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

after Raymond Carver
Because of the light
the broad expanses of light
over the hazy green mountains

Because it's dark at home in the winter

Because I love to wear purple and red and turquoise blue
in a country in love with black

Because of a first memory: my small hands-
fingers tracing the curly vines
on Grandma's tooled leather purse

Because I live in the reticent North

Desperadoes always
head South

Because of the light
the broad expanses of clear light
over the hazy blue mountains

Because Gramma went to Mexico to see Grandpa-
he worked on the railroad in the Depression-
and she was a taster, she just had to taste everything
and never got sick

Because a lover brought me here

Because my name Lloyd
means gray in Welsh-
it needs the balance
of magenta and fuchsia roses

Because I was housebound
for too many years

Because of the shifting expanses of light
falling across the courtyards

The light

Because Gramma talked to everybody
no matter where she was-her legacy to me

Because Guatemalans hug and pat each other
on the back, Buen dia

Because I talked with a Catchikel woman
and sketched Arabic arches
and discovered the Åttebladros pattern on the blue
and gold ceramic tiles
on the underside of the portico

Because Gramma loved the gardens of Lake Xochimilco
Take care what kind of beauty you love!
A second family legacy I choose

Because all of us evolved in the tropics, our bodies'
first home

Because the Welsh fit in
wherever they go
and leave no trace of their path

Because it's dark at home in the winter

Because of the broad expanses of blue light
over the mountains

Because of the light
I already said that

The light

Note:
Åttebladros is a Norwegian word for their ancient traditional pattern of an eight-petaled flower or rose.

The first time I went to Guatemala they told us Don't drink the water
and Don't buy the first thing you see but the first day I saw this
indigo jacket and I bought it in spite of the warning, and I don't
know why I fell in love with it at first sight, but Carol loved it too
and said Go ahead and get it, and so I did, the beautiful indigo with
random pale
stripes -not much of a pattern, really, but on the back there were two
bands of embroidery making a cross: bursts of purple and red and
cobalt, and I liked the weight on my shoulders, and I liked the
embroidery that glowed like jewels and the cross reminded me of my
favorite quote of Black Elk, the one about the road of difficulties,
and the vertical line up my back reminded me of all my chakras,
activated, and the horizontal cross across my shoulders reminded me to
feel my own strength, you know, open up and not be hunched over like
the depressed person I often believe I am. And every time I wore my
jacket I wished I knew who had made the cloth-I knew it was hand
woven, of course, even though it had been fashioned into a Western
style jacket, for foreigners, but I wished I knew the village it came
from, I wished I knew the woman who made it.

Two years later, back in Guatemala, some of us went farther up into
the mountains for the market day at the village of Santa Maria de
Jesus, and as I got out of the van I felt a rush come over me: all
the women in the market were wearing skirts of indigo cloth, the same
pattern as my jacket. Women in indigo walking with jugs of water on
their heads. Women in indigo watching over baskets of food for sale:
baskets of avacados, peppers, eggs, tomatoes, a pile of cut sugarcane
by a truck. Women in indigo holding babies and cooking tortillas on
old tin pans over open fires. Women in indigo sitting on woven mats,
working and tending to their children, barefoot. But there was only
one woman selling meat: pieces of armadillo roasted with chilis and
pumpkin seeds, flavored like pepian, a favorite dish. The head of the
armadillo was still whole, the eyes looking up at me as sweetly as a
pet puppy. Five or six bony dogs gathered around her, sniffing,
looking for an in. She kept shooing them away and laughed and taught
us the Cakchiquel word for dog, se-eh. I practiced, not getting the
last consonant correct, it was kind of a lilting at the back of the
throat, and I knew I couldn't quite get it right but she said I did
great, in Spanish, no English, and all the kids wanted me to say it
again and so I did and I told them I was excited to learn my first
Cakchiquel word and I would practice it when I went home but even all
their praise could not convince me to taste the roasted armadillo. I
was freaked out that this was the only meat they had. I hoped my
shock didn't show. No running water, no shoes, no band-aids for
their kids' cuts and scrapes. So many no's. No broccoli or
cauliflower for sale from the dark green fields we saw with our very
own eyes-it all goes to export. No roses for sale, they all go to
Northerners, hungry for color. No coffee for sale-nothing to drink
but coconut. Pale yellow, surprisingly cool, juice coming out of a
rough shell.

And how could I tell her, this woman who taught me to say my first
word of Cakchiquel, se-eh, that I would remember her when I went back
home? How could I tell her, that when I got home, when I put on my
indigo jacket from Santa Maria de Jesus that I would decide that she
was the one who wove the indigo cloth, that she was the one who sewed
the bands of reds and purples, the woman in indigo shooing the dogs
and laughing, the woman in indigo sitting in the middle of the market
with her kids, the woman joking with these foreigners, all of us who
were in awe of her and her friends, who, in the chaos of hunger and
poverty, bring forth this beauty with their hands.

Forthcoming in LUNA, a literary journal