the absurdity of the beauty of this dawn moment,
the absurdity
of the normalization of any moment or day, in life,
of the uninhibited and unselfconscious public documentation of both the ordinary and the excesses of life
simultaneous to
the People of Gaza documenting
Israeli Zionists
confining, starving, shooting, bombing, maiming, killing
and
incinerating
children,
in Palestine.
Winter Sky Sunrises and endless Horizon, Mountains, Forests, Prairies and Waters were traded for cities, skyscrapers and highways, built and named by corporations, governments and militias to populate with executives, politicians, engineers, administrators, marketers, managers, soldiers and subordinates — the wealth of the corporate-nation city-state dependent on the slow, then fast, destruction of all the Land and Waters and Beings on Earth
the Earth, on which i stood to take this photo this very Morning — and, the Atmosphere, which made the Trees, the Snow, the Clouds, and the Sky colors possible at all, this very Morning.
steel towers, stone temples, asphalt streams, and concrete rivers built to ensure that our feet rarely touch the Earth, that our eyes rarely witness Living and Being;
that we look up or that we look down, but, that we barely look around, that we rarely look within and that we that we never look beyond — so that we forget to remember.
the cities were designed and engineered for doing — which is the opposite of Being;
doing, which is a euphemism for undoing;
undoing, which is actually destruction — and which is ultimately,
a forgetting.
Forgetting to remember where we came from.
Forgetting to remember what we are made of.
Forgetting to remember what we were made for.
Our Elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the Earth is a gift that we must pass on, just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we’ll need will be for mourning. For the passing of Polar Bears, the Silence of Cranes, for the Death of Rivers and the Memory of Snow.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
from her Northland College 2015 commencement address
when the Sun reaches the precise height
above horizon,
then arrive the tawny-bodied apple pickers and gleaners/
stilts for legs,
i count twenty limbs in tree camouflage/
bypassing the bushel and the sack
the bounty of fruit down into their bellies //
ears like SETI,
searching for sounds of hoof-less life — canine or primate in the universe
and also, for movement of my unseen, yet intense presence —my breath and pulse slowed, just above, just beyond them —
but i am not in a tree stand/ i brandish no shotgun, no ray gun ///
how rare, these ones are among us,
— among we Earthlings :
silent, gentle and elegant ///
they linger in the morning gold as it stretches West to the lake and evaporates too quick into its blues/
i linger in the dark cool of the open bedroom window, facing North
my senses also honed — and sated//
on this eve of August’s ides,
autumn has not trespassed on the summer,
but was intentionally summoned ///
the Sun just keeps on shining
setting and rising,
setting and rising
while
the People
of Palestine,
of Congo,
are genocided
did you know that Yaldaboath only feigned dismay
when Cain blew his own brother away;
then He later told Abraham to kill his own son,
just to prove that he was obsessed enough
you know, that dear Jesus
in heaven comfortably stayed
all throughout the Trans-Atlantic slave trade,
and that Allah had no problems with the Caliphates
and The One True God was all about The Crusades
and that Creator ignored the prayers and the pleas
of First Peoples slaughtered by steel,
starvation, and European disease
and that Yahweh was pre-occupied during the Holocaust
busy planning and inciting the Palestinians’ cruel loss
from Auschwitz to Al-Shifa,
He so craves burnt offerings
His global portfolio — built solely on dead things
He created the Sun to grow His tainted Seeds
Horror by daylight,
His Grand Design? — what a fucking death scheme
Auden once begged to “dismantle the Sun”
for the loss of his own be-loved one
but Hark!
for the loss of our collective soul,
dismantlement’s just not good enough,
leave Him no parts, no plans
to re-build and restart!
Extinguish His goddamn Sun!
and forever, and evermore,
Let there only be Dark!
Continue reading “the deception of the Sun”
The Song of the Lark has always been one of my very favorite works of the French naturalists – the gorgeous, day-glo, corally-salmon Sun and the woman’s arrested and reverent attention — her ear-witness to the birdsong — she reminds me of myself on any given day at golden hour — dawn or dusk //
while most criticism — almost all criticism of this work agrees that this painting depicts a woman at dawn — at Sun’s rise: i’m not wholly convinced.
i have experienced Jules Breton’s “The Song of The Lark” twice in two separate exhibits — at its home in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago; and most recently, in 2015, at the University of Nebraska’s Sheldon Museum of Art for “Visual Cather: The Writer’s Pictorial Imagination” — where i was able to linger a mere foot away from the painting, studying it, for as long as i wanted — i stayed there for a reverent half hour in its glow.
Author Willa Cather spent her formative years in Nebraska and was an alumnus of the University of Nebraska; her third novel, published in 1915, was named for Breton’s painting — The Sheldon was a natural recipient for a loan of this magnetic artwork ///
while viewing the painting at The Sheldon, i conversed and queried with the fellow-Chicago-born docent — the only other person in the gallery:
will the lark sing their song most sweetly or urgently at sunrise or sunset?
does this work actually depict a neon sunset in the west; or is it, in fact, a day-glo sunrise in the east?
DayGlo color, pigment, paint would not be invented and commercially available until the 1930s — yet, Breton painted his glorious Sun in 1884 — he had already figured out the recipe ///
and, is the woman’s fatigue residual — from yesterday — she, a worker rising so very early, again, — or, might it be fatigue from a just-completed long and hard day’s work under the Sun?
i asked the docent the rhetorical questions i had been silently asking myself.
is it both? it’s both? it’s both.
let the mystery be*
Continue reading “The Song of The Lark”
Dendronglow on Twin Sycamore Trees.
Dendronglow on Twin Sycamore Trees.Dendronglow : The rosy light of the setting or rising Sun on trees, especially urban trees.
akin to Alpenglow.
November Neologism
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 