February 2015
I taught at San Lorenzo Middle School in King City, California for thirty-six years before retiring in June of 2006. Phyllis, my wife of 42 years, and I still reside in King City. I am a life-long rock-climber and mountaineer. I've made numerous ascents in the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite, though my home crags are in Pinnacles National Park. Many of my climbing stories have been published over the years. One, Three's a Crowd, was produced as a radio play and broadcast on KUSF in 2006 and later made it onto PBS.
I'm an experienced Fantasy and SF writer. My novella Vienna Station won the Galaxy prize and was published as an e-book. It is available for Kindle on Amazon. I co-wrote The Man Who Murdered Mozart with Barry Malzberg a few years back. My fantasy novel Chaos Gate was published in 2011. You may have run across my Joel in Tananar, too. My Young Adult historical novel Dawn Drums recently received two awards: first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors Association's annual literary contest and the New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction.
I'm an experienced Fantasy and SF writer. My novella Vienna Station won the Galaxy prize and was published as an e-book. It is available for Kindle on Amazon. I co-wrote The Man Who Murdered Mozart with Barry Malzberg a few years back. My fantasy novel Chaos Gate was published in 2011. You may have run across my Joel in Tananar, too. My Young Adult historical novel Dawn Drums recently received two awards: first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors Association's annual literary contest and the New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction.
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Editor's Note: This, for the uninitiated... Tenaya Toes are rock-climbing shoes. Okay, I confess: I had no
idea what they were until I 'Googled' them. AND... YES — the man in the photograph below is indeed our Robert Walton himself, poet and rock-climber. |
Tenaya Toes
Tiny sirens shrilling
That there’s blood in the air,
Always blood in the air,
Mosquitoes didn’t want me to leave
Just yet.
An old Japanese man stared at me,
At my feet stuck into yesterday’s snowmelt, catseye green,
Soaking off yesterday’s miles.
Wrinkles,
Like ice-gouged cracks in Tuolumne granite,
And a limp
Show me the old man has put on miles of his own.
He sat down,
shucked shoes,
plunged toes,
gasped.
I grinned at him.
He grinned back.
We shared no words
Just Tenaya Toes.
Tiny sirens shrilling
That there’s blood in the air,
Always blood in the air,
Mosquitoes didn’t want me to leave
Just yet.
An old Japanese man stared at me,
At my feet stuck into yesterday’s snowmelt, catseye green,
Soaking off yesterday’s miles.
Wrinkles,
Like ice-gouged cracks in Tuolumne granite,
And a limp
Show me the old man has put on miles of his own.
He sat down,
shucked shoes,
plunged toes,
gasped.
I grinned at him.
He grinned back.
We shared no words
Just Tenaya Toes.
Click on the pic...
©2015 Robert Walton