Tuscarora Journal: A Reminiscence "James Sends a Poem"

Sometime in 1996, James sent me this poem by Seamus Heaney with the handwritten message, "Here's the Adobe House mantra."

                Lightenings

Roof it again.  Batten down.  Dig in.
Drink out of tin.  Know the scullery cold,
A latch, a door-bar, forged tongs and a grate.

Touch the cross-beam, drive iron in a wall,
Hang a line to verify the plumb
From lintel, coping-stone and chimney-breast.

Relocate the bedrock in the threshold.
Take squarings from the recessed gable pane.
Make your study the unregarded floor.

Sink every impulse like a bolt.  Secure
the bastion of sensation.  Do not waver
Into language.  Do not waver in it.

Tuscarora Journal: A Reminiscence "Second Artists' Week, Second Day"

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Tuscarora Journal: A Reminiscence "Second Artists' Week, August 1995"

Second Artists' Week, August 1995
Nancy and Rosemary

           "By Any Other Name..."

I started the day by sitting on the flat circle of gravel, a clearing in the midst of dried grass, weeds, and sagebrush about twenty feet from the trucks.  You could call it a meditation spot, but I prefer not to.  I stood up and went over to look at the old gray truck with a weathered stock rack and "Kenect, McGill, 129" in faded black stencil on the door of the driver's side.  Its sidekick is the faded red-to-gray Chevy flat bed.  Next to the wire fence is a jaunty green Willy's .

I'm not into meditation and I don't believe in personifying inanimate objects.  However--when I bring a cup of coffee out here and sit in the morning sun letting my mind wander--I guess that would be meditation if I relinquished the pleasure of random thoughts.  And--if those two trucks and that jeep could talk, I know they'd have stories to tell.  How did they get here?