Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

*Phenomenal Woman
*
*Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

- Maya Angelou

[Larry Robinson]

Snow



Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth
I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill
and did not know where I was going except to the top of it.
In those days we went out like that.
Even children went out like that.

Someone was crying hard at home again,
raging blizzard of sobs.

I dragged the sled by its rope,
which we normally did not do
when snow was coming down so hard,
pulling my brother whom I called by our secret name

as if we could be other people under the skin.
The snow bit into my face, prickling the rim
of the head where the hair starts coming out.
And it was a big one. It would come down and down
for days. People would dig their cars out like potatoes.


How are you doing back there? I shouted,
and he said Fine, I’m doing fine,
in the sunniest voice he could muster
and I think I should love him more today
for having used it.

At the top we turned and he slid down,

steering himself with the rope gripped in
his mittened hands. I stumbled behind
sinking deeply, shouting Ho! Look at him go!
as if we were having a good time.
Alone on the hill. That was the deepest

I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it
when I stare at paper or into silences
between human beings. The drifting
accumulation. A father goes months
without speaking to his son.

How there can be a place

so cold any movement saves you.

Ho! You bang your hands together,
stomp your feet. The father could die!
The son! Before the weather changes.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

The Lost Empire
I
And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden.
Its victories were air, its dominions dirt:
Burma, Canada, Egypt, Africa, India, the Sudan.
The map that had seeped its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt
like red ink on a blotter, battles, long sieges.
Dhows and feluccas, hill stations, outposts, flags
fluttering down in the dusk, their golden aegis
went out with the sun, the last gleam on a great crag,
with tiger-eyed turbaned Sikhs, pennons of the Raj
to a sobbing bugle. I see it all come about
again, the tasselled cortege, the clop of the tossing team
with funeral pom-poms, the sergeant major’s shout,
the stamp of boots, then the volley; there is no greater theme
than this chasm-deep surrendering of power
the whited eyes and robes of surrendering hordes,
red tunics, and the great names Sind, Turkistan, Cawnpore,
dust-dervishes and the Saharan silence afterwards.

II
A dragonfly’s biplane settles and there, on the map,
the archipelago looks as if a continent fell
and scattered into fragments; from Pointe du Cap
to Moule à Chique, bois-canot, laurier cannelles,
canoe-wood, spicy laurel, the wind-churned trees
echo the African crests; at night, the stars
are far fishermen’s fires, not glittering cities,
Genoa, Milan, London, Madrid, Paris,
but crab-hunters’ torches. This small place produces
nothing but beauty, the wind-warped trees, the breakers
on the Dennery cliffs, and the wild light that loosens
a galloping mare on the plain of Vieuxfort make us
merely receiving vessels of each day’s grace,
light simplifies us whatever our race or gifts.
I’m content as Kavanagh with his few acres;
for my heart to be torn to shreds like the sea’s lace,
to see how its wings catch colour when a gull lifts.

- Derek Walcott

[Larry Robinson]

For the ninth year, Rumi's Caravan is returning to Sebastopol on February 6.

Critics have called Rumi's Caravan "The number one poetry and cultural event of the year for the North Bay."
This is truly a magical evening of poetry, music and amazing food!

Ecstatic poetry will be recited by Doug Von Koss, Kim Rosen, Shepherd Bliss, Maya Spector, Barry Spector, Richard Naegle, Kay Crista, Carol Fitzgerald and Larry Robinson.

Musical accompaniment will be by Kim Atkinson, Chris Caswell and Cindy Albers.

The event begins at 7:00 PM
and will be held at the Sebastopol Masonic Center
373 Main Street (across from Safeway)
Doors open at 6:30 PM

Tickets are $20 and all proceeds go the benefit local non-profits.

This event has sold out for the past four years, so you may want to get your tickets early by calling Many Rivers Books at 707-829-8871.



Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you've broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come.

- Jelalludin Rumi

[Larry Robinson]

Lose your way

Lose your way
and you are where you are.
Lose sleep
and you see the stars.
Lose hope
and you cannot be frustrated.
Lose your dreams
and you befriend reality.

Don’t hold your breath,
notice it.

Follow it.
Let it go,
Let it come,
And return with it,
come back again
to your essential
sufficient
self.

Where you are,
how you are,
who you are,
be.
Alive.


- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

Love Comes Quietly

Love comes quietly,
Finally drops around me,
On me, in the old way.
*
What did I know,
Thinking myself able to go alone
All the way?
*
-*Robert Creely

[Larry Robinson]

The Great Mother

The Great Mother does not care about us.
Our personal lives do not move her.
Her concerns are
the raising up of mountains,
the wheeling of stars in the heavens,
the nightly rising of the moon,
the turning of the seasons.
We are so small, so ephemeral,
Our plight is less than a bother,
Not even a pesky mosquito to swat aside.
She is not kind,
but neither is she cruel.
She is busy.

- Maya Spector

[Larry Robinson]

Earthquake

I am not really surprised, after what happened in my country, Haiti
Not only Haiti, but in the entire world.
Because life is an earthquake,
It happens daily.
It is perpetual, constant without end.
There are earthquakes within families,
Earthquakes between friends,
Between great philosophers,
Among countries, nations, religions,
And even earthquakes of humans against God

Today, I love, cherish, and even give my life for my partner.
Tomorrow will bring an earthquake to our bond,
The one who I would die for today, I might kill her myself tomorrow.
Divorce or worse could happen.

The earthquake is so strong,
I am forced to stop writing.
Open your hearts and give to those who need.
“Smile… Don’t be angry, only God knows.”

- Anold Etienne

(Anold Etienne is a Haitian artist painter. He currently resides in Chestnut Ridge, NY.)

[Larry Robinson]

Judean Date Palm

The dandelion seed needs
only the rumor of rain
to open its doors
and begin to unfold.

Some seeds, like the chaparral,
are only released
by the merciless grace
of fire and smoke.

Some must travel
the labyrinth
of an animal gut
for their casings to soften.

Still others, like the olive or date,
can sleep safely for centuries
until some crushing blow
awakens the mystery within.

I like to think that,
just before those zealots,
sure of their righteousness
and unbent before the legions
gathering on the plains below,
stepped into eternity,
one among them -
a child perhaps -
savored one final taste
of the sweetness of this life.

Two thousand years later
in Kibbutz Ketura
a young palm tree is growing
from the pit of that date
dropped on the heights of Masada
to await its own rebirth.

- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Enough

I think it is enough,
at times,
to go without knowing
where the end is,
what the beginning--
so long ago.

Perhaps you have friends
who can whisper
such things
in your ear,
hear little bits of
messages
in the laughter of children.

But mostly we just proceed ahead,
not remembering
how it all started,
where it is leading,
not sure
if we are the waiting animal
or the animal's passing
shadow
in the grass.

- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh



Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon,

Because it jumps like a skittish horse and sometimes throws me,

Because it is poky when cold,

Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents,

Because it is flighty,

Because my mind flies into it through my fingers,

Because it leaps forward and backward, is an endless sniffer and searcher,

Because its keys click like hail on a boulder,

And it winks when it goes out,

And puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;

And I lose them and find them,

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,

Because I have let it move in with me right inside the tent,

And it goes with me out every morning;

We fill up our baskets, get back home,

Feel rich, relax, I throw it a scrap and it hums.

- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

Poem after a walk in the woods


I went for a walk in the woods alone at sunset
with my dog
and the earthquake in Haiti
and the health care bill passed by the senate
and a great horned owl
and at least 3 hunters in the surrounding hills
apparently trying to set some kind of a record for ammunition wasted in a one hour period

my feelings about the hunters
were different than my feelings about the owl
though a vole or a mouse might have felt
that the threat in the sounds they made
was pretty similar

and I enumerated in my mind the 4, or was it five, basic goals of the health
care bill passed by the senate, and left it to rest somewhere in the muddy
footprint left by a moose

and for awhile I walked with the ghosts of the people killed in the earthquake in Haiti
hundreds of thousands of them, covered with plaster dust
possibly more than the total number of people killed in the Iraq war
and thought of Pat Robertson, who said, and I paraphrase,
that the Haitians had made a pact with the devil and he was taking his due,
and this comment showed an unprecedented sense of poetry
because how could something so overwhelmingly sad and desperate
come of something so mundane as the subduction of one plate of earth under another?
Certainly an injury this huge in the fabric of the universe
must have been the result of divine intervention.

And I walked with the millions of people who will, like T cells and macrophages and fibroblasts in the dark body of the earth, heal, but oh so excruciatingly slowly, this deep and bleeding laceration.

and then I was just walking with my dog
who was barking at the vole she had unearthed
overjoyed with this intimate interspecies interaction
and then performing brief and truly inadequate CPR with her nose

and the owl again
and the hunters
and the sun setting through grey clouds on the stubble fields and forested hills
the golden light
on the half frozen ponds
of the place I walked
which lacked nothing
of perfection

- Janice Boughton

[Larry Robinson]

Poem for the Poorest Country In the Western Hemisphere

Oh poorest country, this is not your name.
You should be called beacon, and flame,

almond and bougainvillea, garden
and green mountain, villa and hut,

little girl with red ribbons in her hair,
books-under-arm, charmed by the light
of morning,

charcoal seller in black skirt, encircled by dead trees.

You, country, are the businessman
and the eager young man, the grandfather

at the gate, at the crossroads
with the flashlight, with the light,

with the light.

- Danielle Legros Georges

[Larry Robinson]

I believe there is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing – for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean.

There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek.

Intellectually we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins.

The spectacular truth – and this is something that your DNA has known all along – the very atoms of your body – the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so on, were initially forged in long-dead stars.

This is why, when you go stand outside under a moonless country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards.

- Jerry Waxman
( From Astrological Tidbits)
Jerry was a gifted professor of astronomy at Santa Rosa Junior College. He died earlier this year from complications related to Parkinson's Disease.

[Larry Robinson]

Praise Them

The birds don't alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We're the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us?

- Li-Young Lee

[Larry Robinson]

A Valley Like This

Sometimes you look at an empty valley like this,
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the whole world happened -
there was nothing, and then...

But maybe sometimes you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world become nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?

We have to watch and then look at each other.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear
if we don't watch out.

Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party your life is.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Inside Chance

Dance like a jackrabbit
in the dunegrass, dance
not for release, no
the ice holds hard but
for the promise. Yesterday
the chickadeees sang fever,
fever, the mating song.
You can still cross ponds
leaving tracks in the snow
over the sleeping fish
but in the marsh the red
maples look red
again, their buds swelling.
Just one week ago a blizzard
roared for two days.
Ice weeps in the road.
Yet spring hides
in the snow. On the south
wall of the house
the first sharp crown
of crocus sticks out.
Spring lurks inside the hard
casing, and the bud
begins to crack. What seems
dead pares its hunger
sharp and stirs groaning.
If we have not stopped
wanting in the long dark,
we will grasp our desires
soon by the nape.
Inside the fallen brown
apple the seed is alive.
Freeze and thaw, freeze
and thaw, the sap leaps
in the maple under the bark
and although they have
pronounced us dead, we
rise again invisibly,
we rise and the sun sings
in us sweet and smoky
as the blood of the maple
that will soon open its waving
leaves by the thousands.

- Marge Piercy

[Larry Robinson]

Because Even The Word Obstacle Is An Obstacle

Try to love everything that gets in your way;
The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she'll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren't supposed
to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He'll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he'll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
because if something is in your way, it is
going your way, the way
of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

- Allison Luterman

[Larry Robinson]

After

There is one thing certain.
Once you have stood
in the midst of that
searing flash,
been struck down
to earth
like a Mongol taking his bride
on the steppe,
and have lain there,
waiting,
not quite certain—

how can you ever know again
what it is
not to be blinded by the light,
never to have gone there
to the top of the snow hung peak
and felt that nameless something
descend onto your shoulders,
your breast,
even as you bent forward
in disbelief.

- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

Light

Walking uphill,
late morning, as
the ripening sunlight
invigorates, yet eases,

I catch sight
of a fallen post,
gate clamp still bolted,
by Paul years ago,

bringing
to mind
his easy smile,
his quiet, helpful way,

and his passing, weeks ago, in fullness,
and, oddly, feel my step
lighten, my eyes lifted

up to clouds silent, white
afloat overhead
and see:
so we pass.

And so, live.

- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

A Marriage, an Elegy

They lived long, and were faithful
to the good in each other.
They suffered as their faith required.
Now their union is consummate
in earth, and the earth
is their communion. The enter
the serene gravity of the rain,
the hill's passage to the sea.
After long striving, perfect ease.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

The Grapes of My Body.

The grapes of my body can only become wine
After the winemaker tramples me.
I surrender my spirit like grapes to his trampling
So my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.
Although the grapes go on weeping blood and sobbing
"I cannot bear any more anguish, any more cruelty"
The trampler stuffs cotton in His ears: "I am not working in ignorance
You can deny me if you want, you have every excuse,
But it is I who am the Master of this Work.
And when, through my Passion, you reach perfection,
You will never be done praising my name."

- Rumi

[Larry Robinson]

Nova In Night Sky

The river and I are lovers.
We are always together
Separate, but not apart.

The river is tender and temperamental.
It hurls me towards ragged rocks and snags,
and just at the moment of impact
sweeps me away,
toward our mutual destiny.

I come to the edge and I am tossed down.
I fall and I fall until
I feel there is no reprieve.
I hit the water and
fall farther down.
Sucked into a swirling vortex
I spin and I spin
until I do not know
where I am going
or who I am.

And then
I am spit out
into the cool sweet air.
I float, empty,
forever it seems,
until the morning light warms the water.

The river and I are lovers.
It terrifies me
and fills me with such great joy.
It holds me in tender arms
until undulating waves rock and bounce me.
Wave after wave
until I am filled with such heat
that my heart pounds
my head swells
my body bursts
and I become Nova
in night sky.

I fall back upon
the body of the river
spark by spark by spark
until, the river and I
are one.

- Sally Churgel

[Larry Robinson]

Peace Pilgrim, You Are Still Walking

on the long roads, late at night. So many years
after you died, you're not off the hook, you're keeping
the pace, swinging your strong arms.
Who among us found a clearer way?
I shall not accept more than I need
while others in the world have less than they need.
We can work on inner peace and world peace
at the same time. Little people of the world,
may we never feel helpless again.
I marveled at your many-layered pinecone heart
and 3 possessions: toothbrush, postage stamps, comb.
Walk till given shelter, fast till given food.
Still, you're starting before dawn,
pausing at a roped-off trail that says,
THIS IS NO LONGER A FOOTPATH,
shaking your head. I'm sorry you can't rest yet.
One day I woke thinking, it's good you're dead.
We're still fools in a world of war.
Then I recalled the navy canvas of your suit,
how it always felt fresh, not tired.
We listened as hard as we could. What can't we learn?
I would establish a peace department in our government.
Under the swollen orange moon.
On the rim of the sad city, in a cardboard box under the overpass,
you held the calm and the strong conviction.
Oh Peace. Dear Peace.
Don't give up on us. Don't leave us stranded, please.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Mildred Norman Ryder, the woman known as "Peace Pilgrim," began walking in 1953 for the termination of the Korean War, a U.S. Department of Peace, and for nuclear disarmament. She counted the miles she had walked until she reached 25,000 in 1964, but she continued making pilgrimages across the country until the time of her death by car accident in 1981, according to the Friends of Peace Pilgrim Web site.

Peace Pilgrim spoke often of the "freedom of simplicity" and urged those who wished to contribute to world peace to first abandon material desires and achieve peace within themselves, sayswww.peacepilgrim.org.

[Larry Robinson]

Spelled Differently



When I allowed myself to be spelled differently,

the alphabet itself stood at attention

then collapsed in a bale of laughter.



Try on a new face, it spelled out.

Well, I am. It has wrinkles and squintier eyes.



Try on a new body, it again spelled.

Well, hey, this one’s not getting any younger.

Certain sags and bulges are blooming.

Bones, hidden, remind me they are there.



Try on a new mind, it suggested.

So I was flabbergasted again and again.

Dumbfounded. Everything I thought I knew

dissolved. Where to begin?



Try on a new heart, it cajoled:

Bigger-better, wider, kinder.

Oh, all right, I said, in a somewhat disgruntled manner,

and began the intricate work

set before me.



So remember:

who you thought I was: I am not.

For I am spelled differently now,

in an alphabet of an as yet undecipherable language

in a tongue foreign to my own name.



- Tina Devine

[Larry Robinson]

A Man Talking To His House

I say that no one in this caravan is awake
and that while you sleep, a thief is stealing

the signs and symbols of what you thought
was your life. Now you're angry with me for

telling you this! Pay attention to those who
hurt your feelings telling you the truth.

Giving and absorbing compliments is like
trying to paint on water, that insubstantial.

Here is how a man once talked with his house,
“Please, if you're ever about to collapse,

let me know.” One night without a word the
house fell. “What happened to our agreement?”

The house answered, “Day and night I've been
telling you with cracks and broken boards and

holes appearing like mouths opening. But you
kept patching and filling those with mud, so

proud of your stopgap masonry. You didn't
listen.” This house is your body always

saying, I'm leaving; I'm going soon. Don't
hide from one who knows the secret. Drink

the wine of turning toward God. Don't examine
your urine. Examine instead how you praise,

what you wish for, this longing we've been
given. Fall turns pale yellow light wanting

spring and spring arrives! Trees blossom.
Come to the orchard and see what comes to

you, a silent conversation with your soul.

- Jelelludin Rumi

[Larry Robinson]

Night and the River

I have seen the great feet
leaping
into the river

and I have seen moonlight
milky
along the long muzzle

and I have seen the body
of something
scaled and wonderful

slumped in the sudden fire of its mouth,
and I could not tell
which fit me

more comfortably, the power,
or the powerlessness;
neither would have me

entirely; I was divided,
consumed,
by sympathy,

pity, admiration.
After a while
it was done,

the fish had vanished, the bear
lumped away
to the green shore

and into the trees. And then there was only
this story.
It followed me home

and entered my house—
a difficult guest
with a single
tune

which it hums all day and through the night—
slowly or briskly,
it doesn’t matter,

it sounds like a river leaping and falling
it sounds like a body
falling apart.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

John Muir on Mt. Ritter

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble dawn the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

Day to Day Devotions

Imagine making of your life, a prayer
A worship, a devotion. Imagine moving
through the world in celebration
casting alms by the sure presence
of your faith in life.

Imagine waking and rising to
be an invocation, a gifting
in which what is most
precious to you is invited
into the world.

Imagine eating and bathing as
sacramental, a communion with
the sacred other, a remembrance
of all our relations whereby
our own self is given form.

Imagine breathing and walking,
touching and holding to be the
movements of your soul as it
feels its way into your
arms and legs, those
“inlets of soul in our age” as Blake reminds us.

Imagine talking and listening
as rituals of meeting
where who you are is
welcomed into the
heart of another.

Imagine these day to day devotions
as the purest chance you have
of redemption. Imagine
these simple gestures as
God’s sweetest blessing.

- Francis Weller

[Larry Robinson]

Steelhead Valentine

Every year on Valentine’s Day I celebrate the return of the steelhead, Oncorhynchus mykiss (their species name). Mykiss—what could be more perfect?

Whether the run is late or early, on Valentine’s Day they are always in the river, thrusting upstream, in the laguna, in the creeks, heading home in an ecstatic urgency, driven back to their natal beds to spawn. If you watch the creeks in patient silence you will see them. If you listen at night, you will hear them leaping, slapping cradles in the gravel bars.

They are here right now, as you read this--a thread of the culture of this place that stitches you to the people who came before you, just as they stitch the land to the sea, returning nutrients with their very bodies. The carcasses of those that die feed critters all the way up the food chain--that osprey flying overhead a month from now, those river otters I saw last year up at Fitch Mountain.

When you reach for your beloved, think of them. Half in air, he stutters across shallows, rushing to reach her. Veiled in dark water, she glides over the gravel. They are dancing when your hands entwine. He circles over her back. They weave the water in figure eights. She turns on her side, a rainbow through rain.

To hold them in you heart is to value an old companion. To hold them in your heart is to keep clean cold water in our creeks. To hold them in your heart is to protect our streams from toxins and sediment, to keep our hills forested, to restore our urban waterways.

Once by streamside with my lover, we saw a steelhead fly up from the froth of a waterfall, fall back, leap again, fall back, leap again. Love and instinct. Without them, what would life be?

- Elizabeth Carothers Herron