ALAN TRIST
Leaves rustling, rustling
dance in bond with wind
a multitude on each tree
in step yet separate
Leaves falling, falling
the whole airspace
twirling, twirling
thoughts in resonance
refuting separation
Leaves scurry, scurry
back and forth across the road
tumbling, tumbling
playing in the wind
changing course half-way,
like squirrels, undecided
Leaves piling, piling
in a compost heap
sinking, sinking
returning to the earth
crumbling, crumbling,
transforming into union
Princeton, NJ, 17 Nov 2020
Alan Trist is a Cambridge-educated anthropologist, who was publisher and editor with the Hulogosi publishing cooperative in Eugene, Oregon in the 1980s and, in the 1970s and from 1995 to 2014, administrator of the Grateful Dead’s song catalogue at Ice Nine Publishing Company in California. His Paros Poems: an Island Sequence, co-authored with Alexis Lykiard, appeared in 1967 (Difros, Athens), and The Water of Life: a Tale of the Grateful Dead in 1987 (Hulogosi, Eugene, Oregon). He edited The Grateful Dead Family Album, authored by Jerilyn Lee Brandelius (Warner Books New York, 1989), and The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, annotated and co-edited by David Dodd (Simon and Schuster, New York: 2005). He continues to work with the cultural and arts legacy of the 1960s. He is currently working on a new collection of poems and a memoir.
Photo: Bruna Bonino