In The Time of Mountains and Moons

Since it will be tomorrow before I continue the Mojito truffle journey, and because it's late at night and I'm awake sitting at the computer, I thought I'd put up something else I wrote.

A friend of mine bought a sculpture by an Apache artist. He asked me about it and I tried to explain about Spirit Dancers, and stuff like that. He's a white guy, a prominent civil rights attorney, very sharp, smart, all the things it takes to become a prominent civil rights attorney.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I got nowhere.

From nowhere I went to poetry. I'm nowhere near the poet of Steve Kuusisto but, in my own sweet way, I try.

Without further ado, asides, or digressions:

we come to this place in our mountains

at the time when the moon rises between two peaks in the east

splitting them exactly

this is because we are not in time

as it is seen by humans but rather

time as it is seen by mountains and moons

we put on the clothes of ceremony

exactly the same way

in the same order

we paint our faces in the certain way

as the faces have always been painted

in this time of mountains and moons

we take out our masks and put them on

exactly the same way that has been done

since before there was human memory

drums begin

singers join the drums

dancers join drums and song

something happens to us then

as we drum sing dance at this time in this place

we share a moment of a dream

others have done this drum sing dance dream

just as we do now others will do at their time

we find that we are the same as those others

this dream that goes back

this dream that goes forward

this dream that is now

this dream that we drum sing dance

into being only on this night

only in this place only at this time

we are part of a thread that goes all the way back

at the same time it goes all the way forward

we share our one soul in the time      

of mountains and moons