The poets’ blood is the poets’ ink of inspiration

TALEQUAH

I am a darker son of the Pacific Northwest
born in Seattle’s Swedish hospital
baptized in glacier cooled Lake Washington
raised in the wild with mountain goat, cougar
deer, brown bear and marmot
home fed on the word made fish:
trout salmon and sturgeon

My Vision Quest began in the Olympic rain forest
and the misty Cascade mountain range
where I met my black grandfather, a sharecropper
from Mississippi, a Washington pioneer
meditating on the summit of Mt. Takhoma
with Chief Sealth, savior of white settlers seeking
a new life in the ancient woods of the Northwest
on the sacred waters of the Salish nation

I delight in sunlight dancing like diamonds
on rippling surface of Dalco Passage
where man meets his maker and makes amends

I witness the Blue Heron standing on one leg
in stunning silence in shallow water
then darting to spear a fish that slips down
her gracefully long flexible neck
into her feathery full tummy

At dusk the ferry crosses Puget Sound in twilight
as tides and currents pace the passage of sun and moon
tiny swallows swoop in from the sea nesting in nearby alders
At low tide clams squirt sea juice from beneath the barnacled
rocks and wet sand

At dusk honking Canadian geese cruise close by
marauding raccoons squealing on the hillside behind
the hot tube where Carlos smokes his Cohiba

I drink my Columbia River wine as black smoke rises
from the campfire drifting into gathering clouds

At sunrise the ferry idles between log pilings at the dock
where I sit on the bridge of Carlos’ ship sailing
into the wind as currents carry me away from land
and loved ones to the open sea

tomas