Mike Tuggle. Mike was born in Oklahoma, brought up in Texas, and escaped to California as soon as he came of age. He’s lived in the hills near Cazadero, in Sonoma County , California since 1982. Cazadero Poems, a chapbook with poet Susan Kennedy, was published by Floating Island Press in 1994. He is the recipient of a Sonoma Community Foundation grant in poetry and the Dickens Award in Fiction. This is his first full collection of poems.
“One night Mike Tuggle dreamed that all the birds he could not name came down and carried him away. This is his poetry, a man whose life and writing are one and the same. How lucky we are to finally have this magnificent selection of an important poet of Northern California.”
Sharon Dubiago, author of
Hard Country and Body and Soul
THE MOTIONING-IN
Sometimes on the side of this hill
a small tree catches a tricky breeze
and all by itself dances,
circular ripple of leaves and branches
while the trees all around
stand perfectly still.
This green moving within
the still body of green
is like a calling-unto, a motioning-in.
A great yearning to merge
with what you are seeing fills you, pulls you
out of your singular body into your greater one
where you become for a moment those huge fir trunks
glimmering purple and blue in the shadows,
that maple ablaze with golden light.
But just for a moment.
Afterwards you are filled with sadness,
