Creation’s Summer Poems and watercolors David Chorlton
I Local Birds Local Birds Migration Watch Mockingbird Spiritrunner Wrendology Pyrocephalus rubinus Gila Woodpecker in a Stormy Dusk Rainbird Ahwatukee AM Raptor Now Migraciones Claw Night Flight II Sun Rising Sun Rising The Afterstorm Chiaroscuro Rocklight Peakline Over Silverton World upon World Summer Blue Summer Night Calls Summer Storm Creation’s Summer
Acknowledgements: Abbey: The Afterstorm, Rocklight, Peakline, Over Silverton, World upon World Amethyst Review: Night Flight The Blue Guitar: Wrendology, Rainbird, Raptor Now Cactus Wren*dition: Local Birds Cholla Needles: Claw Eunoia Review: Summer Night Calls, Summer Storm International Times: Summer Blue, Creation’s Summer January Review: Ahwatukee AM misfitmagazine: Pyrocephalus rubinus 5enses: Sun Rising The New Verse News: Migraciones Third Wednesday: Spiritrunner, Mockingbird Unstrung: Chiaroscuro Verse-Virtual: Gila Woodpecker in a Stormy Dusk, Migration Watch
II Local Birds
Local Birds A Turkey vulture hatched out of the sun; lost soul seeking directions to better see the wonder of it all. When Costa’s hummingbird rests on the lantana twig that loops out from the shade, he looks left, looks right, looks the daily news directly in its downcast face He taps against the palm tree, questions the house whose woodwork holds secrets Gila woodpeckers must find an answer to: the afterlife of trees. Feathered midnight, the owl calling to spirits among the stars when milk and honey run across the desert sky. The nest woven into light and wind survives storms that follow humans on the run. A hawk can see there is no hiding place on Earth.
Migration Watch Another fine morning in our city of weather with no seasons; clear skies and distant war while citrus blossoms sweeten the sting of rising prices due to overseas hostility. Spring’s first oriole in the back yard, sunlight sliding down the desert mountain slope, the long term forecast is for guesswork with a shower of passwords, digital codes and the continuing quest for life’s meaning. Log on to the day, seven characters away being sure to include one upper case one number and a hieroglyph or letter from an ancient alphabet. The sun the Anasazi knew is climbing toward noon; will it recognize the here below? It’s the Hooded, orange-yellow, black white wings, a day out from Mexico and drinking from a shallow bowl on its way through a world gone out of tune, where darkness hosts the flight of millions and here the mockingbirds sing all night long.
Mockingbird The silver-throated bird who cannot sleep imitates the sound dreams make when they float on darkness. It passes down the street where windows are left open for the season’s scents to drift inside. One tune becomes another while the midnight presses roll with next day’s headlines. Questions daylight cannot answer roost in trees, convenience store cold cases hum to themselves and driverless cars go wandering with no destination. Bright moon, insomnia, a radio playing another country’s music and an intravenous drip of starlight sky to Earth sustaining the vital signs of mystery.
Spiritrunner Another day begins to sag and suddenly he’s here, looking both ways on the run and happy as sunlight soaking into early summer. The Zuni see him bringing rain, the Maya knew he gave his brightest plumage to the quetzal, to Mexico he brings the good luck America would deny. His footprints in the dust lead away from evil. He’s earthy, sacred, draws latent thoughts from hiding and makes them run, run, run so fast no witches can keep up. Two twenty-eight in the afternoon, he’s a backyard spirit chasing memories away to make space for living now. He’s patient, fast, won’t give up and has a sense of humor to strip unworthy presidents of their hubris. Many mornings he parts the feathers on his back to let the daylight warm him. On the stony front yard beside the ocotillo his presence is divine on humble ground until he runs where even spirits have to hunt. And with a good day’s life accomplished he returns to dream the feathered dream of those who are beautiful and yet uninterested in superficiality. No boasts, no falsehoods, nobody to deceive, just the modest reassurance that come storms he can outrun them and carry shreds of lightning in his beak.
Wrendology Between brittlebush, stones and the sky one path says to continue while another turns back on itself: which way to go, where does the call begin with its gravel notes? It knows where secrets are though not the how of getting there. Walking’s fine, to fly is better, best of all forget setting out and listen for the Cactus wren. No good news there, no bad, only directions past the sprawling nest in a saguaro’s arms. And further, to the raspy sound of sunlight caught on cactus needles, still reason to go past the corners and creases of land, a cough that catches in the desert’s throat. The rocks impersonate a raven’s cry, slope leans on slope and greens into infinity. Let other worlds have fire and ice, let them bathe in radiation. Desert calling. Cholla shines. Bright morning. Somewhere to be, known only to those who arrive there.
Pyrocephalus rubinus Stinkweed, Mallow, Brittlebush, a single unplanned Sunflower smiling from among the weeds that populate the wash that’s dry and only pretty to the Mockingbirds who sing warmth back into the air. A day worth speaking for as ordinary as the Mourning doves and sparrows busy with the sandy ground in all their feathered modesty. And the entire planet is spinning underfoot, eight hundred miles an hour the park is moving, carrying all who walk there, or throw balls for a dog. All the years packed deep inside the nearby desert lie unevenly at rest the way millennia of chaos had them become. An earthtones day; grass and topsoil, rock and mesquite, the mountain with its buried thoughts insists on staying where it stands. There’s trouble somewhere taking the back roads, smoke rising to the east and the usual battering of opinion against opinion from coast to speeding coast. Nothing much unusual. No TV cameras filming here. No arrests. And just for those who take the time to look a tiny bird whose plumage is a drop of fire among the mesquite branches.
Gila Woodpecker in a Stormy Dusk Dark hearted clouds on the mountain, a woodpecker clings to the sky with a claw while the crest on his head sparks red against grey. He comes down to tap tap on the side of the house asking woodwork to remember when it was so many trees. There’s thunder in Heaven, he’s looking to perch on lightning. Soft light, gray light, black light, and a dip in flight as he follows the mysteries back to the light of creation. Does he dream? Does he sleep among stars? He’ll be back climbing tree bark at dawn to ask whether insects have souls.
Rainbird The kind of day the sky moves into the house and the street can’t remember ever being desert. Darkness owls itself away leaving mystery behind. The Cooper’s hawk on the backyard wall doesn’t care about the human world with all its looking inward to secrets of the heart and trigger-finger minds. Just waits as a cold wind sharpens it claws passing through; woodpecker be gone, mockingbirds curb your songs, sparrows take shelter when the weather doesn’t know which way to fly.
Ahwatukee AM The turkey vulture flying low along the street this morning casts a graceful shadow on the asphalt. The light of the world balanced on its wings, a slight dip left, another right, the work of cleaning up has just begun. Sunlight in its feathers, embers in each eye it moves with such purpose the mountain each day brings to life stands back to give more room. It doesn’t need a password to log in to information posted in the clouds pertaining to souls the owl coughed up at night. A peaceful time. The heartbeat of high noon is bright and slow, the West is still the West beneath the city’s laws and order. Coyotes patrolling the sky, a hundred degrees and rising, another day, more hair and bones discarded by the stars.
Raptor Now Egrets up in the leaves that float above the pond, two Black-necked stilts wheel around them and morning has its finger on the season’s pulse. Here’s a Cooper’s hawk as sudden as the onset of a memory, and gone as quickly. No high summer roads for him, no switchbacks or nostalgia. He’s easy on the wing, has eyes for what the moment offers and the grace to take it cleanly. Nobody hears him coming, he’s made of secrecy and sunlight, appears when least expected as the wolf who came down from the sky.
Migraciones Music in flight from the border tonight and it’s pulling miles of starlight behind it. Darkness tuned to grosbeaks, orioles, homesick songs and the Black-necked stilts who come down at the golf course pond. There’s an echo to the ads between corridos and the high romance that ends in a flourish no matter who stays and who leaves. The trogons cross to occupy a canyon lined with pine-oak where sycamores sing to the daylight. Gray hawks in the cottonwoods, tanagers where the edge of woodland overlooks a wide and open valley dark priests occupied before they named the land for saints, and Black hawks looking down on it from an indifferent sky. Doves take back their city for the summer in tune with the natural order of hunger and survival. 103.5, La Tricolor, playing until morning and then in the yard, russet crest and greyly greened, the unmistakable Trepador cola verde.
Claw Earth has not forgotten how she pales with altitude until she’s air. Balance, look down at disinformation flying and facts that never come to roost. She sees how one street argues with another and traffic lights keep changing their minds but there’s skywork to be done. It’s the best guess of the wind where she goes and no business of the sun’s where she’s been before coming down to hold on to a snag with the claw by which she hooked and raised and dropped a desert mountain into place.
Night Flight Two hours of the year to go and one step from the back door into darkness. Quiet except for trial fireworks as the mountain counts down. Time on a tightrope. Across the wash a few windows still awake and streetlamps on their toes straining for a view into the future. There’s an owl perching in the yard and when her moment comes she flies at barely shoulder height, dipping first then rising, on the way to where spirits meet with a wingspan twelve months wide.
II Sun Rising
Sun Rising Slow light on the awakening road, a thrasher calling up the sun, the sky breathes in, breathes out, a dream floats away without knowing how it ends. Desert red, a world apart. No interest rates, no headlines, just a jackrabbit who listens to the stones whispering. It’s too early for suffering to begin or souls to rise in protest. It’s beautiful to see the ancient sun the people here before worshipped as it rose and whit-whit now the mountain holds its heart up for all the world to see.
The Afterstorm . . . after which, the trees sing life back into birds, red earth runs down from and water runs back to the clouds. Oak speaks to sycamore and madrone to the pines, a Black witch moth informs the deer the forest has awakened. An alligator juniper that drank a streak of lightning stands its ground with scars to show while light steams from the rattlesnake grass. Flash, flash, the rocks gave up their secrets, the creek had wings and Turkey vultures gathered to an early roost. They’re resting now with stillness shining on their feathers, each of them secure in knowing it was just black daylight passing through.
Chiaroscuro Mountain stepping forward, stepping back; some days it’s so relaxed the sky doesn’t know it’s there. Arroyos digging deeper into memory and memory climbs back to straddle a peak. The low trail only speaks when spoken to, stone down, stone up, simple steps with the familiar view of desert’s inner life. Sunlight climbing granite, nowhere to go from the ridgeline. Rocks alive, forms that won’t stop forming, every day a new alignment aspiring to rough edges and imbalance worthy of the truth. Remembering really doesn’t count for much here, there’s nothing to explain and no line of descent to tell a mountain where it comes from. Enough to see the days begin, listen when the light sighs on its way into night and that old silence returns, the one that was here before thoughts had words to define them. Same shape, same creases, crevices and rustling just beneath the skin, but now all shadow and the calls with which nighttime predators ask the stars for directions.
Rocklight Mountain climbing out of time, desert on the surface, solid darkness underground. There’s a hawk’s eye for a sun here and insect tunnels to the past. Red morning, blue dusk, lizards’ tongues snagging drops of wind, a hummingbird nests in a raindrop; nothing impossible at midnight where boulders never speak of what brought them to life and gave them a slope to hold on to. Large rocks hunt the small rocks, survival by night, and bloodstains on the morning sky.
Peakline There’s a sting in the peak and a smile in the slopes leading up from dawn to the sigh that comes from rocks when they see clouds the color of dove calls. That’s when daylight soaks easily into roughened surfaces, when the fire in a bobcat’s tooth begins to burn, when a desert mountain is so solidly alive the stones believe they could fly and hunt stars.
Over Silverton Golden wind, silver wind, green lace forest below, water for the sun to drink, rocks alive in flowing grass, river in the sky and summer snow packed in mountain crevices. Red-tail scanning history, ready to sweep down, hook his portion and go back to living in a cloud. There’s whiskey in the mines, old hymns that never end and can’t get through the church doors. Summer cool, the last breath of daylight reaches the Animas River and floats into forest so threateningly beautiful even the trains cry out that they are high and lost and long to fly.
World upon World There’s an upper world, a lower world, and what’s left in between is what the desert has to occupy. Cycles upon cycles through more years than a mountain can count and the doves still wait for saguaro fruit to ripen. Rock looks on at birds taking pulp, bats spilling out from the moon doing the same. Day, night, prayers and sacrifice, it all works out the way the heat intends, with hummingbirds as emissaries between what’s known and what a dream alone reveals. Summer months there is more comfort inside the earth than on it, but no patience like what granite has, standing firm until the monsoon rains. Whatever died comes back to life, water in the deep ground sings, the coyotes are immortal and never tire of living, never ask which world it is they’re living in.
Summer Blue Blue Mountains of Mexico will we be always alone, still out there on our own Ian Tyson There’s so much time inside those mountains they don’t care who comes and goes, who watches from across the border as they shade from daytime into darkness into memories of a snake on the road so narrow one thought can’t pass another; the motherfatherdaughter lost and holding close together for water or directions; the blue on the throat of a hummingbird; the easy way a vulture hangs on a thread from the sun; a deer’s eyes in daylight a fox’s at night on a trail that can’t remember him and the abandoned mineshaft in a pine-oak canyon whose old equipment watches for the Red-faced warbler while a coatimundi is so relaxed the leaves on the bough he’s chosen fall asleep.
Summer Night Calls Summer with the monsoon in her claws calling through the dark, wind beneath one wing, rain the other with thunder on the run behind the moon. Clouds above the desert part to let migration through; storms come, storms go, grosbeaks bound for Mexico and the forecast is for mountains becoming a whetstone to prepare lightning for its work of picking summer’s bones until they’re dry.
Summer Storm Time to tie down the lawn, there’s a wind on the way that loves grass. Better gather up keepsakes before they disappear for good, gather stones to place on top of them. No difference between an ill wind and a fresh one, they all want. And want. They don’t choose between what’s useful and what only takes up space; it’s take and take and watch it fly. Lock the doors, pull the blinds down, tell the cats storms don’t need their food. But if that box full of old letters has finally become a burden let it go, have the weather choose between memories and thunder.
Creation’s Summer Calm skies, sunlight in the pines at the north edge of the park, Roadrunner stopping just so he can start again at the pace of surprise to patrol the stones shaded by mesquites along the wash. How did it all begin? With a flash from stormy nothings or the fabled word whose meaning was beginnings? The lizard next to the lantana looks old enough to know and too preoccupied to care. Such busy shadows out where two fledgling thrashers learn to be themselves and creation placed quail among the sparrows with a hummingbird perched on the minute hand of two PM. Such precision couldn’t come from chance. Study how the verdin weaves a nest, the stealth by which a Cooper’s hawk becomes invisible and the casual demeanor of the coyote who this morning threaded himself through a gap in a fence and colonized the light. Maybe the plan was not to have a plan and let earth, wind and fire argue among themselves until unease and earthquakes had their way and it was called good. Doves holding to an ocotillo branch, Red-tailed hawk holding to the sky, deserts shading into forest, rain on its toes and thunder in the clouds. Too much for one god to consider. And with worlds birthing worlds no end to it. Cold moon, burning stars, thirsty javelina tramping downhill to drink. And what of spirits, were they the reason for us all or just an afterthought to make of night a dark terrain where owls decorate the ground with bones. They mark the way a soul goes when it’s tired and needs another story to explain what binds it to the Earth. Flies
for the nighthawks, trees for the fires, deer for the lions, monsoons to quench the thirst that makes the desert shine. It’s dry but beautiful this time of year, ashes on the mountainside at dusk, new flight, old bones and insects for the woodpecker who are nestled so darkly in trees they believe he will never find them.