A Tangle of Snakes

The glimmer of light on wire

like water sliding along a string,

both move with a grace,

a simplicity which eludes the rest of us.

Or do we elude it, yearning

to be complex and complicated,

wanting at once to be more,

everything even, so much more

than the knot of desires

that sits within, deep, low in the belly,

writhing like the tangle of snakes

it is, becoming less as it twists,

tightens, until after a time it is

spent, this knot, as fragile and dense

as a delicate chain abandoned in a box.

If yearning could set us free

we would slide, unencumbered
to the other side.

Bathtub on the Mississippi

Now and again I see Mr. Twain,

white-haired and white-suited,

pipe in hand, twinkly eyes,

like someone else’s grand dad

that I secretly wish were mine.

We float down the Muddy,

a clawfoot tub our raft,

chased by Huck’s dad

who chucks bottles at us as he drains them.

Mr. Twain never flinches while

I row, my arms aching.  I dodge and duck, each bottle

mere fractions of an inch from clocking me.

Somehow the bottles are filled with rolled paper

messages, I think, I hope, some paramount

lesson that I must read, learn, remember.

But when let go of the oars, uncork the bottles,

and  unroll the papers, the ink

is smeared, wet from the river.

I can’t read a single letter.

Mr. Twain beams at the river like a father.

I realize abruptly that I’m sunburned and

homesick, and we’re quickly being sucked into

the churn of a steamboat.

Huck’s dad has long since rowed for shore,

his canoe vanishing in the reeds.  I look

at Mr. Twain, and our oars have disappeared,

chewed up in the turning cylinder of paddles from the

steamboat, which grows larger, louder.

We’re sprayed with water, the bathtub

is sinking.  Mr. Twain, though, is his

characteristic calm,

observing the situation and

smacking his pipe.  I’m drenched

and about to be pulled under,

the churning water is deafening.

Mr. Twain puffs again, the pipe still

miraculously lit.  “You don’t expect me

to save you, now?”  And I’m

submerged, my lungs imploding

from the pressure of the water until

somehow, I surface and gasp, inhale –

I’m on the couch, my hair damp and river-smelly,

an open book on my heaving

chest, Tom, Becky, and Injun Joe racing into

the cave.  I sniff, catching the faint scent
of pipe smoke in the air.

Your Silt Dreams

What you said and what you wanted

were never the same thing.

Later, we wondered what

might have happened if you ever spit out the gravel,

remnants of a dam,

never commissioned but built anyway.

Words washed downstream in the flood

of desires piled up behind it –

silt dreams of what might have been

what you might have been –

if not for drowning yourself,

weighted, pulled under by the current.

Why didn’t you splash,

wave your arms wildly?

How else would we have noticed

your silent distress,

distracted as we were

by the squeals of young ones playing on the shore,

by the kites and birds soaring above us?

Really,

we could have thrown you a lifeline,

reeled you in, administered first aid.

But you floated along,

until the undertow we couldn’t acknowledge

lured you quietly out to sea,

your submerged limbs thrashing,

tempting those familiar sharks

that devoured you, slowly, from within,

while on the shore, we built sandcastles
that would be washed away by the tide before dawn.

Satisfied in August

I wanted to share with you the scent

of the cliff rose this morning, honeyed milk drifting

from the tiny fried egg blooms tinged barely green,

unblinking in the morning sun.  Side oats gramma grass

tickles my knees as I follow the tracks in the dried mud 

of the trail.  Coyote and plain old dog, for sure,

the vaguely heart-shaped deer impression, too, and here

and there, bobcat, I hope.  All around, a rainbow blooms:

orange globe mallow, smoky purple verbena, fiery Indian

paintbrush, yellow goldenrod, datura, purest white and deadly. 

There’s another too, which I’ve not noted before, with

gentian trumpets.  How many greens would you perceive,

from the lush grasses, monsoon-summoned, to trees and

shrubs, satisfied in August.  A solitary blue-black

feather floats on a swaying grass cluster, a raven’s calling

card dropped from thermals high above.  The breeze shifts,

curls around my ear, whispers, autumn’s on its way, on its way,

on its way.  There is a knowing, a stirring inside, an urge to prepare

and preserve, to gather and stash, yet this morning, this first, for you.

Somewhere You’ve Never Been

Everywhere you go will be somewhere you’ve never been.

As you drive north on Highway 64 to the Grand Canyon,

the ponderosa pines give way to scraggly junipers.  The sky is wide,

wider perhaps than you’ve ever seen it, and it seems

entirely probable from here that this same sky stretches

beyond these horizons, from Budapest to Beijing.

On the drive you expect a glimpse of the canyon, a vista between

the trees, perhaps, especially if this is not your first visit to a

national park.  A little teaser shot would be nice, you think.  But

there’s nothing but a few nondescript hills, even more trees,

and sad, yellow grasses pushing up through the cinders.

Past Tusayan (am I pronouncing that correctly?), you’re back among

the ponderosa again.  Just when you begin to lose all hope of

arriving, doubting that this road might ever end, there are suddenly

stop signs, stone buildings, people, parking lots!  And so you park, still

wondering if all those miles you’ve driven were for naught.

Afterall, who hasn’t seen a canyon?

They’re everywhere, right, as common as can be?  Even so, you sling

your binoculars across your chest, camera in hand, you follow the signs pointing

toward the rim.  You make your way through throngs of people.  There

must be busloads of them, speaking languages you’ve never heard

until now.  Looking down, you pick your way along the uneven

sidewalk, not wanting a twisted ankle.  And so, it isn’t until

you finally, truly, reach that edge that you look up, expecting more

trees, more hordes of people, stone buildings, smelly mules.

But this is where your breath catches.  Your eyes, taking in 

the sea of canyon, struggle not to spill over.  How it is possible 

that the earth is so many hued?  How could an absence be 

so vast?  What could make a poet forget her words?

Faith's Symphony

I walked along the windswept beach, while a dense fog hovered beyond
the breakers, a barrier to this in-between place of water meeting land, land
meeting water.  A fine mist coated the boulders and trees, made the chilled
air heavy and dull. The cliffs behind me, scarred here, there, a warning of
their dynamic quest for equilibrium.  I was alone and pondering faith,
and stooped to pick up a rock, the size of my fist.  It was weighty, solid, grey
granite, fit perfectly in my hand, comfort in my palm.  Its smoothness proof
of the tenacity of wave and water.  Keep trying, I read in this gospel etched in stone,
Some things take time, whispered the waves.  Endure.  I watched the waves as
they worked, doing what they were meant to do.  I stood, still, in this borderland,
this convergence of worlds, and listened.  I held the cool stone, the grey sky melding
with the mist, and thought of the changing lunar face pulling on this water from
afar, like lost love.  But not until my head was quiet, the static of my thoughts calm -
then I heard them singing, those rocks, still rising and falling in the surf, their turmoil
a symphony of faith.  Singing, tumbling like joyful pups, falling over themselves again
and again, their essence revealed by the exhilaration of their existence.  I kissed the
stone and left it on the beach, in the arched hollow where it had been placed by the
force of tides, redeemed, for now  - respite among the grains we are slowly becoming.

Guest post: Arden, age 9

Crazy Horse

One day I was sittin’ on the range
when my horse started to act kinda strange.
He started buckin’
He reared up in the sky,
And I thought to myself, “Oh my!”
He galloped, scared away the crows.
Then he disappeared out of sight.
I started to get up, thinking
I might catch him, I might.
He came back toward me, chargin’ like cattle in a stampede,
Then jolted to a stop right in front of me.
One day I was sittin’ on the range
When my horse started to act kind strange.

(Arden's 1st place poem, as judged by the Cowboy Poets.  She'll read this at the Cowboy Poet Gathering in August.)

The Custom

We found the bones in the garden, bones so tiny some
might scoff at their insignificance.  They were entwined in
a pellet of grey fluff and dust that broke apart as you placed
it upon a small blue plate.  The bones, broken shards with points
so sharp - how had they not injured the owl that had digested
the rest of this small creature?  Separating these bones from the
chaff, we sorted, hoping to discover their origin.  Was this an
animal that scurried?  Slithered?  Flew?  In our minds we struggled  
to assemble the puzzling inventory:  half a cracked nickel-sized
pelvis, an assortment of broken hollow bones, two tiny ivory
incisors, a single bead of vertebra.  I reflected on an owl we’d
found years ago, barely uncovered on the banks of a dry wash
in the Canyon, its sturdy legs all that jutted out from the sand
beneath a boulder.  Talons glinted as the breeze made sway its
downy tufts.  How had it come to be there, buried as it was, under
that marker?  Such is not the custom of owls.  We dared not
disturb that static symbol of death and wisdom, perhaps sensing our
precarious perch on the other side of such things.  These
inscrutable proofs of death as life, a lesson to express that which
does not nourish now, of leaving behind something to enrich the
soil.  I took the blue plate outside, satisfied with the endurance of 
mystery, and sprinkled the bones and dust in the garden, returning
them, as is our custom, to the earth where all ends and begins.  Briefly,
they shone in that loam, like your smile in the darkness, like
our moon before another levied dawn.

Surge

You awake in the fog of after
which obscures all that was before.
It’s palpable, like sheets

binding you to a nightmare.

You are flung into a stifling, scratchy
grey, suffocating from a lack

of space, an abrupt knowledge

of finite.  It is too much.  You form the words 
but they emerge like sounds on a slow

reel, heavy bubbles popping

under their own mass.  Disoriented, tossed
about, you are throttled again

again again toward fear’s maw

from each crest and trough.  You flail,
turning, driven below and forced

to the surface where you gasp.

But then you hear other words, another
voice that is within but isn’t either.

You cannot float if you are struggling.

And so you release, you give
yourself up, not down, and you let yourself
be carried.  It is then that you begin

to focus, to see the hint of light that
did not yet exist in that moment before night
ends and something else begins.

You watch, in awe, as dawn streaks

the sky with color, a steady warp from east to west
and you realize you are no longer adrift

or alone, but buoyed by a love that

surges like a wave, carrying you back to shore, no
longer ensnared.  Your feet touch

soft sand, terra firma, and you step

forward to greet the day with the quiet
hope that only dawn can bring.

Enough

Is it enough to watch a
sunset, to mark the passing of
yet another ordinary day?
The manifestation of the good,
constant god that indeed
provides, around whom we
most certainly orbit - is it
enough to witness this disc
sliding beyond the hills?  The
potency of its strength
evident once it has disappeared: 
the rosy glow of the earth
behind me after its vanishing, the
mounting darkness a contrast
to our beacon’s warmth.
 
Is it enough to coax a
seed into life?  To prepare a
space for its stored energy to
inhabit, a loamy soft bed
where it can stretch - roots and
stalk - and turn its face,
eventually, to the light. 

Is it enough to love as best we

can, which is to say, often
inadequately, now and again
without seams that pucker and
bind.  There are moments
fleeting as the exclamation
of color that builds at day’s end -
moments of weightlessness,
compassion, when we fold
into one another, purely,
simply, without terms. 

Is it enough to write a

poem?  To fill the page with
words that lack precision,
and surge and ebb,
stilted in their development. 
Words are just the tools I use. 
The same words that I struggle
with, these are the ones
that Shakespeare and Tennyson
shepherded, now entrusted to us. 

If all we have is each other,

this space the only comfort, our
solace, a soft carpet upon
which we soothe our weary
soles and souls, let us find
wonder in this just as we might
greet the sun’s return tomorrow: 
a miracle of gratitude, the lost
traveler, at last, journeyed home.

 

 

Dappled Markers

That Sunday was one of those glorious November days,
leaves gold and gentle flame,
like the sun’s warmth against my skin. 
Rumors of the storm on the way still implausible, improbable,
and yet,
knowing that Indian summers never last in spite of their popularity among us,
the forecast made that Sunday more ephemeral than most.
And so, I pushed aside the weight of work’s dreaded week
and pulled on my gloves.  Outside,
in the mottled shade of the trees,
high clouds skittering far above,
I heard the whisper of my old English professor,
surely gone by now: 
Glory be to God for dappled things - for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow
and into the garden I strode, the tasks in mind: 
shaking the delicate cosmos stalks to
release their black needle-like seeds, raking
the expired vines, and finally,
drawing a thick black blanket of mulch
up to the chin of this small plot of mine,
tucking it in, cozy and ready to sleep until spring.
With each seed that fell, each leaf that crackled, I thought again
on Pied Beauty and how these days of fall
are as intense in their loveliness as the blooms of spring. 
This dying, this swansong of color
a reminder of the beauty and serenity of surrender,
of these markers of the passage of time,
of our basic need for the rest and respite winter months provide,
a reminder of all that we’ve borrowed and will never repay.