Placing Stone

This was only a theory and yet
what is a stone but a theory of change?
 — Paul Hoover

 

the stone itself in the seeing
the seen of the self revealing
gravitas congealing earth’s fire

enfolding residual continuity
a motionless shimmer
lean summer grasses shiver

do we need to think this say this
as the stone stands forth
as with every thing a theory

Photos: Warner Basin, Southeastern Oregon. A day's indeterminate walk, sagelands. The pictures appear determinate. Then we remember:  the light and angle of another day shift ... lichen moss mineral, the very weight of stone, the revelation of relations... the way.

...
Purpose is silent, as ever, patient in folds of time.
… What I've learned has been added to me — superstition and dream as sure as numbers. 

— Killarney Clary, from the poem “An Unlikely One Will Guide Me…"

Returning

Looks familiar this symbol on the rough wall of rock shelter.
Colors and tones of the stone outweigh the blaze-red of the stroked figure.
Still, profound the geometry of intent.  That’s clear.
Imagine a place of power a retreat darker in a night without stars.
The ceiling houses the terror, a returning necessity. This is not a dwelling.
A place to gather from then move taking with little other than renewal.

NOTE
Photos from visits over several years to Dog Creek Cave, North Umpqua. The massive Jack Fire in 2021 seared slopes and steep canyons, black trees standing, rockshelter spared one more season.  Poem above, DB.

Poems below:
— Lucille Clifton, here yet be dragons from The Book of Light (1993) Copper Canyon Press
— Kay Ryan, from the poem All Shall Be Restored in Elephant Rocks (1997) Grove Press.

                here yet be dragons

so many languages have fallen
off of the edge of the world
into the dragon's mouth. some
where there be monsters whose teeth
are sharp and sparkle with lost
people. lost poems. who
among us can imagine ourselves
unimagined? who
among us can speak with so fragile
tongue and remain proud?

All Shall Be Restored
 

The grains shall be collected
from the thousand shores
to which they found their way,
and the boulder restored,
and the boulder itself replaced
in the cliff, and likewise
the cliff shall rise
or subside until the plate of earth
is without fissure.
 

… And every word written shall lift off
letter by letter, the backward text
read ever briefer, ever more antic
in its effort to insist that nothing
shall be lost.

beneath us the other order already moves

            What's pulled
from the earth but not translated — the mud and the red
    of it, the blood and the wet of it.
    — Traci Brimhall

Certain words bleed through to the unwritten pages.
To call this memory offers no solace.
    — Jane Hirshfield

This is what I know from blood:
The first language is not our own.
There are names each thing has for itself,
and beneath us the other order already moves.
It is burning.
It is dreaming.
It is waking up.
    — Linda Hogan

CODA
I.
Rock paintings on rim rock in a creek canyon in John Day river country gaze as witness, as freeze-frames, to cycles of season and upheaval, to invasion of homelands and trails of dust, to spring-light green grass.

II.
Shields and suns fading
on shimmering cliff facings
refract a time of time itself
turning through …

We cannot speak
yet we see
we see the bleeding through
ages unwritten.

III.
With what lens of time do we grasp this past? ... a then-time not departed, oscillating in the brightening-now? Witnessing catalytic displaced replaced biogeoplanet of polycrisis as political time? Economic? Geologic time or galactic? Eerily clearly Gaia days unfolding when Time is now known as only one unblinking Word. — DB

NOTES
— Traci Brimhall from her poem Translation Theory, in Saucade (2017, Copper Canyon Press)
— Jane Hirshfield. From her poem Waking This Morning Dreamless After A Long Sleep, in Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001, Harper)
— Linda Hogan from her poem Map, in The Book of Medicines (1993, Coffee House Press). 

Point of waking

 How line begins
Point of waking

 How image appears
Shapes congeal

Who is the who in the making?

 

 

Story slides sideways
Memory adheres to stone

 

 

 Story ends
Yields to rain

 

  The Diamond thins
Mirror remains

 

 

Who is the who in the remembering?

NOTES

Photos: Fractured water-worn basalt boulders, manganese-iron patina, petroglyphs, lichen, moss, grasses. Southeast Oregon basin and range, June 2023.   (click to enlarge)

Present matter, Deflected memory

 

 

  

NOTES
-- 1st photo, Old dots/pits with more recent bighorn motif
-- 3rd photo, with details following 4th & 5th.
-- Final photo: Bear paws motif, edge of crack in rim

Memory deflects, time becomes duration.

Petroglyphs in/on basalt, Infinity Playa, Warner Valley uplands.
Photos June 2023.