David Chorlton
A Black Witch SuiteI
The last of yesterday’s rain evaporated in the day’s first light. Starlings were already on the lawn and water dripped from the eaves as the cats in the living room lunged at the window where dark wings beat against the glass before backing away and coming back darker, heavier, louder each time, until they held still in mid-air for an instant, having spread themselves wide one more time to display a curse once issued from the lips of an Aztec priest. II The view from atop the pyramid was of a mass so bright and beyond restraint, the faces seemed to rise in the moment the flint blade appeared, catching for a moment light from the sun that demanded a sacrifice for whom the day became uniquely dark while for the crowd it was an occasion to wear feathers and feel the uplift of flight as the heart appeared that fed impatient gods. III It has been said that the moth represents the four directions, and in the event of it entering a house to touch each of its corners one should take mourning clothes from the old oak trunk packed with weeping and headscarves whose lid moans on a hinge, so tired has it become of being raised. IV A Black Witch arrived in clear light preceding nightfall, on the tail of a storm that had shaken the forest’s tranquility and taken hold of the sky to wring out its rain before putting it back in time for the vultures to come down to a long dead sycamore and spread their wings to dry. It came without warning, fast and straight across the summer grass, the first part of night to reach us, and when it did it almost had a face. V Don’t let it fly above you, the old ones say, move quickly from its path or you’ll lose your hair, and all your precious youth. VI When a Black Witch entered her house it caused the owner to panic as she interrupted putting on her makeup and pinning back her hair to scream a scream convinced it was an omen. She opened all the windows and chased and flapped her arms until it flew innocently away, leaving her to consider appearances as she returned to her mirror of quicksilver and vanity. VII Should the black moth come into a house in which a sick bed floats on cold, hard tiles, the doctor crosses himself and sighs, but leaves the door open to keep hope a little bit alive. VIII While some remain convinced an appearance means imminent disaster, that the moth comes only to the Dies Irae tune, the gamblers who feel most alive when they risk losing everything see it fly to the lintel where black is luck’s favourite colour and they spend their money before the winning numbers are announced. IX In the Aztec twilight many souls turned into moths. To this day they have endured. Whenever an empire burns, flakes of the ash float through the centuries on the breath of immortals. DroughtThe drought insinuates itself at first
by using charm. All it takes are clear skies and the warm days tourists travel far to enjoy with the desert close by and a cherry in their drinks. It’s springtime by the pool and the air conditioned lobby at the hotel features photographs displaying canyons grand and small, saguaro stands, Navajo hogans, and cattle with a home on a range close to Boot Hill with cowboys watching over them as if the cameras were still rolling to capture one more ride before the sunset to end all sunsets. Nobody thinks to check the map with the latest reading for drought, whose colour scheme grows from yellow through orange to the red that says Extreme, because turning the faucet brings water, and there’s plenty in the bathroom for showering off the nervous feeling that reminds them this could be deserted in a few more decades time. The drive from the airport is always so pleasant, along streets with green, green lawns where the sprinklers spray glistening fans into the bright air early in the day, when mowers cut down what the water makes grow. On the outskirts the wildflowers are fewer this year because winter was dry, but there’s still a crisp light on the mountains and desert by name to a stranger must be desert by nature. The drought doesn’t check in for a short stay, it’s like the unwelcome relative who arrives unannounced and makes himself so comfortable it’s impossible to imagine life without him. He loves the summer. Stores enough bottled water to last a year. Offers to help with chores but forgets to turn off the hose. Washes the car when it doesn’t need it. Polishes the mirrors until grackles think they are pools to drink from. Nobody mentions him though, preferring his presence be left as a secret so he won’t scare anyone away, or Heaven forbid discourage new arrivals set on building houses and drinking up what water is left when rivers are trickles of light over the pawprints coyotes left behind from long thirsty walks. Drought digs in and remains in the background while plans are drawn up for more buildings, more business, more people to occupy, work, and be happy without stopping a moment to think what will happen when groundwater is just ground. It worsens in increments so small they’re ignored except by the animals who know what’s happening and aren’t afraid to admit it. Meanwhile, the drought becomes demonic, still attractive, in a self-destructive kind of way, to anyone easily seduced; the character who invites you for a drink and laughs when there isn’t any. |
The Roar Und wenn ich gewaltiger Tiger heule
verstehn sie : ich meine es müßte hier noch andere Tiger geben (And when I mighty tiger roar they understand: I mean there ought to be still more tigers here) Sarah Kirsch This is the way the world goes round, this is the way it all works when everyone does what they do to survive: the baker bakes bread; the minister prays; the woodcutter cuts trees to supply wood for the shelves the carpenter makes. Explorers explore, soldiers fight wars; nurses tend the wounded, and cartographers draw maps that show where explorers have been. It all fits together somehow, from the miners mining copper to the protesters who protest how they devastate a canyon to make bullets, pipes and wires, while wilderness loses the wild in its name. This is when the displaced cats stop traffic, rampage through shopping malls, break open the doors to the chambers where businessmen sit down with politicians, and roar as they were born to, while we who have spent centuries refining grammar, syntax, and expanding our vocabularies, can only wish we were more like them. Monsoon FlashesThe smell of distant rain
blew in from the desert beneath an evening’s darkening clouds when a lizard on the path turned quickly from the concrete’s warmth. Jupiter was drifting away from Venus in the west while stormlight was concealed inside the southern sky. * At dawn the thunder rolled between the wheels of early traffic; shook itself free from the curtains being drawn back behind waking windows; flashed and faded into the clouds as they paled and parted for light to pass through. * The heat wasn’t dry anymore. Moisture left behind from a previous storm had a chokehold on the air. Tuning was hopeless: the strings tightened around every melody played. * Between the diminishing calls the lovebirds made as their shadows stretched out on the grass and the liquid sounds that came with the cowbirds early, the city lay at rest in silver-lined darkness. * The mountains shaded into cumulous edged with white. It was a day very much like the one preceding it, that ended as quietly as it had begun with only a faraway rumbling as a tease, and the men asleep beneath the awning on the abandoned shopfront were oblivious to passing time. * Foot traffic was light along 16th Street before the first cloud appeared above the dulceria, where piñatas were hanging in rows waiting for the right occasion to be struck and spill open. * Early in the day the air carried the smell of burning as it rustled the evergreens and buoyed the mockingbirds in flight. It lasted a while then drifted away. It was the time of year fire comes and goes at will. * Something the sky had to tell us about the confluence of water and light was held back above land accustomed to drought. And the hummingbird perched, as he does every dusk, on the bare branch extending from the orange tree whose outermost leaves had started to curl. * DustAbout ten miles north of Tucson
the wind begins to dig into gravel beside the driveway to a prefabricated house set down without roots and feels for the desert underneath. It stirs a devil from a waste lot and pulls at the foundations of a motel down on its luck, scoops up portions of a field upon which no rain has fallen in months and loosens the surface, revealing the layer above the layer where history is recorded: the sandal prints a priest made stained with candle wax and tears; a horseshoe that brought no luck; the marks created by a man’s fingers when he crawled toward water without knowing which direction to take. Here is Pima dust, Apache dust, dust that bloomed behind stagecoaches and settled back into the earth mixed with the dust a pickup truck kicked back from its tires. And here comes the wind, out of a clear sky, gently at first, just a whisper asking the ground what it’s hiding, and gradually it grows to a shout, then a scream that carries all the way to Phoenix. The late sun reflects on every grain as the yellow mass swells and draws strength from the ground it moves across, tearing the topsoil to release whatever lies beneath and raise it to a dry tide rolling three thousand feet high. At this moment the traffic has surrendered, planes have been grounded and time stops with visibility zero, not a bargain in sight at the mall, no progress to believe in, no history to deny; only the land the white man stole reassembling itself as a cloud and moving back to take the city built where the Hohokam had once been neighbors to the sun. |
