Home, after a long absence

...not many things as blue
        as the sky in Taos on a clear winter day... .


                        1
When Kali the Destroyer gives final suck
         to the world that will die and yet be reborn
The color of the poison with which she anoints
         her nipples
Will be the color of that sky.


                        2
The great god Thor has yet to find a paint
         so blue for his sky shield
And when he casts it behind the midnight sun
It looks a little pale and worn out
Compared to the sky in Taos.


                        3
It is said that Antonio Gaudi never
         came to Taos,
And so the pilgrims to La Sagrada Familia will not see there
         true blue, but
         only the approximately blue sky of heaven.


                        4
Every summer, beside a dusty old adobe in
         Arroyo Seco,
A cornflower sprouts; and, if it gets precisely the correct amount
         of water, and of drought,
It blossoms, a single floret of Taos sky blue.


                      Fini
Long ages ago, before there was a Taos,
         or a world,
The great old ones, Father and Mother,
         raised up their perfect child and
         named him Death.
And they clothed him in black -- of which
         darkest night was made in memory.
And they planted the sun in tribute
         to his smile.
And made the Earth so that all things
         precious therein could be his toys.
And so that none would ever mistake him --

His eyes are mirrors
         that reflect only those things
         as blue as the sky in Taos on a clear winter day.

Kokyu-Ho Nage

Sometimes it feels like my whole world
Is clinging to me
Holding me still.

The trick at such times is to keep moving at a measured pace, not too fast or slow.
Relax and
Remember to breathe in
And out.

Let yourself bend -- it's okay.
If you truly mean no harm
Your whole world will fall in behind you
Meek and astonished as a baby deer
At its first butterfly.

And you might, then, feel a little breeze
Sending you on your way,
Quiet, and open, and really, truly free.

Mot Juste

Some people
only truly live in our minds.

Their turn of phrase burns in our heart and we are inspired
to the elegant
retort
that we fire deep into the well of their being,
slaying them briskly and efficiently.

And still they live, lovely objects of scorn
for us to strike down again
and again.

In Spring the Thaw (at least if there was a frost)

And down from the peaks
those same old pissed out molecules
tumble (late from the bowels of a chipmunk that died after two seconds
in the talons of a red-tailed hawk, a male; his first solo kill--)
tiny bits of life downhill

Sun shining, sere and hot:
when they later climb
the great sky ladder
what do we see...?

Who is to know which motes of sky
were made at the beginning of time
and rolled down that gentle but slippery
nineteen billion years high slope to us,
and which became, in that blink of moment,
testimony of a new creation?