All of One Brood
Writing Prompt: Blah, Blah, Blah…The year before you were born.
1956 was a very good year for a seed like me. I was just about ready to break ground…
The really big, powerful ones are the most fun to watch: calabazitas, frijoles. They look like they are causing the birth of a miniature mountain, a wee little volcanic eruption, as they uncoil and strengthen their stem to breath in the world above ground, bringing with them the moist, deep secrets of Mother Earth. The sacred spiral unfurling is a beautiful dance to behold.
The climbers, as they reach and grasp, wrapping tender new tendrils around whatever is handy: like baby’s tiny fists finding something steady to hold on to, as their strength increases, day by day. Grasping, climbing, hoisting, their ever expanding bulk, finding the upright position and taking its advantage in moving forward, up and into the world, climbing steadily towards the Father, the Sun.
The sun flower, as it grows from a tender, juicy, vulnerable and very edible young sprout… to a powerful young tree like adult, through the budding out of the earthly face of Father Sun, is an inspiration and a damn good reason to get up in the morning. My beautiful garden is a 5:30 am, rise and shine kind of a blessed sanctuary.
This miraculous holy thing that I participate in, is the single most lustrous pearl of my life. It’s like stepping into a living breathing writhing balmy breathed emerald… stepping right in, being made stronger and more whole just by taking it in, in through the eyeballs and breath, into the soul: letting the vibrant, vibrations of plant medicine heal me to the core.
There is strength not easy for me to miss in all of this, simultaneous, reaching up and digging deep. The power of delicate new roots to break ground: to push deeper and deeper into the mysterious brooding body of Mother Earth to be fed… the brilliance of turning Father Sun’s solar power into one’s own flesh! To seek, in both directions, life and all it has to offer.
Living intimately within the process of seed becoming plant and plant becoming food capable of sustaining other forms of life enhances every aspect of my own. Taking responsibility for growing the food that I eat, the food that becomes my own flesh… feeding my soul and hooking me up fully: engaging my body and spirit as one.
I want to live in my garden. I need to create a garden house. Just like when I went out into the woods to live in Alaska. There I lived like a squirrel in my little house of trees: the earth floor, the log walls, the pole and sod roof… I am going to build myself a home in my garden. I am going to listen and learn from the plants how this is to be done. I know them well enough to know that they will teach me how to live beautifully among them.

Someone wants to know why I don’t open up the sacred space of my cyber ceremony to critical debate? I do not bow down before the false god of academia. I am a dyslexic poet. I answer only to Grandfather Coyote and his high holy cadre of spiritual cohorts. If someone wants to enter into a celebration of creativity, well then… let’s dance! But understand all you intellectuals and academicians out there, all of your credentials and education will not help you here. Here, in the realm of Firebird Ceremonies you venture into the sacred space of a Heyoka Coyote Poet Warrior. Careful, because for all the years that I have been honed against the stone of Allah (Ouch!) my pen was at my side; perhaps it has developed an unusual edge. And remember, Grandmother Moon and a spit fire platoon of Ancestors are covering my donkey. I will gladly pit one humble man up against all you highly educated persons out there: and my beloveds name is Hafiz. Let our hearts all be imbued with the sacred sanctum if his holy verse!
I pit fire without the use of a modern kiln, estranging me from the process, because I know how to pit fire, period. I do not have an inordinate amount of breakage because I know how to stop, and ask, and listen, and wait; days, weeks, months, or years if that’s what it takes, and then to humbly accept the gift, in whatever form it comes.
Feel free, all takers, to email me a poem, wrung from the marrow of your ancestral bones; pulsing, hemorrhaging, and oozing with passion for the position you take. I am not asking for what you can prove on paper. But where do you stand in your heart of hearts, and from there, can you truly claim that you know how to and do pit fire your pots? Just how slowly must the fire approach, embrace and kiss the raw clay for the pots to survive that magnitude of unbridled power? If you do not know the answer to this question, you do not know how to pit fire. If on the other hand your overshadowing concern here is “market appeal” and productivity; then yes of course, pit finishing is indeed the correct process for you to employ.
There is a song written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore, sung by Johnny Cash, it expresses very well the magnitude of Love and passion that I feel for my work. I have a profound willingness to sacrifice for and be consumed by this love. The song is called: Ring of Fire. Another song, one he wrote himself, speaks volumes about my relationship with the sacred work that I do. It is called: What Do I Care.
Warn out, academic, fixed railed, disconnected from the land “thinking”, has contributed greatly to this disastrous global situation we are in. This, “I’m right, because I have the paper that says so!” attitude won’t fly here.
Ah, but what does the heart say?
It is the poetic spark of original creative thought, in us all, that will save our collective donkey!

Jump Your Tracks

It happened back in the good old days of homesteading Quietude Pottery in Alaska that I dealt with the fixed rails of bureaucracy. After cutting the lines, building the cabin and living on the land for three years, a surveyor was called. He measured, calculated and documented the reality I called home. When at last his work was done and the map arrived, I noticed that his plotting was flawed. He had oriented the rectangular, 17.5 acres of my homestead east to west, not north to south. I realized that at some point down the line this would become a problem. So, I went into the land office to explain the situation. I was assured numerous times that the surveyors map was not and could not possibly be wrong. This paper was, for them, reality. There for, in their minds, I must be wrong. Over and over I explained the situation: the reality of the land and my intimate relationship with it. Over and over she insisted that the reality of the paper overrode my unfounded belief in my own personal experience on the land. At some point she must have jumped her tracks: because the surveyor would indeed be called back. As for his findings, suffice it to say, that the reality of the land surely does trump the so-called reality of their paper world.

This week I have been accused of using a term that does not exist. The term “pit finished ceramics”, I am told, does not exist because it has no “scholarly credibility”. It has never once been published, anywhere, therefore, from an academic point of view it does not exist. I have never once been accused of being an academic, ever, therefor I am not. I am a dyslexic poet. The term “pit finished ceramics” I assure you exists, because I myself coined and published it on my humble little blog, just last week!

The river does not follow,
the train upon its tracks.
It is the tracks,
that follow the stream.
Only the river is free,
to change it’s course.

Last week in the infinite wisdom of the dream time, I grabbed hold of the mane of an unbridled horse, flung myself upon his wild, naked back and rode. I could see the river flowing free and the tracks of the train beside it heading south. I ride upon the back of an unbridled horse: not even the banks of the river shall contain me, for I am free!

Elohim, Ants and Arugula

I just must take a moment here to give thanks for the simple and lovely fact that the greenhouse ants do not seem to care for spinach. These are the regular type of large red ants. They are not the really huge headed reds that Moon and I see out walking in the desert. I love them all. But it is a special pleasure to watch the greenhouse ants harvest the kale and carry it home. These days, now that we are hitting the low 90’s, it is dry by the time they get it home. Super organic homegrown kale makes for healthy happy ants. But I must admit that I was a little miffed at how hard they hit the arugula seed pods! Perhaps they have plans to do a little farming of their own! I am every bit as fond of the incredible intelligence of the arugula seed as I am my precious friends the ants. The arugula seed knows how to wait. They will sit all summer out, right there on the scorching earth, rain or no and wait. Perhaps a really late summer /fall or very early winter rain will come! And then there will be an arugula wide burst of creative energy. We can learn a lot from the patience and utter brilliance of the ant and the arugula seed.

In love, under the full Moon.