Cardamom Apparitions

Now Blindness asks, What’s in a photograph?
That bending scent–your garden, ripe with dew…
Your softball scar! My gawky dyke giraffe!
Some laughter echoes, tracing down our youth.

The card’mom ghosts that clung to kitchen air…
House renovations–rainbow gingerbread…
The peachy rinse that clouded your roped hair…
Accordion folds…your grin, the sheets, our bed…

Apartments old and brittle; photographs.
So clingy to the touch…Prints left behind…
Your book unshelved, you cradle it–new calf.
Between the slips you visit wilder times

Without me. I turn off light’s waterfall–
Your skin my album…my state…sweet recall.

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This article was originally posted on wiselittleraccoon.gaia.com on April 2, 2007. —WT

Between looking for love and looking for close enough for the next hour, I certainly have read a lot of singles profiles lately. And it occurs to me that some of you could use the help of a writer like me. For example, everyone–raise your hand if you do NOT like watching sunrises and sunsets. Apart from getting up early, is there anyone out there saying, “...another sunrise?”

Here’s the next question: Who among you is dreading the next time you’re forced to walk at length on a beach? “Oh, God. There’s a beach ahead. How will I manage?”

Then there are the listings of qualities the seeker wants in a mate: kind, generous, compassionate, good listener, likes to laugh and have fun…Come on, people, what potential mate is reading this thinking, “Damn, compassionate again. And if only I were kind and generous we’d be a great match, but, oh well…”

I’ll write your profile for you. I bill by the hour. No hurt intended; I see heart in every singles listing. But not everybody has the gift of written gab…

It’s about how cliches feel powerful to the speaker in the moment but lose their juice at lightning speed on the way to their audience. I’m thinking of offering a poetry workshop again here at the Heathcote Conference Center. My first exercise is to open up an idea, wider than the cliche that makes it ordinary conversation, to see the unique poetic experience of that thing.

If a sunrise is cliche, then meditate in that sunrise for a moment. What are you doing? You’re drinking coffee. What do you notice? Random thoughts–you left your gloves at Brenda’s. How do you feel? Restless. Why? The sunrise has the power of a huge natural event, like a canyon fire rolling out its carpet on a California suburb. Something needs cleansing by fire…

But sunrise and fire are cliches. Gloves and coffee are specific poetic colors. Be as specific as seeds–A seed isn’t going to sprout an oak if it’s in a holly berry…

Here’s my poem that explores my thoughts:

Specific as a Seed

Specific as a seed,
not an oak if it’s a holly,
my next poem will break
your heart. You will
see a sunrise for the
first time and be still with
your coffee and your
breath. You will remember
the gloves you left at
Brenda’s. You will re-
member a poem on
film and our argue-
ment over my
pet chicken. You will
see a sunrise for the
first time as a
canyon fire, out
of control, and you will
buy a ticket home.

You, standing in my
yard, will be to me as
specific as a seed.

–WT

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Bathwater Tea

Let’s banish Earl Grey in
favor of darjeeling
but bring back the
bergamot when the
window moon sings
lavender, orange peel and steam.
Candles from your “used” box,
red, peach, lime, cobalt colors,
sit on saucers from the
set your mother gave–
If she only knew.

It’s a clawfoot kettle,
a tapwater Niagara
spills, rage into resignation,
passion into peaceful
poolfullls of surrender.
Nowhere to go baby!

Rose petals bob and wash
up, saved, on the shore of your skin.
I know that shore and
I shadow it again
in the flickerlight, where your
everyday worrylines soften,
surrender, still oil shining on your
surfaces,
rocking in pastel paisleys on the
water’s lip,
kissing your crevices,
and I climb in.

I sip from your darjeeling
and it pools on my tongue
and I laugh, still self conscious
after all these moons. Your
full breasts surface as
you accommodate me
and I dive into a fragrance,
a fleshy bubble and a
cavernous mouthful of
darjeeling, bathwater and you.

—WT

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We know this secluded warm pool
and every time my plane lands in your town
we agree by looks to dip a little deeper.

I’ve been marking my mother’s gin bottles,
afraid to see the levels go down…and marking
my skin as the water of us climbs me…and you

and there is the breath-held thrill that fear might
come as a cold current. But not so far, and last
time you dipped me in the words I love you.

It wasn’t a splash, just some interplay of water
waves and sound waves and time spiraling
imperceptibly as we gave space and touch.

How do I mark this?

Fear asks the question. I know you meant it
as another holon holding me against my own
demon towel. How do I let you know that,

even so, I’ll take it?

Gin bottles. I drink too much fear. In a growing
moment, I believe I can breathe underwater.
And our warm pool is space, silently expanding
after the big bang that didn’t hurt a bit.

–Wren Tuatha

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Look at me wintering, wise little raccoon,
cold, anxious fingers licking tea and dreadlocks,
sorting yellow seeds from poppy seeds,
poppy seeds from dirt, dirt from food.
Washing and typing, busy hands to
keep up with this head, ahead of this
pining for summer and shiny sweat.

Light will rise soon, bringing haiku and
didgeridoos.

Shiny things. Knobs to turn and regret.
Spilling and more things to sort.
Shiny things, the glint in his eye in a
photograph. The prism in his eye so
close that his open mouth is sifting me
in like plankton. Hazel. His eyes are
shiny. I surrender my skin to his
nutrition.

Light kisses his calendar and we are
markers and pix and a plate of
pearly mung beans. Yellow seeds left,
poppy right, and parsley, deep green
from between the bricks. A shiny eye
and I loose my language.

—WT

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Seasons spiral. Playful, clever kittens become standoffish cats, parsnips become stirfry. People spiral, too. After a year of traversing the wilds of The Ozarks and Kentucky, I came full circle and landed where I started, at Heathcote Community. And Iuval spun out too, landing in Atlanta, answering his son’s call.

In the same, transient way, things come and things go. Shoes become air-conditioned foot coverings, nations become archaeology.

About a month ago, my ex-partner let me know that he gave away his bio-diesel schoolbus, Shadowslo. Just gave it away. In the same moment I felt like someone had died and I was impressed. I was also confused. Didn’t he need the bus for housing at his new Intentional Community? Why give away such a basic resource, just when he was launching his project?

“I’m in this meditation group and we were given an assignment to give away something of value. Most people were giving away rings or things like that. But then I met these people and they said they’d always wanted a veggie bus. It just seemed right.”

Wow. I wonder if I could do that. I also wonder if it’s smart, but mainly, I wonder if I could do it. This gift is no kidney, but it’s certainly on the order of Pay It Forward. I wonder what the people who accepted his gift thought of his act. I notice my shelfishness in wishing I could have seen Shadowslo one last time, to remember our shelf on that mountain in Murray Valley, Arkansas and say goodbye.

When I ponder my relationship to my possessions, I’m fond of saying, “If my house burned down tomorrow and I lost everything in it, as long as the pets got out, my quality of life would be the same.” I don’t know how deeply I mean that or not, now that I realize it’s not the same as saying, “Come on in and take anything you like. I won’t miss it!”

Iuval’s a big Howard Zinn fan and since Zinn’s recent death, I’ve been reading his A People’s History of the United States. Zinn makes a clear point of American Indians’ relationship to possessions, how they gave of them freely and seemed to lack attachment, and how most resources were communally held. He notes also how, although Europeans sometimes wrote of this with admiration, they universally went on to exploit it.

Even so, I believe that simplicity, especially in turning away from material things, is the path to be desired. It’s what will serve us now. If we can lighten the demands we make on the planet and begin to conceive of resources as communal, we might make it.

So, dear readers, I knew the departed well. Shadowslo never traveled when I knew him. He stood firm where Iuval had planted him, on a densely wooded mountain. He got his water from a spring and only took what he needed. Tents  and cars came and went around him. Sometimes he was alone on that mountain for weeks at a time, ready, solar batteries charged, waiting, for Iuval to return.

I heard the stories of Shadowslo’s adventures, trips to the West Coast, rock festivals with Iuval’s son, Zac, tours of Intentional Communities with his previous partner, Christina, Saint Christina to some.

Legend had it that no state trooper could lay eyes upon this organically painted hippie house rolling down the interstate at the speed limit and resist pulling it over.

The mountain folk of Murray Valley will no doubt tell the tales of Shadowslo, driving onto the mountain, on that dirt road laid out using plans designed by a kitten with string. And then, 2 years later, Shadowslo repeated the feat, taking an entire day and several shouting matches to go six miles.

Now there are the Atlanta legends, in which Shadowslo and Iuval, seemingly together to stay, landed in a friend’s yard as the leaves changed, and Iuval’s life changed, bringing one last change to our faithful steed.

Shadowslo could be said to have heart and soul and a kitchenette. He sheltered and carried and rested. He obeyed Iuval’s every command, unless his fuel was rancid or his headlight popped out. He kept out the rain, wind, ice and snow, but not mice.

But despite his motor and mobility, and his fold down solar shower, Shadowslo was an object, a possession, a parcel that could be bartered, sold or given away.

Even more than this, Shadowslo was a gift to those who knew him. And so, let us offer him into his next service, a gift of some randomness and shock value, which is always interesting, maybe even poetic.

–WT

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I hate winter. I don’t like the short days, arriving at dinner in the dark. I don’t like being cold and having to bundle up in layers. I feel like the Michelin Man, so bundled up that my arms don’t even rest at my sides! Since I hate being cold, I spend little time outside and I need you to understand–I live and belong outside! It’s like telling one of the wild ponies of Assateague Island, “For four and a half months of the year, we’re gonna put you in a dark, drafty box with a few books, an iffy internet connection and rations thrown in twice a day.” Not relevant, not nice!

One of my zen masters who helps me cope with winter is Leo Lionni’s mouse character Frederick, of the children’s book that bears his name. In this book from my childhood, the other members of Frederick’s little mouse family/Intentional Community are busy gathering grains, seeds and straw for winter. Frederick appears to be lazy, and claims he’s gathering other stores for the cold, lean times. Later, in the frigid darkness, when rations are low, Frederick warms his family/Intentional Community with memories of the sun’s warm rays, the colors of flowers and grasses and poetic, inspirational verses.

Since I’m a poet living in community with carpenters, gardeners, etc., I love this story for suggesting that even we useless dreamers have something to contribute to our tribes’ survival. So here goes: In February, I offer you, my readers, family and Intentional Community, memories of summer–forest walls of green, the endless salad bar for the goats, tie dye drying on the line and naked badminton–love and play in full flower!

–WT

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Yes, it’s a stereotype: hippies living on the commune, dressed in homemade tie dye as they garden and strum guitars. But if stereotypes are rooted in some small reality, this one is alive and well at Heathcote Community.

Here at Heathcote, we have a ten-year member, Carol, who loves to practice and pass on this craft. She’s usually up for a tie dyeing party, and she’s even held workshops in it. Carol dyed Hippie Chick Diaries’ spiral banner for us. And she mentored the Open Classroom kids in tie dyeing sheets for our Chinese New Year dragon, which we paraded up and down our road with much fanfare, making as much noise as possible from Heathcote Earthings’ fair trade instruments!

Most of us have t-shirts, sundresses, skirts, sweatshirts, etc., tie dyed in community with Carol’s help. I love seeing community mates showing them off!

So when Heathcoter Charles gave my partner and me two sets of queen sized organic cotton sheets, I knew what I wanted to do!

Iuval and I, and the two shelties, were ready to graduate from a double bed to a queen. Charles had a mattress to give away. But I loved my old bed, an heirloom. It wasn’t anything fine, a double bed that had been bought for my two old great great aunts when there was a fire at the old farm in Kentucky. Iuval and I decided to adapt the old headboard and footboard to a new queen sized platform. It took us a couple of days to get it just right. The time we spent working together on it was magical, as we problem-solved and puzzled it out.

But I was worried about the sheets Charles so generously included with the mattress. They were thick and clearly expensive, too nice for my dirty, rustle-in-the-woods family. We would have them stained and grungy before you could say, “What dead thing have you been rolling in?”

So, off to Carol’s  tie dye emporium! She and her partner Paul live on Heathcote’s back parcel, in a pioneer log cabin with their two children and a very large cat named Smudge. This cat will let you pet him, but will eventually, without warning, attack your hand as if he were just injected with Tasmanian Devil DNA. He and my dog Tuatha have known each other their entire lives. Despite this history, Smudge still appears appalled and ready to defend his border whenever Tuatha visits. And Tuatha still acts as if Smudge should just get over it and start wrestling around the ground with him. “If you would simply let me sniff your butt, and if you would just smell this corner of the porch I’ve so thoughtfully marked for you, you would understand I’ve come in peace!” If dog people and cat people can coexist, why can’t dogs and cats?

On the lawn of the cabin, Carol helped me spread out dropcloths and organize the colors of dye. I would dye the off-white sheets; Iuval would dye the set that already had a pale lavender color. I planned my pattern for a long time and selected colors that matched the decor of our loft. Iuval grabbed bottles as they suited him and started squeezing with the consideration of a three year-old. Everyone had fun and the results were enchanting.

After leaving the sheets and pillowcases tied over night, we rinsed them with a garden hose and laundered them. And when we made the bed and climbed inside, it was the little world we had built entirely together, not my homestead at Heathcote, not his veggie bus in Arkansas, but a queen sized new start.

These days I’m still at my homestead, down to one dog and no Iuval. He’s moved on to Atlanta to be with his son. I think I’ll send those lavender-and-every-other-color-he-could-grab sheets down to Atlanta. I’m keeping the ones that match my loft.

And maybe this spring, long after the Chinese New Year, I’ll show up at Carol’s cabin with the bag of old shirts and skirts I’ve been saving. Who else is ready for a burst of color?

–WT

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This morning I sold my dog, set my goats free in the State Park, smashed my favorite mug and cut my dreadlocks off. Then I opened my eyes, stretched into my freedom and heard my choices chirping. I sat with my tea, kissed the dog, fed the goats, tied back my hair and began the story of my life again. These things I choose: the snow that’s falling anyway, even though it knows my position on this; the solitude of my pajamas until another dark; a phone and a tray of brownies. This work I take up: clearing off the kitchen table; filling the box to mail to him; asking myself three questions that bloody me at the edges…This morning I sold my dog. I might do anything next. But most likely, I won’t surprise you.

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I told you then I would take it out back and
kill it with a knife but I couldn’t do it.
You stumbled upon my love today as then.
It’s a folding chair, forgotten in the woods,
rusting beside living oaks and rotting, jutting stumps, unsuitable seats.
Your mind tries to pick up its stories from the air around,
a picnicker, a hunter, absent minded yogi.
but stories are noise, excuses. Mute air transmits this year’s bird noise,
same as the moment before and the moment after this chair was left here.

You realize the years–Four legs grounded through
snow mounding and hurricanes,
the inflating and shriveling of mushrooms.
Fox and mouse, mouse and beetle, squirrel and squirrel.
Food and urges and panic. I remember loving you. There was noise.

Mute, awake air, used to being taken in and released,
doesn’t suffer seasons or fools,
doesn’t root for predator or prey, doesn’t pray that you find
your own heart among curly, restless ferns.

I still do.

–Wren Tuatha

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