12.27.12 [the Mountain-Climber proposes]

Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days? 

-Rilke

The hunger in my right hand for my pen has eased by now, and the blank pages of my newest journal perturb me a little less.  I have grown adjusted to the fleeting days and accustomed to ignoring my longing to record all pieces of beauty and heartbreak and detail, given over to the scarcity of opportunities to write this fall and winter.  

Do not fear, Little One, your hand will again drink from the inkwell in its time and season.

But how could I not inscribe this day, when the Winemaker asked for me?  These are the things I will remember from the sunset that changed my life:

• the almost-full moon rising as we drove back in starlight
• and that beautiful expanse, the vista east and north and west he led me to, the sweeping Methow Valley edging toward Loup Loup, the Pasayten, the Cascades and the Okanogan.  

• laughing uncontrollably as I began to discern the immediacy of the coming request.  My love also laughing, terribly nervous.  Turning me as we calmed to face the sunlight on the mountains.

• his arms encircling me as he recalled the dream I had after we met but before we ever spent time together, the scene of us running through tall fields of sunflowers, planted ten and twelve feet high along narrow trails.  Our visit to Elbow Coulee in May, when he first took me home, to participate in the mountain race Sunflower Relay.  (I met you in a dream, my Love,  and I woke with the knowledge that my husband would come to me).
• And then I could no longer feel his arms around me, and I could not turn around to see him on his knees; I was weeping before I even faced him.  I want to run with you, he told me, as long as I walk this earth.

Yes, the Lord has been so good to me.

bury my heart at wounded knee

i don't want to sound like a broken record 

maybe i need a more creative way to tell this story

but from wind river canyon (shoshone land) and tensleep

rocks from the cambrian, precambrian, triassic periods

from thermopolis, the famous hot springs sold to congress in 1897 by chief washakie,

with the one caveat that 1/4 of the springs be always reserved for public use

(congress had been pressuring the tribes to sell for years, you know)

from the black hills carved with those four leaders (but whose leaders?  who?) 

to that towering deviled rock, rising 1280 feet off the high plains

from the bighorns to buffalo

and keyhole to custer (are we really still naming things for this man?)

i hear faint voices in the breeze, and i join in, bewildered, ashamed

this land is my land, this land is your land

well i don't know much about forced migration, gentrification, 

measles and casinos and drug cartels 

the manifold ways in which debt is atoned for, or forgotten

after all, who owns the colorado river?

but my heart aches for the blood in the soil,

the scarlet that stains my feet seeping up from our given, good earth

give me shelter, or show me heart (come on love, come on love) watch me fall apart / watch me fall apart

dia del resurrección

Palouse Falls picnic

elk herd

mule deer

roasted beets & zucchini with feta

bread and wine

warm spring weather

making matzo balls for Passover

good friends

viernes santo

He grew up like a sapling before him: who would have thought more of his destiny?

Crucificalo!

(para esos los que no te conozcan)

Mira, mira, el arbol de la cruz, nuestro Salvador

(para los que no han conocido)

y no es mi cultura, este besiendo de tu cruz

todo la gente adorandote en este modo

not cerebral at all, but bodily, tactile

estoy incomoda, pero yo participo

(este no es un momento para abstenerse)

Y esas palabras yo eschucho de mis lecturas de la pascua:

''Remember what I did--remember that I did this for you,

in real time, in real history.''

Pues, yo he recordado

yo lo recuerdo

and, instrument for death inseparable,

I gingerly place my lips on your cross.