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A magazine of sound and fury
Dana Wilde
The Mind Errant
All writings on this website Copyright 2008-2009 by Dana Wilde and Jack Wilde. Images
Copyright Dana Wilde unless otherwise attributed. You may use what you find here for
any noncommercial purpose as long as you give full credit to the authors, photographers
and the website. For any purpose which involves the exchange of money, including postings
to websites which host any kind of financial transactions, please contact us.

Amateur Naturalist
Short forays into nature

Fires of the Sun
Longer forays into outer space

Critica
Forays in Reading

Fictions

Nature Notes
by Jack Wilde
"In the dreaming man's dream, the
dreamed man awoke."
-Jorge Luis Borges


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Other writings in other places:
China Daze:
American life there, 2000-2002
How Ancient China Came to America: The I Ching as Bible
An Old-Fashioned American Revival: Henry Miller, the Beats, Philip
K. Dick and M.C. Dalley
Ride the Highway West, Baby: The Doors and the latte literati
Nine Qazals of Mazun: Translations of a Sufi poet

Maine: An Essay (1990)
Observations on the difficulties of saying anything meaningful
about observations on the difficulties of living here.

Contraband: A Recollection (1996)
Portland had a poetry and arts scene in the 1970s, before the fall.

Awakening: Rimbaud (long ago now)
Of adolescence and poetry.

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Turning the Wheel
by Bruce Holsapple

The weather shifts, fog, mud
lots of rabbits about, need to watch
in the early dark, they scootch beside the road
tend to dart out, make the stupidest moves
twist, maneuver, melt, avoiding a straight path
a coyote might get fooled but trucks
don't predict-you can't
turn the wheel fast enough,
so that the road's spotted by carcasses-

recall small deer, mornings
in West Texas, those big trucks,
the headlights at night, plowing thru them
you can't slow fast enough
vultures, pink ugly heads, gathered
awkward flapping off
next morning
just as the day heats

& one deer tangled in a barbed fence
between Sanderson & Marathon
sensed it watch as I drove past
otherwise I'd never have noticed-
tan haired in the sand & brown bushes
Got out, looked over & the herd
20 or so, were looking back at us
managed to get the leg free & she hopped off
Hot, Jesus, those border towns
me with no air conditioning
driving around like
in an tin oven

lightning flash, hail, wind, fog
meanwhile in Iraq, the radio says
Weapons of Mass Destruction
but that's already taken place
in fact a done deal
A cow sees grass
A thief, opportunities


Vox Audio/udio-poetry/
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Responsibility & the News
If you leave the reporting of the news to the internet
people, you will never have any accurate idea of what is
actually happening.
Beyond the Bounds of Eye and Ear
Listening for spirits.

Deviant theory
Contrary to popular belief, money does not make the world go
round.

A Talk with a Monk
West meets East.
October

In October comes a quality of light here that is practically
supernatural. The sun has bent down toward the southern horizon
since June so it's throwing rays through the air at the same angle as
in late February. But fall is a convergence of seasons, and winter is a
months-long end, all bare trees and snow. October light is different.
October sunlight filters through leaves and crystal-clear air. In any
given field there's a birch, maple or sumac that practically refracts
light, like a tree hologram, or like a live crystal with facets bending
yellow, orange and red radiances inside the tree and over every
ghostly remnant of milkweed, grass and goldenrod.
Everything owes itself to the air in October and November. Not
only conditions of light, but squalling blue jays and hop-flocking
juncos, and Canada geese. Where the dignity and nobility of the
great geese originate, I don't know. But when you hear 20 or 30
voices honking and cheering overhead, and see the streaming
chevron headed south in slow, powerful wingbeats, then - at least
to me - a chill comes made partly of cool air and partly of cool grace.
They summer from here north, sometimes to the edge of topmost
Canada, where they mate for life and nest on the ground, often
islands, and on muskrat and beaver domes. Their little families stay
together for the year, until the next brood. They migrate south as
far as 600 miles and the Caribbean and tend to make the same rest
stops. In October they're flapping and racing on ahead of the snow
and cold, which is already settling over Canada and not long for
Maine. As long as there's brown meadow grass or stubble fields for
forage, they stay. I've seen flocks resting in desolated corn fields in
December before the snow and wind bullied them out and they
headed off south. They've got the wings to go.
The geese's wings in autumn. The waning sunlight stuns them, or
rather, the light angling in from southwest and bouncing off their
wings, almost like the echo of a voice, stuns who sees it. In my
memory, which is increasingly cluttered by autumn after autumn,
is a moment of crystal clarity in southern England. It was October
1980, I was hitchhiking out of Poole in Dorset on a road beside a
moorland field. The grass and heather were brown up the slopes;
there were brittle fallen leaves everywhere, just like here but duller.
There was no breath of wind and not a sound; the landscape itself
was listening. Suddenly a V of geese rose out of the grass. They
ascended in perfect silent unison with the silkiness of motion you
imagine wraiths have. They rose and rose and then on some
unknown cue started honking. I watched them out of sight over the
hills.
Where they were going I didn't know. They were pretty surely
Canada geese, already at the southmost limit of their British range.
They were brought from North America to Britain in the 17th
century for sport and decoration and afterward invented their own
migration routes. It didn't matter that their destination was
unknown. In their ascent and the low morning light the autumns of
England and New England converged, at least in my apprehension,
the way certain dreams mean something impossible to state or
even think.
In October comes a certain slant of light and perspective that seems
to rise up out of some unseen spot of time and gather itself, and
head south.

Books,
bits
and
pieces
Recollections and other perceptions
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WHILE HULLS FLOAT TO THE TOP OF THE OAT WATER
by Patricia Ranzoni

Where did they go, these top sheets from Wolf Moon’s calendar gift,
Clif’s snaps boxed in a Maine Seasons deck to prop for us to check
by months, weeks, days? No sooner February’s iceplates crashing
and crushing under the pilings when March’s lobster boats part
the thinning crust at their moorings, April’s green waiting to push
through last year’s field thatch for thirty days ‘til taking its place
in the back of another year. But thirty days are nothing next to
the way the likes of young great grandfather Snowman went to sea
and, gone long enough, breakfast could be a stale biscuit broken
into coffee, long enough for spoons of maggots, weevils and scum
to rise into a ho-hum skim.

I sketch this year’s first bantam egg with exclamations in the space
at January’s end, signaling the return of enough light for layers,
waving so long to the ice fishing shack Cousin Frank could’ve towed
out onto the blue snow, its elbowed stovepipe waving back. The way
our men work frozen-over fishpastures between fried bread and beans.

Another chance to begin again. Clear the table still strewn
with unfinished Christmas makings so late they could be Valentines.
Can’t keep up, even with an extra December bridging that black
and white husky panting pulse onto that black and white Winthrop lake
over near Laura with her prized kitchen utensils, wooden handles
painted green, worn. And Claire gazing as if out the window
in her trailer park, the consoling memory of a strong, pitch-smelling
hand resting on her knee.

Only ten more serene scenes before it’s too late for another year.
Couldn’t we just confess we’ve blown it? Another Christmas missed
but still time to prove our love?
Jupiter & its moons, orbiting 9-9-09.