My memory is a trickster thing
Malevolence it’s ruling king

Triumphs, loves and every bright day
Leave no trace, slip easily away

While every hurt, hunger and humiliation
Replay with endless stubborn fascination

My memory has no respect for new joys
Guarding only the old and broken toys

Those worn nursery relics that give me pain
Are all my imp memory deigns to retain

Each new enticing present pleasure
Has no value in my memory’s treasure

Where every small mistake persistently polished
Leaves all new joys heartlessly abolished

My eyes behold pastoral beauty
While memory attends to third grade cruelty

My senses thrill with wondrous feasts
While memory recalls my least defeats

No god could worst punishment decree
Than the devil my own memory is to me

We paid extra

For a float trip day
Down a long silver river
Flowing from a high mountain lake

Guided by Aaron and teenage Faith
Oldest son and youngest daughter
Of the lodge owners

Down the river on a raft
During salmon run
In late August

Sure to be salmon
Alive and dead
And bears, fishing

First, to get to the lake

The float plane landed
In the ocean cove
Taxied onto the gravel beach

Gear loaded, we glided up
Over mountain meadows
To the high lake

Aaron and Heather did everything
While we watched
Tourists, paying to be pampered

Thirty-something Aaron
With 15 and more years experience
Remarked the low water

“It’s been a dry summer.
Driest in years, drier every year now.
We’ll be lucky to see any bears.”

We saw lots of decaying salmon
Doing their part
To enrich the ecosystem

We saw some live salmon
Doing their part
To continue the species

We caught rainbow trout
We caught Dicken’s fish
Pink polka-dotted Dolly Varten

We saw no bears that day

Time and again

Aaron and Heather walked the raft
Over rocks covered with more
Dead fish than flowing water

While we paying customers
Sat royally ill at ease
In the bottoming raft

That night, back at the lodge
We asked if the dry summers
Were a symptom of climate change

“Climate change is ridiculous.”
The climate is always changing.
It’s just a string of dry summers.”

Said a gently smiling Pam
As her family
Nodded in knowing agreement

“Come to the table
Everyone.
Dinner is ready.”

“Let us pray.”

Vast vessels through time
Ships of ice surf mountain waves
We name them glaciers

Beyond lake and road
Mountains rising proud through mists
Dare to reach for God

Eyes sting, nose wrinkles
Gray smoke, black trees, red gold flames
We drive silently

Otter on her back
Baby clutched on her chest
Rock-a-bye on waves

What need of any god
Born of imagination
Nature is divine

Dark green spruce arrows
Shoot high from gray brown rock bows
Bent above the sea

Marsh ducks and tall cranes
Silver road and iron rail
Gray blue Turnagain Arm

Green summer lingers
While golden autumn arrives
Winter white awaits

Suddenly a city
Anchorage stakes our land claim
Mountains ignore us

The road like molten silver
With a streak of gold
Flows, flows
In endless stream
Through endless green

Trees, shoulder to shoulder, crowd the banks
Of the silver and gold road
Claim all vision
All possibility
On either side

Ahead mountains surge upward
Freeing themselves
From the marshalled green ranks
That cling and climb
In doomed determined effort
To best the summit

Tall sharp shooter spruce
Bayonet the watery sky
Then guard the shores
Of the leaked sky lakes

This land is wider than any poem
These trees are deeper than any picture
This road is longer than any map
These lakes are bluer than any color
This sky is louder than any sound
These mountains, ah, these mountains
Rise higher than any god

Here is infinity
Now is forever
Vast is divine

Days
persistent slow as the fields
stretched sonorous
sky to sky
grass and grain
gold and green
dawn to dusk
work to rest
work again

Years
steady slow as the growing
plant to seed
tend the growth
sprout to stalk
pray for rain
ripen to harvest
smell the sun
tractor, thresher
reaper, combine
silo, grainery
fallow fields
winter rest
begin again

Life
straight slow as the train tracks
made for long loads, steady pulls
rulers laid between field and road
measured progress
from terminal to terminal
division lines across prairies

We are will-o’-wisp
gadflies
picture takers
memory makers
strangers in this long strong land.

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust
We birth,
live and die
within that “to”

To smell the space perfume
Dripped by stars
Through the firefly night

To stroke the storm
That jerks the chains of leaf and limb
Insistent that trees heel

To finger your lover’s face
Taste the heavy honey
Of bodies shared

To glimpse a child at play
in a world not of any god’s making
creator of a private universe

To wail in silence at a wake
Pound fists sore
On death’s locked door

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust
In that short “to” lives
All the beauty and terror
Of life

The Rock of Ages
is sometimes
a pebble in my shoe
rubbing my soul raw.

[A work in progress. I like parts of it but not yet the whole of it.]

A willful child, I scorned our Mother
She played Her flute but I danced not
She played Her dirge but I mourned not
Unhappy, I looked for another.

In church I found liturgy and incense
Holy men who always demanded more
Priests who sinfully abused God’s poor
Religious pomp offering only nonsense.

In Christ I found a man of blood and tears
Anointed crucified contorted
Love twisted, discarded, distorted
First on the cross then through two thousand years.

Jesus, divinely human prophet man
Calls me to God, Holy Wisdom Woman.

[Just having a bit of fun here with a writing prompt to write a letter to a fictional character.]

My dear Mrs. Bennett,

It is a truth
though not yet universally acknowledged
that not every young man
whether of good fortune or no
Is necessarily
in want of a wife.

Nor, for that matter,
is every young woman
in want of a husband.

Moreover
To speak of people as property
rightful or otherwise
must now make every person
of any sense and sensibility
cringe.

It is a matter of pride
to eschew such prejudice.

I hope it needs but little persuasion
to help you see the error of your ways.

Though I should not wish to imperil
the humor of your absurdities.

Your faithful friend,
Adrienne

I escape with my life
and sanity, but barely
from the CNN talking heads
too loud, too long
drill through my bedrock skull
melt my permafrost brain
infanticide of all thought.

I seek refuge and repair
among nuts and bolts
down Lowe’s long aisles
but the noise we once called
elevator music
plunges me down
into something like grief
for murdered thought.

I am redeemed, rescued briefly
by an unlikely savior:
a cashier with a lilting Jamaican accent
more music than the alien chords
that invade my mind control
cleave thought from self
more sword than chord.

Right down the road
the library, shiny new
surely offers quiet
thought resurrection.

I sit among others
so many others
in blissful blessed quiet
reading, working, sleeping even
in the quiet cool.

Available comfortable seats are few
but I find one of an empty pair
in front of a large window
no CNN, no shared noise
pretending to be music.

There my mind births thoughts
without contortions or labor pains
with surprising ease
a quiet birth
in a quiet place
Miraculous