Following Nanao Sakaki & Why

Our patio — Studio 725 — Albuquerque — February 1996

FOLLOWING NANAO SAKAKI

Spring almost, no leaves or buds, yet
but warm sunny late winter morning
my last cat stalks a bird, I can see

out window (it is warmer on
my cosmic bones in here) Soon! soon!

Summer and I’ll jump in mountain waterhole
and swim upstream! Don’t know why,
swim, swim, splash, splash, or,

Nanao, is stream moving down
my body and I am stationary in the universe?

———-MW — March 8, 2013

Our house — Studio 725 w/ my truck Green Thunder (64 Dodge) parked in driveway — February 19, 1997

WHY

Why climb a mountain?

Look! a mountain there.

I don’t climb mountain.
Mountain climbs me.

Mountain is myself.
I climb on myself.

There is no mountain
……………………..nor myself.
……………………..Something
……………………..moves up and down
……………………..in the air.

—-Nanao Sakaki — January 1981. Page 79 of HOW TO LIVE ON THE PLANET EARTH

11 Comments

  1. Buell Neidlinger

    good to hear from you again..
    often go to your site just to read
    and remember, which you are
    so good at. and then cry when
    i know it can never be like that
    again…thank you, Mark Weber
    buell n

  2. Mark Weber

    I have absolutely no memory of WHY that tree stump is hanging by a rope from one of our patio vigas ( ? )

    It’s very weird.

    If anybody remembers, please tell me.

    —————————————————————–

    I bought that truck from Kell Robertson for $500 in 1994 and drove it until it blew a couple rings, in fact, I kept driving it after the rings went — smokey — IN FACT, the day the rings blew it was Judson Crews and me toodling through downtown Albuquerque when this giant puff of smoke shot out the back and you heard the tinkling of the rings shooting out the tailpipe onto the road. That thing had a 318 in it and was unstoppable. That’s why Kell called it “Green Thunder.”

    I never saw Kell actually drive anything in my life, so I’m not sure what his relationship was with that truck. I’d be scared to be within ten miles of Kell driving anything. He’s probably hitchhiking around Heaven right this minute. Hitchhiking to the beer store!

  3. Joe Somoza

    nice words and images to wake up to.

  4. Rick DiZenzo

    Everything is here! My Breath.

  5. Bill Payne

    Peace…………

  6. Dana Reilly

    Hey Mark:

    Love your poetry-they take you on a journey. And I couldn’t agree more: “Hopefully, we can fall into the mystery, rather than be so concerned with mastery.” Thanks.

    Sincerely-Dana

  7. Joan Jobe Smith

    Mystical-magical Poetmusicman Mark Weber at his most soulful!

  8. Mark Weber

    I remember now why those rings blew — that scoundrel Kell had stuck the wrong dipstick in that 318 — he must have lost the standard issue — in his urgency to get my 500 bucks squander’d on beer, he thought nothing of this deceit as he was quite at home in such legerdemain — that engine was a sturdy beast to hold up that summer on half the necessary oil — this truck had no oil gauge so how was I to know? Kell was such a fractious and contrary individual I should have suspected — He was one of the Southwest’s great poets, to be sure, but a path of destruction followed in his wake, always

  9. brent leake

    nice poems my brother…..i remember “green thunder” you hauled me all over albukirky and over to judson’s place in it…..man, it was a tank!

  10. Mark Weber

    I’m from the era of iodine pills to sterilize water BUT all of those mountain streams and waterholes of San Gabriel Mountains of my youth, were pure!

    It never fails to amaze me that you could drink water fresh without danger right there on the outskirts of megalopolis Los Angeles WHEREAS out in the deepest backcountry of Utah (the farthest “away” place in continental U.S.) you dare not ingest the water because of deathly giardia (borne of cattle)

    So sad to google Cucamonga Canyon and see all the canyon walls at first and second falls spray-painted these 45 years later, what is mankind but a curse on the natural world?

  11. Mark Weber

    exuberance is a good word to describe Nanoa Sakaki’s poetry ( I never knew him, although his photos are familiar, I might have seen him around town over the years)

    exuberance
    exuberant
    exultant

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