the ugly earring

(photo from here)

and bees in cleveland

“It’s a really lovely example – you have this amazing beast that’s been around for tens of millions of years surviving as a relic population on this island. Then people arrived and they basically disappear in a couple of hundred years,”

“When people turn up they put these populations under enormous pressure – they might not be giving the final, killer blow but they’re adding another level of stress. It looks like these fantastic turtles are another example.”

(from here)

(photo: Jeffers Petroglyphs- Image of turtle and man, looking East)

I heard from someone you’re still pretty
And then
They went on to say…

(photo: W. Robert Moore, National Geographic Society)

When we saw the wounds of our country
appear on our skins,
we believed each word of the healers.
Besides, we remembered so many cures,
it seemed at any moment
all troubles would end, each wound heal completely.
That didn’t happen: our ailments
were so many, so deep within us
that all diagnoses proved false, each remedy useless.
Now do whatever, follow each clue,
accuse whomever, as much as you will,
our bodies are still the same,
our wounds still open.
Now tell us what we should do,
you tell us how to heal these wounds.

(excerpt of you tell us what to do by Faiz Ahmed Faiz)

(photo from the virgin spring by ingmar bergman)

(~Through A Glass Darkly— Ingmar Bergman)

‘All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’

~Pascal

Dearest M,

Before you were born, I dreamed you would arrive during the perseids shower. Like a flailing meteorite breaking through the earth’s atmosphere with a trail of dust and 130-year-old memories, you would land softly on our backyard lawn. Instead, you arrived during a sky of blue, on a warm summer day, long before the locusts broke into their ritual,  monk-like hum.

The first image was sunlight. The first sound was a cello.

Why is it the first face of a newborn is that of the dead?

Mother’s heat, breast, heart for you, purple lips and fingers.

Tomorrow you will be one.

Five teeth.

Little lizard queen.

Long arms and legs.

Barnacle.

Whale calf.

Guardian of the backyard beetles.

Your sister and I sat on the bamboo mat with a blanket and two pillows, gazing up into the sky. We didn’t see them fall last year but last night they arrived. You, tired, wrestled in your father’s arms (and cried in mine).

The train comes nightly. You listen to the whistle as he points to the sky. “Stars.”

You point to the sky, too.

It’s the first one I see. A brilliant tail streaks across the sky.

“Did you see it?”

They say most meteoroids are destroyed when they enter the atmosphere, and only 500 meteorites ever make it to land (and only five or six are ever found).

Cosmic dust.

Shooting star.

Fireball.

Tomorrow, you will be one.

the houses in my dreams:

1.

the first one is a farm house and inside is a bedroom filled with dolls. My great aunt zoe had a doll room with hundreds of porcelain faces – some with real hair and pincurls or eyes that opened and closed. Others were dressed in crochet dresses and a few held lace handkerchiefs she made by hand.

I often went to her doll room to explore, to touch, and occasionally untie the laces of their victorian booties.

When aunt zoe died, what happened to her dolls?

Near the farm house, the barn is on fire and a water leak inside the house has caused the walls to swell. The little dolls’ dresses are covered in mildew. drip. drip. drip. The water drips from the ceiling and lands in the bear claw tub overfilled with water.

Who left the plug in the tub?

Grandpa, what are you doing here?

2.

I am alone in the abandoned glass house except for a monkey that lives in the overgrown rubber plant tree. When I was a child, I had a German Shepard  named Rojo and a monkey doll. Her plastic booties, life-like hands and ears were sewn into her stuffed-animal body. A little white bow hung untied next her right ear. I dressed her in my clothes.

Outside, Rojo waited for us.

Because it is dilapidated and worn, nearly extinct, I am loyal and remain here. The spiral staircase leads to a metal walkway along the roof tier. I greet the monkey up there and leave it bananas and bread.

It smells like my Grandmother’s greenhouse.

Alone in a glass house -  me, the monkey, and overgrown vines.

My parents explained the reason Rojo was put to sleep was because he bit the neighbor child who had raised his hand to hit me. A loyal protector.

3.

Above my bed, hangs a painting of dancers in long dresses in a dark lit cave. The last house is haunted, and you mustn’t open the door to that room. They say the girl slit her wrist.

I pick the bedroom on the other side of the house. Near my window, there is a weeping willow and a pond. It’s beautiful here but I avoid that side of the house. There’s a spare bedroom, which shares the bathroom with the bedroom where she lingers. They say they are going to rent that part of the house.

But I tell them, they mustn’t disturb her – must not open the door to that room.

They’ve opened all the windows. They’re airing it out for the new tenant. I  hear the creak of a door, it’s coming from that side of the house. Why aren’t they home? Why am I going to that side of the house?

The door is open. The curtains are blowing, billowing, like the bottom flair of the dancers’ dresses in the painting. She’s not in the room anymore. No, she’s outside, sitting on the crooked trunk of the willow tree. She’s looking into my bedroom.

She’s looking for me.

Lover rushes into my bedroom – says he heard a scream.
I’ve awaken myself, too.
I explain to him one of the dancers – her arms stretched out from the painting.
She was reaching for me.

Did you hear what that woman on Grafton Street was saying?

You won’t be killed today.
We don’t even know we’re born.

~Jean Valentine “Friend”

(photo: buffy sainte-marie)

Uses for White Sage:

• Seeds are ground into a flour and used analogously to polenta to make a porridge
• Leaves are used for flavoring in cooking
• Leaves are also eaten, smoked, or used in a sweathouse as a remedy for colds
• Seeds are dropped into the eye and permitted to roll around under the eyelids in order to cleanse the eyes
• Leaves are crushed and mixed with water to create a hair shampoo, dye, and straightener.
• It can be made into a tea, which decreases sweating, salivation, and mucous secretions in the sinuses, throat, and lungs. Cold tea can be a good stomach tonic, while a lukewarm tea is good for treating sore throats
• White sage is believed to cleanse a space of any evil spirits or ‘negative’ energies that may be present. This power is said to be released from the plant by the burning of the leaves, which are typically bundled into a wand or stick