Visited Christman Preserve last night. Got there at twilight's start with the sun just setting on the horizon. No orange light show just a little pink glow on a puff of a cloud floating opposite the sunset. My purpose was really to time the drive from Smitty's Tavern in Voorheesville to the Preserve (it is 35 min.) because the June 1, 2009 William Weaver Christman Tribute has grown to include a public poetry reading at Smitty's staring at 8 pm. When I got there the open field on the walk in was still brightly lit and I spent some time photographing the volunteer pine trees with an eye for any WILD PASTURE PINE. It was already darkened within the pine forest that leads down to the stream. I traveled upstream along a stairway of waterfalls. I learned recently that the Bozen Kill has other folk names including Drunkard's Creek because of the up & down and side to side water flow a reminder of the drunk's walk home. Wanting to practice my slow down meditation skills I sat down on a rock and stayed to listen the the deepening sounds in fading light. I'll wait till I see the first star I thought but when a bat flew along the watercourse and into the pine forest I decided it was time to walk back to the car. Looking straight up from the gully I was in, I thought I saw one faint star straight up but the when I moved my head I couldn't find any. I had written John Roche one of the poet's coming on June first that I enjoyed walking in the woods without a flashlight. It was not pitch dark but my walk had naturally slowed with my strides feeling smoother and the firm contact with the trail almost a pleasure to my foot. I stopped a few times looking for stars which of course I saw just as I was leaving the wood.The evening star like a crystal jewel unlocked from greed.

I think the dark moonless path
is one with no flashlight
or cell phone but mine
is one I've walked
in sun light enough
for memory to take a few strides
enough unbalanced sense
to control a stumble
the longer you look into the dark
the more light you find to see
never wait to see
3/3/09

Will Christman

William Weaver Christman Tribute

on Monday June 1st at 6:00 PM

Poetry by the Bozen Kill in honor of our own farmer, tree planter, nature lover, poet

Held at the Christman Preserve

Contact: Alan Casline at ACASLINE@AOL.Com if you plan on attending

Bring your own poems and/or your Will Christman favorites. If you are traveling in from out of the area let Alan Casline know and he'll coordinate a place to stay if you need one.

This the third year Rootdrinker is holding a get together along the Bozen Kill at the Christman Preserve. I always worry that too many people will attend the event held at a realtively small preserve that is in a beautiful spot. The first year of our series we had five people and the second it was two so I guess I shouldn't really worry about the crowds. This year it is a Monday but as we are following a tradition started by Will Christman's family and friends in the years after his death, I feel it most appropiate we follow the calendar and days of the week and keep the event as always on June 1st.

HERE IS ONE OF WILL'S EARLY POEMS

Robin Rhymes

I

Steep my rhymes, May, in your bloom:
Drench them in your rich perfume.

Dandelions wink at night;
Orchard trees stand pink and white;
Sweet as sandalwood or myrrh,
Lilacs white and lavender;
And springlong in shine or rain
Boyhood’s song, the robin’s strain.

Let the jocund bobolink
Tinkle on the meadow brink,
And the veery breathe and blow
On his silver piccolo,
Robin with his boxwood flute
Makes the greatest artists mute.

II

Oh, I’ll make a song sometime
Out of bits of robin rhyme
Sung in tip-top elms, the sun
Loves at eve to dwell upon:
“Skylight pales
And twilight veils
All the fragrant dells and dales;
Night is near,
But have no fear,
Perfect love abideth here.
Sleep, my dear,
Love bides here”

III

Now I hear the lyrist sing
Where the lilac censers fling
Incense to the dewy dawn—
Oh the spray he sings upon—
Joy in callow babes and mate
Makes the ruddy breast elate.
Robin of my liacs—who,
Having such a home as you,
Would not be a poet too?
Thus at dawn I hear him sing
Where the lilac censers swing:
“Here’s the hour
Of love again;
Here’s the bower
We wedded in:
Daybreak’s near,
Awake, my dear;
Here, clear, cheer!”


His later work also included blank verse and evolved philosophical to include more of the social critic and preservationist only too aware of human folly. This one examines a natural world that the mystic could see but never join.


SLOW, SHUTTLE-WISE


Slow, shuttle-wise, the green-gold caterpillar
Weaves out and in and so prepares for cleaving
The airy ways, a butterfly or miller,
But he shall not win heaven for all his weaving;
Only a night of fireflies, stars and shadows,
A moon-bright night in June-time’s golden weather,
Or one brief day over the daisy meadows
On wings as buoyant as a flicker’s feather.

No miracle these lives of twofold birth:
The maggot born in dung, awaiting wings,
The locus springing winged from chambered earth,
The dappled dragon fly from sedgy springs;
But man, under a stone and trod in clay,
Relies on God to roll the stone away.


And here is one of my contributions from last year.


Sacred place - - - invited by Christman to dream beside his brook


Open the portal to elsewhere

enchanted substance

birdsongs calling...
red squirrel
runs up tree
disappears wait silently
as if by magic for living home
to accept
your presence
poetry magic words
requiring a singer

chant the oak
shadows color pools
setting sun lights waterfalls
walk in a grove of elder pine

field mouse left piles of broken cones a scattered feast

Will Christman planted these trees

understory clear
slate wall standing

He and his father before him
made the wall
hauling stone out of harrowed ground



Alan Casline June 1, 2008
Bozen Kill Watershed
Christman Preserve

A "Grandfather Carp" "Teaser Videoem"....

Yes! We are currently calling this form a "Videoem" ...partially because we have never heard of anyone calling one that, but mostly because we are smarmy elitist snobs, who have nothing better to do than to make up words, that no one has ever heard of !!!

(oh, and voem was already taken...)

:)

~

This is a "Teaser" for the forthcoming collection of poems by Alan Casline entitled: "Grandfather Carp". It was filmed on location along the Vly Creek in beautiful downtown Voorheesville N.Y. off of Pine Street. (Defiantly "the" Smarmy Section of Town.)

Hope you enjoy it!

Very Smarmally Yours,
bRAINdrop bOOkbENDER the III

MARCH 2009 * BIG POWWOW * ROOTDRINKER NUMBER 17

Available at cost of $10 plus $2 Shipping and Handling
50 pages * small press publication *
hand bound and trimmed as perfect bound 8 x 5 inch book

Check or money order to: Rootdrinker Institute
P.O. Box 522
Delmar, NY 12054


Alan Casline and Stephen Lewandowski are holding a big powwow for

Rootdrinker Magazine #17. Beginning in 1975 in Canton, New York,

Alan Casline’s Rootdrinker is a long standing magazine of watershed

poetics, folklife, natural history, art, and photography. The magazine’s

legendary tradition is continued with the 2009 publication of BIG

POWWOW. Co-edited by environmental leader and poet Stephen

Lewandowski, the issue draws from work by writers and poets from

throughout the Northeast, many of them early supporters of bio-regional

politics and local culture. The issue presents work concerned with myth

and story, creation of family myth, myth of a shared community, nation

and world.Poems wise in their craft by poets who question both the

representations of native culture and that of topical reality. BIG

POWWOW finds beauty in native sensibilities and rural life.

BIG POWWOW finds wonder in curiosity about animal and human

society and succeeds in celebrating the moment using a confluence of

ideas and visions to praise the natural world.

I see this as a “pebble in the pond” style publication. One small

wave will generate a larger wave. Contributors each given an

opportunity to speak and others the opportunity to hear.
— Alan Casline

Here’s what interests me and might expand on the Powwow
Theme: HOW do we become the equivalents of, if not the natives
of this place. So it’s Powwow Now/How.

— Stephen Lewandowski

The list of materials found in BIG POWWOW includes:

Billy Finnegan

[Waiting for the Train in Figueres]

Mark O'Brien

What if "The Beave" were an Ulster-Scot?

Albert Glover

Basics
Mistaken Identity

Alan Casline Not What You Know...
Briefing for the Poem Not What You Know...
Around a Public House Table

Dennis Sullivan

Civil Seer

Walt Franklin

The Stones Deliver a Sermon on the Duty of Staying Home
Headwaters Mountain, 1985

Alifar Skebe

Mockingbird Song

Joseph Bruchac

Between Two Thunders
On Padre Island, Texas

Helen Ruggieri

Rock City Hill Exercises

Gary Lawless

Two for the Po
I still talk to the animals

Stephen Lewandowski

Early Limnology
Not Alone

John Roche

Joe the Poet
To the Red Fox

Barbara Hatch Vink

How Magnolias Smell

Dale Hobson

Half-life

Karin Spitfire

Be Belfastian: A Triptych

Michael Czarnecki

Rediscovery


Contact information for Co-editors:

Stephen Lewandowski e-mail: stachu 14512@yahoo.com
Alan Casline e-mail: acasline@aol.com

Mailing: Rootdrinker Institute
P.O. Box 522
Delmar, NY 1205

Normanskill at Vale of Tawasentha

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864)

When I came across a reference to Longfellow mentioning Tawasentha in The Song of Hiawatha, I went to the text to find it. The passage is there and it is printed below. By the pleasant water-courses, dwelt the singer Nawadaha. Why Longfellow would start the story of Hiawatha with our local stream escaped me? Until I read in Arthur B. Gregg’s history Old Hellebergh the conviction Longfellow was placing a tribute to Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who perhaps is represented as the singer in the poem. Schoolcraft is credited by Longfellow with saving the native lore he used in his poem. Schoolcraft is a local Normanskill watershed poet, born in Guilderland, educated at Union College, wrote lots poems and impressive works which got his papers to the Library of Congress. Quite a story, most of his life was lived out of this area but he always kept his ties and a home here.


In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing pine trees,
Green in Summer, White in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley.


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From Introduction to The Song of Hiawatha

A native name given to the Normans Kill is Tawasentha.

ROOTDRINKER INSTITUTE STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Rootdrinker Institute encourages artists, musicians, writers, and crafters to use local images, lore, and legends.

Rootdrinker promotes rediscovery of the inspirations and creative visions of earlier artists and writers of each unique watershed.

Rootdrinker advocates increased interest in nature, local history, and local traditions. Rootdrinker continues to publish small press books that reflect these purposes.

At the center of Rootdrinker Institute’s philosophy is the vision of people defining the territory they call their own in terms of their local watershed. This focus allows the natural rather than the political to inform their education. Such an orientation stimulates a sense of place, and the growth of a unique to its area cultural life. To promote this viewpoint, and to further its encouragement of the artistic community, Rootdrinker Institute sponsors publications, readings, concerts, conferences, seminars, and social gatherings.

On hiking trails, along streams, in libraries, through prose and poetry, the goal of preserving and improving the land and keeping alive the heritage of its people by joining with friends and neighbors is inherent to all of Rootdrinker Institute’s work