The Desert Hunter

THE DESERT HUNTER

                                                "The state in which one should be

                                                to seriously search for the truth

                                                is the condition of the thirsty, burning soul

                                                desiring the water of life..."

                                                                             -- '‘Abdu’l-Bahá

                   At dawn he sits in the arroyo;

                   his face like a bubble, skin like cork.

                   His lungs and throat evaporate

                   into fumes that burn in the sun,

                   now a hoop of fire on the desert edge.

                   Teeth gnash on all sides

                   of the venue of cliffs and crickets.

                   The sun's scorpoid fingers now clasp every pore

                   and he begins to ride across the pelvis of time,

                   his bones like burnt joss sticks.

                   In silence, alone, he starts the chant.

                                                          -- C. S. Cholas

                                                              Colorado, 1973

The Atoms Speak

    THE ATOMS SPEAK

                        Night of owls, dawn of meadowlarks;

                        each a passage into each other.

                        Distorted images bent in heat.

                        Carrizozo sunset, languished oasis.

                        Cattle moan in darkness; mirage of two voices;

                        quiet juniper.

                        Cedar stalk the sky with wrangled fingers.

                        Cactus juice; century plants challenge ants.

                        Sudden sharpness, slow haze;

                        smoke and sand in movement.

                        Brittle mountains break into mica slivers;

                        luminous signposts; Picurís pottery

                        streaked by a black trail of flames;

                        sacrifice of pine.

                        Altar of kiva stones and clay;

                        Sangre de Cristo bless and destroy.

                        Flash of rains, mirror of oceans,

                        of lost races locked in stagnate waters.

                        Fear of reptiles scared by faces; strike in fear:

                        mutual weakness, mismatched strengths,

                        desert aura, lava snake, Tres Cerros,

                        glow of the crab-faced moon.

                        Capitán in hiding, coyotes hidden.          

                        Red roses wave to sparrows loose in white sand;

                        now a tension, a thousand years stored in time,

                        front and back of one now walking

                        side to side an endless tension.

                        Scorpions' sting, lightness of ladybugs,

                        wasps in hollows, flies and flies on the last day

                        the cold snow melted moments after it had fallen;

                        not even roses wilted.

                                                            -- C.S. Cholas

                                                                 New Mexico, April 25, 1975

The Earth's Hum

THE EARTH'S HUM

                        I. JOURNEY THROUGH THE SOUTHWEST                                           

                                    Indigo sky, morning sand painting.

                                    Valley of coral, mesquite.

                                    Breath of aromatic herbs, chokecherry juice.

                                    Thin rivers strapped around buttes, like belts;

                                    Caves of scaled creatures, dry on their ledges.

                                    Stucco, mud, dry desert sand,

                                    Windstorms, dust of faces on Second Mesa;

                                    Passage through elm forests ravaged by beetles.

                                    Rural winters, cold minds sunk in tin plates,

                                    Lost miners seeking their crevice of gold.

                                    Mirage of heat;

                                    Mirage of blue lakes among pine;

                                    Of frozen creeks covered by snow;

                                    Of stale ghost towns depressed by the howl

                                    Of wind and wolves;

                                    Mirage of light!

           

                                    Hear the earth's hum!

                                    "The world is like the vapor..."

                        II. THE DEPARTURE

                                    Without the soul his body heat flees into air.

                                    The earth has a hum he cannot hear, a voice of clay.

                                    His last murmurs are fragments of prayers

                                    Loose on his lips.

                                   

                                    The sing will last several nights.

                                                            -- C. S. Cholas

                                                            Southwest United States, 1979

From Clots of Blood

FROM CLOTS OF BLOOD

            I.   Under your feet

                        the gorge of voices:

                                    some of gossip,

                                    some of gnosis.

                        You sort between them.

            II.   In a midnight ricochet of doubt and pain

                        women cross red clay

                        in mantillas of guilt.

                        You follow their mollusk existence,

                        their stale smiles, teeth of maize,

                        to the Santos that hang on doors like garlic.

                        Behind the doors you hear

                        the low monologue of mass,

                        a rhapsody of stigma.

                        In the communion of death

                        you watch this equinal race

                        dismount and flee into shells

                        of mystery and silence,

                        church and chatter,

                        earth and whispers

                        in the gorge of voices

                        under your feet.

            III.  At sunrise

                        you hear sandstone crumble

                        down mesa cliffs.

                                    --C.S. Cholas

                                       1976 New Mexico

Among the Sand Dunes

AMONG THE SAND DUNES

A family, dressed in deerskins,

carry sticks. Across the sand dunes,

they advance like spirits from a trance.

"Shoshone," a scout, hidden among rocks, grins,

as his finger points toward the band,

"searching for the Ghost Dance."

Never fought with Washington,

never thought life would end in trickery.

Dreams caught in ghosts skins

hidden in ripples of heat

that rise above the barren mounds

we know to be our home.

We are invincible when they kill us.

We are invisible even as we die

to live amongst you like whispers

in the sky.

                        -- C.S. Cholas

                                    1983

Cottonewoods in the Park

Cottonwoods in the Park (Los Alamos en el Parque)

In the park of distorted statues,

those gnarled neighbors,

who vie in disfigured shame

with arms that do not cuddle children,

point their naked fingers

stuck on fossilized limbs

at one another,

as if frozen in debate.

Posed, as if to survive all this

takes roots that never give up,

but claw downward,

down in search of life

deep in the damp tunnels

below the parched floor of the human world.

Poised in stoic testimony

of time-battered agony,

abused by the wand

of rain and wind

pain and torment,

those twisted icons,

the cottonwoods, stand

fixed in a park

littered by people who flee

from more than

the dry death of summer heat.

                   -- C.S. Cholas, June 1996,

                             Alamo, Texas

Return to Hilo, June 11, 1999

Dear family and friends,

Aloha kakou!

We arrived back in Hilo on Tuesday.  Rahmat's slowly gaining back some strength in his lower body and can walk without a cane.  He'll wear a back brace for several more months while his reconstructed vertebrae mend. Two vertebrae in his middle back were crushed in the accident, so the surgeon fused four vertebrae together and put in titanium rods for support, too, using titanium rivets.  The surgeon used bone taken from Rahmat's pelvic area to rebuild the damaged vertebrae.

Rahmat only spent a few days in intensive care before being moved to a rehab ward in the Flagstaff Medical Center for occupational and physical therapy.  After ten days there, his doctor said he could continue his therapy as an outpatient. We made many friends, both from the staff and fellow "inmates" and Christian and Baha'i friends from the area, who brought flowers and other gifts to keep Rahmat's spirits up.  One Christian family in Flagstaff, who had heard about the accident, came to see Rahmat and offered me a room in their home which was a short 4 block commute to the hospital which I did each day in my wheelchair.  I became quite close to that family and found out on the last day of my stay with them that they had lost their four-year-old son in a bike/auto accident right in front of their home a few years before. 

Once Rahmat was able to travel from Arizona where the accident occurred, I rented a car and drove him to Albuquerque to be near his brother, Aman, and Linda's family in Isleta. We stopped near the site of the accident, outside of Winslow, Arizona on I-40 for prayers.  Rahmat had been a passenger with his roommate and his roommate's friend when his roommate, who was driving, dozed off going 70 mph; their old van literally flew across the median strip and nosedived about 100 feet away.  The youth had just finished their finals at Embry Riddle and were heading out for the summer vacation; Rahmat to his grandmother's home in Isleta, and the other two, nice Christian young men, to their homes in Colorado.  The van hit the

ground so hard that the doors had to be pried off by the rescue crews.  Rahmat was flown via helicopter to the trauma center in Flagstaff for immediate attention and life-saving surgery. 

The attending emergency physician called us (around 9 pm Hawaiian time, which meant it was around midnight in Flagstaff) and we even spoke to Rahmat briefly before he went into surgery that night.  I flew out the next morning and arrived almost exactly 24 hours later.  Aman had taken off from work in Albuquerque and was already with Rahmat.  The Baha'is of Flagstaff gave us lots of support, and one couple came to the hospital regularly to spend time with Rahmat.  Apparently just three weeks earlier a Baha'i university student from Texas had been killed in a car accident in the same area of I-40. 

From Arizona Rahmat received physical therapy at an Albuquerque Rehab hospital for three weeks.  We even fit in a mini-family reunion in Ruidoso for a few days.  Linda flew in fresh from her graduation ceremony at UHH in Hilo.  My folks came down from Colorado. Linda's mother joined us, too.

Brillana and son, Rúhu’lláh (now 1 and 1/2 years old), Bienshirni and son, Santiago (now 1 year old and walking), had coincidently come back from 5 months of Baha'i pioneering in Cusco, Peru, to see family and rest up a bit, so they also were present. 

Roshan, in route to Ecuador and Venezuela for the summer, changed her flight to spend a week with us; and Aman was even able to join us briefly during a break in the ongoing forest fires around New Mexico and Arizona.  He's working on the rappel crew for the helicopter-based fire fighters.  Brillana's husband, Kevin, couldn't join us due to his work schedule in Colorado.  And Athena, fresh from her pilgrimage with husband Aaron, had to stay in Hilo with her two children. 

With my parents and Roshan, I was even able to visit my dear Mescalero friend, Meredith Begay and her husband, Keith, while in Ruidoso.  It had been many years since I had seen that precious one, who had given me much spiritual nurturing in my early days as a Baha'i youth when I was drawn from my Colorado home to the Apache land of southern New Mexico.  Meredith now spends much of her day on a dialysis machine to keep her kidneys running smoothly, but that gentle, deep spirit still radiates from her being. Please remember her in your prayers.

Rahmat is registered to take a summer class at local Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo, and he expects to return to Prescott, Arizona this fall to resume his studies at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. 

It's hard to see him suffer; the back pain is almost always there, and he has a few other complications, but he has so far handled the sudden change in fate well and has even been able to keep up his good humor and his concern for others.

Your prayers are warmly appreciated. Thanks for your loving concern and messages.  They kept Linda's and my spirits up probably more than Rahmat's, who has stayed fairly calm and optimistic during his ordeal. 

Stay in touch and let us know how you are doing.

With loving regards,

Chris and family

June 11, 1999

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