Poems by Devreaux Baker
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Articulating the Bones
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Summer 2019
Devreaux lives on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in the Big River Watershed.
They brought her in cardboard box-loads
what once had been a great blue god
dreaming oceans with her fins and filled
with the aftertaste of rivers in her blood.
Now she is returning to the land,
laid out vertebrae by vertebrae
on the floor of a make-shift lab
in the town’s community center.
We kneel over her to recreate a life
determined by current and wave, by moon
or the machinations of men.
We place her bones in a shape
water will recognize as one of her own
and call her wandering spirit back
to that soundless deep
even as I teach my daughter
how in death a voice can arise and speak to us
is able to reach across that wide plain
that separates the living and the dead
to help guide us into our own uneasy future
This is called articulating the bones
the lab technician says. But I know
he is opening Neruda’s blue door
releasing consonants and vowels
of hopeful sorrow, defining a body
by loss or gain, the color of skin,
luck of the draw, or that inexplicable moment
that creates the journey of a life-time.
I tell my daughter we are waking
the great blue whale, pulling her from
her deep sleep
resurrecting a life as mysterious and ancient
as our own, opening the blue door
stepping into the house
we all share.
Previously published in the author’s collection Hungry Ghosts, 2018.
© Devreaux Baker
Black Phoebe
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Summer 2016
This morning waking alone in the cabin
the blue gray arms of sky just above
the bending trees pulling me up out of bed
to stand at the window bare feet planted
on bare boards praying without knowing I was
praying for all the living we have left to do
and somewhere the song of one bird someone
named Black Phoebe etched itself in a simple
line against the breaks in my heart and I whispered
this is a good morning for birds and bare feet
and for all the living we have left to accomplish
even though time is such a reckless car flaming
us always toward such unexpected dips and turns
but standing like this planted in the morning
I felt that familiar voice grass and yellow
fields speak calling me to go outside
and walk to the barn and from there
follow the path that leads with her face
of such indeterminate longing
all the way to the sea.
© Devreaux Baker
Cranes
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Spring 2016
What if we could pull back
every lost opportunity
every loss becoming a white bird
we cradle in our bodies
so we become receptacles
of transformation.
Imagine a field
cranes returning
to nest
and we are the light
they are flying
into.
© Devreaux Baker
First Snowfall, Taos
by Devreaux Baker
Snowfall in Taos and I go back
to the underside of things
as in roots tightly bunched together
becoming small fists praying
for the first spring flush
to open their hands again
I go back to rock and pebble
on the trail up the mountain
filled with abiding grace
I stand in the first snowfall
and feel the great wheel turning
that means our lives are in conjunction
and soon we will seek each other out
in winter’s silence while the first snowfall
drifts like a veil of forgetting
across the face of the land
To speak of the first snowfall in Taos
is to speak of wild ponies grazing
on all the high mountain passes
of my heart
where I find silver sage
transformed into guardians
of the long reaches of horizon
and conjure amulets for the brave
who carry the shhh shhh shhh song
of first snow inside their hands and hearts
and legs
uncovering truth in the heartbeat
of wilderness so all doubts
about how to be one with earth
scatter like winter leaves
in wind.
Previously published in author’s collection, Hungry Ghosts, 2018
© Devreaux Baker
Nostalgia for the Rain
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Summer 2016
It began with a tin roof
sounds like silver sticks
falling from air
a dash of bird feet
despair or love at all the edges
It began with a car
gleaming bumpers
wind shield wipers forming a pattern
of lost and found
the truth of the seen versus
the unseen
It began with a picnic
wicker baskets of fruit
grass still dazed from a sudden
shower
It was spring
or was it fall
the brush of winter
woven into scarves
It arrived in the blue smell
at the base of clouds
became a dark thought
fell in torrents
released us from ourselves
It began with a mattress
on the cabin floor
the smell of wet pines
redwoods singing
in hidden groves
It came in a rush
unfolded wet knees
a vertebrae of desire
It began with your body
in the afternoon
the smell of rain
conjuring memories
silver sticks falling across
our shoulders
A dash of bird feet
on all the rooftops
of the world
© Devreaux Baker
Redwood
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Spring 2019
Patient is a word they have perfected
standing silent until
wind from the north urges small
moans out of their throats and so
they sway and sing. Sometimes
in storms they mimic whale song
that rises from the coastal fog
to drift in and out of our dreams.
What is holy, if not a redwood,
color of sunrise and sunset,
color of old flames filled with ghosts
of ancestors. Their lives are strung out
like prayer beads shuffled between
the mossy fingers of some thousand
year old forest monk. They stand in groves
surrounding the remains of ancient ones
cut down years ago. They rise straight up
out of the lap of a mother
or father tree, they push past
bark beetles and squirrels
hungry for the taste of new seedlings.
They are survivors from the years
of saw blades, spiked boots,
lumber barons,
fires, storms, droughts and floods
filled with that desire
that lives only in trees,
to rise up, touch heaven
break open green bristles in sky,
breathe in and out,
sharing their breath
with the rest of us
left on the ground
below.
Previously published in the author's collection, Hungry Ghosts, 2018
© Devreaux Baker
The Grand Canyon
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Spring 2019
I have been sitting here for over six million years
turning from ocean into the mind of magma
with the thrust and pull of continental shelves
defining my body. I am filled now
with the sound of a dying river at my core
and a million cracks of lightning
carving out my features.
Humans persist in climbing into my bones
pitching tents in the caverns of my mind
making love in the wide open spaces of my arms
or trying to resuscitate dying marriages
in the pelvic purse of my lap.
They traverse my body during the day
but at night while they sleep I wrap my force
like a shawl of rainbow dreams around their forms
and whisper the names of trails they define me by
so I become their Bright Angel or their Hermit.
In those moments I want to hold them so close
they share my infinite solitude
and learn how to mold their bodies
into the shape of loss, so they understand
how our world is diminishing
and my abyss becoming a benediction
to the memory of water.
They come and go through the gravity of time
as fragments of supernova
shadow-dancing for a brief moment
against my walls
leaving reminders of themselves
in the cast-off objects of their lives.
Filled with their voices, I endure
long after their rafts disappear
down the veins of my body.
Listen, can you hear eagle wings opening
in the margins of my dreaming mind?
Previously published in the author's collection, Hungry Ghosts, 2018
© Devreaux Baker
The Taste of Rivers
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Spring 2016
Open your mouth
I will pour the taste of rivers
into you
Navarro, Albion, Big River, Little Salmon Creek
The sand you taste
between your teeth
is the after-taste of river time
crossing and re-crossing paths
like lifelines you cradle
in the palms of your hands
The Albion tastes like moonlight
and cattails
The Navarro tastes like
wild sorrel and pine
Big River and Little Salmon Creek
taste like huckleberries eaten at dawn
If you fall asleep by the side of a river
you become part of the ebb and flow
from earth’s great aorta
and share the dreams of salmon
swimming home
through the blue-chambered heart
of this land.
© Devreaux Baker
Whale
by Devreaux Baker
From Canary Summer 2018
The morning we found the whale we had walked for miles
The ocean on our left kept calling us
to take off our clothes, slide into her arms
We kept searching for some private place to undress
until in the distance we saw the rounded curve
against the beach and
thought, a perfect dune to lay against
until we were close enough to see this great
soft curve covered with sand and scars was a whale
and we felt as though we had entered a holy zone,
where the world stopped her
purposeful spinning so we could pay homage to
this life slipped out of the sea
one lost note from some ancient song
Previously appeared in author’s collection, Hungry Ghosts, 2018
© Devreaux Baker