Practice Resurrection — Photography to “Manifesto” by Wendell Berry

https://brunobianco.com.br/bibendum-cursus/ All Text: Excerpted from “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry

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https://detoxofcolorado.com/verify-insurance/ Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die…

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https://vegaoficial.com/haneke/ When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

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Buy Ambien Online Without Prescription So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it…

Order Tramadol Overnight Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Redwood Abstract

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

What's in this Pond?

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

West Bluff, Devils Lake State Park

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

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Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.

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Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts…

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Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Lavender Fields and Bee Boxes

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts…

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As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

The Path Beyond

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.

Kure Beach Sunrise, November 8, 2013

https://spareveil.com/shellac-polish-change/ Practice resurrection.

Excerpts from “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry

~~~~~~~~

I’m posting a poem each day in April, National Poetry Month. Updated poems from my blog archives, new poems written as sacred practice, and selected, favorite poems from other poets. Today’s photography essay was inspired by the words of Wendell Berry and posted in honor of Earth Day 2016.

 

On The Road to Why — A Poem

Brittlebush

Brittlebush © 2013 Bo Mackison

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Checking the map, 112 miles to Why, then south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Highway 86, Ajo Highway, I head west on the road of roadside memorials
and shrines, over a hundred I photographed a few years ago.

I travel through urban sprawl, then open space.
Silver Star Road, brown earth, barbed wire fences.
Robles Junction.
Water puddles in the irrigated fields at Buckelew Farms.

Fuller Road. Battered mailboxes along the road, a row of scraped paint,
crushed metal, gunshot holes and red flags.
Where are the shrines and crosses? They’ve disappeared.
Scraped off the desert earth.

Kitt Mountain is due west, dotted with white observatories,
celestial connections on the highest peaks.
Telephone poles string across the desert scrub. Earthly connections.

Tucson Rifle Club. Members Only.
Hayhook Ranch Road. Ranch For Sale.
Watch For Animals Next 54 Miles.

Yellow bundles of brittlebush and desert marigolds crowd the median strip.
Gravel piles stands where once there were roadside memorials,
the adjacent desert has been scraped level for a road widening project.

A bush of orange mallow, waving stalks of purple pestomen,
white sacred datura, like bridal bouquets dropped along the road.
Tohono O’odham Nation. Green desert, red earth.

San Pedro Road. Coyote Trading Store, open for business no gas.
Asphalt shoulders, graded hills with rolls of burlap hold back the earth.
Where are the memorials? Relocated? Destroyed?

Pan Tak Road
Kitt Peak Ahead, Turn Left
Road construction Expect delays

The road is wide, the shoulders wide,
and safer for the driving living.
Fewer memorials on the side of the road.

Saguaros relocated from the easement, twenty feet tall, propped with 2 by 4s.
By law, saguaros must be relocated.
A saguaro must face its original direction, or it will die,
and become another road casualty.

Gouged earth. One giant saguaro still stands
upon the graded bank, its roots exposed and twisted in the air.
Yellow earth movers shovel the ancient earth into piles.

This is progress. A safe road is a good road.
A good road is a safe road.
Smooth and homogenized, the desert tamed.

Three hawks soar high. Far enough west, the road narrows.
Red plastic ribbons flutter from branches marked for the bulldozer.
But for now grasses encroach over the yellow lines.
Mesquite and tree cholla crowd the roadside.

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A single white cross remains, decorated with bright flowers.
The peak of Baboquivari, I’itoi’s sacred mountain, pierces the desertscape.
Border Patrol. Their green-striped white truck is parked
under a mesquite while they search the scrub.

Littering Unlawful
You Are Entering Sells, Arizona, Population 2734
Komkcʼeḍ ʼe-Wa:ʼosidk, Capital of the Tohono O’odham Nation
The O’odham name means Tortoise Got Wedged.

Indian Oasis School Baboquivari District

Watch For Animals Next 10 Miles
Papago Assembly of God

Highway 19 Junction, Hospital Here
The Shell gas station pumps regular for 3.47.
Two wild horses, white and shaggy, graze along the road,
unperturbed by passing trucks.

Eugene Tashquinth Livestock Complex hosts
76th Annual Tohono O’odham Rodeo
January 26 – February 4, 2014

Tree cholla forest.
Yellow flowering mesquite, seed beans swing in midday breeze.
Road to Nolia. Turkey vultures. Triple decker saguaro.

Quijotoa. A historical marker tells me
it is Papago for Mountain Shaped Like a Carrying Basket.
Carrying Basket had pockets of gold and silver.
And a mining boom in 1883.

Ghost towns. Logan City, New Virginia, Brooklyn, Allen City,
there was only a small pocket of precious metal.
The desert reclaims the abandoned.

Highway 15 Junction to Santa Rosa Casa Grande.
Desert sprawl, yellow blossoming brittlebush color the cactus floor.
The road narrows, ocotillo arch over the pavement. Toothpick saguaros.
Quijotoa Pentecostal Church of God.

Red and purple bows tied to mesquite branches,
remaining traces of a roadside memorial.
The dirt is leveled, the pull-off blocked with a rock pile.

Flashing lights on a Park Ranger’s truck slow oncoming traffic.
Three teen runners jog in the truck’s exhaust fumes,
one carries a banner. Unity Runners.

Road to Pisinemo.
San Si:mon. Tohono O’odham High School.
San Simon Health Center.

Flash Flood Area Next 10 Miles
Why 18 miles. Ajo 28 miles
Chain cholla glitter silver in the sun.

HIWAYRVPRK next road. Shuck Toak Road
Desert Diamond Casino, asphalt parking lot.
Coyote Howl RV Park. Abandoned.

Road in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument ©2016 Bo Mackison

Road in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument ©2016 Bo Mackison

Highway Junction 86/85
Lukeville 27 miles. 10 miles to Ajo
Approaching Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, A Biosphere Reserve

12:46 pm. March 18. 86˚F.
Blue skies. Windy.
Relentless sun bleaches color from the desert.

The organ pipes loom tall,
massive and thick, multi-armed.
Alien. Grotesque. Beautiful.

~~~~~~~

Not so much a poem, more a travel log.

for the need of ritual — a poem

Blue Fountain ©2016 Bo Mackison

Blue Fountain ©2016 Bo Mackison

for the need of ritual

for greetings. for departures.
for days of fulfillment. nights of peace.
a ritual for dreams. for desires.
for sorrow. joy. praise.

a ritual for dawn. sunrise. morning. day.
for evening. sunset. twilight. night.
for dark skies. luminous moon. stars above.

a ritual for beginnings. middles. endings.
for seed. sprout. bud. blossom. seed head.

a ritual for paper and pencil. for written word. spoken word.
for poetry that inspires. that awes. that bleeds the heart dry.
for the gasp. for the sigh. for the song.

a ritual for gratitude. apology. forgiveness.
for fortitude. for solitude.

a ritual for fear. for grief. for anger. for sadness.
for joy. for ease. for comfort.

a ritual for traveling to places unknown.
a ritual for holding. staying. and release.

a ritual for sanctuary. for rest.
for acceptance. for contentment.

a ritual for the threshold. the transition.
for the need of ritual.

~~~~~~

Ritual practice is the activity of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness. ~ Ronald L. Grimes

 

At Tumacácori – A Poem

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Tumacacori Mission Garden ©2016 Bo Mackison

Look past electric wires, telephone poles,
a coiled rubber hose, the 19th century stone wall
cracked open for a water spigot?

Don’t listen to the traffic on the interstate up the hill,
rumbling cars speeding from Nogales to the Border Patrol checkpoint.

Silence the background and search for sacred silence in this sacred space.
Block the sounds of horns blaring,
ignore the heated words of the couple standing near the rose bush.

Shhh.

Hear rustling leaves, whistling wind?
See shimmer in the cotttonwood trees?

These winds were in this garden, long ago.
The trees now camouflaging sparrows’ nests, they were here.
The fountain — the garden’s heart — it was here with its rippling waters.
Dust blowing from the Tumacácori Mountains – the dust was here.

Those mountains? They stand in silence and watch. They have watched all these years.
Arched doorways still shelter the walkway,
a courtyard protects a painted statue of the Virgin with her Babe.
They continue to watch.

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Tumacacori Mission, Tumacacori Mountains ©2016 Bo Mackison

The yucca, the tepary beans trailing along the earth.
The nut tree saplings,
swaying in rhythm with the winds.
They witnessed. They continue to witness.

The che-che-chee of the sparrows mix with voices
raised in song — of praise and protest,
in elation and humiliation, in gratitude and in mourning.

I hear their voices, I hear the choir lift their voices in song.
Harmonizing
Chanting
The rising alleluias, the longing amens.

Voices. Do you hear them?
Che-che-cheee sing alleluia.
Siss-siss-siss, the leaves dance, twirl along the dusty path.

Hearts dancing, hold your gaze on the star hunter,
poised, aiming his arrow at the full moon.
Hidden voices in the whistling winds.
Hidden eyes, watching Tumacácori.

Listen.

Watch.

Hush.

~~~~~~

It is here that Jesuit Father Kino, traveling north from Mexico (New Spain) visited a settlement of  O’odham and founded Mission San Cayetano de Tumacácori in 1691.
It is here the mission remained for 157 years, a complicated existence of conversion, Apache conflict, disease, harsh conditions.
It is here where I sit in the restored gardens, stand in the mission interior and I listen. I hear.

Desert Dust – A Poem

Dust Storm

Dust Storm, Hidden Mountains © 2013 Bo Mackison

 

Such ferocity, these desert winds.
Dust devils spinning.

The mountains rise ten thousand feet
above the desert floor,
vanish in the dusty clouds.

Yellow ochre granules, desert spit,
frenetic dance, rise like mini-tornadoes,
slam into Santa Rita’s rocky face.

Desert powder settles on
the bristling Ponderosa pines.

Broad billed hummingbirds, in defense,
fluff to twice their size
and burrow their faces in their feathers.

Prickly pears cast faint shadows in the arroyo
through cloud filtered sunlight.
And pollen drops, like yellow rain.