It’s now a family of four. Down at sunny Pasadena the stork brought to Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Jeffers, who used to live here, twin boys. The bull dog’s nose is broken.
Carmel Pine Cone, November 22, 1916
All Roads Lead to Carmel
“D. F. Watkins …, [officer] of the California State Automobile Association … stated that more travelers were directed to Carmel, Monterey, and Del Monte than to any other points of the state this last year.”
Carmel Pine Cone, October 27, 1915
Uvas Canyon, Autumn 2015
A couple weeks after our walk-in camping experience at Sanborne-Skyline County Park, Michael and I spent a night at our family’s favorite county park, Uvas Canyon. We enjoyed a crackling campfire, some sinfully rich camp food, and a pleasant hike up the falls trail.
©2015 Kaweah
Commies Everywhere!
The initial printing of “Apology for Bad Dreams,” the poem I’ve been obsessed with of late (and recited at Fall Fest), was in the inaugural issue of the Marxist magazine New Masses.
Fall Festival 2015
The Tor House Foundation’s Fall Festival was once again good fun, from the Friday evening social at Tor House to the Sunday morning poetry walk on Carmel River Beach. Saturday featured, “Once Upon a Sunday,” a newly rediscovered film that featured Point Lobos, plus a wonderful new book by Tom Killion. I felt very fortunate to have been given an opportunity to squeeze in a recitation of Jeffers’s gem “Apology for Bad Dreams.” When I’d first been asked if I’d like to read something with a Point Lobos theme, I’d said that I’d like to read “Boats in a Fog.” Fortunate for me, someone had already claimed that one. I was thus forced to choose “Apology,” which is way too long for such an event, but what the Hell. The recitation was a cathartic experience, and many in attendance seemed to enjoy it. Why more people don’t do this sort of thing escapes me.
Fall Festival 2015
The Tor House Foundation’s Fall Festival was once again good fun, from the Friday evening social at Tor House to the Sunday morning poetry walk on Carmel River Beach. Saturday featured, “Once Upon a Sunday,” a newly rediscovered film that featured Point Lobos, plus a wonderful new book by Tom Killion. I felt very fortunate to have been given an opportunity to squeeze in a recitation of Jeffers’s gem “Apology for Bad Dreams.” When I’d first been asked if I’d like to read something with a Point Lobos theme, I’d said that I’d like to read “Boats in a Fog.” Fortunate for me, someone had already claimed that one. I was thus forced to choose “Apology,” which is way too long for such an event, but what the Hell. The recitation was a cathartic experience, and many in attendance seemed to enjoy it. Why more people don’t do this sort of thing escapes me.
Sanborne-Skyline Campout
Michael and I spent the weekend at Sanborne-Skyline County Park, searching along the San Andreas Fault for earthquake evidence and enjoying a pleasant evening hike up the mountainside to Skyline Road.
Michael walking through the Todd Creek Redwoods
Inscription on Helicon
I have seen her now: seasoned with eternity,
simmers in her sky-cold sylvan pool, hard and white
as the waning moon and quartzite banks, the last softening
membrane of youth seared away in the slow forge of forever;
breast peppered with translucent constellations
when the sun breaks through the leaves.
No fleshy delicacy—even of the slightest young brides,
but the taut, radiant hide of an ageless queen,
Immortal virgin, so say they, but naught of docile innocence;
her purity: homicidal violence.
She it is who haunts the dread hinterland,
forbidden interior, wildland of man;
No love for the society of Olympus,
and no Earth Mother, more terrible
than any Aphrodite.
I have etched here these scars on this stone, scraped
as I hide, catching my breath, wrapping my wounds,
year over year, binding my bones,
to report that I have run this long,
even to the sacred springs on Helicon.
Not pious nor merciful, she makes sport of me still.
The hounds come.
Acteon
© 2015–16 Kaweah
Saints among the Pinnacles
I joined Michael and his baseball club for their first annual campout at the Pinnacles Campground and got in a great evening hike up to the High Peaks, where I conversed with a pair of ravens at sunset.
The Pinnacles at dusk
Hotel Jericho
Lowcountry, maybe twenty
upstream miles from the Battery
and a few feet above the sea;
the gators and the blackwater
patiently flow, and you can just about
hear the ghost-song of the ivory bill
echo off the cypress knees.
On the south bank, the land
swells forty or so feet
to lanky yellow pine stands
and narrow Old Jacksonboro Road,
holding to the rim till a finger
of the Caw Caw points to where
the road meets the Savannah Highway
and the tracks at Adams Run.