Poems from the Empty Bowl Cookbook

I carried rice that long-ago year,
hitching and hiking the mountains,
canyons and coastlines of the West.
Basho’s Back Roads tucked in my pack,
and the ephemeral friendships of the road
for company.

I camped most nights and cooked
in a small, blackened pot.
Brown rice simmered over coals,
sliced onion to steam as the water
cooked down. A splash of tamari,
and green tea in a chipped enamel cup.

Each day a new passage.
I took notes in a journal and wrote
awkward, stumbling poems
as dinner steamed and woodsmoke
wound down one evening stream
or another.

Looking at those pages now,
I barely recognize the young fellow
who wrote them, or the wild
and hidden places, coastal forests
or overgrown orchards where I camped.
Most are gone.

But I still taste the nutty
golden crunch of rice
from the bottom of the pot,
sweetness of cooked onion,
the salty tang of soy, and I feel
the comforting fit of a wooden bowl,

warm in my hand
as the night air grows cool.
Basho wrote “the journey itself is home,”
and for a moment, I’m there.
The last of my tea just enough
to clean the empty bowl.

Tim McNulty’s early wanderings landed him on the Olympic Peninsula, where he’s hunkered ever since. His books of poetry include Ascendance, In Blue Mountain Dusk, and Cloud Studies.

HOLLY J. HUGHES

As kids, we avoided you—learned the hard way
that urtica means burning—double-dared each other
to run in shorts through the field where you grew,
wore your tattoo of red welts for days, a badge

of childhood courage. But were you always someone
to avoid? During WWII, when flax was hard to find,
you were twisted into paper, cloth, twine. Earlier,
the Salmon People asked permission to harvest you,

wove you into nets, drank your bitter brew
to ward off colds. Today, I await your arrival,
a harbinger of spring emerging from winter’s
soggy soil, pointing your green stalk skyward,

unfurling your flags, claiming your territory,
armed against all casual browsers. So I suit up
to harvest—gloves, long sleeves, a basket—
pause to ask permission, clip your tender tops,

carry you home to be steamed, your sting
rendered helpless in inches of boiling water,
which I will drink, make soup from your
limp, bright greens, or enjoy you sauteed

in olive oil, mixed into pesto. We will
eat you not in revenge but with gratitude
that we can know what it means
to revere you, gingerly, with gloves.

Holly J. Hughes is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Hold Fast. Her chapbook Passings received an American Book Award in 2017. She is the copublisher of Empty Bowl Press; directs Flying Squirrel Studio, which offers residencies for women; and consults as a writing coach. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula.

Bill Ransom’s most recent collection is The Woman and the War Baby from Blue Begonia Press. He was born in Puyallup and lives in Grayland on Chinook land.

Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not. —Seamus Heaney

A rainbow descends into the sheep pasture, green
and lit from within. This late August storm has morphed

into shimmer and we have no choice but to wander outside.
Standing by the drainage ditch we fill our white bucket

with large, bulbous bursts of sweet. Dark juice paints
their little, sticky fingers. My lips are aubergine.

If I could preserve this evening in a jar, I would. Their tender
smiles, the playful prick of vine, followed by sugar burst bliss.

They forage higher and higher each year, grasping
for this fleeting fruit, delicate beads that taste like lost time.

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award.

I remember

waking to a Townsend’s warbler’s warble, cheater-
cheater-chattering away; the smell, too, a ripened
seaweed cocktail—the beach laid long like a bar.

There are many who don’t know or care, can’t ever
imagine life with edges. What it is like to have
salivating fangs pondering you, hungry.

The sand molded to my sleep, imprinted my pumping
heart pulsing with the tang of iron and nutrients. Who
but mosquitos or passing wolves know if I am worthy?

My dreams didn’t catch its sniffs, but the beach caught
their furtive tracks. My sleep sack did, too, with a paused
paw print on the corner and a wet nose spot glistening

where my thigh slept.

Lowell Jons’s writings and photography have appeared in a smattering of publications. He calls the Salish Sea his home, having lived in Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Olympia, and finally in Friday Harbor.

 Finn Wilcox
Dumpster Dinner

First there are the greens,
always lots of greens
and a few onions
right on top,

Then dig a little deeper
past loaves of turquoise bread
and the smell of souring milk
until you hit cheese…

two good tomatoes,
a bunch of carrots,
and a full bag of donuts!

Now load what you can
in a sack and
beat it back to the jungle.

The dumpster dinner
cooks in the pale moonlight

the dumpster dinner
steams with what you find

and any tramp will tell you
garbage always tastes better
when cooked outside.

Finn Wilcox, one of the founders of Empty Bowl as well as Olympic Reforestation Inc, was a reforester for two decades. He’s the author of several remarkable Empty Bowl books including Too Late to Turn Back Now and The Silence of a Shooting Star —and co-editor of Working the Woods, Working the Sea.

Empty Bowl, an independent press founded in 1976 in the Pacific Northwest as a cooperative letterpress publisher, publishes periodicals, literary anthologies, collections of poetry, books of Chinese translations, essays, and fiction.
The mission of Empty Bowl is: literature and responsibility in support of human communities in wild places. Learn more at emptybowl.org.