Seeing Bear

Walking Petersburg Creek, the Tlingit’s Seetkab Heenuk’w,

across the Wrangel Narrows from the mud-flat sloughs of

 

 Mitkof Island, hiking a seldom-used wilderness trail

I pass the last cabin, last sign, last mark on the map

 

and come upon brown steaming mounds of berry scat,

piles of gutted humpies, half-chewed, fins still twitching.

 

Through skunk cabbage rank with growth and devil’s club

waiting in ambush, its honed thorns prickly with menace,

 

I skirt innocent gooseberries, expecting the worst,

prepared around each bend for some dark hulk swatting fish

 

and the ultimate terror of Ursus arctos horribilis.

Thick groves of old growth soak up light and squeeze out

 

shapes, the stab of strange limbs, flicker of breeze.

No quick exit out this maze of Sitka Spruce

 

tangled arctic bog, muskeg carnivorous with quivering

insects caught in the sundew’s last embrace.

 

A hundred humped shadows leap out at me from the brush,

startled, hungry, rearing up on hind legs, head-high

 

and higher, murder growling in their fierce gaze.

So near I can smell their panic wild as fish breath.

 

Lost in this still untamed Alaskan bush where two-leggeds

have no more weight than the meat they carry on their bones,

 

puffing a tin whistle like a webelo,

clapping hands, singing out of dread not joy,

 

I keep seeing the hundred kinds of Death,

its snout hairy, fangs bristling, about to attack.

 

Bruin gone berserk and bounding towards me.

Slashed muscle, the snapped arm ripped from its socket.

 

Claws long as Bowie knives.  Eyes like smoking volcanoes.

To run or play dead?  Its bulk crushing me into the earth.

 

Seeing hot flash my whole life engraved on a salmonberry

ground to pulp in the molars of a steel-trap jaw.

 

I meet no one walking that trail, neither grizzly nor rabbit,

not even a deer munching lichen.

 

The air is crisp, clouds huddled against nameless peaks.

Perhaps for the first time in my life

 

I am alone with the dark shape of

myself.

 

Lone Cone Free Poem

"Earth First ! Campfire Poems"

 - edited by Dennis Fritzinger, Karen Coulter, and Dwight Metzger. feral press, Tuscon, Arizona 1998.

 

 

The Great Silence sings

Its silent soothing song

But the cacophony of commerce

Won’t let it sing for long.

 

Deep in the roaring city

Sirens bellow and howl

One cannot hear the wolf

Nor heed the hooting owl

 

Autos clank and rattle

Jackhammers pound

Boom-boxes blare

The assault of ultra-sound

 

Listen, people listen

We’ve forgotten how to listen

 

Loon wails ancient messages

Into the liquid northland night

While we sit smug in soundproof rooms

With TeeVee’s tiny light.

 

We bicker, moan and quarrel

Babble, gossip, spout

Mutter, moan and grumble

To keep the silence out.

 

Our minds become unhinged

By the bedlam and the din

We need to take the time

To let the silence in!

 

Listen, people listen

We’ve forgotten how to listen

 

Brilliant minstrels pour out

The passions of the age

The anguish and the glory

The fever and the rage

 

But all we hear is merchants

Hawking shoddy wares

As we sit and simper

In our locked-up lairs

 

Listen, people listen

We’ve forgotten how to listen

 

Water calls and whispers

As rain or as cascade

Aspen forest rustles;

A shining, singing glade

 

Hummingbird is humming

As she darts from bloom to bloom

Owl hoots a sweet goodnight

Out there in the gloom

 

Listen, people listen

We’ve forgotten how to listen

 

For silence is not merely

The absence of all sound

It’s night in the deep woods

Toads chirping all around

 

It’s each voice given due

Each sound acknowledged, heard

The creaking of a tree

The calling of a bird.

 

Go sit upon the canyon rim

In some far-flung place

Let your mind meander

And gaze off into space

 

The silence will enfold you

In peace as old as time

As for one fleeting moment

You’re touched by the sublime!

 

LISTEN...Listen...listen...

 

Philip R. Knight

"Earth First ! Campfire Poems"

 - edited by Dennis Fritzinger, Karen Coulter, and Dwight Metzger. feral press, Tuscon, Arizona 1998.