Eagle Hunters

 

Eagle Hunters

 

The photos of the Mongolian eagle hunters

for a dizzy moment throw me for a loop—

that somebody a year or two behind me back in school 

who I scarcely noticed should be living there now

under the sacred mountain ranges and eternal snows,

in spring filming the Apricot Blossom Festival

in ancient orchards, in the Himalayan valley villages

out of time and the world—traditional music and 

storytelling by elders, mask dances, blessings by 

     the monks 

from ancient monasteries in a zephyr of prayer flags. 

 

In contrast, I meditate on the single apricot tree

outside my childhood bedroom window—

guardian, shade-giver, wellspring of jam,

and photograph a pair of goldfinches in our feeder,

close-ups, the background blurred.

I think I might reread The Snow Leopard, 

or find the copy of Death in Kashmir somewhere

on my bookshelves, among the many other

travels I don't take, safe in my well-mapped world.

My favorite teacher in high school admonished

on a quarterly report:  

     she's already decided how she's going to be.

 

Mountains too close, too high and stern, unsettle me.  

And being on them, above the tree line, exposed,

without that kindly childhood apricot to shade 

and shelter me, back in the Santa Fe garden confines.

So why envy the lives others make for themselves

up high?  Why am I tempted, as I was one late winter

by Roman archaeology in the high Alps—beyond 

my reach, or desires, I'd thought, until I was there 

standing in those new unwieldy hiking boots 

looking down like a doubtful god at the slight, tangled 

thread of road leading to a far village far below.

 

The world I love best is much quieter, closer to earth.

Hawks come here to me from time to time, if not 

Golden Eagles, their hawk feathers crosshatched 

with ancient heiroglyphs, messages from 

that other world assuring me I'm just where I belong,

my chosen realm no lesser than that exalted other.

Peripheral longing aside, gauzy pipe dreams, 

     I'd after all 

decided long ago already what I meant always to be.

images:  Selena Travel,

               Set My Trip

 

"mend"

 

What does it mean to me, this "mend"?

 

I think of thread and needle and a quiet, patient hand (or Benedick's "Serve God, love me, and mend" to hearten Beatrice).  And I have become captivated by the art of mending—originally Japanese of course—sashiko, visible mending.  Not invisible, as once it was, somehow puritanical.  Not trying to hide a fault or flaw, but enhancing the damaged cloth, making imperfections beautiful and part of a new whole.

 

images:  The Work+Shop, Sashiko Visible Mending

Karen Stevens, Tatter (past events, Narrative Mending, a virtual class)

Haiku: Bullfrogs

 

Tonight, with headlamps,

neighbors out counting bullfrogs.

Joyful spring chorus!

Frogs are good haiku material, of course, hearkening back to Bashō's famous creation!

(my favorite translation, I think, is the simplest—

The old pond

A frog leaps in.

Sound of the water.

image:  American Bullfrog, In Defense of Animals

             (Shutterstock)

 

Writing Spaces

I could surely write something sunny and heartfelt in this room today . . .
 

image:  Dome, Slatki dome

Haiku Day

 

fragilities and 

incongruities of Spring!

prudence overturned,

 

Turkish rose, blush pink

undoing the resolve of

even this stone saint

 

images:  Christie Cochrell, Cycladic Figurine, St. Jerome, flowers

 

Stillborn

 

For what seemed like much of my life, from late high school until my mother's death and memorial service up the coast, year's end was spent on the Big Island of Hawaii, most often at Keauhou Bay, south of Kailua-Kona.  I collected innumerable impressions and filled notebooks with loving detail of the place and its people, which felt akin and important to my own story.  An abandoned hotel figured in that, as well as the old temples of black lava fallen and reshaped into sea-walls.

 

Mention of those was casually slipped into a story set in England a few years ago, with an entirely different focus, and only last year did I write a fictional piece situated directly in that place of memory, setting and ambiance true and truthful, with only the facts changed to meet my whimsical fictional needs.  (The way, perhaps, I used to reinvent myself each year again waiting for New Year's Eve—and Chinese fireworks—under a little palm or other tree beside the bay.)  Whether I did it justice, finally, I don't know, and doubt, but it meant lots to me to be back there. 

 

"Stillborn" was published by the wonderful The Plentitudes in February, their Issue 21 (Winter 2026).  Here's a small taste of it—

 

Marley could get fairly close to some of the abandoned structures, approaching either from the boat harbor or the golf course, and get into the gardens on the property's periphery.  She unfolded the flowered beach chair she had bought up at the shopping center on the hill, and sat for hours on a strip of sandy lawn, or just in from the pitch black lava pools mirroring sky (cornflower, Maya, satiated blue), and try to picture how the place had been once, full of life.  The ocean was a living presence still, black-hearted blue, the color Helena had christened Kona blue, full of the spiritual energy the Hawaiians called mana.  A graceful freehand tree at harbor's edge, not a species she recognized, was her sole company.  Even the birds seemed to have gone for good.

     Line by line again she read her mother's poems, watched kayaks slipping in and out of the harbor like needles through green silk.  The harbor where the king was born, her mother said—just across the water from here.  Where boats anchored, cruise boats for snorkeling and island history tours, sportfishing boats, kayak rentals, and paddle boards.  She watched a fishing boat go by out of the harbor, past her observation post, loaded with brightly colored floats.  She glanced again the other way, toward the silent old hotel, bare as a scoured bone.

 

 

image:  Keauhou Bay collage, Christie Cochrell

Writing Spaces: Days Written in Flowers

 

Days written in flowers—

optimism, fragility,

constancy, consolation,

bashfulness,

wisdom and even hope—

fingers stained 

with the bright-colored ink

of all they want to say

before it is too late,

the urgent messages

hands cup, consult, 

the oracles 

of filament, stamen, petal

flaring like Pythia's flame

in far Delphi.  Visited 

once, and ever held within.

 

 

(I liked to learn that those seeking the counsel of Apollo would offer laurel branches, money, and a black ram.)

 

 

 

image:  Old-fashioned Ladies and Gentlemen Too