Seeker Magazine


SkyEarth Letters

by Cherie Staples


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ProsePoems


I hadn't been writing morning pages since last summer. Then about three weeks ago, the practice came up in conversation. I picked up an unfinished notebook and began again. After a couple of weeks, I'd get to the last page and start free-associating in a way and have been having fun without much work (which you may think perhaps is needed more than not). Here are the results from several mornings.

Rhyming Chiming Words

Just a song of songs just a time of mind and what to bring along being responsive responsible responding restitute resolute resolving dissolving mystifying distilling instilling mostly boasting toasting loathing Bush missed mist schist bliss rocks that calm and sooth smooth groove behoove juvenile rile pile higher dryer crier liar Bush soaked croaked joked smoked the bloke sending rending trending ending remanding demanding commanding commiserate iterate eviscerate deliberate fibulate tribulation jubilation tubation syncopation resumption consumption assumption now I've finished this presumption

Then Come Crows

Blue earth shadow creeping down the sky dropping to the horizon with its pink frosting to the blue plain blue sky why muted colors color our revolution evolution of the new sunlit day and moon begins to grow in the low swimming atmosphere of this sphere peering out my window at windrows of tree-covered hills and still the crows leave their night's haven in pine heavens gathered to by hundreds of gleaming bodies sheening black-feathered crows each evening arguing over where they spend the night raucous cawing diving soaring dashing from pine to pine this is fine no over there lodging shifts each night deciding flights in tight wheeling mobs 'til darkness falls and black feathers quiet for the night in morning's light cold muscles flex and slowly roily groups of crows ascend the sky out to work their day

So Many Words

Writing brightly spritely quietly where and when there and then now and again in the hay mow there will be such a growl and hope resistance persistence the imbalance of a computerized life reading the blogs the logs the slogs through thousands of words birds herds of cattle tramping stamping stampeding into meaningless drivel swivel bevel smooth those edges remove those wedges sedges dredges up the inane the insane who's to blame crying shame that we have the inane Bush who loves his cushy job where 'God' protects him from all writers because he cannot comprehend the trend of what he rends asunder what a blunder all because he does not read to save his soul our goal to send him back to Crawford where he can whip the brushy bushes into shape traipse around on horses jeeps and on his jogging feet and never let another written word in any newspaper bother him forever that's our endeavor and we work in great fever to unlever Bush-Cheney-et al. from great halls and crony offices where phony processes pour forth syrupy smarmy positively harmful calumny of great retort comport yourselves not into comfortable impotence since resistance is the only way to change the deranged demagogues demigods of war pouring forth from this White House no mouse rouses so effectively as a mouse that roars soars abhors the Bush push Bush back to the wrack of Texas ranch to charm the rattlesnakes



With Art

now the artist's way play splaying re-laying the blocks bricks clocks ticks of color line fine do what you will still there are needs seeds to be filled and weeds will erupt abruptly maybe corruptly but maybe the bloom creating room for sliding side expressions of impressions that fill sessions of painting daunting canvasses full of color with lines finely attuned to inner light sightfully incited alighting on the canvas of desire fire in the belly higher than pompelli whoa nelly where would you go to find that kind of fire into the heart not apart from insight there it lies


Hunter's Snow

In the morning's morning minion sun does not shine through blue sky as snowflakes shaking out of thick white bright cloud settles or blows about whirling wind swirls snow shrouding trees and city mid-November chills the last embers of autumn with iciness and hunters rest for the morrow when sorrowing deer will be easily tracked and sacked with gunshot racked with pain death bereft of light in their eyes here the deer dead will be eaten fed to stews ragouts steaks make meals for wheels of families hunter's snow this November blows priming the first day's ray of deer season clear reason for not-hunters to stay away from woods and fields not chancing that mistake of being held a deer by clearly mis-perceiving anxiously believing hunters today's snow will track and soon be blood-spattered it matters that hunters remember deer spirit needs to be honored when its host is dead


Sunset burns the Green Mountains of Vermont; sumac stalk in flame


Photos and prosepoems copyright 2003 by Cherie Staples. No reproduction without written permission.

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Letter to the Author:
Cherie Staples at skyearth1@aol.com