“Knowing yourself as the dweller in both the bodies you will disown nothing. All the universe is your concern; every living thing you will love and help most tenderly and wisely. There will be no clash of interests between you and others. All exploitation will cease absolutely. Your every action will be beneficial, every moment will be a blessing.”
Nisargadatta M.
Now there’s a fairly valid definition of the Spirit of Christmas. Heidigger wrote It is in words and language that things first come into being and are. Word made flesh or is it really flesh made word? And he also states No one can take the other’s dying away from him. The Tree may still outlive us.
The above from the first edition of Five Trees, 1994. It had no pix. I’ve wanted to quote Terence McKenna on Santa Claus (or Sandy Claws as I say to a sweet Brasilian friend who loves crabs), but haven’t found it. He felt that the red and white of the old guy’s outfit derived from the entheogenic mushroom amanita.
A lonely
Railway station
Lotus flowers blooming.
Shiki
PACOBOOKS
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
December, 2007
PRO LOG
It was always a matter
Of asking the tree
To come inside
The wise would inquire
Before the cut
Balls on the tree are
Clearly chauvinistic
I didn’t know that
When I worshipped
Reflections of everything
In their surfaces
The eternal living presence
Taken into the home
Old love of tree is equal to
Old love of animal
The sparkling tree
Even before its adornment
Takes us back to the fires and
Green explosions sleeping
In our brainstems
Needles walk down your back
Let Christmas keep you
On the track.
THE FIRST TREE
Going up to candles on the
Tree in Buffalo overnight from
Philadelphia on the old
Reading Railroad
Aunt Adelheid made
Fruit cakes in coffee cans
An old German recipe
She was very German
Uncle David was my dad’s bro
And the tree’s overwhelmed
So am I by the candlelight
She’s covered in small winking
Fires warmth reflections shadows
Fill the room light up
The smiling faces
Ruby Vallee sings a drunken version
Of A Tavern in the Town
I touched my little cousins
Worshipped the flaming tree
Got a candle end
For the train trip back.
THE SECOND TREE
Mexico City the party’s begun
Rum candles plates tortillas the
Sun has set it’s Tree Time
And everyone’s broke
I wobble out after my third rum
Less than a peso in pocket
Down to the square where
Trees were for sale
What will half a peso get me
Senor Nada Hombre Well
There’s this branch longneedled
He points I pay drag it dejectedly
Behind me & walk slowly away
He runs after me hours later it seems
Take a tree Senor take a tree
Told him I’d send the money
He said It’s not important
It’s Christmas
Back at the party as drunk as they were
They said nothing as I produced the tree
We candled her up and
For me she still shines.
THE THIRD TREE
Center City Philadelphia Geoffrey
Three years old no boots
The wreath and a man with a key
I knew where the trees were so
We all set out and it went from
Sun to freeze the kid didn’t complain
The trees were all gone
Stuffed mom and son into a cab
Go home get warm I’ll find one
Stare at wreath on Market Street
Corner scream at and run after
Trailer truck full of trees heading
West stare at wreath again
Dark man elegantly dressed says
Would you like a tree his voice is
Music I’m in my usual jeans
He gestures for me to follow
Down Market abrupt right turn
Old Mole Street
He keys into the front door of an
Abandoned house every key on his ring
Seemed brand new inside were stacks of
Trees bound up with cord
Take one he says I can’t pay stammer
Doesn’t matter he replies but
Reluctantly takes my last few bills
I float home cold beaming the huge
Tree on my shoulder told the story
Grace knew it had been an angel
We hung it with a wire from the ceiling
It got larger & more beautiful by the
Hour son said Makes feet warm.
THE FOURTH TREE
Germantown huge blue spruce
The Blizzard of 1967
The snows came riding down
Early in the day of the Christmas Eve
By the time Geoffrey Robbin and I
Piled into the old bus half a foot
Had already settled
Flakes fell steadily lightning cracked
Thunder beyond the gray sky’s dome
Found a tree place snowbound all
How much is the tallest one
Five bucks if I don’t have to move
From in front of this stove
Tag read Fifteen later after we’d
Struggled it back
Glorious tree she was and
She knew it but sadder than usual
That she’d been cut she’d wanted to
Live forever or close to it.
THE FIFTH TREE
A little fellow it was
Came into the place on the
Square in New Bloomfield
Said I don’t want to be here
Long
A few little balls a few
Good days and she was
Gone
But you can see her now
Standing tall on the
Warm Springs Road as you
Head towards the Lodge
She’ll be on your left
Winking with her solid
Knowledge of the past.
EPI LOG
Lots of other things
The half-burned jumping jack
There had been a tree took on
A suicide a bad fire
He the jack may still hang
On the back of a family tree
What’s behind the myth
Struggle for your Christmas
How else to achieve it
The balls may after all be
Breasts
Unbutton the tree
Watch the light escape
Heavy snow shadows
The sun sucking us back
Chopin hangs in the office
White chairs hats parasols
Ornaments on the virtual tree
The light of the sun
Goes down by Christmas
Slow waves of water turn to
Ice an impression that makes me
Shake my tree tongue its
Needles sing its piney song
Now she’ll leap & dance & whirl
When icicles were made of
Lead you’d toss them one by one
From a distance of eight feet
They’d short out the train if
They landed on the tracks
The tree would winkle and
Sing its aroma for another drink
Then we’d all have one.
EPI LOG II
If you’ll focus on the
Form of the tree you may
Fly out beyond maturity
Into the ether
Look over her shoulders at
What lies below see the
Slopes see the trees living there
See them dance away in the
Storm see them fly as the
Wind demands
And if she looks away from
You and your family what will
You way now Smash her with a
Broom Knock her to the floor No
Look away with her watch
Where she turns turn yourself
There
Learn a lesson from Manet’s
Black Goat
Politics in your fireplace
Figures in a landscape like
Decorations on the tree
Notice themselves ever since the
Rejection by the Formal Garden
We sketch the tree out-of-doors
She’s keyed up doesn’t like people
Fooling around her perimeter
Chronology is lost
The younger tree remembers its
Parents sometimes recalls the
Landscape more often but
She holds her own doesn’t need
A past life
Light on the branches or on
Her arms tells us where the
Time really is
A sense of Being is where we
Should stop but we can’t since
We have words the branch as
Object may take us in.
KITCHEN LOVE
(…might have been Christmas Eve)
The Holy Days
Needles and snow
Sad animal eyes
She asks if some things
Can be moved she’s
Prettying up the kitchen but
She’ll show me their
New homes
I feel so good and we
Squeeze against the sink
Fool around the ice box
I still say ice box since
Those early days when I
Ordered the ice and knew
The dangerous beauty of
The meniscus
We thrash around the floor
Knock over paper bags and
Caladiums
It’s colder now and the
Leafy things are
Happy with our heat.
pacobooks 