[Travelling North from Hope by lettuce truck, I penned this prose in 1976.]
Happylung frostwind
busking by a church in the rain
blurry hills a-fog to aft
all over, plants in competition
-conifers vs deciduous-
what man hath stacked
little silver pipes in this land?
the plaid daddy-o to port
with the blue baseball cap
pitched over his noggin
like a curved universe theory
as we petrol past
Pantagruellian toothpicks
piled wet near the swift jade
by check-flannel antagonists of trees
Oh!
creeks like milk
in the desert rock rabble
spreading pearl fingers
under dark railroad trestles
and through a tunnel
a Viking stream burbles past
Summertime gypsy groves
of dancing copper leaves
set to motion
by a rumbling train
staggering through wind bowed woods,
its flanks besieged by karst
smarting yet from dynamite
but here
a clever, magic mountain Queen
lets her hair tumble Airmail
down the her stone face
in the pleasant form of mercurial delight
to sight and sound
all while the multicoloured
life smelling mother comforting
savage and epochal world
lies centred throughout
like a silent child
just waiting
to tap you on the back
[During a break from cooking in 1976, I went up in the mountains with no food, water or gear above Kanaka Bar and found a teacher tree and my own special spot that I returned to many times over my life. This prose was written after the first night.]
From the orange and green
surrealistic oaken Winter kitchen of yesteryear
where smiles come as quickly as rock-slides
I longed to drink silence and propose a toast to nothing
to stand open, apprehensive, spiritually naked
on this rock as the stars were rendered fuzzy by a minute rain
drumming like sand riding a spirit wind
spilling down from the high country
burnishing my face and braiding my hair
stumbling with hands out grabbing dark bushes
old dirt wisdom begins to come from the now shouting trees
who put their message into my bloodstream like the scent of sarsaparilla
onwards past grand-mother's basket pines
and November piano old man firs
glancing in my ginger-boots off creek scree
and scratch-ballooning up the other side
rubbing tumescent sage bellies up black log sponge loam
here I am shown, here I am certain
here a place will be sanctified
by my soul sleep
during night-time lightening play
and hot sun afternoons on a pine-needle bed
melting into wind-scream-bat-rain
with visible stars and the ground lit up
like a pretty girl's face in moonlight