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VIEW of an unnamed cirque, from (Lost) Glacier Peak [click photo for next . . . ]
Notice the ± 1850 moraine, left behind by glacier retreat,
first historic warnings of Climate Chaos in the High Wallowas.
At altitude, the effects of hotter, drier climate are amplified greatly. And
yet, we remain in denial, and in some ways, as of 2016 are lurching violently backwards.
That's why I feature the long-line sonnet, BUNKERS ON THE BEACH,
here. Artifacts of Hitler's great Atlantikwall / Atlantic Wall which was thousands of
kilometers long, built by forced slave labor, and made of reinforced concrete so thick,
they cannot, in some places, be gotten rid of. I have a strong emotional connection
to all this. I used to bike frequently to the Dutch coast from Amsterdam.
I would see the bunkers. I learned the history of the Dutch "Bunker Builders,"
men who collaborated willingly with the NAZIS. I have rehearsed frequently
right next to the Anne Frank House on the Prinzengracht. I know the same
bells of the Westerkerk she writes of so beautifully in her diary. And I
have known intimately family of Dtuch "Brown Shirts," descendents of
the kind of people, with only days left in the war, who turned her in.
Some poems, it is true, take a long time to gestate. This one did.
Please forgive the Dutch and German phrases. They had to be there
somehow. For as angels know, sound—the sound of those words—
is much more than merely a mechanical movement of air.
On the road in the American Northwest.
