Dear Friends,
Yesterday we celebrated the end of the Poetic Opening Tour with a victory loop from Red Bluff Park up to the Univeristy of California Hat Creek Radio Observatory and SETI site (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) near Mount Lassen and then on to Burney Falls and back to Red Bluff. Here are some poems and impressions from a wonderful day out that no one should miss the next time they visit Red Bluff Park.
Cartographers Of The Sky
From the depths of space
A blue, wet and cloud streaked planet
floats serenely in blackness
The surface appears
To be three quarters water
Marked by irregular landmasses
And capped with polar ice
Gazing from afar
One would see no evidence
Of the human activity
Teeming on earth's suface.
Our homes
Our soaring spires
Our vibrant cities
Our fields of green and amber
Our acts of kindness
And flights of passion
Triumphs of intellect
And heroic endevours
All are quite invisible
To our unaided vision
Scanning our world
Across the vastness of space.
(From the SETI site, Hat Creek Radio Observatory)
Wobbling Up Highway 5
Wobbling up Highway 5
Past Jelly's Ferry Road
In search of Extra-Terrestrials
At the Hat Creek SETI site
"Report drunken drivers by dailling 911"
We're at Hooker Creek and
The Mily Way just passed on 18 wheels
Golden poppies line the median
Like sun shining on the Verison
Sunset Hills reminds us of
"The Sage Of The Andes" - Silo
And how a sunset can change the meaning of your life
Three snow capped mountain ranges converge here
Not unlike Punta de Vacas
The Sierras, The Cascades and The Coastal Range
We've taken on a new band of troubadors
For this victory lap tour
Patricia and Mark from New York
Janet and The Usual Suspects
We pass Gas Point Road
And feel the pain of rising prices
But angels seem to appear
When the fuel tank is low
From some wonderful Californian Welcome Center
You know who you are
Ken and MaryJo (Mobile Poem)
Balls Ferry Road
In search of Extra-Terrestrials
Breakfast with Dick at the Fly Palace restaurant
Full of good old boys
The walls and halls full of
Local branding iron symbols
Frontier Feed and Saddelry
Pushing the limits of the known universe
What will happen when we find out
We are not alone
What if they come expecting to find Mr. Ed
Informed by re-runs
Birds of Prey
Preyed on by accompanying sparrows
It's a dog eat dog world
And MaryJo riding co-pilot
While Kurt ate fresh green beans and pork for breakfast
Dream Catcher Road
A land of fertile soil and big trees
East 44 to Mount Lassen
We're all looking forward to
The coolness of mountain breezes
After cooking in valley heat
An exhausting heat that demands a summer siesta
Shingeltown land covered by boulders
The sign of a big bang
Sent 20 miles in every direction
When Mount Lassen blew its top.
Kurt & Ken (Mobiel Poem)
Model Log Homes
Model Log Homes from a kit
Put together like a jig saw puzzle
The pine trees on either side of us
Are perfectly vertical
And straight as telephone poles
Perhaps their future calling
Walt's temperature rises
As we climb abover 3,000 feet
More work for a bus full of people
Made lighter by the constant laughter
That rolls and soars to giggles
as we celebrate our victory lap
A tour of historical proportions
Converting into a modern myth
Up and down California's coast
No longer the twisting cliffs of Highway One
We're winding our way up Mount Lassen
Arriving just now to snow
Snow at 5,000 feet, Volcanic Park
Eskimo Hill Summit
5993 feet above sea level
A mile high is 5,280 feet
A few trees left along the highway
In front of the clear cut devastation
Of our professionally managed forests
SETI s a mountain valley
Still 20 minutes away
We're turning on Doty Road loop
It's like Paradise here.
Kurt & Ken (Mobile Poem)
Inside A Radio Telescope
100 Miles North East of Red Bluff Park
We toured the UC Berkeley SETI facility
With Gary who told us about Spin-Flip Transitions
Where photons are released by this reaction
Allowing us to see the flipped object
And figure out what it is made of
Hat Creek,
Hold on to your Hat Creek, it's windy here
The bus people demanded the Doors
And then began clapping, shouting and screaming
LA Woman in the afternoon
The trees are swaying in the wind
We're going to Burney Falls
By mutual consent
And Dick's arm twisting of stubborn Ken
They yell City of Light repeatedly
The out of tune energetic force of our occupants
Blasts us into the windshield
Where we remain pinned by the sheer volume
We stop so Ken can pay the keepers
Of the entrance gate to the falls
And Irina bought marshmellows
But couldn't roast them
Over Patricia's cigarette lighter
Kurt & Ken (Mobiel Poem)
Ode To Susan Wooldridge
We'll begin with the confustion of noun verbs
That are homonyms
The plane and simple plain, planes
The flat plane as a way of preparing
The whey for the cheese
Kurt closed my rest area
And forced me to homonym with him
In honor of the poemcrazy goddess
We've finished a long poetic bus tour
That ended up searching for Extra-Terrestrials
In the mountains
The runaway truck lane never went uphill
So Ken lost interest in interesting others
In the fate of those runaway truckers
There you go!
What does goes up?
And when your gone, what goes on?
An uneasy spirit is not easily satisfied
With partial answers or stone hard truths
But instead demands
The opening of bottomless being.
Kurt & Ken (Mobile Poem)
Humanity is a seed in the Garden of Life.
Heavenly bodies orbit the Sun.
The seed grows and matures, while the Univese expands and evolves.
Haiku verses
Some occurences
are gifts bequeathed by the mind
to nourish the soul.
***
Reveries like dreams
take place while one is Asleep;
Intent, when one is Awake.
***
One fervently hopes
repetitions ad nauseam
could summon a change.
***
Silence swept away
emptiness full of debris
unblocking life's flow.
***
I am a New Moon
that reveals a face of the earth...
I am a Graden
home to bonzai of flowering plants and fruit bearing trees..
I am Butterfly
cuddled in a frail cocoon..
I am Dawn
knocking at heaven's door..
I am a Breath of Life
struggling as Human.
Thelma
