poem

Wild ways

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

If I were a wild river
Cutting at my own roots
Severing the past like grass to a sickle
Slicing cleanly through
Exposing a new path with each
Swipe of blade
Swell of water

Now no more than a
Down low moving
Ceaseless silent forward stream
Oozing seeping weeping sweeping
Close to freezing
The chant of monks in the woods

Warmer seasons bring singing waters
Rushing roaring ripping over rocks
Rejoicing in their wild ways
Scoring the bank with strong voice
Rhythm of pulse and force

I don’t hold back
A tempestuous scream
Dancing naked down the side of hill
Head thrown back and hair unbound
Bellowing like waves in the open sea
Aloft in my mind like memories
The pulse of power and passion
Releases me unruly and raging

Then a silent turn through the woods
Leveling out
A deer through the aspen
Disappearing in a flash
Quiet still silent serene
The pond of reflection
Nothing
For you to see
Only me
A face in the mirror I’m not familiar with
So much older paler tamer
I vaguely recognize her still
A second glance does not reveal
Anything beyond the surface of glass
The surface of the still forest pool

Rain begins with no more than ripple
And then an explosion of storm and swelling
Paint me with vivid strokes and colors
Cochineal crimson and raw umber
Emerald, amethyst, sapphire and tourmaline

Forget your civilized ways
For just a moment
Torn like pages from a book
Left to blow in the wind
Tangle in the untamed grass
And slowly decompose in the shade
Of the Blue Spruce
Whilst the Red Tail shares a lonely laugh above

But time demands
The path of the river revisited
Calm and contained again alas
Prim and proper
Clothed and clean
And see I can make that work too
Same waters
Different path

But this course of the river
Is not what calls me
Inspires me
Drives me
Wild

No more than a whisper

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Wilds whisper yet I long for their roar

In the hollow silence I listen for depth
The eventual splash of a bucket dropped into the well
Does not come

I learn to accept a bubbling brook tucked into the trees
When what I wanted was the bellow of the ocean
Crashing waves and endless horizons
Not before me but within me

Snow falls
Not so much a storm but a gentle covering
White wash
Settling
Erasing the past
A part of my passion and dreams
Colors
The horizon

Standing out alone
She adorns me with tiny jewels
Glistening silver and white
That last no more than an instant on my naked flesh

And then I am left
With nothing

Seduced by earth and sky

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

The sky appeared above as a familiar lover
I have not slept with in years but still haunts me in my dreams
Spread out on top of, over, next to, entwined with me

I vaguely recognized the warmth against my back
Wind like lazy fingers through my loose hair
A recognizable sweet musky breath

Swelling wide above me was Colorado
Bright and blue, clean and open
A crisp dry chill through my nose and throat and lungs
As we climbed the hillside on the clearest day I’ve seen since moving here

It took me there and I was reminded there was not where I wanted to be
I left for a reason, for a hundred reasons
Finances and family, tourists and timing, altitude and in-laws
Histories I was placed into but don’t belong
A burning desire to change, expand horizons, ignite a new adventure
A secret hope to find the Forever Home

A desire to grow
Yes, just grow
As in a garden
A tomato
A lilac bush and hollyhock
A pig that can put on some pounds
Funny the things that interest me.

My father just forwarded an article entitled “Curious Things about Colorado” which included the fact that Silverton, the town closest to us on our west, has no growing season. Really. None. On average, a total of two frost-free weeks per year. I was hoping it was more like four at our ranch. On a good year. After all, I have managed to scratch out lettuce, chard, kale and carrots from soil laden with mounds of horse manure piled and protected in raised garden beds we built from the old bridge across the Rio.

Yes. On a good year.

And still I look back and see an attractive comfort and that entices me. Because it was known. I could find and fill the coffee pot in no more than moonlight when I woke at my usual early hour. Know the number of Stellar Jays that would appear from the Blue Spruce each morning and squawk above my wool capped head until I spilled out their daily rations. I could tolerate the heavy storms and mornings out feeding the horses with the thermometer so low it read, “OFF” because I knew the sun would soon shine and from exactly what point on the eastern ridge it would pop its glowing head.

It is hard to let go of what you had when you have no clear picture of what you have.

So we are seduced by desires of the past. Holding tight to false hopes that we can carry the knowns and givens with us as we step forward into the future and find ourselves floundering in the present. Clinging to the safety of the side of the pool. Afraid to let go of the handhold. Not because I want to return. Yet that comfort temps, the familiar lover you can not leave because a warm body in bed is better than no body at all. At least that is what we are often told.

I challenge that assumption.

Easy for me to do as my lover lies safe and warm beside me and the thick gold band on my finger, combined with my stubborn sense of commitment, reminds us both we will watch each others wrinkles spread like the hoar frost down by the river bank and still lie next to one another and spoon close on cold nights many years from now.

Today we find ourselves out under a low grey sky, hats and shoulders turning white amid the first good snow of the season as we walk in the dream state that first days in a new place seem to necessitate.

And for today at least, I am freed of the burden of the seduction of the dazzling blue.

Beauty redefines

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Beauty is redefined
By necessity
It is what we expect it to be
What we look for
What we are comfortable with
In context with our past
Our present is relative
As is the view before us
Now seemingly a bit odd
An awkward moment that sticks around
We shall get used it to in time.

Must beauty be big and showy
Blatant and bright
Or can it be subtle, slow, vague, and mysterious
A distant view revealed between dense timber
A play of light gracing the valley below
Through a break in the clouds while snow softly lands on our shoulders

Slowly we begin to see, to feel, to understand the difference. We absorb it all, the moisture in the air softening smiles, plumping out the creases the high altitude had carved on my paling skin.
Big trees thicker than our arms can reach around, with our noses touching rich and sweet bark.
Beauty that soaks in like the heavier air, damp and dark and a patchwork of long shadows.

My old mountains screamed. Blaring sun, rugged peaks, stark blue and white
These mountains sing, a quieter tune, we hear only if we listen and look through the trees
Softer, easier, but somewhere in them, I think, she holds secrets just as deep
She begins to open herself to me
I am the one now reserved
I need to let go and release myself fully
How else can we receive

How many layers can we lose and still remain in tact
Can we peel beyond naked and vulnerable
Down to bare bone
Hard and dense as granite
Expose the inner core
Then find what we are made of
Our essence
Perhaps no more than air and water
Thin and light and a little bit ethereal
That which holds us together
Or spreads us thin
Binds us
Or blinds us

When there is nothing else left to protect us
Contain us
Identify us by
But waters smoothly flowing
Over solid rock

Raven

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Silent are the wings of the raven as he passes
Casting a shadow long against the withered brown grasses at my feet
Laid over in the wind like hair in my eyes
Escaped from beneath the safe and warm confines of a wool cap pulled tight

Under a still grey sky
Laid out above like the inanimate object
I try to reach and reward myself with a soothing touch
Something warm, like flesh, soft and pink
But feel nothing
Only the weightlessness of the air above

Raven on the fence post
Static statue on a barrier to no where
No boundaries to define in the fallow field
Like some random spot out in the open sea
Just a few posts remaining
Semi upright
As time and gravity pull them slower than the eye of a generation might see
Old cedar carved deep with creases like wrinkles on an old man’s brow
Then surprisingly speckled with a shock of brilliant chartreuse moss
Unexpected life where one might suppose no more than death
And a tangle of wire coiled like snakes hiding in the tall brown grass
Prepared to grab the unaware footstep

The world around me as a mirror to my soul
Now tired and tamed and worn by the wind
Dreams and desires whisked away for the season
Seed heads reaching mid thigh
Dancing like drunken old men leaving the bar past midnight
Leaning on one another as they make their way down the twisted cobbled alley

Where does it lead me
As I seek a trail through the woods
No more than a tangle of vines and fallen trees
Leaves from the past scattered like forgotten promises

A stir in the stagnant air
Raven takes flight and the flapping beat
Throb like lungs of a running horse
A deep and guttural pulse as legs pour forth in a frenzied rhythm
Across the wide wild open plains

A breath I can hear and feel and smell
Warm and sticky and so wonderfully sweet
And for but a moment
I am carried through those parting grasses
And my dormant wild ways are awakened
For but a moment
I am unbound
And take flight with that feral black bird

Deer Season

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Leaves fallen
Feathers plucked
Skin left naked and raw
Open to the whim of the wind

She steps away
Stripped of her robe
Fallen at her pale feet
Exposed and vulnerable
And lies upon a new land
Cold and hard and uninviting
Not a whisper spoken to her
No secrets to show her yet
Nothing but a cold blank stare
Impenetrable
Unfeeling

She longs to feel
Against the freezing ground she presses her boney spine
Arches her neck and looks up at a sky she does not yet recognize
A stranger above her
Her eyes roll back
Hiding blue as a sky behind thin clouds
White reveals a void
Releasing a guttural moan
An unfathomable sigh
Giving in
Giving up

She remembers standing up
Taking a stand
Vaguely recalls what she stood for
A dream behind billows or a dancer behind a veil
And for a moment she blends into the brown and rotting leaves
Blowing about her like a dirty halo
The rich musky perfume overwhelms
Dulls her other sense
Her wildly racing thoughts
And she rests
Quiet as the sleeping doe
Awaiting the hunters footsteps

My side of the mountain

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Lost and found
I lose myself in my big back yard
Consumed by her presence
I’ve become almost comfortable
Such stances dull the senses
Noted as I languidly lie back on her still warm hillside
And breathe for but a moment between bursts of vigor
Bouts of anger and so much still to do before I leave.

Soul food
She has fed me from her flesh of rock and soil
Nurtured me with her cutting wild wind
Filled my belly with raging storm and thundering tempest
When the earth and sky merge together as one
And quenched my seemingly insatiable thirst for wide and white and wild
Then let loose her uncontrolled wrath of waters in spring
When no one else would stand by her side
As if she were no more than a shallow sunny summer face.

She showed me her subtle still side
Her dark side
Deep side
I dove in
Where the sun dips behind her mid afternoon silhouette and her skin turns frigid in a flash
And the world is a blinding white and black and blue
Or the brown grey cold wet simple season of spring
That no one cares to see
Her seemingly ugly side
A raw face before the fanciful adornment of warmth and leaves and light.

Now she is stripped bare
As tourists turn their backs for a warmer ease
The elk for lower ground
Foliage for their resting place on the leeward side of bunch grass
Surrendered for the season in tired tangled and torn tan mounds
Or deep in the woods beneath the silent silver trees awaiting their blanket of snow
And the geese begin to congregate on the delta flats
Their final farewell sounded by loud squawking that carries up the side of the freezing mountain
Two miles or more as I stand on the front porch and hold my breath to listen.

End of color

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

And then it is over
The gaudy display
The song and dance
The brilliant appealing attractive spectacle

After weeks of the gradual climb to climax
Suddenly it comes to an end
Blown away
Stripped in one windy afternoon
The gradual crescendo
Followed by the Grande Finale
Now the audience claps and clears the theatre

Her inner core is left exposed
And therein lies her greatest beauty
Raw and unrefined
Real and without fanfare and comforts and attractions ready made
And for the first time in ten years I won’t remain
At the one time I belong

I long for wild
My wild winters
What has allowed me through the rest
Will I find this calling somewhere else
Or will I lose that part of me
Silenced in the din
Of traffic, talk and schedules
Based not on the rise and fall of sunlight
But on the numeric display on your modern phones

It won’t be long
It’s who I am
How I define myself
My wild side is dominant
Now dormant
Unable to awaken
But I do not let tears flow unless they may nourish and join the river and rain
Perhaps another river
And a rain storm building above another range

The wind is silent now
I do not hear the mountain
I do not hear myself
Instead I hear the wild call somewhere farther
Somewhere else
And I shiver to think of joining her there soon

A poem behind a rain streaked window

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Rain on the window sill like anxious fingers drumming on the top of a table
The unsteady pulse of traffic below
Kicking up puddles that flash florescent in passing low beams above the slick ink black pavement covered by two days of rain
And above the colored flashing chaotic lights of town
The mountains calmly stand serene
An instant space of silence
Secrets hidden behind veils
Layers unfolding
As skirts on such a grand Victorian lady
Ashen coating softens the deeper you dive in
Irresistibly drawn
Back into the seemingly endless sea of jagged peaks
Back towards the richest of treasures
Sparkling a faint silvery gold
Diamonds in coal
There before me
Changing views as the heavy clouds
Languidly rolling about her hips
Unveil new secrets just long enough for me to question
To draw me in
Back there
And all that is or was the foreground suddenly disappears
My breath calms and gaze widens and I am there
Somewhere between the sea and sky
In the layers of grey fading like a childhood memory
A blurred vision I saw once in the back seat of the station wagon
As the motor hummed and my family loudly carried on
A faded photo with colors washed out over time to a pale patina of light and dark
There before me the view which lifts me over the lights and noise and now a siren I think I heard
Now so far below me
As I somehow progress deeper and higher into the infinite wilds
A place with expanding boundaries
Is anything anywhere left untouched
That I may be the pioneer I dream of

Simple words after a storm

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Oh for peace of place

I seek around me

And all the while

Forgetting to look within

 

Calm and quiet after stormy skies

Have spent their fiery passion

Leaving moist grass in the dramatic evening sky

And let me be still to listen