An Email
Forward: Bill Guggenheim is in the book The Guggenheims: An American Epic. Please visit Bill's site http://after-death.com
John, "Pacific Son" is very creative and very original. It's also very different as in "far out." How does someone sitting in Pennsylvania write something like this about his experiences with a whale in Oregon? Are you into Shamanism? -- that's what your poem suggested to me.
Warmly,
Bill
Pacific Son
The whale's back was dry with sand
It was weird seeing this aquatic mammal
Dead. sad and lonely on the land
The Oregon skies spit a mist not rain
The Pacific tide tried to reach & retrieve
Its' majestic son of the sunset sea.
A strange witness to this all -
Was a crane - slender and tall
Its eyes looked rich as it flew away
Then I was alone - the only one
So I cut the whale's tongue and began to eat
In an effort to preserve its ancient lineage
I ate and prayed to all around me and beyond
Awakening, I felt the Pacific North West
In my blood, soul, and being - and -
I screeched, howled, screamed and sang
With this whale's blood in my veins
Still dripping from my teeth & down my mouth
And when I returned to Eugene
The people all smelled funny to me
- a pungency I never sensed before
And I noticed they all looked differently at me
No longer was I - yet I still knew I was - a stranger
In a strange land seeking something meaningful
John Conte