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voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary
Living on Islands
by Bob Rose
At 3 AM you know it too---
It all turns back on itself:
you turn
on yourself, your friends
wife, child, in mind
hate turns into—
How does it go? Boredom to frustration
to madness? Look, there’s a gale blowing
the guts out of the gulf. Every crow
from Downes Point wheels on its pivot in the wind.
The Old People didn’t live here, burning
the brush for deer, burying their dead under the cliffs.
Bob Rose
Similk Bay, Washington
Bob Rose traveled cross-country from Boston in 1970, landing on north Whidbey Island, Washington. He’s lived within 60 miles of that spot ever since. Rose spearheaded the effort to protect the unique old-growth forest at Heart Lake and create the 3,000-acre Anacortes Community Forest Lands. He then had a long career in land conservation as Special Assistant to the Washington Commissioner of Public Lands and as Executive Director of Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland. He was a founder of the Co-Op Press where he printed his first chapbook, “Living on Islands” under the tutelage of master printer Clifford Burke. Rose served on the board of the Skagit River Poetry Foundation (2011-2016). His daughter, Rachel, served as Poet Laureate of Vancouver, B.C., Canada (2015-2017) and his son, Jefferson with wife Alex, head up the acclaimed Seattle world-beat dance band, The Pazific. Rose now farms oysters on Similk Bay.
Lift a bone, break a bone
the locals say
and go periodically mad or drive their wives
to drink or themselves into a small
corner. And they love it and wouldn’t live elsewhere.
After all these years could they
after the enchantment?
Island off islands off islands
et cetera.
There’s no end to the isolations
we live in, the armor of our love.
Who isn’t wounded? Who isn’t unto himself?
In spite of this we struggle, we shore up the breaches
Of our pettiness against the mainland rush.
“Yeah, Rick hasn’t changed over the years. Just grown
more twisted, gnarled, wind-bent and shaped.
Five more years he’ll be a baptized local,
fruit cup and all.”
See those madrona, there, on the point: aren’t they our island
lives, isn’t this another view, another landscape, another
escape? All interrogative
paths--- thru the grove to the oyster rocks.
Ah! a small lusterless pearl.
If that a pearl may in a toad’s head dwell,
and may be found too in an oyster shell;
If things that promise nothing do contain
what better is than gold…
Without work we wither and die:
without work the mind turns into a bog
a miasma.
Those madrona trees will never sprout oak leaves, we are all
Calibans and Prosperos, threatened and threatening. No
choice. A device for centering. A relief.
There aren’t any ferries tonight, the weather’s
fury won’t abate. Even the crows have found
a hollow tree or a sandstone cave.
Face it. We won’t be rescued from this island.
We must save ourselves. Translate Goethe’s
Be the hammer, be the anvil to
Be the island, be the mainland.
Hate is no answer and love
with what difficulty we come to it
and how much in spite of ourselves.
Such a polite world this
island, these closed
circles, the social
equilibrium
curdles the milk, coddles
the false affections.
I don’t want anyone to come home.
The fire’s burning.
The door opens to those others who live here.
It’s inevitable.
Let them in, let
them in.
They are yours and mine.
Hornby Island, British Columbia