The stave church at Trondenes

Where ragged, jagged rock,

torn asunder, plunges under

the black glass sea.

The stave church door jamb

is sealed with pine pitch.

Some of which smears off

onto my fingers as I step through

the threshold. My nose fills

with the scent of burning wax

and centuries of woodsmoke

before my eyes adjust enough

to see the cross on the back wall.

Outsiide, bundled slabs of cod bound

with twine dangle from a crude log

frame drying in the cold salt wind.

It’s a recreation of ancient means

replaced now by the gigantic

oceanic salmon farms off shore

that diligently apply technology

and environmental science because

it’s not right to feed the world

if the sea is stripped to meet

the billion mouths who hunger

for protein in plenteous supply.

Jesus told Simon Peter and Andrew

that if they followed him he would

make them fishers of men.

The nets they cast in Galilee

caught the fishermen who cast

their nets in the far off North Sea.

And they built their churches

with good Norwegian wood.

Staves sealed with pine pitch

that sticks to your fingers if

you touch the threshold as

you enter. A husky black cat

knows where it’s safe to rub and

sprawls on the foundation where

the weak sun warms the stone.

Fantoft Stave Church, Bergen Norway

We walk up the path beneath

the beech and linden trees

that have speckled the mossy

boulders below with golden leaves.

Perched on a dark basaltic hill,

the Fantoft stave church sits with

fire-spewing wooden dragon heads

projecting from the eaves.

It is surrounded now by steel

security fencing because

the church was torched by a

fanatic anti-Christian member

of the Black Metal music cult.

The church was rebuilt but

no regular services are held,

it’s a landmark; open for viewing

the interior in the summer with

a ticket; outside is free year round.

The sharp angles and dragons,

the black-painted wood seem

more suited to the Satanic.

Perhaps it is safe now garbed

within it’s dark reconstruction

from would be arsonists.

And visitors can leave something 

for the magpies and crows.

God loves them. As do I.

Without rhyme or reason

The Mickey Mouse Club song

is playing in my head

as I climb the fire road

up the mountain.

Not the who’s the leader part, I hear

the marching part at the beginning.

“Mickey Mouse Club, Mickey Mouse Club”

Over and over. That bit gets stuck in my head

now and then going on sixty years.

A good cadences can carry you along.

When I arrived at Fort Ord for basic training,

I had never fired a gun, but I knew how to

march from high school marching band. 

I knew how to wield a clarinet, spitting out

notes instead of bullets.

Drill Sergeant said your M16 is a weapon,

not a gun, your gun is in your pants.

The fact that I knew marching drill,

how to turn, how to stop, do a crisp

about face in step, immediately earned

his respect.

So I became the company guidon.

That’s the person who carries a swallow-tailed flag

on a tall brass-ttipped pole and marches or runs

at the front of the company or platoon.

When the sergeant gives an order,

the guidon raises the flag staff straight up

with the first part of the order “Companeeey…’

and then sharply straight down in time

with the second part...“Halt”.

There are various visual signals to coincide with

and emphasize the verbal commands.

We didn’t sing the Mickey Mouse Club song

"Forever let us hold our banner hiiigh"

as we ran to the rifle range.

We sang soldier songs:

I wanna be an airborne ranger

I wanna live a life of danger

I wanna go to Viet Nam

I wanna kill the Viet Cong.

or

They say that in the army

the biscuits are mighty fine

one rolled off the table

and killed a friend of mine

I don’t want no more of army life

gee mom I wanna go

gee mom I wanna go

but they won’t let me go home.

Well I could sing and twirl that guidon

pretty damn good. But I had a lot

more to learn about shooting a gun,

I mean weapon. Because we’d

never had guns in our house.

When I was four, my friend

down the alley was killed by his

brother when they were playing with 

their duck-hunting dad’s shotgun.

So we never had any guns,

but my baby brother got one

when he was old enough

to own one. A powerful revolver

which he used to kill himself

at the age of fifty two.

Splitting hairs

Technically,

a tomato is a fruit

not a vegetable.

And a banana is a berry

as are cucumbers, avocados,

and pumpkins.

Raspberries and

blackberries are not.

They’re aggregates.

Prawns and crabs aren’t fish.

Koalas and pandas aren’t bears.

Sweet potatoes aren’t potatoes.

Velveeta ain’t real cheese

and once upon a time

five states required margarine

to be dyed pink, so you would

never have to declare

I can’t believe it’s not butter.

Should I go farther,

or is that further? Don’t pop

the cork on that champagne

unless it’s from France.

The same varietals from California

have to labeled as sparkling wine.

I have my own pet bugaboos,

like referring to the Sierra Nevada

as the Sierras. The word is Sierra.

And the way the British mangle

Spanish or Italian words like

the ugly way they say pasta.

And what’s with the grammatical

clunker of using were instead of

was when the subject is singular?

Charles Dickens didn’t write

“It were the best of times,

it were the worst of times”…

Lest I get too much further

(farther?) on my high hoarse

and wreck more havoc,

and leave you dear ones, bemused

I would be wise to remember

Raiph Waldo Emerson’s words:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin

of little minds, little statesmen,

philosophers and divines.”

But honestly I could care less,

or should that be I couldn’t care less?

My head is literally exploding.

Of Ants and Men

I’ve got a problem with ants.

The little black ones that

often invade homes.

Especially in summer.

Maybe they are looking

for water, maybe that’s

just when I notice them.

But I don’t think so because

that’s when they crawl

off the counter onto me.

My personal trouble is

that most of time I can’t

see them, The countertop

is some kind of dark granite,

speckled like coffee grounds,

chocolate, and licorice.

Those tiny little ants are

invisible to me until I feel them

on my arms or sometimes

they make it all the way

to the back of my neck.

My Mom’s Dust Bowl immigrant

family called them sugar ants.

And the little yellowish-brown

ones, were grease ants.

Because that’s what they

like to eat. Good enough.

I wouldn’t expect them to use

scientific binomial classification, like

Tapinoma sessile or Solonopsis xyloni.

Sugar or grease ants is more

functional, you are what you eat.

The ones I learned to fear

at a very tender age were

the little red ants, so-called fire ants.

Because they bite. And they always

seem to come in swarms of hundreds,

thousands. Or so it felt like when they

climbed onto my poor bare feet.

Later on when I was old enough

and curious enough and wise enough

to not go bare foot at Grandpa

Smith’s farm, I convinced my

Mom and Dad that I needed

an ant farm. The one with a little

green plastic farm houses, a windmill,

some trees and a barn sandwiched

between two sheets of clear acrylic.

Came with sand and a jar of ants.

So you didn’t have to find your own.

Sugar ants, so you could feed them

sugar water and watch them construct

their tunnels. The kit was called

Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm.

That name may have convinced

my Dad, Milton, that it would be

a positive learning experience.

Of course eventually the ants all died.

Not sure if that was my fault or just

the natural life span of ants.

I was more intrigued by larger,

more hazardous arachnids,

like black widow spiders and scorpions.

I captured scorpion in the woods and kept it

in a pickle jar with some leaves and bark

in my desk when I was in 4th grade.

I fed it the bountiful tent caterpillars

that were plaguing our region that year.

This was the source of much amusement

for Mom when she told the story

of parents' reactions when they opened

my desk on back to school night.

As for ants though, I would rather

know about them from a distance.

In a book, a tv show or movie. I had book

with a fold out illustration of an Army ant

bivouac that was terrifying. Because it

said they eat everything, no matter

how big or fierce.

Four or five decades later

I read Edmund O. Wilson’s book

“Biophilia” about the innate human

love of the natural world of living things,

plants or animals, vertebrates or not.

And apparently his special love,

his lifelong fascination, was ants.

That tells me a lot about the capacity

for all embracing love. Ants?

As someone else once said, anything

that organized has to be communist.

I think that God must love them plenty

because he sure made a lot of them.

15,700 named species and even

more yet to be identified.

I guess they didn’t take up

a whole lot of space on Noah’s Ark.

But my prayer to God or Gaia

or Buddha and with apologies to Jains

and vegans, I just want to get them

out of the kitchen or crawling on my body.

James Brown sang, I got ants in my pants

and I need to dance. Well, alright, JB,

but I don’t need some big fine sister

to give me a chance. Ahhh, Good God,

Lift me up, you know I feel it.