PEOPLE’S MARCH … Since the start of the year, long-time locals, mostly veterans of the Sixties demonstrations, are marching once a month down Telluride’s Colorado Avenue, carrying signs about No Kings and the Fall of Freedom and other lefty political slogans. It’s a phenomenon that happening all over the country. And no, of course, it’s not going to change opinions. That’s not really the purpose. Holding marches and listening to speakers talk of peace and the etiquettes of democracy is a time-honored American tradition – one my generation grew up on during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. What it does do is build social infrastructure, strengthening the progressive segment of the community and giving witness to our opposition to some of the deplorable actions of the current Republican administration. It’s symbolic ritual. An action rather than just speech or intent. Modeling resistance within the legal limits of dissent in this nation.
Carpe Diem
Seize ‘em by the midterms
-for Wends
Yes, we read Horace, Amor Fati, Sacred Land
Sacred Sex & track the arc of Black Holes
But there’s more to advancement than science &
lit’s churn of the wheel. You, Lady, don’t ask
politely for change. You yell the deep truth
untrumped. No toss of the dice or snip of
the skein. Luck doesn’t matter here at
the confluence of outrage & dystopia
Colorado’s Barefoot Laureate’s got an answer
Seize, grip, clap an electoral chokehold on the
the loosey-goosey MAGA madman by chopping
off his congressional electric power cord
& singing our way back into the obsidian opera
house of matter’s explosive machinery
with starbursts of democracy, social justice
street arias & peace’s quantum entanglements
BURLESQUE … I never liked striptease shows. I don’t go to topless bars. Burlesque always seemed tawdry. Probably my early seminary indoctrination played a part in those reactions. As did our culture’s ambiguous attitude to feminine sexuality.
But that’s not how burlesque plays out in Telluride. There, it’s a huge hit. The local theater group sponsors it every year. Local women love to flaunt their sexuality on stage. And audiences are loud and raucous, appreciating all body types and seeing beauty in the playful hinting of raunchy and the unabashedly feminine display of nakedness. Or even more alluring, the almost naked accoutrements of the burlesque shows: the wild costumes, tantalizing thongs, nipple pasties.
My youngest daughter invited me to the show this year and it was a delight. Not so much arousal for me post-cancer surgery, but more as appreciation for feminine sexuality that we in our culture carefully circumscribe and often denigrate. As an old Rainbow Family paleohippie, nakedness isn’t the public taboo it is in most situations of American society but quite natural in my eyes. So, seeing my daughter parading around the Sheridan Opera House stage, twerking and being totally sensual was fun. In a different context, burlesque may seem unseemly, but in Telluride it’s a feminist exhibition of sexual empowerment without shame. And I found that wonderful.
LONE CONE ASPARAGUS … One of the Spring joys of rural living in Western Colorado is wild asparagus. Well, not exactly wild. An escaped perennial, Asparagus officinalis is a European garden staple that’s gone feral in the countryside. One of the botanical immigrants that came to this country with our colonial settler ancestors.
According to Orion Aon, the founder of Forage Colorado, feral asparagus is usually found along fences and ditches. And indeed, it grows along fences all over the West End of San Miguel County where I live. It took me years to realize that the Red-winged Blackbirds and Meadowlarks were eating the tiny seeds and excreting them in their poop. That dab of fertilizer appears to be the rooting incentive and vector of spread for feral asparagus, which is why it appears along fence lines where the birds perch.
I love to steam it (which only takes a few minutes) and then to use a mayonnaise & avocado dip or an olive oil / colatura di alici / garlic drizzle.
Locals
[excerpt from Reinhabitation]
Over the years I’ve learned
the litany of locals who’ve called this acre home:
Wild asparagus. Coyote willow. Bald eagles
Mex & Phyllis Snyder. Caroline Young
Ed & Grandma Foster
Planting rhubarb. Tending goats
Attuned to the wing whistles of Wilson’s snipe
Flocks of geese. Red-winged blackbirds
The occasional Great Blue Heron
TALKING GOURD … Each column, I try to feature a new poem I’ve written or come upon. Here’s one of mine that springs from my recent reading of discussions between Merlin Sheldrake and Robert Macfarlane in Underland: A Deep Time Journey (W.W. Norton, 2019)
Pachamama’s Muscle
The painter sees the world as landscape
a posed portrait or a still life
Their art to fix motion into dried paint
I see a meadow as Pachamama’s muscle
flexing underground in chthonic complexity
The soil teeming with microbes & hyphae
Iris & asparagus bubbling up out of the slow-mo
cauldron of humus that cooks the raw rock
& serves it up as the fertile soup of all biota
Our planet terraformed
over aeons of naturally evolving wisdom
& centuries of Indigenous care
