La Paloma de Mi Vida Desierta

So she went and found a bird.

Moreover, it found her.

Lying partially flattened,

a broken wing fastened

blood-stuck

to the road.

Great, just great, just great.

Kids are in the back of the car,

sweaty, tired.

It is always hot here,

even in

winter,

and we all 

stick to our seats,

as we stick to our plans,

shiny petal pink noses

and fine soil-powdered

feet and hands.

Cupped hands, cups,
glasses

bowls

baths

fountains

pools,

we all live magnetized to water,

practicing water-divination,

succumbing to 

water-seeking behavior,

the perpetually parched.

Scattered throughout

this paved and

grid-locked city

stands Our Lady,

beatified in bathtub shrines,

and Our Savior’s cross

bedecked with garlands

of acetate roses

to mark the spots

where the dearly departed have

left the earth,

now quenched in mercy.

But this day, the beaten path

of school-uniformed pilgrims

taxied between 

bus stop and home

toward water 

in all

of its dispensations

is disrupted

and halted

by this

half-doomed

wave of a wing,

blowing up

from gusts of wind,

and not of its

own
will.

So now, a pregnant moment of sighs,

inside the metallic sand Honda,

steering, gear-shifting, braking,

hands and feet 

acting apart from mind,

but from a part of

the call of the road 

to halt

for this tiny toll,

and the heat 

shimmers

over the hood.

Pull over, get out, assess.

A goner. 

A dumb mourning dove

done got itself hit

and now just here lies,

peeking up at 
her peering down,

she bent over
hands on knees,

the glare

on her back,

It in her shade.

Well, this can’t be right.

This is out of order.
Highly irregular.

Dove should be above,

Woman should be below.

To realign this upset is

over the line

of requirements 
for the maternally inclined

as they circumscribe

their days

around this valley

of sacred heart mysteries

that never fail

to remind

how one false move 

and show’s over, bud.

She doesn’t have long

to stand exposed,

scalp prickling,

assaying viability

in this dry riverbed,

the engine running.

Lord, what to do?

What to do? What to do?

She pops the trunk

and hopes, then sees 

an old towel waiting for

emergency—

but one such
not imagined

as This: 

an aviation crisis
in a city where
Howard Hughes gathered
his airplane graveyard
with upward tails
on a plain
that glitter like sails
moored in a dry marina
and F-16s fly over
in trained quad
formation,
criss-crossing
trails
that spread
like cotton wool
and settle upon them,
alighting on shoulders
as a chemical
benediction
of the well-pleased
from the wide silver-blue.
Sparking, perhaps, 
an impulse of mercy
toward this
espied and singular sparrow

from those of us below,

arising

from a thinly veiled and 
disgusted faith 

in the ever unalloyed 

igneous truth 

of the tender young
family:

It’s Always

Something.

She covers the dove

in this

faded-as-the-desert-sky-blue

raggedy-edged, 

fringy towel-for-a-shroud

and heaves and sighs

in exasperation,

looking away to the sidewalk

and away from It,

aware of the faces in the car

straining to see

What is Mom Doing?

There is conditionally cooled

and welcome home to get to 

and popsicles

and cartoons

but we are strapped in,

red-cheeked, sweat-streaked,

our little beaks open.

This won’t take long,

can’t take long,

her chickadees

are sweltering.

In one sudden final swoop 

she heroics,

angelics,

and magics

this quivering,

wrapped and enraptured

delicacy of prey

up and off

the blinding

black asphalt

all cushiony tar 

binding gleaming white stones 

frosted with thick florescent

yellow striping,

her backside

now babooned up

before any upcoming

traffic,

yet covered up modestly, 
sensibly, practically, in
reasonably priced and

serviceable khaki 

skirting above

inevitably 
burned then 
tanned legs 

straddling

the fallen,

shod in sweating 
suede sandals

slippery and pigeon-toed

so that polished nails

are in situ
on either side

of this breath-pulsing
not  yet toe-tagged
lump of

blanketed Bird.

If it all comes down to

ten coral-red drops 

on the ends of her feet

spread but fixed 
onto this street,

beneath the Cross,

beneath the roaring eye

of Jupiter,

where is God Not?

If not Nowhere,

Then why not Here

just a moment ago

in this forsaken

suburban canyon

of stucco and tile and gravel,

Swiss-dotted 

with lizard 

footprints

up the concrete walls,

why not Here,

where All is Now,

just long enough

to Deus-Ex this

feather-mashed,

pinion-snapped,

helplessness

under an

all-seeing

sun that never relents,

not one moment of

concealment

does it provide,

no, not even in death

on a steam-rolled

strip of smooth

cruising on any afternoon,

carefully surveyed

over layer upon layer

of broken caliche,
sprayed

from enormous mustard

cylindrical tanks of water

standing up

on T-Rex legs,

dangling

slack hoses waiting to swell out

at each dawn’s

early light

with the shooting,

the blast.

She has witnessed this daily

soaking, grading, bull-dozing, baptizing

and stratifying of 

sifted sediment

in real time,

for a plasticine era.

No dignity in

this age

of the instant potato,

the sudden neighborhood,

the divided and conquered

and sub-divided

plots of nowhereland

of which she was gladly,

gratefully, 

breathe deeply in relief, yes, 

oh yes, she was the proud

owner of one,

by all that is profane,

because, funny, it turned out 
that there also was not dignity

in the quarrel of the

far off fixer-upper,

the spackle, paint-spattered

troweled off, wallpapered

marriage.

So now they are respectable

but not entirely decent

in these isles of homes
which aren’t

cut cookies at all

but chickenwire, styrofoam,

snap-together

press-on, bake-oven

glitter-sprinkled

hunkered down

anthills 
veined with 

termite tunnels

laid out

for all of them

raising these children,

these children,

so many children,

hair gleaming

baby teeth baring

knees scraping

in all of this maze

of too many

and never enough

children

sequestered

in mobile trailer

add-on schoolrooms

because

stuff and nonsense

the government dares

to want property taxes

to pay for these 

mini-educations,

and the elders would rather

save for their rainy days

which are numbered

in the teens

in this Old Pueblo,

and mutter disappointment

as a eulogy over

“these kids”,

appalled

at their own non-legacy,

a gathered-in nest

kept pristine for themselves,

a crying shame of comfort

in these

four bedroom houses

built for two

and free doctoral care,

and gambling and voting 

against these offspring,

as the coil shuffles off,

offering less and still less as their

to-whiches they have become accustomed

become evermore custom,

while we all expect more and still more,

of the younguns, 

to keep up with the Russians,

the Chinese, the Indians, with

jokes of “feathers or dots?”

and build up and around

retiring communes,

rather than commons,

in which, one day 

she will as well,

and again,

gladly, gratefully, merge into 

and become one with,

expiring relief that so much

more is behind than ahead,

so much that should have

been uprighted,

yet is still

left hanging in effigy

or shot down

like a starfish

drying out upon 

parking lot pavement

but first,

she and this

last days, endtimes,

not-long-for

this-world Dove

together, now,

alone in all the golden

stillness,

everything silent

in the geologic age

of a seafloor turned to

low tide desert.

She throws out the towel,

in the towel,

down the towel, 

swaddles bird murder,

someone else’s 

hit and run, 
until she can’t

see It through her

sunglasses and hair,

cascades It away,

as far as hands

can be, farther

than arms’s length

if that were possible,

so as not to

feel the final beating,

the trilling, the squeamish

brokenness of this

aviarian mammalian

reptilian hollow-boned 
grim-reaped other
that is not her

in the wholeness

of her arms that still work,

still bend, straighten and hold,
but never could fly
oh, why, oh why

and then swift up the eroded

embankment,

to the shored up strip

of vegetation

so highly prized

when it was once just

deemed scrub not fit

for man nor beast

nor any living thing creeping

upon the ground

but now is lined

with view-fencing,

for empty pools

and clanking

Sunbrellas,

an iron-railed

churchyard

for these

fossils and bones

that lie down, betrayed,

because the water no longer

runs through it, in these

choked up wish-washes.

She finds a half-circle

of shade beneath

a straggling Texas sage,
of questionable wisdom

to inter this 

still-living bird,

on this errand

of the mercilessly

bewildered

and shocked.

Yet how many times

can we come to a standstill,

a-mazed before death,

’til it simply

sits down beside us

and takes us by the hand,

not to reap

but to release

and to give

and to restore

to the divine

or at least

to provide

the natural

order

Because, Once upon

a nobler time,

a friend,

an artist of prosperity

perspicacity

and fenced-in property

featuring an O’Keefian

skull of a cow

nailed to his wooden

entrance gate

along with other signs

of authentic desert dwelling,

in tune and beknighted with

naturalist leanings,

discovered an owl

graciously already passed on

under his lone swaying cottonwood tree.

Of course such a find becomes

sacred duty to not

leave a horned,

grand and wise

mythological One

to moulder in anything

less than a grave

spaded deeply beneath

the shimmering

majesty of circular leaves,

each one a wafer

of communion

with the light above

and the sweet cool

below

a proper burial

fit for a king.

But here lies her poor common dove,

whom no one will mourn,

with no Godseye upon it,

under its pauper’s bower

of dusty and dried out quivering stems

which makes a lame story

for no one to hear,

so the Three:

a Madonna

and what Children are these?

are freed from the dying
to drive along
the living and quick distance home,
re-placed,
re-enhoused,

but only for a brevity

and the breviary

of tasks and chores

and Hail Housewares
in the Cult of Domesticity

before the suspense

coils round, overtakes her,

a hidden snake, poised,

striking the sternum.

She checks to see the littles

are sprawled on the couches

and white carpetburn,

now fed, now watered,

now cooled off, scrubbed up,

rubbed down,

drifting 

into dazes

and trances

in the lull before

dinner, 
the sweet children’s hour

when the ants

come marching home,

stunned, from the

city.

Errant again,

she glides the Accord,

their armored vehicle of

the nuclear family

back to the spot

of cease and desist

and clambers

back up to the Sage,

to find the denouement,

the resolution, the final act

of this mystery:

Has the misery 

at last been put out?

Will the coyote, the housecat,

the buzzard, the packrat,

have stolen inside

this terrycloth bundle

to find its task already

a fated fait accompli

but still warm enough,

Ooo, yes, a quick bite,

a cocktailed 
amuse bouche

before sunset?

Undisturbed,

just as she left it,

all is unmoving—

but Que Pasa?

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Not immoveable

at all, after all,

for she squats

and grasps only

the corner with

a shudder 

a grimace

an intake of air,

bated,

and tugs,

not as a magician

standing at table,

but gentle as the touch

of a hand in a nightmare,

and the questing fingers

are answered back

with a flurry of feathers

under the chin

a flutter skyward

commonplace to none,

the empty linen

left below,

an ascending life-whirl 

that does indeed

set her back on her heels,

nearly a bottoming out

caught by bracing palms,

and a laugh in her throat

as the Sun, now sunk in the sky 

to chest level,

calls this tiny flighted one

high 

into its 

red solar winds.

Her lips crack

as her mouth

of little faith

spreads open

over a plain of white teeth

smiling upward,

eyes squinting

sightless

daring not to look upon

the holy of foolish holies

within the eternal

glory

of getting played

by God.

"White Dove of the Desert, in Pink," (of  the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson, AZ), oil on linen-lined board, 12"h x 16"w
copyright Jill Banks 2012, jillbanks.blogspot.com

© Copyright 2016 by Gilded Lily Press

Pilgrim's Progress for Mind, Body & Soul

There seem to be different kinds of pilgrims. The three Magi were the kind that waited until various signs were in place before they started out. They needed certainty first. They also had a clear idea of what they expected to find when they arrived at a no-doubt-about-it destination— a glowing and beatific Messenger of the Divine. Their story appears to have a neat and tidy beginning, middle and end, complete with lovely depictions and rhyming hymns. Yet we know that appearances are often misleading, and the middle is never tidy.

For instance, things get ghastly when the star leads the three to King Herod, who reacts to their private debrief of messianic prophecies with an order of infanticide in the city of Bethlehem. These wise men were even planning to return to Herod after finding the Baby, but instead, heeded a brick-falling-on-the-head warning in a dream to steer clear. Some guiding star. I’m glad their slumbering, receptive bodies were as reliable as a celestial body. 

Even if this frightful part of the story could be explained away with several contortions of logic, what purpose does it serve as an element of a pilgrimage? I believe it serves as a general reminder that even when an action seems like a solution with purpose and a predicted outcome, there are many forces and wills at work, some seen and fortuitous and some unseen and unsavory. Calendars, maps, interpretations and forecasts can be wrong.

The Three Kings by bmosig.jpg

Here is also a reminder that desperate acts of destruction, on the part of Herod and the soldiers, cannot guarantee a desired result. By his parents’ flight to Egypt, the messiah begins his own pilgrimage toward bodily salvation. Even the Savior must be saved, from people and by people. So where does that leave the rest of us? We're not often caught up in a cosmic religious drama between forces of good and evil that include signs and wonders. We usually have just our own small dramas with small obscure signs and little to wonder at. And what if we don't even recognize that we are on a pilgrimage because we feel caught in one of those traffic roundabouts when people forget to yield? 

One way we can know where we’re trying to go and what we’re trying to do is to simply observe our movements. Are we periodically making a break or a run for it, even if— unlike the Magi—we don’t yet know why we're going nor what will be there when we arrive? Do we just keep leaving or feeling compelled to leave a central point, but the radius is the only thing that changes? The break isn’t made and the run is halted. Do we just keep tilting but never quite falling completely out of time and space, only to be thrown back in it?

If this is the case, then the stagnant central point is the problem and the impulse to flee it is actually a supreme act of survival toward completing our full course on earth. It’s important to recognize this, because whatever destruction we run toward may not be what we want at all. If the primary urge to live and live fully keeps on being replaced by unwanted secondary and tertiary gains, then there isn’t much point in chasing after flickering exit signs. Also, we may not want to break from every aspect of the central point. All we know is that nothing is working, we’re stuck in a circle around a drain, and efforts to recruit people for help aren’t effective. There’s a reason why hell is described as a funnel of cantos. The chaotic reality of the territory never changes and the descent becomes increasingly constricted and frozen.

Map of Hell by Sandro Botticelli. The blue semi-sphere at the bottom is where Satan is bound in ice as a prisoner and not a ruler.

If there is one thing that I have learned about the circumference of the spirit, it is that an expansion of the spirit can’t happen without the cooperation of the body. The body will move with or against a mental plan every single time until it senses that the mind has come into agreement with the spirit. The spirit keeps insisting that its sacred central point is both within and therefore everywhere, and it wants our mind to have our body act accordingly. If that sounds like transcendental “woo”, I assure you it couldn’t possibly be any more grounded in material and measurable results. 

So here is a tale of one pilgrim’s progress: in 2006, I met an acquaintance who told me of a time in his life when he was extremely ill as part of a local viral outbreak. His doctors didn’t know why he wasn’t getting better, and they had little help or hope to offer. Inexplicably, one of these “healers” found it necessary to tell him that he was at the point where some of his other patients had committed suicide. So with the inception of this idea planted firmly in his guilt-racked mind, he felt a sort of permission, and perhaps even an obligation, to follow through with this idea of bringing about his own end. Hadn’t others done this before him? His central point was now attached to this doctor’s words and how others had acted. As if a dark star had risen, he now had certainty and a destination.

He was so sick that he could barely walk, but his mind forced his body into his truck. The body complied. His mind had a plan for how to end the body, and his body complied by gathering up the paraphernalia of the plan. His mind said, “I must leave here,” and the body said, “Sure, okay, I’m with you, let’s go.” The body agreed that he needed to get out from where he was stuck. He drove to a remote area in the wilderness, when normally he was too exhausted to drive into town. His body didn’t put up a fight. He crawled outside of his truck, depleted, to rest and to prepare himself for what his mind had decided to do. And then his story, as if by magic, jumps up and out from what sounds like a carousel of despair, featuring many go-rounds of doctors, frustrated family, and buried hopes.

At the part of the story when his body is lying on the ground, seemingly spent, he says, “Suddenly, I didn’t feel like I wanted to kill myself anymore.” The body spoke to the other parts of his splintered being and caught their attention. It wasn’t his mind that said, “I don’t feel”, it was his body that said “I don’t feel”; the same body that was suffering the excruciating symptoms only hours before. He didn’t feel his usual state of wired but exhausted, anxious, inflamed, winded, confused, despairing and limp. His illness didn’t disappear, but the symptoms of it diminished enough so that his mind was able to hear his body assert, “I don’t feel like carrying out your plan.” The body resisted a calamitous end to this pilgrimage, changed his mind, and his spirit came knocking. The Three Magi were back together.

Gradually, his mind, in this remote terrain, was clear enough to try a new tack in service of his well-being. He decided to notice and then assess what was present or not present in his current environment versus the environment he had just left. He began to let his body advise him that brief shots of anxiety and depression were his allies, communicating that he was near something toxic and unhealthy to him. He didn’t know which way to go in this unchartered territory, but he began to rely further on his intuition, rather than a limited understanding, toward the good and away from the bad. “Good and bad” for him were not choices regarding morality; they were directions away from self-destruction and toward survival; away from situations that inflamed his suffering and stagnation; toward situations that cooled down his symptoms and allowed him to function with increasing levels of determination. 

While making allowances that various sensations might be hard to interpret, he nevertheless honed the skill of perception. Being highly perceptive meant that he learned how to never miss a trick. But can we be tricked by our own imagination? All the time. Can other people trick us? King Herod tried to fool the wise men with all of his military might. However, an image of reality is not the same as an experience of it. There is nothing imaginary about someone progressing from crawling on the floor of their apartment, desperately sick, to climbing a mountain six months later. That is the definition of materially and measurably better. 

Illustration by John Muir. Ex Libris
getting out of the stories that have been written for us

When imagination fails us, perceptions can kick in and offer a clue. This devastated man’s image of himself on a mountaintop didn’t exist in his mind while he drove his truck to what he believed would be his doom. He had the opposite of encouragement from the pessimistic doctor. He endured social persecution from those who couldn’t tolerate suffering people. He didn’t use daily visualization and affirmations or tightly controlled thoughts to short-circuit his way out with positivism. Wouldn’t it be nice if he had? Because then we could be relieved that all we need is imagination, high-fives, and deep breathing. 

If that sounds counterproductive to all we've been taught, then consider which is more valuable to life and limb— to hopefully believe that a bomb is not ticking, or to rightfully perceive that a bomb is ticking? If I can’t perceive, then I can only believe, and my beliefs haven’t always been correct. My perceptions aren’t fully informed with incontrovertible evidence either, but they offer me something beyond false beliefs I cling to, or a paid subscription to someone else’s point of view. My perceptions can tell me what I truly value instead of what someone else tells me I should value. I can think of many times when my imagination scared the wits out of me, but I can’t think of a time when the full-body knowledge of intuition hasn’t brought their return. My center can hold.

Where does the spirit come in, for this severely tested man, whose center was being pulled between mind and body? I imagine that it came in moments of joy, acceptance, and knowledge that he was still on earth because earth hadn’t rejected him. I imagine it came in waves of assurance that although his mind and body weren’t perfect meters of “the good”, they were more trustworthy than he had previously given them credit for.

"This hill though high I covent ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way of life lies here,
Come, pluck up heart; let's neither faint nor fear."
–John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress

The modern pilgrim of this story is a living example of someone who purposely meant to lose his whole world so that he could gain his soul. Yet, the canny body was looking out for his soul, waiting for its chance, until his mind could follow; to keep them all in one piece until death would no longer be untimely. By regaining his soul, he found his place in the world. Not my place, not your place, but his own. He also lost a great deal in the process, but many of those losses he had intended to let go of, anyway.

That was over thirty years ago, and he’s literally still climbing mountains. And yet, he doesn’t always live on the mountain. He also never completely abandons the former central point of where he lived and where he fell so ill. He just limits his time there until he gets the warning signals that he’s losing altitude and a crash is coming that will burn those around him. Some of his family and friends (not all) love him enough to accept his limitations, rather than demand an unattainable perfection that suits them. 

By keeping his body in the clear air, he trained his mind how to perceive those very helpful limits, so that healthy interactions and relationships are even possible. The body is usually heard the most clearly in the wilderness— the mountain top, the deep forest, the deserted beach, the briny waves, away from the loud kudzu minds of others. In this state of aloneness, the person stops disappearing into oblivion and the true self emerges. This state of a chosen and conscious be-wilderment is the opposite of isolation in a dark room with racing thoughts and bad dreams, sensitive to light and voices. This state of retreat brings us back to our senses that can feel pleasure alongside of pain.

It has been ten years since I first heard his story, and it has been one of the most compelling and instructive in my own progress that I have had the privilege to hear. When I am in the wilderness, I can feel the Magi’s whispering guidance. But I leave off with a caveat: the wilderness is wild, and like any untamed thing, it promises us nothing and owes us nothing.

Roman fresco of The Three Graces from Pompeii