Lake Powell, Arizona (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Lake Powell, Arizone," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Tropic Trees (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Tropic Trees," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Spacesurfers (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Apacesurfers," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Yom Kippur in Montana (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Yom Kippur in Montana," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Birds of a Fin and Fish of a Feather (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Birds of a Fin and Fish of a Feather," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Geneva: The Grand Quai (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Geneva: The Grand Quai," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Passing By (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Passing By," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Winter at St. Legier (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Winter at St. Legier," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

The Obscenity (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "The Obscenity," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Raincoated Victory (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Raincoated Victory," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Hear Ye and Harken - Another Kind of Fire Rages in the West (audio)

Jesse reads his poem, "Hear Ye and Harken - Another Kind of Fire Rages in the West ," from the collection Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Anecdote in the Swiss Alps

         Setting: The Hotel Arosa, in German Switzerland. Easter Skiing Season. It is dinner time. My family waits for me in the little anteroom just before the dining room. I am in a water closet on the first floor hall, having pulled up the plunger on the commode. This machine is infernal to an American because instead of having an activating handle on the front of the tank, it has a plastic disc on the top. The device seems to invite a downward pressing palm motion to work the toilet, but, actually, one must lift it. I have been frequently confused between pressing and pulling the disc top.Now, after once again pushing or pressing it falsely, I over-correct myself and pull it up sharply. I do so too violently, however, and break it off. To my consternation the disc top flies right out of my hand and caroms off one wall and the ceiling above. It bounces down directly into the toilet bowl, whose seat is still up. Before my startled eyes it disappears in the whorl of flushed water eddying out of the bowl.

In the ensuing silence that beats on my eardrums, I find myself staring incredulously at my handiwork….But who is to know whodunnit? Either more cowardly than embarrassed, or more audacious than either, I quickly leave the scene of the crime. The concatenation of events still boggles my mind: my wrong initial movement, my impatient recovery and over-reaction, my fascination and paralysis at the quick course of subsequent events, demonstrating the immutable old law of gravitation or the unearthly new principle of magnetism between plastic and descending water.

Incident on the Clark Fork

      It had taken fifteen memorable minutes—from the time she was hooked, that is. Before that, he must have used four night crawlers, which she kept stripping off. He could feel her each time, big and emboldened with each success. He was just as good at bait fishing as fly fishing and he could not believe, with how cunningly he threaded the crawler on the hook the fourth time, that she would get away with it, but she did. He preferred fly fishing, but this early in the season on the delta’d but highwater Clark Fork, he fished bait the first part of the day. There was an art to it, which fly-men denigrated too easily because of the majority of lazy bums who practiced it grossly. But he had been taught better, by an expert who showed him precisely how to bounce a No. 3 split shot on the bottom so that it entered a hole repercussively; then you let the hook dribble, and, afterwards, lie and drift: it would generally be hit just then.      

The Captain of Disaster and the Sergeant of Surprise

He was a short slight man with a dark vandyke. He looked like, well, Lenin. Alone on the road, just alongside the German farm, with a big ham and a slab of bacon in a wooden barrow he trundled, he gesticulated and mixed pidgin German with Russian. “Stalin hat gezacht—” Stalin has said that any Russian Displaced Person could take whatever he wanted from any Germans anywhere. He held eye contact with me and stamped his foot a few times. When he made a fist, my point man, Driscoll said, lifting the butt of his M1, “Should I knock him down one time.”

“And take the groceries?” Finley said.


“For us, or the farmer,” MacEnroy asked.


“Take it easy,” I said, “all of you. Let me deal with him.”

Robin and Son

In one particular robin flock there was a female who was truly loyal and faithful to the mate she had picked years before. It was a sort of scandal to be so male-bonded in a group that was utterly liberal and would never show the slightest disapproval of normal social strayers from the nest. Not that she showed off in any manner but was, simply, devoted and content. And it had been the same for him in a prior mating, where his partner never once went off, until she died.

What did he have that kept his females so devoted? Don’t say sex because robins don’t delude themselves with unique details of capacity, any startling disparities in coital competence. They know about the general parity of masculine performance. One male is as strong or as brave as another, no special fame inherent. Was it exceptional good-looks? No. He had no extraordinary orange in his broad expanse of chest, no luminous crimson more luminous than the next. No, something else was involved in this robin’s hold on his steadfast, immovable mates.

No one in that flock ever learned his secret except his breast-bespeckled son when the fledgling took his turn to fly to other skies and be gone.

           

The Koala

Enough said about the koala bear, enough about his irresistible charm, that cuddly fluff that keeps people coming. Crowds are mad about him, but a koala never puts on a show, never actually tries to act so cute, stoop that low to gain salute, the way a lot of lap dogs do to captivate you.

No, hundreds may watch while he romps in his gym, but that doesn’t remotely concern him. He never calls attention to himself, he goes on being he or she, and that is the secret of koala success, his un-self-conscious celebrity.

Moral: Never actively seek a flattering press lest you forfeit natural happiness.

The Giraffe

The last one who said to an indulgent giraffe, “How’s the air up there?” soon found out. Seized by the throat and slung through the air, winding up on top of a baobab tree, he dangles there, for all to see.

Your stately giraffe moves slowly, aloof, munching the leaves on acacia tops. His gait is so fluid wherever he goes that he scarcely walks but grandly flows. He drifts unafraid across the plain not simply because of his daunting height but because he has the sharpest hoof of any animal anywhere. So he strides abroad in broad daylight from tree to tree and crown to crown, quite undisturbed by might and mane, serene, sedate, elegant, and kindly disposed, hardly ever perturbed, patient, polite, the most forgiving of beasts—except for that one unpardonable gaffe that no one should visit upon a giraffe.

He is one of the world’s mildest, least excitable critters, but he simply explodes at that unseemly old joke coming from unoriginal, wisecracking smart-alecs, who love to show off. They get what they deserve.

Moral: Do not crack wise at someone tall—better yet, not at all.

Incident at Glacier Park

Two summer tourists sat in their lone car at a Glacier National Park overlook, admiring the sunset splendor in the Montana peaks. Gazing far out and long down through the oncoming dark, each saw something—a shape—something approaching in rear and sideview mirrors: not a person but a looming staggering hulk, shaggy, lumbering, stupendous, wavering, clumsy but closing in, an enormous bulk.

“I’m shutting the windows,” he said, but she re-opened hers and aimed her camera straight at the massive hump-necked beast as he drew parallel, turning his head toward her just then, his whole form abreast when she clicked, a full gratifying action shot, as far as she could tell, and he—fell! collapsed in one imploded heap of fur and crumpled flesh, directly down, not three feet away from their car. 

“You just killed a bear,” her husband shouted, “with your instamatic flash! You must have scared him silly, with lightning in a box, given him one of those rare heart attacks an animal can get from sudden fear, even a giant grizzly bear, and you plain up-and-down killed him.”

“Maybe,” she tried weakly, “he just fainted.” 

As Unbelievable As

No, I'm not talking
about walking,
though standing or moving upright
is a wonderment. Breathing, then? Yes,
another marvel – intricate, ingenious,
no question. But to have lived and seen,
what in all of life, save love, surpasses sight?
To have had no other joy
would justify each history.
Radiant light! And prism'd light–
colors, my god the colors and shades
and shapes and objects, one face...
none of it, none of it could have been
imagined when all is said
and done.
Ah then, that done:
to be gone,
to have seen it all
and, then, not to see a-tall?
To lose the splendor of that vault above
or, down to earth, anyplace,
the corner of a familiar shore,
some grass, a hill, a cove,
or the view
of you
walking toward me or standing just so, before,
gently breathing, luminous, stark
but then – like him the reader now hiding over there,
and her also afraid
and me too here,
all together, about to fade
into the redundant dark?
and cease,
and vision cease,
and then, just there, that tree?
To have had astonishment so brief.
Death is as unbelievable as life. 

The Kangaroo

People make fun of the kangaroo. She’s such a thingamajibbit, with an outsized head and planks for feet that look like sea-going flippers. She looks like a hodgepodge redundant hare, inviting people’s incredulous stare. She inspires derision, even revulsion? Well, if she could talk, she might say something in the following vein:

“You are the one who is really strange, without pelt, without feathers, and coming in so many different colors and shades of skin, it’s hard to know what body you’re in, making our little ’roos afraid. And with your funny hats and unnatural glasses, you think you’re the creature who passes for normal? Give us a break! With umbrellas, cameras, and all sorts of wires on you, you’re the world’s living oddity, nobody else.

Moral: Take a really good look at you—maybe it’s you who ought to be in a zoo.