An escape for an urbanite to a mountain stream in the Oregon hills brings to the surface poetry of a natural eroticism that no one expects, least of all the poet herself.
She is on the run, and doesn't know it. She is running to a freedom she has always wanted, but does not know how to claim. Her inner wildness is finally surfacing, but she has limited time to explore it; is on unsure feet as it rears its head and surveys the territory. She only knows that she must have it, this freedom, again and again and again.
Excerpt
WOLF
i do not understand waking at 5 am.
maybe i am tapping into farmer time.
maybe if i did move to the midwest
where i imagine there are serious rolling fields that erupt
every harvest time
i too would wake naturally at sunrise
even though i planted nothing.
maybe i could divine water for them in drought season
maybe, with my head tilted in its new way,
i could hear bears approaching
the soft pads of cougars' paws
sense all potential danger.
my spirit is moving further and further
away from cities.
now i understand jack
why your final transformation was a return to wildness
i just hope i can take my other half with me
i cannot bear our separation much longer
if he will come.
i see now
i must be very careful where i live.
if i can tap this close into local idiosyncracies
and maria:
i now see you were trying to get me to cover my head
but i've been bold in places like reading
i simply won't go to the store alone.
if two of us disappear
someone will have to come looking
and i think
i think
i could pull someone to us
if we were in danger.
to watch death approaching
and turn to glimpse a tree?
i am not that submissive
i cling to life too fiercely
but your story--
--i immediately get a visual--
haunts me.
the violence you seek
got through.
i am still concerned though
i still sense that you have more process
before you reach peace.
the position of anger
the choice of anger
the deliberate choice of anger
the coldness of the deliberate choice of anger
there is a level you haven't reached yet
softness can kill too.
anger, after awhile, exhausts.
i prefer to notice
to look carefully
to see everything
and make the necessary phone calls.
that is my choice
that is my link
to the quietness i desire.
dropping learned loudness
is dropping an addiction.
that is why i read my poetry
in soft voice.
i wonder if anyone
caught anything
i wrote yesterday.
but i no longer care.
i know who i am
and if my end
is a return to wildness
at least i know
jack has gone before me
Early Works is an exhaustive compilation of the first decade of the poems and stories of Z.B.McClure. Included are family photos, rare personal photos, photos of 1st draft manuscripts of many of his early poems. Also some biography and memoir materia
