Where has all the poetry gone?

Photo by Mark Cunningham

I saddle, mount, and boot the horse forward toward a deeply cut path of fringed roots and barren mesquites. Thorns and limbs reach upward and out like the clawed arthritic hands of an old witch.

The sky begins to blow. Shake. Fade. A gunshot echoes. Shadows stretch and twist and lean in, searching for a foothold. A stronghold. A victory. Over what, I don't know.

I dismount and lead the horse, my white knight against the dark emptiness. His focus is steady as always, true and forward…

unless there is grass of course.

We walk into an open meadow, across a field of sunlit pasture. Thin strands of green flex with each delicate whisper. The horse blows, drops his head and smiles... pleased with himself, no doubt.

I stayed once in a forest outside of Albuquerque. A teeny tiny piece of land we tried to preserve.

I stayed once in a vast desert. A teeny tiny piece of land we tried to preserve.

They are the same.

The words inside move in prose and poetry. Those outside, a jumbled pile. Sometimes they are both at once.

I am alone often but not often lonely. It is the secret pleasure of purpose; the music must come from within, you see. The noise of the world won’t silence your darkness.

Only time can put meaning to memories, I understand that now. I am the turtle. Once, I thought I was the hare. I was wrong. Elbow to palm to forehead, a kickstand against despair – or maybe toward it. I don't know.

What do you know?

That the sheet won’t stretch over every corner? That you are not the person they think you are? That words won't quiet the voices inside?

Pay attention to the song you sing, the one tumbling around inside the walls of your head. The gut always knows better than the mind.

I know, that I am getting old, that someday I will die. The skin on my hands transparent, my back bowed, my voice gentle – or so one can hope. Someday, the ground underfoot will be gone.

I will step into air.

Lately, I’ve been listening to the earth move. At sunset when the wind is still, the highway empty, the house silent.

In the mornings from a bench near the dry creek, a carpet of soft rusted dirt underfoot.

I like to think she is settling in for the night, then waking again each morning. I wonder if the dogs hear her too.

Did you know, that if you stand outside long enough, in the dark, away from the city lights, you will see at least one star die – every night?

Did you know, if you sit outside long enough, still and patient, you will see the finch on her eggs… feeding her young… taunting the last fledgling over the edge?

They dive low on that first flight.

When I was a kid, we traveled east each spring. A homecoming of sorts, a freedom of sorts. Open land, red dirt roads, pine drifting along summer breezes, needle carpeted forests, a canopy so thick no underbrush could grow. It was sitting in an empty field under starlight, the howl of coyote against loblolly pine. It was forts and backroads and dusty trails, but mostly, it was the beauty of getting lost. Of secret places. Of compounds built by ten-year-old hands, various abandoned car parts, doors, deadwood.

It was heaven, and it has shaped my sense of heaven ever since.