CRABTREE
A New Year's Poem
[In honor of one of my very
favorite natural hot springs]
(Written 12/31/91 to 1/1/92)




Some people are wandering souls, like me.

I always wander back to Crabtree, like water.

Now it's almost 1992, like 1991, but newer.

Life brings me back to Crabtree, to see

The past flowing behind me, like the river.



Please, no old refrains, like bittersweet memories.

I'd rather sit by the Rice Fork of the Eel, alike,

After another soak in the hot spring, a cleansing,

Like the set-free soul of the eagle, souring,

I saw him yesterday, and he still exists to my liking.



My friend the sky, like a bosom-buddy

Who's sometimes an enemy, like a bad storm;

Enemy-friend, out with the old, in with the new;

No total dying to the old, both are good in their way.

I say there is hope, for the new and the gray.



There are also my friends the rocks and the trees;

Sentinels guarding the past and the present for now,

They consider what's below them for all posterity's,

And the wind blows by and through them kindly

Even in the rage of the rain that it frees.



[Crabtree Hot Springs,

Mendocino National Forest,

California]