Three days after grading a mountain of papers, I was back in Oregon. The World Lit. and Creative Nonfiction ones were amazing, amazing, amazing, but still exhausting since I’m 102 years old. Buck Steelhead in old growth says,”Let the healing begin.”
In Old Growth Forest
I don’t want to see van Gogh, Renoir, Monet,
read Rilke or Kafka, hear Mozart, or anything,
no matter how artful, from a human mind.
Instead, I focus my yarn fly along giant logs,
undercut cliffs, ready for the instant I feel
winter’s electric strike.
In hanging moss, creek music, sunlight
through ancient fir and spruce,
beside elk, raccoon, heron tracks in mud
men harvest blazing silver and pink steelhead
fresh from God’s ocean.
At night I smile the smile well-rested and joyful
like I slept in a land of Paradise dreams
a thousand years.
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