A tale like this, scrolled and cranked by hand across the screen,
requires attention
— not to mention what must go on behind the scenes —
it's always moving forward, slowly, boldly, bringing us the story in shadowed circular motion
—inspired by “Francis Whitmore's Wife” – a Crankie Shadow Puppet Show by Katherine Fahey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYrNBbVqQGE
as part of #writeacrossamerica
Time's layered hours often begin where water kisses land
The ancient people understand
Sunlight's shadow places stories buried in sediment and sand
The ancient people understand
for #WriteAcrossAmerica Central Arizona Writing Project https://www.canva.com/design/DAFpMZujY9s/EHrJpLD7nMboPaagXvJ_Dw/view
That Dog Might
That dog just might be everything you never know and who but her of us is not afraid to ask them how’re they’re faring how’s the dog doing anyway all curled up like a broken question mark in the back seat Skylark Buick asleep but barely for to be fair a home like this with dented doors and a catalytic converter means choices every day decisions made but that dog that dog that dog is love pure personified with the unexpected sly slobber the kind of kiss that brings a bit of smile to the face most needing it
inspired by The Damm Family In Their Car by photographer Mary Ellen Mark
On Hobbomock (The Sleeping Giant)
The stone giant sleeps in different time, a way in which hourglasses tick with shooting stars
We scale the farthest side of his neck, grabbing stone with fingers, thick, imagining Hobbomock’s toes
We catch our breath here, in quiet, linger on his nose, the stone castle obscured by tree stubble
These rubbled ridges of trap rock formed more than a millennia before, in origins infused with myth
of a ferocious force of heart and fist whose anger stamped this land, then paid the price
for Keiton the mighty arrived, alone, sending Hobbomock into slumber, on this volcanic mattress of stone
Shhh! Listening? Ghost whisperings in the cold dead ear of death, her last breath taken in the arms of her lover - one never recovers a reckoning of history and so, left, as we are, with myth and mystery to the stone-etched fate of a Female Stranger of Alexandria
for NWP Write Across America in Northern Virginia (ghost stories) #writeacrossamerica https://media.alexandriava.gov/docs-archives/historic/info/gadsbys/gtresearchfemalestanger.pdf
Shout – them folk – shout!
Raise your voice up to sing ancestors in a wooden house
Shout – them folk – shout!
Sing us the story of where the world tilts, and what it's all about
Shout – them folk – shout!
We are all threaded lines, all of us tangled together in this history
Shout – them folk – shout!
Let's listen – Let's hear - Let's remember the dance of Jubilee
for #writeacrossamerica inspired by “Jubilee” by the McIntosh County Shouters https://folkways.si.edu/jubilee-by-the-mcintosh-county-shouters/music/video/smithsonian
The Things I Don't Know About Nebraska
The things I don't know about the state of Nebraska are deep enough to fill a box with pages of discarded poems, meandering and more winding than the Platte River running through the Plains
but when wandering the maps, running fingers over the flat lands of corn country, what I wonder most: who carved out the corner and gave the empty container to Colorado, and why?
In my mind, I imagine scenes of resistance, the fight of it, the proud Nebraskans waving pitchforks and rifles at these greedy neighbors, the grabby ones who carved up the land in spite of it
or I see incompetent bureaucrats, unable to discern lines through wind and water, and calling it a day before the day could even begin, checkmarks in the box, filed away with right, angles, wrong
and it's been said, so I've read, how some of those who live in the northern panhandle today like to dip toes on the border lines one way, to call it the West, and others, the other way, to call it Midwest,
while the most Nebraskans of all just carry on, finding strength in the solitude and in silence of their beloved land, bordered only by its beauty, calling it ... home
Mo’olelo
we don't listen we barely hear we forget noticing we lose ourselves
we the stories of the world embedded in this place remain undiscovered
we wander this terrain of rock and soil and river
we need to linger longer in the quiet, listening for
us
we should listen we can hear we are noticing we find ourselves
here
All Ends Are Merely Beginnings
What at first might seem like merely pins on the map become stories of a place when you dig deeper in – wrapping fingers into dirt, resting ear against wood, scratching words into stone; so sit with it for awhile and let the land tell you its tale of where it's been and where we're going
Pause point for #nwp #writeacrossamerica https://lead.nwp.org/writeacrossamerica-a-virtual-writing-marathon/
Allee Gathering
Knees scraping against the bark and bite of ancient things, this tree's rings speak of something larger than us, seated as we are, here, with feet in the shade of solitude, the ghosts of Maple Allee hover just beyond us, singing as they always will with hope for roots and soil
for the #NWP #writeacrossamerica project (New York)
Inspired by https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/51588a6e04ef4284337b1f40a89138a6/hvwp-virtual-writing-marathon/index.html and https://youtu.be/8IXALOI_AzU