Jirga Center

Afghanistan

For Natachee Momaday Gray

THE FIGHTING SEASON

Black locust, apple, apricot leaves

Another Afghan spring

The hollyhocks are low

Wrapped in deep green
When the time is right
The doves will pull their bow
Watching them grow
Tall as me

***

Jirga Center, remembering place

Inside your walls of peace
War roses pruned
For buds then blooms
Of red the fire of my mind
Of her lips
Missing
Having someone to miss

On the ground where the roses grow

A fissure in the fault
That coaxed these mountains to the sky
Through the heart of the earth my sprit goes
To watch her closing shop
Tired wonderful walk
Rose Woman

***

Birds migrated

Singing the long journey blues

Behind wrought iron spires

Disguised as flowers
Singing louder to drown the diesel belch
And afterburners
Just outside

O mynah bird you are still here   

Under the mulberry tree
But now delicate grass
Cushions your broken wing
I'm so glad you survived the winter
Even though the sky was your home

***

Desert morning

The muezzin’s prayer
Drifts on a musical wind
Haunting and heavy
The weight of the West’s fear

***

Beneath a pergola roof

The sun on my face
Soon there will be shade
When the grapevine overhead
Throws out its leaves

But now its vines a brittle bark

No dew, no rain on this high Panjshir Plain
But the cut end of a vine
Drops something on my head
Cold and wet
That’s how I know
The leaves will soon grow

***

Just outside these walls of peace

Rat-a-tat-tat
A suicide vest
The boys gone home to rest
But will never really leave
Their bones in the bark of a pomegranate tree

It is after the time

When time stood still
Alexander the Great
The Soviets
Ahmed Shah Masood

Now time marches on

And with each new spring
With the pink and the red
The yellow and green
The fighting season

Blue Mongrel
Santa Rosa, New Mexico

Route 66

“Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles, that I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity – I belong to the Earth!”

            -Henry Miller

Tequila Memory . . .

"From the Bottle to the Bottom"
-Kris Kristofferson

“Bill Monroe, the bluegrass musician, said that he didn’t write songs but ‘discovered them in the air.’”

            -Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey

“Till I Gain Control Again” by Waylon Jennings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5YBKEwmu3s

Before they rise . . .
Jirga Center