Tree Ancestors and Other Poems
an Articulating Nature Project
Right of passage
I am sitting at the entrance of the cave
The graveyard floating in a silver mist
A metal taste gray nausea invades
The gigantic fracture of the ancient valley
I see a massive spider black stout
Drawing the useless forms of emptiness
In a desert powder thread
The rain searches the earth
In its delirium of placid swollen dance
A majectic bat brushes a frozen stone
As I drift on a deaf shadow
High fever and spasm bent my body
Toward the sacred earth
I feel the need to accept
The ceremony of the dry land
The overflowing juice of the sky
I am the master of fragility
Planted
A seed falls within the earth
Everywhere shadows at noon
Being carried away
A beautiful tree
Sweet grasses of high green
Are the transparent source of the stream
Rust orange cracked leaves
On this tree of everyday
Ash colored wood
Fast faster follow the movement
An open mouth of dirt welcomes me
Wide wings large beak bird that falls down
The sun the hottest sun
The grass rebounds as the wind
Pushes me under the wet earth
Safe nourishing alluring
A good place
An alternance of devoted sun
Of a few grains of dust
Huge beak raging screams
The breeze marvels holds me
Etching th space
Feeble pale seed a wind of freedom
Planted as the horizon makes its bed
Deleted
I am answering the sky deleted in the purest azure
Useless movement on my branches
A sand storm strips all my pods
Forcing out a multitude not content
They desert my trunk
The wind pushes waves of absurdity
Scattered and dry
A violence seizes my bark
I shiver in my depth
Uprooted indifferent expressionless
The lecherous wind slashes my roots
I vacillate
I lay there
In ashes of death
Hoards of ants swell my belly
Tracing a painless path
Ungodly flocks jolt my inertness
Answering the sky
I join my branches to the naught
Elsewhere
Coyotes
Coyotes wild from the Great Plains
to the land of Southwestern California
San Pedro martyr coyote
Paws imprint in the sandy dunes
of extreme Sonora
to the corner of Manitoba
In the Black Hills you hunt rabbits
mice and birds
Your high-pitched yapping
can be heard through the night
from the Rio Grande to Dakota
You belong to this land
to our continent
Survivor of civilization
Bold animal with your long snout and
bushy black-tipped tail
Coyote my friend come
to the Cascade Mountains
to the Broken Lands
Colima Coyote meet me in the forest
of Michuacan and Guerrero
Northeastern coyote dancing in
the night of Saskatchewan
You are everywhere
That makes me smile
In the morning hour
Fleeting glimpse of movements
In the solitary contemplation of a mystic hour
Luckily fantastic magical mysterious creatures
Embroil themselves in the soft dust
For a long time I watch the chamiso blanco
And the desert manzanita shimmers
I cradle her with immeasurable bliss
A leaf re-draws the lines of my hand
I beg for the enigma to simply transform
Lying under a triumphant wild lilac
I feel the touch of the stone
Grinding the coolness of the past
The bark scented of lively morning hours
Anytime in winter is ailing for a visit
My breath in unison with the ground
Surprised by my body rubbing in the grass
The blue sky inside
The shadow colored by the light
Fills
The blue sky inside.
Honeybee’s eyes blushing
With the joy of indigo
Dance
To the other members of the tribe.
Pigments in complicated structures
Give
Their hidden nectar
Reds, oranges, golds and yellows
Emerge
From the soil
To share their scents
In hordes of indecent exposure.
The sunlight
Migrates
On a large stone
Reinventing its eternal passage
On the blue-green moss.
Footprints
Engrave
The primitive path.
The evergreen
Soars
In the persistence of the wind.
The glow of brighter stars
Illuminate
The outline of the crest.
The distance
Changes
Becomes
The shortest path
Undulate
On an oblique tree
That sees the light
Layers of scales
Shift
Swirl
Seduce
Irridescent colors
Romance
My eyes
In a moment of panic
Alone in the color wild.
Olla Sayi
ladybird beetle goes for a stroll
She is interrupted in her lunch
By a dull orange, black and white bug
Making a squeaking sound
What is it? asks ladybird beetle
It’s a large brown skipper
Dropping its larvae to feed on the oak
Ladybird beetle is pushed in a roll
She is summoned by a trumpet
Bright orange, marbled with wavy lines
Screeching in her ears
What is it? says the belle bug
It’s a red admiral
Dropping its larvae to feed on neetle and hops
Ladybird beetle sees a mole
She flies to a buckwheat flower
And sits there for a while
Ashy-gray and pale yellow
What is it? asks the swell little insect
It’s me
Laying my larvae to feed on aphids
The sons of civilization
It is indecent today to claim
That we are the sons of the desert
How proud we are
Nature is still here however
Fat and shiny flowers
In a generous richness
Are the justification of men
A broken beer bottle
Is the regrettable distinction
Of civilization
The sensitive travelers enters
By the door of peace and beauty
But we turn our back to nature
We prefer power
We give up greatness
Everything is lost
My heart sinks
My exile
Riding this country colors
Mustard hills
Purple
Orange poppies
In the arid night
Fat drops of rain
Like music notes
One white One yellow One green
And flat blues invade my exile
Will this journey ever end?
Will I ever understand?
The distance of this land
Opportunistic grandness
Squared valleys
Lining up at noon
Starless smog
Croaked blue sky
Eternity is a long time
To be away
Within rectangular spaces
Between cars
Running nowhere
I am an (un)Americano
Traveling this country rainbow
A Man and a Woman
The woman I am going to create is not overwhelmed by the weight of her thoughts. She is empowered by the extend of her mind.
She is not paralyzed by her generosity. She is blessed by her gifted heart.
She is not intimidated by her femininity. She is loved for her true beauty.
She is not crippled by her inner pains. She is liberated by her understanding of her past experiences.
She is not thrown out of balance at every risky step she takes. She is acknowledged for her accomplishments.
The man I am going to encounter is not ravaged by the pettiness of his thoughts. He is understood for the lightness of his being.
He is not damaged by the extend of his ambition. He is dynamited by the greatness of his enterprise.
He is not driven by his need for sexuality. He is loved for the sharing of his being.
He is not impeached by his lack of humanity. He is grown into the knowledge of his self.
He is not flattened by his desire to conquer. He is freed by his ability to communicate.
Poem Eluard
What’s happening to you?
Why this torn forehead torn?
All of life has run through my wrinkles
Solitude is pursuing me of its grudge
Birds taller than wind
Do not know where to land?
This evening inexhaustible
The day was a stranger
Morning that will not come back
I saw the sun leave the earth
And the earth populate itself
Of sleeping men and women
Walls are charged of space
Similar to the drunkenness of thirst
The end of absurdity
And I trust
Inspired from various poems by Paul Eluard
The young mother
Her solitude sitting around her
on a bench under the sun with her child
She is a sister a little girl
A child came to her in
the blood of promises
Again a sleepless night
‘cause only she knows her child
Caresses whispers kisses
Only she knows now the neverending day
Diapers milk soap clothes
veggies school work
Long gone is the man
not knowing not wanting to know
who the child belongs to
She is shining alone
The young mother
For only she knows
Her child has stolen her
On a journey to infinite love
Inspired by a Christian Bobin novel
Marie-Lou
When I left them
They were alive
Now
When I go back
They’re gone
Their houses don’t exist anymore
Some left children behind
Some welcome me some don’t
Marie-Lou my dear aunt
I want to bicycle with you
I want to hear your voice calling me
For dinner to come back from the garden
I want you to tell me why
You couldn’t marry
I want to see you stand
Straight next to me
I remember so little already
I want to remember
I went back to the village
I retraced our steps
From the church to the cemetery
From the bridge
Under the echo
From the woods and the wheat
The ruffle of the cold wind
From the cold snow to the boysenberries
I walked the main street
My universe shrank in seconds
It wasn’t the world that was so large
Of my childhood
The world you made me discover
It was so small
It took ten minutes
To go from the church to the cemetery
I never went back after that
I miss you so so much
Why did you have to go so young?
For years I felt guilty not saying good bye
Then you came to me in a dream
All dressed in white
Glowing in a white room filled with light
You told me that you were fine
Not to worry
And I woke up
You never came back after that
Has it been thirty years almost already?
I gave your grey sweater away
So now I have nothing from you
Childhood pictures
The memory of the church, the attic, the barn
The grand piano, the stove
Oh and so much much more that I
Can’t tell
The farm will never come back
When Pappy died I knew everything
Would be different
Finally I cry
It took me over thirty years
I miss you so so so much
I want to hear the rooster in the early morning
I want to hang from the branches
Of the weeping willow
I want to pick berries
And play with the chickies
The property was divided by eight
The eight brothers and sisters
And they forgot me the child
The things you gave me
One of your brothers kept
They are in a garage
Every year I ask him
But every year he doesn’t give them to me
I just want one or two
The screen your mother painted
And the old phonograph that I use to
crank by hand in the attic.
I tell him every year
Every year he doesn’t give them to me
Could you ask him for me in a dream?
Could he listen?
May be this year I can bring you back
Here with me
Those objects you touched
Those objects you saw
And when I’ll look at them
I will see your eyes looking at me
And when I touch them
I will feel your hand touching me
Marie-Lou I want to be with you
So so so bad
I want to kiss you goodnight
And wish you sweet dreams
But it’s all gone
And there is no turning back
Oh why is the past so far? so dead?
So irrevocable?
I reach with my hand
I turn my head
The indifference of time is here
And you’re not