Last Week of Happy Campers

This is my last week at the Boy Scouts… I’m going to miss it, but at the same time I’m looking forward to being out of the hot sun for a while. Part of me feels pretty scorched in the heat.

I approached the head of the Leave No Trace program at camp today — on Wednesday we’re going to do a workshop together on responsible rock balancing, and he was keen on it, so I think it’ll be interesting to hear the BSA official response to rock balancing.

I bought the last of my gear for fencing school today, and it wasn’t exactly cheap. I’m not sure how much of it I will ever use again. It feels ugly to spend so much on equipment for a sport that doesn’t even start until November, but I need the equipment in Colorado, or I can’t fence.

My hiking shoes are literally coming apart at the seams. I have walked my hiking boots off my feet this past spring and summer, and by autumn they will probably be unusable.

I keep hoping to have my internet connection, my latest poetry and my computer all in the same place at the same time. So far, it’s not happened. I’ll keep working at it.

Surfacing, Take 2

Ahooogah! Ahooogah!

This is the approximate sound made on board a US submarine as it rises toward the surface, or engaged in a full dive. I’ve made few appearances lately, either here or in person at a lot of events, and I wanted to say a little bit about what I’ve been up to.

I’ve been changing things over at the Boy Scouts. Shaking them up a bit, maybe. Getting shook up, a lot. I’ve given them a lot more of my time this summer than I meant to, and it’s taken its toll. The chapel service this week was the best we’ve had all summer, but it was also the least well-attended; I find myself wondering if word is getting around that I’m not doing a specifically Christian service, or worse. I learned half-a-dozen new plants in the first two weeks of camp, but since then it’s been nothing. I taught one group of boy scouts to recognize a couple of edible wild plants — so they harvested all of them and brought them to their troop to sample. Now they’re gone from camp, despite my warnings that they should not harvest ALL of them.

These are the same people who get angry at me for balancing rocks. It’s not OK to balance rocks in public places within sight of a man-made lake, but it is OK to harvest every single sample of an edible wild species despite an instructor’s warnings to the contrary??

Last summer, the food was terrible and I lost weight. The new cook is good, but for all the walking and exercise I’ve been getting, I’ve not been losing weight, I’ve been gaining.

A week from Saturday, and I’ll be on a plane to Colorado Springs, CO, for ten days of USFA coaches’ college. You can tell me who to see and what poetry events to check out in Colorado Springs, but frankly, I don’t think I’m going to have the time.

I have a new writing assignment from folks down in GA. Haven’t seen a contract, don’t know what I’m supposed to get paid — tempted to pass on the contract for an August in the cockpit of my kayak.

Still haven’t finished the July New Moon sonnet, and a couple of other poems, and feeling really ticked off about that. Getting hints from school that in the wake of a colleague’s departure, that there’s all sorts of new work for me to do, and not much in the way of compensation or recognition — need to be better about saying, “this doesn’t work for me.”

A lot doesn’t seem to be working for me. I lost my wallet this July, lost two checks, lost my ID, lost a lot of time, lost a lot of time with friends, lost a lot of time on my own with a notebook and a pen, and with Leah.

Hippo Birdies

Happy Birthday to me…

In about half-an-hour, it will be the 21st of July, the day on which I was born. Two entries back in this journal, you will find the invitation to my birthday party on July 22nd. Love to see a bunch of you there, particularly poets. It should be splendid.

In the meantime, I’d like to thank the world for being such a wonderful place. I’m having a great time and I’m glad to be alive.

Birthday

So. I’m teaching at the local boy scout camp. It’s been fun, but the last few days in the raucous, riotous heat have not been so much fun. Still, I’ve been teaching environmental science and archaeology (officially) and magic and rock balancing (unofficially). It’s been good, and apparently it’s starting to have some effects of a positive sort.

My birthday party is Saturday, and I’d love to see some folks there. So far, I only have regrets, can’t be there. Alas. Still, it would be fun to have your company. See the previous entry for more info, and feel free to leave comments or e-mail me.

Birthday

So… Friday is my thirty-sixth birthday.

I want lots of presence, not presents.

I’d like to have a chance to introduce a lot of you folks between many circles to one another. You’re all cool and amazing people. So here’s the deal:

Saturday, 22 July!

At Leah’s Place!
in Ashford, CT

The third annual Drum & Poetry Jam
from 6 pm until midnight
(or so, so we don’t annoy the neighbors).

RSVP

If you RSVP, you get directions to the location.
Otherwise, you don’t.

Bring a potluck item for all the people to share,
bring a poem, and bring a percussion instrument.

Dinner will be ‘served’ from 6pm-ish until it’s dark enough for a fire,
and then we’ll adjourn to the fire circle for drumming
interspersed with spoken word.

Birthday cake will be provided at some point.
Limited tenting will be available, for those who wish to stay overnight.

Special super-secret ice-cream trip to the place
that not only has its own ice cream but its own cows can be arranged
for late afternoon on the 22nd or early on the 23rd.

Those wishing to come early to help set the space are welcome.

July Ides Sonnet

Monarch butterfly flits across the field—
fluttering of orange on rolling green.
Jewelweed prepares its annual yield
of blooms and seeds. Obeying golden mean,
spider surveys web with spiraling thread
between nodding blossoms of wild leek.
Last lingering barn swallow chick has fled;
whole cavalcades of ferns flourish by creek,
and phoebe grows strong. Youthful chickadee
fancy-dances, branch to branch, as finches
talk, squabble and bicker incessantly.
Red-winged blackbird observes them from branches.
Bright mushrooms lift their domes on marble trunks
that rise from forest floor and rotting stumps.

Hymn for Consualia

The Consualia was a festival in honor of Consus, the god of the ripening harvest, in ancient Rome. He’s a green man of ripening fields and orchards; around here, in rural Connecticut, he seemed like a suitable figure of veneration.

Summertime Sun dapples field and meadow,
swelling green apple and ripening grain.
Bass play in lake where sunlight and shadow
merge, mirroring leaf and sky. Soft rain
plonks upon leaves of wild strawberry,
soaking in turn through soil and substrate
to replenish deep-dreaming aquifer.
A sweet maroon gloss lacquers each cherry.
Windfall belongs to raccoon — reprobate
that he is — and ant, steady pilferer.

And you, Consus, preside over altar
where light minutely transforms to sweetness
as chlorophyll binds photons to sugar,
giving rise to all forms of happiness,
earthiness in grain and fire in grape,
water in cucumber and wind in corn,
and generative force in all that grows.
Apples fill in to their desired shape,
nourishing their seeds which may yet be born;
wheat trembles in its roots with what it knows:

that the scythe and sickle are coming soon,
and harvesters take whetstones to their blades.
The wheel of the year is sinking past noon,
and reaping shall commence as summer fades
into twilight. Consus, guard the pastures,
and defend orchards from insect and blight;
guide farmer’s hand to remove weed and pest.
Cover pear and peach with healthy vestures
and fill pumpkin with savory delight
so garden and field with bounty are blest.

Sonnet for July Full Moon

I’ve been working like crazy the last three weeks, first trying to get camp ready to open, and then teaching. Leah and I took a break for July 4th weekend, but other than that I’ve been running around like a head with the chicken cut off.

As a result, I’ve had time to write the sonnets and songs for different days, but I haven’t had a chance to type them up. Silly me.

Hail, lady Moon, tiger lily of night,
fragile orange petals painted with spots.
Oaks heave roots from marsh, avoiding nine rots.
Food that tree swallow disdains, raccoon might
gobble up before owl’s first twilight flight.
Trout, bass and sunny eat by fits and starts.
Downy rattlesnake recovers from hurts.
Bullfrog eats fly, then becomes snake’s delight.
You rise through pollution to purity
climbing redder than war, redder than blood
though the turning stars wash you white again.
A lonely warbler sings with clarity
of dying red pines and streams choked with mud,
and Nature’s revolt against laws of men.

Part of my work for the BSA involves teaching soil and water conservation, so I’ve been looking over a lot of environmentally damaged areas around the camp and elsewhere. It’s been hard not to connect the soil erosion and water pollution I’ve seen as a result, with the red moon we’ve seen the last few nights around here. Maybe they’re not connected, but I know that bird populations seem to be down — last spring we heard maybe 30 birds during my morning walks, and now we’re hearing only fifteen or so, maybe twenty. It’s partly the weather, but it’s hard not to attribute the decline to human activity, as well.

July Nones Sonnet

Steamy haze rises sluggishly from pond;
great blue heron stalks minnows in shallows.
Doe marks her passage with broken fern frond;
forest verge gleams with berries and mallows.
Celandine adorns an old cellar wall.
Oriole alights on a moss-decked branch
of weeping willow whose limbs gently fall.
Hummingbird wings so fast, no eye can match.
Wood sorrel and plantain and white clover
dapple open meadows and ruin lawns —
vanguards of encroaching forest cover,
viburnum and wild mint are mere pawns.
Soil receives both milkweed and yarrow,
cocooning monarch and feeding sparrow.

Water Bottle

Last night at Java Hut, I left my water bottle along the East Wall, under the Prince Prints. Of course, all the artwork is probably down now. It’s white, with a black top, and it’s zipped into a red/maroon thermos lining.

If anyone who is painting today, tomorrow and Wednesday finds it, would you please save it for me? I’ll pick it up this week if it’s a hassle to have it there.