A stand of trees in a field somewhere in Texas.

           A friend and I recently made a trip to Marfa, Texas to aid another friend; another story. We drove through the night to arrive in Odessa around 3. We stopped here to pick up a Budget truck in the morning. Not wanting to spend money and making it up as we went along we drove around scouting for a suitable place to throw hammocks up or sleep in the car. Before long we found ourselves crossing a cattle guard somewhere in the perpetual industrial zone of Odessa prompted by a stand of trees set back in a field. We found that the caliche road took us back to another paralleling with a pipe gate and this road lead through the stand of trees. My friend slept in the car; I slept in the trees. The night was frigid and the woods alive. These are few of the images I collected upon rising at dawn.

 

Rising

A bird flys,
black,
from a post

A human
carried by,
car,
takes a picture

The sun spreads,
fresh,
cross the visage

fence and field
forground

old mountains
horizon

and in the middle,
you are,
somewhere with
the black bird
soft mountains
and sun,
rising

Listen

Listen
silence; words unuttered; synapses firing,
the woods breathe,
here I feel,
everything stirs; nothing
  stirs,
wind; needles; boughs; branches,
the crisp evergreen breath,
the whisper of morning light through the pines. 

Here
I
am;
here
all
are. 

My impression, the impression I leave, is not my own
   but the shape of the world removed
   the space bequeathed, allotted,  gifted, for "my" existence.

The mind divided is too loud;
fear of life
being in tumult
noise of "self"

Existence is a subtle breath
  whispering to our nothingness

We need
 only listen

about the first fire

lifetimes ago we sat about the first fire
under most of these same stars
staving off the cold night
with its teeth and eyes and claws
its poetry of inverse light

We cannot prepare to live; we live.

We cannot prepare to live; we live.

Removed, by thought,

from the context of experience

awe and rapture dissolve.

All that exists does so now.

The moment is an eternity

of truth and beauty

if only we are present.

Walk, wander, and wonder

So what if you only want to walk,
wander and wonder all the day long.
Is this not your right; is this not enough?

Must we be busy? Must we be
irreverent toward life? Must we be
arrogant in our living?

So what if you want only to live deep.
Is there a nobler, more humble, more
connected living? Is there a life deserving
of less?

A Walking

     
       A breath, a step, a walking; and so we stepped to the moment; the sun again to peak and rise above the woods greeting our consciousness; binding us to the deer, the hawk, the squirrel, the tree; binding all in life.

       We walk, breathe, communicate; meandering into a reality of us; in which we forsake our isolation; embracing our sameness, our humanness, our deaths; in which we affirm why we exist, why anything exists.

        We breathe hope of dieing less and exhale the pain of living more.