Mystical Tarot Realms
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Pounding Stones on a Ridge
GHOSTS
A quarter-century after I first snaked
down through a foothill valley
along a dying creek at the base
of the foothills, I found the pounding stones
of a people who had vanished over a century ago,
some pounding stones only a few feet
from the road, one with pestles still on top,
less than a hundred feet from the barbed wire fence,
the mortars blanketed by dry leaves and shielded
by the drooping limb of a huge oak, the paths
I once thought created by cattle leading into clearings
where the earth appeared trampled, bare
and dark and a little greasy in places,
pounding stones nearby, and I followed every path
from the Kings River to Dry Creek, a web connecting
ancient village sites across the foothills. Once,
at dusk, a band of coyotes began howling
by the creek, close to my car. I waited, straining
to see a ghost, until the howls began to drift away
into the valley, but nothing appeared. Twenty-five
years ago, a boy first drove here with his father,
a boy who could imagine herds gathering by the creek,
predators never far away, flocks of migrating birds
and butterflies drifting through. A few woodpeckers
remained, making granaries of rotting fence posts.
Once, following a trail away from the creek,
I spotted at eye level several rocks
on top of a large stone. I climbed a few feet
and found eleven pestles on a pounding stone,
as though just left the day before, one pestle
inside a mortar with a little grass growing around it.
Standing on a ridge, I gazed a long time
into the valley where in just over
one hundred years almost every trace of wildness
has disappeared. I thought of a friend
who sued developers to preserve in trust
a few acres of farmland, what he called the last vestige
of nature in the Valley--he no longer worked as a substitute
after a city official complained
about his organization to the school district;
of another activist fined over $100,000 for submitting
a "frivolous lawsuit" to stop urban sprawl by the river;
of my own organization brought down by a bogus lawsuit
tantamount to legal extortion, forced to settle
because of court costs, a lawsuit I can't describe
without fear of being sued; of those threatened
or fired or blackballed because of their activism.
On that ridge, I was a ghost
of the Gashowu, seeing not herds
of antelope and deer and elk but a herd
of cattle in the floodplain, the new freeway
extension less than ten miles away,
the city lost in deepening smog,
a long pestle jutting
from a deep mortar at my feet, the woods
cold but still, a last howl far off in the distance.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Pink Fairy Lanterns
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 suddenly 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.
Years ago, at the funeral, my uncle
Had grabbed his son's hand
From the casket and had refused
To 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'd ever sobbed
For anyone. I paced outside,
The door suddenly too heavy
To push open, until
The 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 slightly overweight and balding--
Or because I now resembled
My father, who had died three
Decades before? 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:
For thirty-three years,
We couldn't find
Each other. His tears
Were also for his wife
And his son, yes,
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.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.​
Tiger Lilies by the Creek
ON THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF ELVIS PRESLEY'S DEATH,
I UNDERSTAND HOW TO SAVE A LIFE
My friends arrived in the junky Ford at dawn:
"The King is dead--how can we go on?" Mid
August, a light rain lacquering the asphalt,
the car meandering to Bear Creek. As I slammed
the door shut, a tiny pine cone stung my face.
Chasing each other through dense brush,
down a steep slope to the stream, splashing
through rapids, sliding down stones, our
pants soaked--how easily we could have
broken our necks, but I kept up even though
they were two years older. (I had spent
five years keeping up.) Wordlessly
picking sides, my buddy and I cornered
the catalyst of the battle, pelting him
with tiny pine cones, and when we ran out
of ammo, the enemy nailed us both
and careened away, vanishing in manzanita.
Minutes later, a stone crashed through
the canopy, thudding nearby. Another stone,
the size of a fist, shattered the humus five
feet away.
We screamed threats at them,
but rocks continued to rain down as we raced up
the slope, the battle petering out
when we cornered them, my buddy
holding me back. We chirped with joy
all the way to the car. Thirty years
to the day, it hit me as I woke up:
They knew that my father had died
several weeks earlier, but my friends
that day never mentioned it. I finally
returned to Bear Creek, the terrain
more treacherous than I remembered,
and I struggled through dense brush to the first
boulders by the road, nothing beyond that familiar.
I hiked over fallen trees, broken branches,
until the slope drops off abruptly, the creek
hundreds of feet below. As I thought about
turning back, I slipped on loose gravel and fell
flat on my face. Shocked by pain in my legs and arms
and head, weak, a little sick, the blood pounding
in my ears, I thought: If I pass out, I
could slide two hundred feet down the slope
onto the rocks below.
"C'mon, get up!
Shake it off," I told myself, because that
is what my friends would have shouted at me.
I stood up, legs wobbly, and struggled
up the hill to safer ground, almost
passing out before I plopped down
on a smooth stone. As I slumped,
I remembered how, once, when
I couldn't stand, they grabbed me
under the arms and pulled me up,
yelling at me and steadying me
until I could lurch forward.
"That," I muttered to myself,
"is how you save a life."
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Lupine and Poppies near the River
FLOODS
I submerged myself
In the reservoir, plunging
Down the denuded slope into
The canyon emptied by drought,
And settled on a pounding stone
At the confluence,
Where a newt floated
In a mortar next to a pestle,
An ancient trail leading
West toward another abandoned
Village, and east toward the flats
Through a thick, underwater crop
Of cockleburs that flourish
Wherever the reservoir
Has chewed away the woodlands,
A chimney looming alone
With the name "Chuck Morris" engraved
Twice before most of the house
Floated away.
Forty years ago, my family
Migrated from L.A., all
Of us in a van winding
Around the reservoir a month
Later. We settled on a spot
Near the flats and while
My father fished, I stumbled
On a web and gazed transfixed
At the intricate tapestry until
I glimpsed a bulbous spider.
I fled as if I'd encountered
The frightful weaver
Of our fate, and I found
Upstream the foundation
Of a ranch house, the concrete
Broken up by the roots
Of oak trees claiming
The former rooms, the rest
Of the house swept away
By floods over the years.
Foundation
And there I heard the voice
Of my guardian angel: "You will
Be back in thirty-five years."
Thirty-five years later, I
unexpectedly returned after floods
Had torn through the canyon
Sweeping across our favorite
Hole. That season, I teetered,
Amazed by the force
Of the flood, sensing
A hush underneath the roar,
A silence rising as the flood
Was slowly subsiding. By then
Most of the people in that van
Were gone, my father,
Grandparents, and uncle side
By side in Clovis Cemetery,
My brother in another state,
My father, forty years ago,
Always facing the depths--
I could not tell him
Of the clear voice of my soul
Or how I could feel him
Tuning his soul to the quiet
Rhythms of water as he
Cast his line and waited....
I no longer grasp water
Or miss the webs
Torn by the wind
Or even attempt to cast
A line as I immerse myself
In the quiet, spiders marching out
Of a crack and wobbling
Toward me, a timeless peace
Drenching the floodplain....
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.​
