#26 Hallowed Ground

In the temple
of our flesh,
we follow Adam.
We are the earth.
The earth is us:
a Holy Family.




(The prompt is the painting "Hallowed Ground" by Rick Mobbs.)
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# 25 Inspiration

And so I said to myself: Self, whatever shall we write about Now? I know--we'll write how he wore his mentor's thumb on a chain, a necklace!

(Note: David Belasco (1853-1931) was a famous American actor/director/playwright whose early education in a San Francisco monastery may have inspired his wearing a priest's garb most of his life, which in turn, inspired the nick name "the Bishop of Broadway."

At the age of 12 he ran away from the monastery and joined the circus. He became an actor, and in Carson City, Nevada, he met Dion Boucicault (whose thumb he is rumored to have worn on a chain about his neck as inspiration.) His off-stage life was often extravagant and bizarre. As a director, he would rip out his pocket watch and stamp it to pieces in front of his actors (he kept a stockpile of these cheap watches for just this purpose). And it was reported that he once dragged actress Leslie Carter around the stage by her red hair to inspire emotion and passion in her performance. I'm just sayin' here that I know it would have surely have inspired ME! Anyhow, this is the way I remember it from my theater history classes long ago. If I remember it wrong, please let me know....)
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#24 Girls

She's the kind of girl who will rescue stranded earthworms on rainy days.
. . .

At the school bus stop early this morning--yes, it's raining again--a worm fell into a puddle in the gutter. Everyone there surrounded the puddle to watch. One of the dad's there saw it as a teaching opportunity and they began a discussion on respiration. My first impulse was to pull the worm out, but I (being the self-conscious old codger that I am) was too concerned that this guy would think I was a crazy lady. I decided to wait until everyone was gone to do it. By that time the poor worm would have drowned. So, one of the little girls there did it! She walked right in, took him in hand and laid him in the grass. Hurrah for her! Boo for me....

Speaking of girls...my first reaction to this Texas/polygamy thing was acute embarrassment. I just wanted this whole affair being blasted out into the world by CNN and everyone else to go away. IT won't. And yes, I was embarrassed by my peculiar FLDS fringe-cousins (most of you already know I am LDS) with their peculiar hair-dos, and their funny dresses and wierd lifestyle....and I am appalled at the idea of a thirteen-year-old girl marrying a fifty-year-old man and having babies. Even though one of my great-grandfathers had two wives at once, I find the principle of polygamy incomprehensible. Most of us believe in obeying the laws. These people live in a world apart (or think they do).

BUT--they are a part of American society, if not culture. Their constitutional rights have been grossly violated, and the seven hundred Texas authorities were WRONG to go like gangbusters into this community with their tanks and machine guns and M-16 rifles and badges and helmets and begin storming into homes (and their temple) on the flimsy evidence of one phone call that turned out to be a hoax. The caller was NOT an abused 16-year-old, but a disturbed 33-year-old Colorado woman who has done this sort of thing before.

STILL--the state's police and do-gooder child protection people continued to remove 437 (Can they count? They first said 416!) innocent children from their homes and families. I think this is outrageous! The authorities broke into private homes and essentially kidnapped hundreds of children! WITHOUT EVIDENCE. Think: The invasion of Iraq and WMD's that were never found. What an arrogant and unmitigated disaster that was. Think: The Gulf of Tonkin incident (never happened) that led us into Viet Nam. People looking for excuses to do the WRONG thing.

If there are people guilty of doing bad things they should be punished, and their crimes stopped. But not like this. These are Americans, people, just like you and me. If they can break into their homes without evidence, they can break into yours. If they can break into their sacred places, they can break into mine. Who will be next? Probably me, because my brand of Christianity is not "mainstream" and I wear funny underwear. You might be next, because you are Amish, or Muslim, or Seventh Day Adventist, or because you home-school your children, or because you protest the war, or are Gay or Jewish.... It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see where this might go. And it must not!

My mother taught me that two wrongs do not make a right. My church teaches me that I must obey the laws of whatever country I reside in, that I claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of my own conscience, and allow all men to do the same. If there is abuse going on, by all means, help those who are being abused, and punish the guilty. But don't violate an entire community with an armed invasion and steal its children. These children are gentle and polite, used to praying twice a day and eating fruits and vegetables from gardens they have tended. They haven't seen TV, so they don't hero-worship the Power Rangers and Hannah Montana. They are used to playing outdoors, to giving and getting hugs. They are tender, and kept squeaky clean and combed. They are loved! One Texas lawyer who volunteers his services on behalf of the community has written the Texas raid was a "fiasco" and observed: "Once again, the Texas state government has shown it couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel."

Shame on you, Texas! Let the children go back to their mothers.
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#23 Haiku

The moon is a hole
cold wind wears a black slicker
the last bus goes by the board


photo by B O H E M I A N
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# 22 Earth Day

SEEING EVE


I once saw a women,
Call her Isha, heart and bones
Formed, in fact, chosen, like Eve
In Eden, by the breath of His mouth,
By a rib in the sweet dough
Of her flesh. Before she emerged
Was it like a fire, then? Like coming
Out of some great silence
Not dark, not light, but out of some
Infinite blank page set so suddenly
Aflame: No Thing, igniting some dust,
Some tinder, with sparks, bonfires, conflagrations
Of particles created, colliding, decaying,
Like everything she knows as real?

And After Word, under a harmony of
Constellations, after the naming of animals,
Those beautiful beasts in the rumbling seas,and
In the seeded fields, knee-deep in grass, or
Above her, touching the air like God
Walking on water, like men and caribou
In marshes, planting rice, like women
Dancing under trees, like children digging
For treasures, like the painter with his
Oils and brushes, like the doctor with his
Medicine bottles and his pills, like the soldier
With his rifle and his helmet and boots, like the
Boy with his book, like the murderer and
His victim, like the drowned, and the saved.

It is so hard to be chosen; to be
The Beginning of The Rest of the Story
Is to divide and expand forever outward
In a sequence of possibilities, growing greater
With each division. We are mere followers.
As simple as that.


(Okay, in honor of Earth Day I wanted to write something that would suggest earth through the Big Bang, through Eden, on to whatever is ahead, and I wanted to do it using this wonderful painting of Rick Mobbs, called: Tapestry. based on the Fibonacci Sequence. It didn't turn out quite as I imagined it. I think I bit off more than I could chew.)
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#21 I Am A Desert

Today I am dry, dry as the dry Kalahari, dry as burnt toast.

Photo: Kalahari Gemsbok

# 20 His Mate

Their calling voices clash over the great dark fields, each of them alone.

# 19 The Great Horned Owl

Listen: the call of a Great Horned Owl, lovely, if you're not a field mouse.

# 18 (Place Names) RWP

A Map of American Sentences


I don't live in Toole, Dutch John, Duchesne, Ibapah, or Nephi.
I won't live in Koosharem, Iosepa, Mexican Hat or Mummies.
I might live in Sundance, or Thistle, or Roy, but not in Skutumpah.
And never in Kolob, La Verkin, Hog Spring: my hometown's Salt Lake.

# 17 Mother

HANGING OUT THE CLOTHES

She wears a straw
Sombrero to hang the clothes
On the line
It keeps the sun
From her pale freckled skin
She carries the wooden pins
In a green-flowered bag
Tied at her waist
The wind whips water
From the corners of the spotless
Sheets the long pants and
Endless shirts, figures
Writhing in a blast
Like men afire
Racing like couriers with
Meaningless messages
Her red hair twists around her
Pale freckled face
Like flames
Her tiny white hands fasten
Each pin like a candle
A row of candles
On the trembling line
She bends over the basket of
Wet clothes again and again
Hushing the baby
Who weeps at her feet
Tomorrow she irons


Prompt from Poetic Asides: Write a poem in the 3rd Person--keep yourself out of it.
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# 16 Los Abuelos

Los abuelos,
the old ones,
know the music
of embers
and ashes,
hold both longing
and love
under a holy
chalice of stars.


Okay, this is icky, but maybe I will try another one later. I like the picture. Maybe you can do something with it!

It makes me think of that old song BOTH SIDES NOW: I've looked at life from both sides now, from win and lose, and still somehow, it's life's illusions I recall--I really don't know life at all.

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How many faces can you find?

I found 21.

# 15 Facebook

Facebook

Out there, somewhere
you have real faces, like
or unlike, mine. People
I pass on the street
might be you. They are
all going somewhere. I, too
am going somewhere.
Sometimes our eyes meet
but only for a moment.
Was that you I saw
last month, at the airport
going to Buenos Aires, or Seattle?
Was that you behind me
in line at the supermarket
buying wine and flowers,
oranges from Florida, avocados
from Brazil?
Do I know you?
My face is a keyhole.
Your face is a key.
This little glass contains
the world, unlocked.


(For all you bloggers, who are also friends, out there, somewhere....)

# 14 A Rothko

Red bird rising
Deep blue day
Born again: green


(3 lines, 3 words each, a color in each line, tic-tac-toe pattern)
Photo by mightyquinninwky
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# 13 Haiku

another fine day
the paper whites are blooming
take a deep deep breath

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# 12 American Sentence

Starfish wept true tears when the abandoned nest of nine duck eggs grew cold.



(See AS # 8!)
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# 11 Image Prompt

A Woman Without Arms


A woman without arms
is still a woman, nonetheless,
given a torso, two good legs, a head.
Without a mirror
she falls in love with herself.
Think: Venus.
Think: Winged Victory.

Think of wings that have been interlocked
so long, folded like an apron, unfolding
now as intricate as a moth's.

She has abandoned rings,
fingers, files, polish, gloves, bracelets,
for these feathers. Yet
she hungers for touch, for the
astonishing grace of nakedness, the endless warmth
of flesh, the chill of water.

She has forgotten how to hold a pencil,
how to play the Tarot. The harp
sits silent in the corner, gathering dust.

How does she eat? Make bread? Who
will feed the mare? Who
will water the fading plants, and gather
sticks for the fire, and turn the pages
of photographs, those foursided pastimes?

And where are other angels,
so long unseen?

(Painting, Rick Mobbs, at mine enemy grows older)
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Stickney Crater

They named this large crater, whose impact nearly split the tiny Martian moon Phobos apart, Stickney Crater, after the wife (Chloe Angeline Stickney) of its discoverer Asaph Hall. See Previous post.

Photo credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. of Arizona), and NASA
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# 10 Sweet Nothings

EARLY HOURS


So, what did Asaph and Chloe speak of in their early hours, over breakfast, heads together, the eggs and oatmeal congealing in the bowls, coffee cooling, toast growing cold? Did he mention, in passing, how he had discovered this tiny Martian moon, a mere
eighteen or so kilometers across? Did he mark its triaxial shape with his inkpen upon a napkin, and did she respond by calculating how its mere 27 x 22 x 19 kilometers were equal to 17 x 13 x 12 miles, and did she wonder aloud, if one were standing on the surface of such a tiny world, and gave a great leap, would one escape its gravity and simply keep on going to some far planet of one's own? Did he wonder if a woman in society should avoid education, and concur with the great Doctor Clark of Harvard, whose study concluded that the intellectual development of females would proceed only at the sacrifice of their reproductive organs? When Asaph turned away to butter his cold toast, did she spit in his cold coffee, and go upstairs to stand at the window, looking out?

(NOTE: Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars. Chloe Angeline Stickney, a professor of mathematics, gave up her career when she married him. He had been a student of hers, and he and his classmates made a game of devising questions and problems they were convinced she could never solve, yet she never failed to solve them. After their marriage, when he refused to pay her "a man's wage" for assisting him, she refused to continue her work. Three cheers for Chloe!)

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# 9 Fibonacci Sequence

ALICE THROUGH THE GLASS


Try

contemplating

these marvels,

today being another

ordinary Wednesday. You study this

group of ordinary objects: seashells, flowers, curling leaves,

until your eyes burn, your heart nailed to these visions like ripe metaphors

rattling to get free. Like Leonardo of Pisa, you have an abacus, that just might move you down the rabbit's hole

with Alice. Lewis Carroll knew the Secret: add the previous two to find the next. The Farey Tree, Goedel, Escher, Bach and Mandelbrot are famous now as Mother Nature, with her eternally born again

chambered nautilus, her dandelions and daisies, chronicled teeth, swarms, cellular automatons, algorithms, fractals, black holes, dark matter to the very ends of observation, seeds growing through your floorboards and out your windows, rearranging chaos into immaculate order, the world rich with order, the Hindu mathematics of it all: Fib's rabbits hopping toward infinity, like Pi.


(The Fibonacci Sequence: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 ... etc. Syllables or words. Add the previous two numbers to find the next. Like Pi, it could go on forever. Remember that old campfire song that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends....)

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# 8 An American Sentence

UPON PRESENTING THE MEDAL OF HONOR TO THE PARENTS OF A HEROIC SOLDIER


But, dude, it takes a heap o' cryin' those crocodile tears, to count.

.

# 7 A Rambling Nonet

I had a dream last night I had this
fox copper tail ruddy tongue
and a mouthful of showy
teeth. I also had a
nest of little birds
which he gobbled
damn my tears
one by
one.

(A Nonet is syllabic, beginning with 9 syllables and ending with 1.)

Photo: Barry Neil, AlaskaPhotography.com "I feel like chicken tonight."
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#6 Pi, or, What Worries You?

DISCRETE MATHEMATICS

Position,
edge,
color the graph
blue.
Circuit is a path,
parent is an adjacent vertex
passing.

Minimum,
set,
numbers passing....
Note:
compare with cycle.
A child of a vertex is lower.
See: tree.


(Pi is 3.141592 and so on, to infinity. Infinity worries me, mathematics scare me. Pi, Christine says, counts syllables (or words) in that pattern, one stanza or several.)
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#5 Tribute

XANADU

I see you everywhere except in dreams
--Karl Shapiro


Someday this poem will be
a memory, like
the ten dollars you got
winning the spelling bee, like
the sweet smell of the tobacco pouch
in your grandfather's pocket,
the grandfather you adored, how
the gold string that tied it vanished
like a coin drawn into a magician's sleeve
amazing the child who watched,
who was you, the child burned
by illusions that turned into dreams,
the child, awake now
to the ruin of old age, but you
cannot heal her, you cannot cry.
You know no words of comfort.
You pronounce her dead
and move to a far country,
sunless, without air.


(Grandpa and me, ca 1942) Xanadu,according to Coleridge, was a vision in a dream, a fragment, a sunny dome built in air, a savage place holy and enchanted, where "the sacred rived ran down to a sunless sea."

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RWP: Family Matters

Aunt Mabel

This town is haunted by some good deed
that reappears like a country cousin, or truth
when language falters these days trying to lie,
because Aunt Mabel, an old lady gone now, would
accost even strangers to give bright flowers
away, quick as a striking snake. It's deeds like this
have weakened me, shaken by intermittent trust,
stricken with friendliness.

Our Senator talked like war, and Aunt Mabel
said, "He's a brilliant man,
but we didn't elect him that much."

Everyone's resolve weakens toward evening
or in a flash when a face melds - a stranger's, even -
reminded for an instant between menace and fear:
There are Aunt Mabels all over the world,
or their graves in the rain.

- William Stafford -
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#4 Idiocy

The Idiocy of Trying to Justify a Mortal Position

The Borg says resistance is futile
Amalgams of culture, collective
Hive mind. The stuff of our spirits says
That we all come from the same substance.
What is eternal? Skin color, or
Poverty, or inequality?
Reward is no justification
For suffering what is offensive
Through the birth process, either that, or
Is it just random? Or because they
Were strong? They are all potentially
Dangerous. Lift the veil. Let us see.


(I am losing it, folks. It's only day 4 and I am losing it....Borgs?)
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#3 HAIKU

Your footfall echoes--
my old teakettle whistling
charms a frosty night


Our nights are still frosty, even though spring has sprung. Nothing is quite as good to charm a cold evening as a cup of hot chocolate. Here are some photos from Easter. A family update!

#2 Cadae

CADAE FOR HSER NAY

Oh, may there
be
bright angels to
bear
you far and may they
sing lullabies in your own tongue. May
you not

remember
that
fierce dark face
of
the man who led you to this fearful
dark place.

Oh, let there
be
a mother, who
will
smother you with mother-kisses, 'til
you wake.



The body of 7-year-old Hser Nay Moo was found last night in the bathroom of a South Salt Lake basement apartment in the complex where she lived. Hundreds of volunteers searched for almost two days before she was found. One of the searchers said, "I'm scared. I'm hoping for the best, but every time I open a Dumpster lid...God forbid."

We are all mourning for this tiny girl who wore her Sunday best, a pink dress, pink shoes, and a pink jacket to her tragic death. Someone has tied a pink sign with pink ribbons to a tree outside the apartments. It says: You are never so Lost that Angels can't find you. Police have arrested a young man for her murder.

God bless Hser Nay and her family.


Photo: sharisangels.com
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#1 A Pleiades

SOFTBALL

Sports is not my long suit, yet
something like a softball catches
summer visions of my dad,
sainted, with a wad of gum
sanctified to one purpose:
stuffing it in the umpire's
short-winded, surprised pie-hole!



My dad loved baseball. He loved to listen to it on the radio, he loved to play. He once pitched a no hitter against the great Satchel Paige. He had an opportunity to play for the Los Angeles Angels, but passed it up because he loved mining more (or thought he would get rich quicker). He chewed a wad of gum like some players chewed tobacco. Once, when the umpire was yelling at him for something, my dad calmly took the wad of gum from his mouth and shoved it into the umpire's gaping, wide-open mouth, stopping the tirade instantly. Whatever works!

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RWP: Overheard

WHO'S AFRAID OF ....

I'll remember ya, honey
think of it as a gift
I was lucky
yer a lucky bastard
yer the one that got away
in an empty and amorphous space
it became confusing
the lighting was different
windows, things like that
it had almost a documentary feel
of new things and old things
because you have new tools and you always want to explore
everybody couldn't help but notice
it's the kind of journey you go on by yourself
*laughter*
in those days everything was very exciting
they did everything before my time
unfortunately there was a lot of night
day, night, I learned, so now
I will pray for you
once we began to shoot
everything was dirty for whatever reasons
done with something you might find in the streets
I just simply
pictured things a different way


(I don't get out much. This was overheard during two hours of TV last night.)

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FANTASTIC!

So, an elephant never forgets? He mourns his dead, caresses their bones, and remembers where they are buried. He can learn to haul heavy loads and do circus tricks. But take a look at this "Self Portrait." It almost made me cry.

Self-aware? Deliberate? I think so. What do you think? I think we have no clue...as to what has gone on, what is going on, what will go on. We people are a self-centered bunch of f**kers at best, believing that our place at the top of the food chain makes us the most beloved of God. God is the God of elephants and cats and jellyfish and rosebushes and bees as well as of mankind. We are all beloved. All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful...you finish it now...while I go get a tissue.

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YAY!

My computer is fixed! I can pick it up tomorrow! (Not that my son Deadboy's hasn't been useful and appreciated in the interval). But, YAY! My other son Pix says that being without your computer is sort of like being blind....

This is my NEW computer, the one I bought at the end of December, because my old one had a total eclipse of the motherboard or something (and still contains about a thousand photos, all my genealogy stuff, and the last half of my novel, but, Oh well. Perhaps we can still resurrect and transfer most of that, I hope) and dropped dead. They had to send the new one off to CALIFORNIA to fix the little CD door thingy that refused to open. It took FOREVER, well, two weeks. But it's fixed, and back! YAY!

RWP: A Day in the Life of a Tree

(From an old Beach Boys album, SURF'S UP, lyrics by Brian Wilson and Jack Rieley--mostly describing Brian's life at the time...A Day in the Life of a Tree.

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To This End Was I Born

"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world...." (St John 18:37)


"...and we have a knowledge that those we bury here God will bring up again, clothed upon and quickened by the Spirit of the great God; and what mattereth it whether we lay them down, or we lay down with them, when we can keep them no longer?...All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection...."

--From a discourse given by Joseph Smith on Apr. 16, 1843, in Nauvoo, Illinois


HAPPY EASTER, EVERYONE!
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WHY?

WHY did Barack Obama sit in that church FOR TWENTY YEARS and LISTEN (or even NOT listen) to this old man spew HATE? Comparing this old hatemonger to his white grandma was a farce. This crazy "Old Uncle" is no man of God. I am really disappointed. Obama's past and continuing association with this bastard is more disturbing to me than the ex-governor of New York's four-year association with some pricy prostitute.

Come back, Mitt! You are looking better and better!

And, WHY aren't we all talking about the FALLON RESIGNATION instead of Spitzer's sex life?
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WI: Spellbound

I find myself spellbound by this translation:

Grey, Mouse, Candle Paul Colinet

Translated from the French by Rochelle Ratner

Grey, the depths, the labyrinths, the sleepingbags; grey, the patient stairs; sly grey, grey brain, mischievous brain, grey, granaries of grey. Grey, the week; grey, the attic window overlooking grey fields, heaven’s grey eye, the messenger on the grey horse; bullet music, the angel caught in his grey snares.

Mouse, clever mouse who smiles with tiny grey eyes which go cri-cri; pointed mouse, spinning mouse, twinkling mouse; mouse who dots the grey quilt; mouse who says oui with a little cry, in the heaps of folded grey.

Candle, it's a castle. Day castle, night castle, castle of mice; castle of cats; castle that sings, winged castle, song of wings. Circle of virgins, candle-virgins radiantly turning, with bouquets of eyes and velvet mouths. Lace-collared candle, fairy candle, candle of Orpheus, French candle greyed from mouse-nests.


from a French poet, sent to me by my son, Slick.

WI: Destiny

It began as such a small thing, like a policeman beating a nag. In the beginning no one thought that two murders in Sarajevo would have any effect at all upon the world. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, all of it precipitated by a piece of newsprint, a short announcement, a small note clipped from the paper: the Archduke of Austria would visit the city to direct army maneuvers in the mountains. Small things. Then, in Belgrade, at a small table in a small cafe, the small newsclipping was passed from hand to hand among terrorists of the Narodna Odbraba. A grenade was thrown. One grenade.

"I come to visit Sarajevo and they throw bombs at me!" the Archduke complained to the Mayor. Then, the Archduke's chauffer took a wrong turn, as simple as that. He backed the automobile to the precise spot where the road had diverged, where a Serbian student named Gavrile Princip waited with a pistol, an angel of death. The first bullet killed the Archduke's pregnant wife, Sophia, and her unborn child. A second bullet, to the heart, killed him. "Sophia!" he called out. "Don't die!"

But she was dead already. As was he. A dead German policeman killed four years afterward in such a small place as Okres Krupina went unnoticed. The Great War begun by a small means was finally over.


(From Pepek the Assassin)
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RWP: Pantoum

These pictures of ice on the car windshields were taken last week. Winter's not done yet! (Click 'em!)

ICE PANTOUM


Ice is braided against the air,
curled and roped like the girl's long hair
bright as frost,
in the hands of the boy who could take a dare.

Curled and roped like the girl;s long hair
are the roads that might take them anywhere.
The hands of the boy who could take a dare
are strong and fierce.

But the roads that might take them anywhere
are not straight but forbidden,
and strong and fierce
is the face of the sun, that won't let go.

Not straight, but forbidden,
they go nowhere. The day is cold.
The sun that lies, that won't let go,
turns the ice to a vapor that fogs the air.

They go nowhere. The day is cold.
The girl is gone. The sun is bold,
turns the ice to a vapor that fogs the air
in the hands of the boy who could take a dare.


(Egad this was HARD. But I tried. It's been a long time since I tried to conform--to patterns. I don't even know if this is close to what it's supposed to be. Non-conformist that I am. It's hard to find lines to repeat that hold up and to have the piece as a whole make sense. This was really HARD!)
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WI: Empowered

Looking back at the birth of my last baby, an empowering event, to be sure, but accomplished without benefit of doctor, nurse, or anyone else but me--and my son. Not even an aspirin. I don't recommend this. Nope. Give me DRUGS! Anyway....

"The door slides shut behind them. I lie very rigid, filled with incomprehensible pain. Relax, I think. Relax. Damn them. Damn them all. So, it is you and me, babe. Here we are, alone together. Full speed ahead. It's my duty to tell you. They say you may be impaired. Impaired, with strange eyes and a strange smile. The pain is real. This is earth. I don't pretend to understand it all, I tell him, but earth is a place of mistakes. If you are less then perfect, I'm sorry. Know that I very much wanted you to be perfect and beautiful. I love you anyway.

I'm listening, hums the heartbeat from the monitor. I love you--eyes, hands, whorl of hair at the crown, wrinkles at the ankles and elbows, big toes, little toes. I love you. I'm sorry if I have to die. I'm sorry if I have let you down! I'm listening, he says.

Where is the doctor, with his shining tools and his sterile green gown? Where are the nurses, with their needles and analgesics and anasthetics? I might as well be squatting in a tent in the middle of the Gobi desert. Something is wrong. I never expected this much pain. This primitive pushing body is mine. This whole primitive process is splitting me in two, I am tearing from the inside out--

--the baby emerges at once, wet and white and crying spontaneously, covered with long streaks of blood. The afterbirth is dumped unceremoniously beside him. I am bleeding all over their sheets. I sit up and take the baby in my arms. I check his fingers and toes, genitals and ears and all. He seems perfect. What a miracle! We rock, and I whisper hoarsely, "Little lamb, who made thee?"

The nurse arrives, takes one startled look at us and gasps. A second nurse arrives, followed by the doctor, who is followed by Mark. We need only a drummer, a couple of trumpets and a baton twirler for fanfare. "Well, aren't you the sneaky one," the doctor says cleverly. The nurse would take the baby from me, but I hold onto him and we continue to rock and sing. I am furious that no one was here with me. But I have found a strength that surprises me. I did it all by myself. I can do anything! Like Jonah, I have been swallowed by Leviathan, and came out alive after all. I can do anything!

...Today I am like an apple--deep inside me, like a star of five dark seeds, there is a cool, sweet peace."


(We named him Marc Ariel. He was the fifth of our five sons.)
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WI & RWP: One for Two

The poet Dylan Thomas wrote of a darkness in the weather of the eye. The eye can show many different kinds of weather. How a thing is viewed always depends upon the viewer, hence, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; or, if the weather in the eye is changeable, and becomes stormy and full of rainclouds, the beholder might see something else entirely.

LITANY FOR A SNOWMAN

"I have a problem. Everybody I ever loved
I still love." --Alice Morrey Bailey


What I wanted most was
First, a sort of lusty voyerism,
To stare boldly
For a long time,
Neither of us speaking.
Then, for an icebreaker,
I would have touched his hair
Where pale blond had silvered,
Would have taken his eyeglasses in hand
To better gaze on passions
We would not name. Without a word
I'd have taken his coat,
Have taken his hands in mine,
Turned them, looked a long time
At the palms, the nails, the backs,
Would have touched the hairs
Growing there, and touched
His arms. At last,
I would bury my face
Against his chest and breathe of him
Until the inside of my head,
My lungs, my cells, are filled
With the scent of soap, after-shave,
Sun--whatever it is--
That makes me want to cry.


And sometimes, especially with snowmen when the weather has changed, there are NO SECOND CHANCES. True story.

(photo by Squirmelia)
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Read WritePoem: Body Parts

PSALTERY

Your hands can smile
With touch
Your pink nails laugh
With their half-moons shining
Smelling of things grasped
And let go: deliveries
And departures

Day after day
Hands are your navigators
Across smoke rainclouds
Starlight leaves ice
Over and over
They tell the story of your life
The left one
The hand God gave you
The right
The hand you make

They are a library
Clapping time
For the rest of your life

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Have You Smiled Today???

It is done by lifting the corners of the mouth upward. Here, let me show you how....

(Thanks, Dan & Wendy)
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WI: Time Travel

(OK. Onward and upward. Here is the ending of a much longer story of mine...time is traveling backward. Martin Redraven is reading from an ancient copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass.)

In towns he sat among half-naked people who spoke a soft slurred language he couldn't understand. He unwrapped the leather book and read aloud to them, and small groups of people followed him when he moved on. When he stopped to rest, Redraven drew for them with a stick in the sand the circular Road of Life, the Path of the Sun as it had been shown to him: winter solstice and summer solstice, death and birth. Placing the stick in the center of the circle he rotated the point from left to right.

"A-ho-liiii," he sang. "A-ho-liiii. All universes are one universe, all worlds are one world, all men are one man...." Wherever he went the people followed him, always far behind, but always there. They called him "Wa-Ya-Nez-Ga-Ni," elder brother.

They came, in the shimmering heat of summer, to a parched place of many rocky caves, where rose a small, silver dome-shaped frame, the shell of the nose cone of a small abandoned rocket. Inside the blackened cone they dug a shallow pit and lined it with hot rocks. The purifying heat rose in a cloud of seething steam. Drained of energy and shining with perspiration, Redraven was given a necklace of eagle feathers.

They led him to another place where scavenger birds perched on the splintered fence posts surrounding an old cemetery. They stopped at a newly opened grave. In the pit, among hot embers placed inside and covered with wet spruce boughs, lay an old man, stripped naked and lightly wrapped in a blanket. The old man screamed hoarsely and rolled his head from side to side. After a time, they lifted him out of the grave, unrolled the blanket and gave him a drink of herb medicine. The old man whimpered mindlessly and picked at the blanket until they held the cup again to his lips. "Shik'a anilyeed," the old man cried out. "Help me."

"Nika lishyeed," another said, holding the cup for him. "I am helping you, sani, old one."

"Niseya, naashdaal," the old man smiled. "I went, and I returned. I go back."

* * * *

The road went on. The brushy hills were somehow familiar, but there was nothing to indicate a city had been here. The city ought to have been close, but there was nothing. Redraven stopped in a patch of shade and looked around. He backtracked to the hilltop, walked back and forth, squinting against the sun, and he thought he saw smoke rising in the distance. He followed the smoke.

"Good morning," Radraven spoke to the woman squatting in the dust outside her tent. The smoke from her fire lifted and dropped with the wind. Inside the tent opening Redraven saw racks of drying skins, baskets and tobacco bags. He said, "I am Martin Redraven. I am looking for someone, a boy called Joseph. He is my son."

"What is his name?"

"Joseph Redraven. His mother was called Aniid. Do you know of him?"

The woman shrugged and nodded, directing him toward a small white building. Redraven walked swiftly toward the building, half-fearing to arrive at last at that which he had come so far to find. One child lost. One tiny soul. His child.

He went up two steps to the high narrow double door with a brass knocker. White paint cracked and flaked about the brass circle. It was a school, a sort of school. He heard the choir of voices reciting inside before he touched the door. He waited a moment, listening. Then he could wait no longer. He opened the heavy door without knocking and stepped into darkness. A voice asked, "Who is there?"

A small, soft-bellied, stoop-shouldered fellow with gray hair and a stubbly gray beard met him at the door.

"Thank you, Arthur. You may return to your seat." A tall figure came down the aisle between the pupils, who sat quietly upon the floor. Little specks of dust fell softly in the gray light that filtered through the dusty windows. Redraven's blood pounded in his ears. "Good morning, Sir. May I help you?" A priest with thick eyebrows and hair cut off squarely at his stiff collar spoke. "Redraven, you say? Yes, Oh, yes. I know him well. Come in." Redraven stepped into the gray room. The priest's beads rustled in the folds of his dark robe. There was a confusion of whisperings. "The boys are always excited when someone comes." He called, "Joseph, come here."

Joseph started up nervously and approached them. His long slender legs were thin as a spider's. His back was bent and his head was bald but for a feathering of white about his ears. His chin trembled apprehensively.

"Joseph, this man says he is your father."

Joseph did not look surprised. He smiled shyly and put out his hand. Redraven took it in his own. At last he understood: a word, a glimmer of light broke in his mind. The Path of the Sun, the Road of Life, the Return. Time was variate, everlasting inflow and everlasting outflow, encircling all that had been, and was, and would be. The singer in his shirt sleeves, the Kosmos of the Book, had known it eons before, singing of the universe as a road, as many roads, for traveling souls circling like space itself--past, present, and future, not separate, but interlaced.

On the way out, with Joseph's hand still in his own, Martin Redraven caught a glimpse of himself in a square of mirror with a crack across the glass: dark young cheeks, and heavy black hair, truly black, as Geronimo's would one day be, as Ten Bear's, and Chochise's and Montezuma's would be.

* * * * *

In the dawn they lay together upon a sheepskin, Redraven's hand upon Aniid's breast. His eyelids flickered in the light. The air around them was warm and damp. She was here. He loved her more deeply than any person before or since. He did not ask how she came here, but smiled, and touched her cheek with his lips. She smiled as he covered her body with his own. "Nelikaah. Bohoneedza." The song in his head: We are on our way back. It is good,"

It began, the return, the ballet and pulse of first-being. The brown infant lay alone and naked upon a yellowing sheepskin, with the buzzing of flies thick above him. He cried, a feeble, steady cry. He urinated and the droplets landed on his belly and dribbled slowly down towards his back. He wiggled a little, and stopped crying. The droning of insects became a deep drowning hum. He slept, and the colored prismatic images that passed briefly across his eyes became a dark red.

He awakened floating freely in bouyant fluid,turning lazily from side to side, head over heel. His fingernails disappeared into the nailbeds of his fingers. His bones softened. The palate separating his mouth and nose divided, his ears moved downward. His toes curled, and fanned, and disappeared. The fragile jelly that was his fingers disappeared into the plate of his hand. The soft, red bubbling noises grew fainter to his diminishing ears. The morula shrank from three dozen cells to the mulberry cluster, and the cluster leaped to one throbbing cell: it's name was TOKPELA, endless space, without beginning, or end, or time. A benediction.


(From: The Stars as Sheep, the Void as Grass)
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A Tribute to Gaylen A Hatton

A Tribute to Gaylen A Hatton, LDS composer, with music from Apotheosis, written to accompany text from the writings of Apostle Neal A. Maxwell, "whereby, after descending below all things, Christlike, we might ascend above all things and become like our Father, Mother, and Elder Brother, almighty and eternal."*


*Joseph F. Smith

(Tribute assembled by pixletwin)
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WI: CHANGE

I have just discovered L.E. Sissman, through reading Violet Weingarten's Intimations of Mortality, (a "testament of courage and dignity, of life prevailing over death.") A fine book,--alas! published after her death. Sissman, dying of Hodgekin's Disease, was a poet, and had been a reviewer for the New Yorker, and wrote a monthly column for the Atlantic. The book, Hello, Darkness, contains 134 of his poems, which the jacket says, were "inspired" by his illness. "There is a powerful rage to live," says the jacket, "even in the face of death." There is also a lot of "suffering of an unpicturesque kind--the kind that takes place in hospitals--which Sissman had a remarkable gift for picturing."

Ah, yes. I remember well "the pinpoint of the least syringe," and the "buttered catheter," and the IV's "lisp and drip," and the "Malignant plum" that "turns out to end in -oma." Ah, yes. He, too, saw forever after through an "invisible new veil of finity." Forever after being something akin to ten years or so. Given the extra decade, he "wrote like one possessed of a knowledge remote from most of us, the knowledge of real time."

Today is really lovely. The snow is melting, the air is warm. There are birds. The boys and I go Indian-file through a hole in the fence to the store, buy hot dogs and potato chips for a picnic, of sorts, in the park. They swing and slide, run and die from invisible and unbloody laser-sword wounds, and rise and run again. Today is an UP. I feel good. I munch on Bar-B-Q chips and read Sissman:

I find you guilty of possession of
The mortal spirit of unstinted love
For all things animate and otherwise,
And of the fatal talent to devise
Live poems expressing it, transcending all
Obituaries which record your fall.

~~

Another picnic, years ago. I am five years old. My grandmother is still alive. SHe is here, with her long red hair wrapped around her head in a circle of braids. My grandfather has a bottle of Four Roses to keep him company. He sits apart from the rest of us and hums comfortably to himself. In ten years they will both be gone. But today it is alright. Today is fine. Tomorrow we will all go our several ways, but today we are all together again. Papa cooks hamburgers over an open fire. Blue smoke rises high into the air. Mama helps Grandma with the lemonade and potato salad. My big brother Gaylen, who is fifteen this year, climbs out of the river, says he won't go in again, that the water's too
cold. He lies on a wide, warm rock to dry out like a lizard in the sun.

Wild blackberries grow all along the river's edge. The water sparkles. I throw little rocks into the water and the circles of ripples widen and run together. I step off the bank and wade out until the cold water is up to my knees. Little silver shivers dance like ripples up my backbone. Mother calls me to come back. I turn toward the shore and step off into a deep hole. The cold water closes over my head. Water is in my nose, in my mouth and ears. I can't see, or breathe, or think. I can't call out. I can only sputter and cough and flail my arms helplessly.

My big brother comes in after me. I gasp and cling to his neck. When we are safely back on shore, he says, "If you'd a been in the air instead of in the water, you'd a been flying!"

(Excerpt from CHRYSALIS)

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Gaylen

GAYLEN A HATTON

~
Born October 4, 1928
Red Mountain, California

Died February 8, 2008
South Jordan, Utah

~



O, Cruel Thorns (an Easter anthum)
--please click on listen sample 1 to hear a short clip of this music.

O, cruel thorns, were thou upon my brow,
Whose awesome twinings on my Lord pressed down;
Might I not wish thee gone, nor hope to know
A sweeter death beneath thy crown.

Thou pierced hands, and body wounded sore;
The heart's blood spilling down as somber rain,--
My heart and hands do reassure
Those scarlet welling drops fall not in vain.

O precious signs, so pure and undefiled,
Of holy flesh and blood in sacrifice;
May I become in faith a little child
Partaking guiltlessly before His eyes.

And weary feet, who paid thy fearful toll
Upon the stony way to Calvary;
Set now thy prints upon my soul
And I will walk in joy to follow Thee!


Words by Onita Davis, Music by Gaylen Hatton

(click on clips from Apotheosis, music also written by Gaylen Hatton--listen to sound clips 8-20, some of the most gorgeous music you'll ever hear!)

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Still Figuring Things Out

We all become important when we realize our goal
should be to figure out our role within the context of the whole...

(Kimya Dawson, I Like Giants)

HEAR IT!

SUPER TUESDAY!

WI: Do Unto Others

They buried my prophet today. When he was asked "How are you?" he'd reply, "Better than ever! And the best is yet to come!" The leader of one small country once claimed that Gordon Bitner Hinckley could "charm a donkey or a king," and attributed this gift to his love of people, and his great humility. I will miss his gentle ways and his quick wit. It's reported that when he learned Mitt was considering a run for the White House, he said, "If you decide to run and you win, it will be a great experience. If you run and lose it will also be a great experience!"

I will miss the twinkle in his eyes. I will miss seeing him throw kisses toward the crowds in China, and Africa, and in the Philippines. I'll miss his waving hello's and goodbye's with the cane he was supposed to walk with.

Someone in the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas said they would all be out to picket at the funeral, calling President Hinckley a "fraudulent old fool." I don't know if they actually came or not. If they did, none of the news chanels reported it. WBC also says "God hates Hinckley ...and all Mormons without exception. All such go to Hell." I think these nuts are a very small fraction of evangelical Christian folks. I also would hope if they really came, that President Hinckley could've hit 'em over the head with his cane--but I'm positive he would have simply turned the other cheek.

But that's not saying I wouldn't have hit 'em over the head with MY cane (if I had one)! Here's the word from Bill Keller, host of a Florida TV program. It says: "this information has been given to you in love, and we can assure you that it is accurate and honest." Yeah, right.

And why in the world are they so obsessed with our "magical" underwear? Is anyone out there so obsessed with your underwear? I think not. My underwear is my business.

Well, then.--I'm off to spend eternity in Hell. But really, when the time comes, I'm taking my cane with me...and my magic underwear.

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God Be With You

'Til We Meet Again.


GORDON B HINCKLEY
1910 -- 2008




"Stand a little taller, be a little better, try a little harder."
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WI: FIRE AND ICE

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

--Robert Frost

Brother

This is a picture of my big brother, Gaylen, and me. I called him "Brother," because for many years I thought that was his name. He hung out hundreds of my diapers on the clothesline for our mom, he carried me around on his back, he paid me pennies and nickles to smell his feet and scratch his back. I first time I ever heard Mairzy Doats and Dozey Doats was when he sang it, drying dishes after supper one evening. I thought it was the funniest song in the world. He built model airplanes and hung them from the ceilings all over the house. There was a perpetual smell of balsa wood and model glue. He flew them in circles over the desert with our cousin Billy. He learned to play the trumpet. He listened to Stan Kenton jazz records, and to Woody Herman, subscribed to Downbeat and Metronome magazines.

Walkin' with my baby, she got great big feet...
Caldonia! Caldonia! What makes your big head so hard? Hunh!

That was the second funniest song in the world.

He said he wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, and fly real airplanes. He bought his own plane with money he earned reading gas meters, and took flying lessons. But when he went away to college, he studied music, and became a performer and a composer, and a teacher. Igor Stravinsky liked Woody Herman's scat and screech Caldonia too, so much, in fact, that he wrote music for Herman's band. WHen my brother composed his own music, years later, much of it echoed the sound of Stravinsky. For his PHD at the University of Utah, my brother wrote music for a ballet gala, performed by the U of U Ballet (which became Ballet West), That piece, TOXCATL, based on Aztec history during the periodic "War of the Flowers," was no doubt inspired and influenced by Stravinsky. This is where he met my sister-in-law, Marianne, a ballerina with the company. They married and had four children, two boys and two girls. He played French Horn with the Utah Symphony under Maestro Maurice Abravanel for years.

He set a poem I wrote when I was seventeen to music for a 75 voice choir, performed and recorded with brass and timpani. He also used a text of mine called JAEL, for a short opera written a few years later. Most recently (April, 2000), I was pleased when he asked me to provide and edit the text for an ambitious piece called APOTHEOSIS, based on the writings of Neal A Maxwell and performed by the Ricks College Chamber Orchestra and Collegiate Singers. A CD was made for Tantara Records as part of their Heritage Series, called Three Sacred Works. An absolutely fantastic piece of music! The last thing he wrote was a piano piece called Fallen Angel, for a special project uniting LDS classical composers with LDS visual artists, performed by Grant Johannesen, called Mormoniana.


He accompanied the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on several tours around the world, he was invited by the Chinese Minister of Culture to spend time in China lecturing and performing at three of the conservatories there. He's performed with George Shearing (on bass), Mannheim Steamroller (on horn), and has accompanied Margaret Whiting, the Lennon Sisters, Liberace, Ray Charles, and many others. He played a jazz concert once with Paul Horn, Conte Condoli, and Milton Bernhart.

The last three years, my brother has suffered with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and diabetes (which took his sight a year ago). But it never, ever, took away his spirit, his sweet nature, or his sense of humor. Now he is dying. We all went over the night before last to say goodbye -- but I hate goodbyes. I said "Goodnight," and he said, "You've been a good sister." We said our "I love you's," and I asked him to please hug Mama and Daddy when he sees them, and to tell them I miss them. And to "leave a light on" for the rest of us. (You know, like that Motel 6 commercial).

Night before last he said to my sister-in-law, "Did you order this?" "Order what?" she asked. "This music," he said. They were playing Faure's REQUIEM for him. Whoever they were, bless them. And bless him.

(Please click on the link to hear a bit of Fallen Angel)

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Snow Day!

Woke up yesterday morning to more snow! This time it kept it up until it was 18 inches deep. Temperature at zero at eight a.m. It's pretty to look at, but it's no fun digging cars out! The boys got some nice, new snow boots. We've all been sick, but are on the mend at last.

I remember when I was a kid living in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California, it snowed, maybe twice in the eighteen years I lived there. The first time, I remember, they closed the school (it was a one-room, fits-all sort of thing) and shut down the highway through town so the kids could sled. Since most of us had been born on the desert, I don't know where the sleds came from -- pieces of cardboard boxes, trashcan lids, I suppose. I think there were a few sleds. One of my friends, who had lived in colder, wetter places, had a pair of ice-skates, and we often put them on to skate through the deep, hot sand. This day, we threw snowballs at each other. This day, my dad scooped up snowballs, put them in a bowl and poured Log Cabin Maple Syrup (remember that little tin house?) with a little canned milk over the top -- Voila! Instant ice cream!

Childhood was the Kingdom where...you made do with what you had! And had fun doing it! And if you remember the little tin Log Cabin, you are as old as I am....

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