dance alive

It never occurred to Matt to buy indigenous cultural music while traveling.
Martha his girl friend considered it essential.
Music made her edgy and alive.
When she heard music she danced.
She returned to her primitive self.

She danced naked.
Ballet. Flamingo. Tango. Cha-cha. Lambada. Waltz.
He wrote naked verbs. They loved naked. Naked cherished syllable skin music.
They wrote, danced and lived like they were dead.
One day they would be. 
They were free. It's the way to be.

Culture is what you are. Nature is what you can be.
People are nature's tools.
Children are parent’s tools.

Passing through Body Sat Quiet in Asia on a three week, “Look, don't think” holiday from frozen Europe they happened into an 8th century tourist town music repository. They smelled music before they saw it. Seeing music is an art form. Synesthesia. In music like life, the end of the composition is not the point.

A music boy handed Matt an orange book. Write your melodic request here. Matt opened the book. A Cambodian orphan popped out of blank pages: I am sorry. Goodbye and good luck to you and your family. These are our famous words. Big vocabulary. Tongues speak. Small life. Big chance. Yeah. Yeah.

Hunger Angel watched 24/7 in the big leagues.

one night

don't go to sleep
this night
one night is worth
a hundred thousand souls

the night is generous
it can give you
a gift of the full moon
it can bless your soul
with endless treasure
 - Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi

translated by Nader Khalili
from Ghazal 947
Fountain of Fire

Every Day

The world is a village.

Your village thrives near rivers and pine-mountains.

You plant it. You nurture it. You harvest it. You eat it. You carry it.

Every day starts at 4:00 a.m.

You put food into a wicker basket, heave it onto your back and either walk to town or ride with other villagers in the back of a small diesel belching tractor or truck. Perhaps a tuk-tuk overflowing with soil smells, green life talkers. Maybe on a motorcycle as chilly winds blast your face. It feels good to be alive.

Get there early. Spread your treasures out on a rice sack near the curb. Cold winds refresh the street. Say hello to friends. Broken dawn breaks over eastern mountains shrouded in fast clouds. Mothers and daughters arrange labors of love.

Women arrive to unload bags of corn, dead civet cats, onions, greens, bamboo shoots, apples, and language. They grow rice, ginger, beans, peanuts, peppers, bananas, squash, sugar cane, corn, papaya, cucumber, and sweet potato. They only leave villages to sell to townies.

A smiling old man crouched on the corner wearing a green army pith helmet from a forgotten war sells bells and musical iron instruments for oxen and water buffalo.

An ancient shaman woman with a deep lined face bundled against morning displays roots, herbs and small bundles of natural remedies. People trust her innate knowledge. Her dialect and wisdom is older than memory.  

Bog Oak & The Pool

Bog Oak

The bole of it hummocked in the turf,
The knuckles of it deep like a tangled hand
Mummified, clasping the quag.
And the burl of it drowned there
Soaked to a fare-thee-well.
Impervious, hard as a cherry stone.
Death’s implacable fixedness
In the cold bog entombed.
Rock root to the world.

The Pool

Even at night,
When I am far away
From the pool in the Nephin Begs,
Even when I am not there stooped,
Peering through sedge at its silken stillness,
Or waiting in a blind of thorns
For some sudden wonder there to appear -
For which my life is the idiot quest -
The water ever sluices in, withal.

The surface shimmers
In the weird watery glow
Of a sickle moon drifting,
A bright star hung on its horn.

Sometimes, then, the water kelpie,
Become again a glimmering girl,
Rolls languidly to the still top
And slippery, shoulders it over Into slow concentric rings
That splinter the moon into wrinkled rippling winks
And rock the grasses browing the banks.

They rock me too while away I nod
Not asleep, nor yet awake,
But floating, cradled,
Above yawning water vaults.
Gently jostled in the soft twilight,
Lullabied by her water song
Whose beauty steals my breath,
Troubled by vague huge visions
Just beyond my sleepy sight.

The floating stars then fall
And with them, I with her,
Like sugar melting in lemon water
Tracing crystal trails weirdly down,
Fractured, prismed, and bending,
Like the paths to fading memories
Darkly to repose at the bottom of the pool,
Where all the secrets in sometimes slumber dwell.

From Achill Sounds, a collection of poems by Thomas J. Phalen, a friend.

operating Instructions For Plants

not hanford nuclear plants
mind you

filled with radio
active frequency shifts 
seeping, bleeding 
55 million barrels of

uranium
plutonium fool fuels

into down through

130 feet to Columbia River 
water table
transparent tables
where drowning skeletons devour 
questions 

old fears sifting
healthy dust, no.

these plants evolved in northwest 

Podocarpus, ‘maki’ loves some direct sun
needs to be in east winter window.

Ficus nerifolia, ‘willow leaf ficus’ bonsai
east window
watching for summer sunburn
likes dry air, misting is helpful.

Asparagus plumosus, ‘plumosa fern’
needs south window
during darker months
don’t water when soil still feels wet.

Dracaena compact will tolerate lower light
trim back to encourage branching.