Part 1: RECURRING CHILDHOOD

Ahgreyeuss (invocation)
Suburban Ruins
In Rural November
The San Andreas
With Nomioss his Brother
The First Flood
The Dream Creek
From the Green Camp
.

Ahgreyeuss

Still smooth limbs                                    
                     Lingering                      
with the scent of oak                                     
only faint impressions                 of bark    
                                                       of leaves      
emerging                                                          
boulders           lichen                                                        
bleating     a whistle through brush                                              
consorts      sipping      immature streams             
                                      willowy saplings vaguely
                                                fingers      twigs    and wind
pulling at the trunks            and leaves
           rippling the pools                 and waves
peering into the caves       naive                                 
always
the presence                       
of the woodlands        
the texture                                        
of rock                 
the sound                 
of water

          we are
                                              exploring
.

Suburban Ruins

…In the country
by a creek they walk
as often                     on a paved road

Penelopeya 
         Hehrmess 
                                 and their little boy
                                                                    Ahgreyeuss

He scrambles
over the banks
pointing out frogs and sticks
insects under logs

He becomes alone
where the stream runs straighter
to the suburbs
through the rip-wrap
wire
bars and
broken blocks

Then flowing
across the cracked
cement searching rushes
and pools

finding goldfish in the confusion
of human wild 
                               shopping carts
                           cattails
                                riffles
                                          bathtubs

It is a meaningful wasteland
of percolation

filling his pockets
                   with foot-long pollywogs
             painted turtles

In Rural November

Bare deciduous
trees
brush

He wanders dirt roads
rut and mud
to the bridge at Ross Creek

He follows the stream
toward home
growing narrower
and shallower
with willow thickets
closing in

He has to crawl to pass through
over the yellow
narrow fallen leaves
and there on his knees
he finds
goldfish
huddling in the drying
                        clear puddles

He is worried that they will
die in these wallows

and scoops them with his hands putting
some in his pockets and
holding others
                                       as many as he can
safe
against his chest

The San Andreas

.

A map-
makers obsession with topography
                      Ahgreyeuss and Nomioss follow
upward vaguely
seeking by boulders
       wet    and reservoir

They walk quietly on
flat paths thinking of other places—

                                                 any over-steepened slope
                                                                               will slide
 
—under leaves
to the in-flowing
arms end
                                         commencement hollow

They enter
wait here in jumble
and shady with relief and variation


                                                 There is a land so steep

                                                              were it any steeper
                                               it could not be

They excite
in the convoluted landscape
                                      fault buckled
                                      bole strewn
in their vision
                                       clear resolution
                                                      precarious in depth
                                                     with wholesome passion

they stare

at not being

With Nomioss his Brother

…Ahgreyeuss walks
from the woods
further back into youth

with Nomioss
They tread long grass
and water all around
streams
clear and overflowing with green
and the sky

By the novitiate
with its stop-gates
                            diversions
                           races
they walk rising land

They come to culverts
where Nomioss turns back
but Ahgreyeuss
                           the younger boy            continues

climbing the awe of washout
                        vertical
over the ruinous concrete      
                                     to the gentle slopes
                                      near the top of the ridge 
                                   where the water

                                                             flows uphill

The First Flood

Ahgreyeuss descends
as the sky darkens
hungering rain
                           a great autumn
to nest in

It is still
in anticipation
                            of the winter deluge
when the gravel shifts
the leaves fall
and the seeds shower…

…at the bottom of the canyon
following the creek that rises
out to
                           and quenching
the reservoir

He comes to fishermen
                             on black promontories
catching huge silver
                                          trout
and he runs home
to tell his brother
                                       of the flood

The Dream Creek

…a passage through
the resonating
waves of the corrugated pipes
              grey

              cool
               moist
with the dream cousins
over the plunge splash
to the slow dark pools

past stranded grocery carts
                       panning revelation
                 the giant reed
cultivating calm liquid arches

                 slipping water
terraced minerals                            
clear to the stony bottom

oversized
goldfish of the translucent
                                                      tropical rainforest
                                                         boreal taiga
blue
red

and green coursing

From the Green Camp

.

Ahgreyeuss is a vernal mountaineer
                                        in a lurid meadow
through a smoke of water
accepting gaze
and desire
cool
                            open and isolated dusk

Ahgreyeuss in the privacy
runs abandon through the blades
a moment
                              of unknown

But in the memory of daylight
                                       covers
                                                  pajamas

he flees exposed

through the oaks
embarrassed
pursued

by "American Gothic" townspeople
from grade-school
                                                      textbooks with hoes
and pitchforks