Mike Cole, Ahwahnee, California, USA
Junction Butte
—where the north and middle forks
of the San Joaquin River come together
Down washed out rock strewn switchbacks
through shoulder high rhododendron and ceanothus
sweetening every breath, tiger lilies flaring above ferns,
to a knoll, beyond loggers’ reach,
where twin sentinels,
a ponderosa and a sugar pine,
have stood since a time
when nothing that wasn’t wild
moved, or grew, or flowed here,
follow the heavy columns
up to sunlight flaring
in their crowns,
down to the snowmelt rumble,
water so cold it numbs and reddens flesh.
Squint against the stinging glare,
then rest in shade beneath the metal bridge
arched above this place where shepherds
coaxed their flocks across.
Take up the backpack again, climb
the high stone steps of the Mammoth Trail.
At a cedar marked by rusted nails
find the faint depression in dry grass of a path
that rises to the top of a ridge.
Stand above the canyon of the middle fork
of the San Joaquin opening so deep and wide
the distant view urges flight.
Two more hours sliding down
pine needles and oak leaves,
then out onto slabs of sun-brightened granite,
side-stepping and slipping across sloughing sand,
crust of lichen, past mounds of bear scat,
wide around undercuts of rock
where rattlers might rest in shade.
Bone deep pain in hips and knees and toes,
step out onto a sandy flat
bounded by the constant thunder
of the two rivers becoming one.
*
In lengthening shadows make camp,
lie staring up into the play
of light through new leaves.
As the day fades,
silhouettes of pines and cedars
rise against the graying sky
like spires of smoke or spirits.
A shattered black oak stands,
two limbs raised like arms
beside the sheared off trunk,
now a head thrown back
to chant warning or celebration.
Beneath the river’s tumult,
the heavy beat of drums,
a rhythm that filled this canyon
for nights and days in ages
when those who fell asleep
and awoke to that water sound
like a powerful wind knew
that any talk of a distant sea
or of men with skin pale as snow
was the product of a dream.
Move for an hour unseen
through a dream
of cedar bark houses that tangle the sky
with braids of smoke,
the early morning voices of women,
men’s dark hands shaping blades
and points out of stone brought here
from the black glass mountain to the east.
*
Wake again to the rush of the river
toward a sea it can no longer reach,
to sadness and calm that make this a place
where everything has been resolved.
Sit quietly and listen
to torrents falling over rock.
Know all that has been lost,
but know too
that this is the place,
the one place, to wait
for whatever takes flight from the body
to leave for the journey
in which the rivers
always find their way
to the sea.
Tuolumne Campfire
Phil brings his paintings,
the one from today of the bridge
beginning to dissolve into
a scarlet tinged darkness,
and the one of a mountain
that becomes a nude woman
emerging from the landscape,
and he has his song books
from the Santa Cruz ukulele society.
We wander among Willie Nelson,
Sarah Vaughn, the Beatles,
Johnny Cash, the Mamas and Poppas,
but we can’t get Janis Joplin’s Bobby McGee
to untangle itself so pause
while Phil’s friend with the wooden flutes
tells of being in line to audition
for Big Brother and the Holding Company
until Janis’s hungry heart
made any other voice immaterial.
He tells how she wandered in and out
of the house where he slept, an ephemera
that like the woman in Phil’s painting
was on her way to outgrowing this world,
says he went on to sing
in hashish informed tongues
for a trio of sitars.
We go on to King of the Road,
Peggy Sue, You Are My Sunshine,
until the fire dies to a pile of bright nuggets,
the camps around us sinking into silence.
We turn off the lights we needed for music,
tell a few more stories in near whispers,
then dissolve into our separate
rooms of the cold dark.
Mike Cole is from Fresno, California (USA) where he attended Fresno State College and earned a pre-MFA Master’s Degree in Poetry. He was a high school teacher of English, Spanish, and Creative Writing for 30-plus years. He now lives and writes in Ahwahnee, California near Yosemite. Over the years, his poems have appeared in a number of magazines, most recently in The Red Savina Review, Stirring, Front Porch Review, and in the anthologies Highway 99, by Heyday Press and Yosemite Poets, by Scrub Jay Press. He is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.