Dali Come Back 

With Us to the Hills

The Abstract Distractionists broke away from Salvadore Dali, et. al. showing what was in all it’s angled out form shadows hiding those surreally baroque, broken dreams  .  .  .           Dali was all classicist, really, and Lundberg and her friends  neo-really; and so the flat remained flat, not recurrent in time and the sun glared bleak and drove us alone.

But it isn’t about the pictures.  Or how we should try to represent anything or all.  That misses the everything.    It’s more about how we are here, seeing this hill, these trees, that valley below.    

Now.

Where is Salvadore? 

Now that we most need to see
remind us of home . . .

Runway

Climbing to it’s apex the road cut over the saddle to the ravine below, stretching perhaps a mile, descending to meet the trail most people follow up from the flats and riding stable which were much later to become the parking area.  

Running full tilt up this road toward me I could see a riderless white horse, saddled, stirrups and sweat flying.  There was no stopping this runaway and as it charged past I could see it’s wild eyes and flying main and tail, hear labored heaving and hooves pounding on the decomposed granite roadway, and smell it’s heat and dust.

Gone.

Briefly

Maybe the atheists are right and no god exists, or materialists and the world is random accident. But you can’t tell me that any of that matters as I watch the grass dance and wind sends waves rippling down hillside. Hawks ride wild currents higher.

Perfect white flowernear
eucalyptus, warm breeze
red earth underneath.

Deer Hunting near Dawn

10 years old and trying to keep up with 
Father, he trying to match his father’s 
standards to kill his own deer with his own son beside him.  Me struggling to match his pace up steep hill in early morning gloom. 

Damp sage pungent in the breaking gloom
rocks muffled crunching underfoot and
absorbing our strained breathing small creatures scurry in near brush to avoid our intruding their fragile world.

Fearing what we would encounter and destroy.  Fearing more coming home empty handed
Unable to fill a grandfather’s cleaning rack
in front of barn below and generations binding both of us to our respective paths.

“Quit bellyaching” he hissed into light fog 
and heavier darkness. Fearing the shattering 
boom the cordite smell fearing Innocence and union blown into tomorrow.

Patricia Squires Johnson
1919-2007

My mother, as the story goes, shot herself in the foot.  Kind, exuberant soul loving life. It was up in Johnson’s Pasture where family had gone picnicking and shooting off the family guns.  Their own land.  A family thing, you know, surveying their domain.  They’d  drive up, look around, maybe have lunch in the meadow.

She insisted upon learning then bungled the shot 
the round enter her foot.  They bundled her in the car and 
drove down the winding familiar road 
to the hospital some miles away.  A funny story .  .  .
if you’re trying to be patriarch.  Something to pass on
to those hungry to hear.

A humiliating story for the women who worked at wielding the family power.  Depended on which side of the family
you favored.  The story carried weight, however
as those things do, especially when heard by the younger
generation sitting around the table as local news, jokes and stories were shared, children eager for clues.  My sister listened.

Sometimes it’s more about the way stories were told.
Recounted again and again through the years tales
relayed with wicked gleam and a wink through generations 
passing myths along.  Subtext clear after all, what should one expect?  My mother saddled and bridled with shame
learned how breaking out of limiting roles brought with it
great risk.  As did we all.

Epiphany

Along this very path I have walked for centuries
Before it grew this tree, I was already becoming
that rock outcropping.  The sun burns as all stars do
until at last, they stop, then particles dance in darkness.

Heat shimmer vision:
Distortion blocks distortion
And all is revealed.