A Farmhouse Easter

Back towards the pine woods, buff hills
Hold the winter, though it wasn't bad,
And though there was scant snow this year
Pond glistens full, recharging from
An earth not stressed for water,
At least not here

And to be sure, daffodils and tiny crocus
Dot the garden, where the ground lies
Disheveled from the creatures
Burrowing all the winter long.

We set the table with old silver
And platters from my mother,
Gone so long I strain to
Remember how she filled
Crystal vases with bright blossoms
Or fretted if the soufflé fell, or
Pursed her lips so not to laugh at my
Brothers' risqué stories.
It seemed then, in memory, that
Easter came with sun and spring,
Scent pungent as the
Loamy earth woke up,
And she was vibrant in those years
Long before she faced the end.

Now this Sunday late afternoon when
I gaze upon the buff hills rolling
Up to meet the dusk grey sky,
The faintest scrim of green seems
To veil my eyes -- in reverie, I cannot say,
Or perhaps it's simply just
The promise of the season,
And we are quiet all together,
Grateful for each other, and the past.

Sunlight long faded, shadows
Deepen in the dining room, we linger,
Feeling ghosts, unsummoned stories,
Some regrets.
I can't say I am unhappy,
I'm just floating on the stream that
Takes us all one day to
Far beyond that scrim,
Where why not say that there
Awaits the golden laughter,
Fragrant flowers, always springing
Easters, and my quixotic mother,
In chorus with a world made right
Because we kept on moving toward
The light beyond our ken.

In my daughter's weathered farmhouse
The kitchen smells of oranges and garlic
A low fire nips the chill and she
Pours a sparkling wine.
We settle in to tussle with the dogs,
And watch the night time gentle down,
Then say goodbye, and leaving then,
Another Easter slips away
Into the waiting blooming.

Yoghurt

Sitting in the sun

Eating vanilla yoghurt and blueberries

Creamy and elegant, liquid velvet,

Reading a letter from a friend. 

The yoghurt makes me think of

Cid's Market in Taos

Everything so fresh

And most home-grown.

Sit with this, I tell myself, 

And I pause 

Waiting for some 

Revelation to arrive.

He knows he's dying, 

She says in the letter,

And she says they are

Back to where they

Were in the 

Beginning

Along the Rio Grande and

The little streams and rivelets

Flowing from the mountains

Along the back dirt roads

To Arroyo Seco, I picture 

Banks and ditches 

Wearing yellow, spritzing

White and 

Purple things emerging

From the winter

We die the way we live,

I'll tell her, 

And,

You didn't choose this learning,

And then I remember our mother

Died this day, seventeen years

Gone now.

But every spring when I start to 

Work again in my garden, 

I find her there, and 

Think of her, 

And how there

Really isn't ever any end,

Just change, new shape,

A different physics in 

A universe where 

Stars realign

In season's heavens,

Full moons in processional

To the Equinox

And what is gone is 

Eternally reborn.

I know there are those who

Die and never give a peace 

To the ones

Who wait and dread

Because there 

Sometimes isn't one, 

They return to clay and dust 

But then arrive again, 

Because they

Will.

In my garden, my mother waits,

Sun dips behind high clouds

For a moment. 

There's no connection

To the yoghurt,

But I decide to tell my friend

All will be well

In time.

Fall

In the mysterious netherworld
Sometimes black forces grip
The spaces in-between, although
Why should I think
That they'd be any different than
The ones I touch and move among
In ordinary living, the daily of
Familiar; waking, sleeping, wondering,
About all of that that is.

Lately I have been possessed
By beauty hiding in plain sight,
The tease of magic rounding corners
From the realms of in-between,
And sometimes when the gray shapes shift
The line between the beauty and
The fury razor thin, I am
Reaching for my balance.

The other night I rose in darkness;
I've never needed light
For a trek across old floorboards,
Feeling every deflect, hearing
Every sound from every
Season, as old living
Wood contracts and moves:
I know these things so well.

An anger had been seething,
Gnawing on some old
And sore deep grievance
I'd let in and wished away.
But the daemon came back in,
Malevolent and hard, and
From the southwest corner
Of the night, a mighty vapor struck me,
You let me out, the blackness said,
And hurled me, tumbling
Vast distances,
From one world to the next.
A flickering light went out,
And with it went the rage.

I opened up my eyes, widening to
The covering dark:
Orenda,
And surrounding me:
Orenda,
Had been waiting, and then coming
From the trees, the fields, the sky, from
The spaces in-between
The physics known and unknown,
I'd keened it, felt it coming
And I melded to 
Orenda,
And I rose as new again, to
Face a clearing.

I can't quite say how this lit up
The new of conscious always there,
The golden fire burst from embers in
The hollows of my clay,
And then the sky burned dawn,
And day began, like all the others;
I slipped back into what
I'd simply wanted for the night,
Balm and restoration, by way of
Waiting dream, 
The far terrain of slumber.
I settled then, and slept.
The room grew warm.
Did I fall and enter in-between?
I suppose that I may never know.
Orenda.

About December

This, a December day,
Trying to become winter,
Layers quiet upon the countryside,
A mantle over howling strife
Taking over sanity, robbing
Goodness from my life.

But gratitude wells up inside,
Calm knocks and says, be still, and
Watch the chickadees,
They squabble at the feeder,
Watch lone snowflakes, languid motion
Floating from the stern grey sky,
Their lace gone before alighting.

I am weary of
Assault by poseurs, scheming bandits
Who will vanish into some
Post-election,
Post-trauma mist;
They won't matter after their allotted
Sound bites, furious pacings;
They'll be ghosts, just viral mendicants,
Figments of a cosmic evil
That flared and spat out bile,
Dared my earnest mission, balanced core.

Meanwhile soon our family will arrive,
We will close in around
Our own warm hearth,
Fall back into small rituals,
Of mercy, memory and creating,
And we'll watch
Our dogs and comment
How they romp like
Cousins on a summer picnic,
We'll make a trifle, bake some bread,
And feed appled fat-wood
To the fire.

This is all there is, and all there should be,
Breathing in this grey December day,
Watching as light changes, as
The winter solstice comes.
I say a prayer for joy,
A prayer for peace and fairness
As the hours pass,
Reflecting, I look through windows
To the back, the sleeping fields,
The western sky that rolls toward
My old home; I think, now time
To do some chores, bring in more greens,
Find the candles, shelter in, for
Soon enough will come
Another lift-off into night.

Bloom the Earth

Reflecting on the repetitions, those
Carried spaces in between the
Constancies of
Light and dark,
Effort and repose,
Interstitial possibilities of
Joy and despair thrive lucid,
Calling me.

Years float thru as my toehold
Slips in one world to become
Tenacious in some other.
I enter and fade through time.

Watching love and beauty
Shapeshift as roses
Die on winter canes,
Stillness becomes motion.
Refusing to give up, I am
Breathing into dream.

For Buff, Zora, and MJ, Paris, November 2015

Across the homelands
We keep watch,

We see the future coming

The buffalo have now returned 

They graze the grasses long in spring 

And winter wheat will come in time

For harvest after solstice.

I am Tatanka Itancan.

Water glints in morning sun,

A shadow curves to surface light

Folds back down, a graceful dive,

Scales flash and disappear.

I am Cante Skuya Win 

While arching high and over us

Thermal riders fly through clouds,

We hear their cries, the darkening skies,

The Golden Eagle watches.

I am Anunkasan Tokaheya

Across the homelands

We keep watch,

Though we may leave and then come back

To care for Unci Maka

And so this is our vision now,

Ancestors guided us to this

We ask you keep your promises 

We pledge that we'll keep ours. 

We're all one heart, one voice, one plan, 

The one Creator gives us.

No Way Out

Out in the meadow the Japanese maple

Burns red in November sun, slanting in low enough to uplight

The lowest limbs.

Red, it pierces me, destabilizing an

Already unsteady self, wraps anger

And fear twinning as I fight the tears.

In past times I've loved the fall, my

Season, the season of my birth,

I thought that I've been good and strong

And tried to occupy my space and time

With some intention; 

With love and an open heart.

Red, like blood, like fire, fugitive,

This intensity.