~

~

~

~

~

I stand in the wind at the casco and watch.   Here in Patagonia where trees take on the shape of the elements, grow in the direction the wind blows, or simply refuse to start and let the seeds scatter to a more tranquil land.

I can not share with you all I see as it seems on the surface still and not yet within, not yet absorbed into that deeper place where words are found and stories born.  There will be time.  I feel the soaking in, warm and gradual and rich as the summer sun browning my shoulders that have never been so exposed in January.

Start and stop.  I stare at my words like unfamiliar faces.  Hard to describe what I do not yet understand.  And yet, that is exactly what I must learn to do.  Describe a life not with the depth and perspective of intimacy as I have for my own life and feel for my mountain.  But as a storyteller, nothing more than the impartial observer, happy to share a tale.  And what a wonderful tale this is.  The story I am here for.

Though are we ever truly impartial?  Can we observe the world around us without becoming a part?  I do not believe I can. Fortunately, I have learned to love this woman before we even met.  As such, her story will be told with a loving touch, a knowing grin, and eyes wide from amazement.  (She is helping me work on the humor part.  Not my strong point, but one more of hers.) This is the story of a woman with MS?  Oh yes.  But her story is so much more…

Now is the time to absorb, and I am saturated.  Spending my days pouring into the life of another to gather stories like seeds, and hold them tight as to not let them blow away. And still the wind roars, and sheepskins hung along the fence to dry flap like thin flags on a pole, and gauchos ride in proud and handsome on their beautiful horses, people coming and going, most of whom don’t understand a word I say and of course I do not understand them which is very frustrating place to be, and the sound of hammers and saws and rooster crows and barking dogs and local gaucho rap songs tangle about me in the twisting winds. More distractions than an artist’s open mind can figure out a place for on the table filled with bounty and ready for the feast.  So hungry for silence yet wouldn’t miss all this for anything.  And realize I am so absorbed, I forget to look back. Forgot back “home” there is cold and snow and familiar faces, my horses and cats and just one quiet rooster that doesn’t wake until after I do, and a language I can understand, but none of that matters here and now.  And that is the best place to be.

Let the writing begin.  Why I am here.  Why we were brought together.

(And yes, Jorge did stay on that horse…)

~

~

~

Old rocks and new
sand worn from wind
and time, so many

millennia of relentless
elements overbearing
softened and smoothed

to a treeless hillside
void of
shelter as the lightning

touches down near and
the low bushes smell
of burning oil, we

curl our shoulders
forward and tilt our
head down

as rain hard as stones
drips through my saturated
hair and down my

still pale from
the northern hemisphere’s
winter forehead and

into my gringo blue
eyes and must be
brushed away by

a crumbled rag dug
from my pocket
the last place

I can find
dry and warm
and familiar.

~

~