One day the maple dropped sap,
another day, bud cases.
Seeds waved goodbye
all the way to the ground,
to leaves young and ripening,
leaves that made promises
as if summer never ended.

Of course, the maple filled with snow,
dropped clumps,
dripped liquid threads that froze near nighttime–
just days before the bees arrived,
nodded into the maple flowers,
into the cells of fallen honeycomb,
fragrant, caramelizing in the sun.

Glass shatters and is beautiful,
losing nothing but form.
People fall apart and are ill.
Better fall instantly
to first frost,
expire early in drought,
collapse on mild earthquakes,
dissolve in sun showers.
Hardiness strives so long for its own fibrous form.
We might cheer to break
like glass,
like lightning:
from one crack
to countless
clear
light
sharp

irretrievable

sparks.

Art by Adrian Bezanis

This predecessor mood next to its successor
is
…they are transient as two bodies
one light/one shadow
that pass each other in the deep blue sky.

The corona rounds its infinite shadow
and is brighter.
The moon is a perfect orb of ink.
Light is a whiter reflection of darkness.
They pass each other in the deep blue sky

Land of Lincoln corn,
rows of cool and knee high in July,
rise between their leaves,
their green palms
in uniform prayer.

Feed corn fattens eunuch beef.
Seed corn grows sterile.
Come August ripe
the corn rows grow obscene,
drinking and exhaling in a crowded haze.

Soon, farmlands settle,
lightened by harvest…
the export of corn
by truck and train

to farmers

in Mexico
where Guadalupe tastes memories
of elote, of her own maize.

After Zapata
before NAFTA,
the kernels of cream
became grains of sun
for winter meals.

Her field now is a field
of whisk brooms
sweeping dust.

She buys her meal,
uniformed corn that
shoulders through the markets–
profuse, competitive,
from the Land of Lincoln.

Guadalupe daydreams
while sweeping
imagining the daydreams
of a Zapatista.

Support small farms and food security in Mexico!     http://sunnu.org/en/

Maybe goats are not what they eat (trash),
so this goat laughs.

He is the coffeehouse mascot,
the small god of the almost-outsiders,
the gargoyle that guards our beans.

He is a goat at the coffee bar
and he is annoyed
at the heaving motors of the cooler.

So he laughs.
Annoyance is ridiculous refuse, and we all know:
we enjoy our annoyances.

Eat them.

Marigold candles
light November- gray headstones

Calendula blossoms
glow all through
the snow

then disappear in secret
before green cracks the cold

on the spring solstice

 –for Nan-in, when the teacher simply pours too much

a blossom-painted cup on a linen field
was over-poured and overflowed
on an oolong afternoon

when a cup cannot be persuaded by the spout
to hold more
its rims trail tea veils

while the dog looks away
eyes birds but sits
until it too has had enough
and whines for water

brings on the rain–
peace, and the end of an oo-long picnic.

Nan-in was a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912); he famously taught: “You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

If we forget, sweating gives a sense of it,
of nakedness,
from the inside out.

Remember our naked childhoods:
the rasped knees,
sand in our teeth,
water in our ears…
the things they made us eat
(with our bare tongues!),
time and again, what we hadn’t meant to say,
but stumbled, and did.

So, we played with fairy tales.
Now we hide in our dishabille,
bit in half by desire:
one for illusion,
one, stronger, for one another’s eyes.

Such mammals as we are,
we are chimps in the nude,
still startled out of nakedness
by the sight of nothing
but our own hides.

The house is a cluster of walls
whose thresholds and floorboards each adopts
its own angle of repose, as animals sleeping.
Its bricks are set-and-set together but
–bulge, bend, shift–
hold onto form like an organism.

It is a house
placed on foothills,
that pulls itself up, slowly,
to the mountains.

At first its lumber shrieked
and groaned itself from a hundred-year sleep.
Nails and pipes and cables resisted
but only worked up
an appetite
for uselessness.

Dis-integration is some motion.
Still, gravity never brings a house down,
it’s the house reaching upslope,
it’s shambling towards wilderness.

There are so many ways to end a story in which a grown woman responds to consuming troubles. As long as there are men to be left behind, she may well swallow pills or throw herself in front of a train. What if Anna Karenina, rather than choosing the death-by-train option, were to dress in her warmest clothes, and with a rifle bought or borrowed walk toward a wilderness?

If she had essential care for herself, it being winter, she would think to carry food and water, fuel, and blankets of down or fur. If not, she would likely turn to prayer, for someone to rescue her from fatal exposure. Sometimes it is so much easier to walk straight ahead, toward everything and nothing, even toward death. Better to travel lightly but truly equipped, and a with a desire to see another sunrise.

Without wanting or needing rescue, a woman would bless the wind that covers her tracks in the snow. She would rest in unmarked places. Well, she might. She might wonder what people might think of her if she re-emerges from the forest or desert or tundra. This should not concern her. Neither should the stories that will be created to explain her.

Imagine such freedom. Don’t worry whether your imagery plays nice with norms. Just settle into a warmly tufted chair lined with two pillows–one each of knowledge and mystery. What do you see? Deep snow? The woman falls repeatedly and still gets up to drag herself through the landscape? What if she encounters the perfect location for her life there? And she builds it. It grows.

Again, there are so many ways for a story. There are at least as many ways for a woman to place her feet on an expanse of earth, if expanse is what she aims for.

Her fire may go out, but she reignites it. Her food may run out, but she learns the nuts and animals, and gathers her life from them, her bread. Her shelter may tear or crumble in the cold wind, but repairs are her occupation afternoons. Loneliness may seem like a predator on an especially lonely day, but she defends the fecundity of her life, and of her everyday ally, mortality.

These are conditions. Others are as beautiful. This is a fictional woman. Others are as real. Imagine that Anna foreswore society. Imagine she walked away from constructed perils, like us, with our lives in our own hands.

Remembering on this Dia de Los Muertos those who, in their lives, encouraged love and peace…and my  own  spiritual freedom.
To Charlotte Harrison, Paul Raccah,  & Micah True. RIP.

Well loved in a world of

well-loved children,

and of fathers who do not die

holding guns,

A child is unaware

that no stone breaks her glass

no blood floods her milk

no light fades from her lamp–

that her sons will live,

without armies.

No one ever doubts

she belongs everywhere,

to be daring and safe

everywhere.

What will she do with so much peace?

She will create without creating possessions,

paint her dreams on unlocked doors.

When we have forgotten

the ancient religion:

of fear and war.

In memory of Micah True, aka. Caballo Blanco,
who lived some months of each year in Mexico’s Copper Canyon

Give him the reins
to the ghost horse
and the guide will remove the straps
from its face and neck.
Then, they will cross the border together.

They will begin forgetting,
when walking through the city
of commuters with inventive ways
to carry worry.

They will forget the dollar
and the peso,
and thirst, for anything.

When roads disappear,
they will forget news, words,
and especially the task of asking
who they were.

The ghost horse,
his ribs and flanks will forget,
his white hide will forget
every boot heel,
wrong or right.

Together, they will breathe nightfall
with the Chihuahuan desert,
where sage soothes the sunset
as it strives behind mesquite branches,
and where wood fires in the canyon
gather Rarámuri faces
around.

They will forget
to celebrate or mourn.

All the love they’ve known is in the pollen
of purple jacarandas,
and in the maize pots, filled
for those who have become their kin.

With thanks for thoughts on border-crossings derived from the play, De Camino al Ahorita, by Raúl Dorantes.