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.

 

thoughts for the color blind

 

love is shade movable as shadow;
it is scintillant brightness;
it cannot be defined as if it were
a color described to someone blind
as orange…azure…emerald… a
dainty pink…a blood deep red

its thinking etches or erases like
lace edged sea foam on a beach

it is invisible as gravity…sensed
like space between tick…tock

no spell is implicit in its sounding
for its spelling is not sacrosanct…
it may as well be evol…olev…velo

enough…for we think of it as warm
or chill or thrill or pain or ecstasy…as
literal as pinch…sustaining as if breath

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Thomas Pollock Anshutz

 

 

 

going for distract

 

oh, Dear Reader…let’s go for distract…
pretend it’s a rainy day…or blazing hot
or something’s wrong with our setting
and we can’t change the world…at least
not these very moments

now consider the reward  of thinking
boustrophedon…come on…stay with
me on this one, for it’s a marvel, and
will prove advantage in a curious life
once you get the knack of it…like
computer glasses…or tapping apps

 

 

there…you  just “boused”…might
tease your eyes a bit at first until you
find the motion knack of it…the plow
of it, like oxen forward backward on
a field, the way some Greeks…some
Romans incised glyphs into their clay

use it now…you’re ready… you…
could try it with van Gogh…his great
“Rain – Auvers”…1890…one from
his final works

start top left…scan seeing thinking
left to right and right to left across
its levels blue to gold to blue…stop
now and then to ponder what he shows
for it will wonder you

and then…there is…his rain

 

Bonnie Marshall

Painting by Vincent van Gogh
“Rain – Auvers” (1890)

I Know Him Like He Knows His Name

When I hear e nerve its sting in needle
the power of my thinking in the margin
makes skin prick on my scalp
there just behind my ears…
and I feel the tiniest annoyance
in my brain corners as I read of births
where mere Roman numerals confer lineage
prestige and preferment nearly royal
to a new born son…and I sense resentment dash
my female mind, for it is rarely daughter true.

There’s mystic power in a name…
shades of understanding that a Debbie
is not Deborah, and a Jimmie is not James.
And, when I asked Sam if he liked his name
or would ever change it…he looked away,
eyes hooded like a lizard in the sun,
and took long slow breaths and smiled.

“I’m glad they named me Sam…ever since
some green egg story Mother read me
when I learned that Sams know how
to question and to listen…take notice
how people change their mind and it’s
no matter…not like a Theophilus…although
a Theo might stay to hear you for a while.”

Then I remember…thinking just behind my ears
and in nether margins of my brain how amply
absolutely fits his name no sham am is Sam.

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Anastasia Tversky

 

chanting arid windsong

 

straw dry …drought crack

riverbed flakes skin…darkens

rain forced to fresh mud wash

 

skyed sparks stream static trace

north poled…arched by fingertips

and… moss gleams phosphorescent

 

geometric moonbeams drift listless

up and down and left and right,

scrape pockets in the night

 

islands slip their moorings…form

new continents of Latin mass for

chanting arid windsong

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Fred Williams