Author Archives: kaweah

Robinson Jeffers Examines a Yoyo

by kaweah

Here’s a profound and humorous reflection on how Robinson Jeffers sees mystical magnificence and predatory violence in the most mundane of things, by California poet Kevin Jones:

It is a thing of grace and possibility this dynamic orb:
A metaphor and a microcosm of the earth, its turnings and returnings,
Embodying the Eastern philosophers’ yin and yang, the western theologian’s
Light and dark, and bound all and brought to fruition by this hempen
Umbilical cord—the Great Mother at last freed from eons of mythical
Dreaming and here, here, palpable, bright, useful in my very hand.

For aside from the mystical nature of this ingenious machine, I see
A much more practical aspect. This is not merely a tool for contemplation,
A toy for a spring-fevered and wayward child. No, it has come to me,
Sure as the vision of a hawk when the wind clears the sky off Point Lobos,
This is a tool for the hunt. I see one of the old ones, in a tree, or atop a cliff,
Waiting to drop this on passing prey, giving the animal, or an enemy, the quick
And sacred gift. Yes, I am told the device’s inventors did this very thing.
But I am sure they cooked theirs before they ate it.

(small world)

by kaweah

The universe seems to be
Very big, and who’s to say
  it’s alone.

Somewhere out there,
  someone is just like you.

Somewhere out there,
Someone just like you
  is walking
With someone like me.

Maybe they aren’t that
  far from here.

© 2013–14 Kaweah

 

The Peace-Loving Elements

by kaweah

The cataract grinds away the granite
But water only wants to find a low place
And take the form of its container,
Conform to make its peace.

Earth falls too—
Crashes down on itself
Till the land is level,
At peace.

The wind blows savage over the plain,
Falls from ridge to trough and
The gradient is lost. No high, no low,
No sound but peace.

Fire comes, hungry,
willful, wild;
Thaws frozen seas, steams
Oceans and the rains fall, turns
Air against air and the winds sing;
Heaves continents, piles mountains up,
Sends the peace-loving elements off
to war.

© 2013-14 Kaweah

 

Suffocants

by kaweah

They breathe only what can be inhaled
from others. That is their way.

When you had no more air for them,
their memory of you was a bible.
They buried the book and mourned it
as you lay breathless, solitary,
according to their law.

They encircled their book,
emitting weeping sounds,
embalming it with rose water
and saline solution.

I stepped up secretly, discretely
pushed each one into the hole,
back after back, there not being faces.

The tomb was spacious
(The book was large).
The earth weighed heavily on the spade,
but it rested well upon them.

They have come to no harm, do not cry.
They lie there today,
sipping each other’s air.

© 2013–15 Kaweah

 

Ten Lakes

by kaweah
Above Ten Lakes

Michael pauses for the view above Ten Lakes

We returned to Twin Lakes in late August to see if the weather would permit us a pleasant high country outing, and what do you know, it did. We found a wonderful, large, flat, wooded site with a large fire pit and some well-laid logs for the night, a short walk from one of the larger lakes.

Here’s some coverage of a pair of hikers who got lost while hiking to Ten Lakes the year before.

©2014 Kaweah

Meeting Minutes

by kaweah

A fool question, but a safe one,
he figures.

Wouldn’t want to give her
the wrong idea—or worse yet,
the right one.

“San Paulo,” she answers,
as if he were there, not lost
somewhere between the
eyes and mouth,
where it can be hard
to hear anything.

”That somewhere near
Ipanema?,” he wonders—aloud,
and she laughs, of course, and the heat
rushes to his face, and the colors
drain from the world,
and she smiles and the stars
draw arcs in the lunch-hour sky
‘round her hair, the breeze
blowing all the patio umbrellas
tumbling and laughing
to the sea, o mundo
sorrindo.

© 2013–15 Kaweah

 

The Stacks

by kaweah

I don’t recall how it began
I was asleep at the time
maybe long ago in a boy’s dream or some
half-remembered adventure
wandering again
through that vast and foreign city of childhood
that never once was the same
in so many days and dreams
maybe this time he’d lost someone
I don’t recall
Hearst Avenue or some such
boulevard    walking downward
a fenced park to his side    an iron gate
concrete path    neoclassic façade    the
pinkness of granite
the cherrywood doors    ajar
Stepping up    cold stone by stone
slipped with the night air    through the entryway
to the dark inside    a broad desk    a bronze reading lamp
too dim to penetrate the dense air and a woman
old white hair skin folded in ribbed shadows
in the green lamplight seated at the desk
stood and turned not seeing me    walked out from behind
the oak battlement    turned his way cocked her head to say
follow me patron and so he did    back to the stacks
the green lamplight remained    fading at our backs
her ancient wiry frame    hung a knee-length dress
black in the green light    vanished here and there
as she passed through the shadows of
the densely packed shelves
the knocking of her heels
echoed off the bindings and the floor
her bunned hair was black now in the dim light
the curve of her hips was complete
each leg in fullness but undressed
seeming to note my hesitation she turned back
she was young she was fruitful she
wore the old woman’s dress
but it embraced her now and her glasses had the same frames
but the glass was dark as the stacks    somehow I knew
I knew her from somewhere she stopped and turned and
she pulled a book off-shelf    handed it to him and
she leaned against the shelving and waited
I looked through the volume all the pages were naked
he looked up to her and showed her    two of the empty sheets
she turned away to the stack and reached up
lifting off her heels to her toes
dangerously drew out another volume
I could hardly make out the black silhouette of her face
her hair    her dress her calves in the crescent light
her bow-like length flush against the mass of bindings
she pulled the book down and I turned timidly as
she handed the book to him and
I handed the empty book back    only to find
the next book was empty    so
she led me down the slot canyon handing him
volume after volume of emptiness
sometimes the pages were fresh
white and glossy sometimes they were
yellowed and cracked with time and
the verdant librarian she led me
though the shadow to where the stacks ended at a wall
the shelves there empty    but for a single book
I could see this clearly    in the light of a naked bulb
that shone from high on the wall    I could see that
the librarian’s dress though black was not opaque
I could see her through it in the white light as she
handed him the lone book that he could not open
because of what I saw under the linen
some kind of writing
the script glowed dimly in the light in the black fabric
he reached for her collar and turned it out
there was writing
in some Latin form    there was another collar
under the collar    white and it too had writing and
he turned it over and I saw the deeper layers
and I licked his fingertips and he peeled back the sheets
back as the pages of her breast opened    a white rose
the petals turned silently    the words
incomprehensible and familiar
he dug through into her pages and I
listened to her breathing    clearly
and deeply
with every new page my hands tingle
to the touch of every silk petal
but the fingers begin to quake and stumble
and the pages slip out of their grasp
and the dreamer slips out of the dream
eyes fixed to the ceiling
we listen to the breathing

© 2013–14 Kaweah

 

Ten Lakes Rainout

by kaweah
Yosemite Creek Downpour

Yosemite Creek Downpour

This summer’s first backcountry adventure was an attempted overnighter to Yosemite’s Ten Lakes, north of Tioga Pass Road and above the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. Unfortunately, heavy rain, thunder, and lightning sent us scurrying back to the trailhead. Fortunately, we’d already got a night in at a pleasant walk-in campsite at White Wolf.

©2014 Kaweah

Bahá’í Calendar Redux

by kaweah

The Bahá’í Calendar, arguably the least lunar calendar there is, has recently been given a lunar calculation of its own. Because the founders of the Bábí and Bahá’í religions were reported to have been born a day apart on the Islamic calendar (though two years apart), the Bahá’í leaders in Israel figured it would be nice to make this happen on their calendar. To do this, they marked the 8th new moon after No-Rúz in Tehran as the one most likely to be close to the time of year when the two prophets were born, and then had one prophet’s birth commemorated on the first day after that new moon and the other prophet’s birth commemorated on the day after that.

The commemorations will no longer occur on the actual dates of birth on the solar cycle (October 20 and November 12) or even the Islamic calendar, but rather, they will take place on different dates from year to year, as is done with Easter and Good Friday.

Calendars are an important tool for scheduling our activities. A farmer might use a solar calendar to plan a harvest. A Bedouin might use a lunar calendar to plan a journey across the desert. Many calendars are a hybrid between solar and lunar so that they can be used in accord with seasonal and lunar cycles. The Gregorian calendar, for instance, is precisely calculated to remain synchronized with the seasons. It is not so precise with respect to lunar cycles, each of its months being about a day too long to keep pace with the phases of the moon. Still, a Gregorian month can be used to loosely approximate a lunar month.

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