This page is dedicated to essays, prose and poetry by Dawn

The Time is Now                                                                                                                                                                                                       GO                                                                                                                                                                                                                     The soldiers sleep with their weapons                                                                                                                                                         The scholars are in the towers                                                                                                                                                                            THE PATH IS LIT BY THE MOON.  Walk to the edge ————————————————————————————————————-You will meet the wall with one question                                                                                                                                                     And dive through floating castle stones.

 

3:00 Visitor (came this morning at 3am for me or by me?)

Armstrong came down
and said
“We’ve gone to far”
“What to do?”
I turned to the sun.
Oh Kneel
and kiss the ground.
We’ve been waiting for your question.
You men
are one of many colors
in a tiger’s eye.
We are ashes
come back to life.
When you kneel and kiss her feet,
We answer.

 

The Artist Saves Her Skin

you may have to hide under a table, with your eyes wide open
a madman is turning your family into skeletons

you try to warn them, your loved ones
you tell them not to trust this imposter, he is no healer
you plead and cry
but they cannot hear you
you have lost your voice saving your skin

then half a century later
you will see a stag running
and cry “NO!”
and it will leap into the air with more grace than you have ever imagined
it will leap twice its height and more so in distance
it will be frozen in flight, a perfect arc of nature
when it hits the side of the oil truck in front of you
the force of the collision throws it fifteen feet back
into the ditch, broken legs flailing

on that country highway
driving, you weep
with your eyes open

and you will get out of the car and onto a little bike
to drive to the deep wide river
and board the ferry
because you are tired of weeping
and you are tired of warning
and the river will take your tears into itself
and wash them away

but the cars and trucks will crush your tiny bicycle
so you veer to the side and watch them pass by
and you wait

that is when you will turn back to where you came from
and see a towering semi truck
its angry and greedy skeleton
barreling through the snaking turns
twisting its bulky body into these tight curves
where it has no business being, even slowly

and you will see it happen before it happens
your open eyes have seen it
your skin has felt it
the semi tips and falls and spins and spins
taking out everything in its path
and everything following

so you will turn away from the fire and dust and the noise
back towards the wide river
and your road will be open
and clear

 

The Owl

Who cannot say it?
“I am a stranger to myself.”

The light dims behind your gaze.
Night winds whisper their gentle command,
“Let me in.”

Finally, fold your body through this tiny passage,
Leaving behind the layers of this life.
The moon will wipe away your stain.

Meanwhile
The owl watches from pine shadows,
And blinks.
Unnoticed again.

 

Pounding  

You can ignore the loud pounding
at the front door
they are here to drown out the little voice.
Sit quietly.
It will be heard between their heavy knocks,
a muffled scratching
like the sound of a tiny mouse
trapped in a box
twenty feet below the earth.
That is the voice that you buried years ago
in the soil
under your cobwebbed cellar.
You kept it safe.
Now it is clawing through the box to be heard.
And you are swatting at spiders in your sleep.

 

Night Vision.  Originally posted 12/25/2016

In the earliest hours of morning our thoughts connect two worlds.  Dreams open doors into a fluid world. In daylight the thick shell of the world hides from us from the truth we seek. 
We forget the stars are still there. 
 
This is my story of remembering.  It is one of many, for when we are not forgetting, we are remembering.  And each story tries to remember, but in the telling it falls short.  So the Storyteller is born again.
 
In the middle of November I was not sleeping well.  One particularly windy night I lay in bed, staring into the darkness and listening to the forest howl outside my window.  As I drifted between waking and sleeping a vision began to form, one I did not welcome.  I saw a darkness surround all beings, enveloping the earth.  It was thick, a cloud of deep thick charcoal fog.  I entered into it and saw with my heart its fullness.  Suffering.  So much suffering.  It was not just suffering to come, it was suffering that had been and it was suffering that is.  It was all existing in one place and one time.  I saw it with my entire being and I lay in bed weeping.
 
It was 3 in the morning and I was sobbing, trying not to wake Dale.  I lay there for an hour.  All beings, humans, animals, trees and the earth itself all wept with me.
 
This was a pretty dark place, even for me.
 
After an hour I knew I had to get out of bed and go into the woods. I woke Dale.  He was concerned when he saw that I was crying. I told him. He said, “Take a flashlight.”
 
At first I didn’t turn on the flashlight.  I wasn’t in a hurry, so I thought I could just step slowly and carefully, letting my vision adjust to this very dark night.  It was a Wisconsin November.  So there were dry brittle leaves everywhere, and, on a windy night like this, they tend to pile up.  So, my first fright came when I stepped into a pile of leaves that wasn’t there the night before.  My foot lifted the leaves, taken up by the wind, farther than I would have imagined. I was surrounded by the sound of rustling leaves and my pounding heart.  In the blackness I stood frozen, hearing movement all around, and I decided I wasn’t so opposed to the flashlight after all.
 
At that point it occurred to me that I would rather see a creature of the night before stepping into its space, so the light stayed on as I carefully made my way to a special spot in the forest of pines.  It is a place where a large tree has lain fallen for years, so much so that younger trees grow through it.  Animals take shelter in it.  Moss grows on it.  I have always loved this spot.  When I got there it took me awhile to find a comfortable seat.  The woods feel ominous at night. I chose to have my back against a young tree, something to lean on, and it gave me a small sense of protection. 
 
The wind was still blowing fitfully, shaking the trees and loosening their dead.  Before turing off my flashlight I scanned my perimeter for potential Widow Makers, or in this case Widower Makers.  Then, with a touch of my thumb, total darkness.
 
Oh how hard it was to keep that light off.  A breaking branch a few feet from me was enough to make me freeze.  For what seemed like hours, but was more likely 30 minutes, I sat frozen.  My eyes were wide open, but, at first, I saw nothing.  Slowly I began to see.  There seemed to be a substance to the air, as if every single molecule was coming out of hiding.  The air, the trees, the leaves and I were all tiny dots vibrating in and out of my sight.  Looking up I saw a falling star.  In this light the trees are the negative space, and the distant stars are the positive space.  For a moment I was neither light nor dark, I was only perception, as everything around me changed from one to the other.
 
For an hour at least my thoughts bounced back and forth between wonder and terror.  Of course I could calmly remind myself the biggest danger that night was a coyote.  But a noisy rustle in the black space around me made me imagine more.  At this moment I recognized a connection between my choice to sit in the woods and the story of Siddhartha.  As the account of his becoming the Buddha is told, Siddhartha despaired at the suffering in the world.  His search for an answer led him to sit under a Bodhi tree, meditating outdoors for seven days and seven nights.  My 2 hours in the cold on a fallen tree paled in comparison to his 168 hours. I laughed at all the times I sat on a comfortable cushion in my heated home to meditate.  Nature is essential to awakening us to this life, and we humans so often hide from it.  In a terrible separation from the earth I had forgotten the lessons it has to teach me.  In my darkest moment, I remembered, and I stepped outside.  To be inside of our deepest consciousness we have to be outside in the Natural World, not inside of the Manmade World.  To the degree to which we the Modern Humans have violently torn ourselves from our connection to nature, we have suffered.
 
I remember there being a moment in the story of enlightenment where a giant cat approaches Siddhartha.  So, I thought, maybe I needn’t be quite so fearful.  A lion or tiger would be bad. Back to fear. Forgetting.
 
Of course the point wasn’t Lions and Tigers and Bears.  We do have occasional bears and wolves and even the rare cougar sighting in this part of the State. I knew there was a reason I was out there in the cold and it wasn’t to try to guess which wild beast would eat me for dinner.  I could fear the wind, the animals, even the possibility of a human in the woods, probably most dangerous of all.  I had to let it all go. The most frightening part of being alone in the darkness in the woods was also the most awakening.  Remembering. 
 
I began to look each fear squarely in its face and release it.  I soon found myself remembering them all, from paralyzing terrors to the less obvious ones. The ones that linger for days, muted and pale but persistent in their nagging.  People who had frightened me, I saw their fear.  People that had hurt me, I saw their pain.  People I had frightened and people I had hurt, I saw my blindness.  I saw fear and pain passed on from parent to child, from master to slave, from teacher to student.  Acts of violence replacing the wisdom of old with inherited pain and terror.  Victim becomes perpetrator and the lamb becomes the hungry beast at the door. There was no bad, no good, no dark, no light. Only attaching and letting go.  With each passing fear I felt an infinite lightness that cannot be expressed with words, although LOVE is a good one to try.  This was a special kind of night vision.  Seeing through the dark.    
It was at this point I realized the woods were becoming more and more visible in the earliest light of the day.  As I had passed through the darkest hour of the morning I had seen through at least some of my blindness.  As the trees became solid, once again I could connect each sound with its source.  I looked up at the sky.  Not a single star in my sight.  I would have to go on memory.  Remembering.  I got up, a little stiff, and walked toward the house.  I would put on some coffee and try to talk about this.  The things the darkness commands us to know. Fears are only passing moments, but we give them strength when we try to suppress them.  In their suppression they are squeezed and wiggled into our souls and the passing darkness takes a solid heavy form.  This heavy load is so light in its release.  Walking back to my warm house I knew I would struggle to find the words to tell this story. And in the telling they would fall short. And the storyteller is born again.