Irrigation

New Year with Ghosts

Each post emerges

like a separate gray soul

on the snowy road. 

On the last day of 2012, I went for a long run. A light snow fell. Milky banks of fog shifted across the landscape. Along the sides of the rutted roads, old fenceposts and signposts materialized one by one, like memories stepping forward from my subconscious. Beyond the border of the road, the horizon was a cloudy sea, marked by underwater dunes and mesas. In the distance, the Dome reminded me of the volcanic rock that rises out of Morro Bay in Northern California, where I spent so much of my life. 

I often miss the Pacific Ocean. But has it ever left me? Have any of the faces, seas or skylines I knew in the past really left me? I thought once again of how this ancient lakebed acts like a canvas for the imagination, how its shapes and sounds evoke remembered beauty or pain at every shift of the seasons, at every turn of the light. 

According to a Chinese superstition, ghosts of the past shouldn't be mentioned on New Year's Day. We should look forward to the future, focusing our thoughts on the coming months. But I don't fear these ghosts, or regret them anymore. I live with them comfortably now -- much more comfortably than I did when I was younger. I greet them like old companions on the road, like the old wooden corral posts that I've come to know so well. 

Winter Maze

Walking in a maze

of prickly pear at sunset,

I lose the dirt road. 

Shadows Roll In

Up the green foothills

the South wind pushes the clouds

in a shadow tide. 

On a windy autumn afternoon, masses of clouds roll across the Valley, darkening the plains and flooding the roads with shadows. The shadow wave moves over the Blanca Massif; the clouds will hover over the peaks all night and leave a dusting of snow by morning. 

I watch the wave of darkness roll towards me as I jog down the road. I wait for the moment when the wave will overtake me the way I used to wait for the waves of the Pacific to fill my mouth and nostrils with salt and the taste of seaweed when I was a little girl. 

The months go by quickly. It's already November. The little pile of firewood that was left from last winter is already dwindling; we've started lighting up the wood stove at night. The clouds roll fast. The shadows come in. I walk and jog and stretch to keep my body as straight and supple as I can, but at times I already feel the pull of the earth below my feet. 

Sublimation

The coyotes glide

below the dry chamiso --

my forgotten fears. 

Clouds without Rain

Four or five raindrops.

Thunderheads darken the mountain,

hover . . . and move on.

September Sky

One windless morning,

mounds of golden rabbitbrush

below mounds of cloud.

Rosh Hashanah

September new year

a northeast wind pelts my cheek

with winter's sharp seeds. 

After a long string of balmy days, a slap of winter. Sunday the southwest wind coasted over the flats like a breeze caressing the ocean; Monday her northeastern sister took over and brought currents of bone-chilling cold. A rain laced with dust from the potato harvest spattered the windows all day as the wind beat at the roof. By afternoon the sun returned, and the clouds lifted to reveal a thick cloak of snow along the spine of the Culebra. 

Dawn Light

This view of Blanca at dawn reminds me of one of my favorite Mary TallMountain poems.

Bright Shining

Companion to me in every place,
You stretch your hand: I see
Majesties of mountains
Crowned with living light.

Your arm flings wide: I see
Wild little islands wrapt in fog
Grey luminous; hidden folds
Of emerald and ermine earth.

I fly free clean through glowing
Cat's eye aquamarine
Filled with light air breath

Swaddled in this cocoon
This dense and lifeless mass
Yet weightless I
soaring with it shall be for you

Light bright shining


by Mary TallMountain
The Light on the Tent Wall
Los Angeles: University of California, 1990

August Shadows

Clouds over granite --

suddenly your face appears

in August's shadows.

I haven't written any new haiku since August. I guess I've been in a survival mode, trying to finish my reflexology program while scraping together enough income to keep things going. But I also believe that poetry and photography are also necessary for survival; maybe that's why I've had such a deep sense of fatigue lately. I want to be able to stop worrying about money, bills, taxes, etc., but I also need to start writing poems and stories again, and taking walks with my camera the way I used to.

Memory of Stones

Slow as a fault line

grows the memory of stones;

they recall the shift

of the rumbling mountain

and the sleep of the lost sea.

The growth of the mountain seems infinitesimally slow; the orogeny takes place one millimeter at a time. Then the sudden seizure of activity -- an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a shift in the tectonic plates. There are fault lines at the foot of Blanca, waiting to open. The plates may not shift until long after I'm gone.

I think about everything the stones have seen, how long they've waited to take the form they have, how they're continually being shaped by the wind, and I don't feel so dissatisfied with my own slow progress.

Stop

Greenhouse

This is the greenhouse that Eric has been building. Its plastic "walls" have been delivered and are coming soon. The young herbs and vegetables have been growing in our sunroom, waiting for frost danger to pass. In the San Luis Valley, that doesn't happen until mid-June.

I have an apple tree seedling that I've been cultivating. I found the sprouted seed inside a Pink Lady apple.

Photo by Eric Havelock-Bailie

Azure

A vertical cloud floats in a vertiginous expanse of blue. This dizzying glimpse of the azure reminds me why I love living at 7,500 feet.

Photo by Eric Havelock-Bailie