landscape. Still other poets reject landscape and use poetic structures and forms.
What are you using in your current poem? Location? Metaphor for an inner life? Witness of another time and place? Write your poem on a fallen leaf and watch it flow down the river.
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