Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande Read online

  for Esai

  Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande

  When the poet puts his foot in that ever-moving river,

  poetry itself is born out of the flashing water.

  In that unique instant, the truth is manifest to all

  who are able to receive it.

  —Thomas Merton

  1.

  Now and then a bicyclist on the bosque path

  flies past me and I stop, quickly get out of the way,

  watch him, outfitted in full gear, expensive sunglasses and

  gloves,

  shiny white racing helmet and black skin-tights,

  then I’m back on the path again

  looking around for signs to connect me

  to the navel of the universe in the tree-trunk knot.

  A small yellow spider

  teaches the craft of writing,

  its amazing web teaches

  life is not

  a rehearsal for living someday—

  I live now.

  My surprise discovering

  the laughter that rises in my mistakes.

  Create your own Spring season

  the herons tell me migrating north in the sky—

  I stop to watch them,

  asking my Creator for insight

  into their hearts, let me be a blue heron, I whisper,

  and for an instant

  each fine tendril of my feathered tendons

  is a shrine-offering to the light.

  I follow behind others

  of the Wing Tribe, wing-bowers

  infused with an abundance

  of praising the Great Will, the Great Truth

  each wing beat of theirs,

  pushes my legs one in front of the other

  carrying me toward my own being re-feathered

  in white, in black, in brown, in red.

  My breathing is not my own,

  my hands belong to the wind,

  my legs to this path,

  my patterns of living and familiar routines become twigs I crush,

  the brush and trees become my community, and here, on a

  branch I pass

  I see myself perched on the side of a tree clinging

  to bark

  tapping out another temple in the bark

  a sanctum for a small heart the size of a walnut

  worshipping with each beat

  the up-suck energy in the roots

  the dirt-food, water-food, air-food.

  So I run, I breathe,

  shattering my self-centeredness

  against each tree, bush, bird, horse and field I sight,

  looking all around me—

  at the leaf-covered path,

  up at the towering leafless tree branches,

  the blue sky space between each bough

  is the insight I search for in these crowd-colliding days:

  a blue space where there is nothing but the sound of silence

  harmonizing its beautiful vowels into my soul,

  pouring it in my veins,

  forcing me over the top of myself

  over the brim of my body

  into the air.

  I stop before a thick-trunked short-leaning close-to-the-

  ground tree

  to pray, a place I’ve made my shrine,

  and exhausted from the five mile run

  I bow to the east, asking the Light to guide me and illuminate

  my path,

  I turn south asking the Darkness to befriend me and teach me

  vigilance,

  I turn west to my ancestors, thank them for carrying messages

  to the Creator,

  then north, where I pray to the great Bear for healing and

  moral strength.

  2.

  Today, running along the river,

  dead leaves cling

  to cathedral cottonwood branches,

  snap in the gusty breeze,

  give a crisp hiss …

  A wafer thin wind spades up

  loose dust from the path,

  and above me,

  gray leaves clash soft in towering boughs;

  sounds

  that might be heard in the silent yard

  of a monastery

  like the sandaled steps of monks

  praying, walking

  over the swept yard,

  walking and praying.

  I run, beneath the winter leaves

  when right ahead of me at the turn,

  a plump pheasant

  white ring neck, gray-black mottled feathers,

  green phosphorescent head

  scurries into the dry brush,

  clashing like rosaries in the sleeves of nuns

  hurrying to the chapel for evening mass.

  I jog on. A hawk swoops out

  and vanishes into the tree tops toward the river.

  Black crows.

  Clean swept dirt.

  Then at the end of the path,

  turning, heading north, I worry over the love

  I have for this woman. Then I see seven pairs

  of mallards burst up in fright at my sudden appearance,

  and I think how they mate for life and beyond them,

  poised on the ditch bank, with such regal bearing,

  a blue heron …

  It’s then I hear a voice,

  a crystal shining icicle clear voice,

  cold water but made of sound,

  tells me, keep my connection to the spirits strong,

  keep my work spiritual,

  stay connected to the Creator,

  and all my worries will be answered in time.

  Ah, it is a good run …

  3.

  This morning, more than ever,

  I feel a sense of strength, not the kind that flexes

  biceps and poses for the mirrored ahhs.

  I reap

  a satisfaction in my heart

  and with a certain gratitude

  wear the scars of those who have criticized me.

  I pray each morning to the spirits to carry my prayers

  to the Creator,

  but I want more than that to happen,

  I not only want my prayers answered,

  I pray that I become stronger,

  more sure of the journey ahead of me,

  not succeeding where others could not

  but to be more honest in my words, more so with my actions,

  more thoughtful each day,

  following the whispered signs from spirits

  that lead me forth, in the will of the Creator.

  I wake up each morning

  while others are still dreaming

  and mindfully

  say my prayers

  asking for the woman I love to understand me

  to return to her ways with me

  to wake with me

  pray beside me

  as I wake to my prayers,

  as I wake to this growing strength to love,

  as I learn to live consciously, open my eyes

  to see, to care, to share this strength,

  to embrace, and take

  her to see that red-tailed hawk I saw yesterday

  at the river

  how I had never seen a hawk so close to me before,

  as if it intended to fly low enough for me to lightly caress

  its red tail feathers

  the kindling color of coals in the dark

  flickering in the breeze like embers—

  I felt its feathered heat

  a dream I had

  of a light that came to me

  illuminating itself a
s my father,

  as the world I must strive for

  and this light,

  this exalted glowing eruption of light

  I have in me

  growing daily

  in measure to my own fearless strength to grow with it

  and I do on faith—

  Creator, grant my wishes

  hear my prayers.

  I pray to you, surrender to you,

  allow me to serve you

  honor you

  welcome you in my life

  and let that glow, that heat, that light

  radiate from my finger tips, my tongue

  my feet, my laughter and my tears.

  Today I pray I am honest in my life

  as was the hawk when it glided above me

  carrying my prayers to you,

  honest as the hawk when it held its wing-spread

  true on the updraft

  and its feathers

  each tendril, each feather

  played the wind like a lover’s kisses

  against its lover’s lips,

  holding to the wind like a lover holds a lover’s hand

  fingers clasped, braiding

  each other’s fingers

  as they walk the journey in faith

  that each will be true to the other.

  And so I pray I am today as honest

  with myself,

  with life all around me and below and above me,

  with all who I encounter.

  4.

  The elegance with which,

  in the sweetest humility, the

  lilac senses the time

  to show itself—

  fights adversity all winter

  coldest nights,

  blowing storms,

  clinging to fence posts,

  tossed and heaved,

  trampled, pecked by crows,

  almost eaten by insects,

  pummeled by brute heat—

  yet the whole time

  still as a stone-carved Buddha

  meditating,

  silently greets the world

  in its vow of silence, birth to death alone, in the rain

  weaving its being into a nameless red blossom

  opening at dawn.

  And its body

  we preserve

  in pages of books,

  that have kept our belief in love,

  next to poetry lines we love so much

  where we place our dreams

  for safekeeping

  from the harmful world

  that hurts us so much some times,

  I place this flower.

  5.

  This morning before we met for coffee I was thinking

  of my brother, and others who never made it to live the life

  they dreamed,

  about our paths, the broken marriages, children we brought forth into

  the world,

  the Rio Grande where every day I meditate, taking note of the river’s

  ways,

  seeking to learn its wisdom, its methods

  the way it lets go, surrenders to each season

  what it cherishes most, what makes its life and gives it color,

  it releases like a huge loving mother

  who

  tears a part of her heart out

  and offers her laughter and sadness to me

  in a lofty sunflower or red leaf.

  I was thinking of the Rio Grande as a pair of mother’s hands,

  not those hands that have

  built cities or Olympian hands in

  grueling gut-grunging competition

  to be the best,

  they are mere gnats in a starving mongrel’s neck scruff;

  but as I sat at the river

  it unspun in me a vision of things to come:

  from a Serbian leader accused of genocide,

  a man choking off his soul to attain his ambitious ends,

  carrying a million passengers to their destinations,

  to a dark-skinned woman dancing the tango in Buenos Aires

  like an insane butterfly in a tropical garden

  in a salsa club where the ghosts of poets sit at tables and drink

  the air as if it were the most savory liquor,

  a Virginia field slumbering in red clay bliss,

  woods echoing with frozen, creaking pine trunks

  unable to endure their own height,

  mountain boulders turning over slowly like bears awakening from

  hibernation,

  sands in Utah bleeding white dirt

  from the betrayals of nuclear waste dumped in them.

  Meditating on a mother’s hands,

  the river in me sings my gratefulness to you and others,

  how selfless the river is

  when I stop to wonder at a million twigs strewn about the

  ground.

  I am reduced in the river’s presence

  to a single note in this orchestra of forest trees,

  my voice an unfolding tiny green leaf,

  singing of my heart’s changing river currents.

  And I pray:

  let all my sensibilities be the breathworkings of this forest,

  let its quiet fire, the invisible tissues of its flame, enter me, bless me, re-molecule

  my DNA

  to be more it than me,

  to be more it than what I want

  to be more it than what I desire

  to be more it

  than what I love,

  and in all of that love,

  let me rise as a tree,

  a flower,

  wild grass,

  river shrubs and tangled brush.

  I celebrate mother’s hands,

  shape-shifters that heal our wounds

  and induce me to be as close to what this river is,

  risk who I am in all I do to recreate me

  molded in mother’s river hands

  there to embrace my frail strength

  to push me forth, becoming more the

  river than myself…

  6.

  I watch the river water shift and whirl, wanting my life that way—

  with such grace,

  the current caresses its way forth

  be it stone, branch, dirt island,

  constantly changes and re-creates its passage

  its way around, along, between, bulging and narrowing

  welcoming struggle.

  I’ve stood here, asking the river's blessings

  a year now,

  holding my heart out to it,

  a heap of broken pieces

  I scatter

  over the silvery effulgence sparkling with sunlight,

  even when it’s gray and overcast

  the river shines.

  If I cried right now,

  it would be out of joy,

  for having this river here with me

  I’d cry for making the mistakes I’ve made,

  for having the faith that tomorrow might be a better day

  and the eagerness to put one foot in front of the other.

  The river has taught me

  patience—a year I’ve stood every day to watch it,

  pray to it that I connect my present moment

  to my origins as it does, that I am connected now

  to my beginnings as it is,

  its source gathers a million beginnings

  gracefully blending and fusing all threads of experience

  and joins them, braids them, into something as beautiful

  as this river now—flowing, connecting

  my snow-melt loneliness, my rain-tears grief, my joyous

  natural-spring laughter.

  And the river has always loved me,

  I’ve come here after drinking all night,

  come here after betraying myself and others I’ve loved,

  come here and offered all the shame and guilt to this river,
r />   to take it down river, pouring it out into the Gulf

  of Mexico,

  there for the whales to spout it up in the air,

  for the dolphins to spin their acrobatic spirals around it,

  to cleanse it, joining me

  in their wholeness, their completeness.

  I breathe part of its being in me, the water turns to

  oxygen that lifts itself up

  into the sky, and in Salt Lake City, California, Mexico, New York,

  Cape Cod,

  New Orleans, San Antonio, Durango, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara,

  Portland,

  the lovers I’ve been with appear on the surface of the water

  and breathe the air with me,

  become part me again and I am part them, we breathe the air

  made partly from this water,

  their faces reflected in the water

  go by me sparkling down river

  nourishing the earth roots,

  feeding the sweet tendrils of river grass,

  breathing out the hurt

  breathing in the hope,

  as the water, not a single ripple the same, not a solitary one

  can be by itself, but all together act in unison

  to create this music we call a river.

  I meant to hurt no one

  and give my regret to the river,

  and as the river I too tried to furrow a passage,

  tunnel a way out of sorrow as gracefully as the river does,

  shining, offering itself to mallards and Canada geese, hawks,

  hummingbirds,

  roadrunners,

  whose feathers I have found the past year,

  collected them in a box

  and framed them in designs to give as gifts

  to my friends.

  And as the river courses down,

  me on the banks hypnotized by its silent dance,

  I kneel and dab my fingers in it,

  touch water to my lips so what I speak

  will be as true and necessary as water,

  touch my fingers to my breast

  so what I create will be as honest and giving as the water.

  Then I pray that the river help me on this day be fully me,

  as true as it is to its destiny,

  accept fate as it accepts its fate,

  know myself as it knows itself and be me as it is it,

  to offer myself to my daily task as it indulges freely in its task:

  Allow me, bless me,

  to be as you are, river, on this day

  and as I enter people’s lives

  may I enter as you enter the earthen ground

  making a river channel for your expression of love,

  may I express my own,

  speak my words as you communicate yours

  in grass and trees and animals,