03/05/2018 Bruce Fessenden's Poetry

Always Open Mic, always free.

Bruce lives in Berkeley and is co-owner of Fessenden Firewood with his partner Christine.  He has been deeply immersed in the natural world his entire life through the activities of backpacking, climbing and skiing.  A book of his poems —“Crimson Coat” — was published in 2014 by Goldenstone Press.  Pieces of Bruce’s writings have appeared in a MoonShine Star Co. anthology called “What is Love”, and also in Richard Grossinger’s book “2013”.  A second volume of poems, titled “Bones” will be published shortly.

                                   Rough-Cut

People are sick these days

    you can hear it in the coughing

    at the coffee house, behind the words

    you can hear the phlegm

    from rushing around too fast

    chasing after what they already have.

Inside lung and organ tissue, inside marrow of bone

    unseen surfaces, stairways, hidden windows

    are already here in the world

    patiently waiting to be found.

It’s not that I’m rough all the time

    it’s something else, something that doesn’t quite fit

    or is a little too silent

    some part of me a little awkward

    a little alien; never feel quite right

    in the light of the everyday world.

I’m not a misfit, not a stranger

    I fit in, in a different sort of way

    like a crystal, opaque and transparent simultaneous

    almost black, but inward, not glowing

    more like an emphasizing

    the innerness of the stone

    a soft radiance, like an animal

    attentive, alive to its world

    just noticing, nothing more.

My darkness is the glade

    on the western side of the ridge

    where nobody goes.

Or the wild desert, a land of extremes

    harsh at high noon; yet crystalline purity

    with the early morning light.

Caravansari of old brought a human exchange

    all the remains is the sand, the dunes

    nights littered with stars.

What is exchanged now?  Where there is only wind

    and endless quiet, where footprints

    are erased in an instant.

What is my last day?

    Is it the holly tree, with its deep greens

    and reds; luscious growth and a steady joy?

Or is it the aurora borealis, with crackling mystery

    and otherworldly colors: lime, magenta, pink?

What have I released back to the

    ground, to matter, to the mother

    to the innerness of all things?

What gesture was I making inside

    the arc of my days, that others may have noticed

    which I could never see.

But love is not for understanding

    love is an activity; love moves.

Ashes to ashes, the course of my days

    a hollowing, for innerness

    a hallowing, full circle, the shape that

    holds the sacred, like a garden

    sifting, reflecting, dreaming

    then releasing.

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