Blessings

Balloon Lady

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Balloon Lady
(Oaxaca)

Moon face floats
its yellow balloon
across the window
and I conjure up
magic images
of the lady in the square
who sits in her fortress
surrounded by balloons.

Nine o’clock at night:
the coyotes prowl
with their cell phones
and offer synthetic joy
in tiny plastic packets.

The lady gathers
her flock of colored balloons
and, Pied Piper of legend,
she leads her legion of children
away from the square
and back to their beds.

I meet her on a corner:
she is a red-yellow-blue-green
tower of contentment.
No hands, no face:
but below the balloons,
two tiny, slippered feet.

Miracle at Lourdes

 

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Miracle at Lourdes

Ed walked through Heathrow Airport. It took him ninety minutes to go from one terminal (Madrid) to the next (Montreal). The black strips on his Achilles tendon held his leg together. He limped a little, towards the end, but the Spanish osteopath had done a good job on his damaged leg. He made it to his next flight with ease.

Thirty years ago Ed had visited Lourdes. It wasn’t a pilgrimage. He was passing by and took a side trip on the way through. He watched old ladies, on their knees, rosaries in their hands, ascend the Via Crucis towards the cross at the top of the man-made hill. Then he went into the sanctuary. He stood there whole, unhurt, curious. A wave of hatred rose up from those who sat in wheelchairs or kneeled at the altar, praying, hoping for healing to descend. Ed needed no healing. He was whole and complete. Ed made the sign of the cross, bobbed his head before the high altar, and left.

Next day, a Saturday, Ed sat in a café, somewhere, downtown, in Lourdes, and he asked for a cup of coffee. An enormous barman towered over his customer, a stark rock on the sea shore, and showered the table with his displeasure. He was big and antagonistic. Ed sipped at his coffee. Then, after a moment or two of thought, he went to the bar.

“Excuse me.” No response. Ed tried again. “Excuse me … can you help?”

“What?” The barman flicked the glasses beneath the counter with his cloth. He refused to look up. An ice block, he froze Ed out.

“Uh, I’m a stranger here. A foreigner. Could you help me … ?”

“What?” the man mountain flicked at the glasses and turned his broad bluff shoulders to meet Ed’s face.

“I’m Welsh,” Ed said. “Gallois. Du Pays de Galles. I would like to see a rugby game tomorrow. Could you tell me where I might go to see a good one?”

“Welsh? Les petits diables rouges?  Rugby?” The barman straightened up and snorted. “Why didn’t you say so?”

He took a deep breath and gave Ed an analysis of every game taking place next day in the region. Then, raising his shoulders and giving Ed a beaming smile, he said, “Jean, le petit Gachassin.”

Ed had seen Gachassin play for France, against Wales, in Cardiff, but he had lost track of him. Le petit Jean had gone to Bagnères-de-Bigorre when they were in the third division, had seen them rise through the second division, and now they were playing their first game in the French first division against Mont-de-Marsan.

“And they have Roland Bertranne,” the big man said. “A future colossus for France. Go to Bagnères-de-Bigorre and watch them play.”

Ed did. It poured with rain. He got soaked. But he saw some scintillating rugby.

Thirty years after that visit to Lourdes, Ed took the train from Avila to Madrid. He planned to spend the night in a hotel and catch the early morning flight first to London and then to Montreal. There was only one problem. He had injured his Achilles tendon and could hardly walk.

The hotel Ed had chosen sported a notice on the reception desk. Massage Service Available. Ed thought about it for a long time. No, he didn’t call for call girls when he traveled. Nor call boys. Massage service: what did it mean? Ed took the plunge, phoned, and made an appointment.

Half an hour later: a knock on the door.

Ed opened it.

“I’m the osteopath. You called?” A handsome young man stood there, his eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” Ed said. “I did. Uh, um …” his face turned red. “Er, you’re not gay, are you?”

“No,” the osteopath said. “Are you?”

“No,” Ed said.

“Thank God,” the osteopath smiled. “I’ve had six requests from gays today. I don’t do that thing.”

“Nor me,” Ed said. “Come in.”

The osteopath entered the room set up his folding bed, and helped Ed on to it. Then he examined him, slowly and carefully. They spoke Spanish at first and then, in a moment of illumination, the osteopath told Ed how, for two years, he had been the physiotherapist for the rugby team at Bagnères-de-Bigorre. Then they spoke in French and ran the rule over their heroes, le petit Jean Gachassin and Roland Bertranne.

The osteopath treated Ed for an hour and a half and charged him for an hour.

Next day, Ed walked through Heathrow Airport, a long, long walk and suffered no pain.

What could Ed say? Serendipity? The good finding the good?

Finally he put it all together and found a phrase for it: the Miracle at Lourdes.

 

Silence

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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.

Sanctuary

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Sanctuary

We thought for a moment that, yes, we
were angels and yes, we were dancing
together on a pinhead with so many other
angels, and all of us as bright as butterflies
spreading our wings with their peacock eyes
radiant with joy and tears sparkling in time
to the celestial music that wandered up
and down inscrutable scales that bonded
the universe and set planets and spheres
spell-bound in that 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 earth
-bound connections severed and all of us
held safe in the palm of an Almighty hand.

Robin Red Nest

 

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Robin Red Nest

That little red nest,
my heart,
hearth and home
to a galaxy of gods
who nest there,
year after year,
migratory spirits
blessing me with
hope renewed
in their spring
nest’s tangle:
feather and twig.

Old now,
you thump to different rhythms
not to mention
the schisms sprung from my body.

Age winds you up like a watch spring
stretching my lifeline egg-shell thin.

When the wind of change
blows me away,
what will replace you
and your offer of sanctuary
to those you daily nourish?

So sad I will be
to abandon you,
your visions unfulfilled
as winter winds unravel you
twig by twig

until nothing remains
but the bare
white-boned cradle
in which I carried you
so lovingly.

Jacuzzi

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Jacuzzi

Warm and safe,
womb waters whirling,
drifting me through time,
eyes closed, and space.

Amniotic, this liquid,
rocking me to the throb
of my mother’s heart.
I close my eyes.

The walls around me
open out to reveal
the sun by day,
the stars by night.

The full moon:
a golden circle
beaming down.

My mother’s face
hangs in space
above me
…
and me:
re-born.

Raw Poem:

I wrote this lying in the jacuzzi about an hour ago. It’s not just a raw poem, it’s a very raw poem. There’s something comforting about it, though, and I like the in and out of reality moments. It’s good to remember my mother, too, especially in the image of the full moon in all its plenitude and beauty.

“and me: re-born” — the small circle in the centre of the Mexican pottery mask is the symbol of the seed of the new born babe. The mask goes full circle, from birth, to beauty, to old age, and death … a full moon cycle.

Birthday Poem

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Poem on his 73rd birthday

I won’t sit with my head between my hands
fearing the future or brooding on the past.

Each day is a bonus now, each sunrise a celestial
celebration, each evening a drawing down of blinds.

I welcome each sun with open arms and accept
the gifts it brings. Sunshine fills me with joy. It beams
like a beacon with the warmth of my joyous heart.

People of the Mist 9

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7:40 AM

Sunlight crept in through the open window and the room started to warm up. Tim fingered the leather cord that dangled from his neck and the medallion throbbed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Tim took it off, held it between his fingers, and examined it with suspicion. Unlike anything he had ever seen before, it still contained the warmth it had taken from Tim’s body. The cross seemed to be a typical Oaxacan cross, except that it was rather stubbier than usual, more like a Maltese Cross. The red of its roses replaced the body and blood of the dying Christ. In the centre of the roses Tim could make out half of a tiny human heart. A jagged tear ran on a diagonal across the medallion. It carved through cross, heart and flowers, leaving the remains grieving for what was absent. The cross was wounded and Tim imagined it throbbing and sobbing as its life blood seeped away. A pedestal of broken stones stood at the cross’s severed foot. The roses that clung where Christ’s body should have been hanging stood out like spilled blood. Tim closed his eyes and tried to recreate the scene in his mind, as if it were whole. Warmth filled his body and he knew that he must find the missing portion.

As though a switch had been flicked and a light turned off, the positive energy stopped and the medallion felt cold and lifeless. Tim traced the edges of the flowers with the tip of his index finger and nothing happened. He wished now he had questioned El Brujo about his gift. However, here in Oaxaca questions were often dangerous and one couldn’t always trust the answers when they were so often double-edged and as sharp as glass. Tim thought of the codex drawings and of the multiple meanings that eccentric experts and squabbling specialists had bestowed upon them.

He placed the medallion on the table and opened the facsimile codex that lay there waiting for him.  The priests who accompanied the conquistadores had hated these indigenous books. Works of the devil, they had called them, and they had tried to destroy, by burning their writings, the history and culture of the people they had conquered. Alonso had told Tim that although much was lost, some things had survived thanks to an oral tradition passed on from generation to generation. This preserved the lore and culture of the older peoples who had for five thousand years inhabited the Valley of Oaxaca. The facsimile copy that Tim possessed still bore the burn marks where a believer had snatched it from the Inquisition’s flames. When Tim touched the burn he could feel in his heart the surge of anguish of the man who had snatched it from the fire and spirited it away. He had so much to learn and grasped at each new world as bubbles of meaning rose from the brush-stroked pages. He knew a multitude of secrets lay in there somewhere, if only he could stumble upon them and shuffle them so they made sense.

… how do you translate a picture into words … he thought … how do you capture line and colour with a few brief strokes of black ink on white paper … what about movement … and perspective … and what cultural perspective steps out from these flat drawings that adorn the page … can you capture in words the smell of cool rain on warm dust … or the scent of the gourd flower when it floats on the surface of hot spicy broth … or the crunch of the mescal worm between the teeth … or the bitter bite of salt and lime  …

The flowing lines of the ideographs wrapped Tim’s day-dreams in colorful hand-woven shawls. The risen sun, a golden treasure trove, gilded the roof of the nearby church and pigeons posed, framed in the window, flash-frozen in an instant of silence. Tim grasped at each new world as it raised bubbles of laughter from the brush-stroked pages, but the speech bubbles quickly faded, faltering on failing air, and he had difficulty in grasping their multiple meanings as they drifted away, golden leaves gliding downwards on an instant of breeze. So many secrets waited to be discovered, if only he could find the key. He looked at his medallion as it lay on the table and listened to the sounds that surrounded him.

…  the tongues of the trees whisper as the slow wind stirs them into speech … the white egrets sigh as they rise from their overnight branches … the strengthening light channels their wings while they shuffle their intimate dance steps …

Last night, the lady who takes her balloons from the square at nine o’clock held a secret within her eyes. It floated in the curls of the children’s hair as they fled to their homes before the coyotes began to prowl. Tim saw them with their cell phones and the synthetic happiness that they peddled in the cellophane packages they carried in their pockets and sold with lies.

Incandescent eyes had blazed from dark doorways in cheap hotels.

“King for a night and a father for the rest of your days,” a young girl whispered to him as he passed by.  Her lips beckoned and her dark eyes tried to draw him.

“I’ll always be your love, my love,” she sighed. Behind her, a table lamp cast the dark shadow of a man with a knife in hand.

How simple it would have been to have followed the snake path, to have slipped sideways and downwards into the welcoming darkness of her arms. But at the end of that trail would come betrayal, the threatening thunder of words, the lightning bolt of the knife with the night sky sliced apart.

… Tochtli leers from his home in the  moon  …  the Owl of the Underworld flaps his wings … drawing near with his gift of subterranean grief …

People of the Mist 8

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7:35 AM

… the sound of dry cactus trickling through a rain stick imitating rain  as it falls from the clouds to strike the forest leaves … rain … steady and  heavy … from purple clouds … water fills the scorpion’s underground nest … Alacrán emerges and  knocks at the dreamer’s door … go away, says the dreamer … tail in air Alacrán minces down the balcony and onto the staircase … now his carcase dries on a stone in the sun … when the rain ends, black ants emerge to pick at Alacrán’s drowned body … they carry him in bite size chunks … up the thin crack in the apartment wall … back to their nests … life goes on … many are called … many are chosen to be victims or assassins … who knows who will be chosen … and for which role …

“Heal yourself,” cried the sánate bird, drawing his knife blade over the sun-warmed stone outside Tim’s window. The trees in the courtyard filled up with sparks of colour as their leaves lapped at his balcony. A butterfly, yellow and black, shook delicate wings, and dangled, at the end of his floral string. Soon the bird of paradise would close its eyes and go back to sleep. High in the sky, strung out like a line of washing in the early morning air, the temples of Monte Albán basked beneath the sun as they dreamed of their former glory. Cloud shadows walked across Tim’s wall. Tourists on an endless train from there to here to nowhere in particular, white clouds stared at Tim from a pastel sky.

Tim loved the sparrows. If he left the apartment door open, they would cease their squabbling and fly down to his balcony from the red-tiled roof of his neighbour’s house. Fearless, they would step through the opening to see if he would throw them some crumbs from his table. Sometimes, they would fly right in, perch next to him on the table, and pierce him with their inscrutable gaze.

… Ah, would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as these sparrows see us, Tim used to think, for sparrows dwell among the blessed and it is written that not a single one shall fall …

The sánate kept winding up the day with the whistle of his call and dogs barked on the azoteas and in the streets. A warm wind walked through the open door, ruffled Tim’s hair, and climbed out through the kitchen window with a last wave of the palm leaves. This was now his life: to sit here before an open book while black ants crawled their predatory letters across the page and tulips and carnations performed a slow dance in time with the sun’s rotation. Tropical fruit sulked in a basket on the table. The great wheel of the sun had risen over the rooftops and sparrows hopped, dogs barked, and the sánate dragged once more the long thin knife of his tinker’s cry across the sharpener’s grindstone as a rooster crowed his thick rich morning cocoa rico.

… the breakfast orange lies racked on the plate …  juices flow like blood … a blood orange … rising like the sun from night’s mist … and now the orange … lifeless … a pale yellow robe spent and exhausted … fading in the sunlight … the wasted disc of a worn-out decadent moon … a lantern with its wasted light cast across a tabloid sky … a still life this orange … its life blood a sacrifice … thick rich golden liquid … as fierce and sweet as sunshine on a branch … 

Tim blinked, went into the kitchen, and looked for the mescal, but it had all gone. The absence of the yellow worm’s slithering crunch beneath his teeth was the ultimate sacrifice. He stood in the doorway, shivered in the sunshine, and mourned one more among his many losses.

 

Reyes

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Reyes

On the night of January 5 – 6, The Three Wise Men, Los Reyes Magos in Spanish, visit all the children in the world as they travel to Bethlehem. They bear gifts to these children and January 6 is a time of visitors and gifts.

First: the visitors. Three deer walked out of the woods this morning. They paraded in front of the garage, luckily we had the door open, and equally luckily, I was able to get these photos of them.

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This is the lead deer. At this stage, the road was empty and I hadn’t been seen.

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The camera’s click sounded the alarm. The deer froze … and so did I. We gazed at each other for several seconds. I was afraid to move.

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I took another photo. The feet picked up as the camera clicked and away the deer went.

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Baby came last, but didn’t stay long.

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Up went the tail and away baby sped. Wapiti, White-tailed deer, tail in the air.

After the visitors, came the gifts.

Below is a link to my first Poetry book of 2008: Iberian Interludes. It arrived just in time for Reyes … the little boy that still dwells within this old man’s heart is delighted with his gift: the majority of my best poems about Spain gathered together beneath two new covers. Click below and open the box!

https://www.amazon.com/Iberian-Interludes-Bulls-Blood-Bottled/dp/1539911411/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

May you all have a great visit from the Three Wise Men (los Tres Reyes Magos), and may you all have a prosperous and joyous New Year, full of excellent writing.