You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Resting on the park bench, she complained
she couldn’t keep pace with her children.
When the seven-year-old pest returned,
demanding, “Ma, give me money”
for a cola, she complied,
thinking it love.
~*~
She couldn’t touch her toes.
~*~
Her legs pushed away from each other, yet
in her cotton dress, unexpectedly
as she swatted a fly, she began to float
and meticulously shrank from sight,
bouncing along the horizon.
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
I’m invited to photograph an Indian funeral for a 109-year-old woman. It’s a traditional affair, with a Pendleton trapper’s blanket on a casket lowered by hand. Even so, young punks surround me: “Don’t you think you’re crazy,” they ask, implying?
I look around for Kokopelli, who might intercede on my behalf. He’s nowhere in sight.
Later, with a Styrofoam cross and dozens of American flags, the casket rides the back of a pickup, viewed by faces in Cool-Ray sunglasses — ancient traditions side-by-side with the cheapest, most honky-tonk trinkets of the New American Way.
I wasn’t permitted to enter the house, either.
For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.
with distances
our skin
our heart
our thoughts
the countryside
a big city
such poverty and misfortune
such glittering opulence
visibly and invisibly
blinding
even before the mildew
* * *
my turtle shell my weakness
three times I’ve prayed it not be moved
* * *
casting addiction
or promiscuity
or crime
along racial
or ethnic
or neighborhood
in or out of
where charity is not supple
communion
no hour
attended as fully as we might
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.
She asks, “What do you want?” (Apart from the obvious?)
For this household to be harmonious, I reply.
It’s a good place to start, she agrees.
Safety, for one child. And gratitude – including the things that haven’t happened.
Health – and the right companion – for the other.
Healing, happiness, and meaningful employment, for yet another.
And contentment, for the mother-in-law.
A good garden, too.
As for me? Where do I even begin? Really begin?
and that’s the really frightening thing
the bomb-sniffing dog
on the way to the Laundromat, before
~*~
I’ve had enough this season
to satisfy my sensibilities
though it’s still unseasonably warm
and raining
lingering
over
food
this buzzing
finds pollen
wherever
our sun warms
~*~
yet to the Appropriate Authorities
Immigration and Naturalization Service, the United States Government
unrelated by family or livelihood
my next-door neighbor
together on numerous occasions
I further state
intelligent, industrious, socially responsible
capable of
very truly yours,
the prodigal son, without the dissipation
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Copyright 2015
On one of my solitary walks with Kokopelli, I admire the fullness of purple-tipped grasses along the canal bank. Some offer bunched, short seeds in clusters. Others have long-shafted seeds in plumes. Or oblong, spiked seeds suspended like bells. “There must be a thousand golden variations,” I tell him. Oats. Wheat. Barley. Bread and beer. Silk-enshrouded ears of corn for sweet butter. Fat tender steaks. Sour whiskey mash. Like some people I knew. The many named needles and strands of whips and brushes reach skyward, flaying the wind, inviting birds to flight.
For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.
As I wrote at the time:
It’s the third straight day of temperatures above ninety, with humidity to match. Still, we’ve avoided a miserable July this year, and the heat has not locked itself into the house: we’ve been able to cool everything overnight. What strikes me is that we’re no longer floored by the oppression. We simply move slower, more deliberately. Avoid using the oven. (We’ll grill outdoors this afternoon.)
In other words, we’ve adjusted ourselves to seasonal change.
Come winter, we’ll have to brace ourselves all over again for biting cold. What will be bitter in November or December will instead feel balmy come February or March.
At the office, I know that any sharp change in the weather brings an increase in obituaries. We can joke about the shift that sends those who are barely hanging on over the edge, but the numbers support us. People in climate-controlled chambers all the same responding to minor shifts in barometric temperature or dew points, all the same. Do we inhale and exhale something other than air?
Spaces I’ve entered where silent prayer or meditation are already under way all felt set apart from their surroundings. I’ve sometimes described it as diving into water and swimming beneath the surface or like entering a pressurized rare-book library.
Returning to the ashram and its grounds after being away presented a similar sensation, as have old Quaker meetinghouses, even years after their regular use.
Live within that energy, and you no longer notice it – it’s simply the way life is. Leave it, though, and you can feel you are falling through space, for weeks on end.
~*~
For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.
Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.
~*~
~*~
“you said when you married
you’d still make love to other guys”
the guest at the house party argued
though now
I initially have difficulty telling whether
he’s talking to the bride or the groom
even as he added
“you’re too young to be getting married”
he spent the night anyway
among those of us encamped in sleeping bags
around that second-floor apartment
~*~
we’d had an intellectual tete-a-tete on the corner
and then, upstairs, stoned out and dancing
at the heart of the crowd, I collapsed
it was all ass and thigh from the floor
so she liked flirting with me . Ooooh!
she told me my eyes were a strange, beautiful color
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
Instead, I looked in another direction and discovered that the Yakama people once occupied 17,000 square miles and had three distinct language stocks. So, even back then one tongue was insufficient to articulate the vibrations of this place, even as an open desert. To try relating the qualities of a simple thing, a pane of hundred-year-old glass, perhaps; the interaction of clouds and sun, alkali and volcanic ash is far more complex. You start by learning the names of flora and fauna. Watch, listen, wait. I open a window and consider the current research, which places the first people here about 14,000 years before my arrival. These nomads made tools from bone and mineral. Hunted large and small game. Fished salmon. Collected river mussels. Gathered wild food plants. Given a guide and sufficient time, maybe I could learn to do these things. (Don’t look at me, Kokopelli shrugs. I’m not from around here.) Maybe I shouldn’t feel so strange about being here, either, even though such long perspective makes me feel incredibly insignificant. The Anglo civilization embodied here is only veneer concealing much deeper systems. The ancient climate was cooler and moister. The land was dotted by many lakes and small streams. Grasslands scattered with pine stands and willow flourished where there’s only sagebrush now. Food sources included bison, antelope, deer, foxes, muskrats, rabbits, ducks and geese (their eggs, too), and turtles.
I want to leap through time to join them, dressing the hides of their game, or making rattles and tools. These people used red and yellow pigments, and valued birds for their feathers as well as their flesh — cormorants, geese, condors, turkey vultures, and eagles all had clothing functions. Maybe I need some ceremonial garb. (Come, now! Kokopelli is hooting with laughter. He loves to taunt and mock me.) Tiny bone needles were used as far back as 10,000 years. I have enough trouble with steel needles today. So what do I make of their earliest burials, cremations that send the body back into spirit?
It’s obvious my own difficulties won’t end overnight.
This is a time of sparrows.
For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 