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Intention
determines
focus

Intention determines focus
in a convoluted conversation
conserved in the candle flames
of ice
expanding
in a universe
within a universe
galaxies colliding
with a universe
of stars
until ALL
ends
in the same place
in the dark.

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Solstice Morning

Somewhere people are shopping
caught in the frenzy
of the Sunday
before Christmas.

After a week
with no electricity
reluctant to reenter the
twenty-first century
I hide
from the madness
on Main Street
where possessed people
forget the bounds
of human dignity
to focus
only on
the present.

In the heat of the wood stove
I watch the snow fall
with a cat curled beside me.


Beyond the clouds
I know the sun has risen.

Somewhere people
are shopping.

The snow hides
the ravages of an ice storm
the fire crackles
as the cat sleeps on
I focus
only on
the present.

Somewhere the sun
has risen
people are shopping
and we are all
One.

Happy Solstice!

Contraband

In smoke and snow
I wander a world away
where spring blossoms
and dried fruit
spell contraband
I stand guilty
before a judge
in Santiago de Chile
where thousands
are gathered for execution
in a stadium
I am only a yanqui
a gringa, a contrabandista
an imperialista
in this thread
of a nation
strifed by machine guns
I am left free
to wander the streets
where Victor Jara's clear voice
still rings
Correle, correle
por aqui, por alla
correle, correle
que te van a matar
his mutilated hands
dance before me
caminando, caminando
walking, walking
Monjitas and Merced
San Antonio and MacIver
in the Plaza de Armas
mimes drum the beat
of rogues and pickpockets
as a gold medallion
from Lourdes
takes flight
into an expressway
of diesel fumes
that choke out
the Andes.

El Zonda
whips my paper identity
into the desert
and leaves me illegal
in a country
filled with gendarmes
and a bureaucracy
built upon stamps
Victor Jara still sings
correle, correle,
por aqui, por alla
correle, correle
que te van a matar
run this way
run that way
run run
por aqui, por alla
they are going to kill you
por aqui, por alla
correle, correle
que te van a matar.

I kneel
before a widow
stuffed into a plastic water bottle
I carry a blood red ribbon
as I pay a peso
for a piece of toilet paper
while a dust devil swirls
and a saint rises from nowhere
whispering always,
te amo, te amo
por aqui, por alla
te amo, te amo
so many voices
speak in so many tongues
each one etched
in a layer of stone
the days disappear
into stars
the stars into galaxies
I sail into the unknown
a paper
on a spirit wind
a name
lost to the desert light
singing
always
singing
correle
correle
por aqui
por alla
correle
correle
que te
voy a amar.


( Notes: translation of Victor Jara's words: Run, run, here and there,
run, run, that they are going to kill you.
and te amo-I love you
que te voy a amar-that I am going to love you.
Victor Jara was a Chilean poet, playwright, singer who was arrested and taken to the stadium where his hands were cut off and he was executed after the coup of September 11, 1973.)

La Querencia

In English there are no words for La Querencia, an act of love, or the return to one's roots. It could be the last vibration of a sound that travels on the Andean spirit wind, el Zonda, and ripples the red cintas of the Difunta Correa, unofficial patron saint of travel, who died in the Argentine desert on her journey to recover the bones of her martyred husband. In route to La Querencia, our Kia sputters and shakes over the hours of ripio from Upsallata to Barreal in search of the Southern Cross. This is the place where the Nazca Plate converges with the South American Plate and the deepest layers of the Pacific Ocean sink beneath the continent and push the purple, red, orange, green, and yellow sedimentary layers twenty two thousand feet into the sky and then the winds sculpt the pre-cordillera of the east into monuments that leave us all with one voice exclaiming, "Holy Shit!" as we turn the corner and our gaze meets the Cerro del Alcazar. This is La Querencia where the tumbleweeds are carried by dust devils across hard packed sand flats and an astronomer sits with his five telescopes and tracks the expansion of the universe and the paths of asteroids. We follow a cantoring horse through the dark night in this place where a post card stamp costs two dollars and there are no telephones. Our hostess whispers to me as she hugs me on our departure, "I will not say good-bye to you, Amiga. I will only say, 'Welcome Home.'"

First Frost

Life comes down to the first frost at three a.m. I feel like the wiring in my brain hangs on the moonshadows dancing among the trees and I brace myself for the ice as the cold creeps in to expand the cracks in my world where the skeletons leap to light in the cross quarters of the sun and the trees open themselves to the stars and we all surrender to the slumber to come.

Residence on Earth

i fly into the deep chill of the gorge on the back of a Darkling Beetle crawling across the pink tiles of my bathroom floor. If only i had the words of Pablo Neruda to describe my Residence on Earth, but the rusty feathers of a Wood Thrush gurgle from the throat of a Cat and i slap a Mosquito that spatters blood all over my forearm.

Who am i to play God?

i dodge Red Efts in the road and curse them at the same time they eat Salamander eggs. What are the odds that the eggs in the Robin's nest above my bed will hatch as one torrential downpour after another washes the Lives out of holes and the river becomes wider and higher?
i chase a Frog to safer ground.

Who am i to play God?

a Hawk screeches above the currents and sinks Her claws into my flesh because there are no words excruciating enough to carry me to the edge of where Life and Death just are and it's amazing what a difference one Flower can make in this Residence on Earth

The Fungus Among Us

"Fuck!"
I say to myself.
"Can I do this?"

I jump off the ledge of the familiar into the sticky sweat of a slimy world that is drip drip dripping with spores. I have gone into the translucent gills of a Destroying Angel to the place where colors become sounds, tastes twitter behind my eyeballs, and visions pop from faeries' mouths. I am in the Kingdom of Fungi. 400 million years old. 1.5 million species strong. 100,000 latin names. Amanita. Agaricus. Boletus. Cantharellula. They sing in musty wines and powerful drugs, and in the largest of known living creatures that spans thirty acres of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is fifteen hundred years old. These fungal creatures are saprophytic, living off dead and decaying matter; parasitic, killing living hosts; and symbiotic, digesting nutrients for other living organisms.
Rising as if out of nothing and disappearing again into nothing, they charm us with questions. They dare us to taste the exotic and risk intoxication. Aphrodisiacs. Hallucinogens. Epicurean delights. The Fruits of Gods. The Buddha's last meal was mushrooms and as he lay dying he said that in his lifetime he had eaten two exquisite meals. One, the first meal after he had attained Enlightenment, and the second, this last meal served to him by a humble farmer.
The rain pounds the forest canopy. I lie on my belly and feast on brilliant orange Chanterelles.