The Past is Dyed With Indigo and Madder

Overshot Coverlet - Detail

Counting the Dust of Jacob

James Hart 

Who can count the dust of Jacob
or number the fourth part of Israel?
Numbers 23:10 (NIV)

We read the text of lost daughters
in the dim blood of unnumbered sons.
They sleep under thick grass coverlets
woven with threads of indigo and madder,
violets matted by our feet in May,
wild rose briars stitching them into time.
We dream of ancestors at their looms,
unaware we are the mordant in the dye
while little claws clutch at our shoes,
and something in our spirits implores
us to linger upon this sleeping earth
longer than it takes us to place our
tributary flowers below their names,
or note dates in paper’s embracing space,
a history beside an x or asterisk
tying forgotten bones to a single star,
raising from the dust of Jacob
our long losses under summer sky.


July 25, 2001

Overshot Coverlet - Detail

Overshot Coverlet - Detai

Note: Among the items of record in my great great great grandfather Nowel Alfred Hart's will and probate papers is an inventory listing his property, including supplies of indigo and madder, which are both used to make blue and red dyes. These colors you see regularly in antique red, white, and blue overshot coverlets. 

When Nowel Hart died in Callaway County, MO, in 1837, indigo and madder were important enough staples of frontier life to be listed as property in his probate inventory. 

For me, the syllables of the two words spoken together in this order, "indigo and madder," create a woven sound pleasing to the ear, and rich with colors of their own.

Sedona Air and Light Create Holiness

Raven Calling from the Cliffs of the Gods

Nocturnes I Heard in Arizona

James Hart

Sometimes we live best
in arid zones of the soul
where light falls into the west,
the only water over-flowing bowls

of endless silver wind,
the only sound I hear
striking silent chords that end
somewhere never very near

until night fills us with
its swift wafered-waves
like a covenant with death,
ravens at rest on architraves

of monumental columned stone,
our faces pale as bread
as each of us walks alone
under black gods waiting to be fed.

Cathedral Rock - Sedona, Arizona

Somewhere West of Never

James Hart

You gaze out at landscape
where you see the failing light
filling canyons, stone shapes
hued with long coming of the night,

and you recall why stars roll
up from east and over
you, a shell of crystal soul,
obsidian ark of endless cover.

Here in time’s black tabernacle
light is both minister and minster,
all the aisles are always full,
and nothing from the stillness stirs

as you look up for signs of flight,
hoping a raven will now sever
itself from stone and starlight
somewhere over there, west of never.

(These two poems form the opening

and closing of an unpublished manuscript

entitled Somewhere West of Never)

From the Heart of the San Juan Range

Hillside Cemetery - Silverton, Colorado

Mining Sky in Silverton

James Hart 

for Denise, Millie, and Barbara, and our grandmothers
touched by the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918

Here on this mountainside in Silverton
we ascend into our grandmothers’ graves,
a pilgrimage we make under summer sun.
The road hangs between the sky and river

rolling rhapsodies of silver light below us,
something about this narrow cliffside trail
where mostly sunlight goes and wind follows
reminiscent of snowbound miners, their pails

of silver hauling up time by tarnished tons.
Again, we remember their elegiac stories
of influenza and abandonment to our sons,
how pandemic was the silver rush, its allures

filling eyes of these dead men buried here.
I think of other gravesides from too long ago,
the irony of miners mining silver here, tears
in their pockets, unnumbered tons below.


(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled Somewhere West of Never)

The Momentary Fear That Follows

Barred Owl

Synaptic

James Hart 

At times the darkness is a tranquil apse,
but tonight I hear a startled rabbit leap
just as something furtive slips and snaps
me from my late starlit thought of sleep,
and though neither rude intruder nor agile
rabbit were even seen by me, I can’t tell
myself there’s nothing here to fear as I pull
dark pockets closer on my frayed coat as well.

Prowling wile and sleek correspondences
seem more attractive to us than chance,
as if we lure the predator that hunts us
in the sound that snaps us from a trance
and awakens our night’s slight shiverings
in sleepless owls ruffling their heavy wings.


(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled Somewhere West of Never)

When Landscape Evaporates Into Night

Twilight Leading to the Liquid Hour

Nocturne for the Liquid Hour

James Hart 

This is the day’s long liquid hour
when floating time silhouettes itself
like sea lace among black coral trees
skirting the dark reef of distant hills,
long lavender waves wash seamlessly
between the earth’s deep darkening bed
and the sky’s full shell of muted pearl,
and at this moment we’re four souls
shaping our silences like perfect pearls
inside our car, a safe shell on wheels
rolling homeward toward deeper hues,
and perhaps an old appropriate song
plays low on the radio, but none of us
hear the words or even seem to care,
for what words can matter just now
as we breathe within this liquid hour
while time silts a seabed around us,
a few passing lights wink like fish
releasing air from their magical gills,
dark waters close as we swim through,
care colors to lost pinks and pearls,
and the world is wordless as it furls
us in a shell of black momentary bliss,
time sweeping us home by liquid night.


(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled Somewhere West of Never)

Norma Desmond: Eyes Blazing Crazy Fire

Machu Picchu

Gloria Swanson

as Norma Desmond:
"Alright, Mr. Demille.

I'm ready for my closeup."

With Gloria on Sunset Boulevard

James Hart

After cover photo, National Geographic, May 2002

She’s quite the cover girl with her ambered bones
and bronze mummy tones, enticing us with death’s
head eyes to meditate on beauty’s mutable moods,
to imagine how her joints would crack and rattle,
her stiff leather lips twisting brittle as she murmurs,
I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille. Here’s no celluloid
goddess like Swanson swanning down the curving stair,
her eyes blazing crazy fire only black and white can light;
not Gloria disappearing in the glare, but a woman’s husk
wound in shreds like a desiccated dimity, rigid fingers
clutching her fashionable stole for no evening out we’ve
ever dreamed, her knowing tell-all stare daring us to ask
her if it’s true what they say about living sacrifice, if she’s
indeed some dried up Incan queen of the damned framed
now in a familiar golden grid, a pollen yellow paper cover,
if time is kinder on the dark side of her tattered skin.

How long ago she might have led her own ceremonial
processional along the cliffs of Macchu Picchu, music
of flutes and thin taut skins and clacking sticks to pick
her way by down a mountainside, veils of cloud touching
imaginary brows where the great gods stood by proud,
though they glowered on this human need of theirs
to call rain down from the sky, hold it in a grailed skull
or two, and drink infinity from the wine of dreams.
I think it’s her pert parrot feathers in hues of blue
and jade, a few strokes of vivid red peeking through
that says it all for us, that flirtatious tilt sweeping down
like a cloche over her left eye’s empty socket, a Deco
echo of desire and damnation housed in fragile flesh,
not too much a leap to imagine her clasping now,
arm-in-arm, dashing remnants of her mummy man,
or smiles of savage gods strolling Sunset Boulevard.

April 19, 2002

Photo: Machu Picchu. www.inkas.com

Cover : May 2002

The Night Wind Speaks Anasazi

Shiprock in December

Approaching Shiprock, 

New Mexico

James Hart 

At first sight, you will believe you see time’s
dark city of the dead over silent underworld,
heaven’s black gateway to pale evening stars,
titanic dome housing spirits’ guides, or gods,
a haunted palace guarding old enchantments 
of emptiness you find along the road you take.
Closer, you believe you see cathedral spires,
towering rock of faith nested in naked grass,
a nave awaiting your soul as infinities fill
these horizons hovering under twilit wings.
Coming from a land of trees and rolling hills,
you can’t contain the desert’s western swells,
eyes straining to hold distance without trees,
a boat of souls bound for lost Anasazi shores.

Somewhere nearer, eyes clear wavering hazes,
you see volcanic remnants of its ample core
soaring where ancient mountain fell away,
sediment in your imagination’s hungry sea.
Finally, you discern this is a frigate’s mass
afloat on billowing stone’s petrified waves,
sailing the vast desert sea of grass and time
solidified as dull wind’s thievery founders,
fails to rend black magma’s mast, ashen sails.
Aligning three spires’ fingers to Orion’s belt,
you dream this rock embarks into lithic night,
and wonder if those Anasazi who disappeared
heard ghosts lost in time’s sable winter seas
opened silent portals to their guardian stars.

(Poem from an unpublished manuscript
entitled Somewhere West of Never)

Photo Source:  www.trekearth.com