Winter Waters

walking by the lake blue-white in half-melte
distant scraping resolves to
sails further out, skaters with parasails
in just enough wind, metal on ice
wet gliding, steel shaving, memory of iceboats

several hours' drive further north
there are bear tracks in late snow
some kind of quiet god woken too early
to own his still-twilit domain
long summer evenings have not yet sprung
out of blue bogs, green cattails, moose brown

there's a river only half-awake
this blue hour of year, stone clatter
musical chime of cold flow on icicle
blue tears hung by spray on granite over shale ledge
this single river carving its shallow valley
scrapes dense kraton, tough sheets, resistant caprock

even further where loons will migrate later
hallow sea-edge open watered haloed green
white pack ice wind-sails into the corner bay
lead left half-open, ready someday for seals
where shallow river-mouth meets tidal swell

we write what we have, when it comes
on shore sand, on half-drowned leaf
brown with tannins and river rust
the land writes on my own waters
circulating sea-tide of red blood and bone shell
skull under skin just waiting its time to emerge

back south in more habitable home
late snow coats milkweed pods whiter
than white, late broken buds exploding with cotton
wild rice stalks clump like black bamboo
and the ring of open water mudding the shore shines

Sealife

Rain on the tin chimney cap, pebbles falling on a black slate seacliff.
Everything is so hard. It all takes longer than it should, longer
than I remember it ever taking before, than i want it to. A wish is not
a promise, not that sudden spring storm that takes breath away.
A mug of tea in hand to light the keeper's soul. These rocks, this island.
Rain on the pebbled path, shattering light in ripples and shards.
The world won't pull itself into shape anymore. I've lost whatever way
I once had. It just falls apart. New paths haven't coalesced. The fog
just sits there, luffing the sails, becalmed. Fog and wind never share.
When my mind fills with fog I make no sail. Even this harbor fills
with ghosts.

        Here I am alone at last. Again and again. Do you see
where the waters meet, surge, blend, change color, finally merge?
Where green and brown become blue, and sink to ancient seabed,
slow limestone forming from the deep rain of falling plankton shell
and skeleton. Limestone is the graves of millions of sea lives.
The same layer and rind of calcium that is the mineral shine
of human teeth. Not mine, which are more than half fake, product
of a childhood spent away from treated water. Lifelong battle till my
minerals flake and fall away, leave gap and gouge in jaw and skull,
holes where pirates put gold, once, when they could.
But I have both eyes.

         And strange cavitation of sea-driven screws vortexing deep waters.
Dark shapes pass close by in the invisible rain and unsilent dark.
In the rain, in another world, I would be warm and naked under
a warming sun. But not yet. Not here. Prophecy is mere
vision that skips across an inner eye like sunlight, starshine,
bad clams. It's as corrosive as it is demanding. Skip ahead,
wild-breasted daughters of sunlit terraces on Mediterranean islets.
Let the wild boys chase you, not knowing you will tame them
once they've caught you. Who owns this trap? Its jaws full of light.

             No,
here I am slunk again in immobility. A broth of lassitude that verges
on desperation. I'm not saying I don't already know. I wish the news
were something that would save me, but it's a perishing blast of ice.
There's a blade of Antarctic iceshelf broken off and floating north,
an island of ice larger than your splayed-out hand from low orbit.
When it grounds and melts, or where, no one can guess, but there will be
hell to pay, a guaranteed disruption and dismay. Prophecy that.
For someone. I'm spinning in polar current circles, as this ice field,
touched down nowhere, frozen and lumbering along. No certainty here,
either.

      It's been awhile since I knew what shape to take to match the world's.
Every certain thing fallen away. Again and again. From first
void-filled vision to slower cracking, a splint on splintered world,
effect preceding cause. We know what caused the plane to fall,
but what caused the plane? What caused falling? It's remote. Iced over now.
Paleolithic.

         Stone axe shattering years between years. Blue red
stone shining when held just so to sun. Slickness of stream-bedded
quartzite sheens like water but doesn't lose shape. Polished sand
that once was river mouth filling the ocean plain below, now
sandstone and glinted mica shale, melted, reforged, made ever harder
beneath the pressure of a world's living, now glass. Still we can see
ripples that lay under river's glint and gleam. Glass-clear trout ghost
across memory of mountain sands that now rise up mid-lake
after being washed and ground to ocean, rippled in waves, crusted,
sealed, frozen, polished, reflecting sun again after long sleep. The memory
of water glistening stone surface as though an ancient river still flowed.
Under time-bent starlight, still, it does. There's no peace in this falling-apart
world, but the long breath of deep time, starlight on wet stone,
at least reminds us how short these few breaths are.

             Your hair
has not spread over my pillow in eons. Will we meet again, in a million years?
Perhaps these atoms, in your bones, in mine, will once again mingle,
making teeth in a future we cannot imagine. Perhaps your stone heart
will indeed be fossilized, preserved between beats as a clenched fist
in concrete sands.

         I cannot wait. Rain on galvanized tin grows louder, steady, still
circling all these eons. Rain wash me away. Rain wash all this to sand.
But the body, breathless, clings, and worries, and wants to go on,
even when we know it never could.

on the shore of the last sea

and we meet them on the shore
of an endless sea in blue twilight in bright sun
brighter so bright one can barely see past sun tears
as more and more of our beloved dead gather
to greet us to love us to say hello and farewell one time
more in the promise of something we cannot contain
the lost restored to each other
all sorrows healed
not papered or scarred over but gone as if they never
existed

and we meet them on the shore
as the light of that long bright afternoon fades
to blue wind and lapping waves
rising out of the waters we are born from
and to which we inevitably return
when our span of suffered growth is done
given to each other given our sons to the sun
held in hands blessed with infinite brilliant
light

and we meet them on the shore
where at the edge of vision gold sunflowers
stand tall offering of vigilance
a requiem of attention
shadows of clouds reflected in wind-bled waters
sound of waves of that lapping last shore
sound of breeze in tall grass and flowers
sound of sigh of breath of sleeping children
sound of trees beyond the windows
all one sound the same sound same sigh same breath
all one

and we meet them on the shore
as they go forward into silence
fingers sliding apart last touch after long merge
until we too we also
meet our own children our own loves
from the other side of this meeting place
we dead now those who go on
and return to water in blue
eternity

Video: Ocean Arch

Ocean Swirl

Images from Pescadero State Beach, Pescadero, CA



seafoam swirls
sunset whirligig
lave of love in turning
whirl is king



ocean swell
long foam dancers
high tide and rising
whirl is king

Golden Waves

For those moments when you wish you were Elsewhere. . . .









. . . find a Doorway in the sunset, and go

Pescadero, CA

Images from Pescadero State Beach, California, February 2011




A sunny, windy day at the ocean, at one of my favorite places by the ocean, that I never fail to stop at if I'm in the region. I've had many powerful experiences here at Pescadero: finding my first dreamstone; camping in the redwoods a mile inland after watching the sunset here; the archway under the cliffs at various times of the year, filled with smooth brown sand, or whipped open to a channel of jagged multicolor rocks covered with green sea-grass, tidepools surrounding the carved channel; making photographs in all kinds of weather; making love once in the sun on the rocks, naked when no one was around. A place that has given me visions, some of my better photographs, poems and more poems, landscape art sculpture, and more often than not, the peace of a quieted heart.




wave patterns on skin of stone
crescent moon wave finger lovers touch
the secret gull's secret home




net of waves weaver's loom of tide against sunrise calling along
explicit coastline roofbeams and rough driftwood walls become stone
ephemera coral white intrusive in blackveined seafloor fragment rock
whitewind wavecrash laugh high in bright air falling at foot of blackcliff
oceanbed wind memory here where orogeny and omega align see what
destined crumble there is to descend devour crash and endless erode away
rock in sand becoming sand over rock becoming sand in wave over rock
till every tide push and pull pools underhill underground making a new



rough angle of shore solid against infinite moving shore
berm of peninsula raised in arroyo salute to sea salt sun

Light on the Ocean

images from northern California, Pacific Ocean, February 2011

Mendocino Sunsets 2

images from Mendocino Cty., CA, February 2011







Two consecutive sunset evenings, one from the end of the peninsula that hosts the town of Mendocino itself, the other from the end of a small parkland peninsula in Ft. Bragg. Clear skies with clouds at Mendocino, for at Ft. Bragg the following evening.















Both evenings, after the sun had set, I put the tripod on the camera and made some time exposures of the waves. Between a second and four seconds long, these time exposures make the whitecap waves blue into sheets of foam or misty fog.

Meditation at Pescadero

How many lifetimes standing here, watching
soft layers of sand and siltstone and mangled shale
erode, making an arch the waves pulse through,
sometimes with seals in the river shelter,
or with emergent seabed marking geologic time.
You've stood here before, at least a thousand times.
I keep returning. Not only the eternal return
of relevant reincarnation but each passing through
of a visit to a personally sacred place.
This is the anti-apocalypse. Yes, the rocks get worn down
by waves, but it takes a long time, and they meanwhile endure.
This is the anti-despair of a permanent presence
in one's little, ephemeral life. Make a snake in the rocks.
Make a stand of ovoid-weathered stones, call it a line
and dare the tide to cross it. Must I cease dreaming
merely because my eyes are open and I'm standing
over the edge of the cliff above the rocks here
and their tidal bathe? Must the world come to an end
merely because you're standing at the end of the world?
Ridiculous to believe the claims of the urban angst poets.
They never drive out here to stand and watch the sunset
fade gold and indigo through the eye of a hollowed stone.
I've stood here and watched people miss dreamstones
littering the riprap they step over, never seen, unperceived.
For every stone I find here, a hundred are still buried,
still being carved, gouged, hollowed, prepared for that one day
they emerge into the light, sand scooped away by winter storms,
the river bed inland redefined into a new channel, again
and again resculpted. Time and tide the changing agents.
How many lifetimes I've stood here, each one a year and a day
of breathless vows. How often I've seen the cliffs calve off
another birthstone. You can see the interface here, the line
between ancient spreading seafloor and newer inland sediments,
the muck and glop and mashed-up island arcs
that assembled California. Land of new beginnings at
the end of the world. The dark line of old ocean floor
discontinuous with iron-tinged conglomerates and siltstones
soft as talc, hard as sodden, compressed sand. An afterlife
of memory, polished shards with their evidence of ancient
mountains being worn down, uplifted, worn down again.
Water the most powerful erosive force of a dynamic planet.
How many times I've stood on the failing cliffedge overlooking
the receding tunnel of arch and surf. Light grey in cold mist.
Brilliant gold in clear winter sunset, a tunnel of light into time.
How many times I've waited till dark before going to find my bed.
Catching the last scanning line of the sun's retreat, sensing
earth turning east underfoot. Next dawn, another chance
to do it all over again. The rocks erode into the sea.
Then a new land crashes into the old, building it up again.
Somewhere the skin of the earth's face is stretched so thin
hot boils pop out of it, and lines of stretch-marks make
the basin and range. And again. How many times have I
thought of you, lost lover, standing here in the dark.
Only twice were we naked and free over stone, arch, and parapet.
I have the photographic evidence: skin blends into harder stone.
I make a collage of memory. Some images pull loose
from their roots in time, and become universal.
The mind of the world roots your own ghost into stone.
I'll be here again. Long after that, standing on the memory
and ghost of a cliff over a lost archway, a gate forwards
and back into blue sunsets.

Waters Rising

Waterline I, San Gregorio, CA, 2005

I’ve been having dreams of waters rising, several times over the past weeks. Last night, the last image before waking of was looking over a deep wind-rippled pond or lake at dusk, lights reflected in the water; the surface of the pond was restless, but there were deep waters underneath, half-revealed, half-concealed by the lights reflecting on the water. A week ago, I dreamed of flood waters rising, making the land where I lived into mud, and threatening to flood the dwellings where we lived. Inn the past week, I've dreamed more than once of sleeping outdoors, under the stars, sometimes in group urban tent-camp settings (which you sometimes do during a weekend art fair in university towns); each of these dreams of sleeping outdoors, on the land, has ended with imagery of waters rising.


Willow River State Park, WI, circa 2001

I’ve learned to associate these dreams as harbingers of the rising of the waters of the deep mind, the unconscious. The deep waters of the unconscious are a source of mystery, wonder, power, and healing, for me. (This is actually a Jungian archetype of the collective unconscious, not only my personal symbol.) Sometimes the rising waters appear as flood waters; sometimes as deep wells in the earth, sometimes in a cave, full of cold, clear, sweet-tasting water. (The well of wisdom in a cave is also an ancient Celtic religious symbol, I've discovered.)

There was one dream that was so unique I've never forgotten it: In that instance, the waters appeared as lines inscribed into a red stone patio; the red stone was of the red sandstone type found in the Southwest, vivid red; the patio was hot underfoot in the sunlight; the water was moving through inscribed lines and patterns and channels in the flagstones of the patio, like a labyrinth made of water; and the water lines reflected the pure blue of the sky overhead. Blue lines of water flowing through hot red stone, going somewhere I couldn't see, perhaps to a pool nearby and out of sight; but it was clear the waters were not still nor stagnant, but constantly in motion, flowing through the stone.

When such images and/or symbols appear in your dreams, especially several times within a short period of time, it's wise to pay attention.

The rising up of dark waters into the light of day is associated, for me, with the rising up of power, of creativity, of intuition, of information. Waters rising from the depths and flooding out over the land, over me. Every time I’ve had dreams like this, something big has moved upwards inside me, or some block has been opened, or new insights are gained, or I’ve experienced a huge surge in creativity combined with insight and intuition. The waters of that black underground river which is the power under life, which sustains me, which is the river of creative force that feeds my ability to make art. The black river underground that rises up through the wells, that flows into the creative work I'm doing, no matter what medium I'm working in at the time.

I welcome these dreamtime events, when they happen. They are a gift of grace and power from the gods, and not to be ignored or dismissed lightly. As I said, they have often been harbingers of change in the waking world.


Water drop in pothole, Interstate Park, MN, circa 1998

Water is a constant theme in my visual art. I make many photographs of water in nature. I love reflections in water and glass, that give a sense of depth and movement to an otherwise static scene. I spend a lot of my time out in the world making nature photographs near bodies of water. Rivers, lakes, the ocean. Ponds, streams, sheets of water making tidal flats into mirrors. Many of my own favorite photographs have water in them, in one form or another. We live on a planet that is mostly covered with water; and our blood has the same mineral mix and acidity as seawater, from which we arose.



I was once invited to present an exhibition of my photographs in a community center in the Twin Cities. I chose water as my theme, and made the logo above to represent the show. I set the type in Illustrator, then turned it into an art object in Photoshop, chromed it, and built the water reflection underneath. The show was a critical success (albeit not a financial one).


Water Gateway, unused image from Spiral Dance

Waters rising. I wonder what they will bring forward, this time, out of the depths.

Mendocino Sunset

A few miles north up the coast from Ft. Bragg in Mendocino County, CA, there is a beautiful sand beach at the mouth of a river canyon. This is one of my favorite sunset beaches in Mendocino. After a storm, the beach might be littered with beautiful driftwood. When the tide is moving, sheets of water float across the flat, wet sands, making pools that mirror the rocks and sky out to sea.



The sun falls relentlessly into the ocean, hissing red and orange. The wet sands echo the colors, reflecting in water waves and pools. For awhile, the cliffs are made gold in the amber light. Then the also blue and fade to black silhouettes under a pale sky.




At the top of the cliffs, there is a house standing behind wind-swept pines. Further out on the ledge, just over the edge of the water, stands a smaller guest house. The surf pounding the cliffs at high tide must make this guest house shudder. But what a wonderful little house it would be for a writer or an artist to have their studio in. So close to the ocean, with views of whales spouting offshore, the wind and the sky, seabirds floating by at eye-level. A small wood-burning stove to take off the chill. A writing desk in front of the large picture windows. A rocking chair before the long view. Every time you looked up from your work, the ocean's immensity would be revealed. For me, this would be a perfect studio, filled with constant inspiration, no matter the weather.





The fading light reflecting off the window glass of the cliff house. Sky going from pink and gold to deep indigo, still with edges of pink and rose. The rising wind, chill and wet, off the sea. The darkening sky. Eventually you have to go home, pack your gear away in the car, drive off into the dusk, headlights making bright tunnels under the eucalyptus stands lining the highway, where it curves down a vale, twists around, and emerges again into the dusk.

Pacific Ocean

images of the Pacific Ocean, from northern California, February 2011





returning home
to the mother
ocean of dreams solace comfort
surf pound drowns out all other sounds
drowns out all inner sounds
brings silence within peace within
ocean pacific even when stormy
ocean pacific bringer of inner silence
solace content