Invitation to virtual poetry reading featuring Bill Vartnaw - Saturday, June 22

[Lawrence Robinson]

You are cordially invited to join us for a virtual poetry reading featuring former Sonoma County Poet Laureate Bill Vartnaw
Saturday, June 22 from 10:00 to 10:30 AM (PDT).

There is no need to pre-register; just click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87994195000?pwd=MnY3QnFHVHFwSERkc2l4Rmd0Y3lCQT09.

Bill Vartnaw is the author of two books of poetry, In Concern: for Angels (THP, 1984); Suburbs of my Childhood (Beatitude Press, 2009) & 4 chapbooks.   He is publisher of Taurean Horn Press, an independent poetry press started in San Francisco and celebrating its 50th year.  After moving back to his home town, he served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate and has assisted Geri Digiorno with the Petaluma Poetry Walk in some capacity since 1999.  He’s been its director of the Walk since sometime in the 20-teens.


The Opening

The opening.  As if someone slit the surface
of an overripe Earth & the juice just rose up
through the rock to reveal itself.  Eel River, Fortuna.

You are here with friends.  One who knows
The area.  One who carries a field guide
with colored pictures of birds.
					You sit on the bank,
on boulders extending from the tangle of branches
you squeezed through to get here.  A long left
(toward town) & a longer right slighted by the sun’s glare.
Over there, across the way the river recedes
from the row of trees leaving a layered beach
complete with skipping stones.
					In winter
when the water is high & a darker shade of green,
those trees are tested.  You think of the January failures
that contribute to this June panorama. . .

Suddenly, a bird bursts through the bushes cutting
the air with uneven geometry, flurry & dash,
dart.  “Definitely, a swallow,” your friend says
leafing quickly through the book.  “Here, this one—
a barn swallow, the rust-colored breast. . .”
This amazes you, not for the naming but what is not:
trees, bushes, birds you can hear, boulders & rocks. . .
The vision extends into the shadows of the shapes 
you feel.  Coming from within.  Something deeper
than the sense of it (or any pronoun.)  Like calm.
An immediate knowing.  That feeling, Angels.
The synchronicity extends through out. . .

Molecule, subatomic particle.  The long loping phrase
Of a great blue heron heading west. . .  To know each
& every name & to speak them in a  moment.  The moment:
Unnamed, unknown.  & still we try & often we extend 
what we know.  Always we go beyond this—
into the realm of Angels.  The siren song the silence
presents to us.
			Circles in a river.
What a mouthful this swallow is.  How it dips,

dives its beak into the water.  The drops slip & 
slam against the surface, reuniting the river in our eye
to our heartbeats & our souls. . . How we are carried
by this current to bend, to swell, to rush & to loose
these selves into that ocean the curls upon itself
to greet us.  The Angels’ song permeates all
from timeless within.  Moving in & out of focus,
in & out of form.  Like those drops my swallow spills.


			*


I know nothing but this feeling.  To have it broken
like that row of trees.  A whole in the middle
where mountains miles away rise, stunning
in their great green coats.  How it all changes. . .
The higher flying heron replaced by the kingfisher
looking for a meal.  The river’s the constant
& the river isn’t, as sun sparkles from the bobbing
current crests.  The process of choice.  
I wonder what my eye sees in its own completeness.
This feeling remains, joyous in its own. 


Bill Vartnaw


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