bluebird canyon, laguna, july 31, 72014

no birds are not dinosaurs
anymore the same way you and i
have two lungs
each
gills given up the ghost
in this sunny valley mid morning
where hummingbirds
a little like flying reptiles
that sparkle come to the hibiscus
so outrageous even the wind
only ruffles skirts
it's a party in a steep walled canyon
where light seeps then colors
now raucous joined by rooster
crying baby truck and avian cacaphony
squee squee  hrrr hrrr huh hrrr
and didgeridoo of unnamed
but not nameless flying reptile
progeny. i used to wonder what our
children would do but now i know
the wind will come down this canyon
whistling in millenia milennia from now
when humans are stories, so changed
by the loping ramble of evolvosaurus
that our daughters' daughters' daughters
etc will be lithe on wing, a flicker
of flight, perhaps the hibiscus still
will offer their pink satellite fabrics
open
to our daughters' d d d d d etc.
who will be green
and flying
and someone else will wonder
are these pteradactyls?

A Visitor

welcome mat

woven or rubber

door may be open 

door may be closed

matters not

step through or up against

feet square 

key under 

“come on in”

“come to stay?”

query

What is your true nature, it asks me,
Part lover, part Zen teacher,
slapping the back of my hand
Til I awaken
You want mountain? Easy--
Sling me across the landscape
like the body of a voluptuous
sleeping grandmother
yes,
a voluptuous, sleeping
grandmother,
or a river
calling one fickle moment after next--
go on, just try to step into me twice

I could claim my calm pool and my drop
rapids and my many many eddies
But that’s too easy
because really what lies at the bottom
of each breath

is the line of ants doing the bunny-hop
along the edge of my bathtub,
and you know what we are all asking,
what you are already thinking—

Why do ants carry their dead?

this tiny army of pumped-up amazons
hoist their fallen sisters onto their backs
and carry this mystery with each body,
as they spill into the hole at the edge of the caulking

..they carry them back and devour them to absorb their memories

...they are delivered to the great ant graveyard
and laid to rest where their sisters,
like weeping elephants, will visit
season after season, to graze their antennae
against the beloved and hollow exoskeletons

..that when they tap each other as they pass
on opposite commutes, they’re playing
an endless game of telephone,
so when the deceased are dismantled
like old motherboards
the punchline data is finally retrieved,
the fruit of a million messages
passed a million times.

I sit for 20 days in silence,
every moment a wrestling match
with god, and a hope
to emerge with my life purpose,
or at least a better sense of humor.
Instead, I emerge from the cave
with only this:
Ants..carry…dead…why?
and the oracle I consult
heaves up a thousand pages of Darwin
and a thousand more, asking the same question

I know the answer is there, but I prefer,
I think, to end my days not knowing,
but imagining,

because
every time I ask, that long line
of the humble and mighty sisters
carries me back to the colony
where everything,
sublime and grotesque,
is happening at once

every question

only north facing shadow pockets still cradle snow now
hope's eager trembling made flesh
looks like daffodils plump emerald leaves
only 2 inches high when it snowed again
and again
now at 4 inches they have decided to make a run for it
their elongated swelling explains how
crumpled yellow satin, bunched and morphing,
is gathering everything it has to fling itself
(how opening is like a leap and a freefall)
and uncurl into this decidedly uncertain world.
it is the answer, the same answer everywhere
to almost every question i ask.
the river, slamming our april fools snow down into the valley,
agrees.
guttural cooing to and fro,
the tree hidden bard owls repeat it.
teenagers strut in sudden april tee shirts,
they know too.
spring hopes eternal.
and the world answers every question i pose
straight from the senses of babes
now now now now now.

when i am old and the wind asks me

as if taking advice
from the movement of greening willow branch,

chartreuse sproutly proudness flex and flocking,

i learn to follow the wind
all in one directly:
full, deep bough-breaths of strands-in-wind.

so when i love you,
let it be like kelp in ocean all moving leeward then land
ward let me pulse
and not pause in staccato ratio-(bana)nality

keeping on moving sliding gliding glowing
flowing fluffing flighting alighting sipping flipping
kiting spriting lefting righting
not one but only one of a thrillion shimmering
butterflies on a monarching tree
in warming climes, climbing northwards
as the sun moves, toward the sun

flowing-fluff and tilting
with the wind and flowing-moving-
toward the warmth

when i am old and the wind asks me
if i have stayed true to the flowing sunward basking
she will have to keep going
to touch me, for i will be faithful
and being both one-with-cloud riding the bareback
of her, wind, i will also be just ahead there
near where the moon (the night sun) is rising, skate-breath-surfing
on the limn where day is turning
flowing
into night
night
night

she will never catch me to ask
what i have become


27 mars 42011

Nature's Answer - Downstream my pain collects

Downstream my pain collects


Downstream my pain collects
Nightly neglect
Lame tree limbed talk
Til dawn lying in wait walk
Seeps into hearts delay
Meets wet bottom today
Downstream my pain collects
Red & white regrets
Shame clung on a clock
Still my body hugs rock
Green water non-stop
Leaps over me top
Keeps coming & going away
& leaves spray
Soaked hair
Not afraid to let go there

"March"

Why do we keep changing our minds, March sky?
When does spring start? (Others are asking, too.)
I feel you, March, your confusion of whys,
your cross tides of opaque gray and clear blue.
Sunshine unhats our bald domes while on high,

a cloud skyline builds in all gray-scale moods.
Wishes and circumstances mix to gray.
We worry our daughter has more than flu—
asthma, we fear, from this commercial bay.
Daydream: we relocate to Hawaii—

except it’s pricey with no jobs, they say.
Our decisions are so multilayered—
our minds change when moths flap in Malaysia.
As life unfolds, we drop what we preferred.
The order is: march. May I march with you?

The last step was proved by what we weathered.
Your next cloudburst catches me unsheltered.

This Week's Prompt: Nature's Answer

William Stafford wrote this poem:

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

—William Stafford

Respond to this poem or write a similar one. What in nature would you want to answer a question about the mistakes you have made? If not this question, what question would you have someone ask, and how would nature (lightning, beehive, trout brook, etc.) relate a response?

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