All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

One Mortar, One Pestle

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THE VOW

On the way up, I needed
words to calm myself,
on this winter day when smog
smothers the valley again, grays
the rocks half a mile away
where the creek shines like chrome.
All afternoon I explored the paths
webbing down to the creek
where pounding stones and trails
are all that remain of the tribe
that once settled on cleared,
gentle inclines. I ventured up
the steep slopes toward the top
to claim it as my own in the late
afternoon sun. For all of an afternoon
I trespassed, perhaps not meant
to look down anymore
on the grayness below that never
clears. At the edge of the cliff I lost myself
easily in the breath of trees and grasses,
above chemicals ruining mind
and body, knowing I cannot protect
these hillsides. Not long ago
the tribe was ravaged by sickness
and finished off by murder and
starvation, the air and water
and the remaining creatures no longer
belonging to the earth. I have always
kept some faith in my feet, and I hiked
past cattle that fled in absolute terror
of me or refused to budge
when I approached, all
without horns. Those animals
could have done me great harm,
but didn't. I have brought you here
to the edge of this cliff to remember
the valley as it was before the earth
was sold. I will remain
as a few magic words that fly
from this cliff over the valley
to write the language of flowers
gone forever, to bear witness
for the air and water passing
through everything living, to ease
the desolation of those who believe
that all must wisely share the earth,
and although I may not even be meant
to be the voice, my words will take you
part of the way, past the last trees
to the rocks at the top behind which
a mother is lying beside her newborn calf,
a young bull grazing, so powerful
and unconcerned you might think them
godlike and pure, untouched
for generations, the huge horns
without garlands, without blood.

__________

The ancient trail died in foxtails,
emerging on the other side
of the hill, heading down
to a stretch of Sycamore Creek

where we had never been before,
the trail snaking to a pounding stone covered
with pestles. Terrifying the cattle,
I ran straight to other pounding stones,

once again along that creek
certain that I had lived
before, gathering acorns
and grinding them in the mortars.

You said you believed, as I
stooped to pick up an acorn,
one great, peaceful breath settling
on the woodlands, my self lost

long ago and again too soon,
the cattle rooting out
the acorns, our home
nowhere and everywhere.

__________

In the foothills, by a vernal pool, I once picked up a toad
that had escaped from my childhood and squeezed it
gently so that it wouldn't squirm or pee in my hand.
The toads disappeared from town long ago. Once,

when I was a flagger, I couldn't outrun the viscous
rain dropped from a cropduster. I showered,
drank a glass of milk, but still didn't feel okay, nearly
passing out. Another man ate with the poison

still on his fingertips; he stopped breathing
for two minutes before they revived him, the boss
not wanting to pay for an ambulance. After that, I noticed
the only grasslands along an avenue that stretches

across the entire valley. A lone owl perched
on a metal fence post, and eight kingbirds flitted
from barbed wire to the grass after bugs
and flitted back, the fence enabling them adapt

to cultivated land, the other birds that once used the flyway
long gone. Years later, I stood at the entrance to a canyon
among flowers whose names I didn't know until middle age,
the self unselfing, the eternal experiencing itself

for a moment, the delicate purple eyes of fiesta flowers
open on vines hanging all over poison oak, a swallowtail
exploring the filaments of the thistle, unafraid
while I watched a foot away, the first oriole of spring

suddenly winging over my head across the river to sway
on a bare buckeye branch and then return toward me,
veering away suddenly to eye me from a nearby oak
as I swayed on the cliff. On the canyon floor,

the call of the phainopepla, a heavy drop
plopping into still water, mingled
with the long musical call
of the grosbeak. I lay by the river,

gazing upward as the clouds
flowed over, and I could believe
that I have lived in wetness with the toad,
that my vines, heavy with flowers, have blanketed

bushes and limbs, that I have clung to one leaf
for ages waiting for some animal to pass,
that I have winged, a brilliant flame, from tree
to tree, eternal and forever changing, only now

aware of a possible end without grace, and I vowed
never to rob life with its splendor
from mountain or valley
or from any human being on this earth.

Please note: We have reached the end of this journey, for now at least. In the near future, I plan to focus exclusively on my other blog: Insanity is the New Normal.

www.newnormalinsanity.blogspot.com

  All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Root Surrounded by Ithuriel's Spears

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MY NEW LIFE

My new life began on a rural avenue
that twenty years before was miles
from the edge of town, the pastureland,
vineyards and orchards slowly erased

by houses and businesses. Near
the freeway, close to the river
on the south side, secure subdivisions
now crowd together along

the bluff. For years, I had taken
the rural avenues north of the river
to witness the seasons, never aware
that the city was sprawling so far north

as I gazed at orchards in bloom
or bearing fruit or bare, in spring mustard
and purple vetch choking the roadside and the rows
of some orchards. No longer grazed, pastures blossomed

with fiddleneck and owl's clover, one, almost wild,
with harvest brodiaea, the umbels crowning blonde grass
with purple, the leaves of vineyards with brilliant auras
in slanted sunlight. On the first afternoon

of my new life, I drove the avenue homeward
and saw on Avenue 40 the first bulldozers lined up
in a place where I had sighted a yellow-headed blackbird,
not far from a post where once a roadrunner perched,

the only one I have sighted on the valley floor. Ahead
stretched acres of grasslands and the plateaus,
the base of the foothills. The county had rezoned
the land so that in twenty years a city

could grow there as far as the eye could see,
from the river all the way into the foothills.
Then, I would be living my new life
without wild flowers on land where 

song birds cannot forage, a land without roots,
a river with roots of rain but with water
that can never find an ocean.

   All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Ancient Trail

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THE ANCIENT WEB

I park near a load of rubbish
dumped by the road, and, struggling
up a hillside, follow a path not sure
it is thousands of years old, but finding

destinations, the leaves of sycamores
floating onto pounding stones
or into the stream where they are dragged
along by the current and sucked under.

By the pounding stone, a lip
of earth extends from the slope,
large enough for a bed.
A house pit? Below that,

rocks stacked on
each other--a miner's grave?
Beyond the creek, five trails
join at a hub between the river

and the creek, where a rancher
dropped blocks of salt, the questions
asked a moment before lost
in the grass, empty in the curl

of a leaf. According to mystics
the ether contains records
of every moment within eternity,
a memory of every individual

experience within the physical
plane. Somehow I know where
to find the pounding stones
and house pits and trails

along the creeks, as though some
inner sight has been granted me--
a man powerless, gauche,
and unworthy. Wildcat Mountain

looms in the distance from many points
of the ancient trails, the distance
undisturbed, no one approaching
with news of forces sent to capture me

or drive me off the land,
the mansions planned
for forty acre lots. I dig
into mortars brimming

with grass and earth, the dry
oak leaves needling my fingers,
the pounding stones deep
as icebergs, the air, smelling

of rain, still in the quiet woods.
I find a pestle and turn
the tapered end
toward the hub. This web

once kept a community
alive, yet I
am lost, searching
the valley for signs

of the city in the smog
and finding none, nothing keeping
the rancher from selling off
to some developer, the trails,

snaking between buckeyes
and oaks, etched for thousands
of years in the earth, always
vanishing in the grass.

  All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

San Joaquin River Gorge

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I BELIEVE IN ANGELS

Cocking its black head, the angel calmly gazed
through underbrush, its speckled wings closed
on fire, the white breast feathers slightly
ruffled, aware that I returned its gaze,

both of us still, separated by a few twigs, until
it resumed rummaging in dead leaves.
Trespassing in the angelic realms, we were taking
the breath of trees and flowers,

each species with its own piece of heaven,
a brown towhee leaping at titmice
that hid in mistletoe, then at goldfinches
which hovered in a panic, rootless yellow flowers,

returning to their stems after a few moments,
a flycatcher on a snag, butterfly wings extending
from its beak, the orioles streaks of flame
above the earth's tapestry of light--

goldfields interwoven with lupine and poppies.
You told me your dream of floating down river,
the boat suddenly swirling through white water
and just as suddenly slowing into a gentle,

sunlit rain which jeweled the strands of a spiderweb
strung between alder trees, where a kinglet flitted
from twig to twig, missing the web, a newt struggling
up slick rock and sliding down again, and a bullfrog

leaping at eyes floating above the water, vanishing,
and resurfacing by the bank, the kingfisher,
loud and persistent, protesting intrusion, perching
a moment behind sycamore leaves, then whirring

back and forth, taunting from a distance,
testifying as though it mattered, the bushtits
like leaves above the water blown
from one tree to another--the current

carrying you through so many
communities until the river
stopped flowing,
a littered wastewater sump

for the filthy valley. Then
you found your friend and dragged him
to the bathtub, his skin blue, and all
you could do was wait to see if he would live,

but there was no fear, only a strange
radiance in the needle and the skin,
the gleaming drops plopping every few
seconds from the faucet as warblers flitted

in a tree outside. I remembered gliding
by the church we attended
the night we first rocked each other,
the tawdry street teeming with sparrows,

and I realized that I'd worked years later
as a janitor three blocks away, not far
from the market where we'd shopped
in some other life, our range

proclaimed by all the angels.
For you, I have made our dreams
one dream where the angels
never lose their connection

to the range of light, the cedar waxwings
above the still river pecking at seeds,
their faces masked, tails dipped in gold,
startled, and flying....

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Lupine after the Rough Fire

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MAPPING THE FLOWERS

Chinese houses are sprouting on north-facing slopes
and in shady washes, sharing their niche with fairy lanterns,
grass nuts, larkspur, while twenty miles away, the skeletal
steel frame of a children's hospital sprouts on the bluffs,

on land donated by the developer, rising above condemned
vineyards and pasture, a "behemoth of bad planning"
inducing the growth of a new city through the expansion
of one clogged artery of traffic just north of the river.

In fields near the hospital, weeds still
hide mice and rabbits, obscuring coyotes
in the dim halls of orchards, releasing clean air
into an ocean of smog. I had almost forgotten

that you can stand in an ocean of breath
and merge your breath with brilliant tribes
struggling into the sun, that you can sit by a creek,
no more than the stillness of the grass, sensing

the timeless spirit at the root of form, forgetting
your face as the battered moon rises again above
the evening hills. Golden eagles sliced through the air
side by side, just above me, down through the wash,

swooping between the trees and gliding out
over the valley until I lost them in the clouds,
and an hour later, as I scrambled up the slope,
the eagles stepped out of the oaks above me

and floated--almost large enough to carry
me away--gliding higher until they were specks
and then gone. Sure of our end, I wanted
to sleep forever in the woods, the valley

stretching out for miles in the haze below me,
the landmarks strangely small, the strident whistle
of the titmouse calling me back, a network
of trails linking the creeks and woodlands--

still pristine (except
for the cattle), the trails webbing
the entire range blocked by pockets
of development, the land owners all

connected. I teetered on the edge
of that high slope, the city so obscured
by smog I couldn't see it--perhaps
gone a century--a web slightly billowing

in the breeze, and I chased a meadowlark
at the edge of a large flock downhill,
a squirrel scurrying over its own thin trail
from one rock pile to another, ants slowly

discarding husks from their tunnels. Overhead,
a flock of acorn woodpeckers set up an alarm, cackling
maniacally as I passed through their territory,
the trail weaving into a clearing where I found

a pounding stone, one mortar sprouting grass,
the other black with stagnant water, the roots
of a buckeye breaking the rock in two.
I followed every path by the creek, finding

more pounding stones wherever I turned,
clearly in view of each other or parts
of the village on both sides of the creek.
That day I felt a radiance that remains

in the village sites, the mortars healed over
and sprouting grass, others collecting rain,
most of the house pits quilted by cow pies
sprouting living jewels, the hillsides

nearby torn and washed away, streaked
with ochre, yellow, black, one pit--
with a fence post in the middle dangling
from a strand of barbed wire--so deep

I could not see the bottom, another filled
with lime-green water, the slopes
near the mines scored by mule and horse paths.
That day I lost myself on the trails,

and when I stepped across a creek,
I had a vision of the harmony
of things--a golden, equal-armed cross
behind manifestation blazing

in my inner eye as though it were always
just beneath the outer robe of concealment,
the energy radiant in each leaf and petal--and I
had taken just enough steps to see it.

A massive oak kept reaching higher
within an infinitely vast fabric of energy,
the sun, between its branches, still
weaving tapestries of flowers in its shade.

   All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Oversoul

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SHAMAN OF THE CONFLUENCES

Leaping from rock to slippery,
Unstable rock in Big Creek,
I cross in search of artifacts,
Scrambling up a steep slope
To find shotgun shells sprinkled
On a house pit, mortars claimed
By humus and moss. Trampled and
Uneven, a trail snakes along a cliff
To a confluence where I choose
A faint path unmolested by cattle,
The trail soon vanishing under dry
Sycamore leaves webbed by tribes
Of spiders. Poison oak blocks
One side of the ravine and a buckeye 
Looms on the other side,
So I grab a long, dry branch and hoist
Myself onto a boulder that topples
To the stream bed as I leap
To another rock. Nobody knows
Where I am. I scramble higher,
Grasping grass and roots, finding
Primeval woodlands above the lip
Of the waterfall, and I plod forward,
Without much faith in my feet,
Sure that I'm being watched by
Something, animal or spirit,
Not human. When I discover
A pounding stone with two pestles,
I am afraid. A skirt of dried earth
And moss clings to each tapered stone
After I pull them from their mortars.
Like a shaman from some other time, 

I feel the Over-Soul
Is aware of me, but there has not yet
Been a parley. A rattlesnake,
Camouflaged by roots that stick out
From the embankment, shatters
The stillness and slithers
Into a hole, the Over-Soul
Aware of me like I
Am aware of the snake.
I open my senses,
To feel what it's like
To be a newt or frog or snake
Or waterfall or redbud reflected
In still water, and I let
An image of her rise from a deep pool.
I fashion a living image for her spirit
To ensoul, her hair winding down
To her feet like shiny black rivulets,
A crown of moons in different
Phases, a bobcat at her feet,
Doves fluttering nearby, green robes
Gleaming with embroidery
Of gem-like flowers, behind her
A towering oak, the branches
Like streams, its trunk like
A river plunged into earth.
I invoke awkwardly
At first, then more powerfully
As I stand on the pounding stone
With her form in my imagination--
And ask the Over-Soul to pour 
Her essence into my soul, a channel
Into the soul of the race. At first
I am black, primordial ooze,
Fetid decay, suddenly warm
And compact, webbed by veins,
Then rivulets trickling down
The ravines into still pools
And down to a river that once
Flowed to the ocean under an ocean
Of breath, and then I am all
The plants and animals, one love
Of everything ever connected
To this stream, the Over-Soul 
Suddenly pouring into me
A timeless peace.

   All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.

Fairy Lanterns, Purple Vetch, Common Madia

(April 25, 2023)

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MANAGING 

Daybreak. The old woman screams and moans.
From the room right above hers, pained,
ecstatic groans drift through an open door.
You want me to tell them to shut their traps?

____________________________________________

Workers come all day
to fix perverse parts.
Pipes knock, dripping
flop sweat; stoves
pop and smoke; carpets rot
from endless spills and shuffling:
Nothing is exempt. The tenants
demand that the piths
be replaced, the rooms
at evening
holding their breath
as I carefully
lock money
in the essential
metal desk.

____________________________________________

I knocked off, hands
roughened with plaster.
Crayons had captured the outline
of light cast from signs outside,
tropes of capital penetrating
the window for hours, as smells
saturated the sink again,
the toilet leaked, the systems
of residuum moaned, each smell
and sound finally recognizable.

The coolest guy left
a butcher knife and gaping
holes in the bedroom walls.
His wife had taken everything
but the mattress, wilting sheets,
and crayons. The family
had danced at the window,
not caring who watched,
while colors emerged
in fragments, the names
quickly filling and emptying.
I've restored the plaster
for other names, clocks, faces,
the past still stinking
and groaning in things.
The glass untouched.
The street a stain
of violet bile--
the light falling
softly
on the walls.
With white hands, I surrender
to the mattress on the floor.
Crayons and plaster darken
on the bewildered carpet.

______________________________________________

They leave what can't be carried
and more: cushionless
couches, with wounds
like mouths from which faint
odors rise; sad toilet soups;
and the tiny survivors--
ants, cockroaches, thriving
on the stench, crawling
through every crevice,
following the command to pillage
whatever's left, the shoe dark
as a theater, the bottles
translucent spires. Recently
I've found an old man's handkerchief
(he now has less weight
than his book of ancestry);
a stained sheet (the flag
of dominion); and a sticky knife
covered with crumbs.
I've dismantled a palatial estate
built with popsicle sticks
and dried chicken bones,
decorated with bright foil
from small luxuries,
and I've trashed a shrine
with wildflowers, the dried petals
mingling with bug legs
on the windowsill. All morning
I've dumped cast-offs, all morning
cleaning and emptying, until bare,
the rooms finally gleam,
good enough for others.

______________________________________________

Last week I discovered a hanging plant
in the pool, the surface ripples
slightly perturbing the wire hook,
a sign of something, I suppose.
Copies of keys to every room
hang on the board above my desk,
which makes me think
that I should know. One day
I gave the copy of a key
to a tenant before I could see
the butcher knife cupped
in his hand, the blade resting
along the inside of his arm. I
twiddled my thumbs until a stranger
leapt, screaming and naked, down
the stairs, before I called
the cops. The same day, checking
the circuit breakers in back,
I surprised a tenant's boyfriend
loading rifles into a van
and said nothing. The next day, cops
moved in, a detective plopping
his notepad on my desk before
phoning in the description
of a tenant: Fu Manchu mustache,
ponytail, no chin, the perfect
account of a burglary suspect.
I had to call the cops again
after I found the stranger floating
face down in the pool, the water
cloudy with blood. I feel like no one
ever totally cleaned that up.

______________________________________________

A year after the new owner
raised the rent thirty percent,
a de facto eviction of us all,
I still remember them,
even though I didn't know them--
the one I sheltered from an abusive
boyfriend, the one I threw a few bucks,
the tenants to whom I served
a three-day notice, and the ones
who just kept bugging me
to fix one damn thing or another--
the fingerprints on glass, slivers
in the carpet, holes in the walls
remaining long after they'd left;
no matter how hard I cleaned,
something remained--they
were worse than ghosts, more
timeless than ooze or earth.
Besides that, I remember
only the waiting, day after day,
for another knock, and dreaming
of hidden passageways linking
rooms I've never seen, where
tenants lead secret lives
too wonderful to brag about,
the eternal appearing in dirty
windows when I wasn't
looking, the veil of exhausted
surfaces lifted. Heaven
filled the rooms with wholeness
while I dozed--waking always
to blank walls--
and I'll never forget
ever
that small sign on the front door
which showed them
where to find me.