Bear Pen Creek Mandala

l.
That wind and breath are one
come
crashing down mountain side

waterfalls
of wind

cascades
of
windy
breath

snatched away and
given back
moist humors of earth
pillowed on
old oak and bracken
pulverized by starlight
and dusky
hurtling
night winds
from up thar hills
limb and leaf shaken skewers
of haughty breezes
(high winds)

2.
Settled leaves startle,
rise up like feathers

floating
crashing

sailing out of
earshot
moist
humors of breath
commingling,
snatched away in whirlwinds
of starlight and musk
vast mountain storehouse
pounding river rock
to sand

dust

molecules

atoms

4.
pounding river of stars and
old leaf-litter
booming night winds
and
cascading
breath

made
visible

each settled leaf
leaps up on a
skewer of
twisting winds to
braided twisting ribbons
of leaves
rising
towards the
branches they were
weaned from.

5.
Out on the night of wind
hurtling showers of leaf and debris
a mountain of wind
the storehouse keepers have
loosed an
avalanche of dervish breezes
that bore
down
the rain
that
scooped out this valley

Shakes you!
holds steady
then
Shakes you again!

A windy buffeting embrace
that shakes you
in a whirlwind of leaves
an avalanche of wind
bearing down
on
its
own
nothingness

Slams the breath into you!
Pulls it back out!

and
with
startled
animal cry

leaps

through a
whirlpool of stars

promises only,
no becalment.

6.
Brother sister
echo of
water and wind
the hills
grandfathered by time
spawning rivers
that pound rocks
calved from mountains

a prism of stars
sharp as a shaman's knife
a startled animal's cry

this night
anathema to
silence
a mere
infant
struggles
to learn
what he
already
knows.

7.
Stranded beach
swoons
startled caress

fulminating

sickle moon
on another
continent too
the
nocturnal passage
of migratory birds
evinced from their
beginningless past,
wing beats that
drum the night,
the embryonic
steadfast
hold-of-no-loss
assurance
promising only

no arrival

the boundary
of flesh and feather
promising only

no containment

A scooping out of
crescent moon
with each beat, the
trumpeter's nestling,
egg hatched in
an old growth forest
rides the old
gene map of
continent immemorial
as familiar as
b r e a t h i n g.

8.
Pooling eyes at
dusk the
predator come to
see what's for dinner

quiet no look
of all seeing
all sensing

ready to pounce,
motley dappled
coat counterfeits
movement of
wind blown branch
invisible at rest,
eating up and down
the food chain
oh
happy beast!
Supping at the table
of the grandfathers.

9.
The trespassed cordons of
boundaryed off demesne,
old growth
pinioned and weeping,
the whispered procurement
of old standing
old loss
in the
tumbled
down
ruins
betokening substrate
of a chided people,
limning the story
in a wordless palsy of
breathless embattlements

no containment

harbinger and
death rattle at
doors that creak slowly
inward a
life stream of
smoky water snakes
through shifting magma
continents to a
shattered bowl
of seas.

10.
Myself as desolation
my partner a
broken
wordless
vastation
of hurry homeward
latitudes in
meridians of
lost delight

We sail this barque
on a gathering of seas
shipping water
throwing bread to the fish
looking with horror
into lightless depths a
promise of

no boundaries

No chosen vessel
but here to sink
in watery consummation

all hands all hope.

11.
Probing leaf litter
in a world that
asks no questions but
hurls them gently back
yes and.......?
yes and.......?

Probing leaf litter
darkness falling
last of birdsong,
leaves barely a-flutter
the time of dusk
between
one star
and
ten billon
who can teach me the way of the pipe?

Probing leaf litter
striking
root
I look up at
the mountain
silhouetted
in the
northern sky
and dream
of holding
Michelle a
single heart
pulsing
from genitals to fingertips.

12.
Did she leave
us nothing
to mystery,
her song a
whoop of joy
cry brethren to mercy
give solstice to wind
leave no stone unturned.

Strange flowers in moonlight
nodding in their cups
a brace of breezes
hoar frost
an
edgy coating
the
ice-rimed veins of
fallen leaves
given fractional forth
the tutelage of old roots
fat and succulent
old wrinkled hands
a
tumbled down dance
to earth is all.