Smoke Signals

Ravens gather
to read
smoke signals
that rise
like diatonic triads
of metamorphosed
cellulose
into a steel
gray sky.

The product
of some
disturbance regime
like ice,
or water, wind, fire
or a ten ton skidder
and a chainsaw
with a thirty-six inch bar
that rocks
the northern forest
where the ravens roost.

I ride shotgun
in another world
a disturbance regime
of twelve lane freeways
and a van filled
with darbhukas
and djembes,
bodhrains
tambourines
claves, marracas, and triangles.

The distribution
of what I know
as sensible
careens into a place
no GPS can navigate.

The blackberries
are not edible
where the cormorants gather
on the wire skeletons
of electronic lives
the smoke signals
shift like magnetic north
on an obsolete compass
and the triads
switch to a minor key
as the flames fly
from pine to birch
and citibank demands
a disturbing regimen
of voluntary
mandatory
Saturday workdays
to cut jobs
of thousands
as trillions
of paperless
dollars
flow over a dam
made of swiss cheese
and scatter
in the winds
like so many
smoke signals.

Cancer
is what
my life is
my friend
says to me
as I breathe
in the smoke
and wonder
what the burning
will do
to my throat
my eyes
my lungs
my heart
my tears.

Truro Terns at Sunrise

Photo by Mari H. Hall

The Second Coyote

"I have your coyote,"
the message says.
"Come get it,
it's freaking
everybody out."

She is frozen
on a snowbank
her red gold tail
flutters
in the breeze.

She seems so alive
I stroke her
like She is
my long lost dog.

But She is dead.

Shot by an old timer
who sits and waits for her
to take his bait
before he pulls the trigger.

"Pests,"
he sputters
Damn coyotes eat
his venison.

I do not tell him
that like humans,
coyotes reproduce
when threatened.

In my mystic's hands
I carry this dog's spirit.

I have tracked her
through the hemlocks
ash and beeches
across the swamps
at midnight
I have heard her
sing and laugh
and call.

I have touched
her menstrual blood.

I raise my arms
to the wind
and ask,
"What do I do
with the flesh
and bones
and the beautiful
soft fur coat?"

I google
"preserving skeletons"
and find the algorithms
to create the perfect curve
of a computer skeleton.

But there are no numbers here
in this world of flesh and bone.

"Boil it,"
my brother tells me.
"Soak it in water
until the meat comes off."

"Bury it in sand
and let the maggots
do the dirty work."

Dead eyes stare at me.
The muscles are hard
beneath my kneading hands.

There are no numbers here.

There is antiseptic clean
in the rotting flesh
and blood that stains
my fingers brown.

This song dog
trickster
gray ghost
rises
to explain
that there is
no order
in the chaos
of the spirit
no rhyme
no reason
no numbers.

Only Life
Only Death
in the blood
and guts
of what binds
us to the tendons
and the ligaments
of life.

There is only
our own willingness
to participate
in each other's minds
and to witness
each other's lives.

I take
this Spirit
into me
and She
opens
my Eyes
my Ears
my Heart
to Life.

Photo by Mari H. Hall

Vulpes Vulpes

Canid tracks in the snow. Red Fox. Vulpes vulpes. The most far ranging terrestrial carnivore on the planet. The other trickster canid of lore. The star of Aesop's Fables dances through the snow before my eyes. This one has a mate. I see their trails criss crossing and zig zagging through the woods. I follow them up a knoll to their mating place. I see where one has pounced on a gray squirrel and later where it has feasted, leaving behind a patch of blood in the packed snow, still melting from its body heat. Later, I find feathers and a wing pattern etched beside their trail. These foxes are not hungry. In my mind, I see their eyes with their pupils slit vertically like cats. They are watching me, I know. That is what foxes do. They know these woods far better than I, and they tell me so. The smell of their urine on the rock where all winter I have stopped to pull on my snowshoes says, "I am here. This is my territory!" Solitary, except for this season when they breed and raise young, these two are leading me on a lark. I fall through the ice and am shocked back to the reality of winter cold and survival. They weigh between six and twenty pounds. They are small and slither beneath the laurel that I must push and pull and drag myself through as twigs poke at me and branches seek to hold me back. These are their woods, not mine. I know I must head for home. My pants are wet. My boots filled with icy water, but the foxes lead me on. "Play with me, play with me," the tracks beg as they turn here and come back. burst forward, stop, change direction. This is not the direct registering, energy saving canid, that guidebooks portray. This is the creature of the woods that revels in the magic of scent, in the presence of a vixen, in the promise of a future. For today, for this time in winter when the light is stronger and life is beginning to sow its seeds again, these foxes announce, "We are alive!" And their yips fill the night.

Buffer Zone

I track a red fox
through smiling black faces
posed on the steps
of St. Michael's
a frail white woman
rocks back and forth
hands shaking
voice begging
for spare change
like an animal
startled by winter
I walk on
by a body
wrapped
in newspaper stories
of bombing in Gaza
and Bernard Madoff
paces his Park Avenue
pent house
as I track
the red fox
down onto the three
a Lebanese clerk
on fourteenth street
tells me
that in Beirut
only Hezbollah
wear orange
I say
I wear orange
so I will not
be shot
tracking red fox
in the northern
reaches of Central Park
where a coyote lingers
in wait
and all that is left
of the light
of the day
is the moon.

TEOTWAWKI 12/21/2012

65 million years ago a 6.2 mile diameter asteroid crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula resulting in a 100 million megaton explosion that excavated a 112 mile wide crater that brought the dinosaur world to an end.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

55 million years ago, 20 percent of the world's frozen methane reserves melted. Global temperatures rose by 13 degrees. 80 percent of all deep sea creatures became extinct.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

75,000 years ago a supervolcano erupted in Toba, Sumatra sending thousands of cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight for 2500 miles. Global temperatures plummeted 21 degrees. The human population decreased to several thousand. Three quarters of all plants in the northern hemisphere died.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

The Supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park is 40,000 years overdue for an eruption.

The Cumbre Vieja Volcano in the Canary Islands is unstable and could collapse into the Atlantic Ocean sending 500 billion tons of rock plunging into the sea creating a splash more than 2100 feet high and 25 feet across and a wave racing across the Atlantic at 450 miles per hour.

December 21, 2012
The End Of The World As We Know It.

The dinosaurs disappeared.

The Mayans disappeared.

The Passenger Pigeon, the Dodo Bird, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker
The American Lion, the Puerto Rican Shrew, the Sea Mink, the Snow Leopard.
Every twenty minutes a species disappears.

Ninety-nine percent of all the species that have existed on Earth are now extinct.

December 21, 2012.

TEOTWAWKI

How many worlds have ended?

How many?

How?