Art Chowder November | December, Issue 18 | Page 31

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In this unsettled heat of Self,
Struggling to dampen the cloak of death
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PILGRIMAGE TO TURNBULL
You are also involved with
radio production.  Does this
relate to the writing, and if
so, how?
At the edge of a wooden foot bridge, Itzy bombdives
A cascading wall of cattails, revealing a plump of canvasbacks.
It’s migratory to park here, get out,
I inherited Soundspace on
Spokane Public Radio from my
partner, Norvel, who hosted it
for nearly 20 years. I have been
doing it since 2014 and was
offered a second hour in 2018.
The expanded format gives me
the opportunity to do more theme
shows and to highlight new music,
and “music share” shows, where
I invite a guest to share their
choice of songs and my musical
response to the person’s choices.
If it is a writer sharing, I ask them
to bring excerpts of their writing
to share between songs. It’s an
organic process, always a great
surprise! There is a connection
between being a poet/writer, and
my show. One inspires the other. I
refer to lines of poetry, read lyrics
to listeners, as though a poem,
after the song has played. I am in
regular contact with a variety of
musicians from all over the world
who share their music.
Without map and tender into It is barren here with no one else appearing. Those who
this unlikely paradise, a raptor’s refuge. Don’t know better would call this nothing. They are afraid
Of wildness, full of ancient direction, flights of
Having a dog so small with me education. I am a student of this room imploring
That an owl or hawk or coyote The eagles, the red-tails for my wings back. I’ve got
Could pluck her off into eternity— To beg from something, place cold fingers in
My soul murmurs, “Spare her and Numb pockets. My psyche is a cryogenic biome
Let it be me…” Preventing me from burning up in flames.
But I have already been plucked
From this earth.
Choristers rise from teeming boundaries
Down the sodden service road I hear the calls
Of old ways. Nothing in this everythingness
As I’m careful not to hinder Is out of place. I am in the eternal now,
Illuminating sunbeams that burst onto seeping through the fine grain of cataclysmic ecstasy
An outcrop of basalt (my tumult) of day, Craig, old friend, departed Bickerton, floods
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I stumble, instead, around my own shadow:
Sorrow elongated/exaggerated/exhausted.
Itzy, my oracle, stops and turns to make sure
in through a narrow canyon of recall, pulling rank
past Archangel Norvel (how does a spirit do that?)
Bick was always the first to proclaim Equinox
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I am still visible in my invisibility.
It is hard to fake out your own shadow.
The strain of Cheney wind, in a fine balance
Like BINGO to dull-witted dark pitted Spokane barbacks
Sloshing in the suds – BUTTERCUPS! He’d yell as they feasted
Their eyes on their own ache of channeled scablands:
Sharp-pointed insides created by volcanic thrust.
Between winter and spring, always so big
And out in the open with its unpredictability,
Mimics the climb of a little frog hidden
And rustling in dry broom
Afoot, tenuous mercies recollecting everywhere’s
A grave, and anytime we can die, and do.
Of dormant grass. It tangles up its leap,
Ponderosas bent, we walk near breaking—my stories
Arid and sustained, in its return to receded pond
That lies flat and brown as a buckwheat pancake.
What are you working on
now? 
Prayerful with each step in and out of mud-grooved
Mind. I welcome the song of trumpet swans overhead,
I’m dreaming time to Sigur Ros, The exquisite breeze they spread from the flap of
Envisioning an Icelandic orchestra like them
Of gusto singing a birdsong to wrestle myself back
To timbered, articulate spirit.
I’m certain this expanse holds unforgotten notes
Their wings, like palms together in immaculate manner,
As feathers, each finger lines up against the next
To next, a winging of spirit reborn to return
Again and again, mating for New Life.
I have to forget to remember again.
What are the best ways for someone to engage with poetry?
01 Walk around your place reading what you fancy out loud,
02 if you write poetry, get brave, and go read it in public somewhere;
who cares if it may suck, you give it life when you do this,
03 listen to recordings of the poets, themselves, reading their
own work, not others.
I just finished assisting my friend
Vic Charlo, Salish poet from
Northwest Montana, with the
release of his second book of
poetry/stories. I transcribed the
manuscript from Vic’s journals
about five years ago; it went
through a series of edits, and was
just published.
I tell myself, to an unconvincing sky, that I’m hospitable,
Thick in the drown of an underworld,
Of Northern Lights flashing across this stage
I kept detailed journal notes and
emails during my grief journey,
after my partner of nine years,
Norvel, died in 2013. I have found
enough distance and clarity to be
able to organize and work that
material into a memoir draft. It
is a multi-faceted approach to
death and loss, with words of
wisdom, snippets, poems, and
stories. I hope to have a working
manuscript by the end of 2018.
Nature breaks this news to us as a beatific vision.
November |December 2018
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