Reading the text of trees, Eiko strokes the burnt ancient
wood sculpted by time and flames, yet still rooted in the earth into which it
will rot.
Eiko runs to greet her projected image flying red on a
hillside. Fusing into a double-story Eiko bow strung with red fibers of woman’s
lives. Landscape, live Eiko, video Eiko, one, while sound of rushing river
rapids echoes in the vast warehouse hall. We are carried on, submerged in, the
sound of water, of our mother’s womb water rushing blood pulsing eternally, as
Eiko completes the woman bow of white and red and sky and hill that launches us
ever onward in the tumbling life/death continuum eternal.
Eiko climbs the feet, legs, torso, chest of a man, her feet
walk his height while her head and shoulders remain planted on solid flat floor.
Eiko drapes over strong man’s back as he belly down slides on
the floor, reminiscent of Eiko & Koma in a scene of LAND.
Eiko talks to us. Stands and speaks. The microphone invisible.
Eventually I notice it—hung small at the end of a cord disguised by its
proximity to a pillar. Eiko’s stories of loss, of recent death of choreographer
friend, of death of mother, her words and full frontal presence confront my own
layers of mourning. We are separate yet one, one with our deceased, one with
our mourning.
Silence. Percussive rhythm of running feet in hightop
sneakers on warehouse floor. Round and round the young man runs, circumambulating
the interior walls, orbiting around us audience on the platform benches. Are we
the sacred object whom he circumambulates? Eiko runs, her sandaled feet a
different tone, a different rhythm, to the running young man. Eiko runs all
out. Her 67 years of whatever pains our bodies endure over the years, her years
ignored as she runs. Runs with the drive of our animal selves running. Fight or
flight. This running, this fleeing is also a power. It is the soundtrack. It is
the beating pulse, the heartbeat. Heartbeat of running feet. Heartbeat sound as
human aerobic hearts beat ever faster, unheard by us, the seated audience, our
hearts beating with the beating of shod feet on concrete. Feet shod not in
cushy running shoes, but shod for other ways of moving, slower ways of moving.
Yet the feet run and run and run beating rhythms with our very hearts
enthralled.
Eiko runs to the exit door, flings it open and is out in the
cold wet night, dark industrial asphalt. She screams, wails in mourning. The
sound, the mourning, the emotion, was too big to be contained in the industrial
warehouse. It needed the great outdoors as its stage.
Flowers. Huge bouquet of hydrangeas and other branches of
flowers blooming in autumnal Portland gardens. Wrapped in huge newsprint
wrapper, clasped in Eiko’s arms like a dead child she’s unwilling to let go of.
Grasping the flowers as the paper falls. The bouquet rearranges in chaos,
clutched to her heart in loss. Grief is not tidy. It is not floral wreaths on
tripod stands around a polished box. Mourning grows wild from the earth, no
matter how we tend it to our desires, mourning scatters even as it gathers.
All goes black.
Lights come back up. Eiko and her two collaborators stand
evenly spaced, facing audience, who bursts into sustained applause.
Eiko walks to center microphone and speaks energetic voice
of appreciation, so different than her mournful voice of grief telling the
stories of death and loss. Now she is thanking us all for coming to the festival;
she hopes we have been enjoying ourselves. My mournful self is shocked with the
sudden emotional shift, like being a passenger in a car driven by an expert
racecar driver shifting emotional gears to skillfully maneuver a sharp steep
curve and take a new direction.
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
About this poem
This poem is part of my Solstice solar year poem cycle, where I write a poem a day from June 22, 2019 to June 21, 2020. The poem a day may get posted on a different day than it was written, or several poems might get posted on the same day. And if I choose to submit a poem to a literary journal, I delete it from this blog before doing so. That's my project. I hope it touches your soul and makes you think.
And maybe inspires you to write more poems of your own.
