Nunca llueve en los bares: it never rains in the bars.
Sympathetic Magic
“Rain, we need rain.” The bruja whirls her rain stick. Rain drops patter one by one, then fall faster and faster until her bamboo sky fills with the sound of rushing water.
An autumnal whirl of sun-dried cactus beats against its wooden prison walls. Heavenwards, zopilotes float beneath gathering clouds. Rain falls in a wisdom of pearls cast now before us.
Scales fall from my eyes. They land on the marimbas, dry beneath bar arches where wild music sounds, half-tame rhythms, sympathetic music like this rainstorm released by the bruja‘s magic hand.
Comment:Bruja: witch, witch doctor; Oro de Oaxaca: mescal, the good stuff; Zopilote: Trickster, the turkey vulture who steals fire from the gods, omnipresent in Oaxaca; Marimbas: a tuned set of bamboo instruments. But you knew all that!
Luck, sometimes, just being in the right place at the right time. One step, two steps, and up he went and look at those footsteps. His flight, a step of faith, two steps of faith, and away he goes, fait accompli.Another golden oldie. I do love rediscovering them. The photos, too.
Flight of Fancy
Just by chance, I caught this cormorant. “Behind you, quick,” said Clare. I turned and ‘Click!’
Such a miracle: the first steps of flight taken over water. That first step heavy, the second one lighter, and the third one scarcely a paint brush pocking the waves.
The need to take flight lies deep within me. Fleeing from what? Running towards what? Who knows?
All I know is that the future lies to the right of this photo and the past lies to the left, and I don’t know the meaning of either.
But I do remember the words of Antonio Machado: ‘Caminante, no hay camino, sólo hay estela sobre la mar.’ “traveler, there is no road, just a wake across life’s sea.”
Comment: I revised this poem a few minutes ago and cut it down to its essentials. If you want to read the original and check the revisions, click on this link to the earlier poem. Any comments on the rewrite and the revision process would be welcome.
Another golden oldieand, with the snow fallen and my back aching, it does sometimes feel like it’s an uphill battle. There are always angels at the roadside, though, and some have called and offered to help. Thank you, special angels.
Sometimes the road seems uphill all the way. Lungs burn. Breath comes hot and hard and chunky in the throat. Legs hang heavy, muscles will not obey the owner’s instructions.
Consult the operating manual: “Take a break,” it says. “Rest now. Don’t push too hard.” But to rest is to give in, to come to an abrupt halt, or to drift backwards down the hill.
What stubborn streak is painted so deep in us that it shouts ‘never surrender’ when our most urgent need seems to be to throw in the towel? Is it the urge to get to the top, to see the lower lands stretched out below us? Or is it the mantra of fight the good fight?
Many things can drive us on: a need, a desire, a whim, an urge, or merely a refusal to stop fighting. Some of us will never give up. We will never lie down and curl up in a corner, a dead leaf to be blown hither and thither by the cold night wind.
Look carefully: there are no drugs, no needles, in the biker’s uniform. There is no small accessory motor hidden in the back wheel to help when times get hard.
The mouth is open, the eyes are set on the target, the legs still move, the sun still shines, and three smiling heart-shaped faces cheer the cyclist on.
Who can they be, these three angels at the road side, who can they be? Yet they are there and we are here and the bike is there and the hill is there and sometimes … yes, sometimes, the road IS uphill all the way.
But we keep the pedals turning and we don’t get off our bikes … and that’s life.
Not Oaxaca, but Avila, with una tromba, a meseta rainstorm, about to descend upon us. And when it descends, there is water, water, everywhere, as you can imagine from the clouds. In Oaxaca, water is precious. Tap water is to be avoided. Bottled water is to be preferred. We used to wash our vegetables in water that was specially chlorinated, also the pots and pans!
Water Peragua Water seeks its final solution as it slips from cupped hands. Does it remember when the earth was without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep? The waters under heaven were gathered into one place and the firmament appeared.
Light was divided from darkness and with the beginning of light came The Word, and words, and the world … … the world of water in which I was carried until the waters broke and the life sustaining substance drained away throwing me from dark to light.
The valley’s parched throat longs for water, born free, yet everywhere imprisoned: in chains, in bottles, in tins, in jars, in frozen cubes, its captive essence staring out with grief filled eyes.
A young boy on a tricycle bears a dozen prison cells, each with forty captives: forty fresh clean litres of water. “¡Agua!¡Peragua!” he calls. “¡Super Agua!”
He holds out his hand for money and invites me to pay a ransom, to set these prisoners free.
Real water yearns to be released, to be set free from its captivity, to trickle out of the corner of your mouth, to drip from your chin, to seek sanctuary in the ground.
Real water slips through your hair and leaves you squeaky clean. It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand.
It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.
Comment: More and more competitions, publishers, and magazines are asking for ‘original material, not previously published, or self-published, even on your own blog.’ So what is a poet to do? Put up fresh material, and it is illegible for entry elsewhere. Recycle and revise old material? Now that might work. Click on the link above for the original version of this post! And yes, it has been previously published on these ages!
Comment 1: It’s one of those pandemic days when the steam stays in the kettle, the heart rattles, the ribs, and nothing happens. This is the hopeful grey squirrel who sits outside the kitchen window and tries to persuade us to come out and feed him. Look at him: one eye on us and the other on the world around him.
I think he’s looking for his twin, or maybe his twain. But what if the twain never meet? Click on the link below, a real Golden Oldie, and you’ll see what happens when the twain really do meet. As they sometimes do.
Meanwhile, Teddy has a message for you: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Now, now: I don’t want to hear anyone thinking: ‘get stoned you silly teddy bear’. That’s not nice. Remember: “let him who is without guilt” etcetera
Comment 2: When you click on the link, if you click on the link, remember: that was probably my first ever post. Oh I was a novice once upon a time, but never in a nunnery. And I still don’t like taking orders. That’s probably why I never became a bar tender or a waiter. Hey: wait a minute now. I think this pandemic lockdown is getting to you. You are as mad as a hatter or as confined as a teddy bear in a glass house. Oy! Whose is that voice talking to me on my own blog? It’s the other half of your split personality. Oh dear: I guess we are all getting to know that strange, locked up feeling.
Diagnosed with a terminal illness that I also call life I know this sickness will surely terminate in my death.
Death: it has walked beside me for more than seventy years. It has gazed back from my mirror, as I shave my face, and part my hair. It has lain its head on the pillow beside me as I lie in bed.
We have shared so many things: the soul’s dark night, the winding ways of life’s once infinite, now soon-to-be-ended maze.
Now, arm in arm, life, death, and me, an intimate ménage à trois, we are running a three-legged race while carrying an egg in a spoon and playing life’s ultimate game of chicken.
Comment: Look carefully at the second picture: you will see the fish he has just caught, sideways in his beak. These photos are from the bay at Alberton in PEI, taken about two seconds apart!
Where e’er she treads, the glossy flowers shall rise and light, like the light of flowers, will pierce any gloom and brighten the room.
Silence
When I wait for words to come and they refuse, I know that silence is golden and spreads its early morning sunlight across the breakfast table where yellow butter melts on hot toast.
Light from the rose window in Chartres once spread its spectrum over my hands and I bathed in its speckled glow.
My fingers stretched out before me and I was speechless, for in such glory, mortal things like words cease to flow.
So much can never be said even if it is sensed: fresh coffee, poutine à pain, bread baking, flowers bursting into bloom, the sense of immanent beauty that fills me each time my beloved enters the room.
I thought for a moment that, yes, I was an angel and I was dancing on a pinhead with so many other angels, and all of us butterflies spreading our wings with their peacock eyes radiant with joy and tears spark -ling in time to the music that wanders up and down and around with inscrutable figures held spell-bound in a magic moment … and I still feel that pulsing in my head, that swept up, heart stopping sensation when the heavens opened and the eternal choir raised us up from the earth, all earthbound connections severed and all of us held safe in an Almighty hand.
A crow, but not a beach. You’ll have to click on the link at the bottom of the page for the real beach photos.
Crow’s Feet
a convict’s arrows marking the eye’s corner and the beach at low tide with its crackle of wings as sea-birds fly their defensive patterns feathered sails on a canvas wind
how many crabs made in the image of their carapaced god hide in the sand half-buried waiting for the tide to turn and water to return and give them refuge
abandoned shells postage stamps glued in the top right-hand corner of a picture post card beach
who can decipher the sea’s hand writing this mess of letters stitched by sandpipers who thread the beach’s eye inscribing dark secrets with the sewing machine needles of their beaks
pregnant this noon tide silence this absence of waves where the quahaug lies buried secured by a belly button a lifeline to air and light surrounded by crow’s feet tugging at the beach’s dry skin
sand beneath my feet sand between my toes dry sand sandpapering
rogermoorepoet 