Photos by Richard Feldman, from his walkabouts.
In The ‘Hood
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Monthly Archives: October 2021
Haibun by E Klingner
Hoping for a late frost this year as my apple tree is laden with tiny fruit.
The fruit smaller than any previous year Red and yellow hanging with green gold leaves all casting shadows on the adobe wall. Quiet beauty here. I’m sitting on the far side of the patio watching robins and finches, juncos and jays come and go for tasting leaving their mark on each hanging apple.
Frustration this week when tons of Santa Fe Brown stone was delivered
for our driveway. In error I ordered too much. Too much was delivered
in a huge truck with a driver who did not know how to handle the load resulting in a bumpy driveway with piles where they should not be.
All this complicated even more when the driver dumped over a ton onto the road. Hours leading to days with shovel and broom and a new tool – the gravel rake. The workout continues.
could it be
yesterday’s experience
using up too much of today?
Crystal Geyser, Utah
Photographs of pattern by Isabel Winson-Sagan
Starcode’s Astro Oracle
How exciting! I love decks of cards, and Heather Roan Robbins has just produced a beautiful deck that uses astrology and archetype to create a tool for intuition and self-reflection. The artwork, by Lucas Lua de Souza has a dreamy magical feeling, often with the effect of spheres within spheres or meaning within meaning.
For me, the best way to get to know a deck is to pull a card a day and meditate on it. I pulled “Vesta” for the goddess of the hearth–a flame within a small neoclassical temple, vibrant clouds behind.
The meaning is the perfect message for me right now as I do the laundry in my suitcase from a trip, turn on the heaters, and put the garden to bed. “Vesta calls to you to be a hearth fire, to share yourself for the benefit of all but still have enough energy to live healthfully and give again another day.”
I also thought I’d ask the deck: any advice for the readers of Miriam’s Well blog?
Retrograde: Review
“Stop the normal patterns of your life and take a break.” “It’s not a time, tempting though it may be, to reminisce, pick at old scars, or revisit a painful situation from your past.” “This is a moment out of the ordinary flow, an opportunity to use what you’ve worked so hard to learn.”
Widely available–Walmart, Amazon, and at https://www.abebooks.com/Starcodes-Astro-Oracle-56-Card-Deck-Guidebook/31010564082/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade-_-product_id=COM9781401962685NEW-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjwq9mLBhB2EiwAuYdMtfyrlLT_yjHbWuD–NwYbYEEv6kpwrpjKXMWbzD127HgXOpPMDPDjxoCXEYQAvD_BwE
New Poetry Posts by Kathryne Lim
Magdalena, NM
Your land is a tapestry of ribbon
and rattlesnakes, sky stitched
above it like an untouched stream.
Mornings, I collect eggs from your basin,
my fingers powdery and warm all day.
It’s impossible not to see the shape of a woman
in a mountain range, here a mound of breast,
there an aching for rivers long dead.
Check out 10 posts on SFCC campus for this poem and more!
Amazing Image!
Artist Margaret Thompson is working on a new video, partially based in the Poetry Yard.
Richard Wright Haiku in Public Places
The Concrete Ships: Poem by Miriam Sagan
The Concrete Ships
At first you thought
the tankers in the shipping lane
weren’t real, but some kind
of mystic breakwater
then they seemed real enough
to leave, and go in search of
of something else
nine concrete ships
piled up in the Chesapeake
to protect from storms, and the imagination
that balks
at floating perpendicular skyscrapers
ghosts of war
never leave certain shores
transport
is its own holy grail quest.
As children
we rather loved
the huge fractured hull
sinking in the sand
broken off, a monument
to failure, wreckage
not unlike our scarred exhausted
grandfather
who still could tell
quite a story.
It rained at night
off Hatteras
the place names
soothe me like a lullaby
but even the strongest lighthouse
can be displaced
and dreams dashed
over these rocks.
***
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kiptopeke-s-concrete-fleet
Photos from Atlas Obscura
Against the Machine–Miriam Sagan
I’ve had many adventures recently. I flew for the first time since the pandemic. Two minutes into the trip I fond myself sobbing as TSA patted me down–first once, then twice, in a private area. Well, I was an accident waiting to happen and by the time I was told I had “residue” on my constantly washed hands and that I’d set the machine off by wearing a dress, I was in nervous tears. “Everyone cries” the TSA lady said in a calming attempt.
She was obviously not a bad person, but what kind of system is this? Like most systems, hard on women in dresses–traditional, modest, or chosen. Like contemporary systems, promoting the machine, including cell phones, computers, and imaging devices, not as helpful tools for life but as technological gods we must placate and please.
I had an opposite experience waiting for my flu shot yesterday. A woman in her eighties, wearing a beautiful medallion of the Virgin, started chatting. Her hugely pro-vaccine stance reminded me of my Jewish mother, despite the obvious differences. “My mom had a cousin with polio,” I offered. “And she was ecstatic when the vaccine came out.”
“I had polio as a child,” the lady said quietly. “A mild case. My right leg doesn’t work well and my left is over developed but I’ve had a long and good life.”
“How can people not get the Covid vaccine?” she asked. We shook our heads. Here was a miracle of technology that works, and yet people reject it.
Acceptance isn’t the last refuge of failure, but it isn’t my go-to either. I’m treading a narrow path between my trust in critical thinking and my need to not judge humanity every minute of the day.
It’s nice here in New Mexico in autumn. Th oak tree my son-in-law planted by the mailbox is turning a gorgeous red.
I’m well aware that more than one thing is happening at once–and I hope that in your world many of those things are good.
True or False? A Thought from Philosopher Gillian Rose
However satisfying writing is–that mix of discipline ad miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control–it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and agony of loving.
From “Love’s Work” by Gillian Rose. What do think?
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 