SUPER CONDUCIVE ATMOSPHERE

Missive #24 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation

[My heart is full. Heavy. Too heavy to bear. Too full to bare. The other day I returned from a week in the southwest, among deserts and red rocks and grand canyons. My family was gathering to celebrate the life of my last grandma, Patricia Lindh Weatherill Hall, who began the next leg of her journey into ancestry this past July 16th. The last time I had seen much of this side of my family was 20-odd years ago. We came together in the rawness of love, in joy, wrapped in an overarching tinge of sombriety. At the same time, immeasurable suffering and impossible bliss continue in rapid hurricane whirls around the world. Everywhere. Not a single place is untouched by this fervent storm whose arms spread many worlds wide. Acapulco is drowning, brown. Homes are collapsing. Maine has been bloodied. Our hands are stained. Our cheekbones worn into canyons and dried up riverbeds, oak creeks filled with tumbled broken agates. What more is there to say? I went today for a beautiful sunset walk, ending in twilight, my way lit by a honey-golden full moon, eclipsing for many though not for me. Every smell suffused me. Every texture warmed me. Every rich color and crispy transitioning enlivened me. We are here together, in this ‘super conducive atmosphere’, wondering: how much more must we bear before our pieces at last fall together…? How much more can we possibly bear.] Received 10/28/2023 | ~6:30pm

Listen to the Recitation:

SUPER CONDUCIVE ATMOSPHERE
The world is an infinite sphere
At once flat and round
One dimensional and omnidimensional
The smell of crabapples in the fall
Sweetly, rotting on the ground
Food for flies, for deer, for honeybees
Golden fields of marsh grass, almost purple
Silver and gray, retreating in anticipation
Of winter, deep rest, recovering from
A world-class plummeting, pummeling
The mockingbird sings in the dead tree
To my right, perched. A beautiful song
What seems like mocking is serenading
Heavenly, as bombs go off, children explode
The golden tome of old sits on a desk
Writing itself. The library opens itself up
To me, wandering in, as if invited
I open to an empty page and pick up
The emerald pen, inscribed with glowing
Turquoise script, unknown to me yet
Not unfamiliar. I write, without knowing
What I am writing. It must be written regardless
I disappear into the word and the screams
Of every innocent lost, sacrificed to a void
Hungering and redeeming; it is madness
To hold everything at once. Must we hold it all?
The blazing leaves of maple, oak, ash, cherry
Burn brightly, then fall, effortlessly, becoming
Food, becoming shelter for wintering bugs
They crunch beneath my feet, like fine bones
Woven in impeccable display, for us, for all
Of life, unspoken yet living, forever preverbal
Proverbial images curling up, brown around
The edges, bodies disintegrating into soil
Rich earth, roots thirsting for more water
They receive only blood. We give them only
Blood. The tears of mothers, losing everything
Fighting, for everything they've never known.
I sit in silence, in safety, and pray.
I pray to a God who oversees horror~bliss
Beyond my imagining, beyond anyone's
Imagining ways beyond, or between, will never
Reframe the will of a will that won't reveal
The resolution to our varied myseries, framed
Within a picture, hung on a wall, in a gallery
Priced out of reach, beauty taunts us
As the one and only way, as if true, or truth
Could dissolve every ugly experience of self,
Of the worlds we spiral into and out of
Galaxies wide, dual barred spiraling limbs
Centered about the very essence of life, dark
Destructive renewal, renegotiating the terms
Of any potential peace, eluding, deluding
Your tears will not open the way for those
Who are lost, who have been given paths
Impossible to walk; yet walk they must
Until their road ends, and takes exhaustion
Away, up, out of the body and elsewhere
Into the warm, open-hearted embrace
Of a grateful, apologetic God.
"I know it was not easy. Thank you.
You have done well. Rest, now."
We cannot know where this goes
Nor where it ends; we can only go on
And in, neverending until the never ends and
Something else begins, laughing, in the small
Form of a child, who grins, and spins,
And takes our hand and leads us on
Into the dark forest
Filled with fae dismay
And endless delight
Where all are loved raw
And all love is raw
And all receipt of love is raw
And this is the whole of the law
In this wholly unlawful place.

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Twilit Jewell Falls (Oct 2023)

Marsh Grass, Almost Purple (Oct 2023)

The Golden Tome of Old, Rapid Deepening (Oct 2023)