Sisters Speak
When I learned of the bombing of Al -Mutanabi Street, I wept as for a beloved brother, the place and space of art and culture frequented for centuries by thinkers and writers, wisdom keepers, scholars and scribes blasted into rubble.
Gone the voluminous and conflicting texts, a thread of discourse weaving through the centuries, meditations, postulations, dispute about the meaning and purpose of things. How did we get here? How did here get here?
Herein follows explanation…A Greater than Life must have created everything. To Him we return. Or not. The disputes go on through flow and ebb of empires, through Torah, Talmud, Mishna, through the teaching of Jesus: Love thy neighbor. Feed the hungry. Give up an eye for an eye…through Mohammed’s Koran also dictated by the only, but a different God. While holding fast to rivers of fire, the greased pig, Truth, slips always out of grasp…The sons of Sarah, the sons of Hagar: brothers still fighting over patrimony.
Utter Baghdad: Witness glory and ruin ebb and flow like the Tigris flooding the fields over and over again, the Fertile Crescent a perfect place for the nomads to stop wandering. Bridging two worlds as we are now, they moved from speech to transcription, from mouth and moment to preservation of the written word…from harvesting the wild to cultivation: orchards, vineyards, long rows of grain.
Long they sat in the House of Wisdom, their knowing skewed by the venom of revenge, skewed by excluding women from the table where brothers drink tea and talk into the night. Understandable in a stone age world when a division of labor arose from necessity, when the noble part of man emerged to protect and care for women and babies. But now is another story.
The Greeks preferred democracy to monarchy because many eyes see more. Dialogue is a better tool to divine the truth and many voices blend in concert and harmony, like bird song and river plash anywhere at dawn.
Brothers, rebuild with us. When we were infants, though it seemed
impossible, we stopped soiling our diapers. It is time for more change. Open your hearts to our minds, our voices, to the wisdom of forgiveness, the solace of love. Out of the rubble, we’ll cultivate our gardens again and by the light of the crescent moon, sit under the fig tree, listening to the voice of the earth. And in its shade, by blistering day, make kites for our children and stories from the well of tears.
The World Will Not End Tonight 12.21.2013
though the wrinkled horsemen
slumped over their antediluvian mounts
are standing by waiting for the cue
and who knows where the trumpeter’s gone by now
itching to wet his whistle …
though the placards and signs are lined up
against the crumbling walls proclaiming the end is nigh
and the ones on parchment vellum and papyrus
curl in their glass cases as generations
of school kids careen by, oblivious. …
though the fountain of youth persists beneath
the track at Hialeah or maybe next door
under the ersatz jungle pool at the Four Winds Motel,
plastic pink flamingos fishing the crew cut lawn, …
though the bomb shelters sink into themselves,
faded labels peeling from crushed and dented cans
whose combined shelf lives equal
a number we have not yet reckoned, …
though the cryogenic warehouses await occupation
your choice of sheepskin or stainless steel lining
your pod stationed on site or shot into space, …
though the falling dreams, the flying dreams
the nightly haunting journeys through
an unbound space time confluence…
(Did you ever ride an elevator to the moon? )
though the green leaves furl crimson and gold
and fall in the gusty autumn afternoon
and the sky stalls, a stark white glare
under the wraiths of cloud, the shroud of fog….
though the brewing rain a deluge in the drought, …
though we are saturate of blood and oil,
the tape loops of disgruntlement,
the strung beads of grievance,
the squandered slain of battlefield and school
and though we grieve the sacrificial lambs,
petals strewn on blind archaic alters,
though we toll the bells and count our losses,
cast our nets, jump from cliffs,
or dive into the cold dark heart to find the molten light,
The world will not end tonight.
How Wise the Ancients Were
How wise the ancients were to honor and revere
ancestors on whose shoulders we stand,
whose trunk our limbs’ leaves unfurl
whose compost feeds our flourishing.
Lives lived in ongoing peril, at any harrowing turn
to be mauled, maimed, or with misstep, disappear.
Such prodigious effort to stay alive in caves,
every day filled with trial, struggle, uncertainty.
Who came to day’s end sustained, replete, sound,
in warm sleep with kith and kin, survived.
Praise them. Thank them, the ones who eluded
sinkhole and cliff, talon, claw, fang and jaw…
whose descendents we are because they were smart or lucky.
whose beneficiaries we are : root, trunk, branch, flower or fruit,
in comfort they never knew sans fleas, worms or unbidden terror,
clean at whim in any weather: opening a tap, filling a tub.
They bathed in water warm enough to flow
in chanced on pond or stream, find footing and learning to float,
trying limbs across the surface, mastering element and not drown.
Before we were settled farmers with silos and husbandry
weathering winter with stored grain and seeds set by for next year’s crop.
before we figured out how to dry the fruits of summer
how to salt meat and fish, pickle and preserve and gain a few years…
and traverse place and space, from foot to horse to car
bicycle, skate and ski, from paddle or oar to sail…
to fly, to leap through cyberspace
and with who knows what dimensional string
scrawling new paths in our remembering brains..
and who knows what where we are streaming to?
daily risk and mortal peril, for high stakes: survival.
We who live long years, go anywhere, any time,
lock our doors against the terrors of the night,
our comfort and folly lulling us into an uneasy sleep,
against the peril of our days, our return to the caves.
***********************
Blank page New Life
For days and days
the rain has been dripping
pouring
teeming, streaming down
slowing to drizzle and mist…
From pewter and cobalt dappled skies,
transparencies cascade,
seeping into the sodden yard
leaving rivulets and puddles
out of which the new grass and
green leaves emerge from earth.
I want to hear what the grass has to say,
babies so close to the source,
so aligned must surely know
the deep hidden heart of things.
know the mystery…
where it all begins…
the nano-spot between not and is,
The off switched, flicking on
the light streaming..
oh miracle of magnetic force
and electric impulse
Oh miracle of being…
**********************
Summer and Wind
The bobbing boughs of the towering cherry tree
harboring a few glinting rubies
the crows have missed, rustle and curl…
and the stately redwood branches bend and sway
in the waves of the wind, back and forth, up and down.
The wind chime has been chiming all afternoon
and the finch who nests above the deck light
and perches on the frame of a butterfly chair,
weaves around the yard all day plucking morsels
for a juvenile who pokes up his frowzled head
to greet her and eat what she’s brought,
his head feathers artless and gawky
as a kid’s before self-consciousness smites,
and the hormone fairy ignites the latent fire,
and the mind devises stratagems of the chase
and all the ensuing preening and ceaseless effort
made, laying and hatching eggs,
feeding and fledging the nestlings.
We could take a lesson from the birds
who may jostle for territory, but without
building arsenals or castles or pyramid schemes…
nesting confounded by war and ravening.
I have cut the cord from the mother-ship News
to breathe deeply, to live simply, taking in
the comings and goings of neighboring kin:
a garter snake coiling in the road,
a barefoot boy and his dog ambling by,
A rooster crowing at daybreak, and later on, a hen
squawking about her produce or a prowling cat,
and my neighbor making his rounds,
dispersing the more than they need:
a box of green and speckled brown eggs
adorned with feathers and guano.
A summer idyll punctuated by unsettling wind.
Tomorrow, perhaps, one of us will remember
at last, how to wield the slingshot.
****************
Dark of Winter
Even in the reticent light of an overcast afternoon,
there are shadows streaming through the bare boughs
casting marks and elusive figures
on the tough winter skin of our road.
Signs and Portents? Who knows?
I have thrown the coins and cast rune stones
seeking a way into the realm of the invisible
where nascent, given the constraints
of DNA, the speed of light, and gravity,
all things are possible.
I have sought audience with the ineffable,
stumbling and bumbling in confusion.
I run out of good ideas, reasons, explanations.
At the crossroads, I do not know which way is best.
I seek the counsel of sages and blind chance,
following by itch and inclination the unmarked path.
Some people carry the weight of inherited authority
and by tradition live in razor-edged certainty.
But what can we really know ?
In this era of post-modern physics, what can we locate
as point or wave or humble pebble on the beach
unless we already know where we are ?
This is a season when friends have died.
This is how we learn to measure time
and know the fragile momentous place
between inhale and exhale,
the smallest space, the largest corridor.
Coming around the bend at Papermill,
I chanced to look up and see
stolidly seated in the high branches
of the trees along the levee road
seven or eight vultures congregating,
waiting in the still and somber late morning air.
And a little while later, a young black Lab
ran into the road on main street
and was hit by a truck
going too fast to avoid the collision…
the yelping pain and the fading light.
Stung by mortality, I feel a hollow in my core
already filling up with the longing
to make every moment matter,
my arms wide in embrace. Only to love.
Nothing else is worth time, life force,
energy, effort or motion
which I have so blithely squandered.
Called to account, will I remember
the fleeting and fragile conditions?
Only to love.
***********************
Art Medicine
The artist hands us
a key to the green door
where the missing links
and the secrets of things
carry on their affairs
in the depths of being…
where, spelunking the abyss,
inside and out
in dimensions states and trajectories
as yet unfathomable and innumerable
as the threshold folds of the latent brain,
the messenger leaves traces of the journey,
Elixirs, distillations of spirit,
wrought in the alembic of art :
transmissions of clear light
revealing hidden mountains,
lost continents
interstellar connections
the tawny landscape of genesis
we almost remember in dreams.
Unbinding the spells of mystery
the painter priestess healer
becomes herself … whole,
radiance, beauty…
her painting, medicine.
**********************
Rumi’s Furnace
In the oracular vernacular
of Rumi’s furnace…
I am stoked in fire,
cooked in light…
the furnace…
a gleaming chest
where beats
the fearless heart.
*****************
The Lighting
I
Inside the mapped terrain,
the geometric form,
the altitudes, perimeters,
where, when, anyone born
in dusk or shade of day,
sleeps in starlight, dreaming dawn.
II
I am contained within
the cubed walls of a brain
emerging from, floating
in an unknown, familiar place
where crows ride a red tide
beside me, waiting.
III
Out of the chemical broth of the sea
bioluminescent impulse ignites me.
Roaming in the dark, I see.
******************
Listening to you
a presence
amidst competing texts and voices
the cacaphony and din,
a presence
among
the tugs and pulls,
the must ought and should
necessity and fortune
heap upon my plate.
a presence
even in absence
or just out of range…
****************
Entry Song
Seeking a way back in
through cerulean and gold
to green, to the garden,
a full circle in the widening gyre,
where the apple tree grows
as in the beginning, and we bite
with full knowledge of good and evil,
aware and responsible for our ravening.
We have bitten, chewed and swallowed,
absorbed and assimilated the fruit
which fuels our foolish arrogant
incipient larval selves
shape-shifting to wise, sapient…
or could…
had we an itch and will
to prune and weed.
********************
Healer of What’s Stuck
Oh this is a sticky stinky messy place,
abysmal holes to get lost in,
masses of melted mattering..
a place repulsive,
not to be missed…
not exactly the belly of the whale,
more like the onus of the anus
( a heady expression to analyze),
a rocket ship launched from a cross.
Rake through the muck.
Find knots to untangle,
what needs to mend
and finally,
transparencies
and the lure of light.
***********************
Blue Medicine
Acrylics, shellac,
burned bones, eggshells and
Egyptian indigo powder…
it takes everything you have
everything you can lay your hands on,
everything that matters…
nothing expendable lost or wasted
that can’t be used in
the ritual of transit
the metamorphic tonic,
the golden heart.
***************
A Two-ning
I
I approach the Twain with Longing
and know in a phosphorescent flash,
while sliding down the ladder
back to the beginning,
the ascent is not vertical,
nor predictable
nor perhaps even possible
from any given vantage.
Back to sweeping
and tending the garden
dreaming duet,
luminous fleshy
harmonic attunement,
I and thou…
II
What could be
more solid fleshy
bold and erect,
more present stalwart
humble, august?
Who could be
more fully realized
lit from within,
more self- sufficient,
succulent, full
companion?
********************
Book of Healers
In the scroll of galactic generation
waves and points of brilliant being.
In the Book of Healers
may we be.
***********************
Beowulf Revisited
Modthrythro, however,
that mighty queen, did terrible crimes.
None of the boldest among the retainers
dared to approach her, unless a great lord.
Whoever looked into her eyes in broad daylight
could count on the garotte, the death-bonds prepared
woven by hand, an arrest and thereafter
the charge quickly settled with the edge of a sword;
the sharp shadow-pattern would suddenly fall,
make known its death-evil. Not queenly
customs in a lady, however beautiful —
to take the lives of beloved men,
a woman, peace-weaver, inventing false charges.
The kinsmen of Hemming put a stop to all that.
Men round the table told more of the story,
said that she caused less harm to the people,
malicious trouble, once she was given,
adorned in gold, to the young champion
of the highest nobility, once she arrived
on Offa’s bright floor over shining seas;
She made the journey at her father’s bidding.
There she use well the days of her life,
famous for goodness upon the high-seat,
kept noble love toward the leader of heroes,
the best chief as I have heard,
in all the world, from sea to sea.
… Beowolf poet
Her Bed
Oh, I know how it looked
and I know what they said…
how I wielded Glamour:
effortless youth
apple skin, feline grace,
my supple sprung limbs
like an axe,
my plaits a noose,
my every blush a crimson wound,
their foul breath
creeping round me
a venomous fog,
those toothless witless
limp and randy fools,
drooling into grey beards,
or reckless
or drunken
or greedy
or bland.
Suitors?
My father the worst of the lot
looking for real estate
cargo ships relations
in enmity’s stead–always a reason
to wither my vine.
I asked him prettily
whether or not he valued
the hearth-gold glitter,
the fair rose in his garden.
What is seed without crop?
I had him there,
and he agreed to my seive.
He who solved the riddle
me would wed
and joy to us both…
otherwise banishment,
and one less oily brow
or sullen eye
peering through the keyhole
ogling my bodice,
construing,
plotting
for title to
my parts.
What would you?
Cruel, they said.
Sorceress.
Shrew.
Their words slid
like rain dripping
from the casement
and vassals fled
and the seasons turned.
And then it was over.
No one else beat on the door.
Now what? said mother.
God wot, said father.
I said, look abroad
and find me
someone suitable.
Him I will cleave to
without challenge,
with all my heart.
Such a tumult over the setting out–
the courtiers, painters as well.
And when at last they found him,
he was not as comely
as I thought requisite,
but tempered and wise,
quick to laugh,
and in giving, peerless,
just and kind.
Him I wed in all gladness
and proud I stride through his hall,
bringing goblets to weary warriors,
filling their cups to the brim.
CBS moi meme May 8,1999
**************
SOLSTICE 2007
To think of all we have found, created, assembled, uncovered
all that we have erected, stumbled upon, designed:
the Parthenon, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
the immense figures on Easter Island,
the Pyramids of Giza and Maya,
the Isthmus of Panama, the great walls…
this coiled basket, that clay pot, the stadium,
Saran Wrap, Scalloped Potatoes, Apple Pie…
the chronometer, thermometer, and magnifying glass
telescope, microscope, telephone and fax
the carbon sucking car, the aeroplane, the Net
extend our faculties of perception
stretch our range of motion
so we can examine, measure, hold, feed and transport ourselves
in the immense world we once thought infinite, indestructible,
raw material awaiting construction,
birds and animals running about the countryside uncooked
ours the only lives and needs that matter.
When wee, my child wept tears of loss and longing,
realizing she didn’t have a tail.
She knew as children do her kin.
as native people do our niche.
The Algonquin understood our role in the forest:
to remove dead wood… for the good of all, the light, and heat
to cook our food and warm our bodies in the night.
There’s a lot of dead wood in the forest.
“The heart has reason, the reason knows nothing of.”
So sang Pascal in the era of Descartes, the age of reason
We know thinking is not enough. Witness the stratagems of war.
Witness the poisoned well, the decimation of the fish,
The oil barons and hungry children.
Under the Volcano, Lowry wrote:
”No se puede vivir sin amar.”
We cannot live without love.
Perhaps our technologies have gotten the best of us.
Relying on things instead of our own faculties
our powers diminish and we forget who we are.
“I am you and you are me and we are all together.”
The rascal ego stands sentinel at the border,
really a permeable membrane through which the wash
of time travels. So much collateral damage awaiting repair.
So much dead wood to remove, to rekindle, to return to the light.
****************
Heat and Light
Solstice 2008
Terrible things have happened.
So many ruptures and losses…
and we, who cannot quite register,
let alone measure
impact and consequence,
bifurcating veins and roots
on this and that path,
put our hands to our heads
and open our mouths to scream
like the stand-in for Everyman
in Munch’s raw painting.
Even the Centenarian cherry tree is confused,
holding onto her mango saffron leaves
that in other years she easily let loose.
Fallen, brittle and brown,
they collected in little heaps
that rose and fell,
scuttering in a stiff winter wind.
This year’s leaves still flutter,
still veil her weathered limbs.
And I have seen the foolish tulips
poking through the hardening ground
and rash acacia beginning to bud in frost.
What can the rhubarb be thinking,
presenting enough stalks for a pie
in December?
The marigolds that bloomed
with fennel and lettuce
are still here.
In my mind’s eye, marigolds signify
the suchness of things,
the way everything everywhere
is in season, in harmony
before the rhythms of day
and the rhythms of night
were confounded by artificial light.
Plundered, pillaged, sacked,
spirited away…
the eternal round,
the cycles and seasons.
Who patiently waits for May
for asparagus and strawberries?
Who sleeps at dusk
and wakes at dawn anymore?
There is a breach in the order of things
And all the cracks, fractures and gashes
have left absence in my heart
and a depression in my mind.
What awaits us at the close
of the Calendar?
What, when solar storms roar?
Better to slip through the bottle neck,
take a wooded road at the fork.
Untangle the knot, unwind the skein,
carry pistil and stamen and seed.
Tonight,
the season of falling leaves
gives way to winter-tide…
time to hibernate,
to dream.
In the shelter of sleep,
in the welter of repair
in the still time of remembering,
embers await rekindling.
Who will bring the wood
and who will light the fire?
*********************
Summoning Powers
Lady, we no longer spill wine
upon the earth
without question or reprisal,
calling a woman to account
because we no longer remember
simple sacrifice,
preferring slaughter,
the drama
of victim and conqueror,
the death of the poet.
Never the less,
I light this candle
and spill this wine
upon the ground
to the four directions
and listen well
to the counsel of birds,
the warnings of dogs,
and the voice of the wind
in the trees
calling me to observance.
Listen to the silence of old women
parched as cornhusks
in the wash of a dry wind,
scattered everywhere
over the body of earth,
without pitcher or bell
or song of observance,
wakeful, watchful, waiting…
Among them comes one
dressed in the ancient
black of the crone.
Maria Callas comes
onto the great stage
and on bent knee,
pommels the earth
with tender hand
outraged fist
and cries out in
that melodious
stirring voice,
the terrible truth.
I can no longer hear
the voice
of the Earth.
It was not
for jealousy or spite
Medea took
the breath of life
from her beloved children.
Pity her suffering,
her sacrifice…
blossoms shot forth
from her bough
trampled
beneath her feet
crushed back into
the arms of Earth,
for love silenced
for love undone
for love rudimentary
as the fertile fields
unmarred by marble
flute or frieze
or honor.
I can no longer hear
the voice of the earth.
Airborne,
swimming in cloud form,
the senile gods and goddesses
recline, drift and dream.
Unremembered,
they do not speak.
Unheard, forgotten
they fade
even as the jet trail
cleaves the sky
as the rent in the garment
of ozone grows.
Therefore
I spill wine
upon the earth.
Make me a clear lens,
a permeable membrane
a tuned string.
Through my skin
and sense
wash the torrent
of sorrow and defilement
away.
I approach the moving water,
the sacred stream
to drink and cleanse,
return to the fig tree
in the evening
to await
the return of morning.
What else can a woman do?
After the long night
of history,
after the long night
of nearly knowing,
we puffed-up ones
sentient as dinosaurs
with ravening appetites
and locked-up senses
still scrabble for a foothold
in the crumbling ruin
of pyramids
the nomad shepherds built
in bondage.
Do we now await
the breakfast of Revelations?
Earthquake
Avalanche
Hurricane
Tsunami
Drought and Famine
Set upon our table
Or is there at work
some unseen Alchemy
in the realm of the Ineffable,
invisible hands
spilling the wine
and consecrating
the sacred soil.
And we awaken
as if from a dream
to see night become day again
and the spring return
after an arduous winter
and listen once more
to the voice of the Earth?
********************
Email Migration
Do we go to the dock and wave goodbye?
Do we bring our nets and catch the fry,
succulent, toothsome, close to the bone?
Do we chase them into a frenzy…frantic like
veal calves looking for their mothers
and the church bells toll…?
Or do we bring bouquets of roses,
nosegays of violets
and (were they lost? ) found files?
Do we buy up their used and discarded clipboards?
Would they fetch a good price?
Do we haggle over hardware and trash?
Do we hide their balloons?
Would stragglers stow away in an empty in-box?
If we come late, do we miss the boat?
Do we bring documents for the server?
Do passwords need passports?
Will there be snacks?
Where are they going,
these bold and brash travellers
these nomads,these pilgrims,
these greenhorn emigrées?
What far shores summoning
what clandestine cause stirring
what impulses inciting
what fierce stars igniting
what constraint, ignominy
or consequence escaping?
what ill winds propel them?
Wither, to what recipients aware
or unaware of messages sent or
thwarted by some mailer daemon
declaring permanent fatal errors.
Do they travel in legions,in pods,
or in squadrons in line formation?
in unison? in dischord? in four part harmony?
or solitary,like seekers, like poets,
who wander desultorily hapless,
or in path -less serendipity
harkening mystery?
or like lovers blending and rending
ripe with deep sorrows
bursting with pleasures,
lingering and touching
against the time of parting.
Would nicknames be known ?
Will there be transfers?
What about their attatchments…
left behind and forgotten
or trailing happily ever after ?
Do they wear babushkas
carry brass candlesticks
wrapped in the family lace,
mutter to angels
and play on mandolins?
Who turns off the line?
Do they migrate quite often
or once upon a time?
Booted up and booted out,
what are their options?
Can they really escape?
In search of signs and fair weather
all sorrows deleted,
shiftless unteathered,
what do they venture
and hazard and win?
Will they return
foot sore and heart hurt
beloved and missed
or do they go
like lemmings
a way away
forever
ever
ever
and
out
>
Caucus
The crows have been gathering,
circling and cawing.
I think they’re talking about us,
weighing benefit against detriment,
the damage to our common home
caused by our our thoughtless ineptitudes
challenging our place at the table
among the sentient generations
occupying a niche in harmony
with other contiguous beings…
not that there isn’t blood
on coyote’s muzzle
or plundering intent
in plants vying for light.
But we, the so called
crown of creation,
have missed the mark.
Everyone is wondering
if we shall relinquish
dominion for stewarding,
occupying a task and niche
the Algonquin named human…
clearing away the fallen trees
using poles for shelter, logs for fire.
Perfect for nomad hunters,
canny gatherers and basket makers.
But we, restless for ease,
ceased following the herds,
settled on alluvial plains,
planting grain to hoard
against famine and hunger,
preferring too much to not enough.
We learned to specialize, schematize,
relegate and script,
forgetting how to live by our wits,
how to track and outsmart game to survive.
Men still take these skills to the market
place, to outmanoeuvre, make a killing.
Perhaps we go to war to live this way,
to try ourselves in the primal arena
for the thrill of adrenaline.
Can the crows trust us?
They endured slag heap
and strip mine barrens,
iron horse and coal dust,
carbon and car.
Earth air and water are
losing resilience and vigor.
How many springs released
dormant fields from
the grip of winter,
all inheld breath released
in blossom and fruit:
the eternal round
of endings, beginnings,
over and over, seeming forever,
but no, not so.
We have marked the silent spring.
Now here we are: melting ice, stranded bears,
oil spills, and oil slick sick rookeries,
dying wetland, arid farmland,
disappearing rootstock and seed.
Passive hurtling consuming being,
vanishing language, knowledge, skill…
lost arts, lost crafts, lost fair and share.
The crows are gathering…
likewise the whales
in deep sea water
swimming away
from the islands of plastic,
away from the sonar blast.
I have heard them grieving.
Listen to the “Songs
of the Humpback Whales.”
Listen.
What shall become of us?
I consider how to recover…
children restored to the garden,
curious and willing to learn
what cultivation grows in us.
Feed the alembic
a meal of molten metal,
a sacrificial offering
of futile weapons.
Take from the furnace tools.
Challenge the valiant masculine
to really solve the riddle of the Sphinx.
Let the young men vying
for cock of the walk throw away
their shivs and pistols
and take up the bravado
of break dancing again instead.
Let the heroes restore the wasteland
our depredations have made.
Surely we can make a niche
in concert with every other part,
none more entitled than the rest.
Surely we will outgrow our afflictions
as we did when we were children
learning decorum and restrained
from pooping in our pants.
I tell this to the crows,
but who knows what they’ll say.
And who would speak for us?
****************
The crows have been gathering,
circling and cawing.
I think they’re talking about us,
weighing benefit against
the damage of our presence
among the sentient generations
occupying a niche in harmony
with other graceful beings…
not that there isn’t blood
on coyote’s muzzle
or plundering intent
in plants vying for light.
But we, the so called
crown of creation,
have missed the mark.
Everyone is wondering
if we shall relinquish
dominion for stewarding,
occupying a task and niche
the Algonquin named human…
clearing away the fallen trees
using poles for shelter, logs for fire.
Perfect for nomad hunters,
canny gatherers and basket makers.
But we, restless for ease,
ceased following the herds,
settled on alluvial plains,
planting grain to hoard
against famine and hunger,
preferring too much to not enough.
We learned to specialize, schematize,
relegate and script,
forgetting how to live by our wits,
how to track and outsmart game to survive.
Men still take these skills to the market
place, to outmanoeuvre, make a killing.
Perhaps we go to war to live this way,
to try ourselves in the primal arena
for the thrill of adrenaline.
Can the crows trust us?
They endured slag heap
and strip mine barrens,
iron horse and coal dust,
carbon and car.
Earth air and water are
losing resilience and vigor.
How many springs released
dormant fields from
the grip of winter,
all inheld breath released
in blossom and fruit:
the eternal round
of endings, beginnings,
over and over, seeming forever,
but no, not so.
We have marked the silent spring.
Now here we are: melting ice, stranded bears,
oil spills, and oil slick sick rookeries,
dying wetland, arid farmland,
disappearing rootstock and seed.
Passive hurtling consuming being,
vanishing language, knowledge, skill…
lost arts, lost crafts, lost fair and share.
The crows are gathering…
likewise the whales
in deep sea water
swimming away
from the islands of plastic,
away from the sonar blast.
I have heard them grieving.
Listen to the “Songs
of the Humpback Whales.”
Listen.
What shall become of us?
I consider how to recover…
children restored to the garden,
curious and willing to learn
what cultivation grows in us.
Feed the alembic
a meal of molten metal,
a sacrificial offering
of futile weapons.
Take from the furnace tools.
Challenge the valiant masculine
to really solve the riddle of the Sphinx.
Let the young men vying
for cock of the walk throw away
their shivs and pistols
and take up the bravado
of break dancing again instead.
Let the heroes restore the wasteland
our depredations have made.
Surely we can make a niche
in concert with every other part,
none more entitled than the rest.
Surely we will outgrow our afflictions
as we did when we were children
learning decorum and restrained
from pooping in our pants.
I tell this to the crows,
but I’m not sure they are listening.
***********************
Prayer for the Planet
A Warm sleepy afternoon, a trance or haze and possibly
a gate, a window through which arises, emerges, transpires
a prayer for the planet
and the kingdoms of leaf, bower and field,
the creatures of earth, air and water,
the hopes arising from our seemingly benighted species,
a prayer for life.
No where a beginning to this meditation and where, a question,
a quest to place our wild cards and trumps, so that…
the afternoon breeze plays in the quivering bay leaves
along with the mottling light of late afternoon,
so that the little bucks abandon alarm
and stand nibbling their fill of ripe blackberries,
so that the simple pleasures and ripeness of summer continue,
so that all that is at risk may find surety, sustenance,
not merely a ledge or a whisper
but solid ground with enough margin for perpetual flourishing.
May we grow strong and wise and able.
May we enter the fray, not as combatants
but as ardent lovers
to help all live without threat of untimely extinction.
May we find solace and balm to heal the rent and barren places,
the damaged and destroyed, the broken and downtrodden, the polluted and defiled.
May we who heal be healed, made whole.
May we replant the clear cut gashes,
restore habitat to our wilderkind.
May we take up the task with alacrity, with a will,
with steadfast devotion, efficacy and skill.
May hope quicken, love fuel, beauty inspire
and necessity ignite us every day to action.
May loving kindness and gentleness flourish where hatred and cruelty were.
May peace flourish where conflict and strife were.
May harmony flourish in the place of discord.
May understanding and compassion grow from mistrust and retaliation.
May joy flourish in the place of sorrow.
May truth inform us.
May wisdom guide us.
May equity and justice bind us.
May beauty inspire us.
May hope quicken, love fuel, and necessity ignite
us every day to action.
May we serve the great spirit that abides in us all.
May we, dreaming, awaken.
May we, waking, dream
again and again and again
world without end.
****************
For Pat on her 72nd Fling Around the Sun
Vernal Equinox….nothing less august would do,
child of night and day, being and becoming,
being knowing doing:
Integral All of a cloth,
wound and bound to all the seasons:
Begun in Spring, when new life quickens:
Greeny shoots everywhere: in every arena, in every medium
All the blossoms, beauty perceived, Imbibed, created, secreted, embodied
And the largesse and bounty of your fulminating mind, spinning and kenning and minding and finding: Summer’s ample fructification
This cup, that urn ,these poems, this unprecedented thought,
this great composition: words, pots, friends, food, Imagining, understanding
The Autumn of winnowed circumstance and wisdom,
The winter of sacred being, helping the world in its caved slumber
Yourself doing without all that others could not go beyond
And at the very cusp, in the corridor between then and now
no and yes, out and in, inhale and exhale,
spring comes round again
Trembling with new life just as the tide recedes
And the inward journey of departure calls.
Integral All of a cloth,
wound and bound to all weathers:
tropical , polar, temperate: all the weathers of the heart
Every element:
earth earthiness and and grit,
far flung thought and imagining, dreaming, shaping air,
Fiery tempered passion burning kindling, searing,
Fluent Modulatrix, walking upon calm and troubling seas
Swimming through streams and brooks, rivers and lakes
soaring through vapor
standing firm as ice,the unmovable spot,the center of the world
And still warm hearted glad abiding in the cold and chilling days.
Day’s doing ,night dreaming
Clay, the potter’s matter, the potters turn: the least gesture made visible… And fired endures.
Beloved Pat,
I join all who celebrate you today, your birthday,
your splendid fierce and noble life,
Always in your debt
with gratitude and love,
dear great and abiding friend,
I am always yours,
Carla
P.S. If I had any sense at all, I would have started this weeks ago and could have found a way to turn the tadpoles into frogs, the caterpillars
Into Monarchs so they could flutter around your room
elegant ,evanescent , utterly lovely
*********************************
3/17/03 transcription of a recent dream:
It was a wild bull i was running from
after i got off the train,
running to refuge in a brick building…
square rooms regular meals,
hiding out with the women and children…
and as i was leaving,
i saw his other face- etruscan, chisled, noble, adorable.
Then why did I leave?
Why did I live,if you could call it that,
without him?
I slip out the back door and make my way
across the pale grey lawn to the curb
and get into the driver’s seat of my car.
********************
Vernal Love
Verging on Seventy,
my Dance card gapes,
the waltz unclaimed.
Virginia Reel ? Hopping.
Solo boogie? Wow.
But the Fox Trot, Jitterbug
Rumba, Tango!
I will not pop a pastry
in my kisser,
nor haunt the punch bowl
delicately sipping oblivion
While moonlight fades
and the stars expire.
I will marry the spring
and blossom.
I do.
*************
Prologue
Do you think I want to live this way,
a somnambulist, a hungry ghost?
So much effort to stop the mind craving,
opposing what cannot be opposed to be,
my heart longing for a tranquil garden
of apples, roses, garlic and chard…
fertilized by the dung of desire
watered by tears of longing and regret.
Wandering in the shadow-lands,
following the wall forty years or more
through the barren land,
finding oasis in dream,
I am becoming stronger
closer to the door
which I have just lately glimpsed
and through which, doffing my tattered cloak
and dusty shoon, I enter,
feathers unruffled, head bare.
******************
The Hand Dealt
It is a fascinating hand
highs and lows of every suit
and how to play them?
or….wild card place holder
for immanence……..
*************
Everything Calls
I want to take in great draughts of everything
I mean the evanescent flurry of cherry blossoms
in the great gusts of wind late in the day early in May.
and the yellow pollen coating my black car,
a weathering powdered hussy, my chariot…
which I drive from my village to the little town nearby
on a whim, I have no idea why, for what. I simply must.
And when I, parking an ordinary way on an ordinary day,
step out, walk through the glass, encounter mystery…
the black and blue butterfly sitting quietly in the street,
a scruffy tattered thing, and I almost walked by,
but impulsively bent down instead, offering a finger.
In a heartbeat, she climbs aboard and I, her warm conveyance,
rise and softly pad to the nearby brush, the living green,
better than the metal sting of the street, shelter
to continue whatever she was doing in her pause.
I wish I’d let her linger on my warm wrinkled thumb,
we two old tattered things, communing, simply being
on a bright cold afternoon, everyone around us
chattering, walking briskly by, coming and going, as people do.
I wish I had stayed longer, as long as she chose to perch,
extending more time, more self than jitney.
Who knows what might have transpired, what haven,
a pleasure forfeit because in my yard, the new made bed
awaits the bulbs, corms, tubers and roots… the spring is deepening and plant I must if there is to be a flourishing this year. Or so I must have thought, when I left her to her fate,
forgetting the timeless garden, the paradise of I and thou the black and blue butterfly
still evokes, the unbearable ache of spring
I am summoned to each tattering year
transported in vernal warm conveyance.
*************
At the wall of time
The road always leads away
from this here and now.
The gravel path snakes to the gate
and beyond, the old black dog,
grizzled, cantankerous, barks
at my leaving and return,
ignoring my friendly murmurs
and neighborly good will.
So much resists
the attentions of kindness,
the sensibilities of accord.
They go, the young men and women,
heedless of elder counsel,
wanting to see for themselves
the battlefields, the moments of truth.
Easy as a quadratic equation
absolute as a decimal point,
simple as black or white
yes or no
live or die.
They must believe
they offer themselves,
sacrificed blossoms,
to mark,redeem adorn
the wounded valleys,
polluted riverbeds,
the desccrated hills.
Otherwise,
how to make sense of life
pushed up against the wall
of century and millenium,
of time?
Sit in a grey windowless cubicle
in a grey suit,graying hair,
computing digits,
summoning files,
accounting statistics
consulting tables and charts
and cashflow impediments?
How to make sense of life
peppered by betrayal and abandonment
(Where were they for dinner?)
freckled by ignorance
( The square root of one?
a town on the equator?A river running north?
Why one human needs 14 billion a year
and a billion children quietly die
of starvation\,neglect,and abuse every day?)
pocked by disappointment and grief
( What are the percentages,the chances
for a life one chooses,for love and fulfillment?)
and scarred by certain knowledge
the clock is running down.
In the post offices of America
the millenium clocks are running down
second by second
to an anticipated rent in the fabric,
a rupture,
an annihilation, a technical glitch,
an armaggedon manufactured
by the consent of the wounded walking,
the devotees of convention, of status quo
devouring,obliterating impulse and intent
while everything disappears:
this bird,that fish,those dissidents,
the butterflies,the honeybees,
card catalogues,
the old
the young,
peace and contentment–
the kindness of presence
the kindness of attention.
***************
Hyperbole and More
Was a man grew oranger and oranger
By eating carrots in a pewter porringer.
He dined thus thrice daily in every season.
To see most clearly was his reason.
She never spoke in moderation,
But stretched a point, enlarged a theme…
To embellish and brighten was her scheme.
But ears closed and backs turned
And thus, how dull, her words were spurned.
Butter with noodles, buns and spuds.
I no longert fit into my duds.
Polentas, pasta, rice or grain:
Nothing to benefit, too much to gain.
I can take it or leave it he always said.
But his liver couldn’t and now he is dead.
Silken clothing, velvet capes,
Satin sheets, embroidered drapes.
On every surface, gorgeous stuff:
Too much of a good thing…almost enough.
She demanded beauty, insisted on grace
So they straightened her sags and lifted her face,
They tucked her tummy, suctioned her thighs,
Bobbed her nose and lasered her eyes,
Smoothed her wrinkles, frosted her hair,
They plucked not the eyebrows which went..who knows where?
She looked in the mirror – her fine self to see.
“At last,” she said. “It really is me.”
With sumptuous gewgaws he’d daily lavish her
In order, of course, to nightly ravish her.
He wooed her with trinket, bijou, and posy,
Stinting no bauble nor pelt, nor lace cozy.
He plied her with moonshine, bon –bons and tarts.
She took, in the end, his all, not his parts.
Pac Sun Freeway Fiction
After we repealed Prop thirteen,
restored the arts,
rescinded individual rights to corporations,
revived mom-and-pops, family-farms,
replaced throw-away with well-made, enduring…
after agri-megalo-monomoniacal giants fell hard,
mule seeds ceased, fouled fowl released,
loop-holes closed, vested interests reformed fair / square,
dams tumbled, rivers freed…
after we tarred -and-feathered every son of a bush-nekkid emperor,
shamed election/ price- fixers,
pyramid became roundtable;
letter, spirit ;
profit, sustainability ;
competition, cooperation ;
security, opportunity ;
want, enough…
we apologized,
making amends to all
we rubbed- out , enslaved, ripped-off,bombed
and 101 became bike path and skating stream.
*************