Tagen Towsley Baker Homesteads Places Left and Retrieved tm HOMESTEADS: PLACES LEFT AND RETRIEVED by Tagen Towsley Baker A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah May 14, 2012 Approved iJt Baker 1 Tagen Baker Project Thesis 14 May 2012 Monograph Introduction The objective of Homesteads: Places Left and Retrieved is to create a conversation between poetic and photographic content and form—each lending a unique perspective and awareness to the subject matter and overall theme of the book: how identity and place become one. Artist's Statement A homestead is a place that can take on many roles. Synonymous with the American West, a homestead can be acquired, settled, and cultivated. A homestead becomes a place where one resides—a place of return, of past and present, left and retrieved. The etymology of a homestead, associates "home," or a place of origin, refuge, and affection, with "stead," meaning to fill with life. The language denotes a physical and communicative place, requiring a relationship with the environment and an emotional attachment. A homestead necessitates a process, whether it is hope, rediscovery, or abandonment. Regardless of the process that is undertaken, a homestead remains a linguistic dichotomy, reminding us of our affections and disappointments. This collection of poetry and images entitled Homesteads, juxtaposes literal and figurative imagery, establishing a narrative that explores how identity and place become one. Through the compilation of literary and visual symbols, a homestead becomes not just a physical environment, but a place of conversation, bringing understanding, meaning, and memories. Baker 2 The depth of field in the visual and poetic imagery shifts our perceptions of environment, contrasting an object, texture, or color in perspective and setting. The cultivation of the visual and poetic language influences us to consider what we recognize and what we have forgotten. Homesteads is a convergence of the human and the natural, establishing a narrative that advances our understanding and connection to the place we reside, even if it is just momentary. Poetics Cole Swensen, the co-editor of The American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry, defines the hybrid poem as containing "selectively inherited traits associated with 'conventional' [poetics] such as coherence, narrative, firm closure, and symbolic resonance with [traits] generally assumed of experimental work, such as non-linearity, multiple perspective, and immanence" (xxi). Contemporary poets often take aspects from two or more poetic traditions that are "truly postmodern in that it's an unpredictable and unprecedented mix" (xxi). As a graduate student in the MENG program at Weber State University, I have been introduced to both the conventional and the experimental poets. I find my poetry, like many of my contemporaries, borrows aspects from conventional and experimental poetics. I attribute many aspects of my poetic craft to contemporary poets Linda Hussa and Jillian Conoley. I identify with Hussa and Conoley stylistically as well as aesthetically. I also attribute aspects of my poetic craft to Walt Whitman. Linda Hussa is a contemporary poet who writes poems that have a "reverence for life and a strong sense of place" (Widmark 79). Hussa is a poet I identify with aesthetically and stylistically. Stylistically, Hussa follows in the traditions of cowboy poetry in content, speaking in a narrative fashion about her relationship with the land and horses. Although Hussa writes in a narrative fashion, she often follows a non-linear pattern. She describes dramatic pastoral images Baker 3 of the landscape and contrasts them with the physical and emotional hardships she has experienced because she lives on a ranch. Hussa does not follow rhyme schemes or stanza breaks commonly used in cowboy poetry. My poem "Stargazing" is influenced by Hussa's stylistic and aesthetic approach to her poems. In "Stargazing" I contrast a relationship with pastoral images of a western landscape. I identify specific images such as "the old hay wane" and "a cozy old farmhouse" inviting the reader to a sense of place, and referencing a history of hard work, cultivation, and folklore. The repetition of the word "old" suggests to us a sense of past use. The imagery is contrasted with a stifled relationship trying to survive within compartmentalized boundaries and miscommunications. Although the landscape is beautiful, and the aesthetics guiding the reader to a grand and open place, there is an underlying irony of what the land and the relationship can really give back. Regardless of how much effort and hard work is put into the land or relationship, there can still be nothing expected to be given back in return. I identify with Hussa* s use of figurative language—specifically the way she uses irony to write about place. Hussa draws us in with specific details about the environment, capturing the beauty of the West, but at the same time, offers us insight into the adversities of human relationships and the ranching life. Another contemporary writer I identify with is a second generation Language Poet, Gillian Conoley. Conoley's poems are complicated, and her use of the pronoun must be read over and over again to understand who is speaking. Yet, Conoley creates "brilliant tapestries of multiple dictions" and natural observations (Swensen 83). Conoley is a great observer of human relationships, and she is not afraid to use caesuras and other forms of white space to push text to Baker 4 a new place. Verbal charm commences in every line of her poetry; it catches the reader off guard and by some complicated miracle, a beautiful refinement emerges. While my poems may not fully reflect Conoley's writing style, reading her poetry does motivate me to want to write poems that are conversational. Reading Conoley's poetry requires a process. The reader must peel back the layers of meaning within her poetry to understand the real intent of the language. While I aspire to push language to the limit, I find my poetry does not fit into the category of Language Poetry. However, I appreciate Conoley's approach to language, and I do gain a strong sense of depth from her writing style because of the way she approaches language. Conoley's words are juxtaposed to suggest transcendence between the structure of the poem and our role in connecting the other elements of meaning. The last poet that I identify with that has been influential in my thesis project is Walt Whitman. Stylistically, there are specific aspects of Whitman's poetry I seek out, such as his use of auditory language. What I find in Whitman's work, which helps me as a writer, is a wealth of information on what it means to find balance. Whitman teaches me not be afraid to write about not only the beautiful, but the ugly. Whitman would encourage— to celebrate the beautiful and the ugly with "equableness" and boldness. Whitman in the beginning pages of "Preface" to Leaves of Grass writes, "The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness of triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe" (Folsom 10). If any human being could progress beyond daily pettiness over trivial matters, we would all aspire to be the great poets Whitman describes. The first part of his statement directs me to think of a person with integrity, regardless if he or she may be a poet or not, but the second part of the statement is what really solidifies his observation—to take something small and represent it as not only grand but part of Baker 5 a larger perspective, almost cosmic. Whitman leads me to think about why it is important to make a statement as a poet, and he teaches me not to be afraid to make that statement, even if it implies something ugly, or depressing. Whitman describes a poet as "equable" meaning unvarying, steady, free from extremes, and not easily troubled. I struggled with the concept of equality and embracing the concept of the ugly when I revised my poem, "Returning Home." This poem is about my Grandma Towsley, and my dad saving some money by getting a special permit and driving her in her coffin in the bed of his truck from Pocatello, ID, to Portland, OR. My grandma was from the Great Depression generation and saved all her tinfoil and plastic baggies for reuse. I wanted to express how she was a simple person, and that she wouldn't have cared that my dad drove her to Portland in the bed of his truck. My grandma was also in an abusive marriage for 40 years and was pretty tired with life in her older years. So this poem is about three things: to honor my grandma and the beauty found in her simple life, to relate how losing a loved one and the process of mourning is exhausting, and to demonstrate how she was returning to Portland where most of her unhappy life took place. There was a last line to this poem that I thought about adding to express her tiredness but it would also change the meaning of the poem and make it almost "ugly." The line was "as tired, as Grandma came to be." I thought of all the different images that line could impress on the reader, and I felt conflicted to take this poem to that place. In the end I decided not to add the line, but I challenged myself to in the future write a poem that would embrace both extremes. As a poet, Whitman seems to have no fear of confronting extremes by pushing the boundaries of the beautiful, and the ugly. This semester, I took risks and made bolder statements with my poems. Baker 6 Reading Whitman's works have helped me progress as a writer. Initially, I was looking for all the stylistic aspects of Whitman's poems, and in the end what I really needed to learn from him was to overcome my fears as a writer. I began to conquer my fears of the "ugly" in the last poem I wrote for this book, "His Chair" (see attached poem). This poem is about a good friend of mine, whom I met in the MENG program. My friend has many qualities that I aspire to have someday. We appreciate a lot of the same things in life, even though we are from very different places, and we both love Whitman. I wrote this poem for her in response to a piece of creative non-fiction she wrote about her daughter becoming a heroin addict. I tried to write like Whitman by observing the light and the lines of the landscape, and by embracing the beautiful and the ugly. I found this semester that my poems have a tendency to be "overly metaphorical." I worked with Professor Roghaar on eliminating unnecessary language that may have been descriptive, but was distracting from the main intent of the poem. In my poem, "Hooper, Colorado," I changed the first stanza of my poem, from "the backdrop of a desert sky" to saying simply what it is, a desert sky. With the help of Professor Roghaar and Dr. Shigley, I changed the first stanza of my poem to be very image based, but not overly metaphorical. Here is an example of the changes I made to the first stanza: Yellowing, pasta salad sticks to paper plates. Black and shifty eyed, a light-footed chihuahua paces in circles, seeing grey-white light bulbs, strong across the backdrop of a desert sky. To: Pasta salad, paper plates, black and shifty eyed, a light-footed chihuahua paced beneath Baker 7 white bulbs strung across the desert sky. Dr. Shigley advised me to trust my reader and to remove some of the similes in my poems. In my poem, "With My Great Pyrenees at Dawn," I changed the last line of my poem from: "The Pyrenees sniffs out cranberry tomatoes, his paws softly pressing into the damp earth like he is un-earthing a divine bone." To: "My dog sniffs out cranberry tomatoes, his paws pressing into the damp earth un-earthing a divine bone." After reviewing my poems with Professor Roghaar and Dr. Shigley, I tried to pay careful attention to the ways I use figurative language, and to trust my reader. I also tried to make all of the "furniture" or images/ideas in my poems come together in one congruent thought. Refining my poems has taught me how to create an image based poem, but also a poem that grounds the reader in a specific thought, story, or emotion. I feel like I have come a long way with writing poems that not only have great "furniture," but have a place in which the "furniture" can exist. I revised my poem, "Old Town Albuquerque, NM," many times to try and focus not only on the images, but what I wanted to say about real art. In the last two stanzas, I was excessively describing the contrast between commercialism and a true art form. Here is an example of the original stanza and how I changed the "furniture" to focus on what I wanted to say about art: A faded sign, a faded door The last historic art form. Competing, With hot pink, buzzing neon signs. A blackened doorknob remains. Varnished with the oils of a thousand hands. Baker 8 To: In the back, a faded door the real art inside the artifice. A blackened doorknob. Varnished with the oil of a thousand hands. The defining common denominator of hybrid poetry is embracing the "postmodern understanding of the importance of connection" (Swensen xxi). My time in MENG program at Weber State University has directed me to understand the importance of connection as I have gained knowledge of literature and critical theory. I have been introduced to conventional and experimental poets, and I have found commonalities that exist between the creation of visual art and writing poetry. With the direction of my professors I have refined my poetic craft stylistically and aesthetically. Photography Photography has an essential role in the history of Modern Art, and it has complemented other mediums of creation since the late 1830's. Photographic form offers many stylistic and aesthetic characteristics that are not only correlative to artists, but writers as well. A photographic image allows the creator to work "imaginatively and conceptually" with imagery being defined by light, dramatic viewpoints, and tone (Arnason, 31). My photography, much like my poetry, incorporates multiple perspectives and symbolic resonance with light and depth of field. My objective for Homesteads is to create a conversation between a written and photographic form—each lending a special perspective and awareness to the subject at hand and the overall theme of the book, how identity and place become one. Baker 9 In the history of Modern Art, and the invention of photography, there have been two opposing perspectives on the purpose of a photographic image—illustrative and suggestive. An illustrative perspective is instructional, leading the viewer from point "a" to point "b," a "straightforward record of the everyday world" (31). The perspective of a suggestive image seeks to purge the composition of the photo from the illustrative, or artificial, and captures "the world and life candidly" allowing artistic expression to occur naturally (31). Homesteads contains images that are a hybrid of the illustrative and the suggestive. There are examples of both types of images, and in some cases a combination of both illustrative and suggestive in one photograph, making a form expression that is complementary to the image- based language in my hybrid poetry. Whitman's writing is helping me make a decision on what I want my images to portray. As Whitman chose images that were a representation of his writing, he described the fusion of image and written text as a "physical tabernacle." I seek to accomplish the same complementary presence with my images and poems (Folsom 50). "Fredonia, AZ" is a unique poem because it combines products of the stark landscape of the desert, such as the trees that are bleached from the intense heat, with impressionist hues, suggesting vibrant contrasts and explosions of color. The image I place with this poem is abstract or suggestive. The lines and the contrast in color and form echo the movement in the poem, with the billowing scarf and the linens, but also visually mirror the depth and contrast of the lines "gaining depth, refracting light." The accompanying image for my poem, "Old Town Albuquerque" is more illustrative. Although the image does not literally translate to the poem, because it is a door handle, and not a door knob, the handmade look of the door handle complements the theme of the poem. The hand- cast form of the iron and the blackened patina on the metal from all the oils off people's Baker 10 hands, mirrors the language and the imagery. The image is cropped at a very close angle to complement the theme of the poem, being that sometimes you have to look very closely to find real art. The photo for my poem "Returning Home" is abstract with one illustrative component. The lights in the poem are the beacons that line the Columbia River Gorge. This is one aspect of the image that literally translates to the language in the poem, therefore making the image illustrative. The rest of the image is very abstract or suggestive and has reflective qualities that mirror the water imagery in the poem and also the tone of the language. The light on the water is reflective and is also disappearing into the black part of the water, signifying a transition from life to death. The contrast between light and dark also signifies the emotional gravity that is felt when a loved one passes away. The image for "Beneath the Desert Moon: Atomic City, Idaho" was probably the most difficult image for me to capture for this book. It is difficult to visually capture the change of light on the desert. Out on the Arco Desert the sky is so vast; it does not fit into one photo. Another problem with the Arco Desert is the constant change of light. I took a series of images for this piece, but they did not visually represent what this poem has to offer. In the end, I decided to focus on the lines "she supervises the luminescence of the foliage, the parting flicker of the setting sun," and I juxtaposed the highway sign with the illumination of the weeds on the side of the highway. The image is dark and light at the same time, symbolizing the emotions a desert landscape can evoke, and the infinite control the light can have on a landscape. Light and perspective play an important role as each of my poems is in conversation with the corresponding imagery. In my poem "Watching Your Parents Get Old," there are technical aspects of the poem and the image that lend to conversation. The image is of emerging iris plants Baker 11 in the early spring with an "amber marble" down in the dirt and leaves. The image, like the poem, physically is divided in thirds. Although there is a fourth stanza in the poem, the white space around the word "emerge" gives the illusion of three sections. The rule of thirds is a compositional process where important imagery is placed within the boundaries of nine equal sections, or the canvas being divided in thirds. In the photo, the amber marble is in alignment with the rule of thirds. The marble is bright and emerging from the darkness of the earth. The marble is not quite in focus, but parts of the iris leaves are perfectly in focus. The focus and the placement of the imagery in the photo converse with the subject matter and the form of the poem. The amber marble is symbolic of ageing. It is emerging, imperfect, and "timeworn." The corresponding image shows the marble out of focus, which is much like the tone of the poem. The narrator is coming to terms with her parents ageing and trying to grasp the beauty and the importance behind watching her parents' age. The poem and the photograph have characteristics that are both illustrative and suggestive. It is obvious the imagery is in a garden. The marble is mentioned and described in the poem, therefore obvious in the image. However, the focus and perspective of the image and the poem lend to symbolic reasoning—suggesting to the reader that watching someone close to you age, or grow older, necessitates a process, just like a homestead. Conclusion Homesteads: Places Left and Retrieved is the product of research, influence of eminent writers, and coursework. The artist's statement at the beginning of this monograph summarizes the theme, content, and form of this creative project. However, the order of the poems and imagery is an important factor in the overall theme of this book, how identity and place become Baker 12 one. This is an explanation of the order of the book and how it relates to the overall theme of Homesteads: Places Left and Retrieved. The first section of the book takes place in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. These places are all on the way from Utah to Arizona where my sister lives in the border town of Douglas, Arizona. The homesteads in these poems are places that I visited and observed. These homesteads left me with a sense of history, life, and understanding of a place I had never visited before. The second section of this book takes place in Idaho. Idaho is my home state and Mackay is my hometown. This section of the book follows the title and the theme, places left and retrieved. When I return home, I often return to the places of my childhood and enjoy revisiting the many memories I have there. I also find new meaning in the landscape and am continually surprised with new discoveries each time I go home. The Idaho landscape I write about in these poems is part of the high mountain desert. The high mountain desert is rough and unforgiving. The people who reside there are taxed emotionally and physically. However, the landscape with its calming skies and clean air brings a tranquility that is hard to find in other environments. The Idaho homestead represents the linguistic dichotomy, bringing affections and disappointments. The third section of this book is my graduate school homestead. The poetry and imagery reflect the academic landscape. Old friendships are ignored; new friendships are ignited with dead writers, living writers, students, and professors. The graduate school homestead is the greatest place of conversation and meaning. The academic landscape is rigorous and requires a great deal of sacrifice. Graduate students are working towards the same goal, discovering the purpose of great literature, learning from each other, and exploring their own purposes in life. Baker 13 The landscapes are vast and varying, full of history and influence, leading to places of learning and understanding. The fourth section of this book is the familial homestead. This homestead explores the deepest attachments to place. The fourth section explores hope, escape, and surprise, taking the etymology of home, or place of residence, and dissecting the process of what makes it a homestead. This section concludes the book and the various aspects of homesteads with the poem "Returning Home." "Returning Home" is the final homestead, accepting loss, moving on to another place, or perhaps physically becoming part of a place that was always home. Homesteads: Places Left and Retrieved is a compilation of literary and visual symbols, a homestead becomes not just a physical environment, but a place of conversation, bringing understanding, meaning, and memories. Baker 14 Works Cited Arnason, H. H., and Maria F. Prather. History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Photography. New York: Abrams, 1998. Print. Folsom, Ed. "Appearing in Print: Illustrations of the Self in Leaves of Grass." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 12.4 (1995): 135-165. Print Spring 1995. Swensen, Cole. "Introduction." The Norton Anthology of New Poetry: American Hybrid. Ed. Cole Swensen, David St. John. New York: Norton, 2009. 83-86. Print. Whitman, Walt. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. Ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Library of America. 1996. Print. Widmark, Anne Heath. Poets of the Cowboy West: Between Earth and Sky. New York: Norton, 1995. Print. Lizard Head Pass, CO I. At the bottom of the switchbacks we spotted a red mailbox, floating above the titian hawkweed that canvased the green hills of the La Plata Valley. It had been 4 hours. We drove over 13000 ft., waded through thick mountain snow, shaded our eyes from the stare of the June sun. II. I wanted to send a postcard to winter telling it spring had arrived. I wanted to scream at the mountain, the barbed wire fences, mere bystanders waiting for a possible July thaw. We are going to Arizona to see my sister! I felt the spring sun reflected over the starchy snow. Our sweaters were sweat mops beneath our down coats, our feet sliding in our boots, our steamy wool socks. This must be how God would get a sunburn. III. I fell asleep in the car, waking to hum of the tires on pavement, the ponderosa pines whispering to the grasses below, you have mail. Spring had sent me a postcard. We left the switchbacks and merged into the highway. Small farmhouses appeared in the distance. At the end of a rutted lane a single rusted red box seemed inviting—relevant. I open the tin hatch of the mailbox, tossed in our map of Colorado. A small "x" marking Lizard Head Pass, 13,027 ft. — Tagen T. Baker The Hot Springs at Hooper, CO Pasta salad, paper plates, black and shifty eyed, a light-footed chihuahua paces beneath white bulbs strung across the desert sky. A woman shoulders an infant, Soaking up warm steam from the water, cradling the child on her brown skin. Chatter moves like heat from water. Twelve year old boys tattooed with crosses on their chests toss a plastic ball into the water. Blistered toes and broken backs slacken. Cracked hands, dried and disfigured soak in the warmth, reaching for youth and color. Under the cool stars, the whole desert drinks. An oasis, in a bleak place, a small white arrow on a wrinkled map. — Tagen T. Baker Old Town Albuquerque, NM Historic exteriors, pink stuccoed store fronts with colorful hanging ristras contain bad art. Men wearing khakis, white hats and flip flops, push past the doorway to their chatting women, crowding the shelves of coffee mugs, three dollar t-shirts, plastic key chains made in China. In the back, a faded door the real art inside the artifice. A blackened doorknob. Varnished with the oil of a thousand hands. — Tagen T. Baker Fredonia, AZ Hundreds of white skeletons, trees, bleached thin ghosts comb a landscape of impressionist hues. The perfume of fresh sap, a billowing scarf unfolds— bleached linens on the line, lindseed oil, compounding pigments. Gaining depth, refracting light. A polished brush renders this canvas. — Tagen T. Agua Prieta, Mexico We hold the green chilies, tenderly. We peel off the charred flesh, purifying the skin in cool water, unraveled fire, imperfections. Bringing the prepared skin to our mouths, we breathe, before we bite the flesh. Our eyes water. My throat tightens, purged, scentless. — Tagen T. Baker Beneath the Desert Moon Atomic City, Idaho A gilded halo touches sagebrush as the evening sun is leaving. Brush strokes of light, swaths of clouds dissipate and fade into the deepened sky, anticipating the pale moon. It is her birthday. A mother, she supervises the luminescence of the foliage, the parting flicker of the setting sun. Below the deep sky, we pull off Highway 26. We watch the moon's reflection near the Atomic City sign, illuminating the town's population 25 as she blows out 12 billion candles. — Tagen T. Baker Riding Through the Storm Lightning cracks a whip, arcing across deep purple sky, striking Mt. Borah and the Three Sisters. Thunder rumbles across the valley. Shivers ripple though the warm coat of my horse. With a magnetic pulse I tremble. Flecks of rainwater descend out of the purple, clear beads encase us, dust mixed with sweat. Moisture collects on our eyelashes, blurs everything, darker, brighter, we see through the eyes of rain. The earth washes, consumes. Voracious thirst, sunken well of earth. Sweet perfume, sagebrush, we race the rain, our legs bleed. The windows of home flicker like a beacon in a dark a sea. — Tagen T. Baker Mackay, ID Unfortunately for Mr. Darlington his town did not thrive. His mines, rusted out sheds— plaques of noted history, self-importance found in a pile of boards, an empty grey hillside, a sign labeling the surrounding air as a schoolhouse. Right over there, teal speckled piles of rocks—arsenic an amateur rock collector's pitfall, a millionaire's snare. A bled mine stands propped against the wilderness. Below, new homes draped in muted colors contain the prized beams of the mine, spanning vaulted ceilings and covered porches. A million dollar view of the Lost River Valley. — Tagen T. Baker Star Gazing I. Looking for shooting stars. Freedom only measured in controlled situations. Satellites are only airplanes. I count them, my shooting stars. II. Looking down, nine thousand feet through an oval window, I imagine my life in that house on the left. The old hay wane, a cozy old farmhouse, glowing windows. Tomorrow morning I will wake up to the faint glow of the stars. I will feed the cows and clap my hands together in my grandpa's old leather gloves. III. I count you. But you allow affection only on national holidays or birthdays. You count the Milky Way to know if there is a God, but you have a hearing loss. You are missing his breath in your ear. Still, I count you. — Tagen T. Baker Replacement (How You Did It) I. The book club had revisited her story many times: a piano student, a cancer survivor, a cross country skier, a New Englander. Everyone has a place. Her house littered with bargain finds: aluminum waffle iron without a power cord, a leaning bookshelf, with brown varnished boards glued back together three times. Everything has a price. She had thrown away all the packaging, minimizing her pages, condensing the sections of her life, the clutter. II. You saved the new boxes of her bargain finds in your closet, hoping to preserve the original items, pushing them back into the compartments where they once found home. You felt compelled to save her, up until a certain point. Then you drove off into the sunset. You left her with your vacuum— to erase your size 11 footprints from her Turkish rug that was still saturated with your likeness and smelled of apple tea. — Tagen T. Baker His Chair You retreat to his chair three times today. Teal blue, small wired cracks in the seams, his chair absorbs the weather, scents of the garden, pain. You touch the worn seams, inspecting your hands, fresh thin lines of scraped flesh from blackberry thorns, fingernails gnawed—raw. You speak your daughter's name three times today. The niches, dark corners of the tangled plants, acknowledging your sorrow. Syllables falling into irregular hollows, full of damp mud, soft moss, cushioning your thoughts— abstracting each particle of worry, loss, failure. You crouch in his chair, knees pulled to your chest wondering if you should move it from the garden path, into the sunlight. You watch your daughter forgo the garden path, walking towards the mountains, her body marked with tracks and bruises— following an old grey dog. — Tagen T. Baker Walking an Evening Road with Walt Whitman He bows to the evening sun. Imperfect—worn, his hands touch every delicate plant. Dusk holds out the last, best light of day. Marked by age, his bent fingers clasp a loaded gun, shooting out every street light, cascading the road with luminosity. Muted snaps, shattered light bulbs shower the tender vegetation, warm pavement— fragments of cloudy glass, refracted light. The sun diminishes behind the black paper-cut hills. The picture alive with the melody of hidden music, the voice of the cosmos, crickets, and the numerous roads to come. — Tagen T. Baker Apple Picking with Robert Frost I. Deep in the bramble balancing on the final rung un-earthly still. The worn wheelbarrow below the eaves sits half empty. Full of swollen apples freckled with bug bites, scented with chlorophyll. Fingers of frost, reach up rusted metal legs. Tiptoeing winter grasps fall labors. The last fruits. II. Sweetened harvest, raw air chills the inner rooms of the farmhouse. On a tired left knee I creep out of the rooms into the dawn. I stare into the body of a massive tree. Gnarled branches bend with the weight of perfumed fruit, yellowing leaves curled in, holding the last warmth. At my cold feet lies an apple, among dried blades of grass, dirt, and twigs, perfectly crimson, un-bruised. — Tagen T. Baker With My Great Pyrenees at Dawn Bare below my knees cheat grass paints water-color patterns on the hem of my skirt. My feet cold from the morning dew. White wooly fur dangles from silken leaves like earrings catching the beginning of the sun. My dog sniffs out cranberry tomatoes, his paws pressing into the damp earth un-earthing a divine bone. — Tagen T. Baker Watching Your Parents Get Old Papa scatters garbage across the lawn again, picking through egg shells, old cat food tins, looking for the lost keys. He accuses my mother. She is throwing away all of his possessions. Precious items emerge. Kneeling—ripping out dried iris leaves, browned by frost— I dig around my mother's cherished plants, smoothing over the dirt, preparing for what will come. We are timeworn. Like an amber marble, chipped and scratched, translucent—opaque. Still prized. — Tagen T. Baker Returning Home Beacons line the Columbia River Gorge, glowing through the dense mist like an airport runway lighting the path to sunrise. Groggy eyed, we look for Papa's old maroon truck, tailgate down, a bright blue tarp covering a coffin. Rain collects on the cheap blue plastic, running in small streams down the sides of the box. Yep. Grandma was in there. She always talked about how much she missed Portland, except for the rain. 658 miles to her grave, her last night outside the muddy earth, lying in the bed of a gmc truck parked out in the rain behind the Motel 6. We enter a dark motel room. Tired, our bodies giving into gravity, we lie on the carpet using our wet sweatshirts as pillows. — Tagen T. Baker 1 I 1 Beneath the Desert Moon—Atomic City, Idaho I I I III 11 I I 1 1 I 1 I I I I I Watching Your Parents Get Old