Memories

The Dancers and the Dance

My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, refers both to the danzantes and to Monte Albán. Monte Albán was the capital of the Zapotecs and the principal city in the Oaxaca Valley (Mexico) between its foundation in approximately 500 BCE and its abandonment in approximately 750 CE. The White Mountain, thus named by the Spanish conquistadores, is justly famous for its temples, its tombs, and its carvings.

Two natural phenomena affected Monte Albán and its population. The first was drought and the dried earth with its brown and yellow tinges is clearly visible in these photos. The second natural problem came from earthquakes, for this is indeed an earthquake zone with active volcanoes causing tremors at regular intervals. The temples, even today, sometimes need repairing as earthquakes have been known to destroy even the reconstructed temples.

In fact, the abandonment of Monte Albán may well have been caused by an earthquake that cracked the enormous natural cistern in which the population’s water supply was stored.

The Danzantes are strange, grimacing characters that have been carved into prisons of stone. They may be captured warriors awaiting sacrifice or the chieftains of conquered tribes humiliated, perhaps tortured, and then flash frozen into stone photographs where for centuries they have danced out their torment. Whoever and whatever they may be, they still dance on Monte Albán.

My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, captures a different form of dancing. It is taken from my book Sun and Moon: Poems from Oaxaca (2000) and contains echoes of the vibrant folkloric culture that thrives to this day both in the city of Oaxaca and in the Oaxaca Valley. Here, traditions are remembered and relived. Each year, on the Day of the Dead, for example, families place food and drink alongside photos of the dearly departed on altars inside their houses and their doors are thrown open to welcome their deceased family members as they return along the marigold paths that lead to their former homes.

The Dancer and the Dance

she comes here to dance for me
only for me does she dress this way
she shows me her dreams
unfolding them one by one
silk and cotton garments
drawn fresh from her scented closet
thin copper bracelets
carved wooden mask
only her eyes reveal
subversive flesh and blood

2

she orchestrates her story
skin drum
rattle of seeds in a sun-dried pod
single violin string
stretched across an armadillo’s shell
I too am tense like an instrument
waiting to be played
the bones of my love
reach out towards her

when she makes her music
familiar spirits return to the earth
dancing in a sash of moonlight
she recreates an ancient spell
gold letters plucked from dark scrolls
no wands no words
just water’s purity
flicked fresh
across lips and face
she binds me with the string of notes
she undoes with her hair
our bodies form an open altar
we worship with mysterious offerings
drawn from wells set deep within us

Rain falls from the sky
Moon turns his face away
suddenly in darkened alleys
clouds hold hands and dance
dense streamers of light
dangle from street lamps
shadows remember their forgotten steps
gently she draws me to her
I try to follow
frail whirlpools of withered leaves
fragment weak sunshine
in light’s watery pool

her magic grows
I take my first step
an unmapped journey
into desert space
we move to old rhythms
across moon flecked clouds
raindrops fall more slowly
faltering drum beat
diminishing water

high above us
the ghost of a melody
shaking its head
wringing its hands
we return at last
to light and air
the moon’s vacant face
scowls in an empty field
someone has plucked the stars
one by one
and threaded them like a chain of daisies
now there are no sky flowers
to adorn the night

7

noche de rábanos
someone has taken a knife
and peeled an enormous radish
this cartoon moon face
this full skull hanging from nothing
this lantern lighting from above
now my lover sculpts time
and space
into small chunks
each sacrifice
a jewel between her fingers
I pin to my chest
three small notes
and a skeleton of words

8

inside my dancing head
the fires have gone out
without her hands to guide me
my feet have turned clumsy
scars layer my wrists and ankles
star crossed bindings
cutting against the grain
I gather a harvest of stars
she holds them in her eyes
her fingers are grasshoppers
making love in my hair
when she kisses my fingernails
one by one
we both know our bodies
will never be the same

together we weave a slender cage
she cuts out my heart with her tongue
placing it on an altar inside the bars
she locks the tiny door
a silvery key wrought from moonstone
my fluttering heart grows miniature wings
next time the door is opened
my wings will fly me to her lips
my heart is a caged bird on a tiny perch
it chirrups a love song
its image in the mirror answers back
breathless it scrapes its wings on the moon
its body striving upwards to the stars

on Monte Albán the danzantes
sway to soft music
their shadows dance in and on stone
as they have danced for centuries
wind rustles the grass
moon casts sharp shapes
darkness ascends the temple steps
huge fingers grasping upwards
an owl’s feathers clutching at the skies
at dawn tomorrow
the sun will rise beneath our feet
we will squint down on its majesty
we will pluck the ripeness of its orange
in our outstretched hands

our last night together
I pluck a blossom from the tulipán tree
a final offering of my love
she gives it back
I place it in the pocket of flesh
where I once kept my heart
tomorrow when the flower breaks
it will stain my shirt
a damp splash of blood
no longer running in my veins
the scent of our happiness
will cling forever to my fingers

Free Spirit

Free Spirit

I stare at nothing
and nothing do I see
nothingness is the state for me

for me anonymity
no name no form
and shapeless I will be

shapeless yes hopeless no
for this I know – eternity
has sown its seeds in me

ashes to ashes dust to dust
my spirit will eternal be

my death will set it free
free to fly – free to roam
free to find my forever home

Comment:

Moo is bring stroppy. He has started painting again, but he refuses to sign his paintings. “Three little letters,” I told him. I won’t tell you what he told me to do. little bit embarrassing, and I am not that flexible in my old age.

Never mind. When nobody was looking, I promised him one of KTJ’s world famous Peanut Butter Balls. Well, they would be world famous if I let them out of my fridge in Island View, and I certainly don’t intend doing that. Then I asked him for a title and he went as crazy as Cuckoo Spit. He told me he was Going Bodmin Again, just like in Doc Martin. I told him he wasn’t in Doc Martin. “How do you know,” he asked, “you always fall asleep in front of the telly.”

He thinks he was hugging that great big squirrel, as mad as a hatter, as crazy as a loon, as loony as a man in a loony bin. So, why does a lunatic sleep under the bed. Answer – because he’s a little potty of course.

Does anybody read this junk I write? I can’t imagine that they would. However, if you are reading it, please send a recipe for maple fudge by mule train via the lower Andes. I think it is quicker than snail mail, or the dog sled via the North Pole. Every time a dog lies down for a rest, those sleds get a flat tire.

In a country garden …

Each day sees another spark of brightness in the grass, in the trees, or at the feeder. Where, I wonder, have they been? In whose back yard did they winter? Some, stray thoughts perched for a moment on a branch in the mind, fluttered last fall in the falling snow and melted away. Others, I know, stayed here with us and we fed them throughout the short cold days.

The robins, even though they are not my English robins, are my favorites, perhaps because they remind me of my childhood home. Less bold than those of my youth, they fly when we draw near and do not sit on the spade handle watching for worms as we turn the early earth and shake the garden back to life.

Sentry duty: and they march up and down the lawn pacing their quicksteps, then standing to attention. They strut their stuff, turn their heads, listen, and look like guardsmen on parade outside our pastoral palace.

With the guardsmen come the workmen, the busy birds, the ones who tap on the trees in search of insects or to set the juices running. Shy, they turn away and hide behind the trunk. But if we are quick, we can catch them, heads turned, when absorbed in their work, they forget to fear us.

And the song-birds, shiest of all, often heard, their melodies, but their quicksilver spirits seldom seen except by chance and the artist’s luck and speed of finger. But listen: other songs throb their melodies on the wind and most days now we wake to music. A calling in the trees in the evening’s glow also tells us the world has turned once more and the birds, the glorious birds, the dwindling flocks of endangered birds, less this year than last year or the year before, are back. We must welcome them and cheer them while they are still with us. Neither we nor they may endure much more.

Sometimes

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.

Rain Stick

Rain Stick

The bruja tilts her rain stick.
Rain drops patter one by one,
then fall and faster until
her bamboo sky world fills
with the sound of rushing water.

Sun-dried cactus thorns beat
against wooden prison walls.

Above me, heavy black clouds
release their pent-up rain

Scales fall from my eyes.
They land on the marimbas,
dry beneath the arches
where wild music sounds.

Its half-tamed rhythms,
sympathetic music
drawn by this rainstorm
unleashed by the bruja‘s dream.

(bruja: witch, witch doctor)

Railway Bridge

Railway Bridge

walking away
from Swansea sands

me crossing the bridge
shaking sand
from my sandals

a rare event
Swansea Bay Station
Cline Valley Line
a train at the platform

the station master
blows his whistle
doors close
slowly the train goes
under the bridge

I stand in a cloud
wrapped up
half-blinded
in huge puffs of smoke

filling my lungs
assaulting nostrils and eyes
with the sting of cinders
the stench of burning coal

sting and stench
and that short sharp whistle

they linger and cling
unforgettable
in my mind’s dark corners

Comment:

Me and my writing buddy also discussed linked poems. This is simply a chain in which each poem links back to another one. Yesterday, we wrote about Swansea Sands and how the poem was generated. Today we can look at the linking between that poem and this one, the old railway bridge that crossed the railway lines by Swansea Bay Station, and led back into Swansea, a town in those days, and the Civic Centre. Note, now, that each of those names could generate further links, further poems in the chain.

When we think of the great chain of being, we think of how all things are linked. From the Great Western Railway (GWR), to the Mumbles Railway, to the Cline Valley Branch line, and beyond. Each poem a railway station along the way. Main line, branch line, express train, goods train … links everywhere, and each link encapsulated in a memory of one kind or another. How could we not write poetry about such things?

McAdam Railway Station, in New Brunswick, Canada. 60 trains a day used to stop here. Now the station is a landmark, a memory, a place where ghost trains run and shadowy figures run wild up and down the grass grown tracks where the sleepers sleep, their dreams undisturbed. I could write a book of poems about this station. Wait a second, I already have and Geoff Slater, my painting buddy, decorated it for me with his wonderful paintings and drawings. What more can I say? Each link in the chain, a potential poem. Each stop along the way, material enough for a painting, a poem, or a book.

Pot Holes

Car tire over a pothole containing small monster figurines with aggressive faces — A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.

Big Sister
replaced Big Brother
and generously
generated this image

“Watch out for that pot hole!”
“Which one?”
Snap, crackle, pop!
“That one.”

Pot Holes

Jack Pine Sonnet

Welcome to Pot Hole time.
It’s all yours and it’s all mine.
Mine, possession, not land mine,
though hitting one at speed
will rattle your teeth,
shake your spine, and leave you
feeling far from divine.

Pot Holes, Pot Holes, everywhere,
filled with water you can’t drink.
They hide the depth of every hole
with waters, dark as ink.

Spring’s freeze and thaw
breed ever more Pot Holes
than we had before. I think at night
they stay out late,
to fornicate, and celebrate.

A low spring sun in the driver’s eyes
makes shadows shift and slide.

A mazy life full of chance
drawing a labyrinthine thread
through a maze of Pot Holes
that we dread, the morning sun
blinding our eyes so we cannot see
the Pot Holes’ size
nor how they move and dance.

Big Sister
replaced Big Brother
and generously
generated this image

Comment:

This is wonderful fun. Moo has ceased to be jealous of Big Brother and Big Sister with their attempts to read my mind. And what a great job they do of it. All in the cause of the Pot Hole Dance Season. Have you seen the Pot Holes dance? You know, one minute there isn’t one and about and then a split second later – CLANK! The dreaded tire pressure light comes on. You turn it off. It comes back on. You turn it off. It comes back on.

You stop the car at the roadside, turn off the engine, get out, and check the tires. They look all right. You kick them or tap them with a stick. They all sound all right and they all sound the same. You get back into the car. You start the engine. All the lights come on. All the lights go off. Except one – the dreaded tire pressure light. Well, I can swear pretty well in about five languages. I turn the tire light off. Wonder of wonders, it goes away.

I am so happy. I turn on the radio. I clap my hands. And CLANK! I drive into another Pot Hole that appeared from nowhere and walked or danced or shimmied or slithered into the road right in front of your car. You guessed it – and the tire pressure light comes on!

Runaway

Runaway

I waited until the boys
in the dormitory slept.
snores, whimpers, children
snuffling, crying in their sleep.

I dressed in the dark,
crept downstairs, opened
the school’s back door,
moved silently to the gates,
and climbed over them.

I stood at the roadside,
stuck out my thumb
at the cars that passed,
not many at one AM.

A cloudless night,
bright stars, dark sky.
A sense of imminent freedom
washed over me.

The fourth car stopped.
A man and a woman.
They opened the door,
let me in, turned around,
and drove me back to school.

I stood in the hall watching
the swing of the pendulum
as the head master, in pajamas,
thanked the couple
for bringing me back to school.

That night, he led me quietly
back to bed. Every night,
for a week, he removed
my clothes from the chair
beside my bed.

I ran away again and again.
No matter where I went
my own face stared
back at me from the mirror.

One day, I realized
I was running from myself.
When that happened,
the running finally stopped,
and I confronted my demons.

Comment:

I guess we are all motivated by flight or fight and I have always believed in the powers of flight – per ardua ad astra – through hardship to the stars, the motto of the Royal Air Force, I believe. Yet running really does no good, especially when we are running from our own interior demons. I hated that particular boarding school, my second, even more than I did my first one. I hated it with a deeply rooted inner loathing that still seethes inside me when I think about it. And that particular ‘first escape’ remains printed indelibly on my mid, every footstep, every floor board that creaked, every shadow that threatened.

Much later in life, while attending my fourth boarding school, one of the slightly better ones, with a strong emphasis on the slightly, my cousin, an unarmed combat instructor, took me in hand. For three weeks we went to Swansea Sands and he put me through basic training. How to break fall, to leg throw, to arm throw. Then he taught me the sacrifice throws, where you go to ground and your opponent follows, you prepared, your opponent not. He taught me about power points and the pointed or sharp edged bones that could do so much damage to the unprepared. He taught me all the multiple choke holds, how to apply them and then the secret of squirming out of them. Monday – Friday, four hours a day, total immersion, three weeks. I learned so much.

After that, I had the choice of flight or fight. However, I no longer saw myself as a victim because I saw those bullies and predators as potential victims. All the vibes had changed. Older, bigger boys no longer bullied me. Everything, in the end, turned out all right!

Mindfulness

Mindfulness

Poems arrive, as silent as the deer
that troop through my garden.

Some times they hurry past,
and catch them if you can.

Sometimes, they stay, wait, nibble
at an overhanging branch.

Just when you think you can
reach out and grasp them,
they sense the bark of a dog,
the sigh of the wind
through leafless trees.

You blink, and they have gone.

Was your camera ready?
Was your note book open,
your pen in your hand?

Or did they flit away like dreams
in the morning when the sun
comes into the bedroom
and sparks diamond fires
from the lashes that stand guard?

Nights

Nights

There are nights
when the trees
seem to whisper
your name,

cautioning you
against the wind’s
knife edge.

“What have I done,”
you ask,
“to merit this?”

The soft fall
of burnt brown leaves
weeps over
your woodland grave.

You will walk
these woods
no more, save
on a frosty night

when deer shiver
beneath naked trees
and the moonbeam’s
icy blade.

Comment:

Poems arrive, as silent as the deer that troop through my garden. Some times they hurry past, and catch them if you can. Sometimes, they stay, wait, nibble at an overhanging branch. Just when you think you can reach out and grasp them, they sense the bark of a dog, the sigh of the wind through leafless trees. You blink, and they have gone.

Was your camera ready? Was your note book open, your pen in your hand? Or did they flit away like dreams in the morning when the sun comes into the bedroom and sparks diamond fires from the lashes that guard your eyes?

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