The Collective of Silence

THE COLLECTIVE OF STILLNESS

There’s not far to go before the land starts insisting

I am alive in every place I stand

The telepathy of clouds

Drawing my face to the sky

The valley bows to my feet

The Rock People watching.

——-

I am listening as hard as I can to the Silence

My ears so still (no cilia vibrating)

No sound save Eternity

Settling in for the long run.

——

Earth whispers to me of immortality

Longing to be a poem

It tells me to take it everywhere

That water-meadow in Wisconsin

Chesapeake Bay largesse

The stone-poems of rock nearby

An unchanging safety

Waiting to claim all flesh

I am immortal as I can be in this moment

The activation of love in a grain of sand.

———

The spare skeleton remains; a lace & calcium poem

Yellow-white teeth resembling long-bone toes

I will be blanched

Gnawed by coyote cubs, dragged, growling, to dens

Sung into sunrise: danced on four legs

——–

Roadside flowers

Visible only en masse

A color smudging the landscape

Wreathing no arches

Serving as Butterfly’s foothold

Nectar in a bitter landscape.

——–

August 4, 2018 0

Truth or Consequences

Some home-town photos…

We have a local trail, called the Healing Waters Trail. It started out at the edge by the informal dog park along the Rio Grande when folks got together to mark off a trail with rocks. It has evolved into a “real” trail with picnic tables, a bench & some pea gravel – whatever has not blown away or been marched away by walkers. Here’s an overlook as one starts climbing. The river is running almost green in the back; the Elephant Butte Dam is letting water out for spring planting. This water will travel to irrigate crops, being controlled through local “acequias” along the way, down to Mexico. (The photos are from Easter weekend 2018 – ignore the incorrect camera dates, please.)

Overlooking T or C –

Mysterious Creature Found Along The Trail:

The sun in a cloudy iris:

Some views of town:

Originals: (Note the prospecting pony painted on the wall over the truck’s hood.)

And shots of Mary’s fence. (Fence art is BIG here!)

Below these are the story of how I met Mary.

I was reading my book one night in my little studio apartment when a knock came at the door. Upon opening it, I found a tall woman in a broomstick skirt, looking quite distressed as she clutched her pocketbook. “I can’t find my car!” she wailed; “I don’t know where I left it.”

“Well, just a sec here, let me get some shoes on & I’ll help you look,” I said. “Did you happen to notice anything around you that stood out when you parked it?”

“No,” she said more quietly now, having garnered help. “Someone told me to come here & see this place. I figured the best way was just to park & walk around,”

“Ok,” I said, having tied on sneakers, “Let’s go!”

We walked around for about twenty minutes until Mary spotted her car on Austin. I waved as she drove off. Next time I came to town, she had her own property & is hiring out as a fence decorator! (This, over the course of five years or so.)

T or C is life lived on a Vortex as powerful, tho not nearly as scenic, as Sedona. It can also be a strange experience if you’re not ready for anything. I’ve lived her on three separate occasions & this one I love the best.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the quick tour, the one vignette, the snip of history & the pictures I took with my sister’s camera.

Love,

Carol

April 3, 2018 2

Each day: a step to heaven (poems)

God-Mother / God-Father

Bear down on me

Birth me into all You wish me to be:

Coming towards you

Coming into me

I know you celebrated before I

Was even conceived

I can see you turning spindles of names

{prayer wheels}

Until you turn my name

Into your breath of me.

My name: both appointment & anointment, I Am.

CoINcidence / CoinCIdence

Seems to be the emphasis can go either way, one being an

Immature Synchronicity,

The other an alignment of two paths.

Coincidence is not coincidence,

They cannot even exist in the same plane

Without interfering with each others’ warp & weft

Not to mention homeostasis.

They are, perhaps, a law of similars, called

In from the Jesters’ Universe …

After you toss your life at the wall or

Find a way to re-begin from where you are.

Keeping From the Eye of Horus

There are better things to do with my time

Than live in any rebellion

Past the stone walls of who I claim to be

Unilateral inner boundaries

Free to be the postage stamp home.

Attention does need to be paid

[Got cash?]

We can’t afford to miss much more than we already have,

Before the change of chance & chance of change

Diverge in some lonely wood.

In the same moment, when we cannot either breathe,

We are connected by a fiercely fiery sending:

“Watch me, Baby, just watch me!”

The highway of life is a toll road, indeed.

Cosmic Volunteers

We are the vols & sometimes it’s not to be believed:

stuck in the laundromat instead of a lifeboat.

Each episode we get to retool the set.

We arrive here curled into a fetal spiral

So well-salted, we match the ocean.

The rest of your life is the Unfolding of it.

An origami of an Avatar.

Some familiar clues / cues

(like enough for an army to follow.)

Status points for not opening the Guidebook.

Eyes Open. Tulku.

Almost

Another of those words

Hanging overhead like

Campfire smoke

Aromatic, heady

Ready to clear into tomorrow

Of the deed done today.

You Call This A Mind?

But everything is right there, on the surface.

Don’t you put anything away?

More likely, you put it down without thinking

(Sometimes I lose major organs that way.)

I entered this Life with a full wall of medals

Later stripped one-by-one

I’ve done my time(s)

I personally have only two thoughts left

The You

The Me

Here, Put This In Your Heart

All the texts

Say, “you can’t take it with you.”

You mostly get to keep some essences,

Ones with evocative & menacing overtones.

The heart is about long-term Memory

Your heart is as big as your God

Who tucked you in between the angel’s wings

With a touch to your cheek, saying

“Don’t you miss a minute! I’ll expect a full report!”

Dubious Honor

I may be the only person on earth who has, yes, here it is, forgotten how to ride a bike.

Make This Viral

I want to be there when the grandfathers tell their peace stories.

“Where Have all the Flowers Gone”

Half-light morning,

I cross the bridge over a rushing Percha Creek

Glancing into it, mid-stride.

I see three young bucks,

Heads twisted over shoulders

Rumps all twitching in time

Not till they face forward

Do I see the burgeoning racks

Still in velvet, flaring in the little light

As, springing onto the low bank, they disappear.

But, Really, I Love You

I conclude two Italian women cannot talk to each other

Without taking turns at being child, maiden, crone all in one conversation:

Whoever is speaking is in charge…

August 8, 2017 1

Rain

4/28-29/17

The rain woke me after midnight. This is the first rain since I’ve been here, just over a month now. I thought at first it was leaves tapping against the concrete walkway outside. I thought, “more sweeping to do” as I’ve swept every day, sometimes twice to keep the walk clear. Saves the heavier work of vacuuming what is tracked or blown in the door.

As I surfaced from full sleep, I realized there could be no leaves this crispy in spring…

This rain is tentative but steady, tap-tapping on the metal roof. I climb from bed to make a cup of chai, and return to cover up & sip it. And listen, cup in one hand, pen in the other. The heavy curtains belly out with that distinctive fragrance: Rain In The Desert. The Balinese cow bell serving as my doorbell sounds quietly, announcing a soft gusting accompaniment of breeze.

(In the desert, the smell of moisture precedes it, distinct & heady from the usual baked-sand scent. This rain will help to settle some of the dust raised by the highway department lately on a mission to dump yet more dirt. This seems to me an exercise in futility since dirt is hardly scarce here & quite abundantly distributed. But with their arcane signage & the unexplained descent of men in orange vests driving orange earthmovers, there is nothing to do but obey the “stop” & “go” of their outriders. I question their purpose & their presence, especially when they leave the soil on the roadway – the one place it was not before their unexplained project. Are they burying us in more?)

When I thought the rain had passed by & started to doze again, another mild volley begins. I can feel the trees outside expanding, the weeds under them reaching out for sustenance. Are there others brewing tea & returning to cover up their legs in bed, just listening to the fall? A rare & delightful sound, a “joyful noise.” Who else in town lies awake scenting this perfume of suspended water falling on a dry world? More than I know? Fewer than I think?

Geoengineering has upended the weather patterns. The changes in Mother Nature herself wing out from that foul ruination of climate integrity. As the sun rolls from yellow to white & the clocks continue a relentless march forward, tonight’s quiet cleansing gentles the planet: rhythmic, soulful, fragrant, musical.

I pull the covers up to my ears & return to sleep, listening to the lullaby.

April 29, 2017 0

Hillsboro

This is my reality now: sun-filled days, whirring wings, the strange, coaxing cries of ring-neck pigeons. A tan-white cat with arctic eyes who visits, meowing, for a pet & a pat. A bedroom in pale green; a bed with a hard mattress I settle into carefully at night. Three deep sinks & water that heats up just as I’m finishing the dishes.

The ocean is above in the sky now, endlessly blue with irregular white waves of cloud. My life is organized as I want it to be, with no commitments other than what I make, no activities other than what I put myself forward to do.

I am rounder here without the regularity of the gym to help. I need a bigger commitment & heavier weights to trim off & I have not yet committed to these. One day soon, though, I will do so.

Here I am not concerned about my age anymore. I don’t fetch up four times a day telling myself I’m a septuagenarian. I don’t feel it here: the light has made me lighter of thought.

I notice things more or I notice more things. It is easier to be kind. I enjoy dressing nicely each day & I really enjoy having nice clothes to dress in. I find myself watching much that goes by, cars, people, animals. The stars seem to wink on when the sky goes black – some celestial switch is flipped. The moon carries proudly into the morning & remains visible most of the day; you just have to look for it. Today is the first day I have thought about seagulls.

History is harsh here, dusty & drowned in risen rivers. In its beginnings as a mining town, there was little enough law (and strangely, this still seems to be of minimal presence as drivers fly through at all speeds except that cited on the limit signs.) There were no rescue groups to distribute blankets & water when tragedy struck. There were raiding Apaches versus “decent” households – huts built on stolen land where the warriors did not want habitation by whites to root or grow. To them, we were the pests with our domestications & demands upon the land, with our claims to scarce water & women dressed in layers & men in hot collars & coats, the children like children everywhere, wild-eyed but brought up to obey, so conflicted (as perhaps even today) by reality & what was passing for civilization. The East imported to the West was an unfitted overlay. Adaptation to local habits was “going native” with all the negative connotations thereto. We are a mixed-match, a blended heritage, a small, tightly-knit community where everyone knows something else about who you are.

I could vacuum everyday so I learn to live with tiny leaves shaped like small dimes carried in on my sandals. Flip-flops pick up grit in the toes – a startling pain – unless I’m staying on the map-cracked sidewalk, I wear closed-toe shoes.

Perhaps the history impacts more here since I grew up at the seashore & so know that with my blood. There is a taut ethic called into survival by realism: cactus, snakes, endless & unmarked space in all directions. Yet I love it & there is a westernized me indwelling, caught up in every breeze & flicker of light dancing among the leaves.

Here I can live as though I belong. Here I can make choices not based on need, but based on a personal truth. Here I can notice what does not belong to me & set that much more aside for recycle.

I have all I need.

April 27, 2017 1