Mountains, Valleys, Cyclones, Suitcases

It began in a valley that was enclosed by verdant mountains
Oaks and maples that hugged tightly to the precious safe low spaces
As an adoring mother might with her brood of precious babes.
In the vale sat this wooden porch, large, ringed with rockers that blocked you a fast paced entrance
Up into a long ranch house, into fireplaces, grub, tables, rooms, it was inviting from the start.
It felt like East Tennessee set into Wyoming because the sky was so big
But it hugged like it would in those eastern ways
The feeling was Appalachian /West.

I sat awhile, with a camera swinging around my neck as the place
Became filled with so many children in their love of exploring and friends mostly 4th graders
Ten years of time to learn to notice the lay of this land, yet they felt as campers.
Excited and alive.
I felt as if playacting now the role of a camp counselor hired on.
Funny the way dreams are so real pulling pieces of our lives, rearranging.

Rocking away out back on this ranch, there was a different kind of porch, a roofless one,
The numbers of children coming to stay awhile grew so large and my sense of responsibility grew.
Oh, yes, I need to take the pictures for the camp albums.
Thinking suddenly to make pictures of their adventures, as part of my job.
They posed laughing, putting arms around each other, bunny fingers on heads, down the most beautiful vale that a dreamer has ever placed into a mind.
Great camp.
Saw happily my student Eunique there. Her friends.

It has faded from my mind this morning, the why,
But there was a realization that my leaving going on a day trip was important errand,
Was needed to drive urgently over to Preston County, or to the Buckwheat Festival.
Saying it sounds utterly absurd in the mouth.
In a way at this point my dream amused me with that.
I wouldn't have minded waking to a trip like that, eating those cakes.
It was so utterly compelling, to get to that place of my Fall days as a child.

Life surging in the valley cabin, got in my black Honda parked in a lot out front.
Driving out to do this errand my scene was changed as land rose up and flattened.
The car was spotlessly clean, new. Reason to go is gone.
But rested with these children.
I was on a plain, this fallen beautiful one, that is somewhat like my homestate.
Preston County is in West Virginia's hidden away beauty.


I thought in the car, wondering how one got there from here.
Tracing lost memory, fussing with the camera.
Perhaps this was what I needed to do, develop my pictures in that place, or deliver them to some safety, or responsibility of teaching that just was assigned irreverently to me.
Me as gopher.
Or maybe, just going to a newspaper for printing, maybe it's an article about this group in the hills, these moving hills that flatten and go wide.

I drove starting on my way, as the car became realized as a bicycle,
Then the trip became effort, and on this bike my feeling became this was a more responsible way to travel.
More righteous, more wondrous, self talking that through as my adult self needed it.
So it was working hard to reach the turn, down to where I needed to go.
Always thinking I might not really remember the way.
Knowing it might be 50 miles or more to that turn.
Long, long, long going where time would be suspended. But there would be things to see.

The distances were in the miles going on past beautiful green rolling flatlands that still felt up,
Open, with water behind, to the side and ahead rimming this wild fecund place.
Almost as pictures of Ireland might be now. A homeland never seen.
At a crossroad, would turn left and "down," the mind kept repeating this.
I'd fall into forests then and the going would be mostly one of applying brakes, that feeling never left me, the path I was going to need to take.
How it "would be then."
Resting coming after that turn.
So, yes, this part required the effort, but returned it with a beauty.

There was a house sitting as if on a knoll,
It was white, shuttered, painted by Hopper.
It sat, the family it held outside in their vast yard, standing working, playing all apart.
Uncommunicative and closed to my interpretations. Just there.
Stopping (yet going), I asked if this was the way to Preston learning I was going intuitively in the right way. Yes.
But I had looked back to talk, if I could undo anything now it would be that glance.
There gathering at the edge of water you saw in the view were dancing, wicked water spouts,
Further out far far away a mighty cyclone was forming as well,

Then I was in and out mysteriously of their home, spaces
Looking out their windows, trying to get them to see with me, look into the sky.
They had a kind of resistance to comprehending the danger involved for them, the future naught a thought for them.
This sky stretching out was so much larger than we can ever know.
The disproportion of it was startling, the enormity.The blacknesses sucking you down.
It was greater in size than ever contained in thought and filled with angry rolling black clouds in a funnel swallowing the sea.
It was making a water spout near them and then the waters were becoming churned.


So I thought about my biking.
It seemed kind of risky to face that out on a bike.
Could I just go on, beat it?
Started out trying, but I warned them to go in their cellar, they were so childlike now.
Just asking if they should, frustratingly inactive, without self protective instincts.
Setting out for me was cooler now, darker, that rick emerald lighting it gets prior to a dangerous storm.
In front of this house the sky was stretching in front with water there now I realized too, another body.
There is nothing like this near Preston my thought.
I saw the way going be reached over by waters rising from two directions as the pathway was swallowed.
My choice to leave was lost there, gone to the demands now taken on and I had failed to see.

I returned to the house, now as island in seas.
In the house were large picture windows, glassed, where you could watch this turmoil, not safe,
But enclosed. We looked out, there were people in the waters. People.
That was a shocking as any of this.
People that need to be pulled safely in to the shore.
People that had to be saved from drowning in this.

Going down to them at the shore on the green slope,
I realized to go in was to die, yet there was a strange change now of rules of this earth.
That came over my perceptions.
Some, when called by name and encouraged, could come to shore to be taken to the cellar.
The safest spot in an unsafe reality.
This family I wanted to stay there.
Their mom, looking in her thirties helped me with leading them up to it by taking them in.
She made a chart of the names of those out that there floating, treading water,
In the waters that seemed almost a bay holding them in the waves.
(As ever in the distance mind's eye this huge cyclone threatened.)
As I thought to hope it would shift and go another direction,
Nothing of that was sure.

She indicated that we lost a few as I napped for seconds,
I went down this steep incline on green grass, as if it had to be me, to callout their names.
Pulling them by name to safety.
The struggle with winds, earth, cold, to push and pull at forces sucking them under required
Using my will to pull them in. It was only will.
Others in the water echoed that effort.
But their voice was only encouragement from freezing waters.
My responsibility was to do it, but I could not swim out to them, or I'd go under.
Pulled by that.
Just to be to my waist in the waters reaching, reaching, pulling them in and knowing
That we would be bound through this forever.
They had to swim to live and I had to compel that effort of impossibility.
A cyclone was coming anyway.
But my mind would be forever held by those that slipped under, to disappear. My lost.

It was riping me to pieces. Ripping pieces away.
Then she said she no longer spotted a Lisa and that there was no way to see out due to darkness to one that those in the water were frantically calling for.
I pulled in another to the warmth of the cellar and blankets with my heart
Saddening over this fearing for Lisa, a heart being eaten.
Yet going back. Going back down, looking up to wonder
At the coming cyclone, looking out to see my job ahead, to try to find those out there.
Knowing my way to Preston, this day that changed and took me instead here to this
Looking out at the responsibility.
My arm went out and my voice became a shout of the names. Of Amy. Of Lisa.

Fruit, Fig, Vegetable, Flower, Fall

I Wait Under A Fig Tree

Clothing a self in her leaves
The shame of living and the struggle to become naked again
Just myself unencumbered by the wants
Freed of the suffering, alive and able
To react to another that stands in this garden too.
I look at this fig tree, up through her
Branches into all the consciousness of mind
Through the leaves sunlight streams and brightens tender fruit
Of possibility and truth.
A fig tree cultivated the garden of knowing
It roots in the mind of the man, in my mind
Who sits here in her shade with me now?
Wearing her leaves his hungers are led
To the lush sweet fruit and a wasps busywork
I have found this in my earthly bed, in this life.
This fig attracting, bearing man's blessing and burdens.
To be seen in our piety and our complete inadequate nakedness
Be able to stand here with fig leaf and loathsome shame
To face the burden of our aching aggressive self
Within the beauty of our gentled palm
See life and death, either as blessing or scorn.
As I wait under a fig tree.




Welcome Fall

The best days were the hell raisin' football times going down College Avenue
With our Dad and getting our seats to see the Mighty Mountaineers
In a stadium that roared, leaves blew, Pitt fell, victory pulsed a heartbeat
That ran through a crowd devouring sweet the blood
Autumn who came to our lives with the color of our red maples
Sticky summer fading to the clear cool of running emerald Monongahela
Fall.

That season still fills the Appalachian man today I'm sure, though I'm away
Far away, anemic and clinging to signs of seasons as a dying hag might.
Witching nights and Indian moons call her out
Watching celluloid replays and realizing overtime defeats.
Filling up an insignificant West Virginian woman who needs to be home again
Take me there down those country roads
'Cause in this coming season your fall just makes my raw heart bleed.






Sunflower

Seeds spiral into cubist core
An Impressionistic vase holds precarious form
Harvested into the daily myth
Of the poets and artists
Looking at this rough steward of autumn
Head tall, braced on a stalk, standing
Flower of a hungry man
Anointing this day in his life.

Pumpkin Shell

And there he kept her very well.
I could live in a pumpkin shell, Peter.
Because somehow you couldn't keep her.
I'll stay home you pumpkin eater
Peter, Peter with wife so wild, seek her.


Pumpkin

Frost on the fields finds them
The baby blossoms now are lost
Little pumpkins losing the race to winter
We ran that contest many the year
To see our fruit to a size of harvest
In a land with late spring and early fall.
We lost every year to the cold snap.
Leaving pumpkins too young to be brought in
The old song a hymn to what might have been

Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God's own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.

I Wandered By Way of The Desert

Was it Ishmael that wandered the desert?
Seeking the father, lost, bearing into his
Children the burden of rejection, his horrible deception
A lost of possibility for kindness
Born into a people. An entire people.
He a victim forever?
We learn this. We read the tale.
And yet, we doubt the truths
And go hurt some more
In our choices to hear
One over another
To hang the desert over some
Over another place a wreath of Decadence

I was watching the desert bloom in my room
Teaching yesterday
Into inquisitive looks and happy smiles
As they delighted in lunchboxables
On a trip walking to a fire station and back for a lunch
We couldn't eat at the park because violence last year
Turned into teens joyfully slapping
A 6 year old in the face as we played, marking her face.
In the desert there are thorns
And crowns that are worn
And brothers where one is "good"
And the other a lovely child on a lawn
Offering me a little tiny cookie sandwich from his box.






Centerin'

Through the kitchen window, I watched awhile
As Zeppelin proved to me once and for all they aren't a choir
He laughed and called in "Mac you ain't no devil worshiper"
Adding, "I'm glad for that."
To appease the gods that started to whirl in here.


He's trying to center a pot.
He likes to handbuild works I call dada because
They are hard to hold with eyes or arms
Sometimes, made of distortions as he speaks
Of the Golden mean, and i laugh


I'm watching him pull and push on this great
Gift from close friend, a pottery wheel, perfect present
It whirls around as he works in the mud
Happily grinding out something that may work out.
And it's a Zep album radio day, how is that possible?


There must be a lot of those playing in the
Backyards of pottery making guys, there must be a reason,
He's promising me a teapot but the form is resisting
A lava flow might be better held in this.
But he is happy and there is clay on the walkways


My husband is just outside my window
Throwing me a teapot that I think already collapsed
But it will one day appear for my collection of things we made
Together, one inside, the other outside the window
In our house we call the fortress.







Grapes

I'm looking at these lovely grapes my tummy can't eat today
Hurting again, the cancer
Trails.

But I'm thinking about depressing stuff
Chinese babies fed formula
made of some
shit.

By someone that had a great idea
And did something unthinkable
why?

I bet the answer would be sadder
Than I could hold
Hell

Dad grew grapes, Freda had her arbors too
Those had these skins you squeezed the insides in your mouth.
sweet.

They boycotted the grapes when I came out to CA
Cesar went hungry over the poison harming the babes
here

I bet the story about that spraying
Of all those workers would drown me now in deep
stupid

My tummy hurts too much to eat
and who would want to chomp on much
now.






Bridge

She said "Who reads this stuff on playing bridge?"
Speaking into the paper.

It's disconcerting to see the child you want to hold again
reading the LA Times.

She saw an article on Palin, noting her nowhere bridge lying
She said, "Why wasn't this run on the front page?"

I come out of room to hear a non sequitur
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

I wonder about this, and recall my daughter
Asking "Who plays bridge anyway?"

I tried to play with the idea of bridges
Tried to build one these last few years

She rustles her pages looking at the science views of candidates
Reason suiting up in boxing gloves

Building it's bridges over flaming rivers
Liars, dollars and piety harder and harder to cross.





Beautiful

A set of daisies are sitting on my counter
Watching us make the Chicken Parmesan
Their color is actually so clean and seasonal
Fresh and invigorating it lifts us up
Settling me down into a realization I'm here at yet another fall.





Your bowl, abalone form calls out

It is a beautiful form made and given
Holding this dismayingly ugly tomato
The edge a grace of whitened line
Someone plopped this gargantuan from the harvest
Into my little abalone bowl
I may fill that bowl with some rose petals
Or leave it for my thoughts to lay within on the morning
something to consider
As i rise and contemplate the day
And what it might bring forth for us.

Few Answers

Define love.

Explain to me what I do for you.
Explain to me what I can do.
Explain to me how I can help you
Explain to me your feelings for me
Explain to me how this entire thing is defined
Explain how it happened.
What end are you attempting to reach
What would you like

Explain to me how getting me to the brink of trying to die exactly helps anything
Explain to me why anyone finds funny taking another
Explain to me how two are one
Explain to me passion
Explain to me avoidance
Explain to me me
Explain to me you
Explain to me how one person can have so much information but only deal with another by relating only to their own cues and their own interests
Explain to me the reasons you go over these lines
Explain to me the other characters
Explain Are you a multiple all the time
Explain to me how and why you do this exactly
Explain to me if you understand what you are doing

Explain to me how this got like this
Explain to me why questions to you go unanswered
Explain to me why you say words would "never be enough" I think I'd like to hear them.

Really even if ten thousand and a billion.

Pieces of Eight Cut in Half With a Dull Knife

Bridge

I lie suspended
Disbelieving
Willing myself
To Balance.




Mocking Birds

can't get you

so they fly around your head
Looking at your bald spot
and nose hair

saying

"hey bald spot, hey nose hair
you looking bad"

it gets you

the mockers eyes
are really sharp tuned
to what you sound like
in the shower

keeps em flying
thats for sure

you never hear their notes
not out loud

a mocker is a
self that's mute


Voodoo Doll

If you stick in
Any more pins
To the heart, head, or hands
My mojo is going
To spill all over



Rubber Balls

Aim them high
Rebound traction
Give your balls
A lot of Action

Fling them high
Watch em go
Sling your rubber
Go with your flow.


"I'd Rather See You Dead,
Than With Another Man"
in reply

Sure

You might get that wish
She said dramatically
Penning her goodbye
Baking up actually
a lemon meringue
And folding the wash
again

And here's another
"and" for you too.
I like them
along with this

It's flu season
I could die
And I woke up at 5
Dreaming of an exploding computer

It was signaling
a countdown to
implosion
Way too hot to move

Going to blow me to bits
You too I think
With another man
No that was me
Let's not get too weird here ok

Making bacon bit sandwiches
Escarole salads out of
bread and
Vienna sausage cans

Watching some ham
On the TV mock his life

So you'd rather not
see me
we'd
be better off dead
Be dead over see me
it's a thought

opps wait, got to tell
The gasman
I'm out of checks
Which is another lie
The money is gone anyway

Who needs gas
I could just put my head
In the Easy Bake oven
burn the skin
on my forehead

Would you count that
As dead?
Dead enough.
A deal breaker

Especially since a year ago
you dragged me out to
Death Valley in the
Trunk of your bike
And buried any miracles.

So you are a better husband now.
You say.

I'd rather you crawl out of
My corpse
Than listen to this
You know.

What's Your Favorite Random Act?

The one that brings a butterfly across my path, out looking for pollen, sunshine.

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When a hummingbird flits through. Once in my daughter's kindergarten one landed on her teacher's finger and she showed her class, for that matter a butterfly also landed on that same Mrs. Wren.

Once Mrs. Wren came to my room to read a book to the kids. Very Random, unexpectedly lovely.

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I love wrens, with their little tushes up in the air on the back way.

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One morning there was a huge roadrunner bopping around in the roses. Just there. That was exciting.

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34°13' 28" N, 119°11' 36" W34.224577-119.19342

When I was 15 or so, I was out looking at the peonies and the grape arbor (so it would have been spring, evening was settling in ) I looked up, the sky was blazing with a meteor shower. Streaks of fire. I like to wish on stars. This was even better. It was low, like being caught in their twinkling.


Finding those baby fish all through my tank seemed such a random treat. Just boom there they were hiding in the plants. Exciting.

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When I drove through Arizona, to 1st come out west in 1983, (my car drive to "know America", at 27) all of a sudden clouds descended into the redness of the place. It darkened to green and rain in a fury came down as the freeway went to impassible. Literally a second with hail balls. Then it passed, strong circular wind. And the sky was green. Earth red, and a rainbow was there. It was one unlike all the rest. (The other rainbows have always been the most incredible of treats.) This was like one might make for those we love to mark their lives.
As it turns out that had been a tornado passing me.

I've been in three tornadoes. Exciting, frightening. The power...

My mind flashes me to the sky.
It is for me the ultimate act of random beauty. Yesterday out of the blue I went to watch the birds all day down by the shore, pretty painfree and getting lovely shots. Then I sat on the shore and it filled with sunset. (None of the kids interested in this) it was a glorious sky. My pictures stunning.

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My favorite part of drawing is how much you don't predict. It appears. It is the accidental, perhaps the mystic nature of the act of creation. The more open you are to this in your work, to it's possibility, the more the process becomes like your act of love.

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A walk is a random act of seeing the day for what it holds. A favorite place to be is on one's feet.

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When my kids were little and now sometimes, they start to play and the room, away of course from "the parents," fills
the house with the laughter of the magpies.

Dad had his "issues" but I loved our Sunday drives. We'd just go up the country roads stopping somewhere and walking around finding trillium, violets, red buds, ginger root, a deer perhaps, if we were lucky. I've loved drives. But now we don't take them....different world.

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Cats have a quality that make them such interesting pets. Mostly ignoring, once in awhile they let you know they like to be around you, it is so seldom in mine , you can't know the fun of being worth their moment's time.

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Finding...something. Like yesterday my pelican bones.

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Ever just get on a bus or subway and just see where you are?

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In the gulf if you swam way out it would take you too a shallow sandbar but in the going a dolphin might bump you, your leg tickled by a school of little fish, you might see a ray or scrunch up a sand dollar with your toes. Extraordinary but always different.

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I actually like to read the things people type in and then hit my blog with, like the title of this piece... It feels random. It's exciting.

When you teach there are days that come, you never know them and can't plan them when a child has a twinkling in their eyes....connecting to something they did "all by themself " and you stand aside and share with them that moment. It is a beautiful fleeting thing. It isn't in the script. And it is wonder.

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Watching is a random act, listening, creating, enjoying the day.
Favorites all.

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