A Fork in the Crypto Road
By Michael Peter Garofalo
We stopped for coffee in Forks WA one day
on the way to Crescent Lake’s forest shade.
The barista smiled, polite, earned a tip.
We sipped and talked about Rips in Time,
splittings, divergences, separations between
Crypto-beings versus real creatures we can find.
Cryptozoology, not bitcom crypto schemes, but
plenty of amazing pseudo-science scuttlebutt.
Yes, Cryptids living by the Quillayute River
or by its incoming Bogachiel or Sol Duc streams.
Or, four Chupacabras living in La Push.
Or, Big Foot and Little Foot
crossing Hwy 101 at dusk.
Forks pretends to host Vampires,
teenage blood suckers on the night prowl,
teenage Werewolves howling, running fast,
Humans afraid of these creatures’ wrath.
Human, not so human, called by the Night,
confused, resisting, teenagers losing the fight
against inner demons and lusty needs
and ordinary life with real human beings.
Many beings eat, fight and kill to survive,
wily, tricky, stealthy, with a hunter’s pride.
The Horned God has history on his side.
Hunger keeps us all on the Edge,
ready to amorally pounce from a hedge
and slaughter or harvest creatures just ahead.
We are all Vampires
rising from the dead. Its said,
Living and dying scenes
are sometimes seen in vivid Red.
Books and movies started it all,
now all Fork’s stores sell
Vampire and Werewolf dolls.
Motel rooms are decorated in Twilight themes.
Crypto-Reality, fantasies, fictions,
magical scenes.
Drawing thousands of titillated tourists here.
Happy Forkers counting more dollars there.
It is said that
Big Foot roams the nearby lush Hoh woods
seeking a lean Sasquatch Lady with big boobs.
She temporarily hides her alluring charms
from clumsy Big Foot’s fingers and arms,
Carrying a Sasquatch-Yeti baby in her arms.
Why do we often picture and portray
Big Foot as a lonely male, a hairy ugly guy,
a grumpy solitary fellow,
without a female, family, friend,
or clan at his side?
And, then we have Paul Bunyan, The Logger Man,
a Machine of a Man, with Babe, his Blue Ox,
dragging logs from the land; plundering
forests till their gone, then moving on.
Nowadays, from Quinault firs
to Humboldt coastal mountain pines,
diesel logging trucks packed full are the rule.
There's a huge statue of Paul the Lumberjack
his axe and Babe, in Requa-Klamath CA,
at the Trees of Mystery,
along Highway 101 to this very day.
One dreary winter day
I spotted Big Foot drinking coffee
with Paul Bunyan and Vampire Vlad
in a cozy Tillamook Starbucks Café
Nobody was fazed;
figuring,
just Hollywoody Cos-Play.
By Ella E. Clark. Illustrated by Robert Bruce Inverarity. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1953, 2003. Glossary, 225 pages. VSCL.
