Paul Willis: California Poets Part 11, Five Poems

Paul Willis

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Paul Willis

Five Poems

Forever Yours

                                                                        (Fagus grandifolia)

KAREN + KIRK, MARK + JULIE,

carved into the smooth, gray bark

of this budding beech, where are you now?

Long added to yet other names,

I would imagine.  And do your current

partners mind that these old loves

course daily in the xylem and phloem

of a tree in the college nature preserve?

XYLEM + PHLOEM.  Now there's a pair.

Xylem, such a manly type. And Phloem,

flowing with feminine graces.

No doubt they wish to memorialize

their eternal affection on the hem

of the Statue of Liberty, the breathless lips

of Mt. Rushmore, the summit of Whitney,

the girders of the Golden Gate.

But when Xylem makes the transition

from angiosperm to gymnosperm,

and Phloem deserts him or her

for the pleasures of non-vascular mosses,

they too will be left with the problem

of their erotic histories, forever proclaimed

in jubilant script, hearts and all,

in the most treasured and public of places.

So KAREN + MARK, KIRK + JULIE

(or, who knows?—JULIE + KAREN,

MARK + KIRK), whatever your current

arrangement may be, perhaps it is best

to embrace the past and face the fact

that all of us are historically polyamorous.

Maybe the names do not matter so much as

that lonely plus, the very last symbol to fade.

                                      —Calvin Ecosystem Preserve

Mango

Halfway up Mt. Silliman, when we finally left

November shade and sat down on a polished step,

I celebrated by biting off a hefty chunk

of thick, dried mango from my pack.

Almost 70, here I was, not vegetating

in front of the fire at our hotel,

but out the wooden door at dawn

and pausing now in autumn sun

atop a long, smooth granite slab

enroute to a Sierra summit.

Surely I deserved as much dried mango

as my mouth could handle.

But I bit too hard, and my right front tooth—

a recent crown—began to wobble perilously.

And though we made it to the top,

where I chewed my lunch with greater caution,

and though my dentist later said that he'd seen worse,

let it wobble, uneasy lies that crown

on my receding gums, reminding me

that my firm stance upon that shining mountain peak

and peaks to come might still be shaken.

If Tennyson's Ulysses felt a dental tremor

such as mine, I daresay he would not have gathered

his old mariners again and told them

that though much is taken, much abides.

And yet—that day, that sun, that autumn bowl

of endless granite.  I taste it still, fruit

of my age, broken for me and unforbidden.

                                            —Sequoia National Park

Palm

That long and skinny trunk of mine

can bend with the fiercest of storms,

but that doesn't take muscle.

Pliable, that's me, unable to hold

my own.  Not to mention these pock

marks up and down my crusty sides,

pits of acne tatted in place

by acorn woodpeckers.

And my frondy top-knot—

always a bad hair day, a real rat's nest. 

People seem to like me, though. 

Compared to my wobble and mess,

they feel strong, and they feel pretty.

So I say to myself, Just relax. 

Because when's the last time

you saw a coast live oak on a post card?

Old

Hand of mine, why so mottled?

*

Split-log bench, the only ones curling

on you now are little leaves of spent live oak.

*

Wisteria, you grip the railing

of the staircase like a senior citizen,

struggling to climb on brittle vines.

*

Eucalyptus, how did you grow

to be so massive and so smooth? 

And why two of you, joined at the roots

but taking your own paths to sky?

*

Iron wheel of an absent carriage,

long spokes leaning against this snag,

your rolling days are sunk

in years of leaves and twigs,

of half-shelled acorns on the ground.

Mid-September, Forks of the Kern

Almost dawn, Orion lying on his side,

as am I, sand gritting my sleeping bag

like cosmic dust of the Milky Way.

Both wrists itching with poison oak,

right knee sore from yesterday's hike.

Packers have left stone tables and ovens

all along the riverside, some of the work

a century old, long before the Wilderness Act.

For this is still wilderness, just as the glossy

rattlesnake above our camp reminded me.

Black oak, gray pine, ponderosa, incense cedar,

alder and cottonwood clothe the canyon,

echoing the rush of river, but the slopes above

are bare and burnt, and resound with the screams

of fighter jets on their astounding runs.

Downstream, the granite outline of the Needles,

smooth and silky.  Last month an old friend,

a has-been climber just like me, left a stretcher

with medical gear in a gap between two pinnacles,

just in case someone needs them.  And they will.

                                                                        —Golden Trout Wilderness

Author Bio:

Paul Willis has published eight full collections and six chapbooks of poetry, among the most recent of which are Somewhere to Follow (Slant Books, 2021) and Orvieto (Solum Literary Press, 2025).  Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, Slant, and Southern Poetry Review, and have been selected for publication by Jane Hirshfield, Garrison Keillor, and Adrienne Rich.  He is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California.