At The Crossroads

Ah, sweet symbolism.

"I have a dream," he said.

It's all a dream, first and foremost.

Timing is everything.
It's essential in gardening,
cooking, harvesting, dance,
punchline delivery, leadership,
intimacy and everything else.

The time is ripe for new being.
Change occurs unconcerned with our agreement or not.
What's new is the amassing energy for
a still to be determined experience of the present moment.

The ancestors spoke of this.

We love waking up from a bad dream,
disliking it when it's a good dream.

Collective awakening
while dreaming a new dream is the change.


-musings while at the restaurant at the end of the universe
the lights are dimming and the overture has begun.
Injoy the show.


P.S. If you doubt you live in an upside down world, consider this:
Donkeys are stubborn and resistant
while elephants are known t
o visit the graves of their ancestors.

Last Blood

I become my womb Saharan:
sere, barren.
My fertile crescent changed
by time's hot winds.
I am uterus come to terms
with the absence of coming to term.
No bloodline contribution
did I procreate.

What gift did I deprive my world of?
What missed opportunity?

Oh Daughter,
my own self renewed,
forgive me.
Forgive me.
Or Son, awakened beloved,
You too,
you too.

And yet
yet,
how full and pregnable I remain.
I, earth tethered and still conceiving
that hidden within
is an underground spring
nourishing
a perpetually blooming
oasis desert rose.

2003

Comment allez-vous?

I really would love to have your feedback, suggestions, applause, raspberries or ideas for subjects to riff on. comments welcomed.



thank you

Swept Away

It was during the Autumn of '02 and the drums to war had begun. Cowboy posturing left outlaw guy in black hat, time to hide, to destroy evidence. I sense another Vietnam, another divisive occurrence.

Futility settles upon me like a veil, all cobwebby. "What's the point to this all? Do I desire to lend my energy to this madness? What's it all about, Alfie?" These and other questions do dust devil dances through my brain. Aaaaarrrrrggggghhh!

Meanwhile, a new exhibit titled, "Desire and Devotion" opens at the Albuquerque Museum across from work. On my next Wednesday lunch, I enter, welcomed into zen stillness. This oasis from outer rumblings is showcasing paintings, sculptures and other artifacts from Buddhist temples. All from one collector.

The lure to return was strong and deep. This I did every 3-4 days during the entire run.

One day, an announcement. Exiled Tibetan monk, Losang Samten would be arriving to create a sand mandala entitled The Wheel of Life. This experience I chose to seek out.  I projected that this monk just might have it "more together" than me. I yearned to breathe the same air.

It's midweek of his visit and I arrive with a co-worker, Jessica. The Rinpoche is away at lunch. She and I settle onto a provided couch, she to sleep and I to read on more Tibetan culture.

Calligraphied on a banner hanging overhead is the following:

Just as a stone
is not moved by wind,

Neither are the wise
moved by praise or blame.

~Dharmapasada

Three quarters of an hour later, the monk returns. Making eye contact, he nods while noticing Jess asleep. He beams a smile, inclines his head towards her and gives me a thumbs up gesture.

I confess my first response was, "Damn, I'm here for me." Realizing how absurd I sound to myself, I breathe out frustration and judgement, returning his smile. He greets a few others in the hall before proceeding to his worktable.

The Mandala is 2 days from completion. It is multicolored. He explains the symbolism. Permission was granted by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, to leave it up til the end of the show, rather than erasing it immediately upon completion.

He cradles a long conical metal cylinder, adds colored sand and begins rhythmically tapping the design. We, the crowd stand with a rope separating.. I am behind his left shoulder. While observing, I feel tension, fear and uncertainty start dissolving. In this same instant, clarity occurs. I grasp what I am and what to be.

I am a grain of blue sand in Spirit's mandala.

Nothing more, nothing less. One grain of sand, important to the whole picture.

An immediate sensation of warmth floods me, radiating out from heart chakra. I am joyous. As I offer silent prayer of gratitude, I recognize the true gift of the moment.

I am both creation and creator. Accepting my place in the scheme of things, I am granted the opportunity for overview. I am both perspectives simultaneously. I see from both grain's eye and the sky's.

At this precise moment, the monk straightens, stands erect, then turns looking directly at me and nods. The smile in his eyes acknowledges our shared secret joke. Grinning broadly, I bow in response.

Staying for maybe five more minutes, Jess and I then leave. All that afternoon was an inner glow of remembrance that we do receive what we need when we show up and ask for it. And I needed that instance of heartening to gently guide me through resignation and back to center. I would know myself as a stone not moved by the world's winds swirling.

And the winds of change are moving, make no mistake about that. We are rapidly approaching the completion of The Wheel of Life.

There is nothing to fear. We are but grains of sand, in many hues, that will be returned to Source. In ending there comes beginning.

Some have called our present age, the Kali Yuga.
The Mayans named it, The Fourth World.
Whether, it be Piscean or something else,
death/rebirth are ever present.
Meditate on Death, the 13th Major Arcana of the Tarot.
It is the time of initiation.

All is as it is, and we are continual.

2003

Georgia On My Mind

Today, a Rio Grande valley sky
is her painting,
all endless blue
and cotton puff clouds.

The vista I gaze on
is full up as
a woman satiated
by pleasure.
2 days moistened
by spring rains.
She's beaming.

New Mexico morn
s t r e t c h e d
across forever.
Dry brown slopes to bank,
growing into cottonwood green.

Reservation fields
pushing forth buds of
pepper and tomatillo.

Whistled gratitude
for eternity's etching
upon this face
of our mother.

Waterway arteries
borrowed for seasoning.
The river is high,
spoiling for spillage
on her journey
south.

This morning, this light,
spiraling hawk flight.

I am ancient again
painting on pottery,
smelling growth on
my sister wind.

She carries
mountain stories
in a grain of sand.

Destiny's Jester

Your voice,
like a gulp of cool, clear water,
after a long dusty trek.
A harmonic note, drumming through my skin,
outside in.
Pounding hounding,
through eons of dreams.
Who knew that a beloved,
once cradled chuckle,
would chime within so deeply so long,
resurrecting ghosts from my ancient boneyard.
Here were sensations
I thought long ago dirt buried and sphinx mute,
insistently clamoring
to stand risen in the light.

Once... just a moment before, whilst smiling,
you did as your grandfather directed.
You gave me delicacies sweet.
Into the glass jar you reached,
placing candies of easter color
upon my open left palm.
You welcomed
after I whispered shy thanks.

A paisan's pronouncement
accompanied our quiet exchange,
imprinting itself unbeknownst, in me.
Did you hear this phrase often?
I was teased you know,
on the car ride home.
Even your first told me she'd heard it,
yet that is another tale
for a different page.

What I recall though,
has shadowed me
these many moonlit miles since.
Always there echoing, quietly beckoning.
And so, I returned
to reflesh self
amid familiar aromas of memory,
all rung
by a soul resonating sound.


2004

Bertha's Gift

I am
a storyteller's granddaughter,
storing up and storied.
Found in epic myth
and a day's labor quietly shared,
I am all stories.
Through me, currents flow
and I spill rivers of stars
still unborn.

Dreamers dream a farmer's harvest
envisioning goods a merchant markets.
I am their imagined storehouse of plenty.

I hold dazzled the emperor's court
in exchange for my daily bread.
I am welcomed as circus act,
a curiosity of temporary diversion.
This, for those of lidded vision
who glance neither up, out nor beyond.
I am entered into their story.

Oh yes, dangerous am I
for I might awaken in shuttered breast
a glimpse of wider, untamed skies.
Tempting, I am forbidden fruit.
I hint of incense lit
where passion is life's perfume.
A snake eaten apple of knowledge
as yet unremembered,
I am phallus seed sown in fertile imagination.
Foretold to deliver with each breath's birth,
whole Universes arise to die away
in my singular story.

A pirate's map to buried pleasure,
I am spun threads
and woven yarn.
Squirreled to be savored
while carpet laid,
I kindle winter's warmth.
A cresting wave of story
that changes all with my passing,
I am tsunami's teardrop beginning.

I am the day's take and a life's ledger.
I reconcile accounts
to balance the illusions.
These, mere curtains,
that once opened
reveal eternity's listening heart.

I am
a granddaughter,
telling stories.

Eunice Marguerite

Today is a personal Holy Day.
It is the anniversary of my mother's death.
Every year on this date I plant a rose bush in her honor.
This will be number 19.

I acquired my love of gardening from my mother.
That and reading.
My sister and I both wish
we had kept the paper lunch bags she personalized
with elaborate stick figure drawn stories.
She said she did it so we would know which were ours.
Mom made great lunches with lots of goodies for us to trade.

Daisies were her favorite flowers.
"Clair de Lune" her favorite piece of music
and Joyce Kilmer's sentiments.
"I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as tree..."

Mom: thank you for the mark you left
xoxoxo
this is for you

Redwood Reverie

Afternoon shadow beckons
you enter into ferned glade,
enfolded in leafy stillness.
In silence, anxiety's edges
spill onto forest carpet.
Within these old groves:
mother, maiden, crone
move outside time, beyond trine.
Worn cares of workaday world
find no welcome here
in your soul's realm;
of Nature unveiling
her hidden rhythms.

Decay feeds growth.
Growth strengthens limb.
Limb reaches crown high
to descend again
through renewal's seasons.

July 2004

 

And so I begin

heart scars
tatted,
form gossamer lace.

intricate weaves,
these
threaded webs.

written as
vibrant hue and tone,
vibrating strings
thrum soul's symphony.

i make of myself
a tapestry of tellings.

thus this,
a spirit song-line
cast outward
in word.

october '03