True life stories make me sad
when I’m five steps into the wet cellar
of my own true life story,
so I tell you about the bobcat cubs
and the river that swept them away.
Rivers can carry us forward
or drag us to their depths. Sometimes
it is just a matter of slippery logs, but
sometimes I have that great notion.
I have been pulled down to dark waters,
rolled like a rock in the suckhole’s grip,
but each time I swam to the light.
standing at roof edge
peeing into the mud street
in cold daybreak light
* Adapted from a prose sentence in Peter Mattheissen”s book, The Snow Leopard
Through the clouds
and into bright sun
I could be anywhere
above the frozen world.
When I’m with you
I am flying —
flesh is earth
blood is sea
heart is feather
and you are my blue sky.
The captain
has turned off the seatbelt sign;
we are free
to move about the cabin of our love.
Last night the moon looked down on me
and reminded me of the night in Chichicastenango
when I heard a procession of drummers
with fluty accents heading into midnight hills.
What was so chilling when they returned
and walked through my dream? Is seeing
the full moon shining through a thin screen
of winter clouds something like glimpsing
my own true nature?
Imagine the pipal tree (while looking at this spreading tree)
where the wanderer sat patiently, awaiting truth.
Imagine the cold (while walking through this winter night)
that he felt alone under the black roof of night.
Imagine the ache (while sitting stiffly on this hard floor)
that he felt in the stillness of his cross-legged posture.
Imagine the morning star (like this star risen in the east)
that he saw like looking skyward for the very first time.
Imagine the golden daybreak, and spread your arms like the tree.
Just an idea I don’ t want to lose yet…
* * * * *
They say that silence is deafening,
but I am learning, slowly, to open
myself to your absence and let it
fill me, not make me feel empty.
Everyone is looking for footprints in the forest
when the elephant is here inside them
and his footprints have all filled in with snow.
If the buddhadharma is a path to the house
of my awakening, and the falling snow
is the mad monkey mind, I sure have a lot to shovel.
Or I could begin by sitting and sensing the snow
settling as the sky goes cold and clear, and then
walk atop the sparkly surface of my new life.
It’s Heikkenpaiva — mid winter —
time to check the fuel oil tank
to see if we’ll make it to spring.
While Florida was freezing,
we had a week of January Thaw,
the world turned upside down.
The northwest wind is up tonight,
howling across the Big Lake,
could bring heavy snow by Monday
but I know the sun will still be up
when I get out of work. I think
I can make it.
This is a song written in the 1990s by Iris Dement
I reprint it here — someone’s got to:
Living in the wasteland of the free…
We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ’s disciples
but they don’t look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don’t tell me they don’t turn around and kiss them peoples’ ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don’t fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got CEO’s making two hundred times the workers’ pay
but they’ll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don’t like it, mister, they’ll ship your job
to some third-world country ‘cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free
We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got high-school kids running ’round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on mTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he’s standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free
While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
