Black Walnut Is the War Tree

War Camps

To track well is to identify patterns by their impressions: walk, trot, scamper, lope, drag, leap, gallop, bound. Each gait tells the story of its prey in a narrative of evasion. To hunt well one must be both diffuse and intent. The art of hunting follows a long tracking funnel into which the desired prey can be identified in ever shrinking circles: the unwalkable vastness of the entire bioregion, breaking into each smaller ecoregion, the knowable habitat, and finally the discreet community of species.

 

To understand the land of the war camp, one must take a proprietorial position and begin tracking with an intent to hunt. Canvasback cross the river like generals in elegant winter uniforms with snowy coats and black top hats, and flitting Purple Finch passerines of perfect proportions sing loud, sweet and clear to mark the ecoregion. Methuselah’s Beard Lichen, long and evocative as a fairy tale beckons forth the image of an opened limb. On the salted waterways, the Harbor Porpoises conduct a sleek reconnaissance of ecoregion and the Snow Geese and Trumpeter Swans make landfall from their pale passages of migration. Here are the exact places to take aim.

 

The war camps are no longer what they once were. Bunkers are folded into the well marked trails of national or local parks. Gun batteries are leaning into the sand next to the Beachcomber Café. Somewhere near the riverside a cannonball is buried. Soccer goals, old rodeo arenas, and tall walnut trees are all standing on the grass that covers the battlefields of the treaty wars.

 

Inside its variegated silhouette of winter austerity, the Black Walnut holds a deep, hardy heartwood. In the forest the tree grows long and straight, but in open backyards or wide amulets of prairie, the branches spread out. The roots send out a slight toxin that prevents growth of other plants. Black walnut is the war tree. Its wood is so smooth-grained and dense it makes the finest grips and gunstocks. Its husks have historically dyed uniforms. The war camps are no longer what they once were.

 

 

 

 

Possession Sounds

Any bird sound can be classified
as either a song or call. Friday’s wind
is so hard it rolls a harlequin carpet

of surf scooters in strict undulations
under a low gray ceiling of clouds.
But when I return, Tuesday’s sky

is balmy enough to sight seven
bald eagles, each one in a higher
configuration, all making the piping

whistles and clicks that seem
so fleeting for a raptor whose wing
cuts such a stout shadow.

I brace my leg against what I take
for granite thinking I might have
caught a peek at the ring-necked

elegance of a loon, but it is me taken
by the throat—the iron ping under
is a historical marker heralding

a landing site. This place’s name
is taken to mean good camping place
or goose neck because it was once

a slim tidal lagoon with a thick tip,
if I mouth the first syllable, I
parse the sound for beak, which is

to say a promontory look out.
A gull flips a purple sea star
then an orange, belly to the sun.

Names come from the shapes of things,
possession courting the tongue.
For example, the navigator is said

to have named this changeable patch
of sound between beak and island
possession as a birthday gift for a king,

and when he stumbled to the bluff,
he called it rose hill but having circumnavigated
the globe and lost a day, he did not

realize it was the day before the king’s birthday,
and furthermore the roses emblazed on the cement
around the marker are the wrong kind.

The sound is neither song nor call,
but the flit of hummingbird wings
around the same spray of flowers

that long ago boat happened to land
upon on this beachhead in the season
of Nootka roses which is now.

 

 

 

 

The City Under the Mountain’s Thumb

Beads of hairy lunar blossoms
harden to midnight, salal is a plant
of generative saturation. Visceral
red stems and leathery green leaves,

mosaic veining. Waxy to the eye
and thumb. The harvest invites
avidity with the rip from pink
stem, but the flavor is acerbic.

A famine food with licks of olive
brine and whisper of huckleberry
pulp. Creased into a drinking vessel
the leaves will hold water

but the edges will serrate
the unwary tongue. It loves
the supine lounge from shade
into a draft of light in the lowlands

of a mountain’s foothills
and maintains a fussy inclination
to fir and cedar and stubborn aversion
to maple. Cross the carpet of salal

on the margins of the city
that hugs the skirts
of the slope. Leave the horse,
tail swishing and one

hoof cocked. Dismount gingerly
onto the pine strewn ground.
A cloud of bracing scent.
Leather embraces the tree,

as the knot is figured
and pulled tight. Take what you
need from the saddlebags,
loosen the girth and leave water.

The city couples with the edge
of the tree line. The rattle of seed
pods mistaken for a snake—the error
remains the name.

 

 

 

 

Skin For Pelt

Baptized in the early spring
with a bottle of rum
against the flagpole.
Within the star shaped periphery
baskets buried neck deep

in the cool earth near a river
could maintain the freshness
of dozens of gallons
of harvested corn
through all seasons.

The coffin shaped bastion
is lined in the watered silk
of a winter garden’s slack plumage
nestled under the mulch of leaves.
Mosquito clotted cattail eyelashes

line the riparian pond—
a wet fingernail torn from
the bed of skin pressing itself into
the swell of the great river
where sturgeon surged

and the sea otters ventured
to seek their missing young.
Salt licks lured venison
until the skins of deer peeled
into a wrap of currency. There is

a fee to enter: walking down over
gravely miles under the scrub jays’
brusque interrogations. Bridges
upon bridges. Overhead a vulture
moves earth and continues

to remake the land.
In the fur warehouse,
coyote pelts swing from the rafters.
Circular hoops of made beavers,
plucked in a winter

flush of fat and stretched to gorgets
still show a shadow of eyes,
mouth and nose in the hide.
I suspect the flesh of commerce
will trouble my sleep;

the cougar’s neatly emptied legs
and the stretch of mink whose
fur is the exact color of my hair,
so I tally that too, hazelnuts
crackling under my heels

in the speed of my retreat.
Five made beaver hides
would have traded for a pound
of sky-blue enamel beads,
fifteen equally for a good horse
or a well-crafted canoe.

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of Tributaries, American Book Award winner, Instruments of the True Measure, Washington State Book Award winner, and Severalty forthcoming in 2025. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee and she lives in Washington with her family.