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.

Montana Young (audio)

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

Tree of Northern Lights (audio)

From Jesse's poetry collection, Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Your Thigh Said Stay

       Your thigh said stay,
your legs under, dead asleep,
myself zonked out until the alarm leaped
when your thigh, flung across,
clamped mine. "No way,"
it said and clung with woman's might,
kept me down, you
in love-locked dispassion,
you the Turk
holding, ownerly tight,
knowing no other necessity after night's
pall, dim waning murk
of dawn, the lightening blue
morning...and grudging dispossession.
Had to fight
to gain my loss
into one more unmannerly day.

Phenomenal Farewell

From the embrasure of their evergreen fellows

deciduous cottonwoods and aspens—

a Montana cast of thousands—more like hundreds—maybe tens—

call loud attention to themselves, wedging in Douglas fir, poking around

and slipping through cedar and pine, their yellows

clapping, their reds a cheer, all their leaves hallooing,

the desperate trees themselves about to bound

from the stage of autumn into tiers of October sun.

            Wait a minute: nothing so fanciful teaches

truth. Things are not what they seem

if what they seem overreaches

so much. Actually, they’re not applauding

back at us or pushing fir aside, they’re done,

that’s all—

I mean the leaves. What we’re seeing, hearing, lauding

is the end of one more season in our heads, another curtain call

for minds over-kindled by vivid sunbeams.

It just so happens that they most wear well

in show-stopping glory, dry-leaf phenomenal farewell.

Moral: Don’t exaggerate, unless absolutely convenient. Or unless you’re into fables.

Otherwise, speak plain...like:

Goodbye is—goodbye.

Best Friends

Best Friends

You cannot call your child “best friend,”

words that only honored others bear.

Not against the law,

exactly,

but it’s sheer impropriety.

Whether son as such,

or daughter as much,

children are disallowed,

cannot share

so matter-of-factly

in that surpassing praise

reserved for strangers to your blood,

privileged people, most loved

but removed.

The phrase is maudlin fault,

smuggled emotion,

so far around the language bend,

so callow,

gauche,

it is barred from polite or any society.

Even if true,

it will not do.

Still, though all three of mine are grown,

have their own

connections

further on down

the chain

of being, they remain

abiding, secretless closest confidants

and, therefore, no apology, no social correction

in this ungrammatic, unretracted

revelation

(which will do

because it is true):

these private friends are best

not in over-reaching far-fetched

but honest

public exclamation—

which can and must be said

before too late,

without subtracting from unrelated

comrades

or unrivaled mate,

with their own deserved affirmation—

For these special three,

lifelong bonded company,

may their own progeny—

good, better, or best—

be equally, or eventually,

simply

blest.

Anecdote on a Poem, and Considerations Thereof

Anecdote On A Poem, and Considerations Thereof

by Jesse Bier

A pair of senior Montana parents, while in Portland, Oregon, happened to buy my first book of poetry, Don’t tell Me Trees Don’t Talk, which their adult son opened to a poem called, “Montana Young.” He read it and wept—not torrentially, they report, but noticeably. And unashamedly. Later on, after reading the book entire, he thought “Montana Young” held up as the best poem in the collection. Well, we all say, of course—after such initial and personal impact. It’s a good poem or it wouldn’t be in the book, but there are better ones (the longer title poem, for instance, and the short “Somebody’s Grandmother, Somebody’s Grandfather”) according to the now thoroughly objective and disinvolved author, who has his own emotional favorites but can rise to soften judgment when put to it. Still, tomfoolery aside (not his real name), there is something special in the instance of a grown man’s sudden and unabashed reaction to a poem of particular significance to him—and, I believe, to many other out-of-state Montanans.

            

It is a poem of dangerously hackneyed subject matter—leaving home—and indeed that cliché interrupted my writing of it a number of times. But the fact is, Montana leave-taking is especially poignant because of what the land and upbringing in it powerfully and uniquely mean to those young people who have to go elsewhere for a living, that leaving a kind of early death for them. It turns out that what was otherwise a general literary threat, treating such a usual subject, was a means to connect with the longer, emotionally fraught immigrant and emigrant American experience, one that Montana especially connects with, coming clear in the second half of the poem. As a matter of fact, while I was searching for a rhyme in the last lines, it was this developing theme of the poem itself that rendered “bereft” for the youngster, not their parents at the very end. For it is indeed the young, departing generations, leaving beloved land as well as family, who are double losers, not their Montana-rooted mother and father. The poem found itself, transcending the cliché of subject, growing organically and emotionally—not willfully or artfully for me. It came to its own governing conclusion, deserving its tears, literal or otherwise, from native readers who happen upon it. In which case, it is their poem, not mine anymore. 

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.