chrysalis

shannon halley, oil and ink on paper

4,  finally sadness creeps in

I dreamed about you last night,

as usual, driving too fast

in an anger that only found its expression in traffic

I awoke relieved

not to be tangled in your quiet traffic rage any longer--

Am I happy now?

I think so, yes.

I feel alive, and the wanting pang of desire,

and the vast breadth of Being

that I had ceased to feel

with you.

Yes,

there is sadness

but it must be much like the sadness

a chrysalis feels 

when emerging, with wings, 

and leaving behind

 its shell

abiquiu

 herman pipkin, palo duro canyon, c. 1935



cool light slanting through dust

early morning Abiquiu

 silent but for

faraway thunder

piñon, red earth, and stones laid out along the sill like prayers

and bones--possum skull, blackbird wing, the twisted horns

of a mountain sheep

I have heard the whispered "bruja!"

exile does not translate otherwise

and you alone know why I have sought refuge

here in the desert--

 that my heart is aflame with love for things both fragile and wild

and that
each day requires a ritual of quenching the heat with the cool hues of canyon and water

You write, Come back to the City

and I wrap my shawl more tightly around my shoulders

strike a match and watch the parchment burn, your words shriveling like a spell

only here can I be what I am

a woman on fire

elegy

for k.c.c.k (9.19.68-1.7.13)

It will always be winter as we walk down the dirt road with our chapped hands shoved in the pockets of our little checkered blue jeans

The wind is so cold it bites the delicate membranes inside our noses,

and our eyes sting in the bitter air

Geese clap into flight

We dare each other to touch the teeth in the grim smiles

of dead coyotes hung along the barbed wire

For some reason these are the things I vividly recall from our life in the old hotel on the plains

I remember your birth-

the fear I held within me that you would come

and break my heart

It will always be your call that wakes me up in the middle of the night,

Baby brother

child of straw hair and blue eyes

 

What does it mean to you now?

Can you hear the songs I sing when I am lonely or

the prayers I whisper in early morning dark?

Do you think of the cold, the rasp of dry bluestem, the sweet early morning call of the Sandhill Cranes passing overhead while we sleep, warm in our beds, just children, 

safe

a wild love for the world

In September I drove home alone from the Texas Panhandle. Driving in a desolate landscape has always brought me a strange peace. On this drive I listened to fifteen years of music I had collected, and as I moved through these mesas and dry creeks I have memorized after years of making this trek, it was as if the music synced up with the landscape and the shapes of both melody and terrain became the same fabric of some great weaving that extended beyond me into infinity. I was just this one fiber, one beautiful, anonymous strain of violin or cello.

Running just after dawn this morning I felt it again, only rather than landscape it was light, and all the variations the sky takes on as the sun moves through the movements of its symphony. I thought of Rilke and his evoking light and air, of the "infinite space we dissolve into," and of Philip Larkin and "rather than words came the thought of high windows--the sun-comprehending glass..." And of my dear friend y.o. and his exquisite video of the subway-window-light.

As I am running I feel the edges of my being dissolving into the infinite space that "tastes of us, then".