David Holper: California Poets Part 8, Five Poems

David Holper

January 8th, 2025

California Poets: Part VIII

David Holper

Five Poems

Dear Past,

I am sorry I set you down. I had dragged you such great distances away

from those gray rooms & my father’s glass eye still sitting on the table. Away

from the portrait of my mother’s absence hanging there

like the echo of the sea in an alphabet cone, missing the letter M.

I am sorry I could not bear the tangled forest of your sorrows

and stranded you there just outside of the town where the hero had left

to find his father—or perhaps appeared elsewhere as a dark-eyed stranger.

Either way, I cannot remember. That memory too rests on the roadside gravel,

where you sit listening to the moan of traffic heading into now.

I tell you I am sorry, but of course you understand I am lying. I am lying

about the house, I am lying about my parents. I am lying about you.

I could not wait to abandon you. I had long had in mind to reinvent myself,

like a wheel or a mechanical bird or the wind, but all I became was this same self,

staring into the glass, where the future awaits. I suspect the future

is your doppelgänger. No one seems to know or will offer me the truth.

Still, I am not afraid to step beyond the future’s open door. I am certain it is nothing more

than a ticket for a train ride to a country where neither of you can reside. I will go

bearing nothing into that strange land, as is the custom, but what need is there

for this body in a house where only soul bears the invitation to the dance?

Goodbye, Ancient Friends

Sorry to say, but you’ll never get to drink

at the Sunland Tree bar in South Africa: someone had carved out its center, so it seated 15. The ancient baobab died

just a few years back. All over Africa,

the same story is being told: the ancient baobabs

follow Sunland to the grave. On the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean the dragon blood trees,

battered by increasingly strong storms, 

become scraps, eaten by goats.

In the White Mountains of eastern California, a bristlecone pine tree named Methuselah, perhaps

the oldest living tree on the planet, offers no match for two degrees of warming: a reality

coming whether we slow our emissions or not.

In that near future, all the bristlecones will die.

Say goodbye to these ancient friends—and while you’re at it,

see if you can explain

the nothing we have done

for so long

to save them,

to save ourselves.

The Secret of Poetry

Early fall couples with the ash and smoke from the east. High

in the Trinities and Sierras,

the fires erupt, walk across

granite peaks with fire tornadoes for legs.

Here the ash settles on us as if ready

to bury us. A friend sends an email saying

his group of poets has met and discovered the secret of poetry.

I go for a long walk until I leave everything behind, until the big leaf maple leaves

line the path, umbering their reminders of a cold that can’t come

soon enough. Much later at home I reread the email, almost asking. Then I craft my reply. Even if they have discovered this truth, I tell him, I am better off

not knowing. I am better off walking these empty woods, uncovering

the layers of duff with my imagination, feeling

where the mycelium is threading the roots deep into the earth. Let the fires burn

until they burn themselves out. The heart,

after all, bears its secrets too.

And some truths, though they rage white hot,

burn better left unknown.

Invitation

This summer I unravel like an old sweater, dithering, asking questions

that pile up unanswered. Finally, I go sulk in my chair like a boy in a timeout

under the silken light of the cherry tree, missing any peace the afternoon offers. 

Under that emerald canopy, I sit, deaf, mute, wordless. Yet, somehow, I hear it: the faint

whirr and buzz before I see her: this blur of motion streaking across the yard,

disappearing like river water in the leaves above my head. She chirps down

to me, saying something like a long-distance call punctuated by static,

but I listen, nonetheless. Later, while I am grumbling through the dishes,

she returns, perching on the back side of the feeder where she plays

hide and seek, sipping the nectar. Between drinks, she peers out at me,

flashing her iridescent fuchsia cowl and emerald body,

as if in some code I cannot decipher. Then, when certain

I am hooked, she leaps into the air, fast, faster almost than my eye

can follow—only my imagination keeping her pace, yet I am reeled in,

finally opening myself to possibility—and when I do,

I hear it like a struck bell, ringing, echoing: the whole world

whispering, come now: everything, everyone is waiting,

and all the earth sings welcome. 

Author Bio:

David Holper has done a little bit of everything: taxi driver, fisherman, dishwasher, bus driver, soldier, house painter, bike mechanic, bike courier, and teacher. He has published three collections of poetry, Language Lesson: A Linguistic Hejira (Deeper Magic Press, 2023), The Bridge (Sequoia Song Publications) and 64 Questions (March Street Press).  His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, and he has recently won several poetry competitions, in spite of his contention that he never wins anything.  He is an emeritus professor at College of the Redwoods and lives in Eureka, California, where his is the city’s first Poet Laureate.  He thinks Eureka is far enough the madness of civilization that he can still see the stars at night and hear the Canada geese calling.