Essential Place

I began life in the west
of deserts and mountains,
was frightened by papooses
popping out of bags
on their mothers backs, I was two.
I rode horses and cows
on farms between mountains
knew the dry heat.

Chaco is a vortex, Gaia’s child
as Jericho is, ancient,
the central core of the Peoples
who left when their water failed.
Moist now, this essential place
drew into all the valleys and mountains
of the western plateau
impoverished, listless  pioneers,
to claim their land of dreams, this
Center of the west born of volcanic fire.

Bursting out, this land rose from the sea,
merged with the granite of the east
water carved, colored canyons,
sandstone arabesques, left
blooming mountain islands
in seas of  sand and sage.

Chaco’s dry monuments
pueblos, and Kivas are quiet,
within the nest of four holy mountains,
there for those who hold Earth sacred,
while the White Men suck ancient waters
lacerate the plains with a million needles
pumping every inch of legacy,
for today’s feast,
heedlessly..

Wheels crush the sage
release the earth’s dry dust
dark cyclonic clouds rise
from the ancient center.

This fantasy land filled,
overflows with the white men,
retirees seeking sun,
miners stripping buttes,
farmers sucking water,
gamblers in slick cities,
and pious Latter-Day- Saints,
the air  fouled by burning oils,
by nuclear explosions,
by asphalt highway traffic,
air conditioners fighting  heat,
as it gets hotter and dryer
and mountain tops burn.

Beware of a  vacuum
that sucks you in,
with it’s bountiful promise.

A new cycle is beginning..
You can overuse the land
but, overwrought it will die,
and so will you and your progeny,
The Navaho know  this.

Kent Bowker   15 Oct. 2012

INDIAN ROCK

I’ve got lots of personas, I have
because I’m a heartless big rock
with glorious and ruckus facets.

I’d been happily alone for eons
until they came and put a house on me.

It’s disgusting their use of me,
though it’s not as heavy as a mile of ice
I’m not used to the nervous energy
rapidly unlocking the Buddha within.

Not that I’ve not had trauma before,
after my flowing, hot birth.
I was quite rugged, jagged, masculine,
but things happened, I got buried many times
in ice and sea, meteor dust, dead trees,
and violated, scraped clean naked.

I’ve endured all sorts of crawling, creeping things,
then man came, a rather new creature,
and chopped pieces off of me.
Nothing’s been the same ever since.
The glacier’s scraping me was slow,
gave me curves, sinuous femininity

Now it’s all disturbance, and my avatars,
my fat guru face on top, my monks descending
watch them sitting on me, arguing,
bouncing on their beds, singular stuff.

But I find I’m liked; they care for me:
clean off the rubbish, groom my sides.
I’ll be sorry when they go,  washed away
when they make the ocean rise..

I’ll miss their love

Kent Bowker    Oct 1, 2012