"The Thing Is" (poem) by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"Rabbit" (poem) by Heather Swan

After a long numbness, I wake
and suddenly I’m noticing everything,
all of it piercing me with its beautiful,
radical trust: the carpenter bee tonguing
the needles of echinacea believing
in their sweetness, the exuberance
of an orange day lily unfolding itself
at the edge of the street, and the way
the moss knows the stone, and the stone
accepts its trespass, and the way the dog
on his leash turns to see if I’m holding on,
certain I know where to go. And the way
the baby rabbit - whose trembling ears
are the most delicate cups - trusts me,
because I pried the same dogs’ jaws
off his hips, and then allows me to feed him
clover when his back legs no longer work,
forcing me to think about forgiveness
and those I need to forgive, and to hope
I am forgiven, and just maybe
I can forgive myself. This unstoppable,
excruciating tenderness everywhere inviting
us, always inviting. And then later, the firefly
illuminating the lantern of its body,
like us, each time we laugh.

"A Good Story" (poem) by Ada Limón

Some days--dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table--

are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches,

dizziness and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes,

between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left.

Outisde, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body

is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak

snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.

My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid,

how he'd, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason,

something in me that believed in overcoming. Bur right now all I want 

is a story about human kindness, the way once when I couldn't stop

crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made

me eat a small pizza he'd cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.

Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.

"The End" (poem) by Lynn Ungar

Perhaps you’ve held this image in your head since you were young –
the meteor blazing towards earth,
the seismic shock of impact,
a lethal rain of molten rock falling from the sky,
followed by months or years of dusk and winter.

Dinosaurs – gone.
Lush jungles – gone.
Teaming seas – empty.
Billions of years of evolution wiped from the earth.

Only, of course, not.
After all, a paltry 65 million years later,
here we are.

I don’t know what kind of small and scuttling creatures found a way to make it through.
Nor do I know how.
All I know is that there was an explosion of new life the likes of which the world has never seen.

Evolution is the predicate of death.
The sentence is not complete.

The end of the world as you know it is not the end of the world.

"What Matters" by Terri Kirby Erickson (poem)

The present has arrived
and you are in it. Your heart
is pumping. Your breath moves

in and out of your lungs without
anyone's help or permission.
Let go of everything else. Let

your life, handed to you through
no effort of your own, be all
the proof you need. You are loved.

Ross Gay - Forward to poetry collection "How to Love the World"

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about witness, about how witness is itself a kind of poetics, or poesis, which means making. By which I mean I have been wondering about how we make the world in our witnessing of it. Or maybe I have come to understand, to believe, how we witness makes our world. This is why attending to what we love, what we are astonished by, what flummoxes us with beauty, is such crucial work. Such rigorous work. Likewise, studying how we care, and are cared for, how we tend and are tended to, how we give and are given, is such necessary work. It makes the world. Witnessing how we are loved and how we love makes the world.

"In Any Event" by Dorianne Laux (poem)

If we are fractured
we are fractured
like stars
bred to shine
in every direction,
through any dimension,
billions of years
since and hence.

I shall not lament
the human, not yet.
There is something
more to come, our hearts
a gold mine
not yet plumbed,
an uncharted sea.

Nothing is gone forever.
If we came from dust
and will return to dust
then we can find our way
into anything.

What we are capable of
is not yet known,
and I praise us now,
in advance.

UUABQ Poetry Service 6/26/2022

Video


Heather Swan - "Rabbit"

Two poems named "Water" by Michelle Otero

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"With or Without Candlelight" by John Marsh

"The Word" by Tony Hoagland

Ada Limón - "A Good Story"

"Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris

GA 2022 - Portland - Day 3

 

The Rev. Susan Grey @ rally on the day SCOTUS trashed Roe v. Wade:

"I am furious. I am filled with holy fury at the way our lives and our rights are being taken away. Women's rights, transpeople's lives and healthcare, BIPOC communities lives and freedom - we are in this struggle in solidarity. There are more of us than there are of them, and we will win. 

There is a holy spirit in us. A spirit of courage and power that knows that liberation is only possible when we are free - when every single one of us is free. We cannot be divided in this movement by identity. We have to fight on all the issues, because the system of fascist, authoritarianism, Christo-ethno-nationalism is coming for us all. And we're not going to take it. We will not be silent. We will not give up our rights. We will disobey the law. We will protect each other. 

Reproductive justice is health care. It is a fundamental right. It is about liberation. It is about bodily autonomy. Are you ready to fight for one another? We are in this struggle together, my siblings. And the spirit of love and the spirit of justice and the spirit known by so many names is with us in this struggle. We will not be silent. We will fight for every single one of us. And we will win. And we will not stop fighting until we win. Can I get an amen?"

Accountability, Justice, and Wholeness: UU Theologies of Liberation

Rev. Sofia Betancourt

"Religion pushes us past ignorance to love hard enough to do better."

"There is something at our core so unshakeable that our dignity cannot be taken away."

"How does what you believe drive your understanding to make justice in the world?"

I believe in multiple truths and the arc of universe toward justice. This makes me work toward justice of journey for multiple communities, and any answer that's held out as unassailable is probably to be questioned.

Collective salvation - to be saved together. Collective liberation - I cannot be free until all are free.

I cannot be whole (not the opposite of broken. Broken is fully human) -- resonant, complete self and presence and promise in the world. 

Accountability toward justice to find our way toward wholeness. (Grace that does not need to be earned. Intrinsically whole yet work to do in this lifetime to ...)

"Dignity and worth require communal lamentation and repair." Can't skip ahead to wholeness, even though it is a promise of our faith. 

"We have to tell the truth about the harms that we have caused and GRIEVE about it."

Without repair, we cannot build toward equity. Without equity, we cannot build toward wholeness. 

Collective wholeness... calls us to the work of spiritual practice. Calls us to lament. Let me be a conduit for making amends. In the service of our greater wholeness.

"What helps you hold the promise of wholeness when days are difficult?"

"Just because we have inherent worth doesn't mean we're always manifesting that worth."

"Wholeness - living as fully as possible into the fullness / promise of what it is to be human. Inherent worth should be so big that it's hard to conceive of."

"I don't mean perfection. Living into a full promise. Not possible alone. That's why UUs still gather in community."

"Covenant without consequences is not covenant. You can come back when you do the work of repair. We must be able to say no in UU spaces - with love - based on our principles. We will be here when you are ready to do the work. But we will not wallow in harm until then. You can always come home, but you gotta come right."

Building Resilience Through Mindfulness in Communication

• Dandy Prinsloo
• Daniel Romero

Dr. Dan Siegel

GA 2022 - Portland - Day 2

 Article II Commission

Shared values

What are the actions we are called to do as a result of these values?

"Because I value ________, I covenant to ___________"

Dandelion (Dandy) Prinsloo

"Accountability, we love her! Obligation, we love her!"

Rev. Mykal Slack

"[It's important to have] some clear understanding about accountability when harm is done. Covenant doesn't mean much if we're not willing to have those hard conversations... how to name harm, what to do about it when harm is done - when it's ok, and when it's good to say 'enough is enough'. It matters that we're willing, in the context of something as powerful as covenant, to say, 'Actually, that cannot be. That cannot happen anymore. If you continue to do THAT, this is not the space for you.' 

We have to be willing to say those hard things in the context of something as valuable as covenant. And being able to communicate that? That is all a part of leading in community where covenant is present. Helping everyone understand the value of those things and help people move through those things in meaningful ways in a way that offers care and in a way that is clear. 

Any commitments we make to each other - have to be relational and not individualistic, they have to be robust, and not reluctant. It's important that they are transformational and not static, empowering and not stale. And the only way for that to happen is if it is a living, breathing agreement that shifts and moves as we need to move, and as we get clear about what it means to move in concert with one another."

Dr. Élias Ortega

"Our religious faith is a covenantal faith. It is a faith where we come as we are but not necessarily remain the same. This journey is a journey of transformation, of new being."

Neuroscience and Ethics

 

"The practice of love begins with acceptance."

Mirror neurons. Are our brains wired for empathy?

1. Brain activity observed in insula.  Body budget. Non-linear, ancestral workings. How well someone can read their own bodies and have feeling responses. Variability measured. We don't have mirror neurons for others' neurons. We interpret and rely on our stories. Early stories about survival of the fittest was tied to male-dominated scientists. Now that women are biologists, too, more research on nurturing and collective care, compassion. 

2. Need more cross-disciplinary work. Biased toward any reduction that says one part of the brain is thinking / doing communal attunement. Emotions are not separate from rational brain / thinking. Brain is a connected symphony (not 3 parts).

Book recommendation:

• How Emotions Happen - Lisa Feldman Barrett

Poem - My Heart is Moved by All I Cannot Save - Adrienne Rich

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

#463, Singing the Living Tradition

Original source:  Dream of a Common Language (1978)

Songs - Dr. Thomas Rideout

 Youtube channnel for UUA

River

Building Bridges

Where You Go, I Will Go

General Assembly - Portland - 2022 - Day 1

 Attending virtually. 

President's Report, General Assembly 2022

So far, great quote by the Rev. Susan Grey (and UUA President): 

Joy feels like love and moves like freedom.

"The rise of authoritarianism, fascism and white Christian ethno nationalism is a reality in our country, and elsewhere. Unitarian Universalists have always been positioned to play crucial roles in the struggle for expanding freedom, equity and democracy. ....

We are in a liminal time, letting go of what has been, in that middle space in between, as we reach for what is next and create it together. Who will we be? How are we called? How is love calling us? 

What I witnessed in the midst of struggle and uncertainty is a fiery flame of vitality. This courage growing in us, this spiritual renewal in depth growing from our theological foundations. This practice of leaning into partnership and interdependence like never before. 

We are building a road together and singing songs, songs that are both new but echo the songs of those who came before us, leaving a road for us to follow. 

For five years now I have said it is no time for a casual faith and it is no time to go it alone. Now is the time to realize that we were made for this moment, that we are the people we have been waiting for. 

Now is the time to take more seriously the life saving ministry of our religious communities and our religious education ministry. To invest boldly and generously in our own congregations as a strong foundation for people to heal, to grow and to resist. To lean into covenant and collaboration across our congregations, to help all of our congregations thrive. To practice deeper solidarity and partnership with directly impacted communities for liberation and to create more joy, to create more joy and celebration, knowing that this is a source of power, of resilience and of the imagination that we all need, that our world needs. 

We were meant for joy. We were meant for joy, and joy feels like love and it moves like freedom. We were made for this moment. We are the people we have been waiting for. May we be, may we be the people that we are called to be."
 

Video

Session on Covenant & Repair on Thursday, 6/23:

• Tyler Coles, Richmond, VA
• Rev. Sara Dendy-Green

(Nuance and clarity)

All covenants should have "return" clauses - how to return to covenant when we "act out of pocket"

Reconciliation is not always possible, and certainly not always "now"

Octavia Butler - "God is change, and we will change with her."

"There are other places we can go to be mean to each other; church ain't it!"

 

Interlocking. Impact and shape one another. Centered are our values - give shape to covenant, mission, imagination (replacing "able-ist" language).

What does the beloved community ("kin-dom of heaven") feel like? sound like? taste like? smell like? 

Expectations with how we intend to be with one another. (Implicit covenants can be in conflict with our stated imaginations.)

 "Remember to find joy in the becoming."

[Thinking about Prez address - challenges for next year - policy overhaul, 8th principle work, campus master plan, covenant/mission redo]

Songs recommended:

• Come, Come, Whoever You Are by "Unfolding"
• Spirit of Life
• Blue Boat Home
• Fire of Commitment
• We'll Build a Land
• We Shall Be Known

 

How do we repair when WE broke it?

Conflict and harm are different things...

There is a lineage of harm that's passed down.

Books recommended:

• The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop by William Ury
• Unlocking the Power of Covenant

Prayer - the Reverend Gretchen Haley - "Bless today"

Bless today
your hesitancy
your shy shrug
your behind the scenes skepticism,
your sweet stoicism.

Bless your boredom
and your anxieties,
those worries that will not quiet
no matter the mantras,
the mettas, or
the meditating moments.

Bless your impatience and
your butterflies
your brash tone
and your desire to talk to no one
to care about nothing,
to be invisible and invincible
to be already perfect
and with ease, of course

Bless your shame
your self-doubt
your inner critic
and your coping techniques -
all of them,
whatever they may be.

Bless
most of all
your broken heart
and all the longings that made it so
bless your grief
your anger
and your still pressing hope.

All of these,
we bless -
All of ourselves,
we bless -
in this gathering made holy by our wholeness
this community made sacred by our scars
Let us be blessed

Let us be a blessing

Song - Busca el Amor - Salvador Cardenal Barquero

Revisa tu corazón
Para hallar el amor en un rincón.
Pero busca el amor.
Ni placer ni passion.
El amor lo que hace al otro bien

Chorus:
Busca el amor en ti.
Se multiplica si lo repartís.
Busca el amor en ti.
Sólo él que ama puede ser feliz.
Busca el amor en ti.
Se multiplica si lo repartís.
Busca el amor en ti.
Sólo él que ama puede ser feliz.
Busca el amor en ti, en ti.

Registra tu camaleón.
Cuando cambia el color del corazón
Y te estalla la flor.
Un pétalo del sol.
El amor lo que hace al otro bien

English translation:

Examine that heart of yours,
As you look for the love on your high shelf,
Past the pleasure and passion
for your own self,
for the love that’s reaching someone else.

Chorus:
Seek out the love in you,
And find the joy that comes to those who care.
Seek out the love in you.
It only grows whenever it is shared.
Seek out the love in you,
And find the joy that comes to those who care.
Seek out the love in you.
It only grows whenever it is shared.
Seek out the love in you, in you.

Your heart’s a chameleon,
Ever open to change like any flower.
Spreading out for the sun,
petals bursting with power.
To be love that’s reaching someone else.

Ultimate Grace by Maria Teresa Gustilo Gallardo [prayer]

Ultimate Grace, the heart of every matter, in every perfection and imperfection, in all senses and: tenses, in moments of every right and wrong, presenting choices to inquiring hearts. You are in the purpose and the journey of mishaps. You are in moments of understanding and misunderstanding. We have but to seek and invoke you, and enable the work of your spirit. As prayer is but an articulated common dream, we invoke our ultimate concern for the work of faith. We long to be hand in hand, creating a world where everyone belongs.


Free us from our hindrances. Make invisible things visible; the voiceless heard; lay what is hidden before us; make the chained unbound; the doubting believe; what is confusing let clarify; as hardened hearts grow soft to the touch. May we come in fullness, with gratefulness, in faithfulness to one another. May we speak in kind conversing, disclosing our truths with care, expressing our practical wisdom to learn of its practical limits. For the world was not meant to be possessed by a singular truth, but to be built together upon revelations.

O Universe, with stars in your hair, you have shown that great things emerge from humble beginnings, no matter how flawed and lacking. That one story, in a stable, in prison, in the cave, in destitution, in abject poverty, if lived in all sincerity can liberate from darkness the many.

May our eyes seek to appreciate, our breaths to dedicate power, our hands to warm each other. When loving fearlessly, we are invincible. When free will is deliberate, we are pivotal. When dreaming together, we are infinite.

Remind us of the very questions that we have turned away from, that we thought could not be answered, or are impossible to realize. Dear Universal Intelligence, your embrace contains everything but confines nothing. In the ever insistence of existence, may this one moment count. Amen.

UUA Website

Accent Shortcuts

 

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é É	Alt 0223 Alt 0201	Ctrl+’, E
í Í	Alt 0237 Alt 0205	Ctrl +’, i
ñ Ñ	Alt 0241 Alt 0209	Ctrl+~, n
ó Ó	Alt 0243 Alt 0211	Ctrl+’, o

The Unicorn Poem - Tony Mares

On Seeing a Detailed Map
of Old Town, Albuquerque

I notice the empty space
where there is no map,
only theater of man and myth,

where there is no path
to the wild mesas,
the shimmering fields of the unicorn,

a great land of dream and memory,
where less lovely beasts pursue
and try to corral him.

El unicornio
malherido por la cadena que rompió
y el coral puntiagudo
que saltó, corre por los campos
rumbo a . . .
los sueños y el recuerdo.
Ya vienen los perros.
El unicornio sangra, sangra.
Se vuelve pura espuma del sufrir,
un leve humo blanco.
Se vuelve pura esperanza.

The unicorn,
badly wounded
by the chain he broke
and the sharp-tipped picket fence he jumped,
runs through the fields
toward . . .
dreams and memories.
The unicorn bleeds, bleeds.
He becomes the lather of suffering,
a thin white smoke.
He becomes a pure hope.

To the east are the Sandia Mountains
where Apaches hidden by time
look down on the great city
stretching far to the west
and all along the Rio Grande valley.
They are beyond the old pain now,
the shrinking land and the suffocating sky.
Once in a while they recall
the good times and as a jest
they send a bear
scampering down into Albuquerque
to test the state of the laughter
there on the asphalt streets,
the surface of the smoothed-over rift.

Enormous caterpillars called "Eucs"
have cut a swath
across the Sandias
gouging deeper than any book
has ever made a furrow
through my mind.

Tourists speed by
perhaps not sensing the scar tissue,
the plowed-up land,
not likely to see the aspen,
cedar, deer and wild goat
above the limestone ledge.

It is not where logic and tools
conspire to simplify the land
that a poem
snares the fish of light
in a shadowed stand of pine.

I choose the forest
and the peaks behind my eyes
above the road cut,
where a hobbled unicorn cries
and a white whale breeches
through El Greco's tumbling skies.

From those heights
the city down below forms a bowl
whose center is Old Town;
not the make-believe Old Town,
the Hollywood Old Town,
but rather as it was then called,
Alburquerque,
where it all began
in the unhurried nights and days
a long time ago,
where the small ranches
spread out along the river
and slowly the plaza formed
a diminutive stage,
the center of my universe.

Boxes on the map
are meant to be houses made of words.
Discrete squares,
loops and rectangles
form this world of ink.
It would become cluttered, messy,
to try to show the details
inside the make-believe worlds
these lines on paper represent.
Straight lines suddenly veer
or curve to follow some unknown contour
of the mind or of the land.

They are roads made of words
obscure as the kingdom
from which they come.

En el reinado de la palabra
todo puede ser.
El rey absurdo ni apenas
se vista de tinta.
Los vasallos andan por allá
entre las sílabas.
Y los demás,
es decir el pueblo,
como es ahora
y siempre ha sido,
forma el fondo escuro
del reinado de la palabra.

In the kingdom of the word
everything is possible.
The absurd king is not even barely
dressed in ink.
His vassals scurry around
through the syllables.
And the rest,
that is to say, the people,
as it is now and always has been,
form the obscure backdrop
for the kingdom of the word.

Roads are words
leading to

silence

where the map falters,
becomes the screechy note on the violin,
the musician blinded by the desert sun,

where the map stumbles
into a whiteness
as total as death.

He cruzado caminos
en los sueños.
Caminos que dan a la muerte.
El letrero de un camino dice "Roma,"
pero a Roma llegan
muy pocos caminos de aquí.

Son caminos
que se parecen mucho
a los caminos despiertos.

Son caminos
donde hay poca gente.
Caminos que dan a un parque
o a una vega placentera
en medianoche
con un jardín que pronto se hace
camposanto
con cruces
bajo luz blanca,
y todo esto
envuelto en la niebla que lleva
el barco del sueño.

Todo mar y camino
llegan al margen
de la nada
donde no hay ni huella que seguir.
Aquí el poeta con su pluma
dibuja imágenes
de su porvenir.

In dreams

I have come upon roads

leading to death.

A road sign says "Roma,"

but few roads here

lead to Rome.

These dream roads

are very much like wide awake

roads.

These are roads

with few people,

roads leading to a park,

the pleasant meadow

at midnight

and there is a garden

that changes into a cemetery

with crosses

bathed in white light.

And all this happens

wrapped in the fog carrying

the ghost ship of dreams along.

All roads and seas

lead to the edge of nothingness

where not even a clue 

is left to follow.

Here the poet with his pen

sketches out images

for his future.

Inside the boxes 

there is an incessant whirl.

People and their possessions

seek form,

the ultimate solidity of words.

Long before there were words,

the curious tracks they leave

across an empty space,

the only map

was in the eye of the eagle

gliding along the canyon walls,

or in the fine particles of sand

forming an undulating S,

the wake of the serpent 

sidewinding its way south

beneath the sun.

Once people formed by the light

became Aztecs wandering this land.

Their lips uttered words

and the words became gods. 

Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl,

Lord and Lady of Our Sustenance. 

Quetzalcoatl,

God of Life,

Creator of the People,

Lord of the House of Dawn.

Tezcatlipoca,

omnipotent God of Darkness,

God of Sorcerers and Highwaymen,

Lord of the House of Night.

We are not the Aztecs

who left ghost trails here.

We remember them.

We are the victims

of all the Aztecs--

Mexican Aztecs

Spanish Aztecs

Anglo Aztecs

Pick Your Own Favorite Aztecs.

We are the sacrificed

in this land

where the Lord of the House of Night

grows fat

at the Feast of the Flying of Men.

Reluctantly, we leave home and wander.

Sometimes our barrios

recall the family names of founders--

los Barelas, Martineztown,

los Candelarias--or the saints--

San José, San Felipe--

and we remember them 

on our travels

for we constantly move about

and we are far from Aztlán.

Words become seeds of maize
the healing herbs of the medicine man.
Words become mud villages
named with the flint edge
of cliff, wind, and star.
Tiguex, Alcanform, Isleta, Sandia.

Spaniards brought their words
for the shapes of horses, sheep,
metal plows, swords and crosses,
wheat, apples, peaches.
Franciscans offered up
their sales pitch--
sin, forgiveness, salvation,
the trade-in offer for the old
native gods.

Clouds of ivory

tinge the Spanish sky,

burst and fall in Mozarabic light,

a fountain spray

beneath al Andaluz sun

caught in some Alhambran

garden of my mind.

Evening toward Africa

and a dark muezzin

calls down the Moorish night

to the narrow streets of Granada.

Golden Age ballads

and a song

in praise of wine

by Samuel Ha-Nagid

drift through the olive trees

toward the sea.

Here an occasional Morrano

paused on the journey north,

seeing the Sandias,

seeing Granada in his mind,

and continued on up in the valley.

Spanish tongues

fleshed out the bare bones

of love and hate.

Indio

Mestizo

Española

Mexicano

Americano

whispered

the ritual words,

then parted the blessed thighs

In the name of the Father

and of the Son

who will be born of this union . . .

and of the Holy Ghost,

him, the spooky one,

the inscrutable tongue of fire

who threatened to burn me as a child.

Him, the ghost who may have been

the howling birth of strong men and women

who built

la Plaza de Alburquerque,

the Church of San Felipe Neri,

ad majorem gloriam dei.

Words of ancestors

spoke of fabulous islands and beasts,

fountains of youth,

cities of gold and heavenly utopias

where the saints would wait

for the second coming of Christ.

Words of ancestors

spoke of Hummingbird-on-the-Left,

an eagle devouring the hearts of men,

the sun who did battle with darkness

and arose every morning

from the pool of night,

human blood and tears.

Words of ancestors

spoke of Jesucristo and his mother,

la Virgen María, who intercedes

with God the Father

to have mercy on sinners.

Sephardic laments

of a lost tribe

carried the words of ancestors

who longed for Zion.

Words of ancestors

sprouted from the lips of the dying,

gathered and hovered

over the rites of extreme unction

and the return of the camposanto.

From where it no longer is,

a star takes aim like a sharpshooter

right at my eyes.

Light scatters in all directions,

a pack of wolves on fire

running to the past and the future.

Bones walk through my shadow

and my body explodes

into a longing for wings.

Coyotes gather in the dark place

circling my path with cold fire.

I cannot answer their hungry jaws.

A bird, a hawk, is a shadow 

circling my future,

is carved into stone I cannot see.

Camposanto of words

uncoupling from flesh,

camposanto of words

seeking the lips of a lover,

camposanto of words

unmoved by time

scattering the tombstones,

camposanto of words

crystalline for the moon

fleeting and hard

as an obsidian butterfly,

camposanto of words

you yearn for a song.

The land is stark in New Mexico.

The sky comes right down to the ground

and stamps hard on the earth

insistent as a Jemez dancer

or the staff of a matachín.

It is a land of hunters

where men and animals

stand naked in a forest of light,

always taking aim,

always the target.

Between San Ysidro and Cuba

I come across a hunter,

a coyote killed by a truck in the night,

a spot of gore on the road.

His great head stands alone,

sculpture mounted on the desolate asphalt,

the jaws thrown open like the land,

the fangs bare to the immense sky.

This is his last and fitting comment

on the world of coyote,

the vast wilderness of death

he did not know 

would fix forever in my heart

this final, silent, and classic howl.

Capulín rises, a perfect volcanic cone,

near Folsom, at the edge of the plains to the east.

We drive round the base in a pickup truck

hunting for deer, our tracks crisscrossing

the ghosts of cowboys on the Goodnight Trail,

Kiowas on their fast ponies, and earlier men

who hunted the mammoth and the great bison.

Capulín rises, a white marker

in a green and cloudy sea

while we, like cavemen, repeat the pattern below

before we, too, complete the circle

into memory, into silence, and into stone.

Looking down from Johnson mesa,

Ratón is a scattering of cold seeds of light,

mirror to the stars in the black sky.

I remember I am a fawn on this sheer ledge,

an early man wandered over from Folsom,

or from the cool caves at Altamira.

There is a cold wind sweeping around the rocks

as at Stonehenge, and through my bones.

Before my feet, a sharp drop falls

to the deer below nesting down for the night.

I remember that I am a tired hunter

and that time has caught me on this cliff.

There is nothing can be done for it 

except let hunter and hunted sleep for a while.

Tomorrow we take up the chase again with the sun

here where the world breaks off,

snapped like a twig or a rifle shot

into the silence of the valley below. 

Here the earth, too, is a hunter

restless on its trail through the void.

Driving on Highway 90 

east from Silver City

crow crosses my path above San Lorenzo.

Gray squirrel does the same thing

in Gila Wilderness.

Halfway through Hillsboro

a whirl of cottonwood leaves

dances across the highway 

following Percha Kreek

down to Caballo Lake.

The Caballo Mountains to the east

rear up from the desert floor

shimmering in the afternoon heat,

horses trapped in stone;

much like unicorns,

they stretch their necks upward,

the great blue heads

neighing into the sky.

Rhythms of the hunt

demanding as the staff of the matachines

return to la plaza vieja de Alburquerque,

the boxes made of ink on paper. 

Ya vienen los indios

de Guarecimé,

son los matachines

de Guarecimé

Son los matachines

de Guarecimé.

Son los matachines

de Guarecimé.

Words of ancestors

remembered a castle in County Cork,

a leprechaun hiding in the glen,

the clean taste of whiskey,

a beloved violin in the evening breeze.

A Victrola of the heart

plays in each box on the map

letting fly voices and words

which sing of another time.

A box on a map

is a whirling dust devil,

a ghost dance in ink.

Each box forms

a history of the flame word,

a cry from the past.

Ghosts walk arm in arm

around the Old Town plaza.

A pale tourist yawns.

Mr. Devine plays

a waltz on his violin.

Carried by the wind,

the music rising

from the bandstand in the square.

He dreams his children.

The old photograph

shows dark Irish eyes and hair.

He sees his grandson.

When she was young,

Rebecca Gutierrez sang

and danced in these streets.

Grandmother looks subdued.

Not at all like when she prayed 

the endless rosary.

Another photograph,

family portrait, dated 1898.

Cristobal Mares,

patriarch of the family,

prosperous ranchero,

his eyes are the shade of history.

He remembers his grandfather's stories

about the long cattle drive

north from Guadalajara,

the throat-searing crossing

of la jornada del muerto

(the dead man's journey)

to arrive in the rio arriba country,

green mountains north of Santa Fe

then Taos and home.

Trinidad Pacheco de Mares

endures the eternal Taos winter,

the struggle etched in the set jaw,

the pursed lips.

She is the matriarch who bears

for her husband Cristobal six children:

Laureano, Porfiria, Isabel,

Fernando, Lupita, Eduardo--

my grandfather who is about fifteen

in this photograph, stubborn enough

to survive the loss of land,

the Great Depression,

slaving in the sweatshops

for the Santa Fe Railroad.

He will live long enough

to wrestle me as a child,

that strength of his still there

for me to draw from until now.

These Mares and Martinez stare

from the cold eye of winter 

into the eye of the camera,

into the eye of death,

that bony-faced woman,

la huesuda, who smiles

and points her arrows at them

from my century,

from my eyes starting into theirs.

I turn away toward the future,

also found deep in the eyes

of David, as Goliath discovered

in a painting by Jaro Dedina.

David, confident as a man

delivered from the jaw of the lion

and from the paw of the bear,

ruddy and handsome,

his face the color of the earth,

takes up the foreground.

A visage as of a mighty power

to the right and above David's head

looks down from the sky

over the valley of Elah.

There seems to be no place

large enough on this canvas

for a Goliath to stand

against the steady gaze

of David's eyes.

Goliath, 

seen only in the eyes of David,

sees a graceful motion not his own,

a dance he fears he cannot do.

For forty days

the Philistine came forward

large and clumsy as a doomed empire.

Morning and evening

he shouted defiance of the spirit.

Trapped now by these eyes,

his great bulk

reduced to pitiable smallness,

Goliath can do no thing

but murmur the ritual slogans

and lurch forward to the battle.

David's eyes will not let go.

Goliath, held fast to is footnote in history

by the eyes in this painting,

does not see the onrushing future,

the small stone

cast from the whirling sling of David.

A third photograph shows my grandparents and their red brick house

on First Street in New Town.

It was the harsh thirties

and the photo tells

the old story of the Crash,

the land blowing away to Texas.

Grandpa is dressed in a cheap suit,

Grandma in what finery she could salvage.

Grandpa was bound

as my father was then bound,

hand and foot

by iron and steel and debt,

by the railroad "shops" 

where men were sliced in half

by the indifferent tools.

The "shops," layered with grime

so dark and gloomy

a worker could lean over a stairwell,

piss on the foreman below

and never get caught.

A train whistle

cuts from east to west

through a child's memory

that first flew and circled

high above some Andalusian plain,

or took flight on a fluted note

in the court of Texcoco.

Far away across the lake

and the floating gardens,

the ram's horn 

called to yet another sacrifice.

The child cannot remember

what he remembers now

here in Old Town,

here with this map,

right here in the Rio Grande valley

where extinct volcanos

guard the west approach

and the Sandia Mountains to the east

sculpt the memories of stone age men.

Another camera has caught 

the ghost in the KiMo Theatre.

Early 1930s, clean

New Mexico sky,

small town downtown Albuquerque

KiMo Theatre marquee:

Glen Tryon in Hot Heels,

Five Acts of Vaudeville.

Years later, Uncle Elfego

took me to see Roy Rogers,

Gene Autry, the Cisco Kid,

and all their epigones

who fought the good fight

against the ubiquitous bad guys.

Now, Uncle Elfego

sings in his grave.

Hot air balloons

float above Albuquerque,

balloons for his funeral

to rise with his spirit

and carry his memory into song.

Frozen, these figures

face the camera

to be caught in pure form.

The university student

dressed like a thirties dandy

raises his hand and salutes me

from his time to my own.

Another man, then in his 20s,

stares at me dumbfounded

from the west corner just north

of the old Fords and Chevies

on Fifth Street

more than half a century away.

The American afternoon crowd

in front of the KiMo

caught then by the camera lens

is now what it must be,

the frozen images within

the reduced and still life

dimensions of a photograph.

Three young businessmen

who try to sell arid mesa

and blue sky

greet each other.

The shadows of the distant future

cast by the camera

are too thin for them in this brilliant sun.

Too  thin, also, for the heavy-set optimist

wearing the good suit

and smiling into the end of his era.

He stares like the last 

black-and-white buffalo

into the dispassionate camera,

the last of his God-fearing kind.

He stands on the hood

of the Pierce Arrow.

Beside the Pierce Arrow

stands the happy baker from Lola's Cafe.

A woman and her daughter pause

to smile at me before they, too, exit

to their own half century.

Another Pierce Arrow continues east on Central,

black arrow crossing the bright day,

black arrow in black-and-white photograph,

black arrow crossing before my eyes.

It is New Mexico, late '20s or early '30s,

black-and-white photograph of the KiMo Theatre

appealing to the history minded

except for him, the ghost, the one who didn't pause

for the camera!

He's the fast-moving blur

him the clown,

sideshow barker,

seller of popcorn and cotton candy,

well dressed, it is plain to see

from the cloud puffs of form

which caught his hands

and sport coat sleeves,

also the pant legs and spats.

It is for him I sing--

him, the ghost

walking smartly along Central

to the El Fidel Hotel

or perhaps on to Old Town,

him, the ghost,

too slick to be caught by the camera,

too much to do

to be trapped by his own time.

Bones pass through his shadow

every day in Albuquerque.

Him, the ghost who stares at Uncle Elfego and me

in the KiMo Theatre

watching Gene Autry and Roy Rogers movies,

a shadow on an old photograph,

a hope solid but shapeless,

fleeting as faith.

Him, the ghost in the KiMo Theatre.

A train whistle echoes again

and is gone.

The train sits on a siding.

The rails turn into rust.

Weeds numerous as headstones

grow inside the roundhouse

crying like an old woman to herself,

longing for her dead children.

I am reminded of the whistle's

shrill lament,

the purpose-bound engine

coming down the tracks,

remorseless as memory.

To the west on the map,

Mr. McCarty's house

is the thick rectangle.

The square behind it

is the tin-roofed garage

where Donny McCarty showed me

how to parachute out of the attic.

It was our airplane

and it was our fortress

deep behind enemy lines,

our secret cave in a cliff

where our small bodies

became immortal shapes

of comic book and movie heroes.

Across the street

is the Manzano Day School

with its playground

open to the children

of the country club set.

We invaded that forbidden wonderland.

Once the watchman caught us,

Donny and me, talked of jail,

tossed us out of paradise

and warned us not to be caught here again,

warned us never to return.

I became an enemy of the state. 

Nearby is the large square

meant to be Old Town Plaza.

The little domino on the north side

is the San Felipe Neri Church.

The other large square is the stone castle

Bernalillo County Court House of the 1880s

that became San Felipe School.

Every gloomy room held for a child

the ghost of an outlaw,

a cattle rustler, a hanged man.

The short leg of the L-shaped building

on San Felipe Street

is where I lied for one year

with good songs and a woman I dearly loved.

That thin rectangle on Lomas Boulevard,

New York Avenue, as it was called then,

stand for the word which is my center.

The bird of memory comes winging back

strong as my child lungs

gasping for air in an oxygen tent,

strong as the coal and cedar

in the wood-burning stove,

strong as the fresh-based wild pheasant

my father hunted and killed,

strong as the July sun

across the worn linoleum floor,

strong as the outhouse stench

even in freezing December,

strong as the wind-and-rain-polished

adobe walls in the back yard

that stood broken and gaping,

strong as the horsehair and straw

mixed in those mud bricks,

strong as the vanished voices

that held together the singing vision.

On such wings

the bird of memory flies

and then falls back to earth,

to silence, to velorios,

to all the weeping women.

Where the map leaves off

there is a great white empty space,

the rest of the world.

Beyond Old Town, la Plaza Vieja,

the old women in black shawls,

the old fires turning to white ash,

there is only terra incognita.

I populate these boxes and lines

made of ink on paper

as best I can inside my head.

Then I turn away

to my own place and my own time.

El unicornio

malherido por estos tiempos

corre al margen del mapa.

Bajo la luna llena

las blancas abejas

labran panal de luz

en una noche serena.

He visot pasar el unicornio.

Hechizado, lo he seguido

a la margen del ancho mar.

No sé si me quedo

para simpre dormido

o al punto de despertar.

Pero ya veo cristalizar

los granitos de sal

en el panal de las abejas.

The unicorn,

badly wounded by these times,

gallops along the margin of the map.

With the full moon above,

the white bees 

build a honeycomb of light

in the calm evening.

I have seen the unicorn pass by.

Spellbound, I have followed him 

to the edge of the sea

where I know not if I sleep forever

or if I am about to wake.

Still, I see

the salt grains crystallize

in the honeycomb of the bees. 

Song - Love Yourself - Linda Myers

Love Transcends

Love Transports

Love Transforms

Love Translates

Poem - The Vulture & the Body - Ada Limón

On my way to the fertility clinic,

I pass five dead animals.

First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky
    like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load falls on him next.

Then, a grown coyote, his furred golden body soft against the white

cement lip of the traffic barrier. Trickster no longer,

an eye closed to what’s coming.

Close to the water tower that says, “Florence, Y’all,” which means I’m near Cincinnati,

but still in the bluegrass state, and close to my exit, I see

three dead deer, all staggered but together, and I realize as I speed past in my
death machine that they are a family. I say something

to myself that’s in between a prayer and curse—how dare we live

on this Earth.

I want to tell my doctor about how we all hold a duality

in our minds: futures entirely different. Footloose or forged.

I want to tell him how lately, it’s enough to be reminded that my body

is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and so’s he, and that last Tuesday,

I sat alone in the car by the post office and just was for a whole hour, no one
knowing how to find me, until I got out, the sound of the car door shutting like a gun,

and mailed letters, all of them saying, Thank you.

But in the clinic, the sonogram wand showing my follicles, he asks if I have any questions,

and says, Things are getting exciting.

I want to say, But what about all the dead animals? The Earth? Our trapped bodies?
But he goes quicksilver, and I’m left to pull my panties up like a big girl.

Somedays there is a violent sister inside of me, and a red ladder
that wants to go elsewhere.

I drive home on the other side of the road, going south now. The white coat has said

I’m ready, and I watch as a vulture crosses over me, heading toward

the carcasses I haven’t properly mourned or even forgiven. What if, instead of carrying

a child, I am supposed to carry grief? The great black scavenger flies parallel now,

each of us speeding, intently and driven, toward what we’ve been taught to do with death.