SAMPLE POEMS – The River-Fed Stone <--back to main samples page

YANAYACU THRESHOLDS

The passage of the magical threshold
is a transit into a sphere
of rebirth…

Dawn
Flush with music of insect-gods
and risen waters,
river voices flow through our bones,
skin moist and coiled
around pregnant moon, singing—
child cries out the morning

Early Impression
So this is what I once fought
the hamburger chains & multinationals over:
trees backing into the horizon,
a river fat and green with fresh rain
and reflections of faces
brown and green, together

Along banks, thatched-roof houses,
young boy and girl fish from long canoe,
grandma on the porch
cutting grandpa’s hair, watching,
soaking up the day,
her silent wisdom layering
over itself, the river and jungle floor
brown and green, together
one surviving
because of the other.

Puma Greets His Mate
Rising with the morning,
you stretch an arm on the stone,
legs flowing out, mane adrift,
your eyes illuminated
by last night’s communion
with the universe.

A lioness you are,
proud, strong, playful,
ready to laugh at a joke,
nuzzle a wounded heart
or fight to the soul
for what you believe
is rightly yours,
or just right.

Stretched out, fanned out,
sunrise color your eyes,
open to become my den.

Pink Dolphin Magic
She rises before the bow,
Brown, swollen, clothed
In branches and trunks of canopy
The rains stripped away,
Her flush cheeks lifting
The horizon line.

We enter her from the Yanayacu,
Turn the boat, swept quickly
Toward center upon currents
So strong a half-dozen oarsmen
And a squawking tree monkey
Can’t change our direction,
So intent is she on dumping
Her fury at the foot of her mate—
The eastern sun.

In her center, calmness,
Heart polished by a billion storms,
Nourished by lungs of the canopy
A mile away on either side.
Her water breaks—
Out fly pink dolphins, pod of four,
Arching into the sun
And dispelling the myth
That there are no pink dolphins.

What funny things we hear
Up north in civilization—
The brown people
Are wild and vicious cannibals;
The piranha are man-eaters;
The black jaguar has no magic;
The shaman mingles with the dark
In wild incantations meant
To hurt us and steal our power.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

The pink dolphins retrieve
All of our dispelled myths,
Punctured with their noses,
Carry them deep into her bosom,
Where she will sweep them
To the same place
She carries all effluvia—
Into the next sunrise.

Down the Alley
Down the alley,
a housewife sells not-quite-real
alpaca wool and dolls.
Teens embrace in the corner
of recycled Inca foundation—
a temple or a leaf
chewed by the old man
walking on stones laid
to pave an empire.
Smoke rises from restaurant vent,
smoke of maize, clean and pure,
straight into heaven.

Shaman’s Courtyard
While boys play marbles and girls coochie-coo
and hug new friends,
their brothers and sisters drag quinoa stalks,
to stalls on tump lines,
Where the rest of the family waits
to strip the prized grain,
nourisher of a great brown people
(and orbiting astronauts).
They sit against a wall decked in red, maize,
twenty shades of sky and sun—

A pig grunts in disgust at the visitors
while chickens, sheep, dogs, cat, turkey
run on the dirt, chasing each other, shadows.
A boy whips a cow forward, visitors slip
into courtyard, hay on dirt,
an open banos in the back, people waiting
to see the shaman,
standing in line. Waiting.

Dry night, cool, pulsing with energy,
scent of manure and sage filtering from the room.
We walk in. Coca leaves spread on the floor,
smoke, spirit and magic surrounding
a wrinkled face flickering between two candles,
shuffling leaves, looking into the eyes
of souls that feed off the conquered land
of his mighty ancestors
but he reads anyway, his job to send messages
that cleanse souls, not stain his own
with their blood.

They spill outside, reading complete,
a different spin to the world.
Dog loses interest in animal he’s chasing,
ducks behind a shadow.
A girl runs upstairs.

Corn Dance
A hundred sunrises
seasoned this corn
into forty flavors
of the sky—

feeding civilizations,
perennial cycle of
a mighty seed.

Eat kernels,
learn the dance

Offering: Temple of the Sun
I offer my heart
To the spirit of the work.
I offer my eyes
To give sight to your vision.
I offer my tongue
To speak your words to others
That they may live in light
That we all live in light
That we all vibrate in light
That we all become the light
     To serve light
     To love light
     To touch light
     To touch hearts
     To bring home light
     To bring light home
Light, our home
     To merge
     Into divine light
     Into divine love
     Into sacred union
With you, Great Sustainer