This page contains a selection of poems from THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS. THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS is scheduled to be published in book form by Solo Publications in 2003.THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS is a collection of poems and photographs. The collection centers on Mt. Tamalpais in Central California. Situated in the Coast Range of California, Mt. Tamalpais rises 2,571 feet above sea level north west of San Francisco Bay. It is the most prominent natural landmark in the vicinity of San Francisco.
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All text and photographic images are copyrighted by Scott Galloway © 1996. All rights are reserved. No poem or section of a poem, and no photographic image or portion of a photographic image may be copied, printed, distributed or used for any commercial, business or other purpose, or for the purpose of distribution electronically or in any other form without the express written permission of the author.
Fat bodies
squandering sun,
hold fast
against the tight
gray skin of granite rock.
Their slit eyes
have watched
the generations.
Deer in the meadow
grazing alone,
brought down by swift arrow,
gutted out with knife of bone.
Their hidden ears
have heard the rifle crack
and the crushing
of meadow grass
beneath the rubber soles
of high topped boots.
Now in the sun
there is no violence.
The deer graze
calmly again
oblivious to the hikers
that pass through the meadow.
this place,
this meadow,
this mountain is now
protected
for all time
that can be planned by man.
But the lizards
Have time.
They store the sun's energy
and feed on its power.
As long as the sun shines
they will be waiting
through human generations.
One or more generation
of man, more or less
Is just a blink
of an eye
On a hot summer day.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
The ocean is never so flat
as it seems from the summit
of Bolinas Ridge.
It is a Japanese garden
in blue.
The submerged rock of the Farallons
immense, mostly hidden
penetrates with its peak only
stark white in the sun,
Cutting through the fabric
of the sea,
raked by the wind
smooth like the raked sand
around a stone
in a Japanese garden.
Perhaps that is the message
those Japanese masters
sought to give us,
message of the power of stone,
flatness of the sea,
the power of the vertical,
the power of the horizontal sea
stretched tight against the sky,
the power of the simplicity of form,
that our eyes may see such,
that our hearts may live
through this vision.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
The cool sun
strained through
A thin film of fog
lifting off the forest
of fir and madrone
glimmers in the damp gravel
of the stream bed.
The air is perfectly still.
You can hear
Your heart beat
the only cadence to this day.
It is an easy sloping walk back
to Rock Springs.
There is no danger here,
no risk.
We have only to walk.
Below our feet
We hear a tiny scraping sound.
A small beetle
struggles with a green prize
over the pebbles of the gravel bed.
To him, these pebbles
are boulders
to be scaled,
cliffs to rappel
with the hinged ropes
of his rear legs.
To cross this stream bed
he must endure
a private wilderness
Almost invisible at our scale.
Wilderness is with us always
In direct perception
or in projection.
We choose our frame of reference
and we choose our path.
There are boulders
and cliffs to scale
in our world also.
We hear a noise,
faint at first,
Then a rushing of air.
High in the madrone canopy
above us
The green boughs sway
and branches sag
As squirrels chase one another
along their red barked pathway
leaping chasms of space
in a game played
in the limbs of their
living wilderness.
We look at our hands.
They are wide and strong.
We can feel the pull
of the smooth red branches
against our fingers.
There in the trees,
the path to wilderness.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
You tell me to be careful
when I walk.
It is a safe place
grown dangerous
in the night.
A smooth black asphalt path
Gaining heat in the sunlight
all day,
now glows back
infra-red light,
heat, invisible in the night.
Rattle snakes
seeking warmth
come here to sun themselves in reflected heat
long after the sun
has passed on
into the Pacific.
I hear nothing,
see nothing,
as I walk eastward on the path
from the East Peak parking area
were we left the truck
idling,
steam hissing in the radiator
like snake breath.
Hollow,
self contained
sucking heat
off the engine,
burning on suns
set a million years.
There are no snakes in this night.
Only the breath
of a warm wind
blowing up the ridge
from Mill Valley,
rushing like bees
at the ears.
The honey hot wind
of the Sacramento
blowing back the fog tonight
revealing what there is
of a sky
on this side of the mountain.
As I walk out the asphalt path,
stepping quietly,
listening
for more rattling
than the sound of the wind,
I see
The black skin of the night Earth
open,
and the hot coals of urban fires
erupt in the wound,
burning light upward.
This too is the light energy
stored in the bark of trees,
warmth of stone
pressed from the black heart
of life,
the light firing pistons in the truck
down in the parking lot.
This wound burns deep
into the surface of the land.
The fires of a million homes
in the cities of Oakland,
Berkeley,
San Lorenzo and Hayward,
Pinole
and Richmond,
San Mateo and San Francisco,
and in the cusped moon
at the south end of the bay,
San Jose.
Mill Valley,
San Raphael,
Tiburon
hug the shoreline
with their fire.
This wound is the light
of the night.
There are no stars.
The light of the forests
burning slowly
over the years,
the hills stripped
to build the hearth
for these fires.
It is the light of the forests
burning slowly over the centuries
since man came to this place.
The heart of stone ripped from the quarries,
soot of coal fire
packed chimneys.
Creosote sealed chimneys
once belched fire
now glow softly
the cold blue light of florescence,
the amber
of mercury vapor,
the blue of neon
burning icy fires in the night.
This is the only light below.
One black ridge
like spine of sleeping black dragon
lies between us
and the lights of the bay.
It is silent,
sleeping with a night light on.
Child dragon
of the heart of Earth,
sleeping head buried
Against this mother dragon mountain
waiting for the silence
of night again
to roam the world,
waiting for the rattling of serpents again
to wake its night drinking eyes.
Now it sleeps,
its lighted side
invisible ,
sleeping in a world
half light
half in darkness.
It is the way of this mountain,
to have its western slope
ragged in the night sea wind
Bathed in the blue star light
of hot distant flames,
the ocean roar
far off, below,
sea life sparkling
At the surface of the waves,
the silent trees
standing darkly
Against a darker sea.
To have its eastern slope
facing always
the fires of man
upon the black night skin of Earth.
To have between the leaves
and the tight needles
of fir and redwood
in its canyons
the red night eyes of fire
always lurking,
banishing the stars,
banishing the night.
The stars are gone now.
In this eastern sky.
There is only the light
of the urban fire
to warm us,
this fire grown sterile
and cold
with electricity.
This fire of a million little stars
glowing on the hearths of man,
woven into a fabric,
a burning web of gauze
to cloak the wound,
burning its captured light outward.
You join me
at the overlook
As I stare down
at the cities of man.
I tell you to be careful
when you walk there tomorrow.
It was once a safe place,
a hearth for man's fire
out of control,
only this
grown dangerous in the night.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
We were not made alive
so that we could exploit.
We were given life
as a thread
in the harmonious tapestry of life.
Like a thread pulled out,
we with our technology
have begun to unravel
the tapestry.
First man,
by exploiting the soil
created iron and steel,
and with these metals
cut and snipped at the edge
of the tapestry
until all of the threads began
to loosen.
But the wind of time
blows on,
and the tapestry
will shred to pieces.
We can see it now.
The species that have perished,
the rich lands
disappearing beneath city streets,
the sky darkening with soot
and the sky itself burning through
holes in the ozone.
We are loose
with our scissors
and our knives
cutting at the tapestry
of life.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
The dry oat stem
snapped
and bent low
spent of pointed seed
brittle white
in August sun
against a dry sky
of pale blue
cloudless infinity,
both in focus.
The fine grained
branch of Earth,
the faceless
edge
of forever.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
Opened up and poured out.
The sky.
All of it.
Pearl studs
of mist
on broad
tan oak leaf
shattered by thunder,
of rain
in broad curtains
moving in
from the sea
against the mountain.
Then,
silence.
And the high
clouds
gray underside
shining.
Faint light
of the sun
lost
somewhere far above
towering
invisible
anvils
of thunder.
And the ripping
of thunder again
and the rain
shouting in the silence.
Growth
to tender heads
of moss
clinging tight
to wet black
bark.
Sheets of water
streaming down,
a waterfall
from each
downward
turned
tendril
of
rain
soaked moss.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
There was the sun,
the yellow late afternoon
dropping into the haze
of forest fire sun,
and the taste of smoke.
There were the shoulders
of mountains unseen
and the growing shade
of the forest
creeping up the granite
slabs of those faces.
There was the stream,
deep and green
with a skin of white leaves
of oak and dogwood,
not moving at all.
There was the trout
deep within that stream
inhaling water
with slowly opening
and closing gills,
reflecting the inverted color
of the sky
on its rainbow sides.
There were the dreams
of that trout,
dreams of telephone poles
Planted hard in fields of oat
between sweeping arcs
of wire
carrying clicking messages
of speech
from Montana to San Francisco
across the San Joaquin.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
On unfurled wings
it glides
in the faint star light
to the outstretched limb
of Douglas Fir
standing darkly
at the edge of the meadow.
Landing softly
on feathered talons,
the serrated edges
of its wings cut the air
like knives,
without a whisper.
The owl is well suited
for hunting
in the heart of night.
Our day eyes
are blind
to the dim glow
of meadow grass
under star light.
We are blind to the movements
of the small gray forms
in the night
that are the owl's prey.
We could hang all night
from the hunter's branch
and see
nothing
but the pin points
of distant star light
and the silhouetted ridges
falling off toward the sea,
ridge upon ridge.
We have banished night
with the bright lights
of our cities,
and so we have forgotten
the mysteries night holds.
Our night activities
fueled by burning petroleum
converted to electrons
flowing through copper
are devoted to summarizing the day,
preparing for the next.
We have lost the solace of night
and its mysteries,
the moon pulling at our souls
and infinity in the stars.
Our lives have lost
the uncertainty,
the vastness of night.
The west slope of this mountain
preserves that mystery.
We have only to walk
through the redwood forests
or stand on the windswept
slopes of Bolinas Ridge at night
to reclaim the vastness of night,
to sweep the sky
with the knife sharp edge
of our imagination,
to thrust the talons
of our souls
into the heart
of the night dark earth
to reclaim the lost part
of ourselves,
to reclaim the vastness
of the unknown
and forever to be unclaimed
universe.
We have only to go there again
to reclaim that element
of our former lives.
We have only to wander
Through the dark meadows
to become again
hunters of the night.
Other Selections From THE HORSES OF SAN ANDREAS
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