Transformation: Into the Telluric:

I have often been fascinated by how my poems change and metamorphose. This past week I decided to look back at one poem in particular that appears in this book. It first appeared on my Hiking Blog: "Helder~Hiking Adventures!" back in November of 2010 with pictures and was also accompanied by a poem by Alan Casline. Both poems were a poetic experiment in response to our hike together on Bennett Hill. I actually wrote mine on my then new iPad as I hiked. It was immediate, impressionistic and spontaneous.

Not long afterwards Alan published it as a Broadside. Not much had changed at that point with the exception of some of the line formatting. The differences were subtle.

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Last year as I collected and composed this cycle of poems into a cohesive narrative things changed. I had hiked Bennett Hill several more times by then. Alone, and in different weather conditions at various times of the year. It had become home. Less a place of the world, more a place of contemplation, spiritual communion and reflection. 

Chronologically it is located fairly early in the cycle and as it was one of the first pieces completed soon after moving here that makes sense. This is how it appears in  "A Mythological Map of The Telluric Voices poems: What they symbolize and how they fit along The Path Of The Poet's' Journey."

3.) Nò ŏnŏquaàm: (I have had a beautiful dream.) Departure- "Supernatural Aid." Timeframe: One Autumn day.

The complete "Map" was an invaluable tool as I wrote and gathered the cycle. This much organization and ridged criteria is not normally characteristic of me but in this case it allowed me to focus and stick with the poetic path as it were. It allowed me see where I had been, where I was going and track my spiritual growth as well. (At some point in the future I will post the complete "Map" for the curious.) Here then, as summer swelters and beats on, is the finished poem as it appears in the book:

~

"He now came in view of land, on which he debarked in safety, and could see the lodge of the Shining Manito[*], situated on a hill."  -Henry Rowe Schoolcraft: Algic Researches. 

~

Nò ŏnŏquaàm:
 (I have had a beautiful dream.)

Wachtschù Mennitow [†]

your
arboreous-mane

now
autumn tincture

I stand alone

in white-pine grove
          search
for wetland

blinded
          by sunlight

crash through trees 

walk false trail
                      circle
                summit
 of dreams 

~

Listen

         trains

                 blow distance

         call me home 

to yesterdays

Shaman in tree-mask
speaks
 through wood:

"Lost one

             follow oak

                          don't forget"

~

        Switch-
 back
         down
       your
spine

Into
 shade
 your shalier
side
Birch litters
           your
           cliffs

       Sloping
    down
sharply

to moss
     covered
     lowlands
     of home

~

Here
       trail
less
      clearly

marked
I search again

make way
 to infinite
 futures

drink
 then onwards

find
 sacred spring
  encourage flow

drink
 say prayer

rest.

~

[*] Manito: 'Spirit' -Henry Rowe Schoolcraft: Algic Researches. Schoolcraft was working with the Ojibwa language. The Mahican equivalent would be 'Mennitow'

[†] Wachtschù: 'Mountain, or hill.' :Schmick's Mahican Dictionary Edited by Carl Masthay. I have created Wachtschù Mennitow for my own purposes and in my own spiritual imaginings. Hence: Wachtschù [Mountian] Mennitow [Spirit].

obeedúid~

20/July/12