The Girl on the Train

The Moroccan girl with wild brown hair tied back is not on the train leaving a white station.

Her bare feet grip small pebbles as root structures dance with her toes.

Her grounded shadow prowls toward late winter light.

She is not on the red and brown train zooming past green fields as her sheep in long woolen coats eat their way through pastures after a two-year drought.

She is not on the train hearing music, eating dates, reading a book, talking with friends or strangers, sleeping along her passage, or dreaming of a lover. She does not scan faces of tired, trapped people in orange seats waiting for restless time to deliver them to the Red City.

Her history remembers potentates inventing icon free art, alphabets, practicing equality, creating five pillars of Islam, navigation star map tools, breaking wild stallions, building adobe fortresses and writing language.

She is not on the train drinking fresh mint tea or consulting a pocket-sized edition of the Qur’an. She does not kneel on her Berber carpet five times a day facing Mecca.

She does not wear earphones listening to music imported from another world, a world where people treasure their watches. Where illusions of controlling time is their passion to be prompt and responsible citizens.

She is not on the train and not in this language the girl with wild brown hair tied back with straw or flower stems surrounding her with fragrances.

Inside rolling hills cut by wet canyons she is surrounded by orange blossom aroma in yellow and green fields. Her black eyes absorb ephemeral cloud thoughts in sky mind. Her open heart feels her breath ripple her long shadow.

Her toes caress soil. She is lighter than air, lighter than an eagle soaring above the Atlas Mountains.

She smells the Berber fire heating tea for a festival. A shaman dances in a goatskin cape and skull below stars.

It is cold. Flaming shooting stars leap into her eyes. Her nomadic clan plays flutes and drums. She sways with the hypnotic rhythm of her ancestral memory.

She is not on the train.

She is inside a goat skull moving through soil, dancing through fields.

Red and yellow fire invites stars to her dance.

ART

Morocco

Denver International Airport

mid-day is the least busy time 
frisked down by guys at security -  they may have been from Ghana or Somalia or Ethiopia

but I suspect Congo or Zaire as their dialect was distinct
they are young and laughing at the never ending task 
waving detector wands over people

and the one waving me is young & angry & exasperated

at having to do anything so far removed from his

land, culture, family, his brothers and sisters carrying water

on their heads in cracked plastic pails from deep distant wells 
drying in the heat of perpetual summer’s drought

his tie is askew and his white shirt 
against his thin black neck 
is frayed and his blue blazer looks severely uncomfortable on his frame

and the Asian security woman

says the woman screening bags

doesn’t know 
what a harmonica is so I pull it out in the key of D

ask if she would like me to play her something 
she says yes so I play a few blues riffs on automatic pilot

she laughs as passengers flow around 
mothers manage baby carriages - three tired tiered birthday cakes with burning candles 
their long lonely joyful responsibilities

the music stops 
I bag the harmonica and take the escalator down

to the train watching Hispanic woman mop the floor as 
women in furs and designer jewelry wait impatiently 
for the train to Concourse ABC...

the train zooms through tunnels like amusement park rides

with silver spinning windmills in cement walls

whirling wind tunnels

people get off and on 
a White woman with her Black husband holds her child 
his black curly hair all ringed around small ears

husband looks bored and she is not sure

in her heart
if she made the right decision 
they are flying east to see her folks
he never smiles and they share no words

The Garden #7

Ah, how sweet it is to explore, laugh, share and love.

Chapter 1 in "The Language Company" is longer than a river.

Here is part of a part of the amazing tale.

Listening for thanks.

The Garden #7

Published in:

The Language Company

Buy From Me

“Buy from me!” sang the swarming young Black H’mong girls in Sapa, Vietnam.

They swirled around him like dancers at the faire, like gnats around a flame.

He was on fire and they wanted to save him.

The Black H’mong wear a deep dark blue almost black indigo cloth. After it’s been repeatedly washed and dried in the sun it takes on a glistening silver metallic sheen.

They crowded around him. He was a stranger in town. A stranger goes on a journey. Two kinds of stories.

Girls carried orange and green and blue and yellow woven bags around their necks. Inside the bags they had postcards of the Red Dzao people, narrow embroidered colorful wrist bands and thin hand made wallets. The wallets had a zippered pocket inside for secret money.

“My story is to sell in the street,” said Mo, all of 10. She wore a dirty green t-shirt. Her face was smudged with dirt. Her off white broken plastic Vietnamese sandals had seen their better day.

They cost 15,0000 Dong in the market. He gave her a blue 20. “Go buy some new sandals.”

She said, “Really?”

He said, “Yes, really.”

He waited in the food market surrounded by new languages, clattering dishes, the smell of frying food and a mishmash of costumed humans.

The Black, White and Flower H’mong. Red Dzao. Tay.

Mo came back with her new white plastic sandals in a pink plastic bag. She squeezed between two slurping H’mong women and sat down.

“Are you hungry?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Ok, let’s get some chicken noodle soup.”

“Ok,” she said. Delicious.

Mo & My

Defrost Your Imagination

“Today is a good day to be empty. Practice 10,000 breaths until you disappear,” said a Lhasa monk petting a Sumatran tiger facing extinction by Malaysian villagers burning down forests to develop cosmetic palm oil exports.

“Yes, not too detached and not too sentimental,” said Zeynep sitting at a restaurant table creating surrealistic art in her notebook.

She drew stick figures with wild forested hair eating purple paper mache houses beneath a startled orange sun as disoriented Bursa talking animals crammed in spinach, green salad, tomatoes, grilled meat, rice and beans.

Across town on the TLC teachers’ apartment balcony sentry ants alerted the tribe to food. They marched from a drainpipe in single file, climbed over the edge of a plastic pot discovering good dirt. Teams fanned out sensing discarded muesli particles.

A mottled wingless insect living in bamboo detected worker ants approaching. Insect couldn’t fly. It scurried up a thin stalk to a green leaf blending in. Its feelers cleaned dirt off head and shoulders sham poop.

A gravedigger eating a hazelnut and strawberry jam sandwich on whole grain bread with grade A black olives harvested from Mudanya orchards nestled tight against Marmara Sea soil spoke to the insect as ants preparing their final assault gathered below the leaf.

“I need to move you.”

“Thanks. If I’m discovered I’ll perish. What do you suggest?”

“We use a leaf. Climb on it. I will let it go, floating over the garden. It will cushion your fall from grace. You will have a soft landing and better than a 51% chance of survival. Ground zero with better cover, food and dew you understand?”

“Ok. Thanks. 51% is better than zero.”

“You sound like an investment banker. Don’t mention it.”

“I need a new adventure.”

“Don’t we all. Here you go.”

Digger did what he had to do. Found a broad brown leaf. The insect climbed on. He released the vein-lined parachute into thin air. It floated. It landed on a huge exploding yellow sunflower.

“Goodbye,” sang the insect, “you extended my little life. I’ve survived to walk another day.”

The gravedigger sang, “Happy trails...to you...until we meet again.”

Weaving A Life V1

The Language Company