god spelled differently is...

sky so blue it aches
an arc, uncontained

earth turning, asking

lightening striking

perfect bliss
broken glass

what is desired and avoided

your footsteps
your echoes

heavy lidded eyes of the diety

looking out from inside you
and me

good work, loving souls

swift kicks, open doors
all god

lahc 7/29/15

agiocochook

a sacred mountain, should be a good place to start or end up, or land at any point in between.
home of the Great Spirit, i offered a sprinkling of tobacco, out of respect.  respect would mean, for myself, for others, for the earth.  i can only pray that that translates in the descent, back into whatever awaits me...whatever i create.  do no harm, do no harm...not always possible. not everyone around me can be happy with my every move. protect the planet, but of course it winces under the load. even interplanetary visitors, they might be dismayed by my choices. even the past, the future -  might roll their overbearing eyes.  but since their existence is suspect and there is only now - now on the summit, now typing this, now asleep and dreaming...now - i'll take my chances..

quiet and rain

so quiet and now there's rain

got the wild woods just out there

coyote, fisher, fox, black bear...

i sleep and hope to wake

to the sounds they make

deep forest,  good night

last night

last night, an owl called me from my sleep
on the edge of a dream
but he was real
who-who ?  whooo-whooo,
two short, two long
i kept still - listening, until he went away

now i need my rest
but he can wake me anytime
it's been so long since i have heard from him

"i rejoice that there are owls"

front

 Medicine bag titled:  baohi'gan , for presentation: Thoreau Society Annual Gathering 2015


Joe Polis was Thoreau's Native American Penobscot guide employed for one of his travels to the Maine North Woods . Maine folklorist Fannie Eckstorm, whose family had a close acquaintance with the Penobscot Indians, remarks that Polis had "a mind that knew the advantage of control of unseen forces and the reputation for being a shaman" (The "Domestic Air" of Wilderness: Henry Thoreau & Joe Polis in the Maine Woods, By Thomas P. Lynch)

Anthropologist Frank Speck's discussion in Penobscot Shamanism:"Every magician [such as Polis] had his helper which seems to have been an animal's body into which he could transfer his state of being at will. The helper then is known by the term baohi'gan, a very interesting term which may be explained as meaning 'instrument of mystery"  

From Thomas Lynch: 
"One might readily speculate, and speculate is all one might do, that Polis's baohi°'gan was an owl. Note that before discovering the phosphorescent wood, Thoreau was awakened by the hoot of an owl, and that at several other points of the journey Polis imitates an owl's hooting: "a cat owl [Great Horned Owl] flew heavily over the stream, and he, asking if I knew what it was imitated very well the common hoo, hoo, hoo, hoorer, hoo, of our woods"

back

From Walden:
"I rejoice that there are owls...
It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized." Henry David Thoreau

7-1/2" x 4-1/2", hand stamped, hand dyed fabric, owl and cloud photographs on fabric, blue jay feather, acorn caps, pine cone.

peace

this form is an open window

without is within

step across the threshold

no boundary of skin

remembering to breathe

as old Self, very old

as tree

water, air, earth, vegetable mold

where is peace?

a moment right before

i fall asleep

that dark and quiet door

 lahc

11/30/14 
04/28/15
07/03/15