Mystical Tarot Realms
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Pink Fairy Lanterns, Yellow Daisies, Purple Vetch
Suite No. 13, Seventh Movement:
RUNNING WITH MY POWER
I hike where even the humus breathes slightly,
huge trees exhaling a breath that cleanses
the darkened shrubs of my lungs
and awakens flowers of energy
all over my body. I feel
the drumming deep in roots and rocks
as snowmelt cascades down the slopes,
the blood of many creatures pounding
in my ears, coursing through countless
veins, the heartbeat of mother earth pulsing
in bushes and trees, in the bobcat
on the other side of the stream, in the strider
sliding away from the bank
on a skin of light. There I find
my power, releasing black spiders
from my subtle body through a hole
in my back, healing myself through grief
and forgiveness, cleansing
the astral flowers of my aura
until they open for the powers
of harmony. Together, my power
and I strut through a meadow
to the ruins of a stone house
as coyotes cut loose a howl,
and we dash over hills on ancient trails
from pounding stone to pounding stone,
feeling our way through a cave where I see
brilliant archetypes: a pure, white,
four-petaled flower burgeoning
into a flower with countless petals,
the four elements blossoming into
the thousand-petaled lotus; a gray
infinity symbol floating above my head;
and a golden-equal armed cross, the Archangels
at each end slowly growing clearer.
I emerge from the cave to perform
a ritual invoking the Archangels,
the four elements flowing into me
so that I feel the power of those forces
embodied as human forms
with mighty wings, all a flowing,
a balancing, as I lounge
on a pounding stone at the edge
of the cliff and pray for release
from attachment and desire. I am
a hawk floating high
above the oaks, my body towering
into the heavens, assuming the form
of a god, my own head the fiery head
of a hawk, my aura flung beyond the edges
of the sky, the sun beating down,
manifold creatures in its light whispering
to creation. Seven pestles wait, placed
on a rock near the pounding stone.
Once I was certain the Earth
would soon be free of us,
everything that I and so many others
had fought for in ruins--but now
I stand on the pounding stone
under the living sun, awakening
the Tree of Life within myself
as I make a brilliant cross of light,
a wren foraging a few feet away,
huge astral antlers branching
from my head, an inverted rainbow
in my heart, a flock of bushtits
descending on an oak, so close: I am
no more threatening than the sun.
Wind Poppies after the Rough Fire
Suite No. 13, Eighth Movement:
THE VOW
On the way up, I needed
words to calm myself,
on this winter day when smog
smothers the valley again, grays
the rocks half a mile away
where the creek shines like chrome.
All afternoon I explored the paths
webbing down to the creek
where pounding stones and trails
are all that remain of the tribe
that once settled on cleared,
gentle inclines. I ventured up
the steep slopes toward the top
to claim it as my own in the late
afternoon sun. For all of an afternoon
I trespassed, perhaps not meant
to look down anymore
on the grayness below that never
clears. At the edge of the cliff I lost myself
easily in the breath of trees and grasses,
above chemicals ruining mind
and body, knowing I cannot protect
these hillsides. Not long ago
the tribe was ravaged by sickness
and finished off by murder and
starvation, the air and water
and the remaining creatures no longer
belonging to the earth. I have always
kept some faith in my feet, and I hiked
past cattle that fled in absolute terror
of me or refused to budge
when I approached, all
without horns. Those animals
could have done me great harm,
but didn't. I have brought you here
to the edge of this cliff to remember
the valley as it was before the earth
was sold. I will remain
as a few magic words that fly
from this cliff over the valley
to write the language of flowers
gone forever, to bear witness
for the air and water passing
through everything living, to ease
the desolation of those who believe
that all must wisely share the earth,
and although I may not even be meant
to be the voice, my words will take you
part of the way, past the last trees
to the rocks at the top behind which
a mother is lying beside her newborn calf,
a young bull grazing, so powerful
and unconcerned you might think them
godlike and pure, untouched
for generations, the huge horns
without garlands, without blood.
__________
The ancient trail died in foxtails,
emerging on the other side
of the hill, heading down
to a stretch of Sycamore Creek
where we had never been before,
the trail snaking to a pounding stone covered
with pestles. Terrifying the cattle,
I ran straight to other pounding stones,
once again along that creek
certain that I had lived
before, gathering acorns
and grinding them in the mortars.
You said you believed, as I
stooped to pick up an acorn,
one great, peaceful breath settling
on the woodlands, my self lost
long ago and again too soon,
the cattle rooting out
the acorns, our home
nowhere and everywhere.
__________
In the foothills, by a vernal pool, I once picked up a toad
that had escaped from my childhood and squeezed it
gently so that it wouldn't squirm or pee in my hand.
The toads disappeared from town long ago. Once,
when I was a flagger, I couldn't outrun the viscous
rain dropped from a cropduster. I showered,
drank a glass of milk, but still didn't feel okay, nearly
passing out. Another man ate with the poison
still on his fingertips; he stopped breathing
for two minutes before they revived him, the boss
not wanting to pay for an ambulance. After that, I noticed
the only grasslands along an avenue that stretches
across the entire valley. A lone owl perched
on a metal fence post, and eight kingbirds flitted
from barbed wire to the grass after bugs
and flitted back, the fence enabling them adapt
to cultivated land, the other birds that once used the flyway
long gone. Years later, I stood at the entrance to a canyon
among flowers whose names I didn't know until middle age,
the self unselfing, the eternal experiencing itself
for a moment, the delicate purple eyes of fiesta flowers
open on vines hanging all over poison oak, a swallowtail
exploring the filaments of the thistle, unafraid
while I watched a foot away, the first oriole of spring
suddenly winging over my head across the river to sway
on a bare buckeye branch and then return toward me,
veering away suddenly to eye me from a nearby oak
as I swayed on the cliff. On the canyon floor,
the call of the phainopepla, a heavy drop
plopping into still water, mingled
with the long musical call
of the grosbeak. I lay by the river,
gazing upward as the clouds
flowed over, and I could believe
that I have lived in wetness with the toad,
that my vines, heavy with flowers, have blanketed
bushes and limbs, that I have clung to one leaf
for ages waiting for some animal to pass,
that I have winged, a brilliant flame, from tree
to tree, eternal and forever changing, only now
aware of a possible end without grace, and I vowed
never to rob life with its splendor
from mountain or valley
or from any human being on this earth.
Pestles on a Pounding Stone
Suite No. 13, Ninth Movement:
SHAMAN AT THE CONFLUENCES
Leaping from rock to slippery
Unstable rock in Big Creek, my boots
And pants soaked as I cross in search
Of artifacts, I make it to the other side
And scramble up a slope
To find shotgun shells sprinkled
On a house pit, mortars claimed
By humus and moss. Trampled and
Uneven, a trail snakes along a cliff
To a confluence where I choose
A faint path unmolested by cattle,
The trail soon vanishing under dry
Sycamore leaves webbed by a tribe
Of spiders. Poison oak blocks
One side of the ravine and a buckeye
Looms on the other side,
So I grab a long branch and hoist
Myself onto a boulder that topples
To the stream bed as I leap
To another rock. Nobody knows
Where I am. I scramble higher,
Grasping grass and roots, finding
Primeval woodlands above the lip
Of the waterfall, and I plod forward
With a little faith in my feet,
Sure that I'm being watched by
Something--animal or spirit--
Not human. When I discover
A pounding stone with two pestles,
I am afraid. A skirt of dried earth
And moss clings to each tapered stone
As I pull them out from their mortars.
Like a shaman from another time,
I feel the Over-Soul
Is aware of me, but there has not yet
Been a parley. A rattlesnake,
Camouflaged by roots that stick out
From the embankment, shatters
The stillness and slithers
Into a hole, the Over-Soul
Aware of me like I
Am aware of the rattler.
I open my senses
To feel what it's like
To be a newt or frog or snake
Or buckeye or redbud reflected
Over Soul
In still water, and I let an image
Of the Over-Soul rise from a deep pool.
I fashion an image for her spirit
To ensoul, her hair winding down
To her feet like shiny black rivulets,
A crown of moons in different
Phases, a bobcat at her feet,
Doves fluttering nearby, green robes
Gleaming with embroidery
Of gem-like flowers, behind her
A towering oak, the branches
Like streams, its trunk like
A river plunged into earth.
I invoke awkwardly
At first, then more powerfully
As I stand on the pounding stone
With her form in my imagination--
And I ask the Over-Soul to pour
Her essence into my soul--as a channel
Into the soul of humanity. At first
I feel like black, primordial ooze,
Fetid decay, suddenly warm
And compact, webbed by veins,
Then rivulets pouring down
The ravines into still pools
And down to a river that once
Flowed to the ocean under an ocean
Of breath, and then I am all
The plants and animals, with love
For everything ever connected
To this stream, the Over-Soul
Suddenly pouring into me
A timeless peace.
Two Mortars
Suite No. 13, Tenth Movement:
THE TERMINAL
The third time I passed the terminal on Cherry Street,
I recalled that I had worked there years before
on Saturdays cleaning up the trailers in the yard, painting
each back door orange and planting the company decal.
Another company had taken over the terminal, sold off
half the yard, added barbed wire to the top of the fence,
and left one trailer standing away from the dock.
Back then, on Saturdays the yard was deserted,
the sun pounding the blacktop and the metal of the trailers,
a hot breeze always causing settling sounds somewhere,
a gray fur growing everywhere, the trailers lined up
for departure to points all over the west coast, hiding me
all day from anyone who might have known me,
a land empty of illusion where a self was unnecessary.
My cousin worked with me twice. I must be an illusion
to him now, the terminal on Cherry Street forgotten,
the old company lost in a hostile takeover, its name
seen in the valley on one trailer stranded on a small farm
by the freeway. The last Saturday I worked with him
at the magical end of the summer before I began
my own glorious life, we jammed together, riffing
the songs of our youth on the empty loading dock,
smoking doobies. Who were you then? I have asked
that question too many times, not just of my cousin
and myself but of many who have disappeared
since that day, so many times that I know that I
must be an illusion, not one self but a world, my cousin
and I the only ones who remember our fingers jamming
on the guitar strings, the rock music
ending years ago, the terminal
in merciless light--with someone
else there now to care for it.
Ancient Trail
Suite No. 13, Eleventh Movement:
ANCIENT WEB
I park near a pile of rubbish
dumped by the road, and, struggling
up a hillside, follow a path not sure
it is thousands of years old, but finding
destinations, the leaves of sycamores
floating onto pounding stones
or into the stream where they are dragged
along by the current and sucked under.
By the pounding stone, a shallow
depression in the earth,
large enough for a bed.
A house pit? Near that,
rocks stacked on
each other--a miner's grave?
Beyond the creek, five trails
join at a hub between the river
and the creek, where a rancher
has dropped blocks of salt, the mysteries
pondered a moment before lost
in the grass, empty in the curl
of a leaf. According to mystics
the ether contains records
of every moment within eternity,
a memory of every individual
experience within the physical
plane. Somehow I know where
to find the pounding stones
and house pits and trails
along the creeks, as though some
inner sight has been granted me--
a man powerless, gauche,
and unworthy. Wildcat Mountain
looms in the distance from many points
of the ancient trails, the distance
undisturbed, no one approaching
with news of forces sent to capture me
or drive me off the land--
mansions planned
for forty acre lots. I dig
into mortars brimming
with grass and earth, the dry
oak leaves needling my fingers,
the pounding stones deep
as icebergs, the air, smelling
of rain, still in the quiet woods.
I find a pestle and turn
the tapered end
toward the hub. This web
once kept a community
alive, yet I
am lost, searching
the Valley for signs
of the city in the smog
and finding none, nothing keeping
the rancher from selling off
to some developer, the trails,
snaking between buckeyes
and oaks, etched for thousands
of years in the earth, always
slowly vanishing in the grass.
Pink Fairy Lanterns
Suite No. 13, Twelfth Movement:
A TRIP TO ROSE HILLS IN L.A.
His living room the same
For thirty-three years:
Immaculate sofa and carpet,
A cuckoo clock, a decoupage
Of children kissing
(my aunt’s creation)--
I was fourteen again,
Paralyzed on the sofa
After the funeral, their
Only son, who resembled me,
Crushed in a car accident,
No time in between as I squeezed
Between my mother
And brother on the sofa.
At the funeral, my uncle
Had grabbed his son’s hand
From the casket and wouldn’t
Let go. I waited, next
In line, suddenly turning away
And bursting through the chapel door,
Tears streaming down my face,
Perhaps the first time I ever sobbed
For anyone else. I paced outside,
The door suddenly too heavy
To push open, until
A funeral director kindly
Opened it with one hand and motioned
Me inside. Of course I went back inside,
But I don’t remember anything else.
Three decades later,
At Rose Hills, my uncle
Searched a few
Difficult moments for
His wife and son,
The headstones all flat
On the ground. As I gazed
At L.A. below, I couldn’t
Remember any time passing.
Had I continued pacing, lost
Among the headstones,
For thirty-three years?
Was my uncle weeping beside
The graves because his son
Had unexpectedly returned,
But overweight now and bald--
Or because I now resembled
My father, who died three
Decades ago? Had he kept
The house the same, hoping
This day would arrive? I
Was always just a few
Hundred miles away.
Suddenly I knew why my uncle
Was weeping again:
For thirty-three years,
We couldn’t find
Each other. His tears
Were also for his wife
And his son, of course,
But as he cried, I was, happily,
His nephew and his brother
And his son, no years ever
Having passed, none of us
Ever lost again.
Baby Blue Eyes Near Oak Tree
Suite No. 13, Thirteenth Movement:
MY NEW LIFE
My new life began on a rural avenue
that twenty years before was miles
from the edge of town, the pastureland,
vineyards and orchards erased
by leap-frog development. Near
the freeway, close to the river
on the south side, secure subdivisions
now crowd together along
the bluff. For years, I had taken
the rural avenues north of the river
to witness the seasons, never aware
that the city was sprawling so far north
as I gazed at orchards in bloom
or bearing fruit or bare, in spring mustard
and purple vetch choking the roadside and the rows
of some orchards. No longer grazed, pastures blossomed
with fiddleneck and owl's clover, one, almost wild,
with harvest brodiaea, the umbels crowning blonde grass
with deep purple, the brilliant leaves of vineyards
in slanted sunlight. On the first afternoon
of my new life, I drove the avenue homeward
and saw on Avenue 40 the first bulldozers lined up
in a place where I had sighted a rare yellow-headed blackbird,
not far from a post where once a roadrunner perched,
the only one I have ever sighted on the valley floor. Ahead
stretched acres of grasslands and the plateaus,
the base of the foothills. The county had rezoned
the land so that in twenty years a city
could grow there as far as the eye could see,
from the river all the way into the foothills.
Then, I would be living my new life
without wild flowers on land where
song birds cannot freely forage, a land
without mysterious halls of orchards,
a river with roots of rain but with water
that can never find an ocean.