equinox rising
first frost
sweetening the plums
branches touching back to earth
ruby-blue plums draping
heavy chains of fruit
Forest Love /
Roses, pink noses and wet cat fur. Fish, funky socks and polka dots. Stripes, broken pencil tips and toast. I love my friend the most.
A birthday present.
Color Me /
Marching /
Warm in the valley
deep clouds touching all peaks
cradling the frosted dry grassland
and her people
Cascading
toward the earth's parted lips
Swallowed all the children whole
and spit up their eyes
so they might still see
Gentle insight
a man wants a home
and needs to be held
Ribbon carries tiny
breaths like atoms dancing,
forget what you know
and make it up
Before the storms, after the wind
we sit in warm waiting,
like spring green spiking subtle
under leaves the color of the rocks
where it breaks, we burst
open with joy
Welcoming another tide in earnest.
the moon setting at the sun rise,
grey in lavender dragging pink down –
behind volcanoes – to rest
I felt it at its height pulling the seeds
from my belly,
friend and foe,
farmer and reaper
The ocean breathes the earth's breath
Choking on our her own creativity.
In and out
steady and strained, but easy as turning around
always turning over one shoulder
never looking back over the other
so leaving one spot for hiding behind the year
Sometimes one will slip back there
and stay
Alone and safe forever from the changes of the sea
as she plays gently over history and devours mine
and me
mooncat /
It was the spinning in the ice that woke me at 3am. The closest moon i've ever seen. I ran to it, tried to hold it. The cold seeped into my shoulders and the light into the scent of the cold. And it was my breath and my blanket. It was the essesnce I dream so vividly of. And fleeting - in the cold snow - reflecting back the light much brighter for just that setting slide i lifted my face, eyes closed. Moon pond of the soul.
blue sky /
turning north - away from the hearth - reaching the border and the blue sky of a new, new year. I take a moment, a slice of life, to imagine myself atop the higher peaks, walking toward the filling moon.
Decemberism /
The feeling of being pinned down by the clouds. Thank (my) god that at this altitude one still has a lot of room to move between compressing particles. Not so some places - where the atmospheric weight and the darkness can nearly get you walking horizontally on your toes.
The Aspen Hour /
After the past two weeks up in the mountains, trees going off like fireworks, and me the lucky one who's gone up into it, we have finally had our first snow and frost (snow on the peaks that is). Some of the color lingers, dimming - but here's my reminder of what amazing changes we've enjoyed.
Lost Lake /
round the bend
lake curve
the wind
scree chute
up the face
sweeping skyward
vertical lake
the path
peeking over
north east of Red River
greeetings from the fall /
hello from the stormy southwest mountains where busily I make art,
tend garden and chase rainbows - .
/
plum -
the gold time /
rise and shine
long grow the nights and cold
listening for whispers
hidden along the fold
Western Intrepid Traveling /
gallup trail ride
breezy
over the hill
lake mojave
forest
zion clouds
zion wall
family on zion
origin
dead
looking back
night light
grand!
woven
glow
natural path
western light
mountain lion
across the storm clouds
on the trail
delicious
white cliffs
sitting
monument storm
monument clear
monument far
red earth
canal
across
red rising
Forest riding home /
east on Hondo-Seco rd. to Arroyo Seco.
warm day, away
in the garden
bumble bee
Saul /
Saul Williams
Mountain Currents April 12, 13 2008 /
I was recently involved in shooting, compiling, organizing and presenting an image reel for a multimedia chamber music concert in conjunction with the Taos Chamber Music Group (Taoschambermusicgroup.org) and Composer Hilary Tann (hilarytann.com). In this video - the images were generously provided by TCMG board member Robert Fitch, Taos photographer Geraint Smith (geraintsmith.com) and Richard T Hasbrouck (querencia.smugmug.com) of Truchas, NM our neighbor to the south, and myself. This reel was developed to accompany the composition "Zephyr" for alto flute and cello by TCMG director Nancy Laupheimer (Nancy is also the performing flautist).
Three pieces of H.Tann's were performed, "Nothing Forgotten" - which included images by New York Photographer Larry White - "Llef", and "The Gardens of Anna Maria Luisa De Medici". A Dvorak piece, "Dumky" trio rounded out the concert's rich program.
Shown in the contemporary gallery of the UNM Harwood Museum on the evenings of April 12 and 13, these collaborative concerts titled Mountain Currents were a wonderful honor to be a part of. Please enjoy this smaller "draft" version of the accompaniment to Zephyr.
Cat and Hilary
Grand Expanse /
Time beat down the tall trees. Water dismantled mountains and left them miles adrift, elbows near noses etcetera. The stretching world rearranged its skeleton and lifted apart what once was whole.
What is left? Much much more.
I wondered throughout. About the travel from one grain to another once bonded at a distant peak.
I was at once alone.
And yet love and earth
were everywhere around me.
Selections of Sketch /
losing ground /
In the canyon at dawn, I felt the eagle. Unmistakable, he flew past us on an early morning hunt. As the world around us degrades by our ignorance, for now, at least, some things prevail to do as they have always done. I can not bear the weight of being human some days. Knowing what I am responsible for. I look at what life provided and say - why was it not enough? Why selfish and sparkling intelligence should set us about a course unwittingly to destroy the beauty we seek endlessly which is surrounding, not eluding, us, I do not understand. The eagle, white head, golden mouth soaring span stretched nearly to touch the winter white banks of Rio Grande. Not even Chaos can find its balance now. Hither come the dark spirits. Go. Sit. Be still. Try not to break anything else today.
Frozen Loom - Wax Wheel /
Held high - the need to be one's own control,
one's own trust and one's own ideals.
Cold season, short days, learning to write
all over again or for the first time,
still there is a discipline to it.
Mine was a script glimpsed at the beginning of the game,
where things fell so easily into place on the loom,
as though I had known it all before.
It is not as such for all beings.
The hard long life and all its necessities
- learning words - learning worlds
- what makes us up and what makes us rise up,
and what brings us above what simply makes us up.
And to know truly what it means to be down.
\
Watching the angst grow in her
and fear in him, watching the love
all around us sink our hearts, eternal,
over the trials of maturing into
honest and capable reflections.
Red shoes, black cap.
A threat unknown perched high
and waiting a strike - futile but flaming none the less.
Journey,
Journey and find a way to hold our own.
A rebellious streak.
We develop without understanding
the litereary implications of our tears.
Coming again to a new year
and closer to the flux of warm days,
waiting again for blossoms after
a cold compression and marbling
of beauty and anxiety which so fills an early-childhood waning.
As for the guidance - it is sound if strained and takes
into account its own past and future
- hinged tightly to the heels of one's children
- though they know not nor ask of it.
Leaving another year behind,
strong and desparate
walking away from view pulling on my eyelashes
still heavy with the weight, not to be lifted, not to be dropped,
to remain until death, to continue heavily,
carried over all peaks and through all valleys - the knowledge
- once earned - never discarded,
never separated from the loom,
though perhaps the run is past.
Let the wax wheel spin, gather,
separate and finally, its purpose done, melt away.
The loom alone and frozen 'til another life slide through.