Gila Greenery

(April 2021. I took peyote. It was very difficult to swallow it all, and finishing my mug was a trial in itself. I spent all day walking around the desert, hanging out with hundreds of different ancient saguaros with different personalities. I was also impaled by a ton of jumping cholla, which I spent a grueling hour pulling out of my skin one by one. One of the cholla spikes was all the way through my index finger, and pulling it out was something of a ‘coming of age masculinity moment.’ After singing really loudly with a deeper voice than I knew I had, I made my way towards the Gila River, while making up a little song as I went to sing in my new deep voice. “I’ve been going to the river all my life, river all my life, river all my life. I’ve been going to the river all my life, and the riverrrrr’s going to meeeeeeee.” Before the river was a set of train tracks, which were once used by the local copper mine. So then of course I walked along the train tracks a ways. “I’ve been waaalkin these traintracks all my life, traintracks all my life, traintracks all my life…” I found a terrifying dark train tunnel through a mountain, and walking through it felt like crossing a threshold (I had recently read Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces.) On the other side I turned left, climbed on some of the mountain’s outcroppings, and found an amazing rocky perch over the whole Gila River area. I can’t describe how amazing the sounds were, how alive the greens of the leaves were in the sun and the wind. It looked more than real.)

Perched on peyote
over the greenery
attending the Gila…

The river below is low, it is more than enough.

The foreground is emerald and wet,
the background is tan and dry.

Braving the train tunnel of bats and wasps
I earned this rocky perch over riparian paradise,
The pride of the desert.

The birds all call,
some go hoo-hoo hoo-hooOooo
and I wonder who they are.

I see small yellow birds flirting—
we approve.

It is as if all the sounds in Arizona
were lushness living by the river gurgling
were fish splashing
were birds singing
were leaves gleaming green sunshine sheen
swishing with the wind
in the ease of their immediacy.