epic poem

i just watched rivers and tides and wrote the longest poem i've ever written while watching it. if you are reading this, you influenced this poem, too. someday i should edit it. probably not today. have concrete things to do, too. i think it's a movie length-poem, so beware. it needs an editing room. some words are stolen. i try to quote them when they are. others are me changing things, seeing things, extrapolating, trying to tell you and me and everything something.



When spring begins
it doesn't begin on the surface
it begins below.

an exchange of energy, of heat
that begins inside
and must work its way up
before we can see
the evidence of change.

the snow may still unexpectedly fall
down from the heavens
but the earth knows
of the change that's begun.

it is only a matter of time
for the change to sprout up
for the new cycle to begin.

roots can look charred, look painted,
fragile, but it's just the way we find them.

we find ways of understanding
what's going on at the moment.

some of last year's plants
will not grow again
even though they're still
connected to that root system
underground

the idea of what happened last year
is being repeated this year

we are going to come through this.

the old must burn
to give new life

the real work
is the change.

processes in nature are connected
to the sun, the moon, the tide, growth.

pull your own tooth
hold a baby bunny
look at film
see stones
through light

talk about
sculpture
through pictures

we get visually
and physically numb
to what we've made

good work
and bad work
everything
is put into here

who are you working for?

do you work intuitively?

pick
yellow flowers
by a stone wall

make
your best work

indications of how strongly
you feel for this place

pick dandelions
for a tin bowl

. . . . . .


a child is the first
to be born on the street

you see only births,
she sees only deaths

he lies in the rain
on the concrete
to see his shadow
while he rises

a rainbow

a yellow trail
of picked flowers
through a purple patch

a red ribbon
streaming through
green leaves

water rushes,
a bouquet of dandelions
afixed to rocks

he loves me, he loves me not
thrown into the
rushing stream

beauty
for its own sake

the river,
a line we follow
an unpredictability
running through
its own cycles
to the weather
and the sea

the river
joins the year
together

a river of stone
animals
wind
water

a river is not
dependent on water
we're talking about
flow

green leaves
chased through
by a green ribbon

a river of growth
that flows through
the trees
and the land

a spiral eye
on the skin
of a tree
its depth
is not seen
when it stays still.

our depth is not seen
when we stay still.

the barbs on the tree
the bulbous growths
make it look
tumored
cancered
but seen from
the landscape
it is
its own whole

its branches make
its own kaleidoscope
while the rams,
the ewes, the baby sheep
make their kaleidoscope
in its midst.

the shepherd
still carries
a hooked staff
catches
a running,
cornered sheep

helps it
to birth
new young

it is not
stillborn
though covered
in mucus
the shock
of new life
it may seem so
at first

surprisingly
it is all over
very quick
painless
the baby shakes
its head

the mother
her own fur matted
licks mucus
off her baby

the men look on,
handle what they can
with their hands

somewhere
there is also
death

a curled horn
seems so inappropriate
for this life
too ornate
for our eyes
let alone
his head

clumps of sheep hair
strung together
strewn over stones
a river of sheep
a flow of movement
in their own way

sheep dot the landscape
strings of wool
strewn on rock

there are no trees
because of the sheep

they have had
a deep impact
on the land

he feels a need
to work with
the sheep
and yet knows
his perception of sheep
is so different from
the reality
of sheep

it makes it
an incredibly
difficult thing
to work with
because
we perceive it
as being a wooly animal

to get through
that wooliness
the essence of
the sheep
is very hard

the sheep
is a powerful animal
in its own way

a wall of lumpy stone
built by man


..............


sheep have been responsible
for social and political upheavals
he says

people were put off
the land,
moved away
for the sheep
baby sheep today

they have left their
story behind them.

there is an emptiness
in the landscape
because of sheep.

wool-y mammoth
stone

big stone
touched by man

people lived, worked, and died here,
he can feel their presence
in the place where he works

.....................

I am the next layer
upon things that have
already happened.

climb a moss-splotted stone
seen from above
it forms a circle

not a sign
of man or woman
but a gateway,
an opening

mothers and fathers
to an art

a monument
amidst a landscape

the camera revolves
in earthy revolution
resolution

he doesn't think
the earth needs him
at all
but he does need it

his work
roots him again
and if he doesn't work
he feels
root-less.

he doesn't
know himself

he needs to be
on his own
at times
enjoys being
by himself

there are people's
company
he does enjoy
and yet he heals and feeds
on his own solitude

to be honest, he says,
he is drained
by people.

there are subtleties
that only he
is aware of
the present state
of the wind

though he looks
as calm as he did
30 seconds ago
there are those little warning bells
going off inside

he has built
an unknowably standing web
of twigs
connecting to a tree
somehow standing
in the air

he makes what shouldn't
stand in the air

its vast difference
from expectation
from convention
stands
and makes space
for the sun to shine through.

when he makes a work
he often takes it
to the very edge
of its collapse.

a beautiful balance

it shakes
and he reaches
to catch it
steady his creation,
with both hands
bandaged fingers

He watches it collapse
and holds his head.

It is gone,
and he sits sighing,
That was close.

"I am amazed at times
that I am actually alive."

His creation
lies in a heap
the tree branches
stand
in a heap,
root system
seeable, greened by codependent creatures

.................................

"There have been occasions
when someone very close to me died."

He smacks the dirt off the moss
makes thread
as he does from wool, from flowers
strings along everything he knows
to his most beautiful extension.

He reaffixes what he can.

The image
of his brother dying
is burned in his mind.

The day after
he worked
at the tree.
Seemed
the right place
to go.

He finally made
a work with the whole
on the tree.

He has come to see it
as a kind of entrance
into the tree, the stone, the earth

"An entrance
between which
life both ebbs
and flows."

Looking into a black hole
he often describes
is like looking over a cliff's edge.

A sense of being
drawn into the black
as drawn into the depths
The distance

But the other side
of that
is out of that
also comes growth

even stones
have holes

The black is not just a death
not just the absence
it's the intangible
but in the context
of a tree
that he knows
will come back to life.

There's nothing more potent
than a black hole
that he's made

and later he sees
a little finger of growth
a blade of growth
growing out of the black.

the river gurgles in
an unimaginable surge
of its own
unexpected direction.

forces following
the earth, gravity
as they unexpectedly combine
circle
and entangle
before making their way.

leaves upon leaves
strung together
in unexpected chains
twining their way together
like a serpent
down a stream
a sway they live
in their own creation

unexpected leaps and bounds
a ribboned collapse
of unpredictable direction

a flow
not knowing
which end
is up
until it is up

breakfast is served
at a diner
syrup over eggs
over waffles,
bacon.

men pound stones
shirtless in shorts

they are making a wall
repairing gaps

he has to respect
their work
their lives

they each have their roles
working their own space

their dialogue with the stone
is what makes the wall

it makes itself
to some extent

the fluidity of working
that gives the sculpture
a sense of movement, energy

walls are a link
back to a home

settlers make
walls
and we remake
the walls
so that they talk
about the place
as it is now.

"The walls have
come out of that process
of cutting down the trees
and turning the forest
into farmland.

But then farming has shifted
away from this landscape
and trees found shelter in the wall
and grew."

It is a dialogue.

"A wall is a line
in sympathy with the place
through which it travels."

That sense of movement
is very important
to the understanding
of sculpture

the river of growth
a flow that runs
around the world
the veins that run
around the world

roads
arteries
trucks
farms
land
music
pulse
water
curving walls
expanses of trees
birdsong
symphony
quiet regret
sound of movement

red drips on stone
he reaches into the water
and collects
stones that color
red on rock
he beats them
their iron,
making rocks, blood red

he feels special energy
in the red
its relationship to blood
something he can't explain entirely

a relationship to life
even though things die
they're part
of that flow still.

they become part
of the river of red.

"In Japan you'll see
a red maple tree
against a green mountain
and it's like a
wound in the mountain."

an energy and violence
about the color

a continuous pursuit
of red

as he approaches its source,
he learns the lessons
of the color

the color is also
in him
a feeling of a color and energy
flowing through all things

the water turns red
a seepage
of iron

realizing the red
is not so obvious

something so dramatic,
so intense
and so hidden
underneath the skin
of the earth

released,
it swirls,
it pools

a shock at seeing that color
so alien to the river
while its origins are rooted
to that place.

stone goes through a process
of solidification
and then becoming fluid again
and becoming solid once more

a memory in the life of the stone
very much in the spirit, in its nature

"We set so much
by our idea
of the stability of stone
and when we find
that stone itself
is actually fluid and liquid
it can undermine
our sense
of what is here to stay
and what isn't."

. . . . . .

They put human hair
from the barbershop in his town
in the clay to the walls that he builds

the cracks at the surface
of the clay
contain us
the cracks at our surface
contain the growth
the flow
of all

of course it feels alive.

words do their job,
but what he's doing there
says a lot more.

unravel your soul.

mist, water, the snow blows

much deeper than that.