Poetry

by James Bertolino

James Bertolino lives on Bad Dog Road on Guemes Island and teaches writing at Edmonds Community College, Washington. His poetry also appears at the end of For As Long As It Takes in this issue.

Letter From The Island

This morning another grey bird
on the path to the well. It gave

its last shudder, and as I knelt
the light blue eye moved once and closed.

This I know was meant for me.
For the first time I understand

the patterns, the sequence of clouds,
the curve of red stones like a sine-wave

along the beach. This afternoon, sitting
below the mountain, I feel the planet move.

Credo

We believe in the one message
like a fever chill
in each mushroom, inside
the chanterelle, the morel,
the rose coral and shaggy mane.
We believe plankton travel the sea's veins.
We believe the movement of a lake trout
takes on the sanctity of number
as the osprey dives. We believe the towhee.
We believe alpine snow water, when it teases the crags
and outcrops like clear giggling crystal,
is memorizing sunlight to help the oysters grow.
We believe in synchronicity. We believe when a poem is conceived
the beloved knows. We believe Jupiter touches us with luck
as we live and live again, and that Jesus knew.
We believe sod holds. We believe there are
in each of us particles that once
were stars, that matter is thought,
and that this belief is the way
of breathing in.

Indra's Falls

One of the articles in Earth & Spirit (IC#24)
Late Winter 1990, Page 34
Copyright (c)1990, 1997 by Context Institute | To order this issue ...

She must have dozed. For a moment
disoriented, unaware of how
she'd come to be floating.

Heading downstream, occasionally
the warm water would cascade
over her face and eyes.

Sunlight became liquid, and she
felt it reaching into her ears,
her lips. She could see molecules

of water and the molecules
of her body running together.
No longer her being carried by

the stream, she was the stream,
and the sun's photons were tiny
explosions of feeling.

She became conscious of deep vibration,
a roar, and of moving more rapidly.
Her liquid body

shot over the lip
of a waterfall and off into space.
She broke into thousands of droplets,

each a point of ecstasy.
It was as though she were a sigh
of pleasure as she spread

into mist. Then something moved
through her. At millions
of intersections she assembled

a description, a form with two
leading edges, pointed center and
bulbous shape behind, with a forked

plane playing the turbulence: a swallow
was flying through her.
She knew then a loving the universe finds

in the swallow's existence, the way
its sensual form becomes intimate
with damp air. Then

she felt water on her wings.

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