chimes sing
flowers glow
in radiant light
eight humans shape peace
this night

you are
just born
your skin
all new and sensitive
nothing calloused nor toughened
everything good or bad feels abrasive
light is so bright
you react to the tiniest things
your eyes, your ears
cannot distinguish
the swirl of stimuli around you
maybe you cry
or roar with your voice
maybe you lash out
angry to be born
you're given food and warmth nonetheless
the comfort of voices near you
you feel pleasure
sleep a deep slumber
and slowly assimilate a self
assimilate a world

Oakland Bay Bridge
driving into San Francisco last Sunday-

engines crescendo and fall
again and again in artificial waves
buses cross before you,
pass alongside of you.
you walk by an overhang,
a boombox on the scaffold
creates a pocket of rhythm
the carpet truck whines
you barely notice
cacophony
the auditory backdrop
of city existence

you cross the street
and halt
no cars in motion, no sirens, no engines
the breeze brushes your cheek
a lover with a surprise
the sound of absence of sound
the cars in unplanned pause
you stand in disbelief
a city block glows
in the unrehearsed moment of silence

It’s a time of abundance.
Fish come to the surface at the wave of a hand.
Quail stumble near our feet.
Sweet berries hang within reach.
Strangers help us to our destination.
Friends lead us to action out of tired dilemma.
Teachers inspire with the stretching of their hearts.
Our hearts expand beyond their known capacity.
A turtle floats and sinks and floats again.

Happy to be
in Nervous Dog again
the door open
contented people
the breeze makes
pink trellis blooms laugh
the buses fly by

Not a cloud in a blue blue sky
Be careful what you wish for.
Fruit trees curl inward in the heat.
Nothing escapes the sun
Old trees die, roots are deep
but not deep enough
to reach water.
Breathe the dust
that parches the nostrils.
In March
this place was gentle
lush with awakening
clouds of blooms in morning mist.
Southern California in July
or one hundred ten years ago, or at midnight, or under a clouded sky
is not the same place.
Timing is all.
I sing a rain song and push northward…

Yesterday's train,
somewhere in New Mexico-

Abilene, Lubbock, Clovis
Miles and miles of flatlands
leave more sky,
canvas for sun and clouds
who paint with light and water.
I leave my heated car
stand on the side of the road
breathe air that blows across the prairies
my lungs fill with wildness
A train goes by
its horn a long and low greeting
human to human
across earth
in its untouched vastness

From Dogsong by Gary Paulsen
‘The Trance’




...The wind cut at his cheeks and he turned his hood away from the force, took the cold.

“You will have to know me,” he said quietly to the dogs after a time. “Just as I will have to know you.”

Two of them looked back at him. It was perhaps not an invitation. It was perhaps not a look that meant anything at all except that they looked back and their eyes caught his eyes and he knew they would run. He knew they would run. He knew when he put his feet to the sled and took the handlebar in his hands that they would run and he did not know how he knew this but only that it was so.

When he was on the runners he reached down and disengaged the snowhook and used the small lip-squeak sound that Oogruk had told him to use to get the dogs running.

They were off so fast he was almost jerked backward off the sled. It wasn’t a gaggle now, but a pulling force with all the dogs coordinating to line the sled out across the ice, a silent curve of power out ahead of him.

The feeling, he thought, the feeling is that the sled is alive; that I am alive and the sled is alive and the snow is alive and the ice is alive and we are all part of the same life...

Everywhere I've been this week in the Texas hill country, there are black-chinned hummingbirds hovering in the salvia or at feeders, buzzing each other with their fast, fiercely territorial aerobatics. The migrating ruby-throateds should be visiting soon as well. The two species look pretty similar until they're in sunlight where you can see the necks of the black-chinned males turn a vibrant purple, the ruby-throated a fiery red.

You can hear their chatter, but you're most likely to first notice the whirr, the buzzing of their wings in motion, more like large insects than birds. That they live primarily off nectar from flowers also makes you think of insects.

Some facts about hummingbirds, gleaned from the March 2007 issue of Texas Co-Op Power:

-Heartrate up to 1200 beats per minute
-flight speed 25 to 55 miles per hour
-a hummingbird egg would fit on top of a penny
-because they flap their wings in a circular, figure-8 motion, hummers can fly backwards, unlike other species of birds

Some years back on a chilly damp day, a man delivering a package pointed to a tiny bird on the patio. A hummingbird had dropped off its perch, stunned by the cold. I picked it up, so tiny, so light a container of energy. Its feathers were irridescent green, its beak long and slender.

I sat on the bench. The bird grew warm between the palms of my hands. When it was recovered, it flew away.

I’ve been traveling.

When I moved to Austin in 1979, Oat Willie’s gave out bumper stickers and decals. They popped up for a number of years: on the car ahead, on a phone post, on a supervisor's bulletin board.

A short man wagged his finger, white beard flowing--
‘Onward: Through the Fog!’

April in Paris...

1) A snake was discovered today, half hidden by grasses in our pasture, the first seen in quite a while. I’m told it was silver and black and about a foot and a half long.
2) There was a news article today about a rare ghost orchid flowering in a very old cypress tree in Corkscrew Nature Preserve, Florida. It has nine blooms, much more than the norm. From the size of the root ball, they think it’s been there many years, perhaps concealed by a branch that has since fallen away.
3) Lady Bird Johnson died today. Responsible for miles and miles of wildflowers along the highways of our country, she had a deep understanding of beauty’s purpose, of nature, and of human behavior. She likely would appreciate that orchid…and perhaps the snake as well.

Figs hang sheltered beneath broad fuzzy leaves.

Grapefruit hide in the open, green among green.

I was shucking corn during a thunderstorm and came upon this spendid ear. I couldn't resist taking a picture...

But not before holding it up for my mother to see: the Statue of Liberty! The corn a fine torch...

Tonight
at the pale yellow counter
I stood peeling figs my father picked,
and listened to my mother’s conversation
about a friend long dead.
I remember that friend,
she would have enjoyed peeling figs, too.
She had beautiful arms
and her hilarious stories
might pass the time.
Perhaps her mother or uncle liked peeling figs,
and their grandfather before them.
The fuzzy skins tear so easily
from the pale fragrant interior
work that offers
such simple sensual pleasure.

I can see my mother
on a warm summer day
in a sleeveless
yellow plaid blouse with white snaps
spooning steaming figs
into sterile jars
each with its own slice of lemon.

Perhaps someone in Italy
is peeling figs for breakfast
do you think?
and someone in Persia
126 years ago is doing the same
you get what I mean?

a sacred sticky ritual
this preparation of food for others
a ceremony of love
a ceremony of satisfying
from my hands to your mouth
from fathers and mothers and friends and strangers
to your pleasure and well-being…

Where did he come from?
His early morning path
on the far side of the pecan tree
is parallel to mine.
He walks along the highway
dressed in blue
eyes straight ahead.
He doesn't see me.
I’m by his side
one step behind
the ditch between us
a soggy dividing line
between two states of being.
His bristled hair
his faded moustache
as familiar and intimate
as a bear on my childhood bed
last seen decades ago.
Doesn’t he hear me?
I see a silver cross
a blue-beaded rosary-
in his hands?
around his neck?
all in my mind?
Why on this day?
Saying his prayers,
he walks with resolution
down the road
toward the farm
as though he sees nothing else.
The leaves of the pecan tree
rise and sway
no weight, no whisper,
responsive to the smallest breath.

I received a gift from a friend-a bit of a poem by Louis Aragon-and thought I'd share:

...Un jour pourtant un jour viendra couleur d'orange
Un jour de palme un jour de feuillages au front
Un jour d'épaule nue où les gens s'aimeront
Un jour comme un oiseau sur la plus haute branche...



(Our combined efforts at translation:

...Yet a day a day will come the color of orange
A day of palm a day of leaves upon the brow
A day of naked shoulder where people will love
A day like a bird upon the highest bough...)

There was a red-headed girl and her grandfather standing before a grave, and the limpness of her posture reminded me of how it felt to be there. The caption of the photo referred to the anniversary of D-Day.

Part 1
A few years ago, I earned continuing education credits by reading a book and taking a test on hypnosis and hypnotherapy. The book, which included articles by a number of academicians and practitioners, was disappointing. There didn’t seem to be clarity on what hypnosis is. There was little information or agreement on technique. I got the sense that in the end, hypnosis and self-hypnosis are essentially equivalent to relaxation procedures with the addition of suggestion. The researchers also acknowledged that very suggestible, sometimes histrionic, individuals seemed to have a different experience altogether from most people.

(In a seminar in college, we had a hypnotherapist visit to demonstrate techniques. His procedure had no effect on most of the class including me. I rolled my eyes, didn’t get it, assumed I wasn’t suggestible.)

I happened to mention the book to my father and discovered for the first time that in his early adulthood in the 1940s, he learned to induce hypnotic states. He did it essentially for entertainment. He disagreed with what I was describing, with what the 'experts' had to say. Hypnosis and deep relaxation were not the same thing. He told me various stories, including one about a fellow locked in his room who had to be rescued from his trance—

A year after this discussion, I was using relaxation techniques with a client. I added some suggestions at her request regarding goals she’d set for herself. I became curious about hypnosis again. The techniques from the book seemed little different from the lengthy process I'd been trained for relaxation. So, next time I talked to my parents, I asked my dad what was the specific wording he’d used in his party games sixty years ago. He quoted two short lines of imagery involving clouds and a countdown from ten.

As he started to count with no intent but to answer my question, the phone nearly dropped from my hand. I felt a grip in my head, the abrupt need to fall asleep right away. ‘That’s enough. Dad! Stop!’ Stunned. Four hundred miles away, he had induced in me in less than a minute a state it took half an hour to create for my client.

Perhaps it has to do with trust.

I just made a visit to Wikipedia and found no fewer than eight groups of theories on what hypnosis is and how it works. The jury is still out.

Bo practice is always weighted by the heaviness of the stick. Yesterday’s practice felt heavy indeed. My corner of the yard had turned into a cemetery.

As I prepared the field, I found in my path a newly deceased juvenile blue jay, dark heavy beak, one wing fanned, its clean blue and white patterned feathers on display. Carrying the body to an untraveled, wooded spot, I teared up, pretty certain this was the jay I’d seen the day before, like a teenager, experimenting with his reflection in a window. Found another blue jay corpse during practice, further along in deterioration, bones and downy feathers crushed into moist earth under the lightning-struck oak. A beautiful dragonfly wing, attached to a small remnant of dragonfly body, was catching light in the grass, like clear paned glass. And my spider companion had disappeared with her sturdy magnificent work, less than 24 hrs after its construction.

The Mississippi kites I love, the huge raccoon, and yes, the coyotes—they’ve got to eat. Like most of us humans, they’re not vegetarians. But even if no animals ate other animals, each now or later takes a final breath—every pet, person, hawk, ant, fish, lizard I see. I may not usually be aware of it, but (like mating, birth, living) death is happening all around.

Yesterday morning was no warning or bad sign. It was just another day.

There is death. It just is.

Bebop was quite a cat. A fighter, a reflexive biter. Not mean-natured—in fact, he liked to be held and stroked and never bit hard enough to do us damage. He just liked to mix it up some.

As he got older, he had some low spells. He lost weight, his head hung low and his coat became dry and scruffy.

A new cat came to town, a young yellow tom with powerful shoulders. He would show up in the corner of our yard and gaze toward the house. Some days, he got more daring and would approach the deck, park himself just under the edge.

Bebop soon got a whiff of this bald intrusion onto his turf. He took to spending more time outside, returning home with battle-scratches he got from showing the tom where to go. Then came the torn, bleeding inner eyelid that had to be snipped off by a vet.

But Bebop, eye surgery and all, had come back to life. With renewed purpose, he swaggered, ate his food with gusto, regained a shining coat, kept an alert eye on the perimeter. He was happy.

About a year later, two summers ago, he died. We’d been unaware of coyotes in the neighborhood. We grieved terribly, we missed him deeply, we loved him.

It's still hard to think about how he met his end. Yet, Bebop was not an animal to back off from risk. He would not have appreciated being nursed across a long period of time. I suspect he left at full tilt, being exactly who he was.