(For Adam Forest Oelsner)

1.
Sun roves up the valley
over warm enormous pebbles.

On a hill
of small bent pines,
white daisies.

2.
Lummi Indian Protest, Washington

Above the snowmelt river,
caterpillar tractors drone.
Wind whups the pine.
When all this din dies down,
hear angry Lummi drums boom
from a sand spit across Samish Bay.
They pound out protest
for lost fishing rights
and for the hindered rites
of salmon season.
The drums resound again
for souls of squandered trees.

3.
Twilight (Lummi Island, Washington)

Green thimbles,
the pine islands.

This earth,
a woman who soothes her lover,
gathers us to herself again.
Time slows down
slowly.

4.
Pinecone Pagoda

Hold a pinecone
palm-wise.
The pilgrim eye
finds a shrine.

5.
O Purest of Naked Nights

Wrapped in blankets
under the great triangle
roadway of a pine,
I face the glinting stars
and see

all is absolutely awake.

No matter if I sleep
or lie restless
watching godlike torsos
of cloud shift.
The pine seethes;
the stars are seeing hawks.

6.
Midway Up Mt. Rainier…

I saw a deer, a doe.
She eyed me as I turned away
to let her graze the grassy ridge.
She stayed a moment, then stepped down
the slope. I put up my orange pup tent where she’d been,
then sat and ate beef jerky and gazed into the wild abandoned
orchard of the West.