Choreography of the Living
“Leave the tree entire.”
Morning and blue shade,
frigid wind and frost.
down the road &
around the bend:
twilight,
the gloaming
El Valle, 2013
Introduction
The high desert of northern New Mexico teaches a particular kind of attention. Here, where the Rio Grande cuts through ancient sediments and juniper-piñon groves cling to volcanic slopes, the land speaks in geological time. To hear what she says — and throughout this collection, the land is a “she,” a subject — requires learning what the poet calls “the language of your fear”: the willingness to be silent long enough for mountains to reveal their names, for stones to sing their song of erosion.
These poems emerged from that discipline of listening. Written across several seasons in the Southwest, they map a journey from careful observation to something like communion. The speaker learns to recognize the ancient seashore locked in the current desert and feels the name of the mountain in their body, to understand silence not as absence but as a form of attention so complete it becomes participation. The natural world speaks and carries an intelligence, to paraphrase Robert McFarlane, which we can never fully know but which we can join in with.
Part of what distinguishes this work is its deliberate use of jarring juxtaposition to simulate altered states of consciousness through language alone. Phrases like “drybone desire” and “spinewhite slice” collide with “luminous life” and “brilliant fall blue,” creating the kind of perceptual shock that opens doorways in awareness. The collection oscillates between overwhelming beauty and stark mortality, between “sacred mind of the sap” and “machine of destruction,” mimicking the psychedelic experience, which heightens hidden contradictions to expose deeper patterns. This is poetry as consciousness-altering technology, using the collision of opposites to jar readers into the kind of expanded awareness the desert herself demands.
The poems refuse to romanticize either the land or the human relationship to her. They acknowledge alienation (“Where different is dangerous”) and mortality (the sand-colored cougar watching for hours) as honestly as they celebrate moments of transcendence. The desert is neither hostile nor welcoming — she simply is, with a presence so complete she transforms anyone willing to meet her on her own terms. Through combinations like “brain of the soil” and “mind of the rock,” the collection assumes consciousness permeates the geological world rather than arguing for it.
The collection moves through increasing depths of integration: from learning to listen to stones, through weather as atmospheric cathedral, to love understood as connection across geological eras. By the end, the boundary between observer and land has dissolved, not through mystical merger but through the patient practice of attention that reveals who was already there. The poet’s work is translation: to find words, imperfectly, for what the land says.
The Stones
The stones speak strong if you know how to listen;
Sing a song of erosion, if you know how to begin.
The mountains slump over,
twofoot walker feels her weight.
pull of terror dreams,
weathered: come apace
the men
who named them.
The mountain’s name was always gravity,
nodding sleeplessly
sleeping with colors
trees speak:
lung synesthesia.
You can hear her heartbeat if you know where to begin:
water clink & sigh;
the wind and the drag,
hiss of desert,
droning pulse.
What jumps into the sky and floats?
the raven song, for one.
two, the clouds.
three, idea and particle
issuance divine
leans only on wind
the spoken word.
cedar gum
scented breath,
the sighed signal
thrum of the throat,
soft mountain
juniper bough,
migrating rock.
If you learn the language of your fear,
you will know how to begin.
what trees embody: mind
quiet in groves murmuring
a murmurating mountainside.
multiple tongues
glow treelife blaze.
brain of the soil
mind of the rock
drybone desire,
evermoving stillness
a communication of trees.
The language of desire speaks experience.
slosh of ancient seas,
tinkling shells at footfall
surge of dust
under boot as surf
the rise of swells
azure gold
desertdry
from stonefaced shore
to sky.
The Cedars Green and Black-Gray
awash in gauzy light white,
luminous life
through uplifted arm &
brilliant fall blue.
Vast cosmic spaces, liberated & eternal,
endless change and harmony.
Here, it is not silent but perpetual hush:
ocean of atmosphere
roils and rolls deep & weighty,
washes canyon floor,
wafts essence of water
and wood on water.
Black cicadas emerge clicking
cycles around the sheer granite face,
ringing solitude.
No one is alone and it is never silent.
Groups of birds glint in the sunlight
stark against shadowed walls
raggedly proud
encircling the colossal valley:
sandy silence and
symphonies of light.
Up from sheer canyon walls,
cells of water become
weight & want
the lowest place,
soaring life, and
weightless flight.
Cathedral Spires
How does brown on brown make black on white?
corner of the eye magpie
weeping willow of glass
jet black bulls,
mourning monoliths.
stone pipe organ spires
shoulder chaparral plains.
Cold raven caw, impossible perch,
rainbow-black feathers
fluff tilt and
—fall aloft
in a cathedral of air.
orange-rimmed eyes
flash rainbow black,
speck in the spiral abyss
of redolent wind.
Juniper-Piñon Grove
i
Juniper-piñon grove,
entire rise off the road
a mountain slope.
sacred mind of the sap,
branching roots;
life awake
unfolding
holding pungent particles.
Trees belong as we belong:
a life of their own,
a life held in common,
living lungs
our breath
her body.
“Wise music is missing from our desires.”
What the soil wants on the sheer slope—
crown and foot
cougar canyon.
soil murmurates,
an ocean swelling &
rippling for aeons.
ii
Juniper-piñon, workaday tree of New Mexico,
quiet still
thriving alive
together
in colonies
cover arroyo
ridge and bank.
heather & moss
hold years of treecrumbling,
dry out-of-time
imperceptible digestion:
a teeming soil of microbes and
fungi, her living tissue.
Voluminous hillswell skirts the sky.
perfect angle in mind
from crouching shrub,
swallows leap—
fragrant cedar
explosion
of feather and tail.
The Cemetery Path
i
The cemetery path,
women with flowers in their hair
vibrant in the house of death.
honored maiden,
full moon face
enfolded in midnight
filaments woven of imagination,
rainbow in her brightness.
Forsaking all but true contentment,
attachment to only
exact occultation and
full satiation.
All who have stood to fall—
their hands do not grasp, yet they make;
their ears do not hear, yet they know;
their mouths do not move, yet they speak.
—Nothing important changes fast.
ii
The earthquake awoke radiating shockwaves:
bent doorways blasted radio rising wind
sunset, opening rose on rolling earth.
fires blare in the aftermath.
iii
The anarchists move in most regimented order.
once philosophers of dun abstraction
now with frozen fingers
red carrots in winter.
Daring bodies huddle solidaritywise.
burnedout bombedout buildings,
blackout cities
coalblurred white &
cinderblock cellar,
stone basement.
The old commercial district
busted open: bright melon
sweet orange meat,
bellow their covert open raging,
menacing visceral atrocities,
cast down, burst asunder.
skulls cast
rich diamond starlight
onto the pavement
glistening with night.
iv
Waters pulse bloodbrown, embrace
frigid softness.
The descending rocks and river there
carry their meaning,
husky voices tell
in the language of ghosts
gone, but never absent—
who may haunt but don’t rend
consummation of desire,
significant expression and
terrible symbol—
the swirling heart of water
Straight is the Path and Narrow is the Way.
collect back into the gut of the corpus.
two springs frightenedly gaze
down on those below
who remember them.
Too much of one, one too many—
Ancient ones have specific bodies:
a metal mailbox black with
aluminum red flag,
dustroad ghost
heroes don’t die,
they have a place
peopled with dusty
rowhouse rooms
arrowstraight smog
green and vinegar
slays darkness and multiplies—
the softest, strangest, most sharp elbows.
The corpus expands to embrace and disintegrate,
gravel thrown down the dawn,
tempered dusk reminds us
that we, too, will.
at the moment of death.
No longer everyone, we walk through the gate
alone, or not at all.
Straight is the path and narrow is the way.
Where Different is Dangerous
do I become my favorite part of this place?
do I want to be alone?
do I like solitude?
Do I pour out my love
for her?
harvest of juniper berries,
quiet bounty of this land.
So still in pastel
jangling live line
midnight sparking
glaucus-blue
blare awake:
fist and jaw
grind bright blistering
hot void.
“slap you around
to know you’re there”—
eternal departure,
shocking separation.
Moonlight opens the night
blankets the bed
soft light.
Holy water rain douses red roof church.
sun, earth, cross,
orange atmosphere:
burning embers
of the day and
days past.
interstellar space age
machine of destruction,
an earthen cross.
Lightness of the mountaintop,
vacant human bodies
lifetimes alive
locked away
isolated
satellite frequency
dustwhine drone.
Wind vane of time a fixed flying arrow:
blur
of the blades
of the windmill
water pump.
Silent in the Desert
i
Silent in the desert, occasional passing chickadee
chickadeeing along
one bush to the next,
distant hush of tires on asphalt
echoes up broke down canyon.
the ping of the cooling car
and crunching footfall up
beyond the decrepit gate
held in place
by its own weight and
twisted across the path
rising from the highway.
Sun warms ancient stone where I sit.
primordial gasses caught inside at the
original fire.
air bubbles arrested for millennia,
frozen effervescence
locked stable in solid rock.
Soon, the sun will drop beyond the rise,
creeping cold
puckers skin.
microscopic birds
flit follicle to follicle
among quiet forests
of hair.
My massive hulking body eclipses ancient stone.
ii
Shall we go, sweetie girl?
my dog and I
go the way
of the doe,
over the saddle
of the oxbow.
dry arroyo,
proud ancient monoliths,
broad in chest,
creased in face,
root of stone &
juniper-piñon.
impregnable,
hidden intercourse,
twittering time &
plunging sandstone.
Force of fading light
subtle with eternity
a robin’s song
becomes one
becomes nothing
becomes one.
iii
The adolescent, sand-colored cougar
still as shadows lurch
across the gorge.
hard foot pad scatters
soft caliche dust,
silent flight,
glistening
spinewhite slice.
Instant bliss and light—
candle flame and linen,
sunbeam breakfast
for 43 years,
now fare for night,
frost shadow &
plainly spoken robin,
sweet chickadee,
my body
becomes death,
immobile stone circle,
choreography of the living.
iv
Above the saddle of the small rise,
where the deer goes
at the oxbow cut,
spring wind slices
up the canyon,
crosscurrent-intersection
of wind and time,
waterparched
ocean of sky.
secret meeting place of
stratospheric birds
adrift in the current.
a point of perfect stillness
a bolt, a flash of white
icy air glows luminous.
Heavy Humidity
When heavy humidity rolls in
as high frozen clouds
locked thick with massive ice,
Does it search for dustcloud to seed snow?
ears thick with pressure,
the body ache & weight of
watersaturated air.
No release until wet air and parched desert dust
merge to form
undifferentiated mist.
Holes in the ceiling in the shape of raindrops where vapors escape—
sublime atmosphere.
She Opened the Way Water Flows
down into my open palms,
around my fingers,
softly whispered
the sounds of oceans.
All the seas of the earth cannot contain us.
as the surf gently cups
docks and boats,
her green fathomless blue
warm and lapping
ship ribs and swaying masts,
whole worlds held aloft
floating seamless and rolls.
Water and light
unite and shimmer.
Bone to Bone
we love—
Nothing closer to the soul than skin,
building blocks of life.
aching trunks
groan with elemental forces.
Mountains sing change over eons.
We touch procession of ancestors—
root to root
granite to granite
skin, feathers
hair, lichen
broad maple leaf an
outstretched hand
reaching to earth,
grasps my open palm.
the deepest &
most longcycle visions,
timeless epochs of
soul, emergence, sex—
even love.
Winter Dawn
Sediment-red sky & distant sun
rounds the sleeping earth.
high clouds criss-cross
miles-long, winter grass
bent by ancient winds.
dusty gray bodies stack as
miles of atmospheric ice.
Frozen arms embrace frozen breath—
earth slumbers under
morning snow,
her crystalline blanket.
Quiet spirit from quiet rest
glides above the roiling air,
slow progress traces light.
suspension of sound as
warmth whispers to warmth,
waking eyes
blaze from the east,
clears the frozen day.
Moon on Earth
Full moon sets on a frozen
morning over the mountains.
grass under checkerboard snow
hatched lines under muted orange wash
gray-purple earth
flaming magenta sky.
Diffuse behind clouds of ice,
the sunrise fugue over the pass
a pastel drive of yellow and blue
resolves to clear melody.
transecting the silver disk
the pointed pinnacle in pure daylight
pins the perfect center:
moon on earth.
Peace at Nightfall I am
invisible, silent
paths night by night,
meet eye to eye
close as breath.
at daybreak,
clouded truth and
morning mist.
I am no machine set spinning,
no ghost in the shell.
of the spirit’s whirring,
no one’s tongue can tell.
No name, none but mystery,
word, a constant vowel
self beyond believing
the sky around the hill.
Badger sets her dinner,
otter swims her course
choice beyond the choosing
sound beyond the voice.
Who can know the value
of any such as these—
how to weigh the sunbeam
pouring through the trees?
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