Gets the animal communicator going
To another griot story with Lakota drum.
It's one on one, the personal relationship,
Not religion's man-made black and white,
The tye-dyed butch from Toronto decried,
"Ah, but there is a choir!" But from my
Perspective it had nothing to offer,
By way of explanation, for this vista;
What is, it appears, cannot be explained
By even the holiest scented robes.
Yet we come here, unreformed,
For frequencies not to be squandered
But held through the cold of Vail and Detroit,
Every destination we wayfarers will go back to.
We watch how the pinyon pine branches are peeled
Away into whorls by the vortextual spiral,
Which seems for the moment to be lost and looking for
The confidence of the agave, unselfconsciously
Holding its own curls like a hair-weave from Mr. Ray,
But it sees, divine wind, how we too are peeling back
Our identities, until there is nothing, not even a name,
Left but love, as natural to catch as this breeze.
The energy rolls down the stone like essential water,
Glinting the same, in another sensory wavelength.
The Hopi forehead, high and full of shadows, gives her
Away, Kachina Mother, her hair held aloft in a bun
That is part of her quest to separate from the sun,
To be at one. There are faces everywhere, guarding the sky,
On the adjacent cliffs and distant mounts, faces that
Have seen too much, looks of awe and laughter, sadness
And surprise, wearing the masks of hawks and lizards
But, despite their hard mein, they have nothing to do,
For what they would protect can only be sacred
Despite the pull of finer vapors from the deepest densities
Of beer and pork chops, to this top, uncovered
Except on our heads. She is impervious still, in her bruised
Red rock, to the ascent of the white man upon her mane,
Such patience and grace, to feel so much to forgive,
A lot of wearing away, a lot of sorrow endured
In the cool, merciless wind. The suffering of a mother
Knows no bounds. Cairns of temple stones in piles
Around her base, oblivious to the distances
To its sister spires hanging in the mist, in equal silence,
Layers and layers away from this center, that is really
No center, just a face, seamlessly woven in to the web of faces.
In ruined columns, high rises extend along the Mogollon Rim,
Each chamber an eye, looking out on what we observe.
The bottle blondes in spandex urge me to silence
As they sit cross-legged by the cactus -- but the gap
Between words grows so large so quickly -- and the pine voices
Start, cacaphonous as any party, a language and reality so strange
It coalesces almost instantly to a cicada frequency in my ears,
What I could regard as lost, a ghost, in the lounge of the vortex
Undertow. The stones that have acquired such heat turn into steps
Toward a pagoda, where buddhas in the guise of monks
In the guise of modern women sit, contemplating the leftover
Nothingness from the roar of the canyon void.
Stoned from the ions, we murmur small mumbles,
Rockgroking like local reptiles, as tuning fork vibes
Come between our heads and the stone committee.
We all are free, to figure it out for ourselves, to find some
Community no matter how imperfect, the only requirement
Is that the current cannot end, that the seemingly endless
Valley will be washed in light forever, the same desire as
Lovers clasping hands. Conclusions seem so small
In the face of such vast empathy,
Integral lines extending like a rope across the skies.
We hear the actual wings of the crow, as it flies.
