As Turtle Watches

Sorenson Creek with Bears, Oregon
—Poetry and Photos by Jeanine Stevens, Sacramento, CA

CACHE CREEK NATURE PRESERVE, JANUARY

High on a hill, the roan stallion whisks his tail,
Small planes drone north, follow ancient flyways.
Tule fog lifts to sunshine, the creek begins to sing.

Eons change course through the stream table.
We place small stones on point bars, change gray
Ribbons to blue, alter the water’s course.

Deep deer prints, parallel pairs, walk beside us
In spongy mud, no odor except the ripeness,
The warmth of sinking pumpkins.

Beyond the spillway, Turtle watches from a sunny
Bank, knows many stories, watches sea arms
Tug levees, make room for wider angles.

Salt Cedars hibernate, wispy, pale branches deceive,
Taproots plan for new growth, soon will appear
As pink smoke seen by crop dusters and Eagle.

Bubbles travel this far south from Soda Bay,
Floating children looking for mother in alluvial
Beds. An old game trail, single palm, and rusted
Plow, tell us others loved these banks, this land. 

 Tahoe East Shore
—Photo by Jeanine Stevens

WATER LEGEND

In deep shade, we tie our aluminum boat
to willow clumps, this creek, barely a half-mile
from Clearlake is the color of milky jade.
Blue-green netted dragonflies sit
on tips of bamboo poles. Three P. M.,
not a good time to fish, still we pull in sun perch,
a few blue gill. The stringer clanks against
metal, gentle breezes slap water, we become
drowsy, drugged, lethargic in August heat.

Almost twenty years later, I circle Road 20
to Cache Creek Nature Preserve. We will walk
the creek, write a few poems. I come to hear
what water has to say. We climb through woods
to Salisbury Spill. Members of the Turtle Clan,
just seven in all, sun shells on rocky banks.

We continue, step over broken limbs, dry leaves,
winter floods centuries-old crack beneath our feet.
I break down a side path, hear water talking,
soft, glossy monosyllables, telling a story.
* I remember a time when all was water,
then came land above, stretched like skin
set out to dry, secured by compass points
around the base of mountains lashed with sinew
from a deer ankle. I can still see loose ends
straggle free in braided channels.
But, we learn point-bars shift, grow hair
and nails, land becomes bigger than water.

Upstream—a rattling of sharp jaws at work.
The turtles come, they’ve followed me.
Pebbles swish in small whirlpools
near the bank sucking them in, they disappear
but leave seven stones across my palm.
It seems this place remembers me.
I make my own image out of warm mud,
large in the center, the rest feet, head and tail,
moss green shell, face my turtle downstream.
I know I’m meant to find stones, fashion
turtle shapes in places special and ordinary.

Stones begin to disappear from Donner Pass,
Yuba Gap, Teichert’s gravel pits, planters
alongside Roseville Auto Mall, pebbles that hunker
near railroad tracks and under freeways.

News media reports turtle sightings:
   Bolinas Lagoon at low tide,
   grottos under Strawberry Creek
   sidewalks in front of Tower Theater
   parking lot of the Alhambra
   Arcade Creek Watershed
   just inside the door of La Bou.
They don’t ask for much—just a place
to keep warm, a place to be noticed.


*Worldmaker’s Story, sun, moon, and stars
by Coyote Man, Brother William Press 

 Tahoe Keys, Winter Creek
—Photo by Jeanine Stevens

BASKETMAKER

She walks the creek

wind tangles reeds
ruffles pale water

sends icy shards
across thin shoulders.

She walks the creek

larvae bore tunnels
soften white root

she’ll gather in spring.

She waits by the red

sedge thicket, elk bone
awl deep in pockets

Eddie Bauer boots
three inches in mud. 

 Sonoma Coast
—Photo by Jeanine Stevens

DUCK’S FOOT IN THE MUD

                      *     Winter, too early
for Patwin women of California’s Central Valley
to gather basket makings. Fog-drenched
branches snake into clouds.
White root, a mirror image, crawls
below the surface, in spring will be cut, dried,
soaked, and woven into coiled buttons—
the center of the earth, spidery tendrils
twine and twist old shapes
—maidenhair fern fly as wild geese
—slender red bud sketch white egrets in thin reeds.

                      *      The Portland Antique Show,
quilts, vivid colors, patterns: Log Cabin,
Wedding Basket, Nine Patch, Bow Tie,
Duck’s Foot in the Mud. Made from printed
feed sacks, fibers holding seams of dust and grain.
Too few leisure hours rocking on wooden porches,
early New England, women hooked small rugs,
and pictures on burlap. Yarn, dyed green from willow
branches, transform a worn black and white
checked shawl—now a summer forest
—blueberries, now sailing ships,
—red bark—hearts and flowers.
Later, artwork was found behind walls,
papered over. The Elders frowned on idle hands.

                       *      At our poetry session
“Native California Baskets,” Dixie, part Karok,
Modoc, Portuguese, shares her extensive display
of grasses, roots, and baskets in various stages,
tells of old motifs, also hidden from authorities.
I imagine old patterns seeping from her grandmother’s
cabin walls. Lizard foot waits! Fish teeth sharpen,
skunk ear listens, deer gut clenches, crane leg
bends, mussel tongue protrudes, wolf eye peers
through cracks! Bat wings woven
from tule root move back and forth, dark
to light. The membrane dissolves. I see baskets
tumbling like the fledgling wood duck, both
landing in tender deer grass, a soft place to fall. 

Salmon, Nimbus Fish Hatchery

—Public Domain Photo

UPSTREAM

“One of the biggest salmon runs in history.”

From the overlook at Nimbus Dam, I can barely see
water for the scarred fish, so numerous they stretch
from one side of the American River to the other,
some flipping into small bushes on shore, others,
frantic swollen bodies, straining against the bluffs,
mounds of white slate bumping in rhythm,
a communal heartbeat waiting their turn. I walk
the bank a bit to the west, see scattered remains,
crinkled skin shapes, like tattered buckskin gloves
lost by old hunters. A few skeletons, bone white
and twisted remind me of a child’s rough attempt
to assemble a prehistoric nature kit—bird, dinosaur?
Along a gravel bar, young willows dip down
into a golden-flecked pond. I wonder at a solitary,
brown catfish sitting quietly on top of the mud. 

 —Public Domain Photo

ONE DAY AT TAYLOR CREEK

Someone left the sprinkler on behind the Forestry Center.
A small aspen, only yesterday a mass of buttery yellow wings,

is now a miniature chandelier, ice prisms frozen, pendulous
branches, tiny gold facets illuminate glass globes
to welcome the winter solstice.

By noon, leaves turn brown as mountain sunflowers,
dry pods rubbing on dusty ground—
a shaman’s rattle to waken the wind.

By evening, tiny leaves, now a deep charcoal,
change seasons in one day.

I smell snow that says—light lamps, change quilts,
shake out Pendletons, bring in winter’s wood and wait
for bald eagles to nest on the south shore.

________________________

Today’s LittleNip:
 
“The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him Tortoise—“ “Why did you call him Tortoise, if he isn’t one?” Alice asked. “We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock Turtle angrily; “really you are very dull!” “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,” added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice who felt ready to sink into the earth.

—Lewis Carroll

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Jeanine Stevens for today’s fine creekside poetry and waterside photos!

 Turtles Dressing For Winter
—Public Domain Cartoon

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