Selections from "Lost Bay"
and other poems
By Scott Malby
Prolog
This image of the village as it looks today is best viewed in a tranquil mood,
each leaf the eye takes in translucent soaking in the sun, foreshadowing changing
shapes to come. Before the white of winter blossoms, summer like a gilt angel
on a gabled roof paints the air orange into gold, striking the water through which
we glimpse the atmosphere of our own reflection.
A tremulation in the ordered air. The swan rises. The dove descends.
Tongues are loose. Old songs made new again as ground slips from under
Heaven's Gate and shadows obscure the light.
Lost Bay
Stranger: when light is a feeling before it strikes flesh,
as rooftops merge into a common skin, there is a wind
that blows in Oregon that is the breath and soul of Oregon.
When time is a rainbow river poised between shadow and sleep
comes a time for reflection when no bell tolls but the whistling buoy
summoning,
Proclaiming this the hour when the Deaf hear, the Dumb speak.
Surfacing (moon wise), the defeated rise from prisons
of their retreat, crying aloud: “We are alive! Are special because of it!”
All are tossing stars, like meteors falling from heaven’s cradle,
bearing as they fall the dreams of their blossoming opposites.
Voyager: in this blustering, stumbling village of rain swept streets
comes ocean, fog, sensations, belief, filling the night
with life’s sharp concentrate. In this dark town of stammering waters,
night squalls sweep in from the sea burning with the sweat
of secret discoveries.
Night of fantastic fevers, of the body in rebellion, sensing the momentary truth
of its’ nature, we are pilgrims in a night of curvatures, illusions, despair.
Our own undoing drives us into a time of unraveling moods and mysteries.
A time of secret confessions, of the confusions of song where there is no excuse
for beauty, no definition of love, no hour, second, minute but the one in hand;
that supple, flying undulation passing, passing till it is gone.
Night of Myth, of spontaneous combustion's, muddy angels are we all.
Caught in ungentle flight, trapped between the chalice and the serpent’s egg,
heaped with now, blessed with sound, taste, gift of sight, endowed both emperors
and clowns, we drift, more curved then straight, propelled by fire,
ice, crazed intellect, small sinners suffering small martyrdom’s.
As we drift, flesh of the apple dreaming from its tree is our tongue’s juice,
pleasures of the body filled with soaring sighs are just as sweet.
Far from sleep, near the parting of logic, I have heard in the bending tower
of myself, secret sounds coming in from the sea. strange, new voices calling out,
rising from the dark surf and falling rain.
O Night of miraculous mysteries, of unraveling moods let me splash
in the play of your sacred water. In my house of clouds, your notes rise
as I recognize in you the anthem of the sun; the Mother of Light.
I see into the beautiful surprise of your face as the Earth, a living creature,
shakes itself awake.
Out of the wilderness of whatever happened to, beyond the borders
of what might have been, comes a stiff, blue breeze of windy chants,
as long as the night to the sleepless is, filling the air with a salt sea scent.
A storm of voices, laughter, spells, yells; unchurchy hymns too scandalous
to be whispered out, prayers, love sighs, confessions. All from a village
caught in the act of falling from sleep, a red necked heaven
where the beer is cheap!
High in the fabled land of Now, everything changes, loss is a form of gain.
Clear as grace, the air partakes from primal rhythms magical shapes
of sand, waves, lighthouse, beach. On eagle wings morning hovers
above the body of this fleshy town rising to its drunken feet.
Everything collides in continual transformation, adding its own frothy flavor
to our mortal brew.
Lost Bay swells. It gorges on rhythms of tides and men. The thunder of life swirls
in a bottomless glass. Here, everyone knows all about you, smiles at sight of your face.
Caught by the shadow of the Raven’s mad flight, each sea-stained soul has a tale to tell,
echoing the ocean stretching its gray fathoms out into the eye of feather fabled eternity.
Breezy, in this land of Now, let the meaning behind each moment lift its head
that myriad eyes in wonder stare everywhere at once. Let Truth bite, drawing blood,
that we may bleed with a passionate, personal view of the essence of things.
Now is the wound we die to carry and all our hearts bleed as one.
Here, the innocent and damned swim against the current of world’s frenzy.
We are mad with doing! Filled with the scent of personal schemes that spawn,
spew, ignite! Let clouds cast no rain today as we climb the crazy weather
of ourselves, each into their hearts the gift of celebration take. Creator and destroyer,
our feet stain the rocky road we travel with our own blood.
Morning splashes against Ruth’s white breasts. Homer whistles.
She passes by, pretending not to notice. Wets her lips.
Jonathan pauses to scratch his crotch, Helen eyes him now eyeing her
from the sparkling reflection in the window of Cassandra’s restaurant.
Rebecca dreams of rubbing her palms along the leather
of Marlons’ motorcycle coat.
Time is a rainbow river. We are the ark sailing down furious water,
who might we call to propel these bodies to motion?
How make them speak their magic, revealing orbits of sun lit images
and steamy alphabets. Science? The storm? Marilyn Monroe in Heaven?
The Dispossessed? The Missing Ones?
Who speaks for the raw sky, broiling sea, our corrosive flame by time consumed.
The flute player? He is naked, dancing, inhaling the fragrant sweat of his own musical
flesh. Cloven feet spiral through gardens of mythic scents. He is the soul catcher, the poet
of light. What awe left undefiled by definition, continuous dissection. Who might we call
on but the moment itself twisting into its own undoing, devious as chance, turning
inside out, a sinuous snake hot and in heat, feeding on itself till it is not.
Steaming over the flame of time, in sudden showers, sometime sun,
anointed by morning-drizzle, too busy to pause for a backward glance,
fishers haul at their shimmering nets, unbridled by weight of what might come.
They heave, pulling at the knotted hemp. Like a folding shroud it rises!
Out of the liquid wilderness; manna of fish, shekels of bright silver offerings!
In continual baptism boats are grabbed by rocking waves, confounding space
and pull of gravity.
Over all: a continual commotion of gulls swift thieving, gorging themselves on the
plenty. Noah swears with a grunt. He is out alone. Peter, his shipmate, oversleeps again.
Daniel is on the Paradise, a trawler that is his own. Eve is at the Laundromat
washing her husband’s clothes. Moses argues with God as he enters Big Red’s Bar
and Crazy Cassandra remembers the future with regret. Jacob tosses in his bed,
dreaming of snaring David’s wife. She dreams of the beautiful limbs
young Jacob’s legs have become. Barbara yells at Dean and Joseph whispers to Mary:
“What kind of man Will our son become?”
In his wheelchair, Jonah waits for his meal on wheels. From Coos Head to Crab Flats,
the air is crisp as the day begins it’s spirited prayer under a cathedral of light.
Blessed are the living, Uprooted residents of the windy gale through which they walk,
breathing in the fire of water, earth, sky. Believing all things possible, if not possible
at least bearable. What is life but a whispering flame of all consuming thirst.
The repeater of patterns closing in upon themselves. A ravenous lover
against whom we burn to press.
Pilgrim Voyager: make ready to swim against the surf of time and circumstance.
Distinct with swells, life strikes rock. To proceed is to go by indirection.
Each act of Nature is one of dissimulation. Birds swim. Fish fly. Happiness is clothed
in flesh of air. From dusk to dawn, we are one with the burning song that through us
flows. Learning as we go how life shapes itself with each breath we take. Take what is
given. Accept what is to come. In selfless surrender are worlds without end.
There is a wind that blows in Oregon, that is the breath and soul of Oregon,
loosing itself in the mystery of unfathomed seas. Though humbled in the presence
of this immensity, I will not shrive, nor bow, recant. My shape has by accretions
grown toward the light. O, but the world into which we push ourselves,
gives only a glimmer of what may come to be. If time thinks it slays,
consider storm of knowing self. The unquenching restless motion of mind
in movement. Imprisoned in each burning bush, flower, tree, is world’s infinity.
Wherever you look, fragments of a healing sacrifice. The shape of this land inaugurates
passionate confessions; the all in constant parting. Both germ and star quicken while we
sleep. Not even death is forever. This the promise, this the pledge: the country around
you is a miracle of mirrors, the deeper you look, the cleaner your own image peering
back.
Adam Rise. Rise Adam. Rise! Try to find, without bruising, your own way now cloudly
bundled in the dawn of apple blossoming shine. For you the fruit of all knowledge
fermenting the juice of your meaty dreams. As strong stars strive, burst to pulse inside of
you, leave the fire ashes, the brown earth glad with plushing petal fall and green leaf drop.
Sprigs in fallow fields spring their way up from your old wounds. Cut branches darken
with new growth, their grave sap fresh sparkling.
Rise Adam. Rise! The nails in me pucker around pink flesh and pounds of good wishes
bleed forth to wing you on your wondrous way.
Prospero Moses
(Somewhere in Oregon On Wizard Island)
Plucking rocks
From cliffs,
I walk in wonder,
Seeking my better self,
Knowing how strong
We become by what
We renounce,
Unable to renounce
What I most need to.
Here, Nature abhors
A straight line.
Appearances deceive.
Wherever you look,
A landscape of curves.
Rage without anger
And trembling days
Of calm as the sun,
Heron winged, in motion,
Moves through the sky.
Its membrane of passage
Froth of the airy sea,
Drowning me
In the incandescent forest
Of its tide.
Give me lightning.
Give me thunder and rain.
Seed the blue pastures
Of heaven with tumbling
Clouds and wind, that I might
Breathe in the storm.
Make me dizzy with life!
Give me the rough, wild,
Untamed edges of coast.
Conceived from more
Then mortal roots, the blood
In me calls out.
Bring back the forgotten
Gods for here is a landscape
Worthy of their passions.
2.
I walk the night’s dark trail,
Wandering among cliffs,
Approaching
The precipice of no air,
Of watery spasms
Drowning in the cramp
Of molten seas, where stars
Turn inside out, vomiting up
The frozen secret of there
Identities.
Pounding on that door
That opens only once,
I watch as it slowly dissolves
For me, merging my seconds
In the fiery chaos of eternity,
As I move closer, standing
On nothing but air, soul
Flames to dance in its’ own
Embrace, reaching toward
The mirror image of itself,
And I ache to hear the fury
Of its cry.
I approach the beginning
Of the end, look upon the anger
Of its face, and rage at the silence
In those eyes that are my own
Just closing.
3.
Progeny
Of Adam’s sin,
What do I know?
I am beastly,
Of primitive passions,
Gluttonous with false
Pieties.
Exposed to the fiery
Forge of life’s
Hammering, my future
Is an ancient one.
O universe of secret
Gestures, what may we
Believe in but the magic
Of high, wild places
Where all existence
Is white treacherous,
And we are one
With the smoking waves.
O universe of passionate
Gestures, what is a magician
To do? All prophets
Are dead.
Cassandra is dead.
The great Pan
Is dead. Power
Of prayer is dead.
Faith of youth
Is squandered.
In New Jerusalem,
The tree of life
Is surrounded
By parking lots.
Nailed to its trunk
Are full-page ads
For diet pills, miracle cures
For yeast infections.
Everywhere, people hurt.
When hurt, its what’s closest
To them they destroy.
On a cliff of sand I stand,
At the cascading edge
Of world’s current,
Questioning what truths
Learned from the cascading
Waves waded through,
The breakers yet to come,
Perceiving few truths
Permanent except
That the Modern has
Failed us.
The wizard in me stretches
A shaking arm, reaching
Toward the sea, as I wait
For the wave bright lashing
Light to illuminate what I feel
But cannot articulate.
Good intentions are not
Enough, for us all things
Problematical, arbitrary,
Having nothing to believe in,
I choose to believe in hope.
4.
Too amazed to be bitter,
I choose to sing the songs
That charm with the pleasure
Of true delight.
As the wonder of the hour turns,
Let flow that fragile vow of hope,
That prayer of grace, asking
Nothing for itself, drowning
All ceremonies of grief.
Waves wash over me.
Comfort me with the knowledge
That I am a part but not all
Of what I sense to be.
And when I come unwillingly
To the cliff of time’s deceit,
All whistling and conjuration done,
I shall ready the island of myself
As it sinks, and be happy
As the shattering particles of myself
Fly free.
Honored Father:
You paid your dues.
The Depression, W.W. II
both took their toll from you
and four children to be clothed
and fed
meant dreams deferred,
meant stumbling through
each day knowing how the next
would be just like all the rest.
Sadly, now I recognize:
we lived together but never met.
NPR
bouncing
along the ether
of the air
I live
only by giving
myself away.
hear me
and be amazed...
I am like
the river
a flickering
sound
a familiar voice
without a face
here me
and be amazed…
Christina’s House
All begins and ends in waves.
A blessing in the parting water.
as if we a flood in the eye
of an unseen storm were made
to rise as we fall.
It all begins and ends with waves.
Ask yourself what matters most-
the answer you hear is your own.
If you want to be happy
know what it is to be sad.
Salt water rises along Coal Bank Slough.
at Sunset Bay, wind gathers steadily
and rain falls. Between earth and sky
an abrupt, gray fog slips in, revealing
more than it conceals.
Somewhere, near South Slough,
the splash of a heron rising,
its cry anointing us, telling us we are
not alone. The sounding mind disappears,
at one with the white mist.
Over all, perennial scents and sacred
mysteries, ancient chants from unseen
worlds that wrap around our own.
Sensing those ghosts within, we enter
this old white house.
I light a fire in the fireplace.
Within this cool, green room,
built by those who knew Nature
as the real master, shadows flicker
making uncertain the world of matter.
Everywhere, in everything, visible signs
of the invisible. Spirits rise from Fossil Point
to Joe Ney Sough. Like us, they feel
their own way through changing
worlds of reciprocal reflections
revealing the silence behind sound.
From somewhere, a feeling comes
of profound revelations imperfectly
perceived, just out of reach like beating
wings against the door of this house.
Lost in the liquid shape of rising flames,
this old Victorian house exudes
a lingering essence, carrying the weight
of lost souls called away, before finished
with living here.
What is in the air, but the presence
of loneliness perhaps, from those having
run as much away as toward their goals,
reaching out, touching us in ways
we cannot know
for no soul rests easy that reflects
upon itself, falling short
of what it strives toward.
Caught in remembered passions,
loves and pains, limited,
what can we understand as we
confront the barriers within,
if, in understanding we come to know
what moves us, prevents our seeing
into the reflection our striving casts.
Palpable as honey, what we touch
we change. Tell me, who made
the rules we follow? Who wrote
the song in the centers circle?
What lessons to be drawn
from the rising of the prescient
water? Who strikes the rim
of the chalice making our blood
hum?
Some claim one true answer.
Others, it's up to each to find.
All I know, a singular vibration
through us sings... on the move
through more then lifetimes.
Horsefall Beach
Brown skinned, copper backed, I remember running naked
along this beach, a virgin tumbling through adolescent free-fall
in honeyed bondage to the sun and this blue sea.
Splashing through miracles, I was a hawk of the leaping light,
weightless and apart, quick in flight, devoured and devouring
an infinity of sighs swallowing the world whole.
Moving from moment to moment, each moment viewed differently,
passing over rocks, under trees, through rich and lenient years,
asking myself what is important and why, I return to this beach
as if seeking something lost.
At the rhythmic edge time pivots, radiant waves clench in flight
like dolphins leaping through a sea of cries until weight of motion
bursts into this lightning of white spray, spilling as it decays
the elemental truth of what we secretly know but fear to face.
Imagination furthers space, all forms made were made to fall away,
nothing known can last but in the poetry of each part passing
into the recreated image of a greater or lesser whole.
Forged from the wilder part of ourselves apart, we are the waves
through which we move, shaped by a movement too fragile for fragile hands
to touch, taking us one person at a time to that ultimate point in time
where all waves end.
Guilt
My beautiful forgotten one, give me back your eyes!
I want to hold your memory inside, planting you like a seed
in the soil of myself.
Walking in my sleep I search the lost fields
of your flowering, willing your image back to my side.
Guilt has found a place to perch in my head,
a naked bird without feathers
screaming: “Don’t you dare forget!”
Hospital room confession
I see in their faces it is over now.
The drugs they give me make me hot and cold.
In this room there is no way out but sleep.
No conversation but the one articulating
within my own head.
I count my murders on both hands.
When love cried I refused to comfort her.
I married the woman father’s money bought.
I was weak in the innocence of my haste,
listening only to my own voice.
Everything went wrong.
Breathing in the atmosphere denied,
I turned on duplicity like a light that it might hide me
from the rage within myself.
I could not see how quickly we become what we destroy.
Behind my silences a meanness grew.
I tried to climb beyond regret, driving my wife to drink,
my sons to cheat. A bird of prey I stole my pleasures
at their expense. Beyond the broken shape of streets
I halted on, forgotten faces, no house fine enough,
no fire warm enough, no friend good enough,
no success great enough to stand me still,
that I might rest in the shine of the irregular moments flow.
Now I know, all the while I was running toward my own retreat.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following three poems were first carried by "Write-Away." They are no longer available on the net.
Said Joseph to Mary
Our son will need a profession.
Being an architect is good.
Such training would join eye to hand
for the practical good of all mankind.
Consider the world as a bridge of sorts,
joining opposite to opposite, making
all journeys possible. Let our son
be a bridge builder, making something
out of nothing come.
Said Mary to Joseph:
A bridge is a wondrous thing
if it brings a man closer to himself,
and yet…
Said Joseph to Mary:
And yet?
Said Mary to Joseph:
Forgive my ignorance. It comes from the way
a woman thinks. Is the choice up
to us?
Why not wait till he is older,
that we might ask him? Thereby building
a bridge between him and ourselves.
Besides, I can’t help feeling there are worlds
more important then what the eye alone sees.
Said Joseph to Mary:
Talk in a way a man can understand.
Said Mary to Joseph:
Are not the things we feel as important
as what we see? You speak of power
coming from knowledge in action.
Dear Joseph, what of wisdom of heart?
Said Joseph to Mary:
Pass the bread.
Sybil
I climb your stairs,
growing younger as I go,
leaving the wounds
of the street below.
Looking for answers.
Nearing the past,
approaching my future
knocking at your door.
In your corridor
faint traces
of an earthy musk.
A clay vase from which
an Iris grows.
On a table from antiquity,
a polished bowl. Its fruit
you say, was picked
from secret gardens
in Old Jerusalem.
Inexperienced,
I stand and wait, watching
as ancient ritual
takes hold of us.
You say:
“The husk of my fruit,
may be dry and wrinkled
but beneath its flesh
weeps a magic juice,
miraculous in its flow.
Like red wine, bittersweet,
filling the mouth, bathing
the throat, savor the taste.
Let it come to you.
Don’t search it out.
Existence is conception,
creation, emotion, response.
Life is long, never long enough.
To be alive is to be lost.
All is in learning to let go,
feeling the earth spinning
as it slips from under your feet.”
Absalom
He had to go away.
Besides, inside every large fir
hides a pot of gold.
A poet needs money.
Will work where he can,
when he has to,
if they will let him.
Absalom was lured up river.
Beyond his father’s reach.
Beyond the comfort
of his books and computer.
Beyond the housing tracks.
Leaping hurdles of old forest
camps, felled trees, snags
and mesquite, to where
chaos flourished
in the fury of long toothed saws
and screaming winches.
Yesterday, God came calling
for a young backwoodsman.
Absalom might have had a prayer
but not the time to say it
as a steel cable lashed
through his red neck.
His head flew into the air
bouncing over my boots.
That these eyes still focus
as they travel up the sides
of my tin cup, stopping
where the whiskey begins
to spill, should come
as no surprise.
If words can mean, these eyes
can curse, cry, run in cold weather,
or tear when throat gags
from shock and fire’s smoke.
I sit here drinking, staring down
at my bloody boots, watching
the anger in me rise, not that life
dishes up such crap on a silver platter,
but that we are forced to eat it
even though we choke.
The Coalfields At Green Acres
I’ve lived my life with those who build and those
who break. Two kinds of people. Two songs sung.
Among the damned who hoard their cherished hurt,
life is a bracken river that drags its victims in panic
down into the hollow of their pain where stagnant
water reflects the cancer of their anger as they repeat
the same ugly mistakes over and over again. I’ve lived
with giving folk offering up their meagre provisions
as they scramble for what little riches life provides.
In the abundant soil of their hope no rain lasting
but through persistence overcome. And I ask you:
Who is the most deceived? They who build or break?
Sunset Memorial; Coos Bay, Oregon
In heaven as below, an ironic humor turns
water to wine, wine to someone else’s vinegar.
We inherit a corrupting taste making palatable
what we’re forced to drink. Therefore, a double latte
if you please. Whipped cream with the beans.
From the age of bronze to silicon a new millennium
has come, another gone.
Once, everything important was writ in rock.
Who, we wonder, had the balls to chisel riddles
into Cheops’ beast, centering on a heart of stone.
What ancient chants fused the body of the king
of beasts with the dissembling face of man?
What magic in them not now in us? Advancement
is a vague and windy thing. Still, we kill to eat.
Must eat to live. What passion spurred old Leaky
heart in throat to hike the narrow gorges searching
for a sign. Seeking the animal in man through time,
joining four million years with our own? What of Yeats?
A man whose passion was in monkey glands.
What beast saw he hitchhiking toward Bethlehem?
Here, stretched upon a hill of emerald grass
that slopes in passing lines from cross to cross,
sad dues are paid. In this stone, a thousand worthy
names are carved. Here is Anna. There is Walter.
Danny rests not far away. All favored citizens
of this humbled city, who hungered, sought and loved
their way to forgetfulness. Each caught up in the fever
of their time. Where is their New Jerusalem?
Here, love is more ache than ecstasy
for each heart knows how fragile is its house.
How far the distance between our dreams
and the world moved through. Love needs
no walls to hide behind, no greater monument
then our suffering. Here, past in present merge
the death of dreams and kings into one
troubling image. Both perceiver and perceived,
we are what we fear most. We sense that danger
in ourselves but don’t know how to change.
How kill our hunger for blood, the mark of the beast
in man but in searching for something greater than
self love alone? Everything is holy or nothing is.
A purging, transcendent truth warns: we are responsible
for everything we touch.
Three Mile Lake
As surrender feeds the water after a great storm,
the bruised red boat let the waves board
and the current take it greedily. It bobbed
like an apple in a gray green pond. The child stared
from where he launched his toy, watching it drift
beyond reach. No child’s tears, pleading prayers,
promises or bribes could entice the hour to turn
the moment back, returning to a young boy's joy
when he first knelt, surrendering his heart’s soul
to the mist and times deception.
On this park bench early in my farewell afternoon,
I sit and watch as a mother lifts her child up
whispering into his ear what only experience teaches.
All flesh plays for a season before it crackles and snaps.
What we desire swells in us, eating us alive.
Mind wanders from the red boat into the tangled
flotsam of myself, tracking my moments passing
folding me within the waves of itself as I think
how happy are they gifted with their own forgetfulness
who sail with the courage of acceptance
through the current's frenzy.
Listing of Poems
Prospero Moses (Somewhere in Oregon on Wizard Island)
Honored Father: You paid your dues
Sunset Memorial, Coos Bay, Oregon
