Logging Suite

for Rigging Slinger Leo Garcia who saved my life

I. Clearcut Morning

No longer a forest at all, ripped earth, shattered stumps, logs and slash raise musky, winey scents in this morning’s sun.

Split some wood start the landing’s burn-barrel fire, sawgas and diesel swirl in the woodsmoke.

The yarder and tower savage sundial above this assaulted hillside, guylines hold the spar tree, cloud measuring pie chart.

The symmetry of industry hydraulic rams shining silver drive wheels, ratchets and pawls. A harvest really; a forest felled, yarded, loaded, trucked away.

Polished in gravel and dirt, cat tracks or chokers dull luster of metal, work worn beauty, sheen of that raw steel.

The last cold coffee flies Into the slash, screw the cup on the thermos. Ease into it. Corks and hobnails crunch across the landing’s shale.

Bird song, morning talk or silence until a chainsaw choked, coughs once then cuts up the morning quiet, other machines snort, belch smoke, spin and join in.

Now it begins, dented hard hat and grimy gloves on, this odd dance, first steps tentative an easy path on downed logs but check for balance, get the rhythm, as muscles wake moving downhill toward dangling chokers.

I miss those mornings now, muscles flexing, focused on a task defined. It seems so long ago and we’ve forgot, this all comes from somewhere.

II. Frightening Demons

Rain forests migrate as a group—Gary Snyder

The Sitka Spruce butt block, ten feet long carved for a temple guardian, fierce eyes bulging.

Carved with clever blades, metallurgy of ancient conflict, steel sliding through spruce cells, sighing like cherry petals blown down a fresh swept path.

Roughed-in gestures violent, mudras for frightening demons for protecting tranquility.

A spruce butt in Japan, unnatural trick of entrepreneurs, carved to preserve tranquility.

Saw snarling, toppling the spruce, pulling the clouds-down, and tearing the heart out.

The twelve-foot splinters left on the stump.

When the clouds are gone, bear, raven, and eagle will leave. salmon will swim in circles offshore. and on the ragged rocks that are left even Kusch-te-kaaw, dread, drowning Land-Otter Man, will have no place to go.

III. High-lead Logging Lessons

Gravity matters.

A pulled tail-hold tree falling toward you is enormous!

Enough adrenaline you fly!

Foolish or just ignorant, where you stand can save your life. Being alert is no waste of time.

Just tired or sleepy nicking your boot with a chainsaw snaps you awake!

Love in your lunch-bucket always makes it better.

IV. Up River

Beyond the tides' high reach where the old firs and cedars grew, where their stumps rot under huckleberries where salmon have spawned up creeks. In simple cabins under sheltering trees loggers lived till the timber was gone. Small cabins with woodsheds, split alder, maple or old fir stacked like stonework fitted together plumb and tight.

Well honed axes with hand polished handles rest ready for winter as the eaves drip

Field gone to alders, dreams busted, feeder steers butchered, cow sheds lean into the soggy loam, blown log trucks under blackberries never start. A stock trailer slowly dies as tires rot berry sprouts and saplings through the slats.

The kids never came back, they never wanted to work that hard, wet and dirty. Now moss covers the roofs, paint fades and fails. Barnyards empty and silent, the stock all gone farm tractors seized or useless disappear.

Rust eats fading yellow iron, skidders, cats or yarders in the brush.

Old choker setters limp to their mailbox musing, "Grannie was slow, but she was old!" Rigging slingers or hook tenders have their own tales, snapped cables, toppling machines, barber chairs, close ones, widow makers.

Crushing logs drop, pivot or roll.

"A miss is as good as a mile!"

On wood front steps an old pair of “corks” full of garden soil flower pots for purple violets or yellow marigolds, On wet hills above, trees grow.

On the close cropped hills above planted seedlings stretch for low sodden clouds.

\ Lenora Rain-Lee Good Mahto

I live in the Cave of the Darkness of Sleep though I do not sleep. Colors of light visit me, teach me, feed me, enlighten me.

Claws hold my pen, an eternal feather brought by Crow. I write symbols across the leaf. I do not stop until all are drawn, colored, completed.

I go to the mouth of the Cave, thank the colors of day, the colors of night, the colors of wisdom, and blow my breath across the symbols.

They ignite, burn, send messages, wisdoms, through the heavens, through forest, across meadows, until they reach the intended who, alone, will hear, decipher, understand.

I live in the Cave of the Darkness of Sleep though I do not sleep. I contemplate ways of existence, I ask the sky beings, earth beings, water beings, the anchored beings. I ask. I listen. They respond. I write on a new leaf.

Sometimes the symbols are for me, always they are for you, the being who asks through your dreams, your tears, your pain. Always I, or one of my kind, hear. Always I, or one of my kind, answer. Nothing gives us such pleasure as the joy you radiate when you hear, understand, accept, when you act on the knowledge so freely given.

I live in the Cave of the Darkness of Sleep though I do not sleep. I dance in unabashed joy at the light of your being.

(Mahto, Lakota for bear)

Cove, Oregon

this path through basalt looks deceptively gentle but we feel its volcanic underpinnings here above the Columbia River which we can’t hear from up here our perch of mud and rock on this gray March day we stare at the dark water, all blues and greens we overlook, take it all in breath going out towards the far hills going in with cries of crows and air propelled by wings of hawks and eagles we feel bigger now like the cliffs more liquid like the hypnotic wavelets not completely skin and bone

Karen Gookin

In Winter

when they need it most, I left the feeder empty one day, chose spite instead, clasped vengeance tight behind me while junco and finch perched on the fence, fading dark shadows watching my straight back will against them—that day when I, too, moved along the fence line, waiting for your change of heart.

Maggie and the Ocean

Stepping onto the shore looking across the shifting tides I find my peace with her again. I let myself go a traveler after a long journey finding the comfort of an ancient past and a place befitting of my ashes.

But gazing out again to where the sea meets the sky I find a longing for more.

Is this the mystery of the unknown whispering through the mist?

Or the silhouetted memory of a shipwreck long ago, carrying my cargo of dreams like crates of tea and opium and spices to the bottom of the Pacific.

Memories move in waves, rushing towards me for a time then receding away.

Running to the foamy water golden hair flying behind her feet slapping the wet sand. Green seaweed that sticks to the skin, digging for treasure that does not exist. The grasp of a daughter’s tiny hand in mine walking to the car at the end of the day. These moments are merely shells I know— bleached by the sun edges rounded by time… but I will hold them in my pocket for safe keeping.

My heart pings in unnatural rhythms clinging to what I wanted for her or what I thought she could be. But the wind in its motion and the sea in its depth remind me these are illusions. The statues of imagined triumphs are nothing more than brown kelp strewn across the beach, heads sunken down like corpses on the battlefield of low tide.

I sense the sheets of rain falling in the distance, the grayness of my beard, the slowing of my step. A poetic voice inside rolls and echoes like thunder bringing Maggie and the ocean together so that I cannot tell where one ends and the other begins…

My complete acceptance of her, A gentle wave released. My longing for her safe harbor, A foghorn, unseen, emanating forever.

My love for her travels beyond the horizon. Her love for me speaks without saying a word.

Marc Janssen

Battery Russell

Frivolous patina-ed concrete imposed on natural curves Empty and echoing above the nature trail

The hunting slit of the control tower is blind Wind scarred pines have advanced to shield the sea.

Rob Jacques