Right Here

HT Cupper

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

RIGHT HERE

Soft whimper from the backseat.
Aren’t we there yet? My dog wants out,
he’s had enough of driving up freeway, and now
this little canyon. He could smell it through
closed car windows. Here, he says
in Dog. I find a pull-out, he leads me down steep
into shadow. No winter torrent, the canyon’s
summer-quiet. Beyond berry brambles,
down to the creek. Opposite bank’s a puzzle
of rock carved by current, exposing roots
dug down for water. Through trees,
swathes of sunlight find the surface, shimmer
ripples and the calmer stream. Water-
striders. And below a rock shelf, my dog
making his own swirls, mud, eddies.
He’ll come out shaking, sharing.
This is the place, he says.

 CC Meadow
 

IT WAS THERE ONCE

Something fidgets in brambles this misty
morning along the creek. Blackbird?
Glimmer through trees as I cross the bridge—
light on a window pane of this almost
ghost town, remnant of what used to be
the road east. Houses boarded up,
the only survivor is this bungalow where
a living family hangs red scarves
from the line. Even the old schoolhouse
is repurposed as barn. I wonder
what happened to the names in chalk
on a blackboard, the answers to questions
mystical as all things bypassed, gone.

 Tracking Ground Squirrels

NOSE PRINTS ON GLASS

Young dog Trek—long legs, long feet—
is at the window, glass being always in the way.
He’s posted like a guardian dog, on guard
for ground squirrels that tunnel
everywhere, maybe under the house.
They ravage garden—tooth-marks mark
the way. Trek leaves his nose-prints on pane
of glass—window which is a sliding door,
a passageway. The door is closed, glass smudged
with nose prints, evidence of dog-guard
while master is away. Windows are too much.
What can a dog do, inside glass? Only
watch the rodents, how they snatch bird-seed
scattered by careless finches every-
which-way across the deck. Trek is undeterred,
on duty, ever faithful to his guard.
The ground squirrels always get away.

 Trek Outdoors

JUST ONE LIGHT

A wolf appears in the room’s dark corner beyond glow of the moon. Your skin tingles as if beast emerged from the palm of your hand, a rhythmic pulse linking man and wolf. If you stroked its rough fur, it might settle like a familiar dog. You might understand its tongue, the light of its eyes. Yet it holds apart, as if you stood in some forbidden circle of your mind. For now, man and beast focus on a single point in space, dark radiating beyond lamplight—maybe thinking the same thoughts, not yet meeting the other’s gaze.

moon through window glows
steady, silent as a globe
that contains all things

 Madia, Quartz Hill

DRIVING TO THE ANCIENT DARK
    abhanga for the solar eclipse
 
We’ve come so high to see
Moon glide across the Sun—
daylight hardly begun,
Earth going dark.

This mountain lookout point
far above valley haze
a rare platform, to gaze
at our lost light.

Call this a holiday?
suddenly turning night—
it caused the ancients fright.
Would Sun come back?

We’ve heard the news reports.
Are we so very wise,
watching as the light dies?
How far we’ve come.

 Madia, Sun Haze

WALKING ON ECLIPSE

In uncertain light, the earth is laced
with crescent sunbeams.
Ever-diminishing day filtered through trees
at mid-morning.
Don’t look Sun in the eyes, they say,
for fear of blindness.
And what might that reveal? The sun
allows us only so much light
in a human life,
if we wish to go on seeing.
And so I walk in a growing dim,
stepping on ground littered with shards
of muted sun. Dark forms
fluttering. An annular eclipse
may not come again
in my lifetime. Is light essential
to dreaming?
On this hilltop I’m walking
among glimmer-gold
fragments like so many fallen willow
leaves. My own
shadow keeps stepping between.

Forest Road

Today’s LittleNip:

ARE WE THERE YET? SEVENLING
—Taylor Graham

Galvanized tin cabin abandoned.
Nameless creek vanishing clear.
Road sign blanked out to nowhere.

Map shows Cheese Camp in three
places: creek, ridge, and meadow
but we haven’t found it there.

GPS got spell-corrected to GOD.

_______________________

Our thanks to Taylor Graham for today’s fine poems and pix! For more about the abhanga, see poetscollective.org/poetryforms/abhanga/. For more about the sevenling, go to poetscollective.org/poetryforms/example-Index/#S and scroll down. Poets’ Collective is new to me and seems to be a ‘way-cool site for poetry forms, if you’re into that sort of thing… which I sometimes indulge in and sometimes, well, don’t. No shoulds, here, but they can be great fun and great discipline. (See “Medusa Mulls” in the links at the top of the blog for more of my opinions, including the American abuse of the lovely, delicate haiku form.) For form resources, I also like:

Shadow Poetry: www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/types.html
Jan Haag’s Desolation Poetry: janhaag.com/PODesIntro.html
Poets.org: www.poets.org/poetsorg/collection/poetic-forms
Poetry Foundation: www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms?category=209

And for poetic terms, try Bob’s Byway: www.poeticbyway.com/glossary.html/.

—Medusa

 Star Thistle, Quartz Hill

—Photo by Taylor Graham
Celebrate poetry! Tonight you have your choice of readings: 

Luna’s Cafe with featured readers and open mic at 8pm, or 

Laura Dominguez Abraham and Shawn Pittard (plus open mic) 

at John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, also at 8pm. Scroll down 

to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for 

info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—

and note that more may be added at the last minute.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.