Head of the Metolius
It gushes from a little cave in Black Butte
but originates in the Cascades,
a hundred miles away.
Cold! Too cold to stand in.
And clear. Right out of the ground.
And these old man poems–
where do they come from,
after so much dark and silence?
They burble out free, easy,
fresh and clear to me.
Sixty-odd years of tears & sweat
roiling in the caverns of my mind,
seeping forgotten
into hidden caves and crevices.
Chilling there. And flowing out
as I tilt and head downhill,
hitting the light, sparkling there.
….
This poem first appeared in The Big Windows Review, and can be found in the book Tramp by Brad Shurmantine (Finishing Line Press) at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/tramp-by-brad-shurmantine/
Brad Shurmantine grew up and attended college in Missouri. After a brief sojourn in Italy he transplanted himself to San Francisco, and has lived in the Bay Area ever since. For thirty-six years he was a high school English teacher and administrator, and labored futilely to reform public education. He is a black belt in Aikido, an ardent backpacker, and a very amateur beekeeper. In retirement he spends his time writing, reading, napping, watching the Warriors, growing expensive vegetables from nursery six-packs, and serving seven chickens, two adorable cats, and two annually collapsing bee hives. His fiction and personal essays have appeared in Mud Season Review, Loch Raven Review, and Catamaran; his poetry in Third Wednesday, Delta Poetry Review, and Blue Lake Review. He hikes in the Sierras, travels abroad when he can, and prefers George Eliot (who he didn’t discover until he was 60) to Charles Dickens, or almost anyone.
The Paddock Review 