NATURE SOUNDS


I
You can derive more from a walk in the mountain forest on a Spring day than any scrap of knowledge attained…
the way the fern bends, sweat breathing through your pores,
bloodless electricity radiating through your arms, explosive crackling of twigs –
it’s the sound of churning stream water plowing through boulder teeth raging underneath the great Coriolis Effect of the earth.
All nature is in shades punctuated by light – forlorn breakthroughs of hoar-sky in evening pasture –
an orange-winged blackbird stands out like a peculiar oriole in the Poconos ecosystem,
hypoglycemic severing with a sinking meal down the gullet, between-tree breezes describe the rustle trestles – cracked nubs with immortal bark disintegrated,
sawdust surrounding the exposed roots underneath the twisted green and swaying bamboo –
one sublime, harmonic sound, except the wind rustle comes in oceanic waves –
the briny splash happens in the imagination.
Splintered ladders hang on the weathered trunks.
As you approach the trees closer to the meadow and jump out of the mountain forest,
the trunks are lichen-stained, some with the bark of a rocky cliff face,
others with the complexity of an onion cell, the unwrapped bark package exposes the hardwood core of trunk furniture, unimaginable groundwater sinking through its veins.
Run down the hill decline into the grainy meadow with crickets, infinitesimal weeds, thorny brush,
poison ivy, milkweed, stale smell of rotting wood,
sweet smell of hemlock, honeyed goldenrod yellow dot the field, slumping ferns,
twinkling aspen changing scarlet pink and orange-tipped maple leaves against drooping cedar.
Projecting furthest from the mountain/meadow boundary, dogwood showcases its white billowy flowers,
catalpa with its blanketing skunk-cabbage sized leaves,
a red “T” in the middle of a white painted sign
hung on an unrecognizable needle stripped trunk.
O joyous variation and green goodness outside the realm of natural!
Pluck a branch from the wilderness and build an Edenic forest cover only Indians knew.
Some rhododendrons have stood for a century.
Find all the Utrecht diagonals in easeled spectrums of green light,
lopped off heads of trees and heads of State, buried tannin rubble,
acres of mildewed garbage foraged by forest carpets,
proscenium property lines sweeping out to a stream trail, clackity-clack branches
tossed from abyssian heights annihilated by hiking boots.
Dutch masters hide in the tree lofts, Gauguin and Van Gogh perfume of peaking Helios hitting the streambend
day lilies,Van Gogh’s willow-white spots overhanging the watering hole,
creekbend brilliant spouting carpet speckling the leaf wilted floor.
Can you see all this? Can you smell all this?
Not until drowning your aortic pulmonary in creek weed during evening light, dewy manna dripping from your soaked, moist skin.




II
Observe the earth drip catapulting branches, cataclysmic phantasmagoria –
orgulous Priam in the forest bulwarks,
blench and shadows, reins of branches. What bird? What sound?
An unidentified melody scaling the dense canopic clangor of tweets,
sweet chirps echoing from SoHo sunrise in dreary hungover morning,
bluebirds ringing out with their crow tones; they are part of the raven family,
accumulating orgones through the soles of my feet in walking meditation
hearing hollowed imploding stump sounds, affecting paranoiac,
stripped bark skin lean-toed, unveiling Caucasian, burnishing clusters of floret in the distance,
gentle swaying of chestnut caterpillar pods and munched protoplasm,
ATP, energy, protein, cytoplasm, endomorphic, transgenital, tran substantial,
penniless, immortal, iridescent, moon-tattooed eaten away tannish carbuncles manacled on the leaf surface,
unidentifiable wounded tree scar with huge wingspanned branches,
cathartic leaf hoppers in chameleon fuscia, bothersome black flies,
clay fragments about to be cleared, the newness of Spring
and oddly unfallen orange-brown wind chimes stolid on the sloping boughs,
buttercups, lazy-eyed Susans, crimson poison-perceptioned weeds,
rib-toothed with brute force thorn flowers interconnected as the mysterious poison nature,
imbedded tracks of fly fisherman, Virginian vine creeper.

Oops! I ducked into cover before I could disturb a real fly fisherman.
I am a beast now, a bear with boot claws, havoc-stomping flowers on Pohoquata trails.
I’d like to dazzle you with Latin roots, but I have none – only the enveloping dense air filling my porous skin,
the released C02 from my healthy lungs and the mountain scene.
I’m not scent deaf of sense deaf, swallowing cedar complexity,
air as sweet as crescent rise and trough squash of briny wave and
illimitable horn clasps.

I lost the trail suddenly because I was focusing on my pen and tablet –
back on the hunting trail again – nearly 20 years since its forged path,
lost fronds of evergreens, a maple drawbridge – off the beaten path a new path Way takes form –
the Tao in scintillating glory, life energy, mysticism, approaching cloud light and illumination,
enlightenment, jet stream heavenward, yellow, red, blues, primary colors harpooned out of the optic spectrum and placed on my lapstep,
Jacob’s branch ladder in Indigo nearness, sweet dill smell wafting form the forest floor magma.
From the earth’s crust finally stream sounds:
sprout drift, larvae drift, caddis fly drift, dragon fly drift, fish feed drift, sun reflect drift, pollen and lily pad drift,
damselflies congregating in packs of thousands in South American spawn swarms,
trickling drizzle of Amazon humidity, haze, fog, umbrella of orange and leopard skin magnetic porch light phosphorescence,
knivy pine and long grass arc skin rustle, magnetic rose twilight.
Go now on a vigorous constitutional, you come back smelling like honey.




III
Rhinestone renegades clasp the heroin button of my bone soul host –
the frightened pelican haggard hair disguises himself as a great blue heron,
splintered roughage, horse chalk, reeds, clavicles, eye-bone rings, subtle Jamaican yellows,
whittled, section birches, sierra in view, dashing whitetails,
emblemed fawns in kewpie doll outlines, likeness of seeming dead Juliet –
bold petal leopards scarred on deer fur, jagged punji boughs, twisted lamp tone of forest light,
mangy, munificent, tender Roman fly rod arches, wrenching trunk moss and tiny mothswarms,
moccasin, teal, Indian barque, barges, schooner moons, termite anvils,
splattered spotlights, hemlock ribcage, lichen flaps, witch locks dripping from scenic redwoods,
budding maple treelings, yearling brooks munching hatchery holocausts,
Poland, Germany, connected unconscious, collective rather,
patch of stream spider webs, debris, long grass – whole worlds!
cleaning ants, long drawn chestnut oak leaves, seeming dead.

Trying to find tortive uprooted and amber pinesap, beaver cuts, anchored moss – a prison of the mind –
Rimbaud shaken mnemonic repetition, Latin Horace, jagged ramparts,
foxholes, red firelight, escaping rabbit and turkey, peculiar neophyte,
thrombi, wrinkled brain tissue, crimson, juniper, daisy, languid velvet,
monarch, moose-racked buck, robin redbreast, phantom fishmonger Peter,
Gabriel, Sebastian, John, Kubla Kahn, nylon green sheen, jesting wood ducks against hyacinth,
violet serene forget-me-not garden lovelorn tree slime,
cosmococcic sunrise rainforest Gibraltar rose Rosettas,
gargantuan steam drills, sculptured branches amid air,
explosive dichotomy, freshwater seaweed, weedy fossil, ancient bicycle and icebox,
New Jerusalem, Vermeer reflections, Holland headlong glances and panorama,
stone rows, third degree scars, slate stumbling blocks, lily branches in ghoulish hover,
fritting old man Murphy on barberry and Diocletian majestic mushroom marshmallows.
Now the stream sounds like trickling rainwater, explosive bubbles, gorgeous gorges,
surrealistic setting, spicebush unction, grilled birch branch stew melting pots, section sign.
My imagination might surrender to the void in madness!
breast stroking wood turtle infant, horse galloping farm cat,
hoar frost, cirrus wings of cloud in the pale blue,
Denver cliff ebb-n-flow sea scrolls.
Want to sound intelligent? Insert the word hubris.










IV
All of nature can be read –
who knows, there may be undiscovered hieroglyphs –
golden thicket African guardsman –
tectonic Coleridgean underwater stream caves, seascapes, black velvet tenses, conifer dragons,
dragoons with spear points, pool sun rain eclipses,
budded Chinese star windpipes, tympanum suspended woodwind stagecoach funereal hearse,
smooth beech skin, corked mangy presses, maggot whites and bloated deer lung bursts,
rancid red eyes, chiseled bone, wrecked skull platoons, wharves,
sheepskin maiden ship front, divorced Mammon and mammo titular beauty,
sun glassed eyes, tree shade tree groan, beckoning evening libido,
lurch and gurgle, bubble trouble toil and witches canticle,
chant incantation, bawd, squirrel scare, tombstone crow peeled grater, sunken loaves,
bluebird yelps across eternities and vine boughed foot escapes.

The mind is one gigantic compound word stuck between synapses –
one adrenal endomorphic/de-stressor intersection –
animal abysses, shark trance leaps, bark slate roofs, salvation toils, the rock where I found my kief pipe,
Indian infinitudes, lazy grays, violent violet swamps, hoar-grass, queen Anne’s face,
plenitude, queendom, mamboed stem in ecstasy, hurtled waterfall abdomen,
extinguished energy, my lover’s eighth grade perfume, bleach, acrid to the nasal cavity,
Andes, Kilamanjaros, Hoods, Everests, Alpines, Camelbacks, gesticulate moon creek on mountaintop Minnesota lakefront,
deserted untouched Emerson transcendental virgin forests,
Thoreau boroughs, bards, fear, toad rings, sycamore-shaded rock,
lost tree antlers, twenty-four point buck,
Slatington rivers of Miller’s ore, granite, platinum, jammed pearls,
exploding fricassee of diamond sparkle in a moon-minute,
trembling toadstools, Valhalla, Vikings, spires, flesh of the gods, red mushrooms, yage, ayahuasca,
pterodactyls, serpents, woodpeckers in Napoleon cannon fire, Hugo’s Waterloo,
volcanic ferns, phytoplankton, eubacteria, Milky Way dust modules floating out of the sea,
fernograph, congealed stream waves, ocean blue, pollution green, great wolves,
horrendous grape vines, tea leaves, white lotus, white locust,
white budding chlorophyll tips, horse trails, broken paralysis of necks in capering wonder,
white overcast, white clover, white into pearl into ice, layers of chortled yeast,
murky pond excrement, watercress, pastel blue pelicans and ducks
in the midst of a stream garden overlooking the world’s stage…