Mirror Image
Wildflowers and Weeds~ Question the Wind~ Listen~ Time Traveler~ Dream of a City Girl~ Suen~os de la Nina de Ciudad~ The Moth~ Kaleidoscope~ A Leaf in the Wind~ The Mallards~ Waiting for a Star~ Beached~ The Lottery~ Forest Eyes~
A dreamer,
a stargazer,
a sower of uncommon seeds,
I reach out with my pen
to touch your soul...
offering wildflowers and weeds.
s.m.chisam
Where does the wind flow?
The wind flows where the sun cannot go,
where the moon calls home,
where the stars are born.
Does the wind ever forget?
The wind forgets the storms
when the season of soft breezes arrives.
Where does the wind go?
It hides in the deep places and plays in the skies,
and brings things back to life even as they are dying.
For the wind I sing my song.
Are you the intrument or the song?
I have not enough power to be the instrument;
not enough beauty to be the song.
Then for whom do you speak?
To whom will you sing?
My voice is but the voice of one spirit in the wind...
like a leaf in Autumn which drifts down in a blaze of glory
but whose true worth unknown
Am I the spirit of the Wind?
Nay...
maybe just a small dust mite dancing on a sunbeam...
stirred by an Indian Summer breeze.
s.m.chisam
You can hear the silence
If you want to.
Sometimes
It is a whisper,
Sometimes a secret laugh
Like children after bedtime,
Or apricot blossoms
Falling.
But sometimes
The sound of silence
Is the sound of crying,
And if you listen
With your heart
You can feel the pain
Of the whole world.
Then,
It hurts to listen.
Then,
You must.
s.m.chisam
inspired by Chaim Potok's book "The Chosen"
and thanks to friend Barbra Hamel, who first told me about the book.
We are, all of us, travelers in time,
And once upon a time
We built Liberty ships
And planted victory gardens
And saved our pennies to buy bonds.
Then there was a thing
Called Hiroshima
And then was Nagasaki.
Then the war was over
And there was dancing in the streets
And unending waterfalls of champagne,
Tickertape parades
And flags flying proudly,
Even next to windows
With gold stars,
And we marched proudly
Through the transitory corridors of time...
And once upon a time
We laughed with Truman
Over a headline,
And we liked Ike
And even Nixon and his dog Checkers.
We lived in neighborhoods
Where everybody knew everybody
And we walked hand-in-hand
Down to the park for
And evening of baseball and popcorn,
And we went to the Saturday matinee
While our moms shopped.
Sundays meant church with
Women and girls in hats and gloves
And the smell of fried chicken
Because company1s coming.
The Rosenbergs got the chair,
DeGaulle took over, over there,
And we pried the Red
Out of the red, white and blue
And saw the results
Of national paranoia.
There was some court case
Back in Kansas
About a little colored girl
And some of us were scornful,
Some of us were jubilant,
And some didn1t care,
And people were killed
Right here in Mississippi
And Rosa Parks
Kept her seat on the bus.
Soon we couldn1t stand the shame
Of looking inside ourselves
So we turned our eyes
To the space above us
And we were thrilled
When Colonel John Glenn
Orbited the earth and returned
A hero for a time...
And once upon a time
There was a land called Camelot
Where the sun smiled upon us
And everything had a golden glow
As we looked at the world
Through a pale veil of plenty.
Then there were people
Named Castro and Khruschev
And a crisis in October.
We had air raid drills
And built bomb shelters --
Have the first one on your block
For only Two-forty-nine: you do the digging --
Then we blinked twice
And on an ironically sunny day in Dallas
Our queen had blood on her dress
And the king was gone
And our world fell apart.
A long tall Texan took his place
But he could never fill his shoes,
And there were riots and demonstrations
About the war, about our right to free speech,
About the color of our skin.
We knew we had a dream --
The American Dream --
But was it for all Americans?
Blacks and Chicanos?
Native Peoples? Marines in Vietnam?
Then Jane Fonda made a fool of herself
And they shot all our heroes
And Martin and Bobby were gone,
And who was left but Nixon
Locked in a nightmare, spinning in time...
And once upon a time
The Golden Age disappeared;
The Eagle landed but it never
Really lifted again.
For many the last golden glows
Were Woodstock and Monterey and Haight
But too many were too strung out
To see straight, anyway, and they tuned out
As dark clouds appeared on the horizon
Of the American Dream:
Clouds like tax evasion and bribery, and
Our vice president resigned.
Then they said peace was at hand
And we believed them
While they bombed Cambodia
And four students died at Kent State.
Then the dam called Watergate burst wide open
And our president resigned
In disgrace
And his disgrace became a part of us,
And we were mad at Jerry for pardoning Dick
So we elected Jimmy
Who might have been a better president
If it had been a better time...
And once upon a time
An actor ran for president
And we said who is he kidding?
But we voted for Ronnie anyway
And he outspent the communists
As we battled over Starwars,
Affirmative action, prochoice and prolife,
And we read the news and we asked,
3How can the national debt possibly be --
How much is three trillion, anyway?2
We played with the interest rates
And the S&Ls went crazy
So we sold our redwoods wholesale
And shipped them
To Hiroshima
And Nagasaki.
While some of worried about
The maybe hole in the ozone, others looked
On in amazement as the berlin Wall came down
And the system of communism in Russia --
Hot-line, missile-crisis, nuclear-equal Russia --
Suddenly began a metamorphosis,
And our own troubles seemed small
And insignificant for a while
As we saw the bread lines
And riots overseas.
Then we looked again at our own system
And saw the decay, but we also saw
The possibilities for good.
So we elected Bush
And got a bonus in Barbara
But we wanted changes
Fast fast fast so
In came Bill who played the sax
And drove an old Mustang and
The next ridiculous headline
Was that Hillary (don1t forget the Rodham)
Really COULD bake cookies
But is this really national news?
And do we really care?
So now as we learn
How not to blame everything
On the Red Menace
We see politicians and journalists
Looking for another nation
On whom to confer
The favored enemy status.
And it worries us because
We are all just travelers in time
And every day we are more aware
That we travel together.
1989
-Susan M. Chisam
I am a city girl,
Born in the city,
Raised in the city,
But my heart, I think,
Was born in the mountains
And my soul in the summer wind.
My feet walked the pavement,
The highways and byways,
While my heart
Walked on hillsides
And in lush verdant valleys
And I drank of the cool mountain streams.
I dreamed that one day
I would live in the mountains.
Now, I live in the high country,
Still in a house,
But not far from a meadow,
And I live my dreams...
I smell the wildflowers
When the breeze lifts them
And they nod their helloes
To my lingering feet.
I see graceful butterflies,
The little flowers of heaven,
Whisper to each other
The secrets they know.
I see a deer
And am silent enough
To have it see me
And not be afraid...
Just the deer and I, resting
By the mountain stream.
Now my heart laughs
And my soul rejoices,
For I have returned
To the place of my birth.
s.m.chisam-1976
Yo soy una nin~a de ciudad,
Naci' en la ciudad
Creci' en la ciudad
Pero mi corazon, yo pienso,
Nacio' en la sierra,
Y mi alma en el viento del verano
Mis pies caminan el asfalto
Los carreteras y vi'as,
Mientras que mi corazon
Camina en los cerros
Y en los valles verdes
Y bebo de aguas tranquilas en la montan~a
Yo viviri'a en las montan~as...
Y ahora yo vivo en la sierra
Todavi'a en una casa,
Pero no lejana de los campos
Y yo vivo mis suen~os...
Yo son~e' que un di'a
Yo huelo las flores de los campos
Cuando la brisa las levanta
Y ellas dicen "buenas d'ias"
A mis pies lentos...
Yo veo mariposas graciosas
Las florecillas de ciello
Murmullan unos a otras
Los secretos que ellas saben...
Yo veo un venado
Y yo estoy muy serena
Cuando me ve
Y no tiene miedo de mi...
Solemente el venado y yo, descansamos
Por el agua tranquila.
Y mi alma tiene alegri'a
Por yo he regressado
Al suelo en que naci'.
Y ahora, mi corazon ri'e
I hover in the aura of the light
Beating my wings anxiously against the metal of the screen
until they are jagged and torn
I am told it is impossible
to reach the light from here Ah,
but to stop....
what, then, would life hold?
smc 1998
Ever changing, rearranging,
shifting patterns
You can make just the slightest turn,
and the pattern you expected
to fall into place
may not be there
at all.
s.m.chisam
Sometimes I feel like a leaf in the wind
torn from all I know
to drift and blow where the wind might send
me 'til I reach the ground below.
apr 88
smchisam
The mallards fly south
over the lake
aligning themselves
so that each is borne along
with the least effort
for the long flight
to a warmer,
brighter
place
standing along the lake shore
in the stillness of the morning
I look upwards,
and wish...
and then I shiver
in the chill dawn
as they pass
into the light.
11/16/98 s.m.chisam
Covered by quilted cirrus and cumulus down
I stretch out on the pinks sands of the morning,
While, upon further rocky beaches, dolphins play
And stranded whales take their final rests
On the limestone.
yet I live,
And while I live, the breath comes in
And goes out
And the heart beats ever anon
And the soul reaches ever
For the sea, and a sail
and a bright star to sail by.
Nearby, a solitary tree,
Bent by age and wind, rests in stony shadow,
Offering a place to rest,
A place to sit and think
About life and death
While larks capriciously vault above a meadow.
Secluded fragment,
feeling like an island torn from the main
As I sit and watch the waves
And wonder
And wonder
And sit and watch the waves
And breathe
And live
s.m.chisam
Cool ocean breezes awaken me slowly
as if from a dream...
a gull pulls at my hair,
insistently...
beneath my legs I am aware of
hot, hard and gritty sand...
my eyes reluctantly open to the glare of the morning sun
and I wonder why it is rising
over the ocean
I push myself up,
feeling the surf getting higher on my legs each time the foam rolls in and back out.
Looking around does not help.
I have no idea where I am or how I got here.
Huge tan and brown rocks on the beach.
Further up the coast the waves are crashing upon them,
spray rising higher than the rocks...
must be forty feet into the air.
Strange shells at my feet.
I bend down to look at one..
.cool inside, like an abalone,
swirls of opalescent pearl, but so different in shape...
like a crescent moon.
The gull flies over my head...not a California gull.
Not a California beach.
How did I get here?
And where is here?
s.m.chisam
He won the lottery.
He bought the land, the rolling-hill land,
The maize-covered land all around.
His John Deere tractor tore down trees,
Dammed the rivers, and dug the pools.
Then he built his houses, magnificent houses
Row after row after row of houses --
Up in a day.
This is the way
He was able to say
To his love, "Marry me."
~~~~~~~~~~
She won the lottery.
She bought all his houses, those
Magnificent houses that he had built
With his John Deere tractor.
Then she used that tractor
To tear them all down, fill in the pools,
Undam the rivers, haul it all away,
Until all that was left
Was just the land, the rolling-hill land
The maize-covered land all around.
Then she carefully planted
Two little seedlings for each of the trees.
It wasn1t done in a day,
But that was the way
She was able to say,
"You don't even know me."
s.m.chisam
Forest green my eyes,
A ring of conifers circling a deep
star-filled firmament...
The place of my tears,
And a salt lick for the deer...
The place of my laughter,
Where the wind and the clouds
Play chase...
Forest eyes --
A still pool reflecting all.
Copyright s.m.chisam