By Dana Stovern
October 18, 2018
Paonia, Colorado
About my memories of the San Luis Valley, Colorado.
The starling murmurations of autumn
sway in the skyward jazz waltz of their own self-thought,
letting us in on their artful movements if we listen,
if we breathe, if we sway with them.
They are the skyward swirls
dancing the valley depth
much like the dust devils do
between here and the glisandro
of the Sangre Cristo Mountains
sharply tumbling down the valley.
It’s the highest ground
where birds are schools of fish in the desert sky
moving as memento to summer moonshine
and verga memories where water should be.
They remind me
every element in high desert
is an edge of pleasure or promised pain
dissolving through one another.
This lifting of pulse renders ready hearts
for an arroyo whispering shoulder love
or shooting arrows.
For those who love the desert,
It’s all welcome.
This place
where murmurations and glisandros remind
that every note of life, all counts.
Every sherd, shred, line, granule.
Hairline feathers and fractures in the skies,
voluptuous starkness where our boots touch the earth.
Dana Stovern is founder and coach of The Magic of Somatic Money, and author of the blog Along the Learning Curve of Life. Even though her profession is body-based money relationship coaching, her first love is words, writing and exploring the depths of the human conscious (or unconscious) condition in body and soul development.