Read an Excerpt
Manifest West
Serenity and Severity
By Caleb Seeling Western Press Books
Copyright © 2016 Western Press Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-592-5
CHAPTER 1
NATURE'S DUPLICITOUS EMBRACE
ABIGAIL VAN KIRK
To Colorado, and Her Fickle Nature
Keep me shaking,
keep me shivering,
caress me with tendrils
of apathetic cold,
and I will learn to love
your stark unstable seasons.
Frigidity balances fiery hearts
and perhaps that's why I'm drawn to You.
GAIL DENHAM
All Night Vigil ... Waiting for Fire
We held hands, five of us, perched on porch steps.
We watched gray columns of smoke rise above
forests we loved — columns surrounded us on three
sides. We could hear distant flames crackle
as the fire gobbled trees, brush — news reported homes
lost. We held hands, prayed for the brave ones trudging
through that madness with shovels, hoes, and ditch diggers.
I couldn't imagine facing that inferno head on. "God keep them."
"Mom, do I have to leave my rabbits?" Frankie was subdued.
I could only nod. My mind sorted: some family photos
and important papers gathered, but my doll collection, Vic's
artwork left behind. Dog cages stood ready. What did we forget?
Our car was packed, so full we might not all fit. Slowly
the sky blossomed with a sunset glow we'd never forget —
oranges, purples, brilliant red, as if the flames had shot
to the clouds and deliberately colored our skies.
Grandma Bertie brought out sandwiches — thick ham
on her homemade bread, upside down cake with fresh
peaches, hot and steaming, cold sodas. "Don't want
to waste this fresh fruit. Eat! It'll cheer you. After,
let's play that guessing game you kids like."
We sat outside nearly all night, fetching blankets and pillows
against the cool; Rachel and Frankie with heads on our laps;
waiting, hoping, praying. Grandma's rocker kept a steady
rhythm. Sprinklers whipped, wetting the roof; water dripped.
Suddenly, peeking from between two smoke columns, a full
moon appeared. There it was — strange, tinted red, but whole
and beautiful. Like a promise from God that fire might not
leap to consume our world this time. A promise that whatever
happened, there was order in the heavens.
LANCE NIZAMI
Fourteens from Thirty
A textured sea of wrinkled white recedes beneath the aeroplane
Colorado, colored white: the first sub-zero snows of Colorado
And here we cruise at thirty thousand feet
It's warm inside the cabin, and we soon forget the chill dry air outside
The chill dry air extends down to the land
It's Colorado, dry in winter, dry enough to turn men's skin to parchment
Colorado, white-flake-covered autumn Colorado, I can see you
November's barely here and plains and mountains lost their contours to the snow
And deep within the mountain valleys, elk will huddle in the bush, invisible
The streams are frozen over; beavers, fat with bark, sleep silent in their lodges
Colorado, Colorado; chilled and silent, little but a mouse disturbs the quietness
And far below me, flakes begin to fall; they're gently smoothing all to white in Colorado.
REBECCA ARONSON
Los Alamos Fire
The city held its breath.
That is, we in the city held our breath.
The dog-walkers tugged leashes to a slow stroll
while dogs panted for speed.
The neighbors with their cream skin and kewpie eyes
rolled toward one another in the morning light.
The woman with a once-dark braid
gave stern instructions to her damaged son.
We simmered together with sore lungs and waited.
The air became visible
and settled around us seared particles
of forests. As odor contains remnants
of its object, my head aches with crumbled monuments
and spoiled crops, with the charred bodies of deer and wood mice,
radioactive ash the burning ground releases.
No one has said a grave is not a grave
when the buried thing still lives.
No one says it's time to leave.
REBECCA ARONSON
The First Act
There's wildfire
sheering the mountain,
leaving a smear of ash for a coat, cindering
knots of trees and abandoned hides.
What's left is a scorched shell so brittle
seedlings will storm through the surface.
From down here it will seem a riot of green gems
has erupted, a sleek new skin
to mask the burning city
which hovers at the periphery of sleep
coveting breath. We choose our dangers.
This high desert, piñons torchy
among parched understory, electrical sky,
radioactive remnants simmering in red rock,
this gun with its invisible trigger.
REBECCA ARONSON
Home
I wake blind in a striped cell.
I wake from a hot, black sleep
to find the sun, a manhole cover,
stomped down tight. I move through a field
of dry stalks rustling a reedy cantata,
woodwind in hollow sands, the music
of shrew and ragweed.
I came here for a mountain.
I came here for a poet. I came here
for something I imagined about horses.
I fell into a snake hole that held me.
When the rains came I was released
as high tide releases driftwood from the shoreline.
Some come to the desert to plant gardens;
some come to bury the dead
in shallow ditches. Some to disappear,
to turn themselves into century plants,
biding time. I know a woman
who turned tarantula.
Her night face is a painted skull.
She climbs out of her cavern
into the dark cover of cicada song, into cloud cover,
or snow pack, from a hole the wind carved.
My house is the color of dried blood.
When it rains, the walk runs red
and I am always
hoping for rain.
SCOTT T. STARBUCK
Canyon
I wanted to fish here but there were cliffs,
thorns, wasps, underwater drops
where men drowned.
Two- and three-foot leaping chromers,
fresh from the sea,
year after year.
Pine scent filled my lungs,
and blood on rocks
was fishes' and mine.
Petroglyphs and cliff trails showed
men netted here
thousands of years.
I can say more
but to know
you must go
before changing glaciers
melt experiences like these
maybe forever.
RONALD PICKETT
The Desert Night
There, now, the Sun touches the horizon, finally.
But it will be hours until the glazing, searing heat begins to ease.
The heat that is stored in the rocks and the sand and the dust.
And yet, almost at once, the air eases, and quiets, and softens.
It is the time of swift change, and all of the hidden animals and reptiles and
insects know it.
It seems that even the plants, the greasy leafed shrubs, and the aloes, and the
cactus know it too.
There is the sense of a collective sigh, a sigh that seems like a small puff of breeze;
We have survived another day of blazing sun and desiccating wind.
This is our time before the onset of night. It is uniquely serene.
The night brings terrors of its own.
The scorpions and spiders and snakes begin to move about not long after
the dark sets in.
There is a flurry of activity; the scurrying of small feet and claws and scaled
bellies in the sand.
And the flying, stinging insects begin to whirr through the thickening air.
Thrusting, crashing into the limbs and rocks and falling to the ground.
There, they dash for a hiding place to wait out the echoes of their wing sounds.
Before long, the overheated air begins to cool.
It seems to overreach its stable point and grow suddenly chilled, but still very, very dry.
The stars pop out of the rising gloom much clearer and brighter than they are supposed to be.
Punching their way through the inky blackness and shimmering, shimmering.
Even the moonless night is bright enough to barely mark the outlines of the thorn bushes,
And the prickly pears and the organ pipes, the jumping cactus and the stately saguaros.
They say that it only blooms once every hundred years, the century plant.
But I don't believe that. No one has been here a hundred years to find out!
They say that it blooms only at night, the cereus, and I do believe that.
They are carefully illuminated by the soft filtered starlight.
But the soft and extraordinary flowers of the cactus seem out of place.
As if they were attached there by a lost and aimless itinerant florist.
EVAN MORGAN WILLIAMS
Anasazi
Artis had been camping in the mesas before. He knew how it was. You roamed the canyons for the perfect campsite, you scrambled up the red rock, you gathered armloads of juniper sticks from the mesas and brought them down to build a fire. With any luck, your girlfriend had found an Anasazi firepit at the base of the cliffs, and you camped where people had camped for thousands of years. At night, the two of you toasted your happiness with plastic cups of wine. You ate shepherd's pie that you had wrapped in foil and cooked in the coals. As the fire died, you and your girl kept warm by dancing to music on the transistor radio, the Durango station, until the batteries froze. You slept cold, you slept close, and you woke up god-damned happy. Fresh snow on the yucca, silence in the canyon, juniper scent from the ashes of the fire.
Artis said nothing when Bernice complained about the cold, the falling snow, the steepness of the trails. He said nothing when Bernice complained about his setup of gear on the camp table, the stove on the wrong side, the water bottles too far to reach. When Artis prodded the shepherd's pie out of the coals, and the blackened foil hissed with steam that smelled like coriander and sage, and Bernice said, "I'm not eating that," Artis said nothing. Their baby, who had begun the trip happy and cooing, began to cry. Bernice held the baby against her chest, her cloud of breath close and cowering, and said, "How dare you endanger my child with all this cold?"
My child? Their child.
Artis kicked snow into the fire and said, "Let's go home."
But the car would not budge from the heavy snow. Artis would have to walk for help. Twenty miles to the highway. Darkness was coming. The tire tracks were filled in. Did Artis know the way? He thought of the family who, last year, had driven into the mesas too far and had gotten stuck. The dad had gone for help. A helicopter found the mom and kids a few days later, tired, cold, and hungry. The dad never made it.
Artis packed the rucksack for the long walk. He was anxious to chase the last hopeful light of day. Then he remembered something. He said, "Listen, I think there's a cabin down in this canyon. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure."
Bernice said, "And you know this how?"
"I think I remember it from a trip in college."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Bernice paced around the dead campfire. The baby slept against her chest. Snowflakes settled on the baby's wool cap.
"I wasn't sure before, but now I'm sure."
"We're up here freezing to death, and you —" He did not say, "You're supposed to enjoy nature." He did not say, "You're supposed to be god- damned happy."
Artis said this: "Alice and I saw a cabin down there once." He added, "And please quiet down. You'll wake the baby."
"Oh. This is about Alice. That's why you wouldn't tell me. Did you fuck her in that cabin, Artie? Obviously you did. I can't believe you. I don't even want to go to that cabin now."
"I'm climbing down to that cabin."
"Artie, you're going out to the highway. You'll flag down a car."
"I'm going to that cabin. I'm going to radio for help to save my wife and child."
Artis tried to pump his arms and legs. During the day, his gear had become wet from the snow, and now it was frozen stiff. Snow pants. Parka. Boots. Mittens. Cap. A scarf Bernice had knitted for him out of alpaca wool.
Bernice continued to pace around the firepit. "Don't take anything off. That's what happens, so they say. You remember that family? The dad took off his clothes. They found his body by following a trail of discarded clothes."
"I think I'll keep my clothes on."
"You're sure there's a cabin? Don't leave me up here while you look for a cabin you vaguely recall fucking your ex-girlfriend in."
"I'm sure there's a cabin, with a generator and a radio."
"At first you didn't remember, then you weren't sure, and then you were quite sure, but now you're so precisely sure that you even remember a radio?"
"Yes."
"It's all coming back to you. Oh, Artie, yes, yes."
"You know, the Anasazi culture collapsed while they argued over petty stuff. With the last of their warmth, they argued. Whether to rinse out the wine from the plastic cups before they stacked them. Whether to place them here or there. On their camp table. In their hogan."
"Did you fuck her in the night? Did you fuck her in the morning?"
"They must have felt the blood and heat under their skin. Did they even have plastic cups in those days?"
Artis stepped close enough to smell his baby and feel the warmth. The snowflakes were melting on the baby's cap. Artis and Bernice were supposed to be happy. This was the mesas. He knew how it was.
He put on the rucksack. He said, "Don't sleep in the car. It's warmer in the tent. I can't explain why, but it's absolutely true. Nothing but the cold air under the car."
He left Bernice and the baby in the cold and snow, and he picked his steps down the steep wash into the canyon, the red rock, where bare juniper roots were the only handholds. Farther down, the juniper thinned and the rock was bare. In the most distant light, he did see a cabin's tin roof through the cottonwoods. He was sure of it. The cabin. There would be dancing. Blood and heat on his skin. He remembered! Every slippery step took him closer. He was climbing alone, quietly, remembering how it was.
Deeper into the canyon, he found aspen trees clinging to cracks in the rock. A shoulder of rock jutted out, capped with snow. The snow slid away as he stepped on it. Far above, he saw Bernice with the baby, peering over the edge. She didn't seem to see him. Artis climbed down the shoulder of rock, and he couldn't see her anymore. It was quiet. Don't fall, he told himself. He was working up a sweat. He took off the scarf and let it drop. Did Bernice see that?
It was a difficult trail into the canyon, if it qualified as a trail at all, and Artis knew he would never be able to climb back up to the mesa. He had better be right about this cabin. He thought of the old times, dancing with Alice to the transistor radio. That took away the cold and pain, but he forced himself to stop thinking of the old times, because he needed to feel pain to survive. So he thought about Bernice. He thought of his baby. He climbed down through the aspens, tripping on their roots. This wasn't a trail. It was running away.
The pitch of the canyon eased to jumbled rock. Artis climbed over rocks mounded with snow. Sweat and snow soaked his boots. The cold air made his face ache. His hands went numb. His breath froze around his mouth. Tears froze at the corners of his eyes.
Bernice had devised hand signals. Artis was supposed to stop now and then, keeping her posted as he worked down the canyon. Every move, keep her posted.
The hell he would.
Artis and Alice had danced in the cabin. What was the signal for dancing? He was dancing in the snow now. He looked at his footprints all around. He had taken off his coat for dancing. His cap and mittens too. The trail had flattened out. It was the bottom of the canyon, a bed of smooth rocks where the creek had run dry. The cliffs blocked the sun, and it was cold as hell. Snow on the yuccas. Perfect quiet. Grey light. Artis picked up his things and walked down the creek bed easy as a stroll.
Artis found the cabin on a high bank above the creek bed. The cabin was locked, but he found the key hidden under a shingle by the door, exactly where they had found it last time. They had laughed about it then. He laughed about it now.
The cabin consisted of a big room — for dancing, Artis told himself — and a bunkroom in back. For fucking. Enough wood for a few fires. Artis made a fire, but the smoke was slow to draw because of the cold, and the cabin filled with smoke. The stove groaned from the heat, then it began to draw the smoke. Artis went outside to start the generator, but the noise of the thing was too much, and he turned it off. They had turned it off ten years ago for the same reason. Artis and Alice dancing! To come back to the mesas and see the crisp starlight above the black of the canyon walls, and to dance — the memory hurtled back! Artis went inside. Clumsy boots scraped a tired floor.
He lay on a bunk in the back room and shut his eyes. In his mind he heard Bach. The radio had died, country music from Durango, and Alice had begun whistling Bach tunes as Artis held her, and spun her, and held her again. Bach wrote dances. She told him so. Allemande. Gigue. Menuet. Sarabande. He remembered the words. He wanted to tell Bernice. He wanted to say he longed for happiness, that they, too, could be this way. Bernice could come to the cabin. Their baby would stay warm by the fire. The dishes would be neatly put away. He would whistle the music, and they would dance. She would come to him, fly over the snow to him. He would wait for them. He who could as easily fly away.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Manifest West by Caleb Seeling. Copyright © 2016 Western Press Books. Excerpted by permission of Western Press Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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