For Pamela

on All Hallow's Eve for Pamela Jane Truzinski 7/10/1954 to 8/15/2001 ...midwife to the stars Listening... She doesn't want to hear people talking anymore always babbling on about themselves...She just wants to stop...listen I know you won't believe any of this... There's a stream called Fishhawk that runs by her cottage in the woods near a town christened Jewell near another named Mist And each day the log trucks go speeding by on the road no wider than her dog's tail curled in the roadside...weeds a victim of good forest management Some of the logs so big the trucks can only carry one dead dog at a time speeding around the bends faster than you or I would ever dare The deforestation drivers are paid by the load so they can't be bothered with anyone's pet crossing their road And I wonder if she's ever been herself since they turned the lot next door into a gravel pit and then her cat Odie who was older than anyone can remember any cat had a right to be died and something started to grow inside her not at all like her many gardens have names and personalities bolder than anything I could write Black seeds planted one by one some of us so sensitive we can't let go especially when the murder by numbers game is rumbling by her riverside cottage Each day she goes out into the world and helps new mothers give birth at home the only place where a child should ever be brought into this world she declared and I listened and came to believe her story says taking birth and death out of the home and placing these portals where we must enter and leave inside the corporate death machine fathered the scourge upon the land devouring every tree dog cat midwife river poem and turning all to profit or dust beneath its grinding wheels "Got to get another load to the mill before sunset 13 days in a row" So he can make payment on the F-350 tank he needs to feel in control of life and she has lived outside that noise for so long that if you asked the river it could speak her syllables three for the first and last on a sultry day in July when she was born I knew her when she was sapling as I was too and her curves were softer more fragrant than overripe raspberries sitting in the sun all day brushing against your idiot's cheek We played crayola with paper dragonfly wings sketching future dreams all night long that were robbed and sold to Japan for a hundred dollars a board foot And people say fucking on film is obscene compared to a freighter steaming across the Pacific with her backyard forest that defended Deer Coyote Elk Owl wander out in the road after midnight staring into an empty future is where I see myself when I think of her house sitting hollow and who will tend the gardens birth the children teach us how to use the herbs to fight the rage she must feel turned inward festering with grief too much for someone softer inside than a newborn's eyelid opening on this vista the first time and not forced to receive hospital-mandated chemical eyedrops This tumorous shadow lives inside her belly while she has carried off so many disappointments like the river that washes through her and cleanses us so we can go on down that road to Japan There's nothing fair in her guarding the last bastion between Jewell and profits piling up in all the hospital...C-sections never performed because she patiently waited till the woman could give birth to a new way to express this lifeforce unrelenting I swell up with words and watch my belly grow in sympathy for her affliction is more than we forgot it's we don't listen chattering away about ourselves She just wants everyone to stop and consider The rights of the accused are limited and yet when anyone points a finger they are labeled instantly as the enemy spoiling the party like a manic depressive mother who shows up off her meds "Lock her up" I want her to come all the way back Protect me comfort me encourage me but I didn't listen either and my rights are limited to this anger outrage fear longing for her truth could fit on a toothpick and taste like a million ampules of royal jelly I pour into her belly by the river in her gardens' barefoot burst of summer when life is everywhere brighter later than we ever guessed it would be a crime for one more log truck to ever pass by her house should she slip away down the river forking into the Nehalem winds down to the sea spilling out there by a little town called Wheeler where we once stayed still growing green dumb invincible towards a careless sky Would you believe I wouldn't be here writing this had she not stopped to listen... Thanks to poet34 ***** Sitting in the forest of a winter's night 10.Dec.2003 22:20 Bruce in Northern Minnesota I lived and traveled with Pamela many moons ago. Leaving Minnesota in a '67 deluxe VW bus (y'know the one with the little windows and a huge sunroof) we traveled across the northern tier of the states...this was 1975. We were full of wonderment and life. The woods welcomed us wherever we stopped and camped. People couldn't help but be drawn to Pamela. We lived in Grants Pass for a year while I went to school and she continued in wonderment...no matter what it was she did. She taught me much about life. I'd be a much sadder, lesser person without what I learned from her. She gave, she shared. She loved. She laughed...most of all she laughed. (though she could cry, and sing, and work, and dance, and garden...). We traveled more. We learned more. We went back to MN and shared a farm with a group of other wonderful folks...firing pottery in a wood-burning kiln, learning about each other and ourselves. She is here...she is there...I saw her in the aurora the other night. She dances in my campfires. She sings with the voices of the barred owls. I see her in the eyes of the deer. I miss her sense of wonderment. I spoke with her the night before she passed. She said that she always knew that death would come someday...just not so soon. Another lesson for all of us. Live to the fullest and speak out against the madness. And don't let those bastards get you down, cuz they're all full of beans anyway. May you all experience the beauty of a love like Pamela in your lives. It's out there...it's in there.