Happy Halloween

May your Halloween be zombie free...



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Sunday Poem "War Zone"

The Legacy Project: War Letters

War Zone

by Constance Brewer

Now

that you've gone

away

our relationship

has been committed

to paper,

entrusted

to strangers.

I unwrap

each letter as if

it were

the flag

of some underground

organization.

I imagine

you do the same.

6771

miles

and 10 time zones

wedged between us.

Our relationship

filters through

in bits and pieces,

a puzzle

to be reassembled.

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What A Difference A Week Makes

In case anyone was wondering when winter started... it was yesterday. Wyoming got hammered over the weekend with some nice, heavy, wet snow. A foot or more in places, six inches or so in my neck of the woods. Heavy enough to break limbs off my poor trees. Compare this to last Sunday, when I went hiking at a friend's place near Devils Tower.

Blue skies, temp about in the mid-sixties, a nice breeze blowing...

Well, blowing is an understatement. The breeze came howling down the canyon with enough force to make my sitting-on-top-of-the-canyon-wall meditation a bit nerve-wracking. There were enough downed and precariously perched trees from a fire a few years back that the creaking grew rather ominous. I retreated to the relative safety of a spot further up the canyon, out of the direct line of the wind.



See that tree leaning to the left in the left half of the picture? That was my perch until the wind threatened to rip my ears off my head. Lots of little birds flitting about, bluebirds, a chickadee that serenaded me with a three note rendition of "Stupid Human Tricks". So I gave up on the meditation, and went exploring. I found live deer, a fawn skull and bones, and more evidence of things passed -


Apparently a coyote snacked on a turkey, and left only the bones, feet and feathers. I picked up a few feathers, but declined bringing home gnarly turkey feet for posterity.



I also passed on the snake skeleton. Not sure what it was, bullsnake or rattler, but no rattles I could find, and no head. Better a dead snake than a live one. (And there was a live rattlesnake sighting about an hour before I got there.) The wind picked up yet again, and this time, it was pushing a thunderstorm before it. Rain, a welcome change from the dry. So here we are, a week later, and I have all the anti-dry I could wish for.


Some of us don't seem to mind, however...

Nature Walk

Last week's walk in the park - Big Horn National Forest again, the Meadowlark Lake area. It's on the back side of the Big Horn Mountains, another 30 miles or so from my last hike.

Up the meadow...



Across the stream...

And into the woods...

My objective was an area of forest that suffered a burn a few years back. I could follow a cross country ski trail for a ways, or after a bit, strike off on my own through the woods with my trusty topo map and a general idea of where I was headed.


Of course I chose the 'wing it' method of navigation. After much tramping over hill and dale, including a rest under a tree where an irate squirrel chucked pine cones down on me, I sighted my objective in the distance.



Downed trees everywhere, interlaced with lots of deer and elk sign. I decided to make my way to the top of the ridge. Slow going, between the burnt, broken trees and scattering of rock.

View from partway up the ridge. That tan patch in the distance? The meadow I started out from. About 1200 foot difference in elevation, from 8000 to 9200 feet.

I did the by guess by golly method of returning, eyeballed from the top of the ridge, consulted my topo map, and plunged into the woods. The path turned out to be a tad more difficult. I ended up following a deer trail or two...

Damn deer led me to a boulder field... but I persevered, and soon found a tiny stream, and followed it down, until I reached the bigger stream...

With fish in it! Some nice sized trout, and lots of little ones. I thought of pulling a Man vs. Wild and try and scoop them out with my hands, but, the water was cold, and I didn't have my fishing license with me... that's my story, and it has nothing to do with the deceptive depth of the water compared to the height of my waterproof hiking boots...

A last glimpse as I reach where I stashed my car.

Oh yeah, and the lake in Meadowlark Lake?


Here you go...

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Book Review – Billy Collins “Ballistics”

Ballistics
by Billy Collins
Random House 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6491-5

The latest book of poetry from former poet laureate Billy Collins (2001-2003) is titled “Ballistics”, perhaps as a warning to the reader that a careful analysis is in order. Wikipedia defines ballistics as “the science of mechanics that deals with the motion, behavior, and effects of projectiles”. Collins throws a lot at the reader in terms of history, poetics, and profound ideas disguised under subtle word play, continuing the precedent he set in a previous volume, The Trouble With Poetry. The poems in Ballistics are deeper, more introspective, and in need of repeat readings to grab all the nuances not obvious at a first read through.

The sly humor of previous volumes is still present, just not as ‘in your face’. It’s a testament to Collins’ growth as a poet that he feels free to engage the reader with a more intellectual style of humor, one that counts on background and experience to carry the twists. Collins’ work, is as always, readily accessible -which makes those that believe good poetry should be pretentious - uncomfortable, to say the least. How dare this guy recount experiences that we all can understand and share in? Isn't good poetry supposed to be as dense as Aunt Mary's Christmas fruitcake?

An interesting undertone permeates the poems in Ballistics. Although many run over 40 lines, there is a very ‘haiku’ like quality to the work. After carefully setting the scene and leading the reader in one direction, Collins takes pleasure in offering up an ‘aha’ moment that is startling in its clarity.

In ‘Aubade’, the reader wonders along with Collins why he is up at 5:00am, sitting on the edge of the bed. The reason, in the last stanza, is profound in its simplicity, and makes perfect sense in the grand scheme of things.

In the poem ‘Ballistics’, the underlying tone of dark humor is helped along by Collins’ self-deprecating style. When he twists the knife into the hapless hero of the poem, you can’t help but feel a guilty rush of glee.

In ‘New Year’s Day’, it’s Collins’ wonderful touch with description that carries the day.

“as I lowered a tin diving bell of tea leaves into a little body of roiling water’…

and

‘an X in a square on some kitchen calendar of the future’.

In ‘On The Death Of A Next-Door Neighbor’, we get yet another take on Collins’ personification of death. Just like all Collins’ poems where Death is a character, we find out Death is not someone to be feared, but a regular Joe with a job to do. It might not be the type of employment Death wanted, but if he’s going to do a job, he’s going to do it well.

It’s no big secret - I’m a fan of Billy Collins, even more so now that I watch how his poetry evolves. It’s a risk to move beyond what you know people like and will buy, to something that embraces growth, not only for yourself, but for your readers as well. Ballistics is recommended, not just for fans of Billy Collins, but for those who want to carry a poem around in their head for days after and wonder, “Why have I never seen things this way before?”.

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