Saturn Came into the house at midnight:
The Lights are on out there, bright and flooding, silver,
illuminating the field
The field? The very one? The Cradle and Womb?
Such intoxicating abundance and radiance of energy and life, Surely this is coyotes birthing stage.
A view point from the metal cool bleachers, to watch these actions, is this not a perspective window indicative of Fox?
And there behind its bleachers, shockingly, oddly, unexpectedly….on the outskirt of that fields parking pavement, lies a small quiet, overgrown cemetery, is this not an empty house? Is this not Wolf standing still?
What juxtaposing startle! What stillness and night and mystery and silence and duty when compared to this grand stage of youth and fertility and possibility and action and breath!
The silence of the cemetery is profound yet fragile, it exists in its saturnine, solemn “cup” of place but it is not purely morose, just as the field is not purely celebratory.
The cemetery holds its contemplative peace and the field holds its frustrated, fiery passion and overwhelming tears and fights.
The cemetery, its sighs and stillness, decision and responsibility, sickness perhaps, obstacle and learning, here is contemplation and experience.
The field its arousal and stimulation, its desire and wanting its elation and physicality its body here is doing and being.
Both share though, in their own ways: Love, fear, awareness and loneliness.
From the heavy darkness of the cemetery, within its growth entangled chain fence, there is a stirring.
A solitary, dim street light casts a faint yellow glow near the rod iron arch that bares the cemetery name. The light barely enough to reveal the headstones within and sickly glints off the bottom boughs of a giant flowering tree towering near the entrance …..there are flowers in every space here and silence and from this silence comes the glitter of yellow eyes.
Scents of alcohol, flowers and decay of every kind, faint and sweet. Smells of surgical gloves and books, soil and perfumes, teas, coffees, must and dust and incense and roses and roses….swirl round this ghostly gray figure who goes slowly slinking and pirouetting between the stones, reading every name and wanting and wanting.
The Blazing light in the dark, the field shines, pristine and clean
round its lights swirl a myriad of winged
The yards marked clear, the End zones looming and Impressive
On its far side sit, lit inside, dark outside, its locker rooms and showers and bathrooms.
down in its center a figure stands
Youthful, large, powerful.
He
The epicenter of the cheers and tears
and in return his own cheers and tears go out
His body is motion and action
strength
in his heart there is dignity and meekness and humility and honesty
he is effort
and he sweats and cries and works.
The cheers are thunderous and his body thunders down the yards with them.
Smells of the body, of semen, of food and beer of peppers and musk, of showers and sweat and cologne and breath and spilled urine and grass and heat.
At the gates of the cemetery wolf stands under the still, flowering tree.
From the stands, fox holds up a mirror like a cheer sign.
Above it all, in its chaotic air of heavens and hells
the center encompasses it all
from the center the coyote laughs.
Lunchtime Walk Appocalypse
And as I walked, a copse of trees rose before me
And from beneath them spread a darkness
But not as darkness I have understood
Not a darkness of horrors
But the darkness of the house of sleep
And as the boughs unfurled
I saw there beneath them, great Badger asleep in that shade
And I was afraid
I feared because I did not understand
Oh, Badger was not awake to instruct me
I was not awake to hear
No matter my will and effort I could not grasp it
It poured up and away like a mist
And from that darkness came a still silence
And that silence instructed that in me which makes no choices
To unhand my will and thought
But oh, how can I? How can I?
I watched then as Rat walked into that deep shade
He laid his head on great badgers belly and fell fast asleep there.
To surrender my will to this house of sleep
To allow the silence of animals and rest with them
I ask them: "Brothers will we wake again?"
There is no answer from the sleeping, there is no knowing
And there in lies the pull of every will of evil and greed
An attempt of control of that wakeful time
Demanding more of its honey
When my Spirit knows that the bees of those visions make honey in their own time
And no other
So I stand before the shaded spot of naptime animals
and watch them sleep and that is all.
A small aside:
A friend of mine across many waters
Knows the secret of animal flowers
In tincture they brine
Till chamomile and hyssop have breath like bears
And rock rose, dogwood, heavy magnolia and iris smell of Badger semen, silver and bright
Onto the embodied, made bodies of inspirited animals the tincture is passed
Until standing, they dance round the room laughing
And sniffing and grunting and growling
The scent of flowers sending animals scurrying into beds and fields and dreams and dreams
And when my friend leaves his house, Oh when he leaves his house
It is as a floral beast, wrapped in the odor of foxes sighs and wolf laughter
One day I suppose, on all fours he will go down and start off down the path with a new nose
and claws and claws
One day this will all be over
One day I will be gone
Perhaps on a grave will lay bestial flowers
My ashes might dust the rodent daffodils
But what could truly be less my business than that?