"Life And The Fields"

Chico poet George Keithley has released a marvelous volume entitled "Life And The Fields: New And Selected Poems" ($24 in paperback from Turning Point, turningpointbooks.com). Drawing on publications from "The Donner Party" (1972) down to the present day, with nine new poems, Keithley has created a paean to the natural world that also recognizes its fraught relationship with human purposes.

The book begins with "Voices, Stillness": "We listen to/ the rhythmic lapping// of the water. We/ hear its current,// almost the sound of voices singing// on the far shore/ until they drift off...." In the poem only the "skeletal pilings" remain of a pier washed away by a flood; now there is only "deepening stillness." But it is the stillness that draws the poet to a connection with the world that can hardly be articulated. 

In the last poem in the collection, "Enjoy the Land," the poet is alone by Deer Creek, "Water cascading/ over rocks, rushing beneath the aspen/ and oak that shelter the foothills...." And a question comes as the poet struggles with parental regret: "... why does a man seek the solitude/ that troubles him?" He adds, "Always/ we long for those we've loved in the silence/ of what was whispered, wept, or left unsaid."

There are poems here of human love but also folly and miscalculation. "There is a land logic which we lost..." says the tragic voice of George Donner. Later in the collection, at "The Red Bluff Rodeo," "The last man on a saddle bronc/ provokes a rough ride/ to impress the judges./ Jabbing flesh,/ his spurs urge/ the bronc to kick/ three ways at once--// He flies from his mount/ in mid-air, tossed/ free. Falls/ like a sack of meal in the dust./ The throng disapproves and boos./ On hands and knees he crawls away from the hooves."

The rider flies, and falls. Now consider "Geese Going North": "They fight to be free of our earth,/ legs dangling, drawn up in the driving air,/ wings stroking the wind, beating its current beneath the keel/ of the breastbone as they're borne/ toward that loud height/ where we find them this morning in full flight."

Keithley soars.