the last sun of the longest day
This is a good place to be when the arc of the time
goes from up to pause before going down
064 another sunset? 11/22/2008
Another sunset
Seen from the Berkeley Hills
Many people saw this one
and photographed it
This one is in our blog
Because Mt. Tam looks unusually calm and focused on matters of its own.
Let the worry turn to care.
053 more places to catalog 08/25/2008
In the late afternoon
the sun is golden
the sky calming from a powerful storm
where the boats wash into shore rythmically
and truck cart them away like floats in a parade
at a place the natives called sacred
a pile of rocks looks on
with a mysterious calmness
and warmth
047 Bull Horns 08/04/2008
Why did you spend so much time on this line?
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Ekmasu Story
The bones of the horn were made of a chemical substance known as Calcium Trioxide.
The bones had stood for a long time.
Before you had passed under their chain-link armor,
a tall, gaunt, red bearded farmer’s son had stood underneath to wait for a young woman of another race.
the tall man, named Amos had paused in his longing to feel the sweat in the pores of his skin pick up the swirls of dust from the hooves of cows, and had simultaneously felt immense pride that his father had built this ranch, and an intense longing for his
young bride
with her quiet clear eyes flashing up at him like the
reflection of
light in a pond
set in a a glacial lake
Some time before that, another story had come to pass.
This one is a long one and may not come in a poem.
The land at the place where these trees were planted was at first just a long mist ridge
owned by the tribe of the e-wu the secret name who were a very hostile people unto others and
usually bent on being by themselves. They would practice certain rituals that others would not be allowed into. Sometimes the rituals involved being alone.
They were proud people who lived in kind with the animals that they had chosen as partners, the elk.
They would let no-one come into their territory. All who came nearby would only feel a hail of flinty rocks as a warning,
and if too much time elapsed, and they did not run, it has been told that a fearsome stampede of elk with mighty horns would push any intrusing people no matter how friendly all the way to the precipices where the edge of land became weak, and like an avalanche, they would meet their end in the sea.
At one time a more solid people came upon and into the spit of land. These people were more gregarious than the others and less focused on the rituals of being alive than on the rituals of trading for goods.
The people who this story calls the oo-wa, which means the people of the elk, did not care enough about the intrbers enough to more than say…smells bad… freakin’ pain iin the ass…. those characters don’t know shit about the rocks or the elk…. if a look was to have words.
The oo-wa took things in their course and had other things to do besides send some mean looks at the people in the nearing place.
One morning when the sun was beginning to rise over the edge of where the hills became sky,
a young man arose from his sleeping bag of skins of elk. It had been a long night, and he was very tired. His consciousness was not so clear as he looked, and saw deep into the clouded ravine where young male elk had formed a cluster. He was angry because his tribe had made him sleep alone after he had danced too loudly and kept saying that he was the spirit of ekmasi the elk of legend. Perhaps he had drunk too much dew from the grass, or simply lost his mind, but now he felt a mixture of anger and the pure spirit of chaos. “I will cross the line,” he said, and began walking towards the place where the seabirds like to sit. Stepping upon the worn paths where his ancestors had also walked, he said, “enough of the elk,” it make me sick, I want to swim in ocean and turn to water.”
He turned and said to the sea, “I am you!”
and then he began walking, quickly down the old path, towards the bay where the fishing happened. He got closer to the beat up gravel near where the waves crashed and pushed out into the cold water.
On the land, his mother and his girlfriend stood on the rock where birds like to sit and watched. They stood wearing their comfortable elkskin garments and were straight. They were holding each others’ hands. The mother said to the daughter in law, “he has the spirit of the ekmasi. That spirit is more powerful than the vessel of the body. We must wait for him to return.” The young woman had powerful eyes. She was looking fully upon the scene. When her mother in law paused, she paused. She felt the sisterhood in her shoulder, and her body was staring to ache. She looked at the edge of the sky and the sound of the waves crashing went, “oooofmmmp.”
She stared into the distance and remembered the feeling of her father when she was a little girl and was splashing in the waves her father was swimming next to her and they were pulled under by a large wave and everything was blue green for a while and then her head was in the white foam that popped quietly and her father’s head appeared nearby and he laughed so deeply that it roared. She wondered if he would drown.
Ekmasu had pushed into his mother the ocean in the same way that a turtle pushes out to sea. He was pushing and blowing like a whale, moving out through the little waves and the big waves.
When the green bubbles began to tickle his eyes he knew he was about to be free. The fingers disappeared. Then the hands felt so strong. His eyes were turning towards the light above. He was flowing gently with the water. What was in his mind only I can tell you. Ekmasu was walking on the water. He was wearing dainty hooves, and the foam was tickling them. He was prancing, and a massive roaring was nearby.
Turning her eyes to the horizon his beloved observed and he sank. As her breath grew taut,
she turned again for guidance to her a’ma.
“Look closely,” she said. “you will need to know.”
The one who they called Cora stood relaxedly upright her eyes charcoal brown. Bright. Angry. Ready to argue.
Ekmasu was prancing through the foam, driven by some desire, and the water became a flat dark place. Only the sounds of his prancing could be heard, and the foam gently shushing. His sounds had beome so quiet that he had a feeling that something was strange as he came to the bend. In front of him was a small cave. He was now known as bull horns. He was moving behind ekmasu. It was dark except for the crystalline foam that rose with each forefoot of ekmasi and gently turned to to dust as it fell off. Bull horns fell of the trail and was bobbing in a large dark cave like a cork. All things were intensely clear. The rhythm was dropping down, it was quiet as you can possibly imagine, so quiet that a drop went from the ceiling to the ground, and he began to see some sort of drawings on the wall. He began seeing an image in the darkness that described little forms moving like ants, and he could see what he was supposed to do. Ekmasu walked from the edge of the darkness and looked at him. Bull Horns was overwhelmed by the power of Ekmasu. It was like an incredibly bright sensation that was telling him that he was going to have to perform some sort of service to a god. The god was laughing at him with the twinkle in his eyes, but bull horns did not care. He was more interested in the fact that ekmasu had paid attention to him.
In the darkness some flowing occurred. Things got icy blue, and the next thing he knew there was a stubby hand filled with strength pulling him to the beach.
The next thing that bull horns knew, he was in a house filled with farmers discussing the probability of rain.
“OK mantis, go get another rock in place for dicision between them and us, the voice said.
“I’m tired of making all these rocks move” said preying mantis.
We need the line said the leader, and you are the only one strong enough, said the leader,
we will make the bottom and you the t
sometimes Preying Mantis wondered why there had to be a line.
But he made it anyways because
THey lOved Him because he Was beautiful and picked the melons.
He wondered whY thE rocKs had to bu PUsheD tOward The seaA
One day, the leader of the earth people called mantis in to his abode,
“Mantis,” we must fight a very stupid tribe to get the land.” The leader said, “since we know that you come from them, we want you to trick them by pretending that you are coming home. Go to the zone of crossing and wait there. Then act as our spy.”
Mantis was feeling strong with his seasons of hard labour moving earth around and planting plants and a bit stupid, so he said, “how am I supposed to pretend that I am coming home if this is mine?”
He receded to his hut and in a room without a corner he crushed a tiny fish egg in his teeth that released a pure sensation and he found truth.
In the morning he walked to the borderline. A line of rocks had been piled along to keep the sheep from crossing from one side to another.
There was no-one on the other side.
Bull Horns looked over his shoulder and saw the leader look at him with his calm gesture of go on. Bull Horns stepped over the stone that he remembered having seen placed there.
He walked calmly on the guise of the spy. He was going to use the fact that he looked like whoever his adopters thought he looked like. To make sure that the other side know enough.
He walked slowly over the green patches, and looked at the horizon. ach time he looked he saw no people. After a while he saw the elk herd, resting in the sunny half of a valley. The does glanced up at him in a reaction of fear, and quickly returned to resting as their calves were going from a pause to see what their mommy were doing and began to play again.
He remembered where he was supposed to go.
He saw the end of the strip of land. Some huts were standing in an angular cluster. He was approaching feeling like he knew what he was doing.
Cora and her great aunt were standing there at the edge of the group of tepees. They were looking at him. Aunt and daughter.
He walked slowly while watching them. He could see the aunt touch the younger one and the Cora began to swivel like a turret towards him.
At about 40 feet, their gazes interlocked. He felt the disacceptance and the cold. Observed as a thing. He walked right to the Cora. She was standing with her arms in front of her and fingers interlocked watching him come closer.
From bull horns’ perspective he saw two raggedt figures edges blowing in the wind and the center part a moving strong indivisible force.
As he got closer, he felt the feeling of remembrance and Cora looked him down.
He got on his knees and she looked down in his eyes.
He could see that she had changed; she was much more powerful than he had recalled and did not even need him.
She was holding an attitude of scorn, as he got closer to the ground, looking down at him as he did not know what she would do,
and suddenly her eyes met his and he could see how much stress wasthere like a rubber band holding a piece of hypert dense lead and he could see that
the deep place was thereand it was time to express himself so he said…
Cora I love you please let me be with you
maybe that was in the eyes but to make sure he said
“I missed you”
and she said
“I missed you too.”
And those white bones hung over the entrance like desolate teeth in a landscape.
Like the end of time, gently locked away into the top of a crevice,
like the eye of a crow,
looking into you.
Copyright 2009 Henry Rawitscher
