Cruelest April

Another cold
spring morning dawns, when the spring question
asks itself again, and again after more than half
a century of spring questions

What is this mind I
walk around in?
What am I looking for ?

I am - I am who I am looking for.
I am who I want to be.

What if
every one of us 7 billion
wanted most to be
ourselves, and knew
knew like warm sun on the face what that feels like
without trying.

What if we wanted just this body here,
not someone else's, not rich
not younger - only
who and what our first baby soul felt
when we first smiled tentatively at the world.

Snowstorm Musings

 I am trapped in my home by a long snow storm, which has buried my driveway, frozen my water pipes, and impinged on my 58th birthday plans to visit my new little grand daughter. Mother nature reminds me of who is in charge. I have time, and so I write. Practice is the way, practice. That is what we do in yoga as well, we practice. Life in practice, practice is life. Instead of railing to the cosmos that I am trapped, I will let my words out.

Instead of gadding about I have the time to write, a passion of mine since I was about 10.  I am pursuing the concept of Heaven. Heaven as an idea, as a state of mind, as fresh garlic, thyme, and sweet summer tomato sauce over homemade pasta in the total silence of a snowy night, as the face of a newborn child who looks like one’s own son in his babyhood 30 years ago, as a poem which turns the heart, as a moment realized that this is life - all we have. We can’t know what the next moment will bring. How then can we know what will happen after we draw our last breath?

I know a man, a man I am very close to, a man I have known all my life. He will be 89 years old this week, and he has written the entire schedule to his memorial service in detail with the proper headings all laid out exactly in the form it should appear on the program.  With brevity this might be called expedient. If the last party postmortem is to be right in the opinion of the deceased, then composing it all in advance is the path to satisfaction, satisfaction before the fact. The satisfaction of knowing what songs will be sung, who will sing them, who will carry the body from the church, what church it will be - those details.

On his handwritten page, toward the closing of the ceremony, he notes a short eulogy should occur, which he has assigned to me. Already I am composing this eulogy for one who is still very much alive. Why, I ask myself, is this the way he wants to spend his last years? There always remains, for humans, the mystery of what follows death which causes deep emotion. For some it is fear, but that is too simple an explanation. The not knowing becomes an obsession, especially for those who believe that heaven awaits as a solace, an end to this 'vale of tears'. Heaven - this concept in the minds of men which guides the waking hours across the plains of life like a cowboy guides his cattle. We think we are walking and running with free will, but always at the edges is this black hole, death, the final end
.
The idea of a wonderful realm where there is peace, joy, lack of want, rapture, everything good and forever, this idea is sweet. Even the word is lovely - heaven. It slides over the tongue -cielo, nirvana. I am guessing that the concept is a lovely word in every language which has a word for it. The idea, the word, the image, the visuals, the emotion, the desires, the relief - heaven. A place where the water pipes never freeze. We need the idea of heaven, but we need it now while we still live and breath, and that is more easily written than achieved. Words are magic though, they can cause thought which can be almost anything anywhere. Let my words search for heaven even as I still kick about here in the physical world. Even as I compose a eulogy for a dear guy I cannot imagine being away forever.

I am interested in what you think. If you read this, send me a comment. Tell me if I am missing important elements in this existential question. 

Snow and the Little Birdies

The second day of snow falls as the afternoon light lowers into a Friday night with a city closed down.  This morning there was a break, and I went out to sweep in front of my doorway. The little junkos, sparrows and towhees come looking. I scour my cupboards to find something for them, these valiant little beings in a cold world. I throw poppy seeds from summer flowers and soy flower. It takes them a few hours to find the spot, but as the day wears on more and more arrive.

I have firewood, and my warm space inside. I look out the windows at the second blizzard. The air is in white-out form, reminiscent of the white-out on the summit of Mt. Hood  many years ago, when I climbed it with the man I loved.  We scaled the mountain for his 23rd birthday and camped on the summit for 2 nights. He would be 60 this year if he were alive.

The snow piles up, and I make soup. The beans and corn carry me back to summer harvest. The season of warm air, the time of gathering garlic to dry, shucking the beans, picking corn, making tomato sauce. It seems like another world from this white mountain tonight.

There is an acceptance of being stuck here, of having the usual diversions cancelled. Suddenly the time is only now, this moment with the birdies and the the soup simmering over the woodstove.  In only one day I celebrate a birthday, my 58th. I don't remember ever having a snowstorm to mark my birthday. Some years it has even been sunny. Mother nature has her way. This pleases me. It gives everyone the little reminder: our world is not our world, it belongs to the cosmos, and we belong to it.

Woman Born With Her Eyes Open

My little grand daughter, Kaitlyn, she, baby of the world
Born with her eyes open two days before
the full moon.

Her small face looking at her parents, a recognition, yes, there you are now,
We all meet face to face
she held her beautiful and perfectly shaped head up and took in this air, this stark place
a room full of love
two gramas, an auntie, an uncle,
3 midwives, two white Husky doggies,
and holding her, an enraptured Mom and Dad.

Kaitlyn Jean, baby of the world,
 I awake thinking of what world you have, of how you see and feel this -
this place of your beginning.
Your first breath a slight cry, so small to wake no night birdies
Barely a call, from the deep beyond of the womb
A call into this new air, this place of light and sound.

I knew you in my heart before you came.
I saw your face and, ah, of course.....you.
You have always been there.
Always 

Baby Shower

Friday night, I am stirring
German chocolate cake frosting
for cupcakes
for the baby shower tomorrow
for the woman who
carries my grand daughter

That fact, by itself, is far too
cosmic
to
contain.

Thirty years ago from today
was the last month of my pregnancy with
this future baby's father,
born the day after Christmas while the grand parents,
and all the aunts and uncles
were still around.
We had a party
He was forever then my baby of the world,
the little chief
born on the Elwha Indian Reservation
caught by his father
blessed by Grama Sampson
held by all, his sturdy, agreeable baby self.

In January he will become a father
And so I bring hand rolled cigars from Mexico
to the shower
as well as the favorite cake for his wife
German chocolate
And I have bought, on a whim, little plastic
baby theme ornaments for the cakes
pink baby shoes (yes, she is a girl, there are fewer mysteries these days)
and little teething bracelets
I see the shoes have space, so
I will write a hoped for quality on a bit of paper
like a fortune,
and slip one in each little pink shoe..

what do I wish for this little girl child?
Strength and courage,
Radiant health,
Curiosity and wonderment,
A kind heart,
A deep love of family,
And plain old good luck.
and for me I wish she will have
many days hiking in the wilderness with her Grammy...
my own special wish-
Given up to the same unviverse which gave me
Her father, her mother, and now...
My own grand daughter, my own little love.

Shani Waves Goodbye

                                                            Shani Waves Goodbye

Hay una nina pequena -  there is a little girl - se nombre es Shannara - her name is Shannara, Shani for short.
I see her still, standing in the doorway of her Grama's house in Patzcuarto, Michoacan, Mexico. Her young Mom, Gaby, holds Shani while she waves goodbye to us. She waves like young children do, opening and closing her little brown hand, her eyes focused in a serious tone, as though she realizes now that she will miss us. These 2 guests leaving, who speak oddly, whose skin is not the same lovely warm brown as hers, who like to smile and play with her and her boisterous brood of little cousins, who eat her Mama's beans and soups at the family table when her Papa comes home. Her beautiful, funny Papa, el dentiste, the dentist, full Perhepecha Indian, with a smile and a sense of humor as long as the day he puts in at his office in town, and the other small pueblas he visits in the week.

Shani's Papa is our dentist now. We travel 2000 miles to have him work on our teeth because he is a wonderful man, and we have no U.S. insurance. His family takes us in, gives us a place to stay and keeps inviting us to eat. We sit with the whole family on a Sunday and eat 'impossible' cake Gaby baked especially for one of the children's birthdays. We talk about food, family, language, music, work - everything.

On the last day Gaby makes us lunch, calda y frijoles - soup and beans. Shani sits on her lap eating frijoles entero - cooked beans whole. I watch her small fingers take one bean at a time from her bowl, as she looks out with her deep brown Perhepecha eyes. She looks like her father I think, she has the indigenous features like those on etched into ancient artworks. With the small earring in her tiny ear, she takes on a wizened countenance. I take a photo, and she will not smile, but that is OK, she has a gorgeous face for a child of 14 months. Something about her stare goes beyond the place, the day, the time. I long to come back and talk to her, years from now. She will have something to say to me.

Shani, the descendant of those peoples of the lake who drew designs of trout - trucha - into their pottery. Those peoples who were so difficult for the Spanish. They ran off into the woods and hid, or hung themselves rather than be enslaved by Cortez's brutal machine.

I step into the little white rental car w/my boyfriend, whom they call "Ella espoza" her husband. It is almost inconceivable to them that people of our age are not married, so we go along.

I think of our destination (Mexico City) and say to Gaby, "Yikes! La Ciudad!" and she smiles knowingly from the cobblestone street in her Puebla.  She laughs her soft Mama laugh, much older than her 22 years, and smiles her blessing upon these 2 wayfarers she has fed for 5 days. She is the new matriarch, the one who is always in the kitchen, who watches everyone's children in the family, who never raises her voice, and looks so forward to her Baking classes in the evenings.

We drive away and they wave. I follow them until the final turn as they disappear from us, and we from them. Shani stays long in my heart, a little ache, a small light. Someday I hope she will meet my grand daughter, who will be less than 2 years younger. Someday we might all sit in the warm Mexico sun and talk a Spanish/English mixture, laughing hard because words will fail us.

Dia de los Muertos, Cuetzalan, Puebla, MX

This humid evening
I hear the church bells continuous toll,
metal to metal, for all the dead.

The laundry hangs on rooftop lines
the children play and run in the street below.

Shedding clothes wet from
famous waterfall pools, I luxuriate in an evening where
I am not required to be anything or anywhere
I Light this candle to James, his brother and
 all the grandparents.
To the good leaders who advocated peace and justice
and to
the innocent.
My offered candle is small here, 3 pesos
My heart however is, I hope, expanding into
jungle hillsides, viney damp
to little kids asking for money in the streets,
To all the vendors and food preparers, to all those walking slowly
carrying a heavy load up these steep hills
My spirit and my heart I am inside
before and after I arrive and then leave,
closing into winter at my own house.