Poetry from the Borderlands

2012

Camping in this place of redwoods
that surrounds a grassy meadow
and dazzling sky and
the Pacific barely within earshot.
Sleepy eyes take their sweet time
opening in damp sunlight peeking
through the redwoods.
I’m wondering how I made it through
the ’60s.

Look at these trees, hundreds of years old.
Is it really 2012? 1967? 1949?
It’s some other era, I’m sure.

Dew collects on my moustache.
The stove ignites somehow,
water heats, years are streaks of light,
coffee grounds in the french press,
elk graze 200 feet away, coffee brews.

Someone told me that we know nothing until
we know everything,
and I know that we’ll never know everything,
therefore we’ll never know nothing.
I can see the possibilities, I said.
Just let the contrarians be contrarians, she said.

I think about my children and how blessed I am.
September’s morning chill shivers my skin
and my first sip warms.
The aroma wanders ahead of me.

And where am I?
For now I’m off a barely visible pair of tracks,
in a wilderness teased by the Pacific,
and for a few moments the world’s noises rush
to get out of my ears.
Silence has its own special roar.

~Marc A. Crowley