In The Country In Love With Color
Selections

the people capture the bougainvillea
purple in their weavings and the red sprays of flowers
shaped like leaves
and the yellow of forsythia

In the country in love with color

the people paint their houses bright colors
colors that clash, the say
salmon next to aqua
turquoise on one house and yellow and cobalt
across the street hot pink walls! orange!
if they like a color it doesn't matter
what's next door--paint it!
decorate it!

In the country in love with color

today January 25th I keep writing June in my journal
the doves are calling <coo coooo cah coo>
the sound comes into me as round-silver-lavender
a color I see meandering up the white brick wall

In the country in love with color

Rosamaria complements me on my earrings
they're dangly purple bead earrings--
I haven't worn them since the summer of love

when I leave this place I'll leave them with her
so they can be here where they belong

In the country in love with color

you don't have to be green light go
24/7 on time all the time touring
the organic macadamia nut farm
studying 501 Spanish Verbs
all you have to do is poke around
walk the cobblestone streets
you were born pokey you know that
you're good at being pokey on time
Guatemalan time and it's not
because your mother
read you The Pokey Little Puppy
that Golden Book about
the puppy sniffing all the weeds
digging under the fence
in trouble late to dinner
don't blame that puppy
don't blame your mother either
when you're being pokey time stops
remember how your watch stopped
the day you got here? and the next day
your clock? remember how you
sat on the sofa reading a novel
in Dayton's Furniture Department
when you were supposed to
meet your mother by the big clock?
pokey-- that is so totally you so don't
deny it go with it when you're pokey
pictures come to you
sensations from this world
and the other poplar leaves on a stream
in Montana suddenly they make a pattern
out of your thirst for quinine water
a volcano named Agua
the four channels of the Bitterroot River
where you buried your cat the fierce one
the one who thought she was a dog
the one who let your daughter
put her in the baby stroller like a doll
your girl's arms stretching
up to the handles now this
gray and white cat on the portico
where you sit writing your fountain pen
from seventh grade with its hungry belly
its snout slurping noisily
from its bottle of black ink
the dark woman with strong teeth
chewing a pig's bladder
to give the Virgin's face
a pearly glow church bells
dinning like chinese gongs
the gold sun on the altar
bursting out like the breast plates
of the Sami women sola!
mother of us all! these impossible purple
roses on Irma's white pique dress
her long black hair held back
by a scrunchy her hands
patting out corn & lime tortillas
like her mothers for a thousand years--
this is what you've been thirsting for
the orange blossoms
in the courtyard this morning
heady delicate sweet
the three ripe oranges
just out of reach

Notes:
1. pig's bladder
under colonial rule, the fleshtones on the statues of the virgin mary were
painted by mixing a chemical found in pigs' bladder and gold foil
2. Sami = people formerly called Laplanders

My mind is alert today.
from a morning meditation, December 10th

To be alert in the season of cold and dark, my mind
needs to be reminded of natural realities, like
the fact that even though bears go into hibernation,
they're only dozing. They're alert enough to give birth
without waking up. Imagine going home
from work today and not getting up
for the rest of the season. I heard last week
Florence Nightingale spent the last fifty years of her life
on her davenport. Too much sex in the war?
She was making a political statement, apparently,
but about what I didn't catch.

My mind drifted. It was picturing mother bears
dreaming the cold dark. Do they see the shiver
of the last green aspen leaves, the first snow
fluttering into the woods? Do they replay the music
of their cubs snuffling down grassy meadows
to the sandy beach? All the trees
have lost their leaves now, even the black oaks
are far-gone into winter sleep.

Remember these pictures. Otherwise
you might confuse normal desire
with a diagnosis, a mistaken analysis of cause
and effect. My friends, for instance, speak of severe
depression. One says, I'm about to burst
from lethargy. Another says, I stand at the window
wishing I could get the energy
to do something. Anything.
Is it my marriage? Is it an old loss
I have not properly grieved? Am I running
away from intimacy?

Take it from me, one who has also suffered.
Your mind does not want to be alert. Your mind's
desire, or lack of desire, has nothing to do
with your work, your childhood, your mother,
your marriage or lack of it, in short,
your spiritual life. Your mind is simply
tired of alertness-it wants to dream
in the dark.

So let it. Every morning fall into reverie
when you look out the window at the sleeping trees.
At noon, no matter how cold it is,
go outside, put out suet for the winter birds.
Picture the loons in the Gulf of Mexico
who had the sense to follow the light.

Midafternoon, light the lamp by the davenport.
Gather your books, afghan, hot milk and tea.
You may occupy the long evening ahead
practicing the dative in Finnish,
reading aloud the creation stories of the Ojibwe
and musing on many other intricacies
of the circumpolar
languages designed for this long winterdark.

When sleep comes over you, curl up
and dream of blueberries, sun
on the rocks, blue lakes so clear they're black.

This is the time to celebrate our ancient kinship,
the one with the bears and the trees.

Published in Community Connections

Why I Fell In Love With The Tropics
after Raymond Carver