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| Pounding Stone with Pestles |
A ghost cackles a warning, falls
like an arrow before flaring its wings,
plunges towards headstones, then rises,
lost in pines. Leaving Clovis Cemetery,
I parked under a cloud of stars
near massive oaks, an animal warmth
emanating from the rough bark,
the sun still inside the cells
of everything breathing. I breathed
deeply, as often as I could pay attention
to my breath, the sea of smog
just below me. Ages ago,
you taught me the ways of birds,
and I sighted a woodpecker winging
from one oak to another, clinging
to the top branches. A meadowlark
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| Close Up of Pounding Stone |
tilted back its head, its call bubbling
over the grassland. A shrike stepped
from a twig, free-falling, floating
up above its prey--to impale
on barbed wire for its cryptic
butcher-shop cache. No one kept
the houses from crowding closer.
Caked by cow droppings,
paths still weave into clearings,
mortars the only sign, roots
pulling the tribe upward into petals
of goldfields and lupine, high
into branches and leaves,
into air. Went down
on my knees before
the pounding stone, so many
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| Pestles on Pounding Stone |
herds and flocks invisible
in the currents of breath,
and once again heard the cackle
and pounding, felt the fierce
shadow flowing over me
like a ghost, the mortars
empty as eye sockets,
portending an end
without grace. Did I sleep,
hearing the meadowlark
as one momentary ring appeared
on the water, then another, the petals
of the purple chinese houses
beginning to tremble, the oak canopy
awake with quiet tapping, whatever
I needed to say lost
in the still sound vanishing
gradually with my dreams,
all the roots quietly sucking up the rain,
the creek beginning to flow again?
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