All Points of the Compass

Quaquaversal-— adjective, “directed outward from a common center toward all points of the compass; dipping uniformly in all directions.”

July folds close as the moon waxes full and a minus tide beckons from my perch in a windowseat above Coos Bay. I scribble bird tracks in a notebook held within the covers of an upcycled refillable leather journal created by my friend Donna. Stop. Pause. Flutter through pages at month’s end. Seek passages to lift from meanderings. I’m still following the daily ritual I learned from poet Kim Stafford of jotting the day, date, and year; then a free write, an aphorism (pithy observation) or question; and a poem attempt. Sometimes I pluck words from the inside cover’s old thesaurus, like “quaquaversum” –inspiration for a Monday, July 3rd entry from my home in the pines by the lava of Central Oregon:

Motion with  Reference to Direction

Compass points the cardinal directions. Does the scarlet bird heed lines of collimation? I choose “as the crow flies” to reach the river flowing north beneath the Cascades.  Leap. Hang onto fraying skirts of a cumulonimbus cloud brewing thunder and lightning. A deviation of destination or my azimuth of the moment? I am storm-blown. I am flood tide. I am riding a velocity of wing flaps. Catch the zigzag deflection of canyon wren song, a counterpoint of freefall. How to be ocean flexing, river digressing, and forests cresting outward from the patterned dome of Turtle Island? The quaquaversal way.

Skip ahead to Monday of July 24th, house sitting in Charleston on Coos Bay. Aphorism: “Let the sea air rain upon your thirsty lizard skin drenching you until at last the dormant seeds will sprout.”

And flipping to Monday, July 10th jotting from home where the word “after” has me walking backwards into the morning:

“After the Ochocos and the hermit thrush arias in the early morning on the Lookout Mountain trail by the meadow of false hellebore, I can still trace every watershed leaf funneling the way of water. After the glory of scarlet gilia wildflowers waving to hummingbirds zipping among sagebrush. After the amber bark of three-hundred-year-old ponderosas showers a summer’s day in vanilla perfume. After thunder grumbling and grouching above Round Mountain and Lincoln Sparrow serenading from lodgepole pines huddled in close conversation. And after the cameraderie of a Sierra Club campout…. I arrive barefoot into this honeyed dawn.”

Winding back to a Sunday, July 16 entry from high in the Three Sisters Wilderness on an overnight backpack trip, writing on a sidehill turning my face to catch first light…the aphorism began this way: “Seeking inspiration, I allow the sunlight haloing each letter to guide my inking of pen on the open-hearted page into a wild blooming of anemone, paintbrush, aster, penstemon, and buckwheat.” Always my challenge is to be pithy. Perhaps it is this: “Ink the sunrise upon a blank page inviting the touch of first light.”

From the aphorism, sometimes the poem finds a way…and only the “attempt”–no judging here. Fiddling with the poem scribbles of that morning, I revise a bit here:

Sidehill
This dawn, this Three Sisters Wilderness. Heels dug
into sliding light lava stones. I sit facing east among bracken
ferns waving feathery salutations to the sun.

The way of sidehill is all glancing flirtation. One blink of desire
before attending to gravity, always that lurking
potential for a wild tumble.

And what do I choose in life? So much instability
on a slippery slope. Unless I learn to balance on one
foot–a fern unfurling with little soil for rooting. Tenacious.

And then there’s the Tuesday, 4th of July camping by a spring in the upper Willamette of the western Cascades–a spring with a name I love but will not write to protect the secrecy. I write:

“This headwaters spring is rustling a cool streaming silvery shine within the great shadowed forest. Cedar. Douglas-fir. Western yew. Western hemlock. Grand fir. Big leaf maple. Among the thickets of salal and rhododendron. Tuned by Pacific wren singing freshets of heart notes, misting me in joy. And by the Varied thrush singing the one held chord of yearning. I have a confession. I’m in love with the west side forests! With all that is lush, tangled, leaning, towering, and oh so very very green and mossy. Shhh.. I still love you ponderosa pines. Maybe this is an affair. Or can I have you both as my lovers?”

Wednesday, July 12. After studying parts of a feather–Calumus (base of a quill). Rachis (central shaft). Vane (the smooth feather surface on either side of the rachis. Barbs and barbules (interlocking feather strands, I write:

“Feather my day in flight, in loft, in the interlocking secrets to glide and flap. Tango of kingfisher wingbeats. Of hover and plunge beak first to kiss a wave, scissor a minnow, and muscle up with wingtips flicking spray. Soften all hard edges with downy breast feathers. Follow the contours, Be primary and asymmetrical to fly. One feather is not a bird. One bird is not a flock. “

To journal is to explore the quaquaversal way. How else to know the center without dipping every direction–to know the intricate patterning on the sloping shell of the turtle?