Three Poems by HR Harper

 

The Broken Tree

 

you are out on Bear Mountain 

like a pilgrim 

with an empty quiver -- 

you’re hunting nothing 

but pines and manzanitas 

walking on logging roads 

whose pitch, crown 

and water berms 

of gravel and clay 

stumble your feet – 

you needed to breathe  

the trees today 

 

you look up 

to hurried clouds 

of a storm coming soon 

and so you’ll stumble home 

 

you know 

there is an uncanny tree -- 

a tree you named -- 

on the other side  

of this mountain 

 

you’ll pass by the tree -- 

a redwood that stands 

among others of its kind 

all straight as telephone poles -- 

tall redwoods piercing the sky 

with limbs as thin as spears 

to snap in storms 

and stab a man  

to briskly make a widow 

 

although you are man 

with a husband, 

he’d be bereft too 

should winds launch  

those lovely spears at you 

 

the pilgrim’s way  

has just the right risk 

 

* 

this tree you’ve named bends 

unlike the others -- 

huge branches bred 

to stretch the air  

and run parallel to earth -- 

branches thick as a trunk 

 

the strange arms spread 

to run against  

the common nature 

against the usual world 

as though to welcome 

both inverted wayfarers 

and hungry grey squirrels  

 

a candelabra of spongy bark -- 

an icon of oddity 

sparking with its inordinate form 

a fire of queer beauty  

 

you found her years ago --  

and only because  

you lifted your head 

did you see her damaged  

crown of craggy snares -- 

a lightning strike many years ago 

fired strange harm at her -- 

an arrow of flames 

lopped off her top 

and forged the odd defacements 

that widened arms to welcome 

you to her world 

 

you congratulated yourself 

for noticing, for lifting your head -- 

you take more credit than due you  

and ponder how a poem 

could tell this broken story 

and doing so 

could open  

your own disproportions 

even as you journey 

to Canterbury, Santiago, 

Bodh Gaya or your own mailbox 

filled with bills 

 

widows weeds 

and screens 

that scorch your wisdom 

wait at home 

after rain, this rain 

and this road to her 

 

* 

the path of letting go 

falls under the broken tree 

and here the quiver of the nameless 

tugs on your shoulder 

and still you call 

her Sophia, thinking 

 

you were Adam  

allowed  

to name it all, 

to make the sounds 

and rhymes 

to sing her song 

 

she’s there downslope now 

and you walk to her  

in a high wind of hope 

then hear a drought-dry madrone 

crash and crack close by  

 

there’s danger in these trees 

 

a rumble of hard rain   

makes you stop -- 

you tire of toting 

this bag of emptiness 

 

you touch her three times 

and, courageously, you ask her 

to tell the thunder  

to pull you 

out of yourself 

into the trees 

and beyond -- 

you ache to go beyond 

 

a few wet birds scurry and hop 

at her bole where 

they sing storm warnings 

in the raining air 

 

* 

without arrows 

the quest narrows 

 

rainwater washes 

your brow, your own salt  

stings your eyes 

yet you cannot turn  

from her now 

you sense 

she senses you and gives you sense 

 

you call her by her name 

you believe it is her name 

though it comes from the Bible, 

movies, and the holy spirits 

that aim your feet against the road 

 

it’s like you’ve named each other 

it’s like you toss atoms back  

and forth to levy and load 

time and space into your pack -- 

to make a possible  

life with thick arms too -- 

arms spread wide  

to hold all harm  

as sacred proof 

of how truth shatters 

just enough to join the tree 

and you, and whoever 

hears a name uttered 

in storms you cannot hide 

 

it’s like you are ready 

you are ready for what’s next 

three touches on her rough wet skin 

and you tell her 

 

“let me say your name 

and change my life”

 

 

 

From Mud Emerging

 

rain comes early this fall 

or so time’s habit alleges 

 

a November skyful 

of sun has drawn 

a white flowering  

from the black dirt 

in the nearby hills 

 

there you walk to celebrate  

the season’s edges 

where mycelia have woken  

to see you 

 

their roots connect  

the broken will 

in the underground – 

here there is no place  

that does not make you 

 

on these humdrum trails  

you walk to root out ignorance 

and take steps to stop 

the myriad screens 

that first cause  

a fake you 

 

here fungi, not the lotus, 

remind you 

 

* 

off the trail  

on a small track 

to the steep cliff 

where the raw light falls 

to the darkness 

at the bottom  

of Baldwin Creek draw 

 

picnics once here 

or prayers  

leave breadcrumbs the size 

of chasms 

 

the lie in your grasp 

has trampled the grass 

on this edge 

of your wilder nature – 

your hand grips  

the local rock 

 

the coastal mudstone  

crumbles as the path 

comes to a crag 

 

* 

these small trails 

are mysteries 

and dead ends 

leading to a leap 

in the freefall 

of dharmakaya – 

 

the main trails: 

thoughts begin 

small trails: 

thoughts end 

 

you pay attention to beginnings 

more than cessation 

 

it is embarrassment, 

isn’t it? the very peril 

of what you think 

 

in the end 

the dark winks 

to take contrivance 

to the edge 

and push it off 

 

Seeds

in a crevasse  

in this crag of granite 

two old junipers cling to the rock 

 

they flatten their trunks 

to join 

in a small pocket of dirt  

 

trunks like big barrels 

have grown from a fissure 

as wide as a wrist  

 

ragged branches 

hold dark green fans  

up to the reaching sun 

 

a trunk will narrow 

as much as it needs to live -- 

no limit is the answer to the question you did not ask 

 

your body does not differ 

and clings to rock as well -- 

from bone your fruits form 

 

though if the spine  

finds space too small  

it dries the sad marrow  

 

two trees reach out 

from old seeds in a small dark fracture 

to teach how to survive in high places 

 

the seeds of narrow and shifting miracles  

implant in bones every day 

to make a way from slender clay  

 

to a sun of limits, known and unknown 

though you have not loved others as yourself 

you have not shifted with your whole heart 

 

no matter, forgiven and forged by this granite bone 

in this mountain day 

the face of weathered stone 

 

and the spine’s seeds have truly joined 

for a brief green breath  

that in this light reveals how narrow life can turn 

 

in a slim crack cheating death 

a seed will not waste the dirt or sky 

in a way that’s wide enough 

  

its way is wide

HR Harper is a writer living in the redwoods above Santa Cruz, California. A student of meditation and the emptying traditions, he writes to understand the nature of human consciousness in a natural world humans seem to be destroying. He began to publish in 2021. Several of his recently published poems and stories may be found at 

https://brusheswiththedarklaw.blogspot.com