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Poetry by Mike McMahon
Ways to Live
Rain fell hard on my trailer last night.
It’s Monday morning,
I wake up early, sip tea and watch the weather.
All I see are clouds and the season’s first trace of snow
through the mist.
I cook a simple breakfast: sweet potatoes
and millet, with cinnamon, ginger and raw-milk butter.
I learned this recipe from the Japanese hobo-poet
Nanao Sakaki.
In his poem brown sugar, ginger and sweet potatoes
come as a gift from Japan.
He adds the millet, cooks and tastes, and exclaims,
“another unexpected comet!”
It is still Monday morning and, comet or no comet,
I understand
that the right poem is a damn good recipe.
Chicago to New Delhi
Stopping off at the Art Institute in Chicago on my way to New Delhi
I stare at a huge stone Buddha, one fat arm missing.
Out in the Street; “A Taste of Chicago,”
crowds eating sausages and ribs in the summer heat.
“A Zen man should be able to eat dog shit
and drink kerosene.”
2:00 am New Delhi arrival – empty airport, fluorescent lights,
long concrete corridor.
A swarm of cab drivers outside jostling and yelling, one grabs my pack, I snatch it back
and catch a long ride, cab dodging street fires and cows grazing garbage piles.
There are snoring men in the YMCA dorm room,
it’s hot sweaty and still.
No sleep for me,
no Buddha, no Ganesh – I’m miserable.
Up two nights straight at the Sri Aurobindo ashram, reading Rilke
trying to catch hold; working in the garden
pulling weeds – the same in New Delhi as anywhere.
Rilke never wrote about that,
and the Zen master left out how he got it down,
the dog shit and the kerosene.
East on Hwy 89
1
Early morning on Hwy 89 east of McCloud
full and empty log trucks
rolling fast
go east and west,
the only traffic for miles and miles.
By the side of the road golden Aspen leaves
fall to the ground
backlit by the late September sun;
the diffuse light slows their descent.
Further east 89 enters the broad Pit River valley;
high desert, yellow grass, sagebrush, red-brown rock,
twisted juniper - volcanic country.
2
Around the turn of the last century
Jaime de Angulo rode a train here from his ranch
in Santa Barbara to live with and study
the Pit-River people, the Achumawi.
Jaime tells of cold sharp nights when the mule-deer’s coat turns red.
It is the time when the Achumawi come together
for a long winter underground.
The summer was spent in small groups gathering roots and seeds,
hunting and fishing and, as Jaime writes,
“practicing, conscientiously, a lot of good healthy loafing.”
But later, Jaime observes;
there aren’t many children, only the lucky and the sturdy survive.
The wintering grounds had names; Astaghiwa,
where there is a spring of hot water, Tapaslu,
where the valley ends in a horseshoe shape
Dalmo’ma, where there are wild turnips.
Jaime said the Achumawi greeted each other at the wintering ground;
“Is kaadzi ! Is kaakaadzi!”
“Man, you are living! Man, you are living!”
3
Log trucks and travelers like me are held up by road construction.
We have all come to a stop.
People are out of their cars and trucks walking about,
talking. I sit on the hood of my truck, the sun is warm
I can see a long ways to the east, all the way to the Warner Mts.
I imagine meeting Jaime out on Hwy 89 -
“Hey Jaime! I’m stuck in traffic
out here where you rode horses
and drove around in beat up old cars with those two Shamans
Old Blind Hall and Sukmit.
What’d you think of that?”
Jaime says,
Man, you are living!”
Castle Lake Again
A winters worth
snow almost gone,
wild blue sky a
dome all cathedrals
or temples mimic.
And the dark gray granite,
darker for the few white clouds,
sparse stands of spruce and fir;
all of it a temple
me a lonely monk
ring bells, chant prayers,
write poems.
Castle Lake, late June 2004