It’s hard not to insert myself into
The Poem
Of course these are my feelings
Expressed herein
To de-objectify my experience
Is often a poetic sin
For how am I to communicate
These thoughts and dreams
If I don’t put myself at
The Center of Things
My desire to write has come
And gone but it is
My love of Nature that brings
Out these songs
I must denote these beautiful places
That bring me joy in these outward spaces
The winds whip
the wiley willows
Young with spring fronds
The waters swish
and turn as the morning birds
search for meal
They caw and call
As they peck the soil
And live to breed another day
New Village
Pecos River
Peace and Heaven
I stand on the side of the road. For she has stood for me, stood for Freedom, for choices, for opportunities un-bounded. Of course, she stands for interruptions as well. Dead ends; roads closed; terminus and for some she is the end of all things before her. The end of a journey; the end of a life; the end of a generation of prosperity. As I stand on the black tar in the hot desert, the orange glow of the sun casting my shadow across the glimmering mirage that dissects her never-ending sprawl across the sand, I can’t help but feel lost. Evacuated from time and space. I don’t know if the sun is rising or setting. There are no clues but my own presence observing the history of her procession across this place. I fall to my knees as if to pray, kiss the hot gravel and feel the surge of every road I’ve ever taken — After hours of driving through the Rockies we reached the end with a washed out road and had to turn back the way we came. The miles of road we travelled all night from Walla Walla to Las Vegas on the bus, the city a beacon of light shining out of the desolate night. Trading cigarettes for whiskey with a Navajo man at 6am when I wasn’t old enough to have breakfast in the casino back in the days before anyone cared that you weren’t old enough to be in the casino buying breakfast and pulling slots. The long drives from Prescott to Oklahoma along I-40 (aka Rt. 66), Albuquerque being the mid-point where I always remembered the dancing cottonwood leaves shining behind the bridge as we pressed on for Texas. The back and forth between Lansing and Louisville via Indianapolis or Cincinnati where the highways were pulmonary arteries throbbing with American life. All of this pavement laid down over the bones of those whose land this once was. So many forgotten dreams of the dead who got in the way of the road’s progress. So much progress fallen under the knee of authority that presses faces into pavement until they can’t breathe because they believe this black road must be painted with white dividing lines. These bypasses that left behind and isolated these segregated communities who now struggle and cry for the American dream that was paved to make way for Amazon and the next off-ramp to the nearest Wal*Mart. And, yet I must defend her. She has given me so many choices; taken me time and again into the beauty of our mountains and forests. She has driven my dreams of change and fueled my ambitions to do something bigger with my life. She has done nothing to us or for us, yet she lets us be good or bad or something or no one. She is my friend and my lover and I must forgive her abuses by the hands of the unworthy. I must revel in her possibility to bring dreams into the night of our awakening dawn.
The blue screen won’t load
The news is old
The fire is hot
The coffee is cold
I must be in the right place
The wind whistles through the trees
The air wheezes as I breathe
The dirt is dirty with blackest soot
The trees have fallen exposing roots
I must be in the right place
I am in the write place
With time to think
And craft this space
With smoke in my eyes there’s time to blink
I must be in the right place
With many miles and tires worn
My skin the sun seeks to absorb
The camp is set, the children fed
No fingers, smashed, no nothing bled
I must be in the right place
Comanche – So the say
“Kohmats” more particularly
Best to make friends
Or be of great use
Otherwise, against, you’ll suffer abuse
Death, torture and rape
No greater friend than
The new minted Mustang
Emblazoned brand
Of the great plains band
Who had many foes
But knows no competition —
Save to better
Fort soldiers in gambling
Games of attrition
Yet, bent around
Their horses necks
They were unrivaled at
who they could best
with brutal speed
and unyielding will
few enemies escaped
their thirst to kill
and take the scalp
children and mounts
and of your women
have their fill…
I sat in a quiet place
Deep in the woods
Very far away
From humans and their
Vibrating city’s sounds
The constant swish of
Cars driving down her streets.
But more than that, the
Prattle and chat of voices gone
There were no songs
Of city birds, fattened and sure
That water and the next meal would come.
No, not the hum of crickets
Not the buzz of flies and mosquitoes
No, nothing to break the sounds
Of my own thinking.
So, when a sound is made
A woodpecker, hawk
or Owl’s tirade, does
Tear the silence into full awareness—
Your mind plays tricks and
Fills the silence with
Sounds of worry, fear and dread.
For the next sound that plays
Will surely be more deadly
Than a bird fetching its morning meal.
Into the woods
The end of summer
Into cold morning
A gleeful glimmer
of a night without incident…
Nothing to prevent
Our awakening
of senses, primordial
Long forgotten, guttural
need for fire and food.
A great horned owl
awakens me from my
darkened state
with the call to its mate
to breakfast.
Brings my morning thoughts around
to the food we hauled up
off the ground
into a tree to ward
off bears out hungry.
A long winding walk, heavy
packs but light thoughts
down to the river’s edge we made.
With campfire rings and
the desire to sing
we make tales of what
adventure bring.
Longitudinal Awareness
Not really a thing —
Not spatial, more sensory
The open capillary of mental exercise
A receptor that activates once in the wild
A slower foot, a surer step
Knowing that it is too quiet
While noting every sound.
The calls of the creatures
No room for mistakes, so
you lay awake wondering if it
be predator or varmint
Alive
Open
Receiving
Consciousness
Ready for the surprises
Except for your own
Mental illness
Migratory Birds
Dying by the 1000s
Warblers
Western Wood Pewee
Fly Catchers
Bluebirds
Blackbirds
Sparrows
—sorrow
Stumbling dumbly
Into the streets
Hit by cars
Falling
Out of
Trees 🌳
Starved
Of nutty energy
Not enough fuel to complete
A journey taken too soon…
For fires 🔥 raged
And burned their homes
Smoke fills the air
And burns their lungs
Away away away away
Into the dry desert sun
Only to keel over
Mid-way through their run
It’s not the apocalypse
Yet, one might blame…the devil
Climate change with dead bird denial!
Her curves cut through him
She is the center of his life
All roads in his city
End upon her shores; Her Mountains
–Earthquakes, Time and her origins–
Embrace him Day and Night
Wind and heat; parch and monsoon
She drinks from the sky
to bring his thirst to an end
He lights Her nights and
bridges her spans
They form this imperfect circle
One man, called by many names
Beeʼeldííl Dahsinil; Arawageeki; Vakêêke;
Alo:ke:k’ya; Gołgéeki’yé — now AL-bə-kur-kee
One woman, loved by the people
mets’ichi chena, posoge, paslápaane
hañapakwa, Tó Baʼáadi, Female River, Great Waters, Rio Grande