remembering clayoquot, 1993

big big trees this way during day
salted meat wrapped in tin
stickered fruit picked
from a different season
days ago. plastic jackets
in case the blue recedes
decides to hide in deeper
than night fog. here
humbly stands stands of columns
cedars grotesque and beautiful
and infinitely reverent
amongst a crowd of others

drinking ruddy tonics living
along the currents from
these mother lifegivers
pulsing silently underpeat.

there are potlatch peoples left
near here beyond the kelp
peoples who have never been visitors
and with peace enfold meaning

and symbol of trixter raven
of spirit bear and each sentient the

collective life. each know but a soft walk
where streams begin where salmonberry
can forever be thinned. they

who with their oral tradition have
and still notch millennia with harmony.

these fog islands have always been 
since the last great freeze
a nurse log puncturing the cold
crystal currents. hairy coniferous mounds
in a monstrous slumber
waiting for all of us to decide
to commit to its ways
or to our modern ballast foreign.
the local anywhere will have us
not just here
and freely
but the thickening of life

the embrace of timeless rhythm

is of it and not for it to choose.

it is one and we are disconnected. 

there are things you cannot buy back

there are still places alive not yet

wholly sold. consumptive indifference

that is what bides time with more

that are tankers and pipelines

and disappearing bees.

there are potlatch peoples left
near here beyond the kelp
peoples who have never been visitors
and with peace enfold meaning

and symbol of trixter raven
of spirit bear and each sentient the

collective life. each know but a soft walk
where streams begin where salmonberry
can forever be thinned. they

who with their oral tradition have
and still notch millennia with harmony.