She called his name after that, but there was no answer. Eskwana lay still. Harfex lay stiller.
"Osden!" she cried, leaning out the doorway into the Vaster Than Empires and More Slow "A.127
dark, wind-shaken silence of the forest of being. "I will come back. I must get Harfex to the base. I will come back, Osden!"
Silence and wind in leaves.
They finished the prescribed survey of World 4470, the eight of them; it took them forty-one days more. Asnanifoil and one or another of the women went into the forest daily at first, searching for Osden in the region around the bare knoll, though Tomiko was not in her heart sure which bare knoll they had landed on that night in the very heart and vortex of terror. They left piles of supplies for Osden, food enough for fifty years, clothing tents, tools. They did not go on searching there was no way to find a man alone, hiding if he wanted to hide, in those unending labyrinths and dim corridors vine-entangled, root-floored. They might have passed within arm's reach of him and never seen him.
But he was there; for there was no fear any more. Rational, and valuing reason more highly after an intolerable experience of the immortal mindless, Tomiko tried to understand rationally what Osden had done.
But the words escaped her control. He had taken the fear into himself, and, accepting had transcended it He had given up his self to the alien, an unreserved surrender, that left no place for evil. He had learned the love of the Other, and thereby had been given his whole self. -- But this is not the vocabulary of reason.
The people of the Survey team walked under the trees, through the vast colonies of life, surrounded by a dreaming silence, a brooding calm that was half aware of them and wholly indifferent to them. There were no hours. Distance was no matter. Had we but world enough and time... The planet turned between the sunlight and the great dark; winds of winter and summer blew fine, pale pollen across the quiet seas.
12 8-ABUFFALO GALS
Gum returned after many surveys, years, and lighryears, to what had several centuries ago been Smeming Port There were still men there, to receive (incredulously) the team's reports, and to record its losses:
Biologist Harfex, dead of fear, and Sensor Osden, left as a colonist
(1971)
VI
Seven Bird and Beast Poems
Various real or imaginary relations and comminglings of human and other beings are going on here. The last one is a true ghost story.
The first one is a joke about one of my favorite kinds of bird, the acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus in Latin, boso in Kesh). They are handsome little woodpeckers, still common in Northern California, splendidly marked, with a red cap, and a white circle round the eye giving them a clown's mad stare. They talk all the time -- the loud yacka-yacka-yacka call, and all kinds of mutters, whirs, purrs, comments, criticisms, and gossip going on constantly among the foraging or housekeeping group. They are familial or tribal. Cousins and aunts help a mated pair feed and bring up the babies. Why they make holes and drop acorns into them when they can't get the acorns back out of the holes is still a question (to ornithologists -- not to acorn woodpeckers). When we removed the wasp- and woodpecker-riddled back outer wall of an old California farmhouse last year, about a ton of acorns fell out, all worm-hollowed husks; they had never been accessible to the generations of Bosos who had been diligently dropping them in since 1870 or so. But in the walls of the bam are neat rows of little holes, each one with a longValky Oak acorn stuck in, a perfect fit, almost like rivets in sheet iron. These, presumably, are winter supply. On the other hand, they might be a woodpecker an form. Another funny thing they do is in spring, very early in the morning when a male wants to assert the tribal territory and/or impress the hell out of some redhead.
131
132 JT BUFFALO GALS
He finds a tree that makes a really loud sound, and drums on it. The loudest tree these days -- a fine example of the interfacing of human and woodpecker cultures -- is a metal chimney sticking up from a farmhouse roof. A woodpecker doing the kettledrum reveille on the stovepipe is a real good way to start the day at attention.
Seven Bird and Beast Poems "A-133
What is Going on in The Oaks Around the Barn
The Acorn Woodpeckers are constructing an Implacable Pecking Machine to attack oaks and whack holes to stack acorns in.
They have not perfected
it yet They keep cranking
it up ratchet by ratchet by ratchet each morning
till a Bluejay yells, "SCRAP!" and it all collapses
into black-and-white flaps and flutters and redheads muttering curses in the big, protecting branches.
For Ted
The hawk shapes the wind and the curve of the wind
Like eggs lie the great gold hills in the curve of the world to that keen eye
The children wait
The hawk declares height by his fell fall The children cry
Comes the high hunter carrying the kill curving the winds with strong wings
To the old hawk
all earth is prey, and child
(1973)
(1986)
134-A BUFFALO GALS Found Poem
However, Bruce Baird, Laguna Beach's chief lifeguard, doubts that sea lions could ever replace, or even really aid, his staff. "If you were someone from Ohio, and you were in the water having trouble and a sea lion approached you, well, it would require a whole lot more public education," he told the Orange County Register.
-- PAUL SIMON, for AP, 17 December 1984
If I am ever someone from Ohio
in the water having trouble
off a continent's west edge
and am translated to my element
by a sudden warm great animal with sea-dark fur sleek shining
and the eyes of Shiva,
I hope to sink my troubles like a stone and all uneducated ride her inshore shouting with the foam praises of the freedom to be saved.
(1986)
Totem
Mole my totem mound builder maze maker tooth at the root shaper of darkness into ways and hollows
in grave alive heavy handed light blinded
Seven Bird and Beast Poems *A-135
Winter Downs
(For Barbara)
Eyes look at you. Thorns catch at you. Heart starts and bleats.
The looks are rocks white-ringed with chalk: flint fish-eyes of old seas, sheep's flint-dark gaze.
Chalk is sheep-white.
Clouds take shape
and quiet of sheep.
Thorn's hands hold stolen fleece.
The stones sleep open-eyed.
Keep watch: be not afraid.
The Man Eater
They'd all run away then. We came out of the hovels by the well to wait as that one came soft from the
