A Long Perspective

Author: Francine Walls

  • InterPlay Journal, Friday morning, April 11, 2014

    Body Wisdom: To change your life, change your practice!”

    Patricia led today on the theme of “intersections.” What happens when we come to an intersection in our lives when we must choose one way or another? What do we do, and what do we not do? What needs to be let go in order to move forward?

    In one form, she has us find a partner. We walked to music “together” as partners although just looking at each other peripherally. We took turns following and leading in movement, gesture and sound. When we “noticed” later, one said that she and her partner, “moved as one body.”

    In the Babbling form with partners, we babbled for 30 seconds on the word, “choices,” as well as the phrase, “the path not taken.”    Finding new partners, we babbled on the question, “What do we want to do?” Then, we babbled on the question, “What do we need to do to make that happen?”

    Patricia had us form three lines. Each person was to walk in a way that showed what needed to be done to get to the state desired. The second time, each person was to walk as if what they wanted had happened. Well, there was some strutting!

    Toward the end, we formed a circle and spoke our concerns briefly into the circle.   Many woes emerged such as illnesses, injuries, natural disasters etc. To music, we did a “dance on behalf” of those concerns expressed.

  • Alki Point, Minus Tide

    c. FEWalls
    c. FEWalls

    Amanda runs through the shallow waves

    in her pink sun-suit and rubber boots,

    yelps as she holds a crab,

    its single pincher snapping.

     

    Amanda grins and flashes the new front teeth

    too big for the others; she sets the crab

    down carefully among sea grasses,

    the bud of its new pincher still safe to grow.

     

    Amanda ignores the call from the shore

    and the women from Vietnam bent-over

    the tide flats placing crabs and clams

    in plastic bags to sell.

     

    Amanda smells like kelp in the sun.

    Her hair damp, she licks salt from her lips,

    squats in the shallows fingering the algae

    and the roots of their hold-fast grabbing rocks.

     

    The long blades of algae, brown, green, red,

    bob on the waves with a strand of white

    bleached out by age, sun, death.

     

    Amanda stirs the sea lettuce.

    She prods the starfish humped over a moonsnail,

    its arms move slowly,

    never tiring, never giving up.

     

    Amanda stares at the abdomens of crabs

    looking for the broadness of the female

    hiding the ovaries. She misses

    the red nipple of sea cucumber

    wedged deep in the breakwater.

     

    Amanda ignores her mother’s yell

    from the shore, hands on hips,

    “Lunch, Amanda, time to go,

    right now, Amanda, time to go,

    right now!”

     

    FEWalls

     

  • Wing-Beat in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado

    Starry Night, Van Gogh

    You have said your good-byes like prayers,

    used to the words on your lips;

    your child has the shape of your eyes,

    but the shade of resemblance dances away.

     

    Remember the river at dawn,

    flowing between the canyon walls

    as the mallards flew swiftly before you

    scouting the unseen curves in the channel,

    their wing-beats counting down the miles?

     

    The cliffs above you climb beyond seeing,

    the water fast past the boulders,

    the rapids seize you, twist you,

    pin you against the rocks then let you free.

     

    In the pressure of the current,

    there is no turning back.

    The ravens struggle across the river against the wind,

    the cliffs the color of the bead

    of blood that glitters from a wound.

     

    You feel the shape of the canyon in your body,

    the ocean abandoning the inland, again and again,

    the continents shifting on their hidden tracks,

    as you dream of separation.

     

    Gather up what you know,

    as the weather turns to rain,

    the mallards have disappeared into the light

    and, now,

    you emerge from the canyon alone.

     

    FEWalls

  • Apricot Moon

    IMG_2519

    Ignition on, the key worn down

    almost straight now,

    on the dashboard,

    a pack of Camels

    lying on maps among rock samples

    and tufts of tamarisk.

     

    Shirtless, you lean forward, turn the key,

    a birthmark flutters over your 6th vertebra,

    the engine roils in the guts of the Subaru,

    purple-gray mountains in the distance.

     

    We lurch through corridors of sand, pitted tracks,

    past tiny signs to Fault Wash, Vista del Malpais,

    a hard right, the key falls to the mat,

    the motor, oblivious, roars on.

     

    At the cliff, the clawed Badlands before us

    baked reddish-gold, dusk gathers up the warmth

    and the waxing gibbous moon rises.

    We lie on our backs in the sand,

     

    the trajectory of our eyes lifts to Perseus,

    son of Zeus, who rode the winged stallion,

    and fights on in the night sky.

    We dream the stories of the ancients

    from this cluster of our beginnings.

     

    FEWalls

     

  • Prism

    IMG_0209_1The glittering water pulses with rainbows,

    tosses off colors, swirling, a flutterance –

    no thought of loss or want or farewell,

    brilliance for a shilling or a dime or naught

    gathering the colors up again to shrug them off,

    twirling into the garden.

     

    Come back! See!

    The crows screech in the firs,

    the raccoons sleep in the fennel

    leaving the leaves tamped down,

    smelling of licorice.

     

    Silently, the crocuses raise their heads,

    clumps of purple, thin leaves arching,

    then, too soon, they fade into the soil.

     

    The bird bath stutters in the wind and rain.

    The waves lapping and overlapping,

    casting off colors with abandon,

    casting off the past,

    casting off you.

     

    FEWalls