Noah and The Buddha


This photo of Noah and the Buddha was taken in 2003, in North Carolina.
It seems a fitting introduction to a post I contributed to redRavine.com -- I was invited to be a guest writer for June 2008.

The poem is called The Face You Wore Before You Were Born -

You can visit redRavine and read it here.

In the Summer of Moths

For Alice Woolf (June 18, 1916 - June 3, 1997)


Yours were the hands,
purple and knotted
striking the keys to
make music from memory.


Yours was the voice
weaving memory and myth,
croaking the stories we
craned our ears to
hear,

ready to laugh with
you, Alice.


Eighty years of life
you aimed to conquer--


Frontier girl,
long-jumper,
rule-breaker,
horse-breaker,
bone-breaker --


Fast as a hummingbird,
silvery as your weight of
turquoise jewelry

until the weight of
pain would slow you down,
you never missed a trick, Alice.



Nearly Christmas eve
you missed a step,
body and soul plunged
down the dark stairwell,

breaking almost every
bone but not your spirit, Alice.


Through the narrow
rabbithole emerging,
pinned like an insect
to the hospital bed

Stubborn butterfly, you
willed your promised freedom
from the white cocoon.



Crucified woman, cast
in a halo crown of thorns
who freed a hand to tear the tubes
from your own throat
while your guardians slept?



You would breathe, and
you would arise.



Trusted healing hands
would hold back death
till it be merciful,
and swift.


No thunderclaps or
lightning, on an
ordinary day

you stopped the world.



Did you dream of riding
bareback through the
aspen,
racing to the ridgetop
of the ranch,
ageless matriarch of
wonderland?


Sky-wide your heart,
yet could not hold you
longer,

June-Bug Alice, this
summer of moths,

You were drawn to the
light.

Linda Weissinger Lupowitz


(Alice B. Woolf, 80, passed away on June 3, 1997.

She was a teacher, artist, musician and rancher who lived at Circle A Ranch in the Cuba, New Mexico area for 45 years.)

Here's a new rose in the courtyard, only hours in the full afternoon sun...

This is Apache Plume, it came up from a seed on the side of the driveway...now it is huge!
The yellowflowering shrub at the end is Spanish Broom, blooming madly this year giving us fragrant swoons. Russian Olive smells like orange-blossom, and the roses are very late, but the cotton is flying and god knows what is burning our eyes.

The rest of the photographs were taken at the same time here looking east at the Sandia sunset, though the clouds have been "feeling lucky" and are a bit brighter than natural, but still it comes close to the imminent sense of them - flaming ...awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

Windy Point - Mount Lemmon above Tucson, Arizona

Kicking Out My Son

1

Having kids is so much fun
Today I’m kicking out my son.

2

Oxen-ringed, spiked canary-
golden, pierced with pins
and banded like a bird:

Wounded, who knows
how, by whom?
Spoiled, they say by me—

Now his handsome face
is sorrowful— red-brown
break-dance rug-burned
brow—red-brown eyes
bruised by sudden weariness:

He knows we’re serious.

*

Nights half-listening,
half in lucid dream for heavy shoes
to scuff the creaking stairs at dawn,
then down the hall to piss:

I sleep if I know this.


*

Nights no tires crunch the stones,
rousing dogs to bark, back-door
banging in the frame—

Ears ringing false alarm, I call his name
in morning’s glare, and there—
No body in the bed, no blinking on the phone:

His fate unknown!


3

Past shame, past struggle of my own
somehow I’ve grown, somehow
I’ve brought forth progeny, and now

I doubt my purpose in it.

4

Knocking in the chest, a mother’s heart
beats to spinning nights her children roam,
under raving stars, up way too late

Trance-dancing neon mine-fields,
testing the waters and the fire-waters
uninitiated, thirsting flight or fate—

*

I cannot tolerate

breaking into sweat while
safely shrouded in my downy nest.

I need my rest.
*

The sleepers snore who share these walls,
their breaths meshing in the halls, the dogs snore
and all ignore my useless fear, as bitter as beer.
At every step,

Every step in this house squeaks.


5

You underestimate your own
colossal vulnerability:
My fear that if you leave this nest,
you’ll die.

We cry and cry.

*

Fledgling bird, new wings
still wet with dew—

And yet you flew!



Linda Weissinger Lupowitz 2002

This poem is posted to mark the end of this period of time in my life, and to wish my son the very best in his journey to healing. He has been gone out of town since October, living in a "foreign country" - Tucson - and our recent visit was a wonderful reunion. So far, it's all a blessing. One day at a time.

(See also Bill Urell's Addiction and Recovery resource - a very funny and honest video here and check out Spiritual River as well, here.