September/October
2018
by Quincy Saul
with inspiration
and editorial supervision from Kanya D'Almeida, copilot, and major thanks
to Martin Saul y Diana Quintero, Jen Pearson and Robert Crying
Redbear, Bodhi Harnish and Matilda Hernandes-Miyares
1.
A rising smiling moon shines on the
street
Where we are waiting for the bus to
ride
Away from this big city, sick and
sweet,
To where the heart and soul may open
wide –
Above the metal forest now we fly!
To heights where we can see our
Mother's face
And see the squares and smoke that make
her cry
And see the maze and monster we escape
–
Away to soils unpaved and skies
unscraped!
To stars at night and birdsong in the
day,
To holiness with blue horizons draped,
To roads of red and leaves of green we
pray!
Deliver us from artificial life,
And in the wild pronounce us man and
wife!
(Harlem - LaGuardia)
2.
Where Pachamama's breasts rise from the
plains
And garnet glaciers gather up her milk,
Where Comanche rode mustang without
reins,
And raptors rule a silence gold and
silk,
Where faithful geysers gurgle, spout
and fume,
Where doors to underworlds are open
wide –
Through which will rise a continental
doom
And cast the country that we know
aside!
Where buffalo are beautiful and wise,
Reminding us of dread ancestral crimes,
Where mountains lions stalk and
grizzlies climb,
Where moose and elk and mule deer tell
no lies.
Where fewest people live in all the
land
There wilderness may take a final
stand.
(Wyoming)
3.
I cannot shake the sentience of stone
It lingers in my wet and fleshy mind,
Sometimes in chorus and sometimes
alone,
The silence sings of all we've left
behind:
It broadcasts from the spires sculpted
by time
And resonates in canyons carved by
rain:
An epic geologic verse and rhyme
By which the rock reveals that it is
sane!
Where does a stone begin and where's
its end?
Streaked or arched or crushed or pure
or stained,
The stone is patient with its human
friend;
Its message and its mission here are
plain.
One day they just may learn to read the
stone
And join its song, in chorus or alone.
(Druid Arch)
4.
Relentless rocks of
rainbow brown and red
Rising and melting
in vast flows of time,
Through which they
travel lifeless and undead
And preach in
panoramic pantomime...
To those who learn
to read the canyon walls –
The slickrock and
the arches and the spires;
The rock that
balances, the rock that falls;
A cosmic story spun
on silent gyres...
The silence round
which all the world revolves –
The rock which
cannot lie and cannot die
Reveals
relentlessly and thus resolves
Our every who what
when where how and why.
They teach the
ancient past if you will read,
And prophesy the
pacts of destiny.
(Canyonlands and
Arches)
5.
Symbolic?
Allegoric? Literal?
Or were these
categories not conceived
By those who
painted on the canyon wall
And therefore
surely not to be believed?
Confucius, Jesus,
Buddha, Socrates –
These names may
conjure feelings of the age
When ink distilled
from bark and stone and leaves
Was painted on this
canyon's turning page.
In silent
contemplation among friends
The past, present
and future may be one,
And life and art
and rock – no start or end;
Fused by sudden
rain and scorching sun.
The time machine is
ready. Death presides.
Join the grand
gallery with living eyes.
(Horseshoe Canyon)
6.
I first came here
seventeen years ago
But of that I no
single cell remains!
Where memory and
soul reside, who knows?
I ask the ancient
canyon's curves and stains.
Red and redolent of
mystery,
Cradled and cracked
and curved by times caress,
These holy halls
hung with prehistory,
Born of matter,
riding spirit's crest...
A precious woman
reads by candlelight;
A single giant
flower blooms nearby,
And somehow I and I
are one tonight,
As canyon rims cut
slices of the sky.
The future remains
safely round the bend
With its towering
pasts and unknown ends.
(Hurricane Wash)
7.
I came, I saw, I posed and clicked away
And captured every moment on a screen,
With camera I pounce and pierce and
prey,
Accumulating all that I have seen.
How is a picture taken and from whom?
What language binds the thousand words
it's worth?
What mother tongue will speak them and
what womb
Has carried all these stolen souls to
birth?
Does a landscape have a soul to steal?
Or only us, who beg and volunteer
To feel the rapture replacing the real
While through a lens at wilderness we
peer?
Nothing escapes the tourists' cyclops
eye
Except the vast and unknown world
inside.
(Bryce Canyon)
8.
America the
beautiful, how did you get so bland?
How did your grace
and glory peak and pass?
May we remember to
live for the land –
May Southwest stone
redeem Northeastern grass.
How has a New World
aged so suddenly,
Which once won
freedom from its kings and queens
And now is throne
to money's monarchy –
May Southwest red
redeem Northeastern green.
The roads which led
to Rome have led us here,
A continent
transformed into a mall,
Its people bred on
plunder, pomp and fear –
May Southwest
spring redeem Northeastern fall.
Where wilderness
exists there is still hope
May Southwest
dreams redeem Northeastern dopes
Where pavement ends
and desert silence starts
May Southwest
hoodoos heal Northeastern hearts
Where juniper and
sagebrush blooms and grows
May Southwest
sonnets flee New England prose.
(RV park)
9.
A straight-up land
of red and brown and gold
And orange polished
silver by the sun,
And rain that
carves the canyon's drapes and folds,
Where blossoms
green from dusty cliffs are won,
With pools of
emerald and thrones of white,
Where angels land
and Sinawava soars,
Where from the
weeping rock new life delights –
The raven calls,
the mountain lion roars!
Vertical reservoirs
of porous stone
Which from the
desert air and wind divines
Sand sagebrush, oak
and alder, penstemon,
Maidenhair ferns
and golden columbines!
Where velvet ash
and canyon grape preside,
Breathing in the
blueness of the sky.
(Zion)
10.
Abbzug and Hayduke
rested here from work
Defending the
Kaibab the night before –
Where fiction has
been known in fact to lurk,
Where Colorado cuts
to Vishnu's core...
A million years are
measured by the inch
Where gods and
fossils flow, aeons converge,
Revealed and
resting in the canyon's pinch,
New myths and
greater mysteries emerge.
Where Pahaweap and
Wikataka weave
When all the clocks
of timelessness strike noon
And uplift and
erosion have conceived,
The grand abyss is
staring back at you!
A window to the
soul of Mother Earth!
What will you do to
carry dreams to birth?
(Grand Canyon North Rim)
11.
He travels to this
marvel of the world
And climbs the
mighty mesa's highest shelf
To where all
nature's secrets are unfurled
And there he takes
a picture of himself.
Who bred this race
of posers on the rim?
They turn their
backs upon the face of God
And flex and pout
and prance and prate and grin –
What path to
desolation have they trod?
Technocracy and
Narcissus are one,
United in the
kingdom of the lens,
So no one cares to
see the river run,
Or contemplate
their own impending ends.
He's here to be
taken and then to take;
The vultures know
the end is near, and wait.
(Grand Canyon South Rim)
12.
The oldest town
from sea to shining sea –
It never signed a
treaty with the Whites
No water pipes, no
electricity –
Here a nation sings
and sows and fights.
With just a few
inches of rain a year
Their mesa is their
paradise on earth,
A chosen place that
most would dread and fear,
Where purple, red
and yellow corn are birthed.
Here a people
triumphs over greed.
They know their
past and dare not till the land;
“To sow a sietch,
be one with what you need” –
Surrounded twice,
they doubly understand.
Sing praises from
the hilltops for the rain!
Or beg the ants for
refuge once again!
(Old Oraibi; thanks to Robert Crying
Redbear and the Red Rock Native Arts Guild)
13.
¿Podría
poesía de Aztlan
Amanecer
o transnochar en paz
Y fe que su rima será imán
Por
un conjunto de su luz fugaz?
The
sonnet is a stranger here, like me,
It
rhymes and scans with words from far away,
Yet
here it is, and here it strives to be,
And
here it strives to listen and to say
Que
somos las semillas de Aztlan
Chicanos
Shaking Spears for life and truth
Que
los antepasados nos llaman
That
unity is destiny – here's proof!
La
isla de tortuga nos parió
And
we are closer than we ever know.
(Arizona)
14.
With jagged teeth
of stone to saw the blue
A weather maker
calls and conjures clouds,
Its pantheon of
ridges guards the truth
Which draws into
its heights the pilgrim crowds.
This crown of
spires which Turtle Island wears
Is garlanded with
lakes of blue and green;
The summit summons
us with truths and dares
In consultation
with aquamarine.
The top wears the
horizon like a hat
Which it takes off
at night to feel the stars –
Meaning is running
like sequoia sap
Away from cities,
nation-states, and cars.
Great ark of stone
whose prow pats seas of scree,
We walk and rhyme
and sing in praise of thee!
(Whitney)
15.
The marmots and the
pikas don't know why
The weather's
getting warmer every year.
Up the slopes
they're squeezed into the sky
Until one day their
race will disappear.
What happens when
the mountainside runs out
And nothing's left
to climb to reach the cold?
That final council
of small paws and snouts
Shall reach
conclusions that no words can hold.
On summit islands
all across the earth,
They'll come to
breathe the planet's last cold air,
To say goodbye to
beauty and to birth,
And greet their
deaths without doubt or despair.
United in their
final loneliness,
May our own ends
have half their holiness.
(Glacier Point)
16.
A separate reality
of stone,
Where granite's
rainbow reaches epic heights
And partners find
togetherness alone
Against gravity's
self evident rights.
The captain steers
the valley with a prow
Worn smooth by seas
of ice older than man,
Who had spent
lifetimes contemplating how
To climb it free –
a woman proved they can.
So ancient walls of
dawn outlive old fears
And things are done
that no one dreamed before –
El Capitan climbed
without ropes or gear!
A new era has come!
Who dares do more?
The captain is not
conquered when he's climbed
As words are not
surrendered when they're rhymed.
(El Capitan, for Lynn Hill and Alex
Honnold)
17.
Where does the wild
begin, where does it end?
How is it tamed and
how is it reborn?
Who is its enemy,
who is its friend?
And when were we
from this wild bosom torn?
Is wilderness
outside or deep within?
Why do the
civilized still hear its call?
And why did
domestication begin?
How does an
ecosystem rise or fall?
We ponder this in
“wilderness preserves”
Where bears with
tags in ears are photographed,
We wonder what the
park system conserves –
A Christian ark? A
positivist raft?
We must be one
again with wilderness
So we are cursed
until we know we're blessed.
(Yosemite)
18.
One legged giants!
Brown and gold and red
With slender
outstretched fingertips of green –
They may stand
centuries after they're dead
Indeed they
challenge what life and death mean!
Whose tiny seeds
require fire's sparks,
Who've watched
civilizations come and go,
Elemental spirits,
armored arks,
Who need to burn
before they sprout and grow –
Their roots are
interwoven underground,
Helping each other
grow through wind and drought,
And in each trunk,
whole ecosystems found –
Between heaven and
earth, no straighter route!
Teach us how to be
beneath your limbs,
Remind us how to
sing your sacred hymns!
(Giant Sequoias
and Coast Redwoods)
19.
The shining sea is
breaking on the shore,
Thick with the salt
that ancient mountains gave.
The sands, fewer
than stars, do not keep score,
The moon,
invisible, rides every wave.
Great blue domain,
we pray you shall prevail
And teach the land
the peace that is your name!
We pledge
allegiance to pacific sails –
Wash away our
continental stain!
And carry us from
port to poisoned port
With tidings of an
oceanic peace
Fated to reach the
East, West, South, and North,
Pacific, Manifest
your Destiny!
Full fathoms
thrive! One day you'll be our grave
Of dying coral is
your patience made.
(Ocean Beach)
20.
The journey ends as
it began
Seated in a metal
bird of pay –
The traveler begins
to understand
In twilight what
began at break of day.
The wilderness
survives! And rock redeems,
And plants are the
ambassadors of gods
And animals the
architects, whose beams
Hold up the roof
while nature beats the odds --
So we, who burned
and basked in red and green,
Who tempted heights
and depths on rock and sand,
We are not now as
we have always been,
Transformed,
transposed, translated by this land –
A road trip and a
riddle full of clues
For memory to
reckon with its muse.
(SFO-EWR)
