The giant see-through letters of the gate would read
to someone on the way out of
the quaint jackrabbit airfield but I am walking
to downtown again or to
Mendocino
County Mental Health
at the north end where I play
licensed
psychiatric tech
or driving to
the sea or Cow Mountain or the
Montgomery
redwood grove
or near my job a good steep trail
off Low Gap Road with a warning
se han visto
pumas
at the height of which I will have a
view down into the deep green quiet of what the
Pomo called
Yokayo
in heat what any
time or day I go am back in northern Cali-
fornia not only
Passing Through a Passed
Life
name of a poem that friend
John Skonnord
wrote
but looking around ahead at an age when
Dante might not have wanted to take to the woods
twenty years have been since that rent in a heart
ranch west of
Petaluma
midsummer evening
bottle of petite sirah the last thing shared
I have returned to the ranch the chipped-rock yard of
no one I know and know that what we had can-
not be again just have wanted to try living
Mendocino
like
Sonoma
not quite am in
the trashed Mayacamas campgound but the de-
nuded mountain is lovely
Greek
I have been
hiking looking around ahead the license
in my wallet that I got back then as a meal
ticket
psychiatric technology
not
hard for a word man to do even the drug part
the
restraining
easy through it all might have
skewed me in the heart
would that evening at the
ranch have happened had I not ever gone to
the thick dry shade of
Sonoma State Hospital
I do not know or am already working
a night at em-cee-em-aitch with Dee down the hall
in
crisis clinic
beautiful grey-eyed nurse
from Germany I am set to love
she is do-
ing aquarelle the next melodrama will
come in soon enough
another German girl
it
must be that I like a flaw in woman and
to my eye germanity is one
I have not
had luck with such or in this work
why do it
when I know what Yeats wrote to young Enid Bagnold
if you want to do creative, imaginative work—never
interest yourself in politics, welfare, or the conditions
in which people live. Only in their aspect, their hearts
and minds, and what they are
I turn to with a syringe
pro re nata
when I am not trying to reach Snow Mountain in
Mendocino National Forest
have gone
at it via Bear Creek also Bartlett Spring in
my old vee-doubleyew and flopped twice the hacked-
out roads the fording too much
I want to get there
no snow on it now and may have to take a
long way round to the east
meanwhile to climb
Mount Saint
Helena
once more that she and I did in
that passed life
leave the car with pine and bay
trek through
old silver mine
a magic word man camped at
it later
Ar El Ess
into the open light-
fall and an easy government road to a
top I do not really know but do the glint of
ocean the piquant warm air
can make out Snow
Mountain waiting to the north
somewhere today the
amphibrachs of quail that piped the other time
to an end
or I have driven to the coast in-
to fog scraps at noon near weathering yankee
town
Mendocino
the horns do not toll they knell
we camped here in January
had mated
on an earlier grand wet place
Bodega Head
one of the wrecked men in em-cee-em-aitch has
told me to move to
Caspar the Caspar Inn the view
room twoooo the viewwww
but no trespassing at
Point Arena
lighthouse
I do a walk north a-
long the sea
know it will not move me again
when I want coolth
and green I take to the redwoods
a moss quiet that does not need a reply
too huge too old
am up an unmarked way that will
lead I think to unsigned country
but a gate
no trespassing
all we are strangers
at the li-
brary too the children bratty and loud where
I read
Primo Levy’s
attack on
Paul Celan
the
obscurity
of whom he damns in a
word
presuicidal
two raddled men
one a
Dichter
one not at all found the same way out
and I have come on a dust road to
Indian
Valley Reservoir
two young men wave me down
we’ve got car trouble we need
a ride do you have a cell phone
I cannot help them right away
am here to hike but if they still have not gotten
a ride when I return I will take them to
town I say
the midday warm and calm
fishermen
arriving and I park with them ask one if
he has a phone like that
he does they may use it
I meet them again at the start of my trek
tell who and where but they are mad
do you do this for fun
a mocking hiss
a word he wanted
to add left written in the tone
asshole
young men
of health a red ess-yew-vee
bratty and loud
typological phenomenon
the Cali-
fornia sissy
like
the Ukrainian
peasant
but endemic to the sun land in which
all we are strangers
I put them quick behind
on the nude burnt mountain am in mind of the Greeks
fucking on high sunny ridges
read that in
Snyder I think
the bee-el-em have not driven
this road much and up along it I hear a
coyote motet
even at such a daytime
in the yellow distance each part dimming out
alone
and every night I am in unit
fifteen a shady cheap converted motel
the ones that did not leave or could not are
waiting in it
the older and kids on pro-
bation a retarded man even a client
of mine
the ay-cee running on and on where
I have woken out of a twenty-year coma
Rip Van Winkle
a memory of the Pet-
aluma ranch but how did I get to this dim
clean room the tee-vee watching me I do not
see her on it
I have slept way into the bar-
barian mind am one of who surround me
at the opaque window a young numb voice
ih
te
yi
cl
vu
ih
cannot finish even
half a word I know what cell phone is and dope
that I am lying next to the jackrabbit field
Yokayo
it must be
Rip Van Winkle too
in the trade I inhabit a med room again
do not have to relearn syringe or
zeetrack
quick in and test
inject quick out
need only a
review in the
management of assaultive
behavior
many new drugs though I have to
study and am at that another night when
Dee leaving toward one ay-em
stops to talk of
girlhood in Buxtehude a twin her look
her tone hypnotic to me
of how she and a
man are living in the country with horses
and purebred dogs new log home ready in a month
they like to hunt
the upland fowl
Dee says and
what do you think of our
Kesseltal I am going on vacation
earthier woman
than I expected is what I think who like this
Tal
but not the notion of
Kesseltreiben
that I am linking to it now
and Dee is gone
in every way what an-
other awakening for Rip what another
wrong orientation to
person
time
place
she had not been looking when I hove into town
only wanted to
check
me
out
might have seen
not love but a reptile in me oh well I wade
through heat to Sun House a trim shadowy park
next to it in which we would have met had I been
a jongleur with right orientation oh
well I am too old for any overwhelming
have driven up in the forest again to
Middle Creek
Campground
a wealth of flower and grass
and bug
picnic table
man yelling drunk at
a woman
the human drama has not to do
with country oh may the sun knell on it all
I am
farther up toward
Elk Mountain
in an
oh-aitch-vee
wooded
rec area
a kink
of churned dry track through rock and tree a rattlesnake
stretched out on it dead
chuff in the arroyo
huge dirt bike huge tanned man that gives me the rattler
eye in passing
I turn to look but the snake
is not there it must have detected me and feigned
or I am
hiking at the very socalled
Lake Mendocino
a tub for summer man no
succès fou
too low and smelly
or outside
Vichy
make that
Vitchie Springs Resort
where hearing
the plaint of a crow youth I do not go in
am taking inconspicuous leave of em-cee-
em-aitch anyhow have told them I want to
work oncall only have talked to
Adventist Health
anent a job who run a geriatric
nut center in town have had one interview one
more at Angwin Napa Valley gawd-folk do
pay well
my drama may not have to do with it
but I love this sinuous country of vin-
yard redwood a few palms unblinking daylight no
end of mountain treks with no one on them what
more could a sometime
urbin innallechool
want
the sissy doping geriatric town
I do not mind would be able to make my way
here alone or not
have to break a tough spi-
der web to get onto Valley View Trail at Cow
Mountain
harvestman trapped in my tub I
free it
Yokayo
is already mine
two old
remaining questions though why
telesis
why
live
anywhere at all
in coolth one morning late
summer now I walk to the market and am
gawking up at wooded ridge in elated con-
tentment when a starry frisson moving nape
to brain gets to right eye
cannot see ahead I
have to creep on vision edge to the room
mild
nausea vertigo
to draw the curtain go
to bed one aspirin every hour
times five a round of the clock the radio on
my trip toward nonbeing
I return next noon
am ready to chance the light in hat and dark shades
get food cod liver oil and live
anywhere
the starry touch might have boded my end I feel
it coming not now do not need to know when
which means that I am just a
homme moyen sensuel
like many other
may not even recall
my trip in the direction of it
nor need to
withdraw to room and dark when a rise at
Cache
Creek
is there to hike on
I drive to the town of
Napa and yet one more interview with
Ad-
ventist
folk
no job yet I
get a view of ra-
diant
Saint Helena
coming not home to
what I seem to be leaving
time is knelling me
away
I am down to
telesis
again
have the map of Nevada out
dream of a walk
through dim forest in bearskin or bullskin coat
I see a bear ahead
and turn around only
to panic some buffalo
one charges me
what
Jung
would make of it I do not need to know
am on highway twenty now at
Clearlake Oaks
the dawn
too perfect not to remember I am
thinking of Dee whom I shall not meet again
more of what the word Nevada means so even
more of unmet
Snow Mountain I cannot see
it from this part of the road
Valley Ridge
in the
way
may have to
return take a trek up there
Glossary:
| se han visto pumas | mountain lions have been seen |
| Pomo | local Indian tribe |
| pro re nata | p.r.n., as needed (medicine) |
| Dichter | poet |
| Kesseltal | valley enclosed by mountains |
| Tal | valley |
| Kesseltreiben | hunting down |
| succès fou | whopping success |
| telesis | reaching ends through intelligent means |
| homme moyen sensuel | Everyman |
A lifelong nonacademic, Rodney Nelson has worked as licensed psychiatric technician, copy editor, and librarian. His poems and narratives have seen print often enough. He made a cameo appearance in the fifty-fourth edition of Who's Who in America. Now Nelson seems to be finding new life in the ezines.