Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves

Here it is, week 3 of 2018 already. This week’s poem, Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, is from my collection of the same name.

This is one of those poems that picks on the oddness of place, as much as the images that place evokes. Not sci-fi, but you could imagine a world made up of images like this.

One of the fun things about poetry is getting to use words that don’t pop up into ordinary conversation. So, tufas are the calcium carbonate tubes rising up out of Mono Lake (see picture). It makes you feel a bit like you might be on another planet when walking around a landscape like this. At the same time, it is embedded in the ordinary world around it–the Sierras and the creeks and streams that feed into, but not out of, Mono Lake.

Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves

—Rush Creek, Mono County, California

Leaves have started to turn the gold
…found in weak veins in the hills or washed
……in slivers & nuggets
………down to the creek from God’s Eye.

Afternoon casts a slow muddy opacity
…on the water, a brown thick as muck
……washed from boots & hooves.
………Black boles mark the aspens, mark notches

where young branches were
…stripped away. Signs of seasons,
……patches peeling. The stand leans
………slightly, sighing. Bare branches

reach for each other, make a sieve
…for sunset & rain. The ugly angles can’t
……be denied. Blue-green mist tangles the shadows
………near the base. When you think you see the aspens’

souls, ghosts come rushing in
…to fill the willing space
……all about the creek bed, & the wind
………will not be still. Your eyes are torn

from water & branches to clouds,
…the shadows of birds over
……grasses & heaped silent stones.
………Sudden memories, hands & faces

of great-aunts & uncles, missionaries
…& maybe devils, spring up sodden,
……demand to be seen, to carry you
………with the rushing water

to the ancient lake without outlet
…where the tufas form, where briny waters
……bubble up through limestone, grow gnarled
………calcium tubes like fingers from the murky floor.

Hollow bones reach up toward the sky. Jagged
…columns, cracked pillars, ruins of
……old sentinels ring the lake, the younger ones
………still under water.

Near the rim, the bones of 1940
…crumble & dry, weaken under their own weight.
……The paths through the tufas are lined
………with dust from all the years before.

In this hollow, you hear whispers
…that are not the wind, whispers as elusive as fireflies,
……fragile as brine shrimp. They thicken the salty air,
………sting your face, & spurred you think of how

you never want to leave, & climbing
…the cone to Panum Crater, the volcano not yet dead
……only sleeping, ringed with slippery gray sand
………seems easy by comparison. Small obsidian slates,

black mirrors, webbed & cracked,
…make lines across your face. The mirrors
……pull you in, & only the paling day,
………the last flicker of red before

the stars crawl out from their caves,
…can reel you back to the banks of the creek
……where nuggets have sunk beneath the surge
………& the water has cleared

except for pools near the edge. The aspens still rub
…their limbs together for warmth,
……their white stalks turning to tufas in the night
………& ghosts still drift near the scree.

Mono Lake is over 1 million years old.

If you’d like to know more about Mono Lake, you can read more here. The California State Natural Reserve at Mono Lake is amazing, and I highly recommend a visit if you get a chance. Yosemite National Park is also nearby.

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If you enjoyed Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, you can read more of my work on this site or in the collection itself which is available in both ebook and print.

Have a great week, and look for another poem next Monday. As always, comments welcome.