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| Photo: H. Utz |
I haven't written a poem for a long time. But was inspired by an assignment in our Transcendentalists class: write a poem in the style of Emerson. Now, there's an assignment! I enjoyed this exercise and it stretched me, as I don't often write, or think, in mid-19th-century English. But the Transcendentalists have reminded me of a month I spent camping alone on the Oregon coast in 2008, one of the best months of my life.
Cape Blanco
Atop a rocky terrace against the sea,
Campfire voices strut, philosophize, debate
To the crackle of wood and bottles
Petitioning Phorcys against the dangers of the deep.
Weary of bluster, I escape to stiller ground,
Watch dense smoke nestle in evergreen boughs
of fog-shrouded sequoias beneath blackening sky
crinkling and coiling ever back on itself.
Alone I sit, anchored by sodden earth
Scanning sky’s vast canopy of leaf and branch
While the chill of wind-off-water
duels brazenly with an August night.
I stake my tent under full moon’s light,
breathe the scent of wet pine and brume,
ocean salt and the day’s last repast,
as midnight rousts a coterie of stars.
Cradled by Beauty, I make my bed
held by giants whose diurnal ablutions—
water, wind, rain, and tide—have placed
cold heavens within their grasp.
A patter of droplets pelting my tent
nudges me further down roads of dream
until day’s light presses awake the treetops,
announcing morning in ripples of violet and blue.
Open-pored, brine-soaked, I awaken
Bare skin a vessel, unfurled, to forest’s great Essence,
as surging waters above and below
embrace this promontory in tides—
a baptism of all both ancient and eternal,
washing the sands of this e’er-pervious coast.
-HU
