Impromptu and with Ease

Impromptu and with Ease

Westminster bells
partition through the air
to orient for place
a pacing in the hours

 and cockcrows wake
to first ordain the dawn
with much the surety
of rows of daffodils
unclenching in the sun

it is a gentle doing

it is not blast ordained
like thunder lightning storm
from heavy-lidded clouds
decreeing lines for rain

oh, let us dance…my love
impromptu and with ease
to relegate our days
in measured roundelay

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork: Vincent van Gogh
“Wheat Fields in Rain” 1889

soul I tear

 

these days my brain
is incessant solitaire…
it flips present moment
into bits and pieces
through a shuffled time

no matter…luck of the draw…
my flimsy card slip apprehension
plays sequential consequence of now
with all time wasted…scattered to a table
where a three dimensioned plane
is littered with distraction

oh…there is no damnation…none

somewhere beyond this sphere
that pulls upon me…holds me down
spreads immensity of space
where stars collapse and recombine
in chaos of a deep design
I cannot think to think

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Salvador Dali

to congregate with maskers

I shall congregate with maskers
circle dance their holy ground…
lift its soft warm dust to clouding
with my bare…bare tender feet

ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po
ai-na, ki-na-wchi, ki-na-weh

take up chants…petition spirit
croon a cadence rise and fall…
imbrue thought…and bear the
weight of a vast imagining

chi-li-li-cha, chi-li-li-cha
don-ka-va-ki, mas-i-ki-va-ki

stretch my arms to the horizon
caress air with open palms…
shoulder weave above the plaining
and think locus to the earth

kive, kive-na-meh, kive-na-meh
kive, kive-na-meh, kive-na-meh

for I’ve access…if I wish it
to a universal voice…I’ll overlay
significance…I’ll imagine wisdom
in its ancient keening howl or…
its whispering syllables

ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po, hopet*

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by John Farnsworth

“Apache Mountain Spirit Mask

*The ancient Hopi words of this chant have lost their English equivalent.

 

my Bijou

for Nancy…who loves old buildings

my Bijou in afternoon smells chick hatchery
dried parsley, and old woman’s shoes…
then evening steeps it to bean soup
sour laundry soap and moldy windowsills

rats nose twitch and scurry each way over
through and under…conceiving…birthing
of their kind and oblivious to faint…faint hiss
of massed cockroach mouthing glue beneath
frail wallpaper…Chinese pagoda pattern

warm brown bats swarm to fecund evening
through jag-ed shard-ed windows…
while molting doves coo guttural on ledges
snatch spiders from dew spangled webs…
and chill shrinks wood to incremental creak

my Bijou…no longer courts a populace;
it slips now historic…with attendant  new
assemblage resplendent in decay

 

Bonnie Marshall

Photography by Joey B. Lax-Salinas

Hamlet and the Piraha

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?” William Shakespeare   (Hamlet, 5.2.214)

To live as Brazilian Pirahã
is to be wholly in the present
where mists of past and future
are intangibles of time.

To live with Pirahã worldview
is to have no word for worry.
Dreamtime is the same as waketime…
seamless experience.

To live on the Meici River
is to flow one with the moment
where death is observation
eyes close…breath stops…
and readiness is all.

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Salvador Dali