Nostr notes by Doyu Shonin

Three deep breaths, palms together, Here in her room, or ...

2024-11-05T21:52:23Z

Three deep breaths, palms together,
Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may
Rise and take. A habit she has formed,
Even as most of her ideas, ideals,
Even her so cherished findings, hard found,

Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished,
Even those most like faith, as taught her,
Even those most like science, measured, observed,
Peeled one by one: a human desert, she.

By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how?
Reality itself a question she's no longer asking,
Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.
All she bothers to call caring is now to listen
To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to
Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices
Spending both hope and pain. She bows.

An #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=acrostic]acrostic[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] by Shonin from about 2016, reflecting on the effects of #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=zazen]zazen[/url] practice on her life. #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=Buddhism]Buddhism[/url], #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]

What she will do today is walk and take in Hand her apple staff, ...

2024-11-04T23:08:46Z

What she will do today is walk and take in
Hand her apple staff, leaning on it
As she does now, more and yet more
The nearer arriving to a last heart beat

She comes, and check for vegs and berries.
Here are yet more peas; she's not as
Eager for them as three days ago.

With a bit more busy-ness, she'd go
In for blanching those. Onions and
Leeks too small yet; almost out of
Lettuce; tomatoes on the other hand

Doing well, and some ready already.
Oh, she could cut kale, collards or chard

This morning like any late spring morning,
Only she's hungry for something more.
Do what she will, there are yet no pears,
Apples, zukes, potatoes, corn, or beans.
You must make with what you have.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=aging]aging[/url]
Shonin wrote this #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=acrostic]acrostic[/url] about 2016, during a time of #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=drought]drought[/url]

There are two climbing roses by her gate, one to each side, with ...

2024-11-04T16:52:51Z

There are two climbing roses by her gate,
one to each side, with velvet blooms, small,
but heavily scented, suitable for soaps, salves

and potpourri. They blossom out together,
several hundred, perhaps a thousand whorls
French pink, shading to cream, the haunt

of matching shy arachnids. How tall they'd grow
she doesn't know, having twined an arch of willow
whips atop her gate, to bind them to.

In her middle years, her family took this place
and named it for the stony creek, dry
in summer, rolling through between house

and garden. A storm year came; that garden up
and vanished down a river to the sea,
leaving them three dead plum trees and a rose.

She started fresh, by the house. For the rose
she chose north, a shaded wall, and while the bush
liked a hidden spring there, for drinking,

it never cared for the paucity of light. It'd
stretch its greeny fingers roofward, up
and over; send roots drilling left and right;

make awkward shoots. Shift it one more time,
she thought. Maybe both sides of a sunny gate
she'd build, with an arch. The spot she had in view

she could muse on from her kitchen window.
Again two days of digging, and with her bow saw
made one rose two. Would they take another journey?

It seemed they would, though they'd always want water;
She'd have to remember to make the hoses reach.
She wouldn't mind if the roses wouldn't mind.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url]
Shonin still misses her Rose Gate. Written about 2019.

Along the new trail, built by no one I knew, acorns had fallen by ...

2024-11-04T00:00:06Z

Along the new trail, built by no one I knew,
acorns had fallen by thousands, more than enough
to leave creatures dazed by too much fortune.

Conkers have tumbled among them, each
experimentally chipped and then rejected
by some set of tiny teeth. Hazel nuts

were better, it seems. Should an adder pass en route
to denning, amid this rich mast, amid
this late fall of goldened leaves of ash

and beech, I might merely step aside,
unalarmed as any fattened squirrel.
Across the pasture, I remember, past

the partly shaded ferns, cowslips, bluebells,
buttercups of spring and summer, where
falling water, catkin-patterned, drowned out

the cygnet's cry in an otter's teeth (witnessed
by a kingfisher, two low-flying larks and a heron),
a willow had leaned to hide that tiny sorrow

and also shade a loafing spotted newt.
The hill behind, where bees sought nectar of a kind
from sunburnt heather, swept up to a copse of oak,

wrapped in a druid's dream of mistletoe and ivy.
There I had paused for dandelion wine.
Perhaps the trail will help some find this place.

My children, do not forget there is a world.

________________________________
#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=nature]nature[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=vocabulary]vocabulary[/url]
*This was written by Shonin in response to a report, by Robert MacFarlane, of the [url=https://oxfordpoetrylibrary.com/the-lost-words/]disappearance of certain words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary[/url]. It contains a number of the examples cited.

praying for rain Perhaps the seedlings were better off inside, ...

2024-11-03T16:39:12Z

praying for rain

Perhaps the seedlings were better off inside,
Really. She's never sure what's best for them,
All down the years trying peat pots, blocks,
Yanking down flats from storage, penciling markers,
Ingratiating herself with baked soils,
Now trying perlite, vermiculite, moss,
Getting out lamps and heaters, rotating flats,

Fighting intruding snails, mice and rats
Or even knotweed and bindweed
Running their tendrils up through brick.

Right now, she wishes she hadn't hurried.
All her helpless babies in cracked clay!
If it doesn't rain tonight, she tells herself,
Never again shall I call April May.

praying for rain to stop

While watching forests comb wet bellies,
All grey and louring, of heartless clouds,
I wondered how the heavy earth breathes
Thus more than dampened, more than drowned
In so much rain. The very snails could gasp,
Nudging toward such daylight as they might,
Grudged them by endless drops, dropping.

Fear for my crops, standing in chill pools
Or bent, prostrated, shambled, lying left and
Right, I feel, yet not enough to go and see.

There are tree branches, if I go, ready to pull
Hair, poke eyes, and shower me to my skin,
Every direction, along each path and bed.

Running streamlets ease a darkening land
All river-bound, discovering the slightest slope,
Inland being anathema to them,
No place like home, their wide and welcoming sea.

There all streams meet, mingle, and play.
Ocean the lowest place, where rain may end in

Stillness some times, or leap about, yet bounded.
There it may stop awhile, then one day mist forth
Over waves and shores, plains and mountains
Putting forth life and death again, a cycle.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=rain]rain[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=drought]drought[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=deluge]deluge[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=weather]weather[/url]
Two #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=acrostic]acrostic[/url] poems written by Shonin as a contrasting pair, as drought ended and an #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=AtmosphericRiver]AtmosphericRiver[/url] began.

When Polyhymnia sends refracted light shimmering toward parched ...

2024-11-02T13:59:02Z

When Polyhymnia sends refracted light
 shimmering toward parched and shriveled roots, 
seeking some semblance of promise kept alive 

between her hands, her well, her seeds and soil,  
A bit of fluff, a female Anna's, comes 
to perch nearby, cocking its tiny head 

and waiting. Waiting for the hose to steady 
its cold blast toward some fainting eggplant  
or tomatillo, ready for a burst of aimed 

delight, catching one rainbowed drop of water 
short, then flitting to the fence again, 
shivering. To the Muse of hymns and farmers it's  

a game, to the throbbing ball of feathers more. 
Its heart will stop without the gift of rain.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=drought]drought[/url]
Shonin wrote this about 2015. Polyhymnia is the Muse of farming and holy songs (the kind that bless farming). Shonin sometimes uses an image of this muse as her avatar.

When her back began alarmingly to creak, and all the earth ...

2024-11-02T00:01:05Z

When her back began alarmingly
 to creak, and all the earth receded far
 below, she made herself a bench, a slat  

of fir between two other slats of fir. 
Her knees derided her presumption, so 
she tacked a bit of carpet on, to ease  

the landings when she launched them out and down, 
hoping, as she did so, nothing was 
missing: not the ho-mi*, nor the seeds  

or seedlings in their flat, or soil she'd stolen
 from the neighbor's molehills, baked and sifted, 
nor the hose-end with its chilly hand  

of brass. Any unpresent thing could send her
 wandering from barn to potting shed 
to kitchen counter, swearing at herself,  

ending in her having yet another
 cup of something, using up the morning's 
bag of tea -- again. Gardening  

is knowing what to do, and when, they say,
 leaving out that bit about old brains 
forgetting what to do about forgetting.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poems]poems[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=aging]aging[/url]
Written about 2017 by Shonin, 67 at the time. She's even more forgetful in 2024.
*ho-mi: Korean hand hoe. Gardeners should never be without one.

"There was a word for that -- I am forgettin' it; ...

2024-11-01T14:04:56Z

"There was a word for that -- I am forgettin' it;
forgettin' things I thought I'd never not know --
As I once understood th' way a shackle will turn

to follow th' wire rope reaching back to th' pulley,
or which way th' water will run when it falls
from th' crook of an east-leaning alder in th' rain,

or run from an alder's elbow that leans west,
when th' storm comes in, always from southwest.
Oh, th' word! A short one, I should be able to just

say it! Clevis! Yes, we called a shackle a Clevis,
I don't know why. So, John, he picked up th' Clevis
and hung it on th' drawbar of the Cat, slipped

th' loop onto it, and reached to set th' pin;
but Alley, he thought he'd heard John say 'Ready,'
an' put her into gear. So. That wire rope

sang just like a bowstring, an' th' Clevis
rotated right around th' slot in th' drawbar
an' went through John like he was made of suet.

He stood there for a moment -- like me now –
trying to remember. Fixin' in his mind
what it had been like, bein' alive."

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Shonin wrote this circa 1994, remembering a story she was told while putting a Clevis on a drawbar in 1979.

I stop at the flower lady's cart to see if she has roses. ...

2024-10-31T16:47:01Z

I stop at the flower lady's cart
to see if she has roses. There are a few,
with straggling leaves. The blooms

are decent still, especially those in pink.
She interrupts her desultory lunch,
brushing crumbs from her sleeve, to slip

a long-stemmed pink from among the buds,
carries it to her work table, and deftly wraps
the stalk in a yellow paper, tying it,

gentle-fingered, with a thin red ribbon.
I watch her eyes as I buy; they are like
those in the face I love, but the spirit is closed:

she has dwelt upon disappointments.
As I turn away, I see in my mind's
eye, myself turning back to buy for her

one of her own roses. Ha! no doubt she must
throw away many; of all things, wouldn't
she be sick, by now, of flowers?

Trading, as she does, in these signs
of the happiness to others, what would be
happiness for her, here, today? I catch

her tracking me warily; now, as if to say:
is there some problem with the rose? No.
Or, rather, yes. Or no. I stand, unworded

by the mystery of unsharable joy.

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Written by Shonin about 2002. It was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, FWIW.

As the rains return again, she notes, almost in passing, how her ...

2024-10-31T02:15:48Z

As the rains return again, she notes, almost
in passing, how her strait love remains;
how darkness, wind, and sorry days of

work and worry cannot shake it. We are not
built to last; we know that. Some speak of life
as it were stark tragedy alone, a

trudging from diaper to death bed, doomed
because end it must. Others try, by seeking
comedic relief, to put such gloom aside,

assuming that to live brightly today will,
somehow, pay for the pain of barely living
later, when last years have but begun.

Her truth: somewhere between. She would,
if the gods permitted, lose herself in your eyes
every day of forever, but knowing this

will end, and relatively soon, makes her not
over-sad, nor will she lie to you now
with thoughtless laughter; rather it makes her

carefully love you, deeply as she does here,
breathing your name in, breathing it out, like prayer.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=relationships]relationships[/url]
Written about 1998 by Shonin

Here was a man who was known as an Oregon poet. He never wasted ...

2024-10-30T19:32:22Z

Here was a man who was known
as an Oregon poet.

He never wasted words.
He wrote a poem

Every day, rain or shine, and so
he had some

rain poems and some shine poems
and if people

came to him saying, sir, give us a book
he would turn

and rummage in desk drawers
or grope

along shelves in the kitchen.
Pretty soon

there was their book, bright as
Sunday morning

but sharp, too, like bottle glass.
He'd hand

it to them carefully, carefully.
And it was

their hint. After that they'd have to
look out for themselves,

and that, I guess, was his Oregon
message.

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Written by Shonin about 1995 as a tribute to Stafford, one of whose books is entitled [i]An Oregon Message[/i].

Spring, and spring of her life also. She walks to water to stand ...

2024-10-30T14:25:42Z

Spring, and spring of her life also. She walks
to water to stand behind sedges, thinking of snakes.
And snakes come. First one, lazily, tail

sculling, head high, counterclockwise along
shore, and then another. And then -- another.
All going, she notes, the same way round. Next day,

incorrigible child, she rigs a black fly rod
with stout green line tied, butt end and tip end:
a snare. Back to the sun-long lake. The snakes

continue their rounds. She casts loop, she waits.
One comes, riding high in clear water, black eye
bright. Caught, the looping, livid thing

bends the rod double almost. On close inspection
she speaks its given name: common water snake.
Proudly she touches the twisting ribbon of flesh,

but it turns to sink four quiet rows of teeth
deep in the base of her thumb. Shamefaced, she
lets the bright creature go; it swims sedately,

maddeningly counter-clockwise: nothing
has happened to change its agenda. Rod forgotten,
she sinks to her knees among sedges to watch

fishing men quietly fishing in beech-shade,
shading her eyes with her still throbbing hand.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=wildlife]wildlife[/url]
Written by Shonin about 1989, concerning an incident in about 1966. She had some ideas about becoming a #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=herpetologist]herpetologist[/url], but, being extremely hearing impaired, found math classes a bit of a hurdle.

The wall her father built to muscle back the brown flood waters ...

2024-10-30T04:12:25Z

The wall her father built to muscle back
the brown flood waters of the creek still stands.
It leans away from the run and hugs the contour

of serpentine embankment, redeeming years of silt
by interlacing a thousand granite slabs
against the tide of spring and spill of storm.

He could not bear the thought of land he'd
paid for picking up to run away downstream,
ending in useless mingling with other men's dirt

deep at the foot of the continental shelf
ten miles beyond the Chattahoochee's mouth.
So he built. Each day, though tired from climbing

poles in Georgia sun for the Georgia Rail Road,
he slowly removed his cotton shirt and sank
to his knees in the creek, feeling for stones

with his bare toes, prying them out of their beds
with a five-foot iron bar. He heaved them up,
wet and substantial, on the opposite bank,

and judged them, then carried them, staggering
under the load, to their exact spot in the rising wall,
setting them down like Hammurabi's laws, never

to be revoked. The whole he stocked and faced
with wet cement his daughter carried to him,
breathless, in a pair of buckets slung

from a home-carved yoke. Wall done,
he capped it with a pointing trowel, and with
his finger wrote the child's name and the year

nineteen fifty-five, which you will find today
if you scrape back moss. The house has had
six owners since, and of these none has given thought

to who prevented their foundation washing out
with freely offered labor long ago: or perhaps
they have. There's something in a wall's

being there that speaks of someone's having lived
and looked upon the land, giving shape to time
and place. Then taking stone in hand:

___________________________________________________
#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]
Shonin probably wrote this about 2010. The wall in question held back flood waters of the little creek in Georgia for decades. Maybe it's still there. Her dad did not always build pretty, but he built strong.

They do not always sit with an easy grace, the aging: in ...

2024-10-29T04:10:40Z

They do not always sit with an easy grace,
the aging: in afternoon light, even in October,
cracks invade her clear skin,

showing in relief, and he knows dismay,
seeing her, his own once simple face
crowding itself, as when a life within

doors runs out of thought. Yet, sober
as this renders him, he will not turn away
from her to seek some easier play:

there is no win or lose, no hunt, no race,
no battle. His eyes would disrobe her,
for she is to him more than she has been,

and he would know all, even here,
as passers pass, not seeing what his eyes see;
but he will wait on her clear sign

that this is welcome, even from his gaze,
for she has known most men hold themselves dear;
known too long their avarice that she

should shape to their dreams, their ways,
their endless drawing round her of sharp lines,
their wrapping an arm carelessly round her days,

their failing, in this many years, to touch the key
moment of her heart: that movement lacking fear
when she might freely give, without design.

Placing her hand in his, she shifts and sighs;
a not unhappy sound, considering the hour
and how late, as well, this man has come to her:

five decades they have lived apart,
as though all meaning had to be deferred;
as though some god, having hated happy hearts,

had suddenly relented, offering them this prize.

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Shonin wrote this about 1999

Cartilage has vanished from between long leg bones, and I have ...

2024-10-28T21:43:04Z

Cartilage has vanished from between
long leg bones, and I have become
dependent; may I have some help please
with these pants, these socks, this clacking

knee brace, this burgeoning heaped skunkish
laundry full of everything that leapt from
the spoon onto my clothing, this tea welling up
somehow from my cup's brim to spread across

the tidal flat of my shaking hand and fill
the sea cave of my sleeve? Huh, and if
last night's frost has subsided enough,
perhaps even with such a day's beginning

I can hope to step into these two unmatched
clogs and shamble on, past undone chores,
gathering up my left-hand stick and my right-
hand stick, and walk the dog. There is no dog;

what he left behind lies there: that small
basaltic stupa, littered with seasonal
offerings -- lately, deadnettles that wilt
in such hurry. But I call to him anyway;

he loved these walks so, that I feel obliged,
knee brace and all, to retrace our kinhin route
each weekday Armageddon fails to materialize.
Oaks throw shade; in summer I seek them,

in winter avoid. This is a ritual. As when I sit,
as when I chant, I know, even when tongue tied, or
falling asleep, or feeling my knee brace loosen and drop
just as I stagger into the ditch to avoid a truck,

that ritual is a kind of living being, made up of
my life and also the lives of all who participate
in some way, such as: "are you going to 'walk
the dog?'" Yes. "Have you got some water and

your phone?" Yes. "Okay; if you're not back
in an hour, I'll come looking for you." I bobbled
the Heart Sutra this morning, as I always do,
but this little exchange of hearts is itself

the Middle Way. Along the road, taking tiny
steps, tinier every year, I stop
to watch a robin angling for its worm.
The little dog that isn't there

wags his universe of tail.

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by Shonin, written about 2021. Toto died in 2017, age about 19

I'm on two places on mastodon, having left xitter when the ...

2024-10-28T19:07:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…9ntj
_________________________

I'm on two places on mastodon, having left xitter when the sink was brought in.

I like the features here better but it is a tiny population, interaction seems low to me, and this instance seems to me to go down a lot, though I have found if I wait up to 30 seconds, it often shows up.

I'm here to repost poems and blog posts from elsewhere, because I like not having a character limit and I think the presentation is nice.

I've built a fiberglass-roofed hut where there's nothing ...

2024-10-28T15:04:24Z

I've built a fiberglass-roofed hut
where there's nothing to take away.
After eating, I conk out.
When the hut was completed,
it was a children's playhouse.
It had long been abandoned —
covered by blackberries.
Sometimes I live at the hut,
drying out weeds.
No need to go shopping.
No movies, no popcorn.
Though the hut is nine feet square,
Nowhere is there a place not here.
Within, an old nun
gawks out the window.
With her gnarled hands
she trusts being/time.
The neighbors can't help wondering —
what's going on in there?
For now, the old crone is present,
losing track of Meaning.
Knowing she does not know up or down,
she looks straight ahead.
A wide window below green cottonwoods--
five star hotels can't compare with it.
Just nestling in her zero-g chair
all things are settled.
Thus, this mountain nun
doesn't squint at circumstances.
Living here she no longer
hankers for escape.
Who would proudly arrange place settings,
trying to lure guests?
Doing as a Buddha does
cannot not be what a Buddha is.
Instantaneousness can't be
looked toward or away from.
Meet the lineages and spiritual friends,
absorb their guidance.
Salvage fence boards to build a hut
and don't give up.
When your begging bowl breaks,
which it will, relax into your day.
Open your face
and walk, de-stressed.
Thousands of teachers
babble, but the message isn't garbled.
If you want to benefit
from dwelling in your hut,
Don't expect to be polishing that begging bowl
forever.

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With apologies to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitou_Xiqian]Shi-tou Xiquian[/url] (700-790). Written by Shonin in 2022.

At this high bridge begins silence, even as whitecapped water ...

2024-10-28T01:51:42Z

At this high bridge begins silence, even
as whitecapped water beneath
runs against rock and fills the hearing

with its white roar; this is not the sound
of human trivialities, of men disrespecting
women, women turning aside

with embarrassed smiles from men,
the sound of pulling of tabs,
ripping of aluminum, assorted

purrs and rumbles of fire along the pavement,
wrapped in steel. She gathers her oldest friends,
space blanket, matchsafe, whistle, map,

cheese, bread, water bottle, and poncho,
and stuffs them in her old firefighter's vest.
This is a new place, but deduction finds

the lightly traveled path, snaking across
a landscape steeped in stillness.
The vine maples have yet no leaves,

and the moss-lined nests in their jointures
contain no eggs. There are times
when tall firs on these ridges

creak and suffer, a forest of bent masts
in a wind-smashed harbor: this is no such time.
She has been used to walking alone in forests;

has walked among peaks dawn-rosed
at sunrise, or hunkered under wuther
of rain-heavy winds, or under smother of clouds

among tree-trunks. Now, for a sudden,
she stops, puzzling her alienness. What
can be different? There are yellow violets,

trilliums, oxalis. She gathers moss and horse lettuce,
a couple of conks, and pebbles, yet connection
is missing. Her heart leaps cold in her chest,

and her pulse rattles. On an impulse she whirls
round on her track, examines
the trail behind her and a hillside of

silences. The silence is plural, but how
do you read absence? What does she not see?
Bear? Cougar? It is a feeling one has

when the sights of the rifle are trained
on the back of one's neck. Often in life
she has felt this, but only in cities

and the lifelines of cities, those rivers
of asphalt and their pageant of strangers.
She must establish herself here, she feels;

some introduction has been omitted. She searches
her vest and locates an old pipe,
a treasure remaining from another life;

it goes where she goes, though she thinks of it seldom.
There is little tobacco in the bowl, but enough,
and she chooses a bit of mountain,

a leaf of kinnikinnik, to add. Self-consciously
borrowing culture, she aims the pipe
at four points of the compass, the grey sky,

the soundless earth at her feet, then sits
fumbling with the lid of her matchsafe.
Fire lit, she sends smoke quietly aloft.

It rises uncertainly, then finds the drift
of cold air sliding downslope into evening.
Whatever seemed angry seems to her angry still,

but gives way before the smoke of offering,
and makes with her a capful of truce: she will not
be eaten today, it seems, tripped up, or smashed.

She will not name the place, "place where I broke
my leg" or "place where I lost my spirit."
In return, she must finish this hike now

and not soon return. Replacing the horse lettuce,
conks, moss, and stones, she wryly smiles
a little: if this is superstition, so let it be,

she says to herself. We do what we have to do.
The silence, which she'd thought a hieroglyph
of an unknown tongue, nods and agrees.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=hiking]hiking[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=cougar]cougar[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=offering]offering[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]
Poem by Shonin from about 2002. IIRC the forest she hiked in has burned over five times since: in 2005, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023.

When they returned from building the kay-dam (of logs and drift ...

2024-10-27T19:54:23Z

When they returned from building the kay-dam
(of logs and drift pins, to make again
a place where salmon might yet spawn)

they divvied up: each hauled a pack frame
loaded with tools and sundries, twice down
the canyon to its end, then up the old fire trails

a mile and a half, ducking vine maples
all the way, to the parked trucks. A third trip
for each would end the business,

but night came on, as it generally does;
they might have come back another day, but
as the moon was full, down they went.

One folded and refolded the old tent
and packed it away, while the others sat,
taking down the old sheepherder stove,

dumping ashes, talking. She would walk ahead,
she said, and slumped off down the scoured
sandstone ledge of the dry wash, admiring,

even in near exhaustion, the old moon
drifting among the snags. She came upon
the canyon with its pools and riffles,

and, regarding the first fire trail
as too steep, trudged on to the second,
wading a beaver pond. Logs at the head,

old growth, lay jackstraw piled, and she footed
along them easily, as she had done
in dozens of such draws. A big cedar sighed,

turned lovingly in its sleep, and with
an almost inaudible click, closed over her shoe.
There was with her no axe, no lever of any kind.

She stood knee deep in black water, too far
from the landing to be heard, neatly caught.
What if her co-workers took that other trail?

She looked back as she let slip her heavy pack,
seeing no movement but the falling moon,
knowing that one alone in such a place

has, while there, no name at all.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=StreamRehabilitation]StreamRehabilitation[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=WoodsWork]WoodsWork[/url]
Written about 2010 by Shonin, while recalling a nearly fatal incident that took place in the Siuslaw National Forest in 1982.

sometimes this is what you'll come to, picking about in ...

2024-10-27T13:22:20Z

sometimes

this is what you'll come to, picking about
in earth, pulling morning glory roots
like long white worms and heaping them

beside you of a morning: you will become
distant and glum, and as your wrists dry up,
caked in clay, you'll look around you, and

not your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your oak and ash,
your three brave maples rattling in the breeze,

your small house bracketed in lilacs, breathing smoke,
your woodshed stacked roof-high,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,

your geese, your ducks, your pear trees in bright bloom
will rid you of the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.

Assuming the sun will come out, which now
it does, things won't seem quite that bad,
and yet you will walk stooped, with furrowed

brow, into the house for a late cold lunch
without words, for there are no words
to share what it was the cold ground

said to your hands just now.

or, sometimes

you'll come to this, lovingly rooting
in earth, gently setting to one side
fat worms, watching them

sink from sight with shrugs of their nonexistent
shoulders. As your wrists dry up, caked
in clay, you'll look around you, and

your small red barn, your irises,
your bamboo patch, your ash and oak,
your three unfurling maples whispering in the breeze,

your white house bracketed in lilacs, breathing
smoke, your woodshed stacked with fir,
your mint and parsley putting on new life,

your pears and apples, your geese in their bright plumes
will bring to you the thought of what this is
that you are digging, bit by troweled bit.

Assuming that the clouds will come, which now
they do, you will take things as they are,
and so you simply walk, with even-tempered

gaze, toward the house for a late cold lunch:
one without words, for there are no words
to share what it was your hands

said to the green earth even now.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=food]food[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=mortality]mortality[/url]
Written about 2007 by shonin

She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading their roots ...

2024-10-27T02:33:44Z

She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over

when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.

Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five-tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's

sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what

was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,

zippered it open, feeling about in its depths
like the housewife at the station platform
seeking her ticket for the last train --

Seizing her prize, she held it in a soiled palm,
reading the runes of inscription:
"Date of last frost"; "zone three," "days

to maturity." How many days now to her own
maturity? Not to be thought of. Her hand
trembled. Tearing the thin paper rind,

she tipped out contents: a shirtfront
of buttons. Five seeds to a hill she counted,
pinching their graves over them: three hills.

And on to other tasks. The rainmaker
whispered over hilled earth all
the zone's days to maturity, and the date

of first frost held true. Almost forgotten in the rush
of gathering in others: beans and corn, tomatoes--
she sought them last in October, the golden

fruits of that planting. Her other crops
talk to her; the Hubbards never do. (What are they
dreaming at, over there? She brings out the knife.)

Now it is March, she remembers having gathered
the silent, sulking Hubbards. How are they faring?
A look into the pantry reveals them,

dour and uncommunicative, all
huddled like bollards on the high shelf.
She chooses one to halve on the kitchen block.

Scooping out seeds to dry and roast later,
she bakes the halves till soft, slipping off skins
per Rombauer & Becker. "Dice them,

and in a mixing bowl add butter, brown sugar,
salt, ginger, and move the lot to the mixer,
remembering to add milk." With a bowl

of silent Hubbard thus richly dressed,
she goes to the living room, asking blessing
of the gods of the steel fork and the weeds,

the rainmaker, the packet of white seeds,
booted foot and blue denim bag
and the longtime summer sun, eating,

listening to a fugue by J. S. Bach.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=food]food[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url]
written about 1995 by shonin -- who had not yet taken up no-dig gardening

Whenever we worked at the creekside shed there was always ...

2024-10-26T14:13:08Z

Whenever we worked at the creekside shed
there was always something else to do
such times as we were stumped, or nails ran short,

or the sun reached round the fir and baked us down
from raftering, roofing, or the like. We leaned,
gossip-like, against the fresh framing

of the walls, sipping solar tea,
watching the edge of a cloud's long skirt
chase the neighbors' horses leisurely

across their pasture, down the camas swale
and up the other side, against the black contrast
of maple-shrouded hills. The horses liked

to amble to our corner, stand and watch.
We couldn't cure them of the shies,
though we might try with handfuls

of our green grass, or a few choice coaxing words.
They'd check us out: first one black blink from behind
the forehead blaze, and then another,

cocking their long heads round to see
our self-assured, predatory faces, eyes front,
gazing on them, horse-flesh accountants

by their reckoning. Their flanks
would shiver, and their forefeet stamp,
scoring the earth in a language built of weight.

Some movement would always spook them off:
a silvery chisel hefted, or water bottle sloshed,
spattering sun. They'd hammer up the swale;

lovingly we'd watch them go, coveting
our neighbors' lands and all that lived thereon,
as country folk in August always do.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]

It was not enough to see, in colorful maga- zines and costly ...

2024-10-25T17:53:13Z

It was not enough to see, in colorful maga-
zines and costly books, the country homes
and garden walks that men and women build

who have only ready money and a few ideas.
I too wished to sit sometimes drinking 
tea by firelight, admiring a work of beams

and plaster, hanging fruit and herbs, good books
liberally strewn, and a sleeping cat (or two). 
To which end we labored without cash, days

and even nights with saw and chisel, scraper,
hammer, knife, and plane, using such wood,
such paint, and even such nails as came to hand.

Our friends and friends of our friends remembered us
when their surplus had to go, and I went forth
 with battered truck and pry bar, gathering decks

and fences long past keeping for those without
the patience to rebuild. We have learned
to watch for stones of certain weight and shape;

to lay a course of ninety-year-old brick, 
to scrap a window sash to get the glass 
for cutting, and to fill the oddly angled wall

with joint compound. When supplies ran short,
 we turned to the acre of ground, and forked and spaded,
laying out long beds, piling them with straw,

covering the paths with leaves of oak, maple
and ash. Seeds bought last year at sale, 
ten cents a pack, were sown with trembling hand.

They all did well: the new shelves are fat 
with harvest. This all has come late to me. Now
 we do sit in chimney-corner like English cottage-

keepers, tea in hand and cat in lap,
ready to peruse an act of Winter's Tale
or book of Faerie Queene, only to find

our eyes no longer focus on ten-point type
 for an act or a book at a time. I call the youngest
child; she reads to me from Sendak, or

our mutual favorite, Potter, haltingly,
but with a will, improving as she goes.
As she sounds out words, I watch a knot

of fir collapse into the coals, and fall
 to long, light sleep, with not unpleasant dreams.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]

She spreads the brightly colored packets round the table, and ...

2024-10-25T11:56:52Z

She spreads the brightly colored packets
round the table, and speaks of hope. 
I lift a flat paper envelope, with its picture

of a perfect beet, and shake it like a rattle,
"Hey-ya!" She sits across, nodding and smiling,
and hefts a half pound of peas, offering its promise,

like incense, to the gods of our little life. 
We've drawn out and made domains of the gardens.
The east one, very small, is on the highest ground,

and drains superbly. It is all hers.
She loves  to dig in early spring and late in the fall,
coaxing brassicas, beets, chard, sugar snap peas

to grow in long succession through the year. 
The south garden, sheltered from hot winds, 
but prone to wetness, is mine. I've raised my beds

high as I can pile them, tossed away stones,
and spread out golden chunks of bales of straw,
redolent of the ducks who've nested on them.

Here tomatoes and sunflowers, limas and vine crops
broil in the sun by day and rest by night. 
The north garden, on the only at, gets sun,

but stays colder longer. It is the largest, 
so we share it, and here we fight. I look for
long rows of corn and beans, and always more

tomatoes. She tries new things I can't pronounce,
and seeks the permanence of berries: raspberry
is her favorite thing under the sun, I dunno.

We fight over water, when to use, how much.
We fight over planting depth, shade, what
 to harvest when, and how long to blanch beans.

We fight all the way to the bedroom; its north window
opens onto the windswept beds. In plain view 
the rustling rainbow windsock

presides there over the rustling corn, and our
fighting turns to sudden loving. We hold
each other's life, like seed, in careworn hands,

and sleep, like seed, until the sun's return.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]

We went to see the place in Walterville. Before we had even seen ...

2024-10-25T06:52:36Z

We went to see the place in Walterville.
Before we had even seen the house, the neighbor,
a man of some seventy years, bent with woods work,

stopped to chat. "The house isn't much, but the soil
is good. Oh, it has some Scotch broom, I know,
on the pasture, but you can get ahead of that

if you keep after it. I helped the last folks with their fence,
but they wanted the gate right here, where the tractor
couldn't get in. They'd no sense."

We asked why no fence between his place
and "ours." "Oh, I don't need a fence.
Don't want your apples, and you're welcome to mine."

The sort of thing we'd hoped. We walked over
the pasture till we reached the incense cedars,
each one five feet thick, and found a hanging

branch worn smooth by generations of children's swinging.
Good, and the valley here was wide,
with mountains stretching east and west,

and sunshine access on short winter days.
But the house wouldn't do; bedrooms dark
and tiny, with telltale smell throughout

of dry rot underneath. Desire for land
sets one dreaming. One acre, three acres--
not enough to farm, but who can farm

with these prices? It becomes a privilege
just to set out onions, and a cow
is not mere luxury, but even a kind of madness

to consider. We have cross fenced
our high-taxed valleys so that to walk straight
for five minutes can't be done, and all

the while buying our produce from five hundred
miles away, where the tractors have as many
wheels as your freeway rig. I want to put

my hands into the ground and make it yield
enough to make my children grow, and not
grow poor in the process. We drove home,

and quarreled along the way about land,
as people do who have gone to see
not only what they could not have afforded,

but ought not to have desired. The ducks
were glad to see us; she watered them, and I
fed tomatoes, and we kissed and made up,

and lay awake in our small suburban house
beneath the wheeling moon and stars. Why is it,
I wondered then and wonder now, that no one

ever seems to know when they have enough?
When sleep came, there was a vivid dream.
I met again the old man with no fence,

and saw him pointing to the earth. "This
was river bottom in here not too long ago,"
I heard him say. "When we drilled down forty

feet, we hit a driftwood tree, even though
the river now is half a mile away." He opened up
the earth somehow, and showed me the tree,

still caught amid smooth and rounded stones
deep beneath the topsoil, which now I saw
was dark and rich, as he had said it was.

I reached to touch the soil, and awoke.
The northbound train was rumbling by the house,
carrying produce from industrial farms,

and I was drenched in sweat, and found the moon
had drifted far across the window to the west.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]

We homesteaded (while working) from 1977 to 2008, then full time ...

2024-10-25T02:12:56Z

We homesteaded (while working) from 1977 to 2008, then full time (retired) to 2022. Here's a [url=https://photos.app.goo.gl/xs8eJSBKkLL1ukp17]rather big photo album[/url] (mostly of that second shift), made available in case the ideas shown spark ideas in a younger generation. I don't represent myself as an expert, though, just as someone who had a thing for fresh fruits and vegs. Spouse had a thing for egg production.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=polyculture]polyculture[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=microfarm]microfarm[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=gardening]gardening[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=homesteading]homesteading[/url]
_________________________
Shonin works a veggie bed with a sickle and basket.

[url=https://friendica.world/photos/shonin/image/1627133404671aff7b9ae56344564237][img= ][/img][/url]

She sells books from nine to six. They are good books, well ...

2024-10-24T22:42:55Z

She sells books from nine to six. They are
good books, well bound, well written, colorful
to the eye, and children love them, but

the town is poor. She sits waiting for hours
for one grandmother to come in and buy one book
for a favored grandchild. The owner of the store

is her friend; she cannot leave her just now, but the store,
she knows, is not her place in life. All
she has ever wanted is to farm: at evening,

when the dinner things are cleared, and the hot sun
drops behind the cottonwood, she farms.
Food for the ducks, and soapy water for broccoli;

old lettuce gone to seed comes out; the hay
is rearranged, and fall peas go in. She stops
only to hear the geese pass overhead,

then bends among her plants until the stars,
first one and then another, leap and are caught
in the hair of approaching night, so like her hair.

She comes in, soiled to the elbows, leans against
the table, extending an open palm. "Look,"
she says, her eyes afire. "Marigold seeds!"

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poem]poem[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]

In 2010 I wrote a ...

2024-10-24T18:41:58Z

In 2010 I wrote a #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=novel]novel[/url] about life after the US Nazi wave recedes, set in 2048-2052. It depicts a seemingly thriving Oregon cooperative community set upon by a short-sighted warlord. Spoiler: improbably, they win, but are displaced -- crops were hard to maintain during the war, and everyone has already been weakened by malnutrition, radiation poisoning, environmental pollution, heat waves, wildfires, drought, flooding, and a new virus anyway. The world around them has been depopulated by 97%; there are few trade routes, everything is in short supply, not least because there are no working factories, but because even the EROI of raiding landfills for materials is getting too high. All this even though the community has had access to a hidden microreactor.

The novel ends with them trudging, like nearly everyone else, toward Canada -- which is no better off than the US, and has become extremely anti-immigrant. Readers demanded a sequel, but I didn't have the heart to go on.

I did think of writing an alternative timeline, but I'm too addled by chronic illness and old age to pull it off. In the new novel, there would arise, in multiple areas, new democratic entities guided by parties called the Commons party, which somehow defeat the Nazis and usher in a decentralized agrarian carbon-farming era, with far less loss of life and a sliver of a chance at avoiding extinction. Laws would be enacted reforming land ownership, with most arable farm land reverting to lots of one to ten acres in size, with crops grown by hand or electric tools in the partial shade of rows of solar panels. Those unable to farm would work from home, living in small units on the land of those able to farm, receiving from them means of living.

Forests would be managed by stewardship work camps aiming to provide wood products from thinning overcrowded or diseased watersheds at rates determined by basal-area studies, with forest health as the goal.

UBI, universal coverage, doctors would make house calls.

Those arriving in such places from unlivable regions would be interviewed to see if they'd like to join internationally-financed fire/flood/storm/sea-level rise/epidemic rescue/mitigation teams, with opportunities to rotate out and settle on a land grant.

But who would read it? Peaceful fantasy is boring, right? Especially to warlords.
______________________________

Ad for 2010 novel. It did all right as a blovel, but bombed as a self-pub for the usual reasons. It's still available in paper, also for free at https://archive.org/details/starvation-ridge. MC crouches with bow against background of wildfire. Tagline "They will race against exctinction. But will they win?"

[url=https://friendica.world/photos/shonin/image/1851420810671a943f171c0563220674][img= ][/img][/url]

I'm also ...

2024-10-24T16:18:13Z

I'm also @[url=https://mastodon.world/users/shonin]Shonin[/url] on Mastodon.

Formerly: forester/firefighter, university library manager and permaculture-adjacent smallholder. Interested in climate, pandemics, simplicity and degrowth.

I retired in 2009. I'm now a Soto Zen nun, practicing in a [url=https://photos.app.goo.gl/n3c1WnUgJcrzKF6G2]repurposed tool shed[/url].

She/her: transitioned 2006. They/them is fine.

Anticolonialist but conflictedly living on Kalapuya lands.

Living with leukemia.

#[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=wildfires]wildfires[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=leukemia]leukemia[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=Buddhism]Buddhism[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=Permaculture]Permaculture[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=degrowth]degrowth[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=climate]climate[/url] #[url=https://friendica.world/search?tag=poetry]poetry[/url]