Mystical Tarot Realms
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Wind Poppies and Chinese Purple Houses (after the Rough Fire)
A SHORT STUDY OF BREATH
We rub stalks of rosin weed and hold
our fingers to each other's nostrils, both
of us inhaling deeply. Late summer, the air
opening a small slope in the brain
that flowers with ever-increasing
abundance, the neural energy shooting out
vines, panicles, corymbs, spikes, racemes, umbels--
burgeoning, blossoming, dying back
and supplanted, our breath taken in
by these creatures and given back
so tenderly and diffusely--no one yet ever
recording the impact from the breath
of this flora on people or vice versa. The year
my grandfather was mustard-gassed in France,
Native Americans were setting up their last
encampments in these hills. A hundred
and sixty years or so after the Spanish
first wandered here, my father was shipped out
to Guam where he remained as Friant Dam
was constructed, a dam that nearly wiped out
the wild flora and fauna on the valley floor,
the bombings elsewhere causing great fire storms
that sucked oxygen from the air, incinerating
those caught in merciless winds. You propose
a short study of breath before humanity finally
catches up to these hills. I propose that, for
a decade or two, we observe the flora growing
on this small slope where the barbed-wire fence
suddenly ends, before the subdivisions are dropped.
For the price of a stealth bomber, we could ensure
that numerous experimental subjects are healthy
and fed well enough to experience fully
the unspeakably lovely flora, and we could
then record how fresh air benefits the human brain.
Then we could establish the exact
connection of us all to wild, breathing creatures.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Ithuriel's Spears and Fiddleneck near an Oak Tree
MY NEW LIFE
My new life has begun on a rural avenue
that twenty years before was miles
from the edge of town, the pastureland,
vineyards, and orchards slowly erased
by new houses and businesses. 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, unaware
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 pasture, almost wild,
with harvest brodiaea, the umbels crowning blonde grass
with purple, the leaves of grape vines with brilliant auras
in slanted sunlight. On the first afternoon
of my new life, I drove the avenues homeward
and saw on Avenue 40 the first bulldozers lined up
in a place where I had sighted a yellow-headed blackbird,
not far from a post where once a roadrunner perched,
the only one I have sighted on the valley floor. Ahead
stretched acres of grasslands and the bluffs,
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 here, on land where
song birds cannot forage, a land
without roots,
a river with roots of rain but with water
that can never find an ocean.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.​
Bridge above the Kings River
KINGS RIVER MEDITATIONS
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A cute girl, possibly
thirteen, legs crossed,
eyes closed, twenty feet
from the Kings River,
remained totally unaware
that my friend and I
were gawking
at her. Grabbing
a smooth stone, the size
of an egg, my friend
lifted his arm, muttering
curses at her, and I
lunged to stop him. Two
years older and stronger,
my friend just frowned
in disgust and dropped
the stone, stumbling off.
The girl never stirred,
and I never got the nerve
to ask her what
she was doing. Infatuated,
I finally scurried away,
never to see the girl
again. Cross-legged
by the Kings River,
forty years later,
close to the spot where
she had meditated,
I remember a photo
of my friend holding up
with pride a necklace
of fish. That same
morning, forty years
ago, I had spotted
a car in the depths
of the river and shouted
for them all to come see.
No matter how excitedly
I pointed, not one of them
could perceive the faint
shadow of the car
beneath the glittering
surface of the water,
so no one believed me.
Our fathers both died
a few years later,
my friend gone
to some other state,
but the hood of the car
has surfaced,
caught on a rock, tilted
like a stiff, flat tongue.
I close my eyes and empty
my mind, hearing the water
rushing by and then
nothing at all, everything
gone but my awareness
of the void. But then I feel
and see a sun in my heart
and a golden-equal armed
cross on my forehead--
I open my eyes, surprised
that I had so quickly
forgotten the river--
the bending reeds,
the slippery stones,
the rushing water....
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Pounding Stone on a Ridge
THE TERMINAL
The second time I drove by the terminal on Cherry Street,
I remembered that I had worked there forty years before
on Saturdays--cleaning up the trailers in the yard, painting
each back-door orange, then 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 in the day, 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 realm 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
remaining on one trailer stranded on a small farm
near the freeway. The last Saturday I worked with my cousin
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
while smoking a doobie. 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, too many times not to realize that I
must be an illusion, not one self but a world--
one part earth, with the sun flowing
through plants and animals and pounding
through my veins, growing in my cells; one part
water that has flowed down the mountain slopes,
with trees and clouds mirrored in its depths;
one part air that circulates through the ocean
of breath; and one part, a fire of desire--each person
and creature a world of Earth, Water, Air, Fire--yet
my cousin and I are the only ones who remember our fingers
banging on those guitar strings, the rock music
ending so many years ago, the terminal,
in merciless light, with someone
else there now to care for it.
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All poems, stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.​