JUST NOW has been back in New Mexico! Maybe that’s why it’s taken so long to get this edition out the door. But here it is at last.
Anyway. New Mexico. What can I say? It’s becoming a habit. I can’t seem to stay away from the place.
However.
In Santa Fe, 10 days ago or so, about 6 in the evening, just as Gail and I were heading out to meet some friends for dinner, my phone buzzed in my pocket. When I looked at it, there, in a big red box on the screen, was an Emergency Dust Storm Warning, advising everyone to stay inside until 7:30. Assuming as I always do in these sorts of situations, that the warning is meant for everyone except me, we proceeded as planned.
Wind blowing 40 miles an hour, gusts over 60. It was crazy. Dark. The nearby mountains weren’t visible. I had to drive with the lights on in what should have been bright sunlight.
It wasn’t like a snowstorm, which would have been also scary, and intense for an unpracticed snow driving Texas guy like myself. But it wouldn’t have been weird. This was weird. More than a storm. Primal. Apocalyptic? Like a flood, or a fire. Something was blowing away that could never be returned.
We made it to the restaurant, walked inside and – almost magically – all that chaos just disappeared. We sat in a lovely, cozy room with our good friends, had a great meal, and enjoyed every minute of our time together as if nothing at all was happening outside and everything was just as it had been, had always been, and always would be.
When dinner was done, we all walked outside. The storm had blown itself away on its way wherever that was, and it was as calm on the street as it had been inside our magic room. There was a layer of dust on the car – like a note slipped under the windshield wiper.
Later, talking to my friends, I learned that dust storms aren’t that unusual in New Mexico. So, if I’m going to keep visiting, I should probably get used to them. Or at least try not to freak out when one happens like this.
Then I remembered pictures of the big one, the haboob that hit Phoenix a few years back. So I looked it up. It was as incredible as I remembered. An enormous undulating wave of sand that literally swallowed this huge city out in the already barren wastes of south-central Arizona like a gigantic wave.
There was You Tube footage of people filming what I can only describe as an awesome and terrifying wall of a sandstorm bearing down on Phoenix and they were laughing with excitement and glee as they watched it come. It looked like the end of the world to me.
OK, I admit, there might be a strain of doomsday alarmism here. I can see that in myself. But I look around at all that’s going on right now, and shake my head. There is so much more than dust and sand blowing in the wind.
Maybe it’s just my mood.
So how about this – just one time a day – like the opposite of saying grace at dinner – a momentary acknowledgment in the simplest terms – SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT. In fact, A WHOLE LIST OF THINGS. . . Not to dwell. . . Just remember, and to do something useful whenever I can.
Having said all that, here are three small poems, none of which deal with the ills of the world, but instead with its beauty and unexpected blessings. Not much to stand against the storm that seems to be brewing. But it’s all I have right now. Hope you enjoy.
-Bill
5/4/2022
THREE AT THE FLYING STAR
When I looked up from my breakfast at the Flying Star
There was a little girl looking in through the glass door.
She fit just under the metal push bar.
She was so sweet, pretty, waiting so calmly,
her hands clasped in front of her,
watching what was going on inside,
the wait-people moving through the tables
we diners scattered here and there,
our coffee mugs, our plates of food.
And then her mother came around the corner
and pushed open the door and the two of them walked inside.
It was so striking to me, the patience of this little girl,
young, maybe three years old I thought, that she would wait
like this, with such quiet trust for her mother to appear
and open the way for her. That she didn’t need to struggle
with the door, that it would be taken care of,
that everything was as it should be and she
could stand and wait, and in the meantime
be curious, and see all there was to be seen.
Bill Jeffers
4/20/2022
SONG
A bird was singing in the tree nearby a song
I imagined I had never heard before and I spent a long time
peering up into its branches with their thick dark tangle of leaves
for this new bird, and while I searched, its song went on and on.
But I couldn’t find it, and my neck began to ache.
So I sat down at the table to do
what I had come outside to do in the first place –
write something in my book on this empty page.
But the bird kept singing,
tugging my attention back up
to the mystery of leaves and branches
where it stayed hidden
except for the song it sang.
My notebook sat on the table with the blank page calling
just as the bird was calling from the tree.
And the thoughts I’d been thinking when I walked outside
flew back and forth like a disarray of grackles
from my empty page to hidden branches in the tree and back
again and again until they disappeared,
one by one – I could almost see them fly away – into a sky as empty
as the page on the table, leaving just the birdsong,
and my attention searching still
for the hidden singer singing.
Finally, I began to write –
with the song, remarkably, still filling the air around me –
about the song the bird the tree,
and as I did, the bird was almost instantly silent.
Bill Jeffers
10/4/2021
THE SUN’S GREETING
Through the window the sun comes
saying, Get out here. Stop hiding. Let me see you.
Come see what’s happened
while you were napping,
before you were born,
before your mother was a thought
in her mother’s heart.
See what the moon
did overnight. You have to see it all
before it’s gone.
Even me, the sun says, even me – time burns so brightly.
It never stops. And you, she says – you –
so small, so hardly there at all. I blink, you’re gone, forgotten,
everything you ever felt or knew or thought or imagined
gone and never seen again.
A blink of flame and a quick-lived whisp of smoke.
So, come out. Be seen.
Come out and see.
Bill Jeffers
10/20/2021
The Flying Star is my favorite place to have breakfast in Albuquerque when I stay with Blake and Lynne. I walk over for one of their tasty meals, good coffee, and just hang out with my friend or sometimes just a notebook or my computer and think my thoughts. It’s that kind of place.
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