From North to South

For Lench Archuleta

In the book was writ great mists of nothing—
Extremities cantilevered into meaning
Then stripped deliberately, strand by strand, of sense
'Til out of dust whisperings we made plinths
Underneath Sonoran cactus guardians
To bear our offerings of silence.

The voice of God is silence in return

I don’t belong to pain, but to the world;
I find my grief in rocks on eggshell ground
To carry through the purifying desert.
Peace comes when pain is released, easy,
I can set myself free any moment I wish,
But with pain comes the past, the comforting
Atrocity that festers in the cool insouciance of air
Better to have pain than to know all the pain I created
has been wasted.
I catch a glimpse of the emptiness of my life
And the sky cracks, heat leaks like benediction
And I ask the sand permission to lay the boulders down;
Grandmother Tree whispers with her tears.

I leave behind what I touch

What if all of it I thought up as I went along
With the curse of being almost able to make things out?
Because I don’t believe in my own mind, I insist on certainty
As a salve, a substitute for being, to defend against the fear
That in being wrong I may not exist at all,
But all thoughts lead to "I’m alone"—
The mind chases down its own labyrinth
Trying to fit its hopes inside a smaller box,
Trying to tame the injustice of what can’t be brought to sense,
Exhuming darkness for no reason other than that is what it does.
But things darken so the heart can learn to bend without always
breaking.
The heart can, with a wave, lift the hosannas of the mind
Away like smoke, as if the unresolved ceases to matter,
To a world of flowers with no names
And feelings without place,
And nothing that needs to speak for itself
To hold on to its very existence.

The only way to fill empty space is with feeling

Owls teach us to see beyond the obvious.
There are far more things unknown than there are known,
The seen is born from the unseen, flip sides of the same coin,
The path to freedom is straight through my fears:
Let everything teach me—
Not to unravel the mystery but embrace it
That's what turns my heart to candle, my mind to flame
That's what makes me invisible, an agent of Magic—
I lift myself up each moment, expecting nothing except
To be amazed, miracles pulled at any time from the air.
Ego knocked on the door. Reality answered
And there was no one there.

I thank me for coming, for hearing the drum

Man gets drunk for the same reason he goes to church:
He doesn't want to be alone.
An ant will never cross the path of another without touching it.
And I do all this, bravely, for you, my dear one crying,
Not knowing yourself in the flower’s bloom,
Not seeing yourself in the cat's eyes,
Not hearing your voice and wanting it sounded in others.
Unpeel the Earth, there's nothing behind it
It exists by your sight, it was born from your mouth.
Just know the endless gesture of yourself
Helped a broken-hearted spirit find his wings...

And those of our entire lineage

And you, Lench, whose ears and voice became that of your elders,
When you took us to the mountain with your staff of totem bells
And convinced us we were not yet warriors,
For we needed first to forgive our fathers,
Paint our faces, find our guides, create our war cry,
Burn our names in cave fires and wear new ones you supplied;
And left us to get lost, as it thundered overhead
To contemplate the living symbols all around,
Returning at our baptism of sacred desert rain;
You knew that all this ritual was just to ask permission
Of ourselves—to open without question to the fullness of our souls
Agog at how the veil can slip from flesh to merely watching.

We will not forget the wisdom of the old ways

The Thunderbird points its beak to the sky
Having died to its pride, it's free to see
It flies to the highest branch
It has no need for past or future to block its path
It does not long for company even of its own kind
By being itself, it validates others, allows them to be
It has the ability to change colors
With nothing to defend, it bends to every shape
It must sing very softly
It only gives the choice of life or death if asked permission

The song will come when the chatter society bequeathed has been
unlearned

The words sit, as if they were there before the pen formed them,
As if they would continue after the book is closed forever.

I leap to the stunning summation: all but death, in the air.
I turn and turn it, but it will not be turned,
So I burst through the door, to the sun
There is nothing but incomparable love
From the dirt to the sky.
I exist in everything, and everything exists in me,
In the emptiness of form and the fullness of sound,
The motion always going in perfect time and direction
Straight at the source.
All things show me the way to where I lack love.

Suddenly, I realize my journey's just begun