Love is whatever you make it
Just like the song that I sing
A cage or a perfect circle
This golden wedding ring.

We made a vow in a garden
Twelve years ago today
To build our lives in common
To link arms on our way.

Now look back on that moment
Where once the seal was set
And see our path returning
To the place where we first met.

We’ve lived in the big bad city
We’ve moved out on the land
But location no longer matters
It’s where we are we stand.

We blasted through the sixties
A searchin’ to be free
Came down to earth in the seventies
Accepting the limits of “me.”

And everything we wanted
And everything we tried
Has come and gone in the rushing stream
Has flourished and withered and died.

Except for one thing only
That stands against the flow
That time, instead of eroding,
Has strengthened and helped to grow.

And that’s what always is April
The moment under the tree
The love that we make together
The source of our family.

Palo Alto, April 2 1979

Hey, let’s go down to Chinatown
And get a bit of Lichee
You say that you’re allergic
And it makes your elbows itchy?
Well, that’s no serious problem
I know just what you should do:
Mash ginger root with ginseng root
And get a sticky goo
Mix it up with some rice vermicelli
That you’ve dipped in a little grass Jelly
Then rub it gently around on your belly
And wipe it off when it starts to go smelly.
Do this and your elbows will never get itchy
Though you’ve eaten your fill of delitchious lichee.

(Written for the Lund Theatre Troupe’s Production of Free to Be You and Me)

Tester’s Testament

This is the last time that I’ll sit
Slowly leafing through this log
Searching for a contact’s spark
To pierce my boredom’s lonely fog.

There’s hours when working in the mill
Seems like punishment for crime.
You’ve got a home and family
For that you’ve got to do your time.

It takes the strength of a serious man
To work on shift both day and night.
There’s character and dignity
In holding a job and doing it right.

But my time’s up, my Winter’s passed.
Though I hate to leave that steady pay
Spring’s lecherous tickling in my blood
Wont let me stay another day.

I take with me just a little money
But maybe more important still
I take a feeling of comradeship
With the men who remain and work at the Mill.

There isn’t much I can leave behind
As a legacy to share–
Just some contacts for a spark
To light the long nights in this chair.

Tarot Question

Shall I stay?
Shall I go?
Which will make
The spirit flow?
Do Graveyard’s skull
And bones disguise
God’s holy light
In bleary eyes?
If I remain
By my free will
Will Spring transform
This Wintry Mill?

The defeated happy man turned to go home
Wasted by the pain of grace.
Longing for a sign
Had weighed him down for years
A sealed pack on his back.
Now he was light.

4-12 shift

Yew Street Basement

Here is a still life: the wheel thrown pot
Amidst the grids and graphs and charts
Scales and rule, calendar and clock
On the steel top desk in the pulp-test station.

There is still life in the centered cup
That holds the instant coffee I must drink
To keep apace the thrumming frequency
Of the sprawled electric death machine I serve.

There is still life in the ceramic mug
The elemental spirit of the hands
That mold with Nature’s art the water’s flow
The glaze of fire, the earthly body’s clay.

Still life
Soft frozen
In stone
With thumb
I feel.

4-12 shift

January 6 1972, graveyard shift

Husband’s Song

I wish that I could love you
With a boundless energy
I wish that I could move you
Like the storm wind moves the tree.

I know that every morning
You meet the other man
Who takes you on a voyage
To a distant foreign land.

Though I often try to follow
I’ve lost hope for the chance
To slip free from my burden
And join your silent dance.

When you two are departed
And I’m left here behind
I search the mirror for my face
With fear I’ll lose my mind.

I wish that I could love you
With a boundless energy
I wish that I could move you
Like the storm wind moves the tree.

December 21, 1971 Day Shift

Solstice

Sap down, morning dark
Rooster sleeps, infant coughs, wife groans
Stove cold, pipes froze, truck stuck
Uncoffied and late to work.

Screen Tender empties sewer samples
“Goundwood down for cleanup
Pollution controls suspended
Today we flush the system out.”

Thousands of gallons of woodpulp and bleach
Zinc hydrosufite, sodium sulfate
Slosh through the flume into the saltchuck
Pablum for fish, heavily spiced.

In the Towncrier photo the Forestry Superintendant
Stands proud on the butt of a thousand year old fir
They’ve finished logging the old growth grove at Goat Lake.
It was one of the last virgin stands near the coast of B.C.

Cruised, felled, limbed, bucked
Skidded yarded, loaded, trucked
Dumped, boomed, sorted, tugged
Towed, spiked, barted, lugged.
Ripped, slashed, cross-cut.

Pulped, shredded, screened
Bleached, tested, cleaned
Blended, thickened, died
Rolled, pressed, dried
Wound, rewound, finished.

The Times is all that’s left
For breakfast.

When darkness holds dominion here tonight
We’ll find and cut a sapling hemlock tree
To celebrate renewal of the light
And hope for rebirth of the land and sea.