Y . . .

a lesson in new world history



Your body
is a codex
unfolding beneath my hands –
a history of skin
revealed in hieroglyphs that cluster
like galaxies around a center too sacred to have
a single name.

At this moment,
you are sun, fire
and star
illuminating every corner of a dark
winter with your brilliant gaze.

Smooth as obsidian,
luminescent as silver,
you refuse easy translation.

One of the first members of my personal library

I worked at the Barnes & Noble in Amarillo when I was 18. I shelved books one night, and came across Simon Ortiz's After and Before the Lightening. I loved the cover. It was familiar. The winter plains of the Dakotas look so similar to the Texas Panhandle in January. From that collection, these lines:

Lightning IV

Why we should keep riding
toward the storm, we don't know.
It is right on the hills, short miles
away, the wind twisting the elms
furiously all along the road from Winner.
It is perhaps way past questioning,
past the moment when it's too late.
Our only certainty, when the horizon
is no longer clear, is our memory
of how our journey has been till now.
We bank on that as we watch the sky
and the prairie become knotted finally
into inexorable event. It is vast
and enormous before us, this knowledge
that we could have turned back and now
still could in fact before decision
is lost to us at last.

Yet there is
no such chance we give ourselves here.
The destiny on the unseen hills holds
us fatefully, and it doesn't really matter.
When we slow down on the thin strip
of the highway that is our lives,
the decision is now God's we believe.
The storm's spirit is brilliant fire
flickering deliciously on the horizon
that is no longer ours to reach for.

We don't know the storm anymore,
the fragile journey we yearned to take
homeward or away from it is ours now
because we cannot free ourselves from
where it enjoins us to place and place.
We do finally know why we don't turn
from danger or beauty or sadness or joy.
How completely we feel the tremoring
and shuddering pulse of the land now
as we welcome the rain-heart-lightning
into our trembling yearning selves.

-- Simon J. Ortiz

This one has taken some time

I have tried versions of this poem for over five years. It's strange how small words can take forever to find a home . . . even a temporary one.

February


Without us, the mirror is empty
there are no dimpled smiles –
no oversized ears
even our eyes have disappeared.

Our departure erased all traces of genetic precision,
only bare space remains
-- bare space and the reflection of a naked towel rack.

This is not how I mean to leave.
It is February and the wind is cold and brown;
too cold to move
a refrigerator or a stove.

Your birthday is so near.
I want to stand in front of the sink,
reach into the bitter mirror water, and fish us out –
bring us back to the speckled surface –
only the winter does not give –
we are fixed in its unmoveable
silence.

The spring will bring blooms of cheap
wine, fists against metal and glass as well as my first
confessions whispered before Mass.
Dad, I want to be through
except the reflection in the mirror is you.

Okay, so it's the middle of the day

In 1996, I was an undergraduate at West Texas A&M University. I took a general survey course on World Literature. Every day, I was becoming more determined to be an English major, and possibly do graduate work. When we read this poem in that course, I became a little more certain. Not completely certain, but closer to the idea of perhaps one day being a writer/academic myself. Beyond all those logistics was the simple reality that I loved this work. I loved the words, the sentiment, everything.

"There is No Word for Goodbye"

Sokoya, I said, looking through
the net of wrinkles into
wise black pools
of her eyes.

What do you say in Athabaskan
when you leave each other?
What is the word
for goodbye?

A shade of feeling rippled
the wind-tamed skin.
Ah, nothing, she said,
watching the river flash.

She looked at me close.
We just say, Tlaa. That means,
See you.
We never leave each other.
When does your mouth
say goodbye to your heart?

She touched me light
as a bluebell.
You forget when you leave us,
You're so small then.
We don't use that word.

We always think you're coming back,
but if you don't
we'll see you some place else.
You understand.
There is no word for goodbye.

-- Mary TallMountain

Y una mas . . .

I began this one at mass today. After several attempts I finished the poem and managed to fold my palms into three crucifixes.

Days of Lent


Lenten days are bare as church altares,
santos hidden beneath purple cloth.

I am hungry.

Four days ago, I awoke to snow and ice,
the sun weak behind steel cloud curtains.

Yesterday was bright with light,
the bend in my arms itched with sweat.

Shortened days have become long. Winter is done.
The ice has melted its last.

Tonight, the winds have knocked trash cans into empty streets.

Evergreens scratch against the bedroom window.
It is too hot for blankets, sand begins to coat the sill.
These early movements of spring are familiar as beauty
marks on your face.
I traced them once while you slept. The belt of Orion
moved when you laughed.

Palm Sunday brings red silk. I twist fronds into one
crucifix. Then another . . .
and another.

Next February, these palms will mark our foreheads,
the days of abstinence will begin again.
Except now, it is spring. Green dusts the bosque.

The fast is almost over.

I wait for resurrection.

Tonight . . . a love poem

Fundamentally I am a literature person, and what I learned first was the "canon." So from the canon (which of course I question the very notion of the word "canon) here is one of my favorites.

A Red, Red Rose

O my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thous, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
O I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And far thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

-- Robert Burns

Lenten Days

For me, Lent occupies a place of both sadness and anticipation -- the end of winter, the beginning of spring. And always, always the wind here in Albuquerque, in El Paso, and in the llanos of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. El viento que nunca duerme.

"Lent in El Paso"

blows forty days
of dust-devils

lentil soup
capirotada

and the daily litany
of wind across the city.

Afternoons, the cottonwoods
tumble like sagebrush

the ocotillos creak
like crucifixes

and women walk
with their buttocks

tucked in tight
under their skirts.

All along the border
the river speaks

in wild tongues
the voices of the penitent

ululate in jail cells
and confessionals

and women weep
for their murdered sons.

At night the litany stills
on the branches and the grass

rises again, dazed
after the whipping

but stronger and more alive.
In El Paso the wind of Lent

blows forty faithful days
without contrition."


-- Alicia Gaspar de Alba

I love this poem. I come back to it every Lent and re-read and re-read. Gracias, Alicia.

And what got me through Wednesday Night

This is a passage from one of my favorite poems by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), a Syrian poet living in Lebanon.

3

"Braid your hair, my boys, with greener leaves.
We still have verse among us.
We have the sea.
We have our dreams.
'To the steppes of China
we bequeath our neighing horses,
and to Georgia, our spears.
We'll build a house of gold
from here to the Himalayas.
We'll sail our flags in Samarkind.
We'll tread the treasured mosses
of the earth.
We'll bless our blood with roses.
We'll wash the day of stains
and walk on stones as we would walk on silk.

'This is the only way.
For this we'll lie with lightning
and anoint the midewed earth
until the cries of birth
resound, resound, resound.

'Nothing can stop us.
Remember,
we are greener than the sea,
younger than time.
The sun and the day are dice
between our fingers.'

Under the exile's moon
tremble the first wings.
Boats begin to drift
on a dead sea, and siroccos
rustle the gates of the city.
Tomorrow the gates shall open.
We'll burn the locusts in the desert,
span the abyss
and stand on the porch
of a world to be.

'Darkness,
darkness of the sea,
be filled with the leopard's joy.
Help us to sacrifice,
name us anew.
The eagle of the future waits,
and there are answers in its eyes.

'Darkness,
darkness of the sea,
ignore this feast of corposes.
Bring the earth to blossom
with your winds.
Banish plague and teach the very rockas
to dance and love.'

The goddess of the sand prostrates herself.
Under the brichthorn
the spring rises like clocynth from the lips
or life from the sea.
We leave the captive city
where every lantern is a church
and every bee more sacred than a nun."

Excerpted from "Elegy for the Time at Hand"

I read the first stanza of this poem over and over again. "Walk on stones as we would walk on silk." What could be more beautiful than that string of words?

Desire at the Sub-Atomic Level

Desire at the Sub-Atomic Level

is like an onion
each layer thicker
more pungent
than the last
except here
there is no core --
no definite place of being
only waves
of energy
crashing against a non-existent shore
like your mouth
against my neck
leaving bruises I love
more than myself

where is there more violence than this?

the sear
of your glare
reduced twenty-four years of my life
to nothing
but blurry shadow

one look and everything familiar
became ash
bitter and soft
on this tongue
that has split
me a thousand times
releasing a power
I never knew I had