Thursday, April 30, 2020

Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area



"The Tibetan's textual maps had an ambitious purpose: to convert wilderness into a sacred realm and to chart the interface between mind and landscape...In a passage through a landscape lush with symbols...the lake, the cave, the cliffs all offered fulcrums where perception could turn to revelation and open the gates to some previously inaccessible space, whether within the outer landscape or the mind."   Heart of the World, Ian Baker


Thursday, April 23, 2020

a walk in the field




a walk in the field
zillions of tiny flowers
hiding in plain sight

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

again, Loren Eiseley


                                                                                                                              The Bisti Badlands Wilderness

"...this was a country in which time had no power because the sky did not know it, the stones had not heard it passing, the river had been talking to itself since before man arose and in that country it would talk on after man had departed.  I was alone...looking upon a time thousands of years remote, yet so meaningless that at any moment flame might spurt from the ash of a dead campfire and hunters come slipping from the rocks...No bird sang no beast stirred...I had come across what seemed to be a hidden fragment of the days before creation...I had brought time in my perishable body into a place where, to all intents, it could not exist."

                                                                                                    The Invisible Pyramid
                                                                                                    Loren Eiseley

Monday, April 20, 2020

A quote from Loren Eiseley


                                                                                                                The Bisti Badlands Wilderness

"As the long months passed, I began to live on the slower planes and to observe more readily what passed for life there.  I sauntered, I passed more and more slowly up and down the canyons in the dry baking heat of midsummer...I sat once on a high ridge that fell away before me into a waste of sand dunes.  I sat through hours of a long afternoon.  Finally an indistinct configuration caught my eye.  It was a coiled rattlesnake, a big one.  How long he had sat with me I do not know.  We were both locked in the sleep-walking tempo of the earlier world, baking in the same high air and sunshine...It grew cold finally, for autumn was in the air, and the few things that lived thereabouts were sinking down into an even chillier scale of time...so thin and slow was the time of my pulse by then that I might have stayed on to drift still deeper into the lower cadences of the frost, or the crystalline life that glistens pebbles, or shines in a snowflake, or dreams in meteoric iron between the worlds."

                                                                                                   The Star Thrower (p. 85)                 
                                                                                                   Loren Eiseley

Friday, April 17, 2020

a subtle calligraphy




Rare rainwaters trace
a subtle calligraphy
across tawny sands.


Out in Ojito,
crusty place of space and sky,
blooms a desert rose.

Thursday, April 16, 2020

kaleidoscope





The numbered wheel's marble
drops a darkly dicey spice.
Pretty patterns break
as the kaleidoscope churns
rainbow-colored lights.


Tuesday, April 14, 2020

one crystal moment




one crystal moment
a twist and the pattern's gone
none remains for long

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Out to Ojito



Out to Ojito

The world sometimes feels upside-down
with senseless violence and pain...
I go out to Ojito then, 
seeking solace and reminder 
that the earth abides
and humanity may yet
set itself right
again.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

evening gold descends




evening gold descends
settling molten on the pond
sandhill cranes alight

Friday, April 10, 2020

the ruddy sunset



the ruddy sunset
smoldering yucca aglow
candle burning low



Tessie

Thursday, April 9, 2020

the rustle of leaves



the rustle of leaves, 
fall whispering up your spine --
the silent pause



sheep bells and stream ice,
ravens winging by, framed in
 the canyon's silence 

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

circling overhead




circling overhead
a raven strokes the still air
checking on my health



we play with free will
till nature's long arm reaches in
closing on the loan

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

the sun's flaming tongue




the sun's flaming tongue
licking the dusky surface...
swallowed by the sea



pipers lounge atop
their watery reflections...
just another day

Monday, April 6, 2020

two turtles sunning



Two turtles sunning,
hugging the pond's precipice.
I...step...and...PlopPlop!

Saturday, April 4, 2020

after the squawking



after the squawking
clusters of goslings here and there --
sun-haloed puffballs 



Friday, April 3, 2020

springtime geese



The geese are pairing,
the male making a racket!
She's unimpressed!



Breaking morning's peace!
Raucous, he pursues, she flees.
Oh those fucking geese!



Thursday, April 2, 2020

a feathered cloud floats



a feathered cloud floats,
dissolves into the vast blue
like foam on the sea



such a fine feeling
that rings with the bell
of recognition


Wednesday, April 1, 2020

window open wide



window open wide
morning fragrance and birdsong
breezing gently in



such powerful wind
tearing branches from the trees
while flowers curtsey