Paul Willis

Bio: Paul Willis has published six collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2018) and Little Rhymes for Lowly Plants (White Violet Press, 2019). He is also the author of an eco-fantasy novel, The Alpine Tales (WordFarm, 2010); a YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green (Slant, 2020); and the essay collections Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (WordFarm, 2005) and To Build a Trail (WordFarm, 2018). He is a professor of English at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and hosts an annual reading in Los Padres National Forest to honor the life and work of the late poet William Stafford. www.pauljwillis.com

Unanswered

A stack of letters on my desk waits for reply—not urgently, for those who wrote knew several days would pass before I read their thoughts, and I in turncan take my time in contemplating what to say. Meanwhile, the inbox on my screen beckons and beckons, crooking its finger like a hooker on Haley Street,and I obey as if in a trance. The pile of mail on my desk cantilevers in crazy ways, growing oldand anonymous—but patient—yes, patient as a tortoise crossing desert sandwhen row on row of solar panels, dark and flashing, settle upon its ancient home.

October Shift

(Erigonum nudum) Wild buckwheat, brittle nowon granite ledges, youare about to go under again.
Is it lonely there, separated from the sun?Or is it merely one short sleep,tucked inside those rumpling quilts?
The foxtail pine stand up to ice-borne scrutiny for months on end, losing their checkered bark to the winds.
The cones and needles sayto each other, Hold on.
And the yellowing snags—they hold on anyway,raising their gnarled fists to the sky.
But you, buckwheat,you have it easy. Just shoulderthe flakes as they come.And lie down.
 —Sequoia National Park

Sheep Camp Lake

I found you by dead reckoning from over the ridge, a long green pool between the heather.
Above, a swath of runneled snow comes swirling off a granite face and into your waters, finale of an Olympic run.
In the distance, pinnacles tip overhanging blocks in cloud, daring me to take my stand and upset the balance of nature.
But I would rather sit right here on this warm slab, sloping into your chartreuse shallows.
Underneath, the ghost logs angle peacefully, old thoughts of mine beneath the surface.
 —Kings Canyon National Park

Tomahawk Lake

Bilberry bleeds the granite, and amber grasses tuft themselves for a fallow taste of October sun.
The water hands its jewels to the breeze as if the ice will never come.
We are the ones, stepping softly, resting our heels in not quite the same lake,
who bring the ache, who sing an elegy for the living.
 —John Muir Wilderness

Oak Camp

The live oak shelters a fire ring, a rusty grill. There is a bleached log to sit on, worn smooth.Out of the shade, manzanita tangles the breeze. And down in a gulley of shattered stone, a thin stream apologizes, fading already in May.Two thousand feet up the mountainside,it comes from a spring under a boulderbig as a house. You could live in either place—here by the tree or there by the house—but you'd have to pick your seasons right.The snow is deep up high in winter,and, down here, summer will seethe stream run dry. So you'd probablygo back and forth, the way we do.The way we almost always do.
 —Los Padres National Forest

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