What I See Along the River

A road runner, descendant of velociraptors,  scans the shoulder of the bike path for lizards or garbage --  hungry, wanting. Another road runner further back. A mate? A dark-haired dog lies in the middle of the dry river bed. It raises its head to look at me. I can't tell if it was a coyote or not. It sets its head back down on the hard pan of scoured sediment. A pair of homeless campers set their gear out to dry in the breeze after the cold rain last night. Others lay bundled in sleeping bags, blankets, tarps, on top of pallets. One is working on his camp down in the wash, dragging back furniture that had washed downstream during the storm. There are piles of debris; a child's pink plastic car, big enough to sit in, sits still, vacant, and incongruous in the middle of the wash. Chairs, tarps, coolers, buckets, clothing, a toilet seat lie scattered on the sand. A red-tailed hawk, wings retracted in the "W" of a fast descent, cruises along beside me, close enough that I can see his breast feathers ruffled by the breeze. He looks straight at me. I think he is racing me. No contest there. He swoops up onto a dead tamarisk. Another canine, coyote for sure, very dark, old, ready to die, slowly crosses the path, not caring if I come too close to him. He lopes toward the river. Another man swears to no one I can see beneath a copse of mesquite trees tangled near the bank. Graffiti I have never noticed before spreads up the arroyo away from the river. One large message reads simply "ME" in block, spray-painted letters. Now, one might say I see only what I want to see, that there is beauty amid the death and suffering and predation. Fair enough. But it is what I see on this cloudy, December day, breeze off the mountain dusted in fresh fallen snow.

Soul Work

 Why are you there?

People sometimes ask.

There's nothing there

No bars, clubs, stores, movies, crowds, or

Pressure to dress it up, look good, fit in, hunger for fame, compete.

And all that ... silence... shudder.

 

I guess that's the point.

The nothing here.

The putting the wallet on the shelf

They keys on the hook

The phone on silent

All open a space

For something else

Some other intention.

Call it soul

Call it heart

Call it home.

It is between the notes

Of music I am learning to play

Of paint I am trying to conjure

Of words I search for in the dark.

 

It is in the extraction of distraction

That the light can shine in

That the way is revealed

That the veil parts.

 

Sit down with me,

A voice says,

Man without means

Without status

And tell me about

Your heart and its

Desires. 

 

Nocturne

The night smells of Tucson: deep fat fried chicken wings and chimichangas, creosote, melting tar, water on hot asphalt, jasmine. The train sounds like an organ or a choir as it pulls me from sleep in the wolf hour. Magical thinking tells me I can make the past right, but stars tell me I have to pour love into mistakes, the paths I have taken. They say make beauty out of chaos. You can never go back. If you did, you would find only ghosts. Very well then, I will walk with ghosts. My heart wants to make it right; my head knows I have to forgive. And so, this is my life, a fried Southwest tortilla, not, as I hoped, a cool, blonde, snow-capped milkshake. Here, in the dark, we can sit together, remember that the sky was once on fire with the colors of a dying day.