HORSE RANCH

Three sisters pulled the Sears catalog in front of them and went through it page by page, picking and choosing what they wanted. Each sister had a pad where she would add up her score.

I remember as a young man I would put $1,000,000 at the top of the page and start subtracting each item as I made my list. I didn't add much foolishness, although a cabin layout extending into the lake and an ultralight copter were prominent.

Really, one item tops many a young woman's list: the horse ranch. Young women may not detail the symbology of the horse, but us wise ol' guys know it includes physical prowess, energy, sexuality, and some wild spirit.

What most young women are likely to get, at the beginning, is a cowboy. That's where the ride begins. And in a just world, if there is genuine love between the young woman and the cowboy, truly all the rest is secondary.

HOOFPRINTS, FOOTPRINTS

That horse you ride in your dreams
the one unafraid of steep hillsides
the one that runs up
       one side of the house
       over the roof
and down into the fallow
       over the fence
and into the open land
       the Native Americans knew
that horse is your heart.

Reading the stars --
what foolishness --
but the heavens are a horse
God has often ridden.

You pick at my words
with the tiny forceps
       of your beliefs
and if you have never felt
the rumbling below
or heard the chorus above
I understand.

The Fruit of the Tree
       is the Word
       (it rebuffs images)
which we mistake
       for knowledge.
But the Word is a horse
God has often ridden
between the heavens
and my beleaguered people;
between the heavens
and my beleaguered heart.

In a distant land there is a cage of glass
       over sandy symbolic footprints
       where Abraham struggled
       to bridle just one Word
and each of my words
is a tiny hoofprint, footprint
of the horse of the stars or words
       in the tiny stomping grounds
       of my heart.

          Westwind 08/17/16 and 09/03/16

PREPARATIONS

       There was this old guy who played music with Hank Roat down at Hank's Bar whose name I can't remember ... I think it was Bill. Bill went down to the river to fish and died there. I think about that more than I should. He died doing what he loved. Maybe Bill hooked the Big One and his heart stood still in awe.
       Leonard Sandstrom went hunting. The story has it he loved to hunt. When they found him it looked like he had decided to sit beside a tree and take in the view and hunt from the stillness and silence. I think maybe he saw the Antlered King.
       I dreamed I had disappointed the Spirits and I would rather leave it all behind than live with a broken heart. I leave the community and go down the stairs and outside there is my deceased Uncle Paul sitting in a big jeep. Behind the jeep there is a trailer with a fishing boat ready to go.
       I loved Uncle Paul Tillman although some women thought he did some pretty low-life things. You gotta remember he was just a man and women are always angry with men. He stood 6'4" tall and was always smiling and cracking wise. He shared Havana cigars with me although I was just a teenager. He said, "Wheat farmers should always smoke good cigars because when the ash falls, it's cold."
       I was supposed to unload a truckload of wheat; 240 bushels. The engine on the auger would not start. I fought with it all afternoon. I nearly lost my hand once when digging at the wheat in the auger and it auger spun by itself as the wheat ran and the weight shifted. The sun had begun to set and I was nearly in tears -- maybe I was, I can't remember that part -- when he arrived. He looked sad, too. Instead of chewing me out for failure, he just gave me a hug and a smile.
       Once I tried to run the 22' disk one pass closer to the wet gumbo hole in an 80 acre field. The diesel tractor tires were taller than me because all that horsepower was necessary to wrap that 22-foot one-way in a solid blanket of gumbo mud. He didn't smack me with so much as a word of censure, just got busy with that shovel.
       I saw him sitting on the wrench scattered-ground staring at a gearbox full of disaster. He was saying, "Son of a bitch, son of a bitch ..." over and over. So sad.
       I loved that guy.
       And when I ran out of the Tower of Damaged Talents -- all of us have eaten there, I believe -- and all the friendly Spirits gave me long eyes because I fled in disappointment to a sad place, there was Paul sitting in the big Jeep. He said, "Ready to go?"
       I always wanted, when it came time for me to die, to have some breath-takingly beautiful Native American women -- you know, one of the Wise Ones -- to come up to me in a canoe of excellent handiwork and say, "Let's go out upon the lake."
       But when it comes time it'll probably be Paul Tillman, or a trusted friend like Robbie Anderson, in the big Jeep with a fishing boat behind it.

FISHING

FISHING ... yeah, right, the place where your fantasies have a chance.
       In 1968 I fly-fished a lot.  I learned that by tugging my line back just right when it was fully extended in front of me, the fly would recoil and land gently on the water maybe a full second before the line fell.  I hooked the biggest trout I ever saw in this fashion.  I mentioned to a girl (NOT a woman) that I used an automatic fly reel. She said, "That's terrible. You should give the fish a chance."
       DRY FLY FISHERMEN obsess about the right color, the right wrapping, the nearly perfect imitation of the Blue Dun, the Damsel Fly sitting atop the film, at the right time during the hatch.V They obsess about letting the fly follow the flow, letting it find its subtly guided way into the shadow water behind the rock right in front of the tree in the water.  Yep.  Insane.
       FULL METAL FISHERMEN smite the water with what looks like a white girl posing in the costume of a hula dancer with no sense of color while wrapped in a chrome chain and dragging a single-fluke anchor in chrome.  Predators, like unrestrained capitalists, go for it!  Full metal fishermen do fine.  Most pike don't know dreck from Drambuie.
       There are, though, I will grudgingly admit, the occasional really smart fish; consider the old bass that won't eat a chunk of hotdog unless it is still in the torn package some dumbass litterbug tossed in the water.
       FUTURE FISHERMEN will have a laptop and game widget in their hands and drive a little submarine with a harpoon and/or impact taser loaded.  Your Navigator riding shotgun will be responsible for the fish-finder.  This is so the fisherman will have someone to talk to and share beer with.
           Captain: Where are the damned fish, Bob?
           Navigator: Water's warm today, Skipper. They'll be down deep.
           Captain: What are the chances of a 40 pound pike eating my whole damned $2500 sub?
           Navigator: Only one case of that in the literature, Skipper, sir.
       Laugh not, there are lures out there with a longer pedigree than your horse, more words in their name than a Spanish Grandee, lights, rattles, odor packages, and some that are nearly perfect models of live fish.  I'd give $30 for a genuine Pott's Lady Mite.
       PLUNKER Someone who just wants fresh fish for supper.  Kids or subsistence fishermen.  They don't want a record fish, they want pan-sized.  They go down to the water with live bait.  God bless 'em.  They are by far my favorite and I have endless sympathy for them.

WHY RELIGION?

     To begin with, I must insist that religion represents the dry bones of the spiritual quest.  Religion is the materialistic leftover of a non-materialist exploration, experience and mystery.
     Despite this, religion is very important today for at least the following five reasons.
     First, thought forms.  As science claims an ever larger percentage of brain time, our language includes more and more scientifically based words and concomitant thought -- thought forms -- including a powerful bias towards a materialistic view, despite surprises from quantum discoveries.
     Other thought forms grow out of economics, marketing and advertising, public media, literature, cybernetics, the art of war and violence, the wars of gender, domination, deliberate manipulation and even religious models.  Internet memes.
     Religion gives us yet another language, yet another paradigm (model) upon which to draw; one which is not so beholding to the other models.
     Unfortunately, zealots are fighting to make religion a political adjunct, destroying its usefulness.
     Second, some of the sciences, psychology, brain physiology, neuroscience, and more, are concerned with what the brain is and how it functions and whether or not there is a real field called mind; questioning whether mind is just bio-electric chatter or a field that can pull itself free of all the forces, language and thought-forms and memes and so on.
     Thanks to religion and the reminders that grow out of the creation stories and stories of the invisible world, we are constantly urged to look beyond the material bias and the parameters of conventional thought, even trenchant thought of considerable probity.
     Third, we are still babes in the woods as far as our own development is concerned.  We know so little about awareness and consciousness.  We know so little about our own evolution.  We are going somewhere.  Do we determine the direction, or are we dust in the wind?  The story of higher beings urges us to look up, urges us to think seriously about our observations of "realized beings" who demonstrate exceptional integrity of mind and heart.  Can we classify the true shamans, the genuine healers, the people who demonstrate parapsychological abilities, and/or the stories of people who, under pressure, suddenly demonstrate great strength or astonishing insight?  There are thinkers and observers like Tesla, Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna who speak of fields of consciousness beyond what the nets of our contemporary science can catch.  Perhaps Jesus was just a step ahead of us and urges us to practice purity of mind and heart so we or our offspring can attain to the next step.  Perhaps our language is not prepared to speak of the next higher function of mind.
     We have failed observably to mature as a species.  We are capable of some great tricks, but our planet is degrading rapidly, peace is a rare prize, corruption is rampant, inhumanity is becoming commonplace ... and right along with this decay angry voices are raised against religion when religion is saying Look beyond this, Look beyond this, Look beyond this ...
     Fourth; language and our artificial means of memory are temporal.  All efforts to record an age stiffen and die.  Who can comprehend the feelings and meaning of the Assyrian codices?  The stories we tell, the understood consensus of the age, is all that will reach the far future.  Long-term memory.
     The fifth use is by far the most important: a reminder, lessons, and training for the Chosen.  I know the experience occurs, but beyond that I am quite ignorant.  Most of what follows is second-hand knowledge.
A Calling, the true spiritual experience, is rare -- I am guessing at this number -- occurring perhaps  for 1 in 1,000.  The Bible says, at Matthew 22:14, "...many are Called, but few are Chosen."  There is no way to offer evidence of this to skeptics.  It seems to be invisible to the average person, although there are historically quite a few people who autobiographically describe having some form of the experience.  Kabir, Baba Ram Dass, Billy Graham, a number of Native American medicine men, and even to some who are dedicated atheists such as Barbara Ehrenreich.  Where these "enlightened" ones exist, true initiation, a ceremony of substance, can transform a man.
     The Chosen are not specific to any religion.  The Buddhists I believe refer to an intermediary, teacher, guide, inspiration, who may appear in one of eight forms: parent, sibling, teacher, student, friend, lover, stranger or ...  I cannot recall the eighth.  The fact that only a few of the many Called are Chosen means we, as those whose purpose is to "swell a scene", should do all we can to offer no stumbling block to believers, although the experience is individual.
     And, honestly, I do not know if religion is of use to the Called, but it does provide a path, at least of language, between the mundane, acculturated world, and the transformative experience.

SMART GREENHOUSE

     This little beauty, is it a cold-frame, a hot-frame, or just a greenhouse ... a subterranean greenhouse?
     I, for one, do not like working on my hands and knees for hours, nor do I like reaching uncomfortably to the middle of a raised bed while tottering on the edge.  Well, jeez, I'm getting old and cranky.
     So I decided to build a covered greenhouse that solves all the problems I could think of easily and cheaply ... well, kind'a cheaply.  It's a cold frame because the earth remains about 52 degrees and there is a lot of earth under this little shelter.   It is a hot frame because you could fill the bottom of the trench with green cow manure if you don't mind walking in it a bit.   Cows don't mind.   It's a greenhouse because, well, it's a little house for raising green stuff that you can set out when the soil gets warm enough, or in which you can keep the veggies you like best of all.
     It's subterranean -- largely.  It looks like this:

     That's the barebones gist of it.  You can see that because so few materials are required that a person could buy a slightly better grade of materials.
     Should I point out that this is a simplified drawing?  You should elevate the sides a bit more than I have drawn here so plants can get taller if you wish to keep plants inside.  And you'd want the sides to be supported on a plank of treated lumber instead of directly on the insulation ... unless, of course, you are actually planning on building-in problems.  The point of this essay is to rough out an idea for you.
     No kneeling or uncomfortable bending over or balancing precariously upon a wooden or stone wall.  Leave that for the kids.  Here's how it looks in a cut-away.

     That's the basic package.  Easier than removing all the dirt.  One need only dig a trench then remove a foot of soil all around the trench, replacing that absent foot (or eight inches) with the best topsoil you can find (I import mine from hidden forests deep in the Ohio Valley (don't I wish!)).
     Because I live in a narrow Montana valley, on the south side of the Clark Fork River, it is cooler and the days are shorter than across the valley, so it is a good idea to WARM UP THE SOIL.  Yep.  Warm it up!  To that end I have decided to add a subterranean heating element.  I thought water would be the way to go, at first, but that meant plumbing and antifreeze and emergency venting of steam.  It struck me then that the smoke itself (hot gases) might do the job just as well and at a very much lower level of tech.  So this elegant solution came to me.

     To be honest, I haven't built this yet.  It's my springtime project (if I live to see the spring.)  So in fact it is a theoretical model.
     You are wise.  I'd value your opinion.  I might even take your advice ... or maybe not ... I'm not only old and cranky, my wife says I'm stubborn, too.

NIGHTSNOW

It snowed on my imagination during the night;
about two inches – it stuck --
the light, afterthought snow that accumulates slowly,
falling from an uncommitted sky,
unconsciously, like eyes dampening with old sorrow,
or the very fine mist that nevertheless soaks you through.
I turned my head and glimpsed without seeing
being falsely reassured by the white outside.
Snow, I feel, brings purification by cold,
bears in its arms icy distilled water which splashes
the sleeping seed into gasping wakefulness
and starts all the flourish of spring.
When I looked carefully the paths were still black
the earth grudging only patches to my sight
through snow no longer white, but dirty
and decaying; the little green exhausted,
convalescing in winter's debris.
My nightsnow disappeared with a pop
like those dreams.

BIOGRAPHY

A few minutes ago
I carried my compendium
of the works of Richard Brautigan
into my den.
It disappeared
and has not been seen since,
much like Richard Brautigan
himself.

ABOUT GENDER EQUALITY

. . . I am an advocate of gender equality. During the mid-->late 60's men began to wear COLOR, a development not seen for years! I taught school while dressed in striped bell-bottom trou and sporting long hair.

. . . I mention MARIJA GIMBUTAS, thinking primarily of her last book. . . . I have read "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" by Leonard Shlain. (Includes the thought that the angry desert god doesn't like pictures (images) because pictures bypass the word-coding part of the brain). People are mostly right-handed because of language ... a rigid form of abstraction.

. . . I have read Elaine Morgan's "The Descent of Woman" (written to counter Desmond Morris, whose work is male-centered). She has valid arguments aplenty, but misses the boat when she speaks of sex ... I am not being necessarily male when I say I don't think she has ever been in real love (which reflects on everything she writes) nor do I think she has ever had satisfactory sex. I write these things because I know both love and sex (well, as much as anyone I know at present). This reflects a bit on her projections based on the human body ... MUCH of her arguments.

. . . In other words, I have done my homework, both on paper and on the street. I've been in the midst of this struggle since the mid-60s. I was raised by a single mom and that's why I respect women. My mom could shoot and butcher her own pig and calf. She built pig sties. She also wrote and painted.

. . . I suppose I am being a bit defensive, but I've argued sexual equality until I am exhausted. My friend Biz hates the word 'history' because of the 'his', hates 'person' because of the 'son' and on and on. It's exhausting indeed. What I want to see are some concrete proposals or action in the street. I dearly want true equality. I am tired of dragging the stoneboat behind me when I write and when I speak.

. . . The issue demands attention, true, and even a bit of micromanaging our compatriots' language may be called for, but the anger is NOT called for.

. . . I once created a non-gender specific pronoun, "te", that I thought filled the bill. (I am fucking angry at being forced by intolerance to say "when the student rises, HE OR SHE must do such-and-such".) Too many lifeless words. And I am NOT PLEASED with using "he" as an 'unmarked' or default referent. "They" will not do for the singular instance. Te=subjective. Ter=objective. Tes=possessive. Since my 'creation' I have seen what I thought were my personally created pronouns used by others! Marge Piercy, for instance, and she is a fierce feminist.

. . . There have been a great number of 'attempted' singular non-gender specific pronouns proposed, but most die out quickly. BUT, my 'te' suggestion is the neologism that I think will re-arise and LAST because it occurred to a number of people who were not communicating with one another simultaneously.

least corrupted Word

Get your filthy hands off my forests.
Draw your bitter hungry hands
from my rivers.
Take your wretched reasonings
and rapacious policies
from all the little wild things.

I give a damn about your vaunted
economy. What part of that
is in me? How does that serve
my aching heart?

All your history smells of death,
cruel imperialism hidden beneath lies,
and even the touch of the Spirit
you have webbed up in schemes.

I find beneath Cathedral Ponderosa
a silence that terrifies you
I find beside the silent spring
a breath you've never drawn.

The Eagle drops and a fawn falls,
the heavy snows bends a Juniper
that will not straighten in the spring.
The fox finds the nest of the goose.
But you, what have you to say,
when you send boys to kill families
and the flesh is hidden in mass graves?

If I had my way, you would feed the ravens.
If I had my way, carrion beetles
would polish your bones.

Excuse my anger. That is not why I came.

I came to listen. Not to Death, but to the fall
of rain. I came to listen to the grass.
I came to hear the purr of little things
touching, always touching, the Great Mother.

She found me in the forests. She fed me.
She comforted me. She spoke of love.
She opened the door of the mystery
and invited me to see.

WEATHER LIKE THIS

A rainy day
of dark and pewter skies
tarnished silver
gives me permission
to relish the brooding;
and should the sunlight
fall through the rotting clouds
tinsel thin streams of glory
or paint on just one side
spotty, the wet trees,
then I can consider
babies that smile broadly
at secret causes --
at so little.

Knowledge comes with loss
and wisdom with discovery.

INSTEAD EMBRACE

First, a note: Tricia tagged me with this poem.  It moved me deeply as I read it.  I thought it very well done.  Then I began to recognize the language.  I checked: it was my own poem, written and forgotten.  What a wonderful surprise!  It is difficult to be objective about one's own work and self-doubt comes at times like a tsunami.  How wonderful when a poem comes to life.  Thank you, Tricia.

I.
So
perhaps it is wise
   we have put away God.
Those first lands
   are they not deserts now?
And the new lands
   are they not ruled by greedy men?

Perhaps it is wise
   we have turned our backs
   and walk away inured
   to the cries and wailing.
Who are we to shed useless tears
   when the black slick inundates
   the manicured lawns
   when the water ignites
     beneath the kitchen tap?

Let us scoff together
   at those fumbling scriptures
   written by many in many lands
   whose inadequate words slip like fingers
     on the glazed edifice
     of dreams now deemed
       ineffable
       and impossible.

Let us not shudder to consider
   every fruit dropped into darkness
   from the splendid tree of Evolution
   will require the miracles to renew
     we no longer underwrite.

What is a tear beyond salt and sorrow?
The skies are clear in springtime now,
   no longer darkened by clouds of overwinging
   Passenger Pigeons.
     whose fatal flaw was to come
     to the call of distress.

Can we be far behind?

Perhaps it is best we put away God
   in every language, in every land
   even in translations that leave no room
     for a divine being.

II.
Perhaps it is best to put away Hope
   who takes her sweet time to appear
and what good if she is not pregnant
   beyond pauses?
We've had our fill of promises;
of fulfillment
   not a bite.

Turn up the empty lights
and the music of hysteria
   where there is no room for silence
   nor lingering.

Rivers are stolen.
The sandy bellies of great seas
   are naked to the powerful
     indifferent eye.

Take those words like righteousness
   tag them with disdain
   scourge them with easy cynicism.

What room in our language now
   for what is lofty
   beyond this concrete plane?
We have no time to imagine experiences
   each unique as a single soul.

With each fallen fruit and tree
   more sand blows across our imagination;
like the parting of true lovers
the long longing songs
   of coyotes and whales
   grows more distant
as we embrace the rumble
   of gasoline and war.

        --West Wind
          27 May, 2013

THANK-YOU DREAM

Had the most marvelous DREAM:
     I have been working in the garage all morning. In our garage there is a bird's nest on top of a hanging florescent light. Twice I have gently caught little birds and put then out when they panicked and tried to fly out the glassed-in windows. I took a nap after lunch. I dreamed that I looked up and something huge was hanging along the wall. At first I thought it was a huge spider with some garboon in it's web, but then I saw it was a fresh branch with green leaves hanging from a stray nail up near the ceiling. The clump in the branch was some debris a bird had hung there. As I studied the branch I could see more little birds. They had build several little nests. There were a number of little birds. I was so delighted I could feel tears of wonder and joy coming up in my eyes.
     Now, fully awake, I believe that dream was from the birds ... giving me a thank-you dream for helping them out.
     There is much more magic in the world that we are wont to recognize -- even if it should work out that the dream were merely a bit of my own inner workings.

MID 60s

I prayed and begged and talked at God
so long Someone finally showed up;
then I listened and laughed
as the dark waters receded from the land.
Didn’t we have a time! My brothers
and my sisters walked like Children of God,
like princes. My mother. The Earth.
Our words … Goodness! our words:
how big they were!
The Earth rang with them and the skies fairly sang,
they caught in our ears
and resounded for days.
Oh, those were times.
We could command the dead but wisely demurred.
And the light! It was everywhere!
Rainbows, perihelions, sundogs, opened up the sky
even as the dark cast nets against it.
Sunshine so liquid we could drink it
and Pan in the weeds.
Diamonds circled the moon.
Miracles were common as those little brown wrens.
And us, what about us? Bless-sed
with beads and high ideals we fought
for righteousness and won;
we tried the laws in court.
The world began to bend
toward the light.
So rich. So rich. It filled
our cupped hands
like water
in the rain.

     --Butterfly Herbs
        05.01.27