Writing Spaces

 

image:  Christie Cochrell

             Collage pages with daguerreotype 
             digitized by Michael Shanks

Wanting the Sky to Be the Limit

 

Wanting the Sky to Be the Limit

 

I'm troubled today

walking through the redwoods after rain,

finding them secretive and deep,

keeping the horizon from view

as if there isn't one at all, or anything beyond.

Instead I'm wanting

a graceful short flight of sunlit stairs 

on some English or European street,

a bookshop halfway down the block,

and outside the museum a café for sitting 

over an array of bright-colored postcards,

where I can linger, take the possibilities all in 

slowly, with limitless contemplation.

To drink deeply, rapturously,

of what I know I love.

Trees, yes, always—but I'm so greedy 

for the world out there in the painters' sunlight.

 

image:  Lucy Willis

 

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