For Mama, walking the cliffs alone (copyright 1999 Sara, all rights reserved)

For Mama, walking the cliffs alone

Together
we knit a sweet and salty scented basket
of arms and legs
of lips and fingers
once upon a time.
And somewhere
in the tangle we made of the threads of our lives
somewhere
in the impossible matted mess of knotted souls
with crimped and crumpled
veins of spirit
trying to flow freely throughout
we yet managed
to leave so many holes
that our delicate basket
formed only of straw after all
burned away
in the merciless fires of passion
without compassion
to leave
only a few lacy ashes
floating on a dusty breeze.

My heart is scarred
by blisters from this heat
which festered long
and have never healed
inside.
So I have never knit another basket.
But you --
you have woven for yourself
a net
a great and sticky web
in which you capture for your pleasure
all that you desire
as it comes along
-- and sometimes
yourself --
so that you are filled
and weighted
and entangled
and a great success in many worlds.
And I am free
and walk the cliffs alone
and unknown.

I watch the endless, muffled turning
of the water on the rocks below
and feel through the thick earth
this water's rhythm
the immense power of patience
of something so soft
sculpting into smoothness
something so old
and hard
and sharp
and feel through the thin wet wind
the steady etching of my skin
by the stinging, kissing, biting, licking, cutting
strands of time
as they sail away
beyond all containments
beyond the realm of nets
and baskets.

For the years
they flutter by
like coloured threads of dubious strength
on a wild
flying and dancing
spindle gone mad.
Nothing to stand on
or stand for,
nothing to grasp or reach for,
no anchor.
To try to catch them
to keep them from sailing away
is to risk snapping them.
And when they are dragged into harsh modern light
for questioning, for reckoning,
for scrutiny
or for keeps,
the colours fade
and the fibres crumble.
Still somehow
the farther they recede
into the deep darkness of the forever gone
or into the brilliant pale horizon of the never to be,
the brighter
the stronger and closer
they appear.

And so the years
they weave about us
a taunting fence that cannot be broached
or touched
and time as a whole
becomes a wicked nursery rhyme
with which we torture each other
like desperate children
in the prison of a playground
littered with remnants of our past.

Thoughts fly
like ashes on dusty wind
beyond all nets and fences
and sometimes back again
even through walls
of deliberate avoidance.
And I still think
about our basket of straw
so dry
and full of holes
that it burned away
so fast.

But the driest straw
was once lush grass
strong, supple
and golden green.

Behind me
in the sun
is an immense field
of wild grass.
Years ago
a careless match
razed this field and scorched its earth
and it lay empty
for decades.
Rain
the sweat and tears of decades on the wing
drenched the wounds of this blackened earth
soothing and preparing it
to nurture once again
runaway seeds
from a thousand near and distant sources
so that today it lies replete
with life dancing
the old ballet of wind and light
in sequined costumes
once again.

I knew a mountain woman once
who found herself trapped
upon a wide, blank plain
between two ranges
whose peaks she had already climbed
and knew too well.
And once I knew a water woman
who found herself trapped
upon an ancient desert
whose only moisture
lay deep beneath its dry, dry surface of dust.
Time passed
and the women raged
in silent desperation
until at last
the mountain woman
took to digging ditches
-- great ruts across the plain --
that she might climb the ridges
between the ruts
and until the water woman
dug deep
and buried herself.

And I have known men
who could not nurture life
who could support nothing that breathed
or cried
or beat apart from them
and so took to planting
gardens of rock
whose asphalt vines spread wider than ivy
and whose concrete stems stretched higher toward the sky
than any rose
and whose brief marble stumps
dot every city
like weeds.

I am like none of these people.
I force no solutions.
I have not the will.

I am like a stem of grass in the field behind me.
I have been an orphaned seed.
The salty mists of the ocean
the great collecting pool
have softened my landing
and I have stretched
slowly
toward the sun
until now
when the golden warm afternoon wind
brushes through my hair
and across my neck
like the soft contented breath of the thousand lovers I never had
(because our basket kept them out)
to awaken deep within my head and heart
sleeping fires long forgotten --
the small, soft purple flames of contentment,
and sharp silver tongues,
the icy swords of immolation
representing in the battle between life and sentiment
the overpowering desire
to survive.

Beyond these cliffs
I can see the horizon
and it is brightened by my fire.

Above these cliffs
I stretch
like the foxtails and the wild wheat
beyond the fire scars of my heart
and into the wind and light --
swaying, falling, springing --
until with the briefest sigh
I will pop
and scatter my seeds
across the land
to weave with the earth
a basket
to hold the future.