“I will not hold my breath... /because there is a singing in everything…” – Leialoha Apo Perkins, How the ‘Iva Flies, 2003

“Art is the clothing of a revelation” – Joseph Campbell, 1990

“Art is the soul breathing” – Emilio Soltero, 2002

Poetry began as chant – the first music human beings created. My poems reach back to chant. I know a poem is ready when it can be chanted. Rather than writing in a five-beat line (e.g., iambic pentameter) that has dominated poetry in English since Shakespeare, I write primarily in the three- and four-beat line lengths characteristic of and natural to the indigenous languages that are the foundation of English, such as Angli and Saxon. Similarly, in the lines of many of my poems, primary stress comes on the first syllable rather than second syllable of words.

Poetry publications: books

_

The natural world of sky, sea, forest, fog and desert are the Silver Mirrors that are both windows into a deeper reality, and reflections of imaginings on the path to transformation of consciousness. Includes 25 poems, © 2003 by Chilam Balam Press, Silver Mirrors is beautifully illustrated by artist Emilio Soltero’s etching of a Mexicana farm worker walking through a field, and the fanciful calligraphy of Lia Solorio.  (Available from KW-G)

Two poems from Silver Mirrors:

it seems
that nothing is what it seems


and that is maybe why
what is
offers just a whisper of
what really is

___

she is
a solitary woman
in a field worker’s hat
her infant in a sling
safely against her body
barefoot in pesticided soil
she walks resolute between
perfectly contoured  furrows
towards a point beyond the horizon

among the imperial hills
of global capitalist production
rolling mile after mile
tenacity, sacrifice, pain
are mirrored in her being
a lifetime caught in a sketch
deepened by the artist’s touch
fingerprints across the heart

and she in calm resistance
will endure past empire’s end
as illumined by the morning sun
the glow of spirit presence
she walks into forever
in a cascade of golden light

 Silent They Are Lit, (© 2004, Chilam Balam Press), includes two sections: Silent They Are Lit, 23 poems on spiritual transformation; and Landscapes of the Soul, 28 poems on the wisdom that comes from lived experience. Emilio Soltero’s etching of a Mexicana farm worker harvesting vegetables on the front cover, and his monk meditating on the back cover underscore the two themes of the book.  Lia Solorio provides the calligraphy. (Available from KW-G)

Two poems from Silent They Are Lit:

art
is the soul breathing
into the deep
past the walls of distraction
we accidentally constructed
before we awoke
and having arrived
without moving
free and beautiful
on the out-breath of soul
the world is changed

___

love is all
and so i came
to love

nobody said
something would be given
nobody said
something would change

flicker of light
in silence

nobody said
there would be joy
nobody said
anything

golden rain through sun
silver rain through stars

soul sacrifice
yet i came
love is all

Poetry publications: individual poems

“causes and reasons”.  La Palabra  7,4, 2002, p. 8.

“children of the affluent”.  La Palabra  7,4, 2002, p. 9.

“cirrus.” Chilam Balam:  Journal of Visual and Written  Arts  6, Fall 2002/Winter 2003, p. 3.

“end of summer vacation.”  Chilam Balam: Journal of Visual and Written Arts  6, Fall 2002/Winter 2003, p. 3.

“white hawk flying: In Memory of Dan Moonhawk Alford.”  ReVision  26,4, 2004, p. 23.

Poems also appear in the following papers and publications:

2004 - “on 'Eclipse Puja' 8/17/04” DVD booklet for Eclipse Puja, Bagavan Das Chants '1000 Names of the Mother' with Jay Yarnall, Glasswing Productions.

2005 - “A Different World: Embodied Experience and Linguistic Relativity on the Epistemological Path to Somewhere…”  Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, 15, 2:1-23.

2005 - “Journey to the ‘New Normal’ and Beyond: Reflections on Learning in a Community of Practice.” The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18, 4:399-424.

2005 – “Invisible Illness, Invisible Violence: Situated Learning Contexts of Patient Communities at a Live-in Medical Clinic.”  Council on Anthropology Symposium “The Making of Meaning in Contexts of Violence: On the Interface of History, Power Structures, and Culture in Identity Formation Professes.”  American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 2005, Chicago.

2006 – Keynote Speech, “Finding a Path Through Silver Rain: Steps Toward an Anthropology of Conscience.”  Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (of the American Anthropological Association) International Conference, 13 April, Asilomar.