who?

Who says these
dangerous, lonesome
prayers? You talk
like a creek feasting
on mud. Because of
this conversation, my
life has become a
thirst, a surrendered
flag trembling
in the generosity
of your breath.

----©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

tell me a time

Gray: The ash is blowing towards the restaurant.
Maureen: Not any fire? Just ashes?
G: I guess. I don't know what blowing fire would look like.
M: Wouldn't there just be tongues of licking flame?
G: Well people always talk about tongues of flame. There's something Pentecostal about it. But fire does seem alive, doesn't it?
M: Yes. (Pauses.) I think it might be. Even the embers.
G: Even when you can't see any more flame through the smoke?
M: Sure.
G: Did you say you worked around here?
M: Yes. I work at the cafe just down the street, on the corner of Cobb and Sullivan.
G: Maxine's?
M: That's it. I don't think I've seen you in there. (Pauses and gazes intently at the fire.) Wow. This house has a balcony on the third story. 
G: The fire's not there yet.
M: I should go home and sleep. But this fire will keep me awake. Kind of a holographic imprint. Only with sound. Not a memory. More immediate. Bigger. More present. Do you ever get that?
G: Not quite.
M: Quite?
G: I have a kind of synesthesia that happens when I'm working sometimes. Usually it's strongest around the big cats. That sad old king with the tattered mane. Then sometimes with the lemurs. Don't ask me why.
M: Because they're so noisy?
G: (Chuckles.) I don't think so. But maybe.
M: What else?
G: The wolves.
M: (Softly but eagerly) I can see that. Kind of. Tell me something. Tell me a time.
G: With the wolves?
M: Yes. With the wolves.
G: (Takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes.) This was last week. These wolves are getting old. Their attachment to each other is almost (pauses again).....palpable. They don't have the territory to heal when they need to. So things just hang around in this air.....(Sweeps an arm towards the entrance to the zoo, down the street.) 
M: Go on. 
G: So, they bay and yip and howl during the day, now. Midmorning, midafternoon. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to it. I've paid very close attention and it seems to happen independently of anything I can see. So last week this big male was loping across the grass towards the edge, the fence, where the hidden gate is. I could see his fur through flashing through the leaves. He knew I was watching him. He ran right up to the gate. Like he could go through it or it wasn't there. Then he skidded to a stop. Very undignified and very unlike him. He didn't know what to do with himself, after that. I felt embarrassed and sad for him. I went the other way. 
M: Wow.
G: I know. You know what's really odd, though? Not what happened but how I received it. How it (pauses) registered with me. (Glances at her as if to make sure she is following him.)
M: Please. Tell me the rest.
G: Well, it isn't a story. Just how.....well, it was like I heard him running. He wasn't making any noise, but it seemed like I could hear the air around him moving aside. Or something. Not his footfall, you understand. But the air itself. Like it was alive and trying to give him room. Moving aside for him....



I wrote this in response to a dialogue exercise a couple of summers ago and tweaked it a bit just now as I typed. The prompt read "A zookeeper talks to a waitress at a house fire." I named the zookeeper Gray and the waitress Maureen. I may do something more with this. I didn't come to a satisfactory stopping place.


©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

a shared seeing

I can’t quite see the mountain from where I am. Tall trees obscure its tip. A collar of pink clouds rises up from just above it. I am reminded of last October when I wrote about the shedding of old skin and the emptiness that follows. That skin has continued to fall away, mostly, with patches of reclamation here and there. There is loneliness in it but beauty too. A paradox, as ever. I have a little outdoor altar here, with a fading illustration of an artsy greeting-card rabbit amidst a little silver crucifix and a swathe of bright green flowered fabric. Shells and feathers are settling into the damp fabric after today’s rain. A tall spike of some kind of volunteer bulb spreads out across the glass table towards the forest. I light a tall white glass pillar candle and a glass pillar candle with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on it, both brought in with dry wicks from my hearth. A whippoorwhill calls in the woods and I remember that I actually seem to have heard cicadas out at a friend’s horse rescue farm the other night. Seems improbable in May but it sure sounded like cicadas to me.

That night was one of connection, understanding, and conversation offered and shared with tremendous warmth and sincerity. I sat on a log beside a campfire with two people who had heretofore been strangers and talked about my spiritual journey and listened to them talk about theirs. We all believe in paying attention to synchronicity, and we talked about that. We laughed at our own misadventures and at the beautiful incongruities of being human. We talked about sacrifice and how we watch it happen and how some people seem to choose it, to take on the pain of others in a deliberate way, a profoundly unselfish and loving thing that is impossible to explain in words. It sounds trite. Unless you have seen it, it can sound maudlin and empty, platitudinous. But it is not. And I honor it in my heart every day. I know it when I feel it, more than when I see it. It is a palpable energy, a largesse of soul that I do not understand or even envy at this point but which I revere and am grateful for. It felt good to be able to say these things and have them be understood.

And we laughed and ate pizza and they drank a little beer. Finally it began to rain, and as the sweet early-summer smell of grass and hay began to saturate my senses I gathered up my camera and my old serape and the peacock feather one of my new friends had given me and headed home. 

--©Laura Sorrells 2012

all rights reserved

what the water said

Listen for the humming tremor
of story, for its
inexhaustible healing.
Breathe in the curative eros
the crazy river inspires.
Only a few shameless stars
remain to converse with
the giddy red body of dawn.
Be there among them.
Your own muscular language
of trance and tumult
is also the complete
stranger who conjures
your perfect medicine back
from the gray land of gravity.
Now, a storehouse of vision
gusts into your teaching.
You will never be lost
again.

I put together this found poem from David Abram's book Becoming Animal this afternoon.