I was pulled awake from my blue agave dreaming
by a gust of cool air flowing through the screen.
At first, my skin - an independent animal-entity with its own preferences -
stirred suddenly as if to say: You have a visitor.
Then my mind kicked in, with all its strange ways of seeing-and-knowing, and said:
This is what renewal feels like if you seize it.
I didn't.
I drifted back into the depths
where all the ghosts, dancing ladies, and old gods gather around a central fire
to tell stories that break all the rules,
crack casting-molds,
and up-end everything with the tip of an ash.
Coyote puffed on his pipe, smiled, and said: "Don't worry. I got this."
I say all of this only to say...
We may be living in the Clown Republic right now,
being run by bozos and spiritual hobos,
but it's a house of cards fashioned on a turtle's back
and come the next good rain there's going to be a whole lot of shaking going on.
(c) 2017 / Pure Land Poetry / Frank LaRue Owen (Wandering Stone Lantern) / purelandpoetry.com
sound: Koichi Sugii
image: Newfoundland-American Arctic explorer Captain Robert Bartlett and local, 1933, Smithsonian. Photograph taken during Arctic expedition for the Invertebrate Zoology Department, Smithsonian