Cesar Chavez march

Flew down to Albuquerque on the train Friday night after work, for yesterday's annual procession in honor of Cesar Chavez. An action I needed to take part in, out of respect for my new home in the South Valley. The march began at Sanchez Farms: where, in the truest sense of "demonstration", people are right now joining as various collaborative groups to plant seeds in the earth, and grow food to share. The broad column of people wound up Isleta Boulevard, happily slowing traffic, bringing the neighbors out onto their porches, provoking honks and waves from passing cars and trucks. It headed for the National Hispanic Cultural Center just across the Rio Grande (whose cautious cottonwoods still hold their breaths of green hidden in their waiting bark-muscles). La danza Azteca led the way: we are, after all, following with awareness in the steps of our history here. Then came various community and youth organizers, workers groups, Wobblies. A man on a truckbed tried to lead us in a list of chants. His success was limited by the size of the march (I'd guess around 150 people), and by the fact that, a few rows back, a woman with her own microphone (supported by a guy walking with a generator on his shoulder) was leading chants of her own. One line attempted by both instigators, but at different times, was: "This is what Democracy looks like!" Our mismatched, juxtaposed chanting struck me as annoying, but then as funny, and then as perfect: this IS what Democracy looks like, right? People many and diverse and lively, speaking in their own different voices, all at once and all together. The cacophony became fun at that point, and I walked for a moment celebrating the chaos. But then, even better, the man in the truck invited the woman in back to come up and take his microphone, and lead the chants. Her stronger and more rhythmic voice united the group, almost completely, for the last half mile or so across the Bridge bridge and into the Cultural Center parking lot.

At the Center, a man passed round a petition which I want to share: a request for a national holiday - a PAID holiday, for the workers - on Cesar Chavez' birthday. Here's the link - very quick to sign!
http://www.ufwaction.org/campaign/chavezholiday?
qp_source=web

for Lunasa

who I saw last night, at the Lensic. This doesn't begin to do them justice, or to what the music did for me. Only a shadow of an effort to convey...


For those of us not Irish
but made for that deep cycle of celebration
of elation and of ache
of the highest and of deepest depths
your music helps to set the heart
back in its orbit once again

For those of us not Celtic
who shudder yet when the green world turns
who never learned to drink the pain away
or play it out on some enabling instrument
the sea of sounds in which you wave
can bear those riptides back into healing oceans
an air or reel can turn them round
just as sure as lunar beckoning
moves the visible sea

I am not Irish
in fact I own no culture to speak of
have known as mine no embracing heritage
am not wound around (or wounded)
by ancestral ties or rootpaths
I am a free traveller on this worldsea
but an hour floating on your mellow incandescence
your aquiescence of unmaking and rethreading into Life
finds me in the kinship of the living
with an moment's invitation to the inheritance
of those who yearn and breathe and travel oceans wide
and although it near drowns me with sorrow
deeper than time, deeper almost than my soul can bear
still ever deeper yet I hear and know
a home, a belonging place, in joy

to do list

in any given week...in this week...

catch up on sleep
do the laundry
take the tips to the bank
take a tip from a stranger
quit the pizza business
find sustainable work
release attachments
drop caffeine addiction
regain endorphin addiction
leave room for the magic
find that portal to Portland
take that left turn back to Albuquerque
retrace my steps
watch my feet
walk backwards in my carbon footprints
walk like I have a head full of Irish fiddle tunes *
listen
see the stars and planets outside the blue sky
carry the memory of Colorado from 14,433 feet
get fluent in Spanish
get fluent in English
take back the city for myself tonight *
develop my inherited psychic abilities
breathe green
dream lucid
resist fatalism
be patient
give thanks
pursue the devastation of my separation *
metamorphose the poison into power *
forgive
hesitate in the space between Wonder and Why *
seek wisdom
love unconditionally
get free


(must cite my sources: the lines with a *
I owe, respectively, to Bruce Cockburn, Snow
Patrol, Joan Osborne, Frank Herbert and Rush)

an~o nuevo (mio)

folded doubting questions
into the grace of the moment
left the baggage by the highway
and started packing for another journey
cleared the poisons from the heart
with that last remembering poem
and there is finally room for now

the waning year's last days
he tells me
are a time for rest, regenerating
a centering, a clearing out is how I hear it
and these are efforts I can understand
but this is still a calendar, a map,
a territory new to me

the morning of the turning blesses
with so many synchronous connections
in the Valley which will soon be homeground
afternoon I fall asleep awhile
on a floor in front of an altar
and dream of an old man drawing many pictures
whose pattern I just begin to understand
in the moment of awaking

nightfall full moonrise
feet are moving now toward the water
what do I know of this dance
into which I've been invited?
this is a question not for heartmind
always with its warring waltz
but for soulbody
who will not know but will be
and this, by way of feet on earth
and eyes on the other feet in the circle

the most incredible luminous sky opens
purple glow crowned by a queen of moons
platinum strength of river embracing racing
south into an infinity of cottonwoods and currents
all speaks abundance and upholding
full and alive and self-contained but still inviting
feet move in impossible no a possible joy
tracing steps they've never known in silver sand
even the Dipper upturns, overjoyed
to pour its bright abundance
over the river and the Valley
and the beating drum at the circle's open heart

open your own heart
the full moon says
down by the river-edge
I double dare you
and I say
dare me

new beginning
now beginning
sacred time
remaking time
ano nuevo
respiro nuevo
I don't know how to dance
but here I am already dancing
already woven into Everything

all this magic and mystery

How to speak in words, on a luminous day like this when giant pirateship clouds invade and take the weightless silver sky without a fight? How to talk in ideas, when out of every curve of earth grow magic, beauty, mystery like crazy wild flowering plants, pre-empting our regularly scheduled careful garden plots and schemes? How to think, for any reason whatever reason, when Life sings open possibilities of feeling and sense and being?

I only want to record one detail of this day, though there are many others I could speak of. This morning I attended a workshop at the Ecoversity on Soil Building. An involved and a prosaic activity, on 2 hours' sleep, to be sure. But a fascinating one. It made me realize that the only reason I hated science classes all through school was just that I couldn't relate them to anything at all in the real, working world. But this: this is science that we need, right here and now. And it's beautiful stuff. This is about saving our water, growing our food (filling it with flavor, even), about protecting the life of our home and the creatures we share it with.

But I'm too much afloat on these clouds and this Life of now to talk at any length of humic substances, mycorrhizae, saphrophytic organisms, or even the wonderful measuring term of "resonance time" (all these words would make great poems, actually...) So, only to repeat this one detail, just because it fits so wonderfully and oddly with all the sense and non-sense that is afoot:

On the subject of bacteria, and their role in our everyday world: A study was made of the hands of 100 people. It was found that on all these hands was carried a total of 4,000 species of bacteria. And that only 17% of those 4,000 life forms were found to reside on _both_ the left and right hands at once...

I have NO IDEA what this means. But it's just the coolest, weirdest thing I've heard all day. That I can repeat, in language, in written words, anyway...

about time...

Ha. Glad to see I'm not alone in my view of television news. I usually try to ignore the generic brain-draining Microsoft "homepage" that persists in appearing on my screen, but this article caught my eye and was good for a laugh. Good for the people: finally realizing, for at least a second, that they're not slaves to imbibing without opinion whatever appears on their TVs. Way to go: now, just turn it off, and take a deep breath, and step outside your door, and see all the beautiful things people are doing in your own community, in the REAL world...

NEW YORK - Between the drumbeat of bad economic stories, two wars and a winter that won't quit, NBC's Brian Williams knows he's been anchoring a depressing "Nightly News" for a depressed audience.

Still, even he was shocked at the thousands of responses he has received in less than two days after asking viewers to suggest some good news to report.

"I'm looking at a stack of printed e-mails," Williams said Friday. "We have more stories than we could humanly cover if we combined all three network newscasts. It's hit an unbelievable nerve."

Williams said he's been hearing it repeatedly from people he meets on the street or viewers who send e-mails: The news is so bad every night that it's a burden to watch. Wrote one viewer: "We all know it's bad, but the news makes us feel like crawling under a rock."

want to sign? restore relations with Cuba

Okay, I have to pass this on as well. A good friend just posted this, and he's right - it's an incredible lift to the spirits just to read down the list of people who have already signed this. To see all the beautiful things they're doing in the world, and also how many of them are New Mexicans! You too can sign the letter to President Obama, in support of restoring cultural relations with Cuba, at this site: http://www.cubaresearch.info/cubaletter2009

we can help each other

I have to share this event: for any in the area who might like to offer their support. And then to send the wonderful idea further out into the world. To infect others, maybe, with a little hope and competence, rather than the fear and inevitability that seems to have poisoned so much of the collective air lately. This is what my community is doing, to counter its own economic hardship. Literacy Volunteers of Santa Fe, the department at SF Community College that oversees the ESL program with which I work, recently felt the blow as more than half its staff was laid off or had their hours reduced. As they send out regular email posts announcing workshops and new students seeking tutors, there's a fluent communication process going on among the 50 or so people involved in the effort. Many, apparently, heard the sad news and asked, immediately, "What can we do to help you?" And this event is what grew out of that intention, only weeks later. I'm proud to be connected with such a fine, immediate, human response to a need. I plan to donate books and maybe cookies too. Who knows how much financial relief this effort will give the staff of the program - but it's obvious from the emails that it's sustaining their spirits, even now. We can do this, yes we can, wherever we are. It's just this simple.

********
Clear Light Book Gallery will be sponsoring a fund-raising event for LVSF on March 21 from 10:00 – 4:00 at their site at 851 San Mateo (the old Open Hands site). Joe Hayes and Steve McFadden will be doing story telling, Peter Aragon will provide microphones, we will sell cookies and brownies (if you make good ones and would like to donate them, please let me know), there will be posters, notecards and used books will be for sale and lots more.

How can you help?

* A few tutors will speak. If you would like to tell about your experience with tutoring, please let me know
* If you make good cookies or brownies and want to donate them for us to sell, please let me know
* If you have books to donate, please take them the Clear Light Tuesday – Friday 12:00 – 4:00 or Saturday 10:00 – 4:00and mark the box “LVSF”
*********

highway virus

In these opening days when atmosphere blooms
with returning light, pollen, potency, possiblity
all the lands I've ever walked on whisper to me
each with its unique, compelling voice
I hear them walking, driving, working
paused between one errand and another
or between dreamsleep and waking
and the music that I play always becomes
a party to the psychic conspiracy
cracking open those dimensional portals
with its precious prescient sonic intervention:
There Is Life Out There...

In the poised midrange of Now, I Be
moving back into the living free space
climbing onto the green verge where
waking drive and dreamtime meet and again entangle
every altered state both on and off the map
still holds its open frequency
- and the power to tune me in again at will -
they entice invite and sometimes yank me in unwilling
reaching touching mind, skin, memory and sense
California exhales on me, sunbright
citrus CO2 humid hopeful morningbreath
Oregon is evergreengold mystery, quicksilver rivercurrent
and the shadows of invisible dreaming volcanoes
Idaho is lonelyhearted sandhills,
and those defensive mountains everdistant
Nevada is bold stormfront breaking open
lightning with nothing left to lose
the most alive of desert skies that I was ever
blessed to risk my life beneath
Arizona abandons all yearning hope on the rocks
only to enfold again with benevolent sunny sleeping forests
and O New Mexico
how I have traced your dusty roads like palmistry
backroads frontroads cracked highways blue and red
veils of halfwaking history layered on each other
how I have pulled your stardeep skyblanket over me
to sleep in a hundred unauthorized roadside beds
how lamented your dry humors, your withholding,
moved on seeking rain and sustenance,
returned again to find roots stretching
in earth that seemed too austere for nurture
yet proves to hold my answers and my growth
and every calendar ignites another cycle
does no one else contend with these energies
vibrant and virulent and virile
infectious and inevitable and immanent
surely others are similarly ambushed by
the springing of the year?

dreamfoundpoem 1

In light of all the More Important Things To Do in the world right now (and there certainly are), it was affirmed for me this week that the dreamtime still has its role to play. In the personal and in the collective life. My gratitude goes out to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni for her lovely, lyrical, magical novel "Queen of Dreams", which was just the tale my tired soul needed, in this Here and Now. I was already reading through an old dream-journal from a couple years back, looking for the inspiration and the insights that a little time-remove always brings. This novel gave me the last boost of affirmation to bring a few of my own most beautiful dreams to light. For whatever unnecessary and inexplicable offering they may have to the waking world. The images that dreamjournaling preserves are surely too alive and full of possibility to keep in the dark. Here, then, is a found poem made up of quotes from actual dreams, over about a year's time (and it was a year as transitional as this one, at that...).


forest crying man blue butterfly
looks like a chance of green ahead
we're on the verge of a major breakthrough
air sparks with hope and possibility

cry out! for the deep otherness of this place
this is The House That Saves All The Water
the back of the house is another dimension
it might even open onto the Sea

at the entrance to a building that is the entrance to the city
it is the unending city of Dream, not of waking
behind the colonial government buildings
is an ancient healing spring
he comes to wash, and to make amends to the place

a priest tells me that mass is starting,
and no one can come in with wheels on their feet
I go on my way wearing the symbols of welcome
given me by the other, kinder priest

a woman says, “Prove to me that you're from Texas”
I wonder if one of us is the child, or neither, or both
I do see a few ghosts while I'm there but
convince myself it's only because I expected to see them

searching for parts, odds and ends (wheels)
she sings me a song about how I still have choices
I tell the reluctant man that he'll have to
find and supply his own code, when he's ready

“In my country, we have a saying,” he begins
I hear the power in his voice, and start to hope again

must cross strange waters by narrow gates
to our ancestor's home, to practice claiming our inheritance
1 silent winter month, no water, no speech: as it should be
he radiates joy, serenity, and maybe
a secret I want to know

is my brother one of them, or just the bus driver?
he takes incredible risks and gets away with them
it's my job to be handing people their empty suitcases
we take a sharp left turn into the side of the mountain
and we've arrived

nobody wants to go first, so I do
telekinesis doesn't work: I have to walk back
down the sidewalk to pick up my bag
I left on the road I came in on
I'd like to go back,
but I'm not sure if I know where it is

Late at night, Hakim invites a few of us outside
and teaches us to breathe fire...