Saturday, June 15, 2013

Big, green, iridescent forests speak to me in Oregon, on the road to Reed


Big, green, iridescent forests
speak to me in Oregon, ~
and blue skies and gray clouds
color everything,
with wild, different light.

Timbering industry lumbers on,
as Old Growth forests diminish,
as I drive north to Stumptown,
not yet in a solar car,
to Reed's ReedFayre,
a reunion in Portland,
which is growing big
with people.

Reed's canyon -
that green water-valley in its middle, full of life,
this campus's natural focus these days, -
old friends,
a gentler, Oregon ethos,
than many, in modernity,
are welcomingly familiar,
and I speak quietly here to folks
of World University and School,
influenced as it is,
in its knowledge generation focus, especially,
by Reed's
intellectual culture.

I wander down
on a tour,
into the depths of its library,
to the calligraphic Lloyd Reynolds' collection,
and learn of a book,
full of Beat poets and writing-art,
"LJR: Stained the Water Clear a Festschrift for Lloyd J Reynolds,"
a long time Reed professor,
whom didn't teach Steve Jobs calligraphy -
that was Father Palladino -
before Jobs dropped out,
turned on,
moved back to the Bay,
to found Apple with Woz,
in a garage.
A Lloyd Reynolds' weathergram,
10 words or less calligraphed, about nature,
on paper,
preferably cut from an old, brown bag,
dangles from a tree,
like a treat,
outside the library,
which didn't say,

'Big, green, iridescent forests 
speak to me in Oregon,'

but was instead writ with,  ~

"The new buds open from within,
are lit from behind"







...

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