Winter 2012 . Volume 3 Issue 2

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Writt en River is a literary journal published by Hiraeth Press which focuses on poetry and non-fi ction prose exploring nature and our relationship to it. Published quarterly in digital format, we strive to encourage the discipline of eco-poetics and return the voice of the poet to the body of the Earth. Eco-poetics is poetry in which the energy of the ecosystem fl ows through the poem, creating a writt en river of words which ebbs with the creativity of the entire Earth commun ity. Writt en River marks the confl uence of many streams and many voices as they fl ow back into the nourishing ground of the watershed.

Founding EditorsJason Kirkey

L.M. Browning

EditorJ. Kay MacCormack

Issue DesignJason Kirkey

Cover ArtMiya Ando

Writt en River is published by Hiraeth Press.

Hiraeth Press is a pub lisher with a mis sion.Poetry is the lan guage of the Earth — not just poems but the slow fl ap of a heron’s wings across the sky, the light ning of its beak hunting in the shallow water; autumn leaves and the smooth course of water over stones and gravel. Th ese, as much as poems, com mu ni cate the being and meaning of things. Our pub li ca tions are all po-etry, whether they are poems or non fi c tion, and refl ect the ideal that falling in love with the Earth is nothing short of rev o lu tionary and that through our rela tion ship to wild nature we can birth a more enlight ened vision of life for the future. We are pas sionate about poetry as a means of returning the hu-man voice to the poly phonic chorus of the wild.

We pub lish a range of poetry and non fi c tion ded i cated to exploring our rela-tion ship with the earth. Our titles refl ect our mis sion to par tic i pate in the re- creation of our cul ture in full par tic i pa tion with the earth com mu nity. Our non fi c tion titles rep re sent a diver sity of per spec tives on the topic of ecology, spir i tu ality, and place- based lit er a ture. Each of our poetry col lec tions, in their own way, ask “what use are poets in times of need?” answering in voices of riv-ers and stones. Our books are food: come browse our col lec tion and nourish your self.

Winter 2012 . Volume 3 Issue 2

Writt en River accepts unsolicited submissions. Our Journal primarily publishes poetry (any form as long as the verse is theme-relevant), nonfi ction, (essays, au-tobiographical stories, and travel writing), interviews and book reviews.

Please send a short cover lett er, biographical statement and a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx) at-tachment of:

•Up to 5 poems not exceeding 15 pages. Please send a query lett er and an excerpt if you would like a long form poem to be considered.

•Nonfi ction work of 5000 words or less.

We prefer electronic submissions. Th is is currently our only method of accepting submissions. Please use the submission form on our website at: www.hiraethpress.com/writt en-river. We review submissions aft er the deadline has passed so please be patient if you submit early.

Submitt ed works should be previously unpublished. We are open to publishing a limited number of po-ems/essays may have appeared in print or online, but the author must hold sole rights to the work. We do accept original artwork/photographs. We request that images be scanned with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Simultaneous submissions are permitt ed; however, we ask to be notifi ed promptly if your submitt ed work is accepted elsewhere.

note: If your work is seasonally themed you should consider our issue deadlines below.

Writt en River Submission DeadlinesWinter Issue: October 20thSummer Issue: April 20th

submission guidelines

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contents5 · Letter from the Editor

6 · Touching the Burning Infinite LightFeature Interview

12 · Sipping Tea in the Pure LandWhat is Zen Really Like?Where I Am Most At HomeWhat Is

Old Mountain

14 · ScarecrowNew Shoots

Musan Cho Oh-hyun (trans. Heinz Insu Fenkl)

15 · Coastal Rainforest SilhouettesScott T. Starbuck

16 · The Pond Has Clear ImaginingsAutumn at Itako

17 · The Pond is as Small as a PrayerMartin Willitts Jr.

18 · Blue HeronA Rock

19 · AgingJesse LoVasco

20 · The World as I Found ItMartin Burke

24 · From one astray, seeking soul-sticeErynn Rowan Laurie

25 · The Grass Holds the Afternoon Together26 · Song for Hidden Shorebirds and Grass

ConfluenceThe Upper Meadow

Joel Long

30 · . . . or night.. . . nothing else.

J.K. McDowell

30 · Nooya Lake, Misty Fiords31 · Full Moon While Flying dfw

(Dallas Fort Worth) To RichmondDiana Woodcock

34 · Spring TideChristine Waresak

36 · StewardshipGenevieve Leet

38 · Wild NettleLesson #1: How to Listen to a Bird Sing

Laurence Holden

41 · Autumn window no. 3:Vulpes Fulva, Key of Bflat

Deer Has Full Tail: New MoonCarved of Cedar

Gwendolyn Morgan

42 · Thin Ice45 · WhoooJamie K. Reaser

48 · The Nothing HereTyra Olstad

49 · TreesRiver

Brendan Sullivan

50 · When It Does Not IncreaseNicole Parizeau

51 · FoxVine

Michael Bazzett

52 · Coopers' Hawk Caughtin the Library of Congress

53 · Yosemite Phenomena Never Seen By MuirDaniel Williams

54 · Joshua Tree, CaliforniaColin Dodds

55 · Falling ForwardTheodosia Henney

57 · Where There Are No Roads,The Road Not Taken

Laura Story Johnson

59 · Preview of Creatively MaladjustedTheodore Richards

60 · Contributors

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Photography and other art by Genevieve Leet, Jamie. K. Reaser, Angeliki Savvantoglou, Russel Streur, and Pamela Petro.See pages for photo credits.

4Photo © A. Savvantoglou

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Letter from the Editor

I step out of the house into the Solstice night. My mind is full of my grandfather’s recent death, anxiety about the future, and many unanswered questions. Clouds veil the crystalline stars. There is no clarity. But I know

what I must do. I crave the woods. Entering the small swathe of pin oak, Quercus palustris, behind the house, I settle on a log. Thoughts clutter within me. Taking a deep breath, for the first time I notice a sharpness in the air. It pierces my inner haze, causing me to pause. Then Rilke’s lines run through my head:

If we surrenderedto earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own makingand struggle, lonely and confused.

. . .This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,patiently to trust our heaviness.

His words wash through me, and without thinking, I find myself sinking to the forest floor, legs sliding under a thick layer of oak leaves. The earth is so solid, holding me. I can smell that oak smell, the moist decay of humus, and the dormant sleep of little seeds. I can smell winter in the wind, but the cold thrills me, reminds me that I’m alive. I shiver. Then I see it. Mist. It’s like a living creature, curling and gliding around the smooth sapling bark and dead winter twigs. It feels like I’ve never seen mist before. It is so fresh, so real, so alive. That’s when I realize that the woods are singing. It may be the bleak midwinter, but down here, amidst soil and leaves and stones, I hear a hum, as branches shiver in the wind, and little crunching noises rise from amongst the acorns and hickory nuts. I hear a bird cry, as though startled. I hear soft animal breathing—in and out. It’s my own. Everything has slowed down. I lay there, burrowed like a squirrel in the red brown oak leaves, and imagine that I am snow melting into the ground. Breath rises and mingles with the mist. And then, looking up through the latticed arboreal ceiling, I notice the first glimmer of stars.

Dogen said, “When you find your place where you are, practice occurs.” In this winter issue of Written River, we’ve interviewed Miya Ando, whose artwork marries together the spaciousness of meditative practice with a sensitivity to nature and place. Each place has its own special quality, yet psychology shows us how easily we become habituated, our senses dulled to the aliveness unfolding around us.

Eco-poetics is not just about celebrating the earth or exposing the short-sightedness of industrialism. Eco-poetics for us is about practice. It’s about the words slipping off the page and running through your body and heart like a river—a written river. It’s about shifting our everyday perceptions. That tree outside your window isn’t just a tree. There is no other tree in the world exactly like it. And there is no other place in the world exactly like the one you currently sit, breathe, and inhabit. Eco-poetry then is about directness, about cutting through the haze of our over-crowded, dulled sensory experiences to revise and revision our relationship with place, bioregion and earth. Eco-poetry, as a practice, can shift our perceptions of the world from hackneyed habit to honored habitat. Be where you are, wherever you are: indoors, outdoors, wilderness, suburb or inner city. Waking up to where you are, however beautiful or painful—that is the way our world can change. It all just takes . . . practice.

With mono no aware,* Jenn

* A Japanese word. See page 7, this issue.

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Touching the Burning Infinite Lightthe art of miya ando

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We live in a high velocity, technocratic, and a (sometimes) loud and harsh world. It is a world increasingly charac-

terized by violence, environmental degradation, psychological stress, cultural marginalization, urban anonymity, and a mind-numbing overload of digital imagery and information. Living within such conditions can have a detrimental impact upon the human psyche. Under such duress, art—a universal human lean-ing shared across all cultures—can serve as a salve for the heart-mind.

Art, both East and West, ancient and modern, causes us to pause, to contemplate, to return—if for just a moment—to a slow-er, more natural rhythm. Art also invokes experience, specifically within the inner life of the viewer. When that art is—by its very nature—spacious, contemplative, minimal-ist, and evocatively mind-like, the viewer is naturally invited into a meditative process. Therein lies healing and illumination.

With such art-making, and within such art-viewing, a person may even experience a sudden flash of deeper spiritual insight. This is one of the key features of what the late Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa called “Dharma art”; and, this was my own experience the first time I saw the art featured in this article. With my first glance, something elemental and primordial reached out to me.

The year was 2010. I don’t recall what I was looking for on Google, but as my eyes scanned the smorgasbord of images be-fore me, I saw a photograph that suddenly stopped me dead in my tracks. Without knowing anything about the artist, I imme-diately uttered the phrase, Mono no aware (pronounced mo’no, no, ah’wah’ray)—a Zen-influenced literary concept first coined by Japanese scholar and philosopher Motoori Norinaga (1730-1831).

Mono no aware does not translate very easily into English. Lan-guages are different because different cultures think and concep-tualize differently. Yet, there is a universal human realm that con-nects us all and that is the realm of emotion; and, it is on that level that mono no aware gently flows in.

Some of the most widely accepted phrases used to commu-nicate this deeply spiritual and aesthetic Japanese term suggest that it means an empathy toward things, a sensitivity to ephemera, awareness of impermanence, or a deeply felt comprehension of the

transience of all phenomena. Even more so, what the term truly points to is the resulting tender feelings, including gratitude for the preciousness of things and the melancholic sadness that can result from having such a stark and precise perception of that all things will eventually pass from existence.

As I gazed at some of the images you now see placed like step-ping stones before you, I realized that many of these pieces stirred

memories in me of landscapes I’ve wan-dered through; horizon lines I have looked out at while meditating near a shoreline, or mountain ranges that are dear to my heart. Still other images conjured pure emotion, washing me in a haunting atmosphere I was unable to articulate with words. In all cases, something about this artist’s work has a strong sense of mono no aware and seem to invoke—in visual form—something of the kensho-experience (sudden illumination) of Ch’an/Zen, or a quality of wabi-sabi—another term from the Japanese tradition of aesthetics, which suggests beauty shining through a rustic sense of minimalism and sim-plicity.

It is no accident, then, that I first reached for contemplative and aesthetic terms from the Japanese tradition to describe these works. As it just so happens, the artist is

versed in an understanding of these terms, both from an intellec-tual point of view and as an internal experience as an artist.

Miya Ando is part-Japanese, part-Russian, and the direct de-scendant of Bizen samurai sword maker Ando Yoshiro Masakatsu. She was raised in Japan by sword smiths-turned Buddhist priests, and grew up in a Nichiren temple in Okayama, Japan. After her early years in Japan, another phase of Miya’s childhood was spent in the misty redwood forests around Santa Cruz, California.

“Friends, all is burning.”—Shakyamuni Buddha,

The Fire Sermon, Samyutta Nikaya Sutra

Nichiren Buddhism (日蓮系諸宗派: Nichiren-kei sho shūha) is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism rooted in the teachings of a 13th century Japanese Buddhist named Nichiren (1222–1282). Nichiren Buddhism emphasizes The Lotus Sutra, which teaches that all people have an innate Buddha nature and capable of attaining enlightenment in their current form and present lifetime. Part of their practices in-volve the recitation of the Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, ‘I Take Refuge in the Great Law of the Sutra of the Lotus’, which can also be translated as ‘In the Name of the Great Mystery of Life, as expressed by the Lo-tus Sutra.’

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Now, Ando lives in New York City, where she—to a large de-gree—continues working with the materials of her ancestors; namely, steel. However, rather than fi ring, pounding, bending, and shaping the steel into swords, she uses steel, pigment, brush-es, and the fi re of a blowtorch to express her artistic vision in con-temporary forms.

I had the opportunity to connect with Miya to discuss her background, her artistry, and some of the themes and infl uences that fi nd their way into her work.

WR: Writt en RiverMA: Miya Ando

WR: You have a compelling lineage, Miya; both the fact that you were raised in a Nichiren temple, and that you are a descendent of swordmakers that carried on samurai tradition. From the point of view of cultural and spiritual identity and consciousness, how do these energetic forces infl uence you on a day-to-day basis?

MA: My exposure to Buddhism occurred very early. Since I was a child, Buddhism has made a strong impact on my perception of the world, as well as my art practice. I feel a deep affi nity to the Japanese word otonashii (Quiet). It is from a place of deep quiet

that I create, and it is a place of deep quiet and refl ection that I invite people to visit through my art.

Th e other half of my childhood was spent living in a redwood forest in Northern California, completely surrounded in nature, miles from the nearest store or gas station. I consider this exper-ience to be equally infl uential and complementary to my time living in Japan. Th ey are very diff erent countries and cultures, but each place and each culture has off ered something to me. As a result, I now see that the practice of harmonizing and fi nding beauty in disparate things has become an artistic and philosophi-cal pursuit. Simple forms and non-denominationalism interests me greatly.

WR: Your spiritual and cultural roots are undoubtedly an import-ant part of who you are. What is your artistic lineage—your men-tors, your infl uences, and the fi gures from the past that inspire you?

MA: My Japanese grandparents, with whom I lived, have always been my moral compass. My grandfather was head priest of our temple, but also my caretaker. Th e connection of family and reli-gion has been signifi cant in my life and have drawn me to make certain choices in my artistic expression.

“Let the mind fl ow freelywithout dwelling on anything.”

—Th e Diamond Sutra

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WR: Due to your Japanese and Buddhist roots, the tendency of some could be to pigeonhole your work as “modern Japanese art” or “contemporary Buddhist art.” I want to resist that because your work stands on its own as a captivating and unique manifestation. At the same time, the links with your ancestral background are undeniable. To what degree do certain principles of Japanese and Zen aesthetics influence your work such as wabi, sabi, wabi-sabi, mono no aware, etc.?

MA: I have been strongly influenced by the philosophy and aes-thetics of Zen reductivism. I appreciate very much the idea of par-ing away all except that which is essential and I seek this also in my thinking and execution of my work. Mono no aware is a won-derful concept. I have been investigating the idea that all things in life are ephemeral and transitory and this force, being universal, has always been a subject matter of my work. Hakanai (fleeting) is one of my favorite words and is a feature of some of my install-ations.

WR: There is a phrase I have heard that: “Some Japanese are Budd hist, but all Japanese are Shinto.” What is your own relation-ship to the kami and how do the ancient nature-honoring tradi-tions of Shinto influence you and your own relationship to nature, the elements, and the seasons?

MA: In my childhood, living in the redwoods in Santa Cruz, I had a particularly close relationship with nature. This, coupled with my experiences in Japan, and being exposed to a culture that has such a deep respect and reverence for nature, has been a strong influence on my being and also my pursuits as an artist.

I have always loved the Shinto idea that stones, trees, mountains and natural forces such as wind are sacred. When I was a child and learned that Shimenawa meant that there was a spirit present inside of a particular tree or stone, I was delighted beyond belief. (note: The shimenawa is a large braided rice straw rope placed around certain holy trees, stones or above archways around Shin-to temples).

Seeing the spiritual power of nature and natural forces myself, it

makes perfect sense to me that Shinto would recognize and make sacred these forces.  I have such a respect for the Japanese aware-ness and sensitivity and adoration of nature. It’s really ubiquitous in Japan, from the architecture that allows one to live with nature, to interior design elements like the tokonoma (a recessed alcove in traditional Japanese homes and teahouses), which is a place to display flowers and scrolls for that particular season. The at-tunement to nature and harmonizing with nature is really second nature to me, personally, but as an artist I also find it as an inspira-tional theme in my work.

WR: On that note, something we learn from your biography is that you divide your time between the quiet, pristine environs of the redwood forests around Santa Cruz and the vibrant pulse of New York City. How do the distinct energies of these places influ-ence you as a person and an artist?

MA: I lived in California when I was a child. Now I am based in New York full-time. Santa Cruz is like Japan in that respect for me. They are both filled with strong, beautiful memories and they are both in my heart wherever I am.  I think otonashii, quiet, is inside the self; it doesn’t truly matter what the surroundings are.

WR: Are there other places to which you feel an exceedingly profound connection? If so, what makes the spirit of these places particularly important to you on the level of your heart-mind? I’m thinking of how Basho, the wandering haiku master, had a deep connection to a stretch of land near Natagiri Pass, which he explores in his various travel journals, Narrow Road to the Inte-rior; and also some of the other “spiritual-creatives” of Japan felt a deep relationship to a specific place which they nurtured, and which nurtured them; like the Zen hermit, poet and “wisdom clown” Ryōkan Daigu (“Great Fool”) who felt a deep affinity to the bamboo and hardwood forests around his hut “Gogo-an”, or the ‘crazy wisdom’ Zen master Ikkyu, who first developed the Japanese tea ceremony, or the potter, painter, poet, and martial artist Rengetsu (Lotus Moon)

MA: Yes, the redwood forests still are the most magical to me. I was just in Santa Cruz filming for a documentary that the film-

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maker L. Young is making about my work. Th e forests are so com-fortable to me. Every time I return, it takes my breath away. Th e fog and mist, in particular, is magical and mystical to me.  Th at said, I also have a strong affi nity to Miyajima, which is near where I lived in Japan. Th ere are torii everywhere (red gates associated with Shinto shrines that signify moving from the profane to the sacred). It is such a spiritual place to me, and for many Japanese people.

WR: One of your most well known installations is the  9/11 Mem orial in London, commissioned by the 9/11 London Proj-ect Foundation as a permanent addition in England. Craft ed from polished World Trade Center steel from Ground Zero and the 9/11 att acks, you were actually given the opportunity to create a piece of sculpture from the rubble.

What was your own personal experience of 9/11 and what was your experience on the artistic and emotional level working on the 9/11 Memorial in London?

MA: Creating the piece for 9/11 was very taxing on an emotional level for me. I worked for two years on the monument and the entire time I kept praying that I make something that had rever-ence for the victims. I prayed that I was able to make something that was respectful. My concept was simple; to polish to a mirror fi nish the World Trade Center steel. My hope was to create some-thing non-denominational and put forth light into the world. So, I made a highly refl ective piece.

WR: One of your most recent installations, commissioned by the Fist Art Foundation, is called “Obon (Puerto Rico)”. It also deals with the theme of light. Share with us the initial inspiration of this site-specifi c, large-scale exploration.

MA: I was inspired by the ceremony of ‘Obon’, which occurs in August in Japan. Th e belief is that one’s departed relatives return to the home for 3 days. On the third day, the spirits return to the spirit world and small boats with candles are fl oated down rivers and bodies of water. I have always loved Obon, in that it is about respect and memory.

WR: Seeing the images of the long strand of leaves, each emitt ing an eerie luminous blue glow, I had my own association of a “blue spirit road” of the ancestors. Truly fascinating. Share with us a bit more about the materials you used, as it is a defi nite departure from your use of steel and metals of various kinds.

MA: For “Obon (Puerto Rico)”, I wanted to create something in Puerto Rico which introduced some of the ideas surrounding the theme of the tradition of Obon, but I also wanted to create this using unexpected forms and materials. So, I used phosphor-escence instead of candles because the phosphorescence absorbs light from its surroundings and emits a glow continuously. I love the idea of a sustainable light source and I have had interest in light as part of my vocabulary as an artist for quite some time.

Also, I used leaves from the tree known as Ficus religiosa, which is

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the type of tree, sometimes called the Bodhi Tree, under which Buddha attained enlightenment.

WR: So, there is the theme of light again; the lights of the an-cestral festival of Obon, the light of Buddha’s enlightenment, and the phosphorescence or light of nature. It’s not only wonderful, artistically, I like how it really is a teaching for the eyes to behold but communicated on levels that are more visceral and primor-dial rather than rational.

So, what is next in the luminous, light-filled world of Miya Ando? Do you have any specific upcoming shows or gallery openings you would like to tell people about? From an artistic ‘always-in-process’ point of view, what is stirring for you as far as inspira-tions, directions, and possible creative expressions? 

MA: I am currently in the studio working on pieces for a solo exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery next spring. The work is inspired by my continued interest in states of transformation.

WR: Thank you, Miya, for your work and the light you are shining into the world.

To learn more about the work of Miya Ando, visit her website:

http://miyaando.com, her Facebook page: http://facebook.com/MiyaAndo, her Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/mi-yando, her artist profile at the David Lynch Foundation, hosted on YouTube: http://youtu.be/oJlVHY8OHqI, or visit her gallery showings and other appearances in the following:

Sculpture Magazine, Fall 2012 issue

Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Miami, June 2013, Solo Exhibition

Bronx Museum Biennial, New York, June 2013

ArtPulse Magazine, Fall 2012: Review of ‘Obon’ [Puerto Rico]

Old Mountain (Ch: Lăo Shān, J: Kozan) is an American-born poet, part-time Zen hermit, and full-time follower of The Way. His interests include soaking in hot springs, drinking tea and sake, walking, and napping-meditation – in that order. Currently on his reading list are: Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Master of the Three Ways by Hung Ying-ming. Currently on a retreat from digital media, he can sometimes be reached at: bodhiyatra@gmail.com

All photos © L. Young except where otherwise noted.

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Old Mountain

Sipping Tea in the Pure LandBird song, waterfallHot tea poured in the mountains.Nothing else needed.

Where I Am Most At HomeQuiet autumn day.Pines swaying ‘neath a gray skySaké at sunset.

What is Zen Really Like?Zen is what Zen is.It is not “like” anything.Outside, Inside, One.

What IsWhat’s the greater fraud?What is? Or your ideaof how things ‘should’ be?

Sipping Tea in the Pure Land

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Photo © Russell Streur

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Musan Cho Oh-hyuntranslations by Heinz Insu Fenkl

ScarecrowHe waves at the passing age,At the man walking by—This scarecrow, laboring with a smile

A year of bounty, or a famine year,Take a walk along the paddy dikes—Mine, yours—See the field, the autumn wind?Not a sole possession, yet I, too, a smiling scarecrow

Is what they say I am,But clear my mind, spread my two arms wide, and Everything, even the sky—all just a single step away

New ShootsThe sky, the eye’s light, open once more at the point of breath,An ember born again where a star’s light glanced— Today, at last, the green waves of May come surging again

Photo © Genevieve Leet

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Scott T. Starbuck

Coastal Rain Forest SilhouettesWe could teach the boy what we know about fishingbut it will be more fun, for him and us,if we watch him in silence behind these trees.

He will fall through deadwood, scrape face on devil’s club,lose footing on river stones,and eventually land a gasping salmon.

His shout will echo in old growth.He will eat red flesh with a pleasure he has never known.He will be a silhouette like us soon enough.

Photo © Russell Streur

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Martin Willitts Jr.This Pond Has Clear ImaginingsIt wants to empty itself of all earthly concern, to reachan unique, passing insight,

a clarity, unspoiled by carp orfreckled tadpole, splaying acrossthe water in long, lingering, laziness,

it wants more of itself, more purityof the divine, the inspired, to be thoughtful and thought-provoking,

to twingle when disturbed, to blushwhen reflecting upon sunrise,to stand perfect as a heron becoming light,

it wants seven impossible things before waking, it yawns serenely, it holds its own breathlessness Autumn at Itako

Based on a woodblock by Kawase HasuiNote: Itako are blind shaman

Our boat of ghostly rains merges deliberately into a stream of darkness. It is a song of settling-down. The kind a mother coos to her baby.

The river is messaged and its skin ripples.The moon light is a part of this song.Noise whispers across water as a dwindling star.

Let go of the oars. Let them slip into the evening, and trust that you will be taken somewhere. Anything else is ripples that fade into nothingness.

The oar is already into the lost. You are barely moving and yet you are moving, like a mother swaddling a child into a blanket of clustered stars.

What is the difference, when you are so loved, that the wrapping takes the length of a song, and not less? The songs cross a lake with the same current as moon light.

When we grow older our songs unravels it wrappings, the boat lists, the stars are further from our cupped hands,but our whisper is a mosquito heard in the absence of a lake.

What startling secret can you let drive in stilled water?When a distant voice calls for you to come home,will you answer that plaintive cry?

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The Pond Is As Small As a PrayerToo small for discovery or ruin, barely more than a bear’s snout

unexpected and forgottenand left to its own conclusions

the smallness of it all,protected by an amulet of blue light

something to singe the tongueif spoken

it could remain undisturbedin forever hibernation

it could keep its prayers to itselfand remain radiant

only a whisperinside.

Photo © Genevieve Leet

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Jesse LoVasco

Blue HeronI spotted her on the stone that sat beneath the willows,pruning her slate gray feathers like an old queen,sliding her beak down the creases of her satin gown.

I was eating an applestill and quietexcept for the crunch,letting the wind roll my kayak in on the water.

Bending low she listened, tilting her head,discerning whether my slow approachwas a threat. I had entered her parlor, where privacywas the treasure of her existence.

Could she sneak a bite of fish in the mauve milk weedand goldenrod she was moving through?Several times she pecked and swallowed something small.I followed the lump in her throat roll down like a snail.

I gave a thoughtful glance to a dragonfly zig zagginga kingfisher swooping low,and a mallard duck gliding by,but returned my gaze to the heron and her regal gestures .

Rolled in on a wave to the edge of her boundary. The invisible cords were severed.

She ducked and opened her great stretch of wing toward the skyas she painted a low slow stroke to circle me,take a closer look at the intruder,

to see if I was offering my core.

A RockThis rock is part of a wall surrounding a stone tower.

Shall I sit on it,scrape the flowering carpet or bend down close,

see how many small forests it has fostered in this miniature world?

Perhaps they are stars and this rock is a planet, shall I look for the moon?

How many ways does creation tell its story?How many things diebefore they are known?

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AgingGrowing old, The memories of youth are holding onlike a spring shoot on a dried out tree.The number of years doesn’t equate with the behavior.

I’m a seasoned woman,expected to know.

Fold the napkins just so,attend social events,wear elegant clothes,pour sweet wine in crystal and sip slow.

Instead, I scavenge the hills and hollows, crawl on earth’s dark mudto gather lichen and pinecones, seeds, nuts and sticks, remnants of the blowing wind.

Wrap the long wool scarf around my neck,marry the wilderness.

Photo © Genevieve Leet

2020

Martin Burkei.m. David Gascoyne

To build up, not pull downTo be makers, not destroyers

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Th e house is silent, the world is mine.Rain att empts no dialogue yet speaks incessantly to the world.My ownership is fi ctive but even the not-real sustains meNot again loneliness but over-simplifi cation. Only the world at its best approaches the purity of this momentIn a way nothing I do ever will. Th e house is silent, the world is mine:My ownership tells me this is the Buddha’s poverty.

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Like that –Blue sky and the hard sheen of the riverAnd the sky’s glance in the river

Hold itAnd hold to itAnd do not take your eye from it

Where what it is givenMust be receivedAnd imparted in water’s tradition

And

Two drawings which sayTh is is the way the world isAnd this is how you should see it

And I see it both waysAnd see no contradiction –

Clarity in the wind And clarity in a charcoal strokeAnd clarity, hopefully, in a spoken word

Th at the not-spoken be spokenTh e not-seen be seenWithout embellishment

Just blue sky on the river’s sheenComposing a mind’s tabula rasa

Th e World as I Found It

Th e river assuming my gazeAnd holding me to the conclusion

Conclusion? Th ere is no conclusionWhere the gist of my shadow

Is absorbed in the river’s steady sheen And I in its tide towards –

�

And then it was December Walking the hard-packed leaf-mould pathsOf Lappersfort wood

Where the intention was to be a makerNot a destroyer; to, countermand the iceAnd honor the solstice light

Th at its mark might be upon usAnd make a strong song. And Marcus like a troubadourCalling to that green life underneath the ice

Th at the sun’s eclipse be undone. To be makersNot destroyers; that summer fi nd its solstice honoredAnd its mark be on our minds that we might forge

A new tradition.When was it diff erent?When did I not acknowledge Shiva’s dance as my own?

3

To winnow the air for its seeds of lightTo usher in by such the verbs of living

Aft ermath of rain in a sunlit squareBirds scatt ered as we approachedTh en returned to feed from our hands

Gent in the shadows of eveningTh e world like a hammer striking the gong of the mindAnd the sound-waves making new formations

Assembling a moment which saidWhatever you say next will speak meAnd speak it does

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Becoming an inheritance without preconditionsWhere everything said winnow the air and remake meAnd the only transgression is not to begin

Nor confess that such is beautiful and imbuing.And the river saying follow and my shadow saying I willUntil I could not tell one from the other

Unless I know what this river knows no day will ever be mine.

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Can it be told –all of it, or part of it In the truth of it as I know it-Words with the fi re of a comet’s fi re-tailWith shards and shrapnel from the skyBurning my lipsAs I waken to a world the I Ching saysIs generous under heavenAnd hyacinth, gladioli and chrysanthemum proclaimAs the land of expectation and fulfi llment

Th e world is its own otherness –Target held in a hunter’s eyeOr that of a weaver working lissome moments to a threadTh at I might live this momentSo as to live beyond it

Where the dark is no more than that absence in whichAdam waits for BlakeAnd not even a doodled page irrelevant to the day;Like a gap in a stone wall leading to a treeWhere if I am an intruder I am so at the tree’s bidding Which does not begrudge the pilfered leaf I dip in ink to write with

So that it be told without alteration to the worldOutranking the clipped dialects of critic, theoristBored practitioner of un-expecting expectation,Of looking the others wayWhen it is the other cheek which should be off ered;For it is April and the world surprises me againWhere if Blake be denied what can be affi rmedWhere stars, friendship, and begett ing words confi rmWe were not born for fear.Th us before I know which word to speak I must forget the lessons of priestsAnd if I come with apples in August What can I bring in December?And winter’s ice no longer webbing the grassAnd her hand resting on my handAnd moonlight shuddering at the fi rst of many ecstasies.

And I will enter your heart like a thief of heartsWhere moon aft er moon, unappeased like a moon-drinker

My purpose will be to have no purposeNor need to justify myself to history.

SweetlyOh sweetlyOnly fi re-blessed lips could sing it

Words infi ltrating wasteland and borderFor which if mistakes have been made Who has not made themAnd who can cast the fi rst stone Where brotherhood is essential and not at all fragile?

Hail brother Adam Newly come to the world teachers hesitate to enterAs if Breughel wove it clear and steady By which they fear their undoing

As spring undoes winterAnd a word the connivance of silenceAnd all be there dust and ashAnd splintered verbs and britt le mouthsYet the lyric maintains its sure cadence Which in many a voice is pleasing.

Listen:Even the wind is att entive,Th e stillness of water not at all unbecoming,Th e breath of spring has begun its fi rst canticle Soon to be a cantata.

Th at music –yeast of new weatherAnd by the river-bank walk More walkers than I counted yesterdayAnd for this which the world gives with largess What can I give in returnWhen nothing can be given Which the world has not already given of itself

Th at I winnow the air for its seeds of lightTo usher in by such the verbs of living.

5

To make a painting is to make love to the wind Is to make an occasion of grace from circumstance To say to the future that the present existed

So, as the wind curls in from the sea I see that nothing has changed and nothing will

It is always the light which astounds us

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24

Erynn Rowan Laurie

From one astray, seeking soul-sticeCascades behind meOlympics before mefacing west to the sett ing sunKulshan my rightTahoma my left Grandfather Snow-Faceglacier crowned

below me mountain ridgeabove me all the sky

peak spiritsstone spiritsspirits of mountainsI off er cedar, cedar and smokeoff er salmon off er riceoff er pure clear water

mountains soundrange round mesteep face of protectionkeep strong lest destructionthrow down the worlds

before me behind memy right and my left below me mountain ridgeabove me all the sky

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erynn rowan laurie

available now fromHiraeth Press

24

Joel LongThe Grass Holds the Afternoon Together

Photo © Genevieve Leet

When we are dry, we look so lovely.When the land is our shape, there isno shame. I will be quiet from now,let the shape the wind gives me sayI wanted to say this all along. And this, is enough. A beetle clicks the tuftwhere stem meets root. A swallowwants my color. I do not blame it. Perhaps its wings have the sky’s ambition,its name, combed a thousand tendrils, forged in the gas fire’s root. I knowwhere the limb clamps on, where the heart clings to the fallen fence post or willow, barnacle clinging with its blue ghosts.

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Tawny bones of last year’s storm, the reeds recognize wind as kind, in rungs of an untuned flute, strange stations invisible watchmen climb, transcribers of bird song and bird.

Today birds hide in the ready dimmingwarmth of new storm coming, shade of lint clouds pulled to north, the sunanother retreating bird of fire, breathingbehind the sudden gray. When I’m still,

I hear swollen needles in the reeds, silver birds, killdeer, blackbird. I know grass cannot sing but rattles a snare against the singer’s tone and wind, its mindless intent, rasps dry grass against itself, hollowpulse to the afternoon that falls to the empty hour where every window opens at last.

Confluencefor Roxanne

Twilight trees dream their own light, flecked with tanager, song that moves. Shadows come from brilliance, growingshadow-deep. We find our way by touch. Our hands know the way through branches, through sky among black branches, knowthe way toward where two waters meetat night, every night that gravity leads them. Touch like water, blooms the other inside, current in primrose, penstemon, lily, wild rose. Silt shimmers down, pull of the planet. We two find the gully, cool braid of water, jostling nerves beneath the pouring distance. Stars in water stream through silence. Motion makes every motion under water. We cannot leave our shadow, so formedwe are from light, will not leave the river made when two streams meet in twilight.

The Upper MeadowSo many visitors have walked through me, dark and light, depending on the illumination. —Regina Derieva

A basin of wind strikes sparks, wind-colored, sun-dimmed a tawny hum. I part; weedspart. Tassel of brewer’s daughter, combthe brown mole, I raise the rim of the sky, its low limit and muddle it closed, let skymove through me, mimic me in its mirrorand the flies, night moths drifting down.

If I let waters come, they come through me, some lesser light threading skin and cold, motion like falling sleep. Vanishing trees keepme hidden like memory, a sliver of some dayheld, nearly still, a place you were walking, cricket note, black wing splayed. You never remember what you said exactly, only scent,tea, plum. Cinnamon dissolves your tongue.

Song for Hidden Shorebirds and Grass

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27Painting © Genevieve Leet

28

. . . or night.Each sip is precious, drinking from each other’s grief.Souls mingle then are torn apart but flames remain.That fire is a gift. This will take most of the night.

Moonlight, silver crescent, sharp against my throat.What pleas would grant me another day of writing?This happens so often, yet I cannot fear the night.

The Beloved lifts Theresa from the floor.Winds of passion, the cloak rustles, folds, flowing.Here, feel this Divine Ecstasy, in the darkest night.

Sometimes the sunlight is more dangerous. A targetSo well illuminated, any pause means the end. Moving among such brilliant arrows I pray for night.

The final alchemy? This is far from over!The ingredients, the proportions and the timing.To see the stars, we need to wait until night.

Federico’s Heart opened wide to embrace the Moon.What else could any eyewitness account add?Anyway Jim, I was not there, day or night.

. . . nothing else.The label read “elixir” – in an all caps font.The bottle was ink – blue-black – now those sweet worlds ofNight and Darkness, could be captured on parchment.

September, tell me, what is left to be crossed?The trespass was unavoidable but bloodshed?Darkness, I cannot claim the presentiments.

Are you still writing about darkness? With a splashOf malt vinegar and a sprinkle of sea saltThis twenty-one cent kale is the best salad ever.

Your autumn light is poor at hiding my darkness. The South is still warm for a cloak. Soft nightmares beacon,Perhaps to borrow that old velvet mantle.

The impending balance of the equinox offersLittle comfort this year. We confuse so much.The charge, the spin, yet we can survive the darkness.

There is the sinking – your whole form embraced by theDim waters, then the current takes you into darkness.Are you writing? Living is an art like nothing else.

J.K. McDowell

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Photo © G

enevieve Leet

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J.K. McDowell

available now fromHiraeth Press

30

Diana WoodcockNooya Lake, Misty FiordsFollowing tracks and scatof a Brown (Grizzly) bear,we made our way from float planeto shore over muddy trail to shelter,surrounded by Skunk cabbage

and flowers of Salmon-and Blueberry(on which one Rufus hummingbird dined).A Varied thrush sang to us each night, rang a wake-up call each dawn.Day one we canoed the lake

from which granite walls of stone—rounded sheer cliffs—rose up,snow-draped this late June (a dollyof lace to grace the peak), the loon paircalling, answering their own echo

again and again as we drifted late afternoon. We, like the loons, the only pair of our kind on the whole lake.Sound of waterfalls, Glaucous gullscrying when we paddled too close to their nest.

Day two, we hiked into summer through an old-growth forest—where Methusula’s Beard hung from Hemlocks,Yellow and Red cedars—to the ocean where it lived up to its name (Pacific),

where we sat on mossy ground in a meadowof Black lilies, buttercups, Indian paintbrush—around which snow-crowned rounded peaksglistened as we listened to the tide rising.Summer Solstice, what better way to spend

the day than in the heart of a temperate rainforest.After days of rain, the sun all day.I paid rapt, animal attentionthat I might be put back in complicitywith things as they happen.*

With only one intent, I went into the forest, onto the lake—to interact with wildlife,intuit and imagine, be at bear’s and loons’ disposal, communicate

with the vegetable world that I might betransformed—my autonomous selfjoined in holy matrimony with ecological matter.Having basked in Systema Naturae

in all its glory—beasts, birds,plants—I came away convincedHomo sapiens will no time soonhold a candle to Brown bear, Devil’s club, or loon.

*Lyn Hejinian

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Full Moon While Flying dfw (Dallas Fort Worth) To RichmondRed eye, early July,returning from Alaska—Juneau, Ketchikan(Misty Fiords)—where I practiced echo-location, ontological insubordination, considered with every step along the wet, slippery trail, each dip of paddle into lake

my mortal indebtedness,*my goal to live as an equal partner with bear and salmon,raven and eagle, glacier and old growth forest; to entangle myself in intricate roots of Hemlock and Sitka spruce,in tendrils of Old Man’s Beard,to be insatiable in my hunger

to know loon and humpback whale,to treat each moss and lichen,bird and insect with utmost respect.What did I learn from my brief sojourn?That I must, at every turn, beginagain in humility and gratitude,to locate myself in the biosphere,perceive each species as distant relative.Alaska taught me what I thought

I already knew—how dependent andconnected we all are. What joyto recognize the Stellar’s jay, orcas at play—to get so caught upin their worlds that my own was no longer separate. Temperate rainforest singing its refrain, bears waiting in the lull of late Julyfor salmon- and blueberry flowers to fade

and give way to the berries they crave.A green so lush the only proper responseis a hush of silence, mist over the fiordslike ecstatic chords of mystical music only audible to ears of the humble.Alaska put me in my place,its grace reminding me my specieswas an afterthought. Caught in its eye, having no permanent home,

I was taken in—more than pilgrim,I sought to enlarge my sapience,to participate in all of her natureso reconciliation could occur.And it did—between me and heras I leaned out over lakes and Pacific,observed and listened while glaciersglistened all around me, their surgingrhythms ancient, echoing, all-knowing.

*Herman Melville

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Spring TideChristine Waresak

•32

Photo © Genevieve Leet

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I cannot see the moon this morning as I walk on the beach. Overcast, windy, cold, and somewhere behind the clouds a full moon is causing this very low tide. A spring tide, when the moon and sun are aligned with the earth, and their gravitational forces com-bine to create tides of exaggerated range.

It’s Monday morning, and I can be out walking because I have quit my job, a good job, and by good I mean decent pay, with benefi ts. But also a boring, exhausting, and draining job. People don’t know how to react when I tell them, not in this economy, not at my age. They raise their eyebrows. Wow. And I don’t know how to explain why I quit and what I will do with the time that I could be making money.

The beach is deserted except for crows feeding on the small islands of seaweed newly exposed, and schoolchildren, who scamper between the wet sand fl at and the tent where their teacher waits on high, dry sand. Their shouts and screams of delight fl oat to me on the wind.

Debris litters the beach. Crab carcasses, hollowed and broken, tangled ribbons of copper-colored seaweed, bits of shell. Rivulets of water fl ow back from the higher sand to the Puget Sound. I search for something whole to take home, to show my husband, and to put on my shelf, but nothing is whole except the rocks, and I can’t even fi nd an exceptionally pretty rock. I give up and walk awhile, gazing outward now at the milky waves.

And that’s when I almost stumble on it. Startling, and I want to say beautiful, but it is not beautiful. Orange with purple dots,

about a foot long, it could be starfi sh-like except it has too many limbs, maybe 20, purple-tipped, all facing the same direction, toward the water. The way it is lying, with the meaty middle near the top and the limbs pointing down, it makes the shape of a heart. Fascinating and compelling, yes, but too strange to be beautiful. It’s a little scary, re-sembling the spiders of my childhood nightmares, or images of cellular beings under the lens of a microscope. Things not meant to be seen with the naked eye in the light of day, which makes them as irresistible as a secret whispered just out of earshot. If I touched it, it probably wouldn’t move, but I don’t touch it for fear that it will.

Instead, I pull out my iPhone, take a photo, and send it to my husband. And as soon as I do, the mystery of it evaporates a little, and I wish I hadn’t taken the photo and sent it to David, not yet. I wish I would have kept it to myself a little longer, let the wonder of it linger like a dream I’ve just woken from but can’t quite remember or the silent, stunned minutes after reading the last page of a great book.

At fi rst I think what draws me in is to learn what this creature is. To know what is unknown. But then I realize to know the strange and not-quite-beautiful phantoms of the sea is not the point. To show them to you is not the point. That’s not where the ultimate pleasure lies. The pleasure is in something else. It is in the almost fi nding but never knowing absolutely. The search, the surprise, and then the mystery. That is what makes the children on the beach squeal and makes us strain to hear a whisper. That is what makes me quit my job to do nothing but walk on the beach and scribble in a journal.

If seas exist inside me, what creatures are revealed during the very low tides of m y being? During a spring tide and a full moon? All I want is a little time to look.

Sea of marrow. Sea of blood. My qigong teacher says to calm the seas within me, and I

imagine moonlight on dark, gentle waves.

34

Genevieve Leet

StewardshipOne way or another, The choice will be made by our generation but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.

—Lester Brown

I’ve tasted it; and the water is sour there where the ocean lips up against the air.Carboxylic acid. All that chemical vastnessbending the four directions. The medusa jelly twisting its streamer like a tattered feather,floating on a sullied current. The coral cities are dim rainbow, all flickered and crumbling, the empty spaces of a hungry mouth.Two lost starfish seek for each other, following their shadows, one way or another.

I’ve seen it; the water is ancient there where the moisture kisses the briny air. Teeming and nebulous. Coral’s spawning transparent polyps which anchor as ghostly flags or swirl in full-moon tides. Blooms of adaptation. The slippery, colorful blush of scales, the meats of the sea, delicate and savory – first flesh, then memories, then ghosts disappear.A dying language and development’s temptation, the choice will be made by our generation.

I’ve tasted it; the muscle of a baby king.The soft meat of shark is a mythic thing.Who’s this “I” to judge? Two foreign eyes, a student and a guest. I’m a puff of carbon,a thing of gossip, leaves, and little worth – a pelican dipping it’s wing-tips into the globe. Those who hunt parrotfish over the pale coral with nets of vines and rocks to hold them down, may they then begin to guess the oceans worth? Which calculations will affect life on earth?

I am born in a time of clocks. I’ve seen it; The world fumbling towards progress admitsnothing. Emits everything. In the Coastal Commons Lady Petroleum in her iridescent gownromances King Coal and his new black shoes.What trill will whistle when our externalities return to us? What bell will toll? What futurewill reach down for us? We flock together, lickour fingers, hurry on. Forgetting we’ve becomethe stewards for all generations to come.34

35Photo © Genevieve Leet

36

Laurence HoldenLesson #1: How to Listen

to a Bird SingTake off allyour clothed andclammy thoughts.

Sit awhile.

Make nothing upbetween the intervals of silence,but listen to them.

Between each breath is a song you’ve forgotten,is always calling us to gather to this wild and shocking world.

This music happens to usbefore we can ever think about it

this song happens in usbefore we can ever say it’s impossible

to listen before we speakof nothing or everything.

Wild NettleThis wild nettlethat is Creationtrembles.

Our touch and words pinch at the knot therethat is knowing and not knowing.

36 Photo © A. Savvantoglou

37Photo © A. Savvantoglou

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39Painting © Genevieve Leet

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Carved of Cedar

Photo © A. Savvantoglou

41

Gwendolyn Morgan

Autumn window no. 3: Vulpes Fulva, Key of BflatShe walks along the edges of musicstar-lit before the fog rises from the river

Her black paws are quarter notesblack-tipped tail, white belly diurnal

We see her in the early morningin the meadow where the Great Horned Owl flies.

Douglas Fir above, blackberry thicket belowLook! She is the color of vine maple leaves

warning symbols on a topographical mapdanger! Fire danger high global warming

when we have forgotten the lyricsthe pendulous nest, woven tightly of plant fibers,

our relations. She slips through the grove of Hazelnut like the mists over Salmon Creek, above the Cascade Mountains.

She remembers the Sumac, the runes of trees,voices of Spotted Towhee.

Deer Has Full Tail New Moon

In a time beyond memory: Look for calligraphy pens and nibs. Relearn to write your ancestor’s alphabet, runes. Wind and weather spirits, birds, native ornithology. Stillness and silence, migratory. How we walk between shadows, up mountains, outstretch our feathers and wings. What it is that makes a place, a day, a moment. The ineffable presence of divinity. Animate, invest, enliven. The doe and her two fawns stand beside the dry Queen Anne’s lace on Salmon Creek Avenue. “Good Morning!” I greet them as I pass by on my bicycle. Thousands of people march in the city blocks of thirteen cities around the country for what might be called “Occupy Peace.” Standing up, walking through the dry stalks of our economies on the deerskinned fringes of our streets for social justice, peacemaking, hope, courage, common sense. Our neighbor says we might have protested sooner, louder, longer. She says she has begun to play her mother drum in the morning. She is sitting on the earth for a few minutes each day to recalibrate. Columbia White-tailed Deer return from a distant time.

According to Corvidae Mythit was Crow not Ravenwho brought light to the people

open a carved cedar boxtell the truth with transformation masksforgetting about dualitylight, dark, good, evil

count backwards and you will fall asleepremembering the light is in the Crow feathers,the colors of snowflake obsidian,black-and-white fine-line geometric designs

light isn’t trapped, it is held, so cherish the shiny silver braceletyou carried to me at the gathering of tribesthe one carved with Celtic and Tlingit designs

slip the phosphorousinto the water at duskin the sea the phosphorous isthe sky shimmering mountainsin my hands

release the story you brought light to the people –the cedar box is openand I’m walking home late in the eveningas if you had just flown overhead

and the bracelet on my wristour ancestors alivetakes the shape of your black wingslike desires still to be named.

Carved of Cedar

42

Jamie K. ReaserTh in Ice

Th ere is always one winter morningthat is the fi rst winter morningfor ice on the pond.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising to thosewho have lived decadesin the north next to still water,

But, for me, it still remains a wonderment,an ordinary miracle made possibleby elements conspiringto wake us with befuddlingpredictability.

We have a ritual, this particular winter morningand I.

I wait for the sunlight to come,anticipating the spectrum of colors dancing among the gas bubbles trapped in the glassy-crust.

And when it does come,memory transports me back to my youth:

I am watching small wall-rainbows emerging fromcrystalline prisms hanging from lampsin a home that we once thoughtwas quiet and tender.

And then I’m in my teens:

Th e minister arose and venturedonto the frozen reservoir,and with the confi dent stride of a once-Olympic skater,drove forward until he found a placethin enough to free himof this world.

Th e imaginary me has stood,for many a winter,at the gaping hole left by hissinking body,

asking questions about beliefsand vowsand faith.

Now older, I focus on the red-spott ednewts and the snapping turtles movingin the cold waters below the ice:

No one ever told me they could.By the rules I was taught,they can’t.But they are.

Th ey are there shuffl ing their thick legsand looking, golden-eyed, back at mewith not a glint of surprise.

I love this ice, thin as it is.

It reminds me that that which can be readily explained is sometimes best left to wonderment.

�

43

available now fromHiraeth Press

44 Photo © Jamie K. Reaser

45

Jamie K. ReaserWhooo

Tonight the barred owlsask their question uponthe chill of dusk;

one from the tulip poplar grove,the other at creekside.

“Whooo?”

Is what they want to know.

“Whooo?”

It’s a dangerous inquiry.

A warrior’s initiation rightif you dare seek the answer.

Do you dare?

Do you dare to knowwho you truly are?

Coyotes run the crest of the ridge,yips and howlsformulating the collective voice of the pack.

Don’t listen to them,

they are tricksters.

Th is is what I have to say:

If you go searching for theanswer,

you will Die.

And if you don’t go searchingfor the answer,

you will die.

If you want to Live,

you must go searchingfor the answer.

Th e moon will light the way in the darkness,but only so much as to allowyou to take one uncertain stepat a time,

oft en, backwards.

You’ll fi nd that what the sun illuminates,is frequently outsized by itsshadow,

and that the shadow has a life of its own.

You are going to have tobefriend it,as your fellow journeyman.

Be prepared to leave who you think you are behind in the quest forauthenticity.

It’s best if you put down the large bundleof “what no longer serves”at the trail head.

Do bring your most spectacular heartachesand your deepest wounds;these are the trail markers thatwill help you stay on course.

And too, have within you a mostbeautiful verse.

You cannot fully understand who youare until you have courted theBeloved with such wild abandon,that you become completely undone.

“Whooo?”

from the top of the tallest pine.

“Whooo?”

from the sycamore at the edge of the mead-ow.

“Who?”

from the moment you were born,

has been the question

gift ed by those who

want you to fi nd your way

Home.

�

from Sacred Reciprocity: Courting the Beloved in Everyday Life

46

The Nothing HereTyra Olstad

“I mean, 45?” the man grumbled to his wife, referring to the speed limit along a stretch of road in Petrified Forest National Park, “It should be at least 65! There’s nothing there!”

Nothing there.Nothing there? I wanted to ask him, shout at him, shake him, Nothing? Nothing but the sagebrush and the sparrows; the paintbrush,

the pronghorn, the prairie, the sky. Nothing but that big beautiful horizon stretched taut across distant mesas and buttes; nothing but the puffy white clouds floating merrily overhead; nothing but the wind whipping up whirls of dust, nothing?

Nothing. I said nothing. I sat silently, looking out across the landscape. It wasn’t my place to say anything just then – I had already hung up my Smokey Bear hat and badge for the day. I had already told hundreds of visitors what they would see and urged them to stop, listen, look carefully, learn. I had already rhapsodized about the rocks, the wild life, the history, the scenery therein. Now I just wanted to sit and enjoy the place.

And by the place, I mean the space – the curve of the earth, the height of the sky, the miles and miles and miles of pavement that un-furled beneath my bike tires. It was early evening, mid-summer – a delicious time to be out there, with the land exhaling the heat of the day and the rabbits emerging to nibble on brush. After pedaling from the Visitor Center down to Puerco Pueblo – about 11 miles – and most of the way back up, I had, as usual, stopped at Pintado Point to stretch my legs and drink in the view. It’s my favorite place to pause and look: to the north lays the Painted Desert – thousands of acres of colorful clay hills, sandstone ledges, dry washes, and basalt-capped buttes; to the south, there’s nothing but prairie. (Nothing! Everything!) The land yawns gently away until it reaches the Puerco River, then rises up toward petroglyph-pecked boulders, fossiliferous formations, and, eventually, the “forests” of petrified wood that form the historic core of the park.

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Tyr

a Olst

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I love that view. As much as I love the Painted Desert, I lovelovelove seeing breathing biking hiking and, yes, even driving through swaths of steppe, rich

with plants and animals, wide with horizon, buried in sky. (It’s all about the sky.) I know, though, that many if not most people do not share this sentiment. I’d heard “there’s nothing there”-like comments several times before, and studied a long legacy of pejoratives that Euro-Americans have used to denigrate mixed- and short-grass prairie since the days of the pioneers. (“Desolate,” “Empty,” and, most damning of all, “Boring”. Meaning: no shelter, no landmarks, no mountains or trees. Nothing.) People come to Petrified Forest to see geological and archaeological curiosities and spectacular Painted Desert scenery, not wander through the prairie’s low shrubs and grasses; unless they happen to catch a breathtaking sunrise or storm, most probably won’t notice much about the drive from Puerco to the next pull-out, except that it seems to take an awfully long time when traveling at 45 miles per hour.

45 miles per hour! What was I supposed to do, stand up and tell the man and his wife just what they were missing? Give them species checklists and a lecture on local history? Insist that 45 is, in fact, far too fast? Cry, “Pronghorn can barely dash at that speed! You’d be bet-ter off at coyote’s trot, or a kangaroo rat’s hop; the scuttle of a stink bug! Better yet, leave your car behind – take bicycles, boots, walk walk crawl on bloodied knees…”

No, that’s Edward Abbey’s rant, written on behalf of the once-underappreciated wonders of Arches National Park. Abbey had his most beautiful place on earth; I have mine. I realized, when I heard that man say “Nothing there,” that I just have to let some people whiz through, snap their photos of Giant Logs and move on – on to Phoenix or the Grand Canyon or Santa Fe – on to the rest of their lives. The prairie aesthetic is not something that can be told or taught.

But some people do understand. Some people slow down or stop at Pintado Point, of their own accord. They sit with me. We listen to the grasses rustle and ravens

crraaaw. We watch the sun sink behind the dusky earth, flinging reds and golds into the troposphere. We sit silently, or whisper, “wow,” and smile.

Smile for nothing.

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Photo © Tyra O

lstad

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Tyr

a Olst

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Photo © Russell Streur

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Brendan Sullivan

TreesTh e secret lifeof elm and oakand thin white poplars -elegant apostleson a winter night,grazing the moonlike tapers in December.

I smell earth –peat and cedarand the indulgent bulgeof maple,craft ing the airlike a smithlost in his work.Chestnuts bear an off eringand the yearning pallof pine scents the skytill it’s thick with resin.

And they gatherwith boughs and limbsbent like monks at play,roots tight as ancient drumsto ruminate on stories,sinewed in fragrant barkmaking merry wherethe green bends backthe world.

Rivercold punches through the river,webbed silver trails leading downdown to the caveswhere we lost the children last summer.butt ons left roaming in the rockscleave the past in two,their tiny holes gaping throughtender fi ddle fernsand the cry of white geesemocking us like snow.

the tide claimed their faces,rude shallows pulling them downdown to the bott omwhere the wet could not reach them.skin caught like cloth in siltcarves the riverbed,the slender reeds wrapping roundknots of slippery elmand the glimpse of dank weedsmarking us like ash.

our hands try to rememberhow they feltwhen we put them to bed that last time,the soft fl annel of their good nightsbunched in our arms like angels,never dreamingtheir toys would wake up alone

or that god would forgetwhere we live.

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Nicole Parizeau

When It Does Not Increaseto my mother

What happens to me here, underwater, has nothing in common with what you see from shore. We all drown distorted by surface tension. At depth,

the moon rises like ice. Love is like the moon; when it does notincrease, it decreases. Lunar maria: Sea of Tranquility, Sea of Crisis. I see

it’s time to tap at recent wounds, assess what’s scarred over sufficiently to hold our weight. Every day I vow to call you. It’s easy,like wholesale butchery. I sway

between balm and venom on the continuum of loveand you groom your reef perversely, laying skeletal coral on top of the living. There are two of us walking this plank, each to her own sea, but there is only one ocean. So we

warm and re-warm the surface of love til the gyres and tides evaporate and only the moonlit salt remains. With that, I swim to shore and we wait to cure, as if this long storm has all been a fantastic misunderstanding. I need

to tell you something:

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Michael Bazzett

FoxThe slough by the river is tangled in fox trails, musk hangs in the air. Ahead, on the trail, russet flutter, then gone, over the soundless snow,

along the spine of a log, each footfall dropping in a quiet place, leaving redolent

prints for the dog, leavingdelicate bones by the trail. The fox hems the fringe, needling voles into their dens, stitching up the ragged woods with his daily thread.

VineMelon vines twined up the sycamore tree drooping crimped blossoms that swelled

into fruit pulled by ripening weight which dropped cracked open to feed the endless

lines of ants simmering into the flesh like fevered sentences

slashing with hooked black mandibles

at the honeyed sweetness of its opened mind.

Photo © Genevieve Leet

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Daniel Williams

Coopers’ Hawk Caughtin the Library of CongressDept. of Fish and Wildlife – January 2011

Th is too another kind of book–a young coopers’ hawk describingthe rotunda ceiling of the Jeff ersonReading Room with its fl ightgray and white lovely power it swoops and sweeps below gold and white fanned seashells the 24 carat cornices and moldingsof American federalist rococo

What a surprise to fi nd something so primordial this accipiter whose wings and shape have fl ownto us straight from the Jurassiclooking down with ruby eyesat all those colors in neat rowsthe blue of Spinoza green of Lockeleather tomes of Shakespeare andJeff erson’s journals in yellowed array

It will take two starlings used as baitto deliver this predator her freedoma simple idea –appetite as lever–BF Skinner winks from his shelfwhile a bird back paddles down sett les over humanity at its cleverest– all our dear hidebound cursive composed of millions of words over the last two hundred years

Our own survival may just depend upon this captive hawk’s escapeall our thinking and writing andyet we sit helpless to save ourselveswe must learn from simple lessonsshe senses our gilded and cruel cageand wild responds with power and graceshe’s hungry for prey and pine forests for clear space of horizon-less skies

If fortunate she may carry us with herfar away from all stultifying thoughtinto the full meaning of moonlightand heartbeat and the joyful scurryof those newly released wings in airover no matt er how many and what kind our entombed tomes of wisdom

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A thousand cars and trucks parked amonga hundred sparse pines day glow signage shows them where to park rainbow pools ofcoolant sett ling under them I walk a new trail beaten into the orange earth crossing a slimroad of black top and then back into grassesdappled with light and bright with bunches of fuchsia foxglove daisies and scarletsa dark shadow moves across the rye and Ilook up to see a young bald eagle rise onair bitt er with the stench of lighter fl uidits dark body with pallid head my pulsequickens at so rare a sight at this elevationseeing such a visual fi rework I am reminded of my connection to the wild and to all things even when upon second glance I realize it’s onlya raven grasping a saltine cracker in its beak

Yosemite Phenomena Never Seen by Muir

Photo © Genevieve Leet

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Joshua Tree, CaliforniaTh e disk of the galaxy runs diagonal to the ranch road

And so slowly that I can barely stand to listen, the stars call me cousin

Th ey say I’m like the motel on the hill that overlooks the desert and the mountains but whose rooms all face the pool

Th e stars call it an exile and an expedition, a sitcom and a crucible, say that bounded by senses, by plain stupidity, given seasons to think and death to forget,I may yet form a true word from the infi nite

I’m eager for more, but the cold worms through my sweater, and strange headlights illuminate the Joshua Trees

I unlock my rental car and climb inTh e car is a body over my body Th e dashboard fl ashes concerns over my concerns

Th e radio plays Th e headlights show no stars

Colin Dodds

"‘World Clock, Morning and Two Twilights’ is from a series called Aft erShadows: A Grand Canyon Narrative. Th e zebra-like stripes on the pebbles are actually photographs of immense shadows cast by rock formations in the Canyon, printed using liquid emulsion and radically shrunk to fi t Atlantic beach pebbles. Th e backgrounds—sand, shot at noontime, and sea grass and ash, shot at twilight—refer to diff erent eons in the Canyon's development. Each shadow corresponds to the time of day it was cast, and the sequence represents dif-ferent locations on the globe at the same moment. Th e triptych functions as a multi-layered sundial, evoking both human and deep time scales, and our place in the earth's chronology." —Pamela Petro

Photo © Pamela Petro

�

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Falling ForwardRain patters the roofof the bus through Nicaragua.

Looking out to the yellow and blueof mountains, cornfields, stark trees,

I want to run into it, fully into it,coming apart as I go, so that I become

liquid, rain falling forward, drops

rushing to cover everything, soakinto the land, make the lush smell–

hot, damp, organic- risefrom the ground, the wetted stalks.

Theodosia Henney

Photo © J.Kay MacCormack

56

Where ThereAre No Roads,

the Road Not TakenLaura Story Johnson

Photo © A. Savvantoglou

57

My husband Shawn was the first to notice the strange van in a parking lot adjacent to our apartment building. The driver was leaning against it, smoking. We’d been waiting all morning on our stoop, staring at the three dozen two

liter bottles at our feet: sun-catching kaleidoscopes on the cement. Green. White. Blue. My sister and her friend Liz had catapulted themselves from their high school graduation in the Midwest to my closet-sized kitchen in Ulaanbaatar. There we’d spent hours boiling and filtering water to put into the plastic bottles I had been collecting for months. Safe water and a knowledgeable driver were the only two things we needed. We were ready for the Gobi.

Only the driver we hired never showed up. We’d met with him in advance, paid him some pink bills, checked out his mode of transportation. He spoke English, an added bonus worth the higher price. We mapped out the two week trip we wanted to take with him and left our address and phone number. I stretched out fully on one of his van’s three rows of seats while Shawn secured the departure date and time with a handshake. We had his name, but not his number. No one had cell phones then. The morning of our scheduled departure arrived and we waited. And waited. Shawn stayed by our apartment phone while the girls and I sat outside. As the sun crept above our Soviet block, I prepped myself to disappoint my sister and her friend. “Sorry guys, I guess we’re not going.”

Then Shawn came outside and pointed at the other van. I argued that it wasn’t the vehicle we had looked at, but agreed it was strange how the driver watched us while he smoked. Shawn went over to speak with him and returned to tell us that, indeed, it was our ride. “He says he’s here to take us to the Gobi. He doesn’t speak English.” I will never know the events that transpired to bring Batchuluun so briefly into our lives. At the time we theorized that the driver we’d hired passed the job on. But, sometimes I still wonder if, like us, Batchuluun just happened to be there. I’ve thought it’s possible he just stopped to have a cigarette when an American approached him and asked in broken Mongolian if he was going to the Gobi desert. Perhaps Batchuluun took his last drag, tossed it to the ground and thought, “Why the hell not?”

“за,” he answered, “говь-руу.”  Mongolia then was still undiscovered, wounds fresh from independence. Today sparkling skyscrapers bandage the

raw skyline we knew and English has replaced Russian in schools. Though I would be pressed to recognize our old neigh-borhood if I were to return, the beauty of the country is that outside of the capitol, everything else remains unchanged. The Gobi is a place where you can feel as though you are the first, and the last, person to ever walk across the infinite desert, scorpion-like bugs skittering along with the pebbles that roll from under your sandals. The Gobi is a place where you un-derstand why Mongolian reporters said a live dinosaur was spotted there a few years ago; Loch Ness monsters lurk on the mirage-lined horizon. The Gobi is a place where you can stare up at the sky, the swallowing sky of the Land of Blue Sky, and disappear.

The Gobi is also a place where you may have to park your Russian pillbox into the wind, hood up, so that the en-gine that sits between the driver and the passenger seat can “хөргөх.” Batchuluun would go out to smoke while the engine cooled down, sometimes we would wander around, other times we would sit in the van and play cards to win a chance to ride on the floor. Batchuluun’s van was from the days before independence and the original seats had left with the Russians. With the seats torn from the floor like the televisions and tape players pilfered after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Batchuluun had devised a creative solution. He drilled a mismatched van seat into the floor. Then, to make the whole thing into a six passenger van, he had drilled two airplane seats into the back. The bolts were loose and so the airplane seats swung and bounced over the desert, but the tray tables still worked. We took turns getting carsick in the airplane seats, recovering on the somewhat more stable van seat, and passing out on the floor, where the heat of the desert rose to meet the heat of the vehicle, warming, eventually burning through the sleeping bag we spread out. We told ourselves that there were no roads so we didn’t need seatbelts.

It was during one of our хөргөх breaks that Batchuluun told Shawn about Yolyn Am. My Mongolian was on par with Shawn’s, but Batchuluun preferred speaking to a man. While we had planned to see the Khongoryn Els (the sing-ing sand dunes) in the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, we didn’t know about Yolyn Am. Shawn got out our English-Mongolian dictionary to try to interpret what Batchuluun was describing. Wall of ice, road of ice, I realize now that even had I understood the words, I still wouldn’t have understood what he truly meant until we were there. There is no translation for an ice field in the desert until you decipher it with experience. We agreed to camp there and, engine cooled enough to carry on, put our tray tables in the upright position.

We arrived in the late afternoon after hours of driving, looking. Batchuluun asked a couple of camel herders for directions, men on horses who scratched their heads and waved their arms about. After some time he made Shawn get out binoculars and point them toward the horizon. There were no roads, no gps, no map. Batchuluun found things in the Gobi by sensing them.

Eventually, mysteriously, he sensed Yolyn Am and found the entrance, flooring it through the gates either because it was closed or so that we didn’t have to pay, shouting over the rumbling and clanking something that justified his decision. We

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wound our way into the gorge, beyond the reach of any park rang-ers or their Mongolian equivalent, beyond the reach of humankind. Yolyn Am is a valley in the Gurvan Saikhan mountains. Th e moun-tains are mythological towers; impenetrable walls line the gorge straight out of a Tolkien book. Arriving at a patch of green where a river widened the space between the hills, Batchuluun pulled over and parked. Mongolian ponies, wild though owned, grazed where the low river ran, wider than it was deep. Th ey scatt ered as we walked through the icy moss, tripstepping from one stone to the next.

We left our yellow two-person tent staked by the river and start-ed out for the “мөсөөр хучигдсан тал.” Batchuluun led the way, cigarett e dangling between his dry lips, a jacket open over his sun-browned, hair-tuft ed potbelly. Th e air around us cooled as we hiked into a narrow opening in the mountain. Th e ice started at our feet, low to the ground like a melting winter storm. It quickly gained in height as the gorge went on. Th ough it was June, it was chilly. Shawn, Liz and Batchuluun stood at the entrance for a while, taking it all in, their thoughts in dif-ferent languages. My sister walked above on the ice; I walked in the middle where water had carved a path just wide enough for me to fi t. Soon she was way above my head where I couldn’t see her. My path constricted, then dead ended. I had to go back in order to climb up to join her, fi nding a place where my bare hands could grip the ice, a place where I could bury my exposed knees into the packed cold to scramble up. Up.

Th e others joined me and we forged ahead into the frozen jaws of an untamable beast. Hiking next to Batchuluun, I contemplated the otherworld meaning that a place embedded with time evokes. A place outdoors. I listened to remember. Memorizing the sound of my breath echoed against glacier-carved rock was necessary, for returning to that place, to that moment, was already impossible.

Th is memorization, this consideration of our own existence is why we seek these places. Walking on time, quite literally, frozen, the precarious, fragile meaning of it all was, for a fl eeting moment, completely clear. I imagine this to be the grounded version of what mountain climbers seek: the clouds tumbling back to reveal a view omnipotent. To remain there, perched above the world forever, would be impossible, so they strain, bodies exhausted, to see by gulping air, swallowing the experience into a place inside where it will stay until another of earth’s wonders calls to it. Listens.

Way leads on to way. We will never go back there. For a long time I dreamed that we would, but that was when possibility stretched before me in a diff erent life, a life when I believed I would climb mountains. I may one day return to Mongolia, even to Yolyn Am, but we will never go back to then. We can’t. At a portion of the ice fi eld where enormous chunks of ice were piled like build-ings aft er an earthquake, Batchuluun sat and asked me to take his picture. Later he scrawled his address in my journal so that I could send it to him. We stayed as long as we could, perched on the ice until evening made the cold of the cavern unbearable and we hiked back to our tent.

“Th is memorization, this consideration of our own existence is

why we seek these places.”

Th at night, our foursome crammed into the two-person tent and Batchuluun asleep in the van, I listened to the gentle breath-ing of my husband, my sister, my friend. Th ey were the only souls on earth who knew where I was. With them asleep, I didn’t exist. When I fell asleep, Yolyn Am would sink into a place where the echo of breathing was just a memory. Th e experience of a place so wondrous that it seems imaginary blurs the line between the self and the world. When the outdoors engulfs us into a true physical relationship, when it begs our senses to be aware of the meaning-lessness and yet overpowering-importance of time, that is when we become our truest selves. Th e beauty lies not in the place, but in our relationship to it. Each of us will fi nd our own undiscovered breath-catching moments in nature. One of mine was Yolyn Am. Another was this morning.

My daughter walked barefoot across a beach for the fi rst time just hours ago. Watching her baby steps, her round, smooth face as she opened her mouth at the sensation of sand between her

chubby, uncalloused toes, as she laughed and marched on toward the water, I felt the fragile nature of experience. Th e fragile experience of nature. I was the only soul on earth to see, to know. I caught myself trying to memorize the feeling of the moment, the sound of the grey waves lapping at the shore, the warm wet of almost rain, and I realized I was once more in the gorge where the memory of an experi-ence will inevitably feel like a vivid dream. It feels too beautiful to be real. And in that mo-

ment I can’t return to, I hear Yolyn Am.I awoke that night in the pitch black, squished between my hus-

band and sister in our tent, to the sound of distant singing. Th e eerie melody of deep voices grew louder and the ground shook. I felt the beating of a hundred horses galloping before I heard it, listened to the rumble through the thin layer of nylon, through the bott om of our tent deep into the earth, deep into the Gobi. In the middle of the night the herders drove the animals through the valley, right past our tent. We all sat up, huddled together, frozen together in awe and fear. Th e horses were so close I could hear them breathing as they ran by. None of us dared to move. In a matt er of heartbeats they were gone, leaving us to fi nally break the magical silence that remained with a whisper. “Was that real?”

Th e lett er I sent Batchuluun came back aft er several months, Mongolian stamped across the envelope telling me the address was incorrect. It was the address from my journal. He was no longer there. He didn’t exist. I sadly opened the envelope, removing the picture I had enclosed. I stared at Batchuluun captured, proudly sitt ing on the ice, and for a long time I wondered. “за,” he had an-swered, “говь-руу.” And that has made all the diff erence.

�

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The work of education, of course, is not to make bett er schools, but to make a bett er world. Too oft en, I believe, educators forget this obvious and simple truth. Discussions

about education seldom refl ect the kind of world we might imagine is possible; rather, they focus on achievement and success within a given paradigm. Educators seem not to realize that the way we educate our children creates, reinforces, or shatt ers the paradigm.

For example, when we assume that the purpose of education is to help students fi nd a job in the global economy, we forget that the “global economy” is not some force of nature. Humans created it. It exists because of the decisions we made, decisions based upon how we view the world, which is based on the way we have been educated.

While what goes on in a school is important in itself—aft er all, our children spend most of their childhoods there—the ultimate relevance of a school is what kind of civilization it inspires our children to create. A school is not “good” if its students get good test scores but are so unhappy, so disconnected, and so unable to think critically that they go out in the world and commit acts of violence and destruction. Such schools only give more power to the mis-educated, who become what Wendell Berry calls “itinerant professional vandals”. I think I prefer the “bad” schools.

Modern industrial culture is ill equipped to deal with the crises of this moment. For the fi rst time in human history, we face a mass-extinction that threatens the viability of life on the planet. Th is crisis was largely created by modern industrial culture. Its values can only lead to more destruction.

I would like to give some att ention to what I believe to be the real consequences—good and bad—of the choices we make about how we educate our children. On the one hand, we have the current model in which the world is the marketplace for global capitalism, the school a factory, and the child a machine; on the other hand… this is a hand is empty, a story we have not yet told. In part, it is our responsibility to off er our children a new vision. But we also must empower our children to become mythmakers, to tell the story of their generation themselves.

Creativelymaladjusted

59Available Spring 2013

The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Theodore Richardsauthor of Cosmosophia

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ContributorsMichael Bazzett has new poems forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, Literary Imagination and Prairie Schooner. He is the author of The Imaginary City, recently published in the OW! Arts Chapbook Series, and They: A Field Guide, forthcoming from Barge Press in early 2013. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.

Martin Burke was born and raised in Ireland but live permanently in Flanders where he is poet, playwright, and actor and from which he has published sixteen books of his work in the USA, UK, Ireland, and Belgium. He recently finished a successful run of his monologue Beowulf (published by Cervena Barva Press, USA) and is working on a new show about James Joyce.

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s the author of several novels, including The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment – A Tragedy, was named a semi-finalist in 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poems have ap-peared in dozens of publications, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha.

Heinz Insu Fenkl, born in 1960 in Bupyeong, Korea, is a novelist, translator, and editor. His autobiographi-cal novel, Memories of My Ghost Brother, was named a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selec-tion in 1996 and a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist in 1997. His most recent prose translation, Yi Mun-yol’s short story, “An Anonymous Island,” was published in the September 12, 2011 issue of The New Yorker.

Theodosia Henney is a circus enthusiast who enjoys standing in the spaces between raindrops. Her work has appeared in over a dozen journals, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and The Micro Award.

Laurence Holden is an artist and writer in the North Georgia Mountains of the US. He draws his poems and paintings from living here. Words and paint – just two natural dialects for the same thing – bearing witness to Creation. Just two sides of the same bright coin, tumbling in one great river. His connection is to the land here, its life, its promise and to it’s living place, as very much like a river, or even a breath, in our lives. His poems have appeared in ‘The Chrysalis Reader,’ ‘Appalachian Heritage,’ and ‘The Reach of Song,’ the poetry an-thology published by the Georgia Poetry Society. His work received an award of excellence from the Georgia Poetry Society in 2010 and an honorable mention from the Byron Herbert Reece Society in 2011. His paint-ings have appeared in over 20 solo exhibits, and are in over 200 public, private, and corporate collections. His art and writing may be viewed at http://artistspath.info and at http://www.laurenceholden.info.

Laura Story Johnson is an attorney working in human rights research and advocacy. Born and raised in Iowa, she has lived in New York City, bush Alaska, Mongolia, Boston, west of the Zambezi River in Zambia, and in Austria. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has most recently appeared in apt and the South Loop Review. She currently resides in Chicago with her husband and two children. www.laurasto-ryjohnson.com

Genevieve Leet is a 23 year old poet and artist from Michigan. The arts, she believes, speak to sustainability issues in moving and engaging ways. Through poetry, painting, and photography, she hopes to build the pub-lic’s relationship with the land and thereby foster responsible stewardship. In 2010, Leet received a fellowship to study Thailand’s coral reef decline and write place-based poetry on the experience. The work focuses on

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an artisanal fishing community and the degradation of the reef they traditionally rely upon. “Stewardship” is from this collection and grapples with the complicated moral questions regarding the use of our natural resources. In 2011, Leet graduated from Kalamazoo College. She won Terrain’s 2011 annual poetry competi-tion themed “Ruin and Renewal,” the 2007 Brave New Voices: Global Warming Poetry Competition, and was twice named a national Udall Scholar. She has performed across the nation, including at the introducing Governor Sibelius’ Earth Day speech. Her work is forthcoming at Terrain.org and has appeared in Off the Coast. Genevieve looks forward to her honeymoon hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington State. She will be carrying her camera, notebook, and ice axe close at hand. You can find more examples of her work at genevieveleet.com.

Joel Long’s most recent book Lessons in Disappearance was published by Blaine Creek Press in 2012. Know-ing Time by Light was published by the same press in 2010. His book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was published in 1999. Long’s chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Rhino, Bitter Olean-der, Crab Orchard Review, Bellingham Review, Sou’wester, Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, Poems and Plays, and Seattle Review and anthologized in American Poetry: the Next Generation, Essential Love, Fresh Water, and I Go to the Ruined Place. He received the Mayor’s Artist Award for Literary Arts at the Utah Arts Festival and the Writers Advocate Award from Writers at Work.

Jesse LoVasco studied poetry and art at Vermont College of Norwich University after years of writing on her own. Her poetry is inspired by time spent with plants, woods, inhabitants of the earth and the experiences in between. The human/nature relationship holds a great deal of importance in her life work as well as poetry. She claims not to be a scholarly poet, though she has read and studied many published poets. The discipline of going to the page day after day, after being in the woods observing an animal or tree, feeds her intention to create words that have meaning, inspire deeper awareness and intimacy with the natural world. She teaches poetry workshops for adults and children and is currently working on a non-fiction art, writing and ecology workbook called AWE. She has resided in Vermont for the past 14 years, where her daughter and two grand-sons live and also has two sons in Michigan.

J. K. McDowell is an artist, poet and mystic, an Ohioan expat living in Cajun country. Night, Mystery & Light is McDowell’s first collection of poetry and part of Hiraeth Press’s Catalog. McDowell’s poems have appeared in the Journal of Shamanic Practitioners and Written River. McDowell recently contributed the foreword to Homebound Publications’ rerelease of L. M. Browning’s Ruminations At Twilight. New work can be regularly found at McDowell’s poetry blog “Night Mystery and Light.” McDowell lives 20 miles north of the Gulf Coast with his soul mate, who also happens to be his wife and their two beautiful companion parrots.

Gwendolyn Morgan not only learned the names of birds and wildflowers but also inherited paint brushes and boxes from her grandmothers. With a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College, and a M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary, she has been a recipient of writing residencies at Artsmith, Caldera and Soapstone. She has poetry published in: Calyx, Dakotah, Kalliope, Kinesis, Manzanita Quarterly, Tributar-ies: a Journal of Nature Writing , VoiceCatcher, Written River as well as anthologies and other literary journals. Gwen and Judy, her partner, share their home with Abbey Skye, a rescued Pembroke Welsh Corgi.

Master Cho Oh-hyun, who writes under the pen name “Musan,” was born in 1932 in Miryang in South Gyeongsang Province of Korea. He has lived in the mountains since he became a novice monk at the age of

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seven. Over the years he has written over a hundred poems, including many in sijo form. In 2007 he received the Cheong Chi-yong Literary Award for his book Distant Holy Man. The lineage holder of the Mt. Gaji school of Korean Nine Mountains Zen, he is in r treat as the head of Baekdamsa Temple at Mt. Seoraksan. His work has appeared in The Asia Literary Review, Asymptote, AZALEA, and Buddhist Poetry Review.

Old Mountain is a poet, part-time hermit, and solitary Buddhist. He conducted the interview of Miya Ando.

Tyra Olstad recently moved to upstate New York to teach Geography and Environmental Science at SUNY Oneonta. Before that, she spent several years wandering around wide open western landscapes, working as a ranger and paleontology technician at units of the National Park Service in Arizona, South Dakota, Wyo-ming, Colorado, and Alaska. She also earned a PhD in Geography from Kansas State University, where her research focused on place attachment, land management, and the aesthetic of plains landscapes. She has pub-lished articles and essays on ecoregions, exploration, wilderness, and sense of place in a variety of professional and literary journals.

Nicole Parizeau is former senior editor at Whole Earth Magazine and principal editor at University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science. She writes and edits in the San Francisco Bay Area, to which she moved from Montreal as an interpretive naturalist. New poetry and prose appear or are upcoming in Folio, Poecology, Emrys Journal, Opium Magazine, Writers Rising Up, and the anthology Weather, from Imagination & Place Press. Nicole is writer in residence at Sonoma Mountain Ranch Preservation Foundation and a 2013 Associate Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Pamela Petro is an artist and writer who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. She has written three books of travel-based non-fiction, and teaches creative writing at Smith College and on Lesley University’s MFA Program. Her essays and articles have appeared in many publications including The New York Times, Granta, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review Daily. Her work with “petrographs” – silver gelatin photos printed on stone – grew out of her book The Slow Breath of Stone: A Romanesque Love Story, set in Southwest France. She is currently creating an artist’s book based on her tenure as artist-in-residence at the Grand Canyon. Her new book of creative non-fiction will be about hiraeth in and outside of Wales.

Jamie K. Reaser has a deep fondness for the wild, intimate, and unnameable. She received a BS in Field Biology, with a minor in Studio Art, from the College of William and Mary and her doctorate in Biology from Stanford University. She has worked around the world as a biologist, international policy negotiator, environmental educator, and wilderness rites-of-passage guide. She is also a practitioner and teacher of eco-psychology, nature-based spirituality, and various approaches to expanding human consciousness, as well as a poet, writer, artist, and homesteader-in-progress. She is the editor of the Courting the Wild Series, as well as the author of Huntley Meadows, Note to Self, and Sacred Reciprocity. She makes her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Visit her Talking Waters poetry blog at www.talkingwaters-poetry.blogspot.com, or through Talking Waters on Facebook.

Angeliki Savvantoglou is originally from Greece, but now lives in Bristol, UK, where she studies Conserva-tion Biology. Her photography reflects her love of the natural world and her hopes that humanity will develop better relations with the diverse kingdoms of the earth. She also enjoys drawing, swimming with dolphins, traveling, and singing.

Scott T. Starbuck was captain of the fishing vessel Starfisher in Depoe Bay, Oregon, and a writer in residence at The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Now, he communes with dolphin yoga masters off Encinitas, Cali-fornia, and frequently hikes in the Pacific Northwest. His most recent book, River Walker, is at Mountains and Rivers Press in Eugene, Oregon. He works as a Creative Writing Coordinator at San Diego Mesa College, and has claywork online at The Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy at Athabasca University, and Untitled Country Review.

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Russell Streur is a born-again dissident residing in Johns Creek, Georgia. Published internationally, he oper-ates the world’s original on-line poetry bar, The Camel Saloon, located at http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com, where the beer is cold, the whiskey Irish, and the door is always open.

Brendan Sullivan is a lifelong beach bum who has turned from acting to poetry, as he finds it a more remark-able and reliable muse. He also enjoy surfing, sailing and diving. His work is a series of snapshots..small sto-ries about life and what we all share in common. He wants readers to take away what they need and want from his words, as poetry should be an individual experience. His poetry has appeared in The Rusty Nail, A Clean and Well Lit Place, Haggard and Halloo, Mad Swirl, 521 Magazine, Gutter Eloquence and The Missing Slate. He has just had short fiction accepted into the Horror fantasy anthology, Nocturnal Embers.

Christine Waresak is a writer and editor living in Seattle. She was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Florida as a teenager, but it wasn’t until a free plane ticket brought her to the Pacific Northwest that she recognized her true home. Even though she is often cold, she never tires of watching fog thread through pine trees or wind toss waves against the shores of the Puget Sound. She has an M.A. in English from the University of Florida and recently published a short story in RED OCHRE LiT.

Martin Willitts Jr retired as a Senior Librarian and is living in Syracuse, New York. He is currently a volun-teer literacy tutor. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Push-cart and 3 Best Of The Net awards. He has print chapbooks “Falling In and Out of Love” (Pudding House Pub-lications, 2005), “Lowering Nets of Light” (Pudding House Publications, 2007), The Garden of French Horns” (Pudding House Publications, 2008), “Baskets of Tomorrow” (Flutter Press, 2009), “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “Why Women Are A Ribbon Around A Bomb” (Last Automat, 2011), “Protest, Petition, Write, Speak: Matilda Joslyn Gage Poems” (Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2011), “Secrets No One Wants To Talk About” (Dos Madres Press, 2011), “How to Find Peace” (Kattywompus Press, 2012), “Playing The Pauses In The Ab-sence Of Stars” (Main Street Rag, 2012), and “No Special Favors” (Green Fuse Press, 2012). He has three full length books “The Secret Language of the Universe” (March Street Press, 2006), and “The Hummingbird” (March Street Press, 2009), and “The Heart Knows, Simply, What It Needs: Poems based on Emily Dickinson, her life and poetry” (Aldrich Press, 2012). His forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting For The Day To Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content, 2013), “Art Is the Impression of an Artist” (Edgar and Lenore’s Publishing House, 2013), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2013), “A Is For Aorta” (Seven Circles Press, e-book, 2013), and “Swimming In the Ladle of Stars” (Kattywompus Press, 2013).

Diana Woodcock’s first full-length collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders—nominated for a Kate Tufts Discovery Award—won the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Poetry Prize for Women and was published by Little Red Tree Publishing in 2011. Her chapbooks are In the Shade of the Sidra Tree (Finishing Line Press), Mandala (Foothills Publishing), and Travels of a Gwai Lo—the title poem of which was nomi-nated for a Pushcart Prize (Toadlily Press). She has been teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar since 2004. Prior to that, she lived and worked in Tibet, Macau and Thailand.

Daniel Williams is a poet who resides in the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California. He holds an M.A. in English Literature from San Jose State University and has taught at Foothill College, Columbia College, and Metro State in Denver. Daniel has read for PoetsWest readings at the Frye Art Museum, and has been a frequent reader on PoetsWest Thursdays on KSER-FM radio, Barnes and Nobles, and Epilogue Books in Seattle, and at the former Cody’s Books, Berkeley. Recent poems have appeared in Grrrr..Poems About Bears, A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare, Sierra Songs and Descants, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Amoskeag Journal, NEBO, Sea Stories, The HotAir Quarterly, Minnetonka Review, Great American Poetry Show, Raven Chronicles, Rockhurst Review, Flowers & Vortexes Manzanita, Common Ground Review, and Yosemite Poets: A Gathering of this Place.

www.hiraethpress.com

Poetry is the language of the Earth—not just poems but the slow fl ap of a heron’s wings across the sky, the lightning of its beak hunting in the shallow water; autumn leaves and the smooth course of water over stones and gravel. Th ese, as much as poems, communicate the being and meaning of things. Our publications are all poetry, whether they are poems or nonfi ction, and refl ect the ideal that falling in love with the Earth is nothing short of revolutionary and that through our relationship to wild nature we can birth a more enlightened vision of life for the future. We are passionate about poetry as a means of returning the human voice to the polyphonic chorus of the wild.

Writt en River Copyright © 2012 Hiraeth PressAll poems, photographs, and essays copyrighted by their respective authors.

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Detail, Painting © Genevieve Leet