Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
The arroyo follows water
that passes through.
Mineral-red, intent,
it wants only
the way of water
that does not gather.
Along it, sprays of chamisa brush
resist browsing creatures,
resist need of rain,
grow fists of gold blossoms-
the daughters of stoics
with their shoulders to the sun.
From the juniper-clustered bend,
coyote watches its joke,
its scat cairn,
without a care for audience.
She will hunt at dusk
where sinkholes evaporate slowly,
lapping with her tongue
beneath the tamarisk
And now, early snow settles low
with strewn pebbles.
Daubed with arroyo red,
it will wash the desert again
toward the Rio Grande.
The snowmelt will flow
from Taos to Matamoros.
Ravens laugh.
Their throats of madrona wood
and tumbling stone,
they ride wind currents
every day,
up and down the arroyos.
Tags: arroyo, caminos, currents, New Mexico, Raven, Rio Grande, snow
Posted in New Mexico Poems, Poetry | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
There are many things that don’t happen.
If a shoe doesn’t come untied, who notices?
Once, I saw a vine that did not creep,
but who knew?
So when a day comes and goes
uncelebrated,
when a voice falls without rising,
when love makes no appearance,
why is it like a breath
taken away?
Maya Angelou wrote:
“Lose something every day…”
and I say:
Let your laces go,
let the voices roll on,
and let love hide
like a guilty dog.
There are many things that don’t happen.
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | 3 Comments »
Friday, October 7th, 2011
a spoon lies on its side,
warm from its bath,
well,
before
a day that is
a crowded drawer.
it is a spoon’s sunrise,
warmth in its belly,
awake,
a gleam
that knows
its origins.
a spoon’s length,
warmed in its veins,
breathes,
a brushstroke
of breath
made visible.
a spoon turns
for the moment,
seeing,
an eye
in a water drop,
of a round world.
spoon on my palm,
its own balance,
its ease is
an even stream
of water
where i live.
Tags: acceptance, equanimity, Love, Morning, spoon
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | No Comments »
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
A nest in autumn is built for winter
against our dispossession in the season.
Our mates turn their eyes from the fields
to the study of warmth, a family of faces,
where dough rises more slowly
but its product is contentment.
What a time for wind storms,
before our acquiescence is secured
again, for one more year.
What a time for gales
when the fields lie low and the shelter
of leaves is blown
away.
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | No Comments »
Sunday, September 25th, 2011
the garden is still unimagined
but alive with un-reliant weeds.
it’s not my house, here, alongside it,
not my eyes in its windows.
long tools in the shed hang with rust–
teeth, still from grinding,
not ancient, not natural, not asleep.
so, my friend, pile aspen logs for the stove,
though no one here is to be warmed
but to a cold sweat.
the world is still frigid.
i sit by a hearth like this,
its eyes of stone and arms of smoke
and want only loneliness in the pines
or the warmth of love-light,
often, from each of your hands.
tonight, deliverance is this bear
who knocks the clay pots, then tears the screens,
smashes the panes…
let it in. let it in.
there is food here, bear,
for your body and your soul.
unlike me, you know what it is for.
i’m ignorant of its purpose,
even this soul of mine—
its abandoned garden.
note: the bear is a bear, not a personification.
Tags: hopelessness, Loss, soul
Posted in Colorado Poems, Poetry | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Creek water runs
as muscle belly, rolling,
extending from metamorphic joints,
flexing deeply in whorls,
lathering where it meets much
resistance.
A woman breaks its surface
with one white toe
and nearly tips.
She trails one hand
on the gleam of creek skin,
over form in its passing.
It is a breach
in her Sunday picnic,
is love or its messenger,
this summer tributary:
insubstantial, muscular as a tongue.
Posted in Colorado Poems, Poetry | No Comments »
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
Updated
For the Mexican poet, Javier Sicilia, on his March for Peace and Justice
following the assassination of his son. And for the healing of Casa Mexico.
The poet leads the demonstration,
silently, on his feet.
Three days they walked together
in a solitude of hundreds,
who gave words from silent moments
between shudders - ni uno mas
of grief - no mas sangre.
From the high green mountains
to the valley of volcanoes
hundreds became millions walking,
walking as pilgrims in a labyrinth
through Mexico’s streets.
Where, in the great plaza,
the poet opened his voice to Casa Mexico
as a father at bedtime prayers
with his only child.
His rosary dangled on his chest.
So much weight, so much on a string of beads.
A heart placed in its crux hears and holds,
with room for our crimes, our petty altruisms
and our interims of beauty.
The poet walks.
We are several million walking,
and with our footsteps, words sway,
as our pendulum over the earth:
- paz y justica con dignidad,
Peace and Justice with Dignity.
[Translations: ni uno mas: not one more. no mas sangre: no more blood.
paz, justica y dignidad: peace, justice and dignity.]
Tags: Ciudad Juarez, Drug War, Javier Sicilia, Marcha por la Paz, Mexican Poet, Mexico, Pact for Peace, Pacto por la Paz, Peace and Justice, Poema para Sicilia
Posted in Mexico Poems | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
For the children of Juarez
Morning.
The barrio radio
pitches hilarity at our windows,
with clumps of baritone, the news.
We try to untwist
from our sheets of sleep.
The day, already binding.
Outside, the bougainvillea
are magenta fountains,
bolder than we in daylight
and bolder at scaling walls.
Mama says, Go learn now.
Your education is public.
Keep your heads low, eyes up.
Our kitchen table stands
still warm from our breakfast bowls,
and Mama’s on the long ride
to a factory on the outskirts.
Until night, when the lightbulb
shivers on its wire
over the shhhh…tunk of Mama’s ironing
on tomorrow’s uniforms.
But we want what the factory makes.
And we do not want to die trying.
Javier died not trying anything.
Without and empty, only walking
where came sudden guns.
Hear? Until he died trying,
Jaime got cash for meth
by the arroyo that disappeared Maria,
and you didn’t hear.
The church pews slump,
old backs of prayer horses,
and Sundays we taste bitter copal
with body and blood.
The supper table stands
on loose legs, with cold places
at vacant chairs.
Don’t let it be.
Don’t let the bougainvillea drop
to piles of sepia,
fragile and faded
like we are already gone.
Tags: Border Town, Drug War, Juarez, Maquiladora, Mexico, Paz y Justica
Posted in Mexico Poems | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
This is a second version, a major revision, of the original High Hillside. Gracias to my sometime mentor for the urging.
In this dust, the scent of feathers,
of peregrine in the cedars.
This dust, ground by wind, softened by rain,
is juniper and gentian seed,
the scent of elk hooves up from the ravine.
This hillside bared by lightning
is ash in the pollen,
is sage budding above the industry of ants.
A place to bring a year and offer it
to dust, to wind-polish,
to weigh its white ribs in the light.
To be, again, a peregrine in the cedars.
Tags: Dust, New Mexico, Renewal
Posted in New Mexico Poems, Poetry | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 21st, 2011
Wear the wind,
wear it on your back where it presses,
where it circles, a blue scarf beneath your lifted hair.
Draw up the air on your face,
and know your thirst for weightlessness
in the solid amber of noon.
Sleep clothed in the pool of every breath ever taken,
by oak leaf or orca, by iron pulled from earth,
the newborn you birthed.
Give the air your own hands,
to feel an entire day in the passage of light,
near as a pulse beneath skin.
You are air and air’s creature.
Tags: Interbeing
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
Winter solstice skies,
where our eyes wade in the deep ink,
this midnight, above our ice-blanched field.
Behind the shed, the wind swats an owl back to nest.
It unnerves our stiffened hinges,
and the limbs of old trees,
but here we stand, cold in our extremities,
when we might gather-in for comfort,
near the fire growing new embers.
Every year it is this way,
we go out to receive again our own desire.
And to tilt again toward lengthening days.
Tags: New Year, Winter Solstice
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
Raven pivots on his tail axis
to flash a belly at the sky,
flips back, quick, to sun his spine,
opens wide
his unibrow of wings –
an inky joke with a corvid beak.
Wind finds readers on picnic blankets
to make books blow at noses,
waggles pages on hinges,
scatters pagination
onto subplots and sandwiches –
a protagonist laughing.
Pasture Grass bows to Wind
to conceal field mice,
shades tracks and traces,
then tosses her blonde hair
at raven’s grin –
a trick cloud behind her shoulder.
Such friends as these,
where everyone winks.
Tags: Raven, Texas Hill Country, Tricksters
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | No Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
This is a valley of farms in the arms of two rivers,
a greened island of mountain shale
that wind brought to gather for an epoch
on a deep pool of salt.
It is a south-shifting valley
where bedrock bends and sandstone bleeds salt,
where rain drives currents through narrows
that clear their windy throats to the valley.
All this is known to the horses grazing
in the rabbitbrush and sage,
in the shade where the lazy apples fall.
And the musicians keep time, but only in passing.
Tags: Moab, Red Rock Desert, Utah
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | No Comments »
Monday, October 18th, 2010
In an era before either God or the camera,
grainy views of forest were peered at
through the shadows of dawn.
Cool air deepened the sky’s own blue
on a clear day.
When colorization was simply plant dye on pale wool
the work tinted an old weaver’s hands,
her fingerprint swirls elaborated
like bright veins within autumn leaves.
She touched what was born or bloomed
without an angle of apprehension,
before we began seeing as, perhaps, we were seen
before the dilation of God’s eye,
on the fading garden.
Now, the camera leads us back–by the eyes,
reflecting through slanted mirrors
what we must see, and what we otherwise cannot.
Tags: Nature, perspective, Photography
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
in Seattle
the sun wears moist shade
and reveres the tides
whose saline acres rock and lick
the basin lips of the bay
all for the savor of kelp and krill
and to dissolve the shore back to sea
the leaf-green bungalow above the port
distills fog behind drowsing windows
under its roof of spreading moss
and shingles of lumber dreaming
all dreaming the slow slow drink
that is sunlight from clouds
Tags: Bay, Puget Sound, Seattle
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
In this dust, the scent of feathers,
of peregrine in the cedars.
This dust ground by wind, softened by rain is
milk quartz and rose granite,
juniper and gentian seed,
the katydid’s wing–all forest dust,
and the scent of elk hooves up from the ravine.
This hillside bared by lightning,
by ash in the pollen,
ventures green, yes, and fresh decay,
hosts whitened rocks so poised
they hide fire ants and are unshaken
by footfall or weeks of gravity.
A place to bring a year and offer it
to dust, to the ferment of beings
in their softening for wind-polish,
to become white ribs in the sun,
weighed in the standard of light…
To be once again a peregrine in the cedars.
Tags: Nature, Renewal
Posted in Other Poems & Places, Poetry | No Comments »
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Between fenceposts to high desert trails
is a gate of brittle juniper sticks and sagging wire
to public paths on the henna-powder mesas,
the pinyon-meal lomas and the chaparral.
Beyond the cottonwoods just over west,
gunshot pops on the sportsmen’s range.
The dry land in between bristles at leaning fences,
complicit with boots in the discouragement of my sneakers.
Neighbors know it is tame enough
or they have faith enough, under wide skies.
Women like me, with freckled arms, walk out here,
willingly meet eyes with ocotillo blossoms
and dawn coyotes.
At the gate, I scan to crossroads for trucks,
for sunglass glints, glances from souped-up cars.
To be unseen. To be alone and unseen.
I can, its likely true, outrun you, imagined one.
But not your bullets, nor a blade from behind thick tamarisk.
No one sees me…
Below the first hill, a rash oasis,
a wash mosaicked with splintered glass,
the widespread tesserae of bottled beer.
At the second, a frame of rusted bed springs stands,
an upright grave marker for a sun-eaten engine
on a sere battleground of latex and rubber viscera.
The third, a downslope scatter of blue cans,
and red, that gave-in to hard heels of old children,
oh, how they gave in.
I hope no one sees me.
Here, fourth hill, is a vantage to green-platinum grasses,
to ridges watched by cedars and natural spires.
This trail, now, chuffs softly under my treads,
sprays powder and pine duff up onto my limbs,
out where pinyons drip incense sap in dry air.
Your air, old children who live in town,
who ride low, and high,
of whom I am afraid.
Loma: little hill
Tags: Fear, New Mexico, Trail Running, Youth
Posted in New Mexico Poems, Poetry | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 10th, 2010
An earthen house sheds at night.
Terra cotta landslides fan out from walls
behind dishes on shelves, below windows,
onto portal stones and the dusty garden.
Because, adobe swells in the cool desert night,
with moisture, and dreams of sleepers in its hold.
A double sedative to those within,
thick adobe and damp sage below windows
bring on ancestral dreams
of silk and water, antler and milk, fire and mazes,
places the sleeper has never been.
In a house with walls that drink them in.
Morning, all dreams are respired in the desert sun,
from interiors through the filter of shelter.
Waking sleepers are light as whistles,
the dreams blown through them.
They open curtains, grind dark coffee.
As the house shifts and dries,
they sweep its edges.
Tags: Adobe, Dreams, New Mexico
Posted in New Mexico Poems, Poetry | No Comments »
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Fence wires hold ends of three horse hairs
from the tail of old Paulo in the meadow.
He grazes, bends, noses the green,
white neck tender and taut as a bow-stroke
of horse tail on a cello.
An old mowing machine disagrees
with itself in the hayfield.
The farmer tends the coughs and roars, the stalls.
He hums, cuts hay and rolls it through dusk,
cools it in damp mounds.
Crickets, you are newcomers in softening grass.
The songs you rub, legs like hairs,
into the night air repeat repeat.
Paulo blinks through the barn window.
He sleeps lightly. The farmer listens.
Tags: Farm, New Mexico
Posted in New Mexico Poems, Poetry | No Comments »
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Cottonwoods rim the two-lane, an alameda out of Española,
a forearm extended into the High Road villages.
Seven miles on, the hand opens to Chimayó,
one palmful of adobe farm homes and a sacred site.
“Martinez,” reads the mailbox on a garden wall.
Packed-earth, the painted wall beams blue.
The Oritz house naps behind a fence of roses, of flames on old vines,
and the Sanctuarario curio shop stands banked by a stone wall
painted Sangre de Cristo red.
Just before the turnoff to “The Lourdes of the West”,
where dirt, rather than water, is sacred when blessed,
a corrugated shed crumples in the weeds
between two fallen companions:
A bulb-headed truck that slumps in the gravel,
a peeling cottage growing gray thorns in the sun.
Across the rusted shed doors, a sign
brushed on in white-paint letters
leaves a forwarding address: Moved to Arroyo Seco.
Moved to Dry Ditch.
Alameda: a road lined with cottonwood trees.
Sanctuarario: sanctuary, church.
Sangre de Cristo: blood of Christ, name of nearby mountain range.
Tags: Chimayo, New Mexico
Posted in New Mexico Poems, Poetry | 3 Comments »
