22 - Globemallow

Globemallow Year after year after year Smooth rocks smoothened By water and even sand in wind and even wind Juniper scrub grew to a tree split and died Remains as snag mostly still alive Rodent holes take refuge in sandy soil Beneath the globe mallow crop waiting for the seven year piñon to drop Seeds. Many young even Oaks in little gullies of green grass meadows hidden pond and aspen stands big Mesatops catch the rain as if Some rock giant has been slowly gardening These clefts for a billion years But groves of bright orange mallow and yellow and blue penstemon Against the rain fingers touching the horizon, blurring the distance And us journeying along an imperfect Family group forged and beaten still smoking from the birth Without a place to call home together so we wander, create traditions and stories, move onward to places never heard of A group of young souls just born into the still smoking mud of which we feel the heat of what we were also molded from And a rag of trash wound up in an ancient sagebrush bush that I take three stems from and show them to Todd for a sniff, stuff my Mouth full of globemallow flowers and gain sustenance from the land and I’ll tell you I’ve given up on meaning and instead work with how I find feelings out in places both empty and full such Moments of presence to convey a kind of resonance that doesn’t need these words for you to come close to it But it’s like a fire stoked by attention only and it Goes out and everything is dark in that realm that you don’t know or see into become like The old ones who rest in the hills gardening their patch near the piñons and living with the Least chipmunks and the mule deer and the visitor who comes for cota from the house over Puts his feet up by the door and stares out at the rain fingers and the mallows and the piñons and junipers and rodents and distant cities and collapse and reforming and smallnesses and bignesses and the Colorado river and the lack of water in the lakes and he sits with his friend staring out and and says only for hours: after all these years….. PS. Thanks for reading. Funds are tight right now so if you feel like it, throw a few dollars my way. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run