Mystical Tarot Realms
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Pounding Stone with Pestles
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 other creatures pounding
in my ears, coursing through countless
veins, the heartbeat of mother earth pulsing
in bushes and trees, in the bobcat
across 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 subtle 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
suddenly a hawk floating high
above the oaks, my body flying
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 solar system, the sun beating down,
manifold creatures in its light whispering
to me. 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 to them than the sun.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Pounding Stone on a Ridge
SHAMAN AT THE CONFLUENCES
Leaping from rock to slippery
Unstable rock in Big Creek,
I cross in search of artifacts,
Scrambling up a steep 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 tribes
Of spiders. Poison oak blocks
One side of the ravine and a buckeye
Looms on the other side,
So I grab a long, dry 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 a waterfall, and I plod forward,
With a little faith in my feet,
Sure that I'm being watched by
Something, animal or spirit--
I'm not sure which. When I discover
A pounding stone with two pestles,
I am afraid. A skirt of dried earth
And moss clings to each pestle
As I pull them from their mortars.
Like a shaman from another time,
I suddenly 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 then slithers
Into a hole, the Over-Soul
Aware of me like I
Am aware of the snake.
I open my senses,
To feel what it's like
To be a newt or frog or snake
Or waterfall or redbud reflected
In still water, and I let an image
Of the Over-Soul rise from the deep pool.
I fashion a living 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, a channel
Into the soul of the race. At first
I am black, primordial ooze,
Fetid decay, suddenly warm
And compact, webbed by veins,
Then rivulets trickling 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, one love
Of everything ever connected
To this stream, the Over-Soul
Suddenly pouring into me
A timeless peace.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.​​
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Ancient Trail
THE ANCIENT WEB
I park near a load 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 lip
of earth extends from the slope,
large enough for a bed.
A house pit? Below 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 questions
asked a moment before lost
in the grass, empty in the curl
of a leaf. According to mystics
the spirit realm 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 now powerless, gauche,
and perhaps 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,
the 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
vanishing in the grass.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
One Mortar, One Pestle
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 nearby, so powerful
and unconcerned you might think them
godlike and pure, untouched
for generations, the huge horns
without garlands, without blood.
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​​House Pits near a Pounding Stone
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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.
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Pestle in a Mortar
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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 crop duster. 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 to adapt
to cultivated land, 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 lounged 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 ending without grace, and I vowed
never to rob life with its splendor
from mountain or valley
or from any human being on this earth.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
