The Language of Trees (Part III; Poem)

"Where are you!?" I screamed into the dust,
a vortex of noise slamming and hissing its answer,
while I scrabbled on all fours, cutting palm and feet.
I reached for her hand, frantically tried to gain balance,
and sobbed into a sandstorm.

Crawling, I searched for her tent, any tent,
where moments before, within, I had been sheltered, comfortable,
warm and peaceful.
Sand stuck to my eyelashes, covered my teeth in a crunchy film,
and ran in muddy rivers down my cheeks where tears fell.

I was lost in a malevolent maelstrom,
wondering if this was the complicated road she had spoken of,
wondering how I was supposed to do anything
when the marketplace I had seen only moments before
had disappeared behind a curtain of grit.

I continued shuffling,
while the smirking wind kept up its howling,
holding my soothsayer forever out of my grasp,
until from one moment to the next,
I bumped into what felt like someone's leg.

"Yes, yes! I understand now," I cried,
"some of the most difficult roads are those you cannot see,
they leave you blind to joy,
and cast whip-tails and shadows of questions wherever you may walk.
I understand, I understand..." I croaked, half-choked but not letting go.

Within a few heartbeats,
the wind scattered and swept itself away,
while I slowly raised myself to my knees,
painfully pushing off the ground with scratched hands.
My eyes turned slowly skywards, seeking,
and I heard a deep rumble from beneath the tree,
almost as if the Earth were chuckling.
I bowed my head quietly,
stooped my back, and unwillingly,
loosened my arms off the tree and let them fall to my side.

The Bellowing Wind ("Faceted Life" Sequel; Poem)

I stooped and bent myself in half,
in order to re-enter the tent
where she still sat, sublime silence drifting towards me.
I felt the outside din folding in upon itself,
like shy violin chirps grown suddenly quiet.

"Here," the old lady beckoned with a finger,
bent like leather left too long in the sun.
I stepped carefully over mounds of carpets,
worn thin by feet seeking other stories,
threadbare from ceaseless pounding and cleaning, and took a seat.

"It is simple, as I said," she told me,
"but you must walk down complicated roads first,
and learn how to talk to trees."
"Wait, talk to trees?" I questioned, curious,
even as the humming wind outside grew into an agitated note.

"Certainly, my strange interloper,
how else will you learn how to create?" the old lady croaked,
as she let the words bonce around the tent,
seeking solace and solitude away from the growing gale.
Her eyes still sought mine hungrily, beneath her weathered face.

Glancing nervously upwards,
I attempted to wrestle meaning from her statement,
as waves of tent canvas fought each other for freedom
from their earthly spikes,
and the kerosene lamp spluttered, afraid of the coming darkness.

"I'm afraid of you," I intoned evenly, carefully.
"I'm terrified of walking out there, seeing what I must do,
and knowing you will not be here when I return."

"Perhaps when you know the language of trees,
and when you have sat quietly enough with your cold heart,
will you know where to find me," she said,
as the tent tore free with a thump,
and spun me into the darkness.

Sky Garden (A Sketch)

Beneath the Faceted Life (Poem)

I was not there,
but I will record what she told me,
the simple story this old lady whispered to me in a raspy voice,
while passing through a dusty marketplace
on her way to see an old friend.

Her face, wrinkled like cracked seashells,
eyes like garnet stone,
and red like a bull's slow blood in a Spanish plaza,
hooked me into her story,
and wouldn't let me go.

Life according to her is simple,
it can be told in small sentences,
tiny powerful phrases,
snippets beneath what others face,
their complex stories unraveling like stone ribbons.

She told me unhappiness is ambitious,
that a twisted circle can break where it should be joined,
that I must step behind the creative curtain,
where titles without authors are lost,
and a poet scrambles and skitters under a mountain's carapace.

I responded like a weak gust of wind,
"This is not as simple as you state," crone.
"I cannot build simple stories
beneath this faceted life.
Every angle glints and winks a different way.
Every twist and turn leads to new stories.
Every cut and polishing changes the plot,
like a shoal of shimmering fish."

She sat hushed for a moment,
earth brown shawls, tattered coat blending in with the dust,
our tent humming in the wind.
She stared at me with eyes far less than sated,
licking lips colored by the flickering shadow cast by our kerosene lamp.

I had walked five paces before she called me back.

(To be continued...)

And This Blue Marble Shifts (Poem)

She says a spirit watches over her while she sleeps in bed.
She says when her eyes open,
and her heart awakens,
that this spirit holds something in each hand.

In one hand rests a kiln where soft songs of fire shape the contours of a lie,
and in the other other a mask of a young girl's smile,
surfeited with sugar and sunshine.

She says the evening before,
a fuchsia sky smeared the horizon with a lighter hue,
where clouds obscured far more than the sky.
She whispers that the spirit lives just beyond the noise line,
like crossing a raucous road into a prairie of crickets and whispering wheat.

She says this spirit resides in the marshes of madness,
in the mire of peoples' minds,
and will never step foot amongst the living.

Yet there it stands, two hands held up in question,
silent in her room
and this blue marble of a world shifts slightly towards the unknown.

A Discordant Note (Poem)

She stood ankle-deep in mud and silt,
at the edge of a slippery stream sailing by,
stock-still and a little bit afraid,
as if she were tied to the tracks of a train,
and didn't know if she would escape in time.

Memories eddied around her,
memories like sticky juice on a hot summer day,
back when she was young in her age of innocence.

She debated whether or not to invite fate to its normal meal,
knowing that some gifts, once neglected,
can never be reclaimed.

Her mind was a sky the color of sooty wind,
and the rooms inside her head were flung wide open,
inviting in the spring-side sunshine,
inviting in that discordant note in a familiar song,
one she could not quite place,
one she could not quite understand,
one that brought her inevitably closer to the middle of that swirling stream.