Sun Rising Poems and watercolors David Chorlton
Sun Rising Sun Rising Peakline Rocklight Over Silverton Migration Watch Mockingbird Pyrocephalus rubinus Gila Woodpecker in a Stormy Dusk Ahwatukee AM Beth Octavio Raptor Now Local Birds Rewriting the Border The Storm of August 25th World upon World On the Job Migraciones Claw Night Flight Acknowledgements: Abbey: Peakline, Rocklight, Over Silverton, World upon World Amethyst Review: Night Flight The Blue Guitar: Raptor Now, The Storm of August 25th Cactus Wren*dition: Local Birds Cholla Needles: Claw January Review: Ahwatukee AM misfitmagazine: Pyrocephalus rubinus Neologism: Beth The New Verse News: On the Job, Migraciones, Rewriting the Border 5enses: Sun Rising Third Wednesday: Mockingbird, Octavio Verse-Virtual: Gila Woodpecker in a Stormy Dusk, Migration Watch
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Beth Cloudlight on the ridgeline, dust yellowing below, blue wind in all directions and a blind spot where the sun should be. It’s been six months since anybody saw the lady whose mind escaped her when she fell and the turquoise car in her driveway is the only sign of life today. She used to sit outside and chat, took her dog a block and back, complained a little or a lot – it always was the same – and when she came home from being cared for turned a monsoon’s shade of mean. Some days another car parks next to hers, some days the silence that surrounds her house cries out for understanding. It must be comfortable living with air conditioning and cats, window blinds down, listening for a storm to break and rain to be delivered to her door in cups just large enough for her to stir some thunder in.
Octavio He’s a thimbleful of jaguar mixed with centuries of housecat. Wears sleep as a disguise suggesting domesticity, but once the clock between his eyes ticks daylight he wants and wants. Sunlight on the mountain, kibble in his dish, white bread on the table, he’ll eat anybody’s breakfast when the window blinds are raised. Postprandially resting with finches in focus he adjusts the flow of his spine and leaps to where their feeder hangs on the safer side of glass. Race from wall to wall, complain enough is not enough by chewing magazines as though they grew in jungles and investigate any open drawer or door to where he’s not allowed. Breakages are part of his identity, the collateral damage of being alive. He must be dreaming when he’s curled into a question mark of fur, must remember the unrecorded months before unsheathing his claws to snag each passing day as though time were meant to bleed.
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.
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.
Rewriting the Border It’s doves and thorns and sunsets all the way into night, and blue mountains float away at dusk. The border isn’t what it used to be, no Spanish is the Lovin’ Tongue or Marty Robbins riding out of El Paso. Used to be a line between the cowboy sky and shops whose colors overflow to make tourists feel as happy as they couldn’t be at home. A hawk still hovers with each wing in a different country and ravens cross over with ease when they dip and dive for joy, but there are no visas for the jaguars drawn by the scent of survival. Twenty pesos for a dollar, undocumented sunlight, new lives for old and corridos from the radio playing on an August roof in Phoenix. Taco Tuesday in El Norte, deportation on the menu every day. A flag of wind still flying west of Lukeville, hammer tap in a mechanic’s workshop, trucks with hearts of steel between Brownsville and Tijuana, highway never sleeping, flan for dessert. A family lost and a Rufous-capped warbler in southern Arizona, slow river leading a line of cheap labor to the interstate; wasn’t that a time when water was the passport for anybody carrying their first home in their pockets. Cheap labor on the move, supply and demand, a cupful of rain for a day digging fields. A trogon calling from the oaks and sycamores. Summer is his time before the sky opens; fly south, fly north, never fly at all for fear that dreams come only in translation.
The Storm of August 25th Clear sky today, sunlight flowing slowly where yesterday’s dry flood advanced from east to west and left the traffic blind. Pull over, the alert advised, to the edges of the world. Nothing stops fate when it’s four thousand feet high. It looked yellow, was dirty, and soft like a bear. Yesterday had no five o’clock. Time was dust. But more to come as wind pulled trees out by their roots and set the scene for rain that was so happy when it fell it kissed the desert back to life. Quiet now, not even TV’s meteorologist to explain that it was darkness with a beating heart.
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.
On the Job Late glow on the slopes, desert streaming between the ridgeline and the streets below, Friday afternoon, T-shirts spotted with the stains a day’s work leaves behind and cashiers at the supermarket scanning what the weekend needs. Mourning doves for restfulness, grackles for opportunism and he who all day wheels the carts stacks another line to steer back to the entranceway. So much to be done: bread to bake and orders to compile, restrooms to be cleaned and a country to be run. A painter splashed white is picking up fruit, a man dressed in black casually steps between coffee and the cookie shelves with a sidearm strapped conspicuously at his side. So much to be done: wash the floors, make appointments, secure domestic peace and spray the fruit to keep it fresh. Almost Saturday, but there’s work for the workers to do even when the sunlight looks nervous. No rest for the doctors, mechanics, plumbers and all who believe that even a rudderless ship reaches port in a storm.
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.