I wrote this poem for my friend who died in Alaska in 2010. Fireweed is a plant in the evening primrose family; it grows in the Pacific Northwest and is among the first to come up after there has been a disturbance to the land.

“Fireweed”

i.

it was dawn, there were thrushes

up and down the path, moss

gathering the light, gathering

the rain and the men hauling in

the nets, the nets filled with silver

coins, jewels, oil, an abundance

there was the frost waiting in the mountaintops

and we wanted to show you

all the crystals that stood underneath the needles

waiting   they were waiting for you

to notice them and take them in hand

ii.

how long had you been gazing 

west   how many afternoons

did you see his face, did you want to touch

his face, was he waiting,  did you ask

him to bring you, did you request

your own canoe    (how neatly it cuts

through the channel)    were you hopeful

did you ask   were we wrong about everything   were we

iii.

everything waking up now as it always

does   fern   hillock   hummock 

root wad    tide pool   and a hairline fracture

where the light crawls along

and the spines   and the moss after nightfall

and the faces of the women

lining the riverbed   holding out their baskets

one by one by one by one 

they step up to the trunk

where the water shines and the tiny

root hairs reach into the cold

invisible    like nerves

iv. 

nothing could hold the salt nothing could capture the paint nothing could hold the wind nothing could cover the stones

v.

did he say it, did he touch you, did he call,

was he there, did you believe him, was there

smoke, were there rattles, were there teeth,

did you ask, did the blanket hide you

did the wind spill through the channel,

did the ice feel right, were there matches,

were there needles, could we have spoken

better, could we have held you tighter,

could the light have traveled any more 

quickly into your heart

vi.

afterwards, we could see him traveling

through the village   we didn’t want

to see him   we didn’t want to see

but he just kept limping along there

and sometimes he stopped at the window

and we closed the blinds 

and he tapped and he tapped with a fingernail

a mussel shell

a piece of fish

a cup of oil

a twisted bone

a hunk of wood

an ivory goose

a thorny grin

and we opened the window after all

vii.

there were the baskets and bowls

and blankets and your daughter carried the nets

and the nets kept filling up, we couldn’t stop them

(her wrists adorned with silver and garnet)

and when we gathered at the roadside

there was light

there was ice and rain

there was the sound of the ice

touching down onto the earth

and there were the thrushes 

there were the songs

all along the path

and there was your voice 

twisted into the woven leaves

we were sure of it 

The following long poem was first published as Steven Hitchins' Literary Pocket Pook #2 in Pontypridd, Wales, UK.

“Text Me, Ishmael”

 i.

Ability to evaluate different genres of creative writing.

Linked-In, Jim has switched from the Higher Education 

Industry to the Insurance Industry. Transferable skills. 

Your inner child galloping along the rocky ridge. Did you happen

to catch the YouTube of the man trying

to cross Halibut Point Road? So intoxicated he finally 

lies down and rolls. Himalayan poppies

lining the wall, and huge marigolds under the window- 

sill. Breaking dawn, after another night,

the husband trudges out into the morning’s

mouth. He’s bending at the stern of the vessel,

he’s hauling in the nets. What does he bring

home through the door in the evening? What skill set?

ii.

The hill is made of Old Red Sandstone

from the Devonian Period. Out of the fort

at Crug Hywel, the tiny iron figures marched

onto your windowsill, bearing knives and bayonets.

In the mean time, we brewed some strong tea.

And inside the chambers of our hearts, matchsticks 

formed the figures of men. Our sister

crumpled in the ditch. Old friend, they lay you flat

upon the table and lifted out the sour parts. And your new 

life began. Your children still clung to your hips;

they did not know the difference. And I lit the lantern

in the evening and I set out the bowls of seeds.

Inside the greenhouse, under the wrinkled glass,

our sister is standing up and dressing herself.

iii.

Always trudging out into the morning’s

mouth. Out through the front door and up

the coast, across the seedlings, the artichokes. 

Goldfinches nesting in the hedge. Galloping

child, hopeful daughter, friend request. There,

the fringe is eaten away by moths. And there,

bright snowberries decorate the creek. What

smooth beast? Asters and geranium, a horse

struggling in a ditch. Imagine that we had a long

enough rope and the strength. That the carousel

never stopped turning, the bright eyes and manes. How 

different each morning, and how long would you keep 

hauling it in, planting the pumpkins, gathering the fleece? 

Listen. The looms are clicking and thumping, wool 

pulled thin and looking for a place.

iv.

Our sister, crumpled in the ditch. Months 

for the bruise to disappear, green lake 

filling up under a long flat sky.

The surface looked as though it would spill 

right over... and we stared and stared but 

did not know any strategy with which

to contain it. Lots of times they do remain

behind bars. We thought about the shadows 

marching across the men’s faces. Not how

to manage the fear or the tendency to return.

Far away, several bottlenose dolphins headed

for the West Coast at breakneck speed, carrying 

radiation from the spill. And somewhere else a hand 

stroked a harp. And our sister chewed the little pill.

v.

Linked-In, over the shining trees. A flock

of sandpipers breaks apart, reunites, breaks

apart again. In Fort Collins, the fire took

more than 82,000 acres, 191 homes, 1 human

life. Still, the tide rose and fell. I wanted

to hold you, to reinvent the old rooms filled

with one scent. I spent a year walking

the shore. I lifted the stone, I stuck my head

deep into the pool, peeked around in there. Cool 

water, still water. The giant green anemone 

fastening itself to the driftwood, rough

as sandpaper, waving and reaching, every tentacle 

filled with nerves. And the mouth. Big flower.

I wanted to bring it home but I left it there.

“Amaranth”

Any kind of wind in a hedge reminds me of the dancers I saw in London at a small theater next to the Opera House. They wore leotards that matched their skin. Also the raven, way off to the east, and pigeons. The oil-colored throats. The urban wilderness.

There is a street artist named ROA who painted three enormous sea lions on a wall on Bartlett Street in San Francisco, and a family of opossums at Fifteenth and Valencia.

Every other weekend, I  ride my bike north for an hour in order to admire the fields of brussels sprouts along the coast… Click here to read the full essay.

“On Amber Flora Thomas, Red Channel in the Rupture”

In fall 2020, I took an online class through the Poetry School with bilingual Welsh poet Rhys Trimble: “Poetry and Eclogue: Ritual Ecopoetics.” The prompts and the other students opened my eyes to many possibilities, and the “associative leap” became central to my practice in a new way. I have long been interested in writing about trauma survival, having lost an infant daughter in 2002 and my beloved husband suddenly in 2016. Trimble’s class challenged me to think about how I might continue to integrate these experiences into my creative practice in ways that honor their intensity and complexity. In my reading life, I began to ask myself: what leap might the poet be asking readers to make when juxtaposing wildly different images or tones? And, why might they be asking us to make it? In addition, I wondered how a poem might act through accrual, perhaps like a collage… Click here to read the full essay.

“Roy”

April 27, 2012. I’m reading on the plane: Doris Chapin Bailey’s biography of her deceased husband, Roy. The book is called A Divided Forest. Roy was a Tlingit elder from Sitka, Alaska, the town I called home for fifteen years. I still call it home, although I was born and raised in Anchorage and I’ve been in the San Francisco Bay area since 1999. And there is so much I want to say about Sitka, about Roy’s life and so many others, about my own connections to the place as a poet. Let me begin: I am flying back to California from Sitka after the memorial service for my old friend Isabella Brady, another Tlingit elder. Isabella died suddenly at the age of 88. She was a cancer survivor, ready for another ten years. She, like Roy, knew my grandparents, Les and Caroline Yaw, Presbyterian missionaries and educators who moved to Sitka from Iowa in 1923. My youngest daughter is named Isabel, out of respect for Isabella… Click here to read the full essay.