Have We Been Here? We Have Been Here
/for Wayne Jones, 80th Birthday

Have we been here
we have been here
you and me and
many others
some came and left.
Some came with spangles on
left with mud on their boots.
Many came and left.
Remember the Vietnam War
remember the Vietnam Vets
as you are
who came here
lived here
left
remember marching down Central
young people, we were younger
some pregnant women
marching
the business people looking at us
as we walked
and when we danced danced
in the bar
to loud and louder bands
some quieter or just a country fiddler
or Ginsberg in a crowd
dancing. chanting, people doing
uncommon things
the matching and uncoupling of people
the hand made day to day activities
embroidering blue work shirts
long dresses, belly dancing, marriages
love, remember love?
drumming, ignorant chanting
lighting stars on the forehead
out of mind ritual guided drugs
shouting in canyons, marriages
by the creek or next to red rock canyons
rock groups from Taos Santa Fe
Albuquerque, thr0ngs for New Years
arts fairs, locally designed booths
a casita almost a hermitage
renting houses or squatting
turning a place into a magnet for others
much to surprise and confusion and some
elder dislike of residents –
so many could build unique dwellings –
didn’t yours have a sloping floor?
a commune, hell, just living together
not me but I observed –
doing farming, what’s new from California,
New York, beads leather
diets changing
sweats, food stamps
Tarot, IChing, peyote
poetry readings, photography, art even
on basement walls, volleyball, most of all
the music, live music groups
fire station concerts 4th of July
local real dancers
dancing, we got hitched up
had our own spring-fed swimming pool –
we did all kinds of things, handmade stuff
up from the ground –
and everything turned over into the commerce
of growth and we weathered, stayed
or some of us,
many were here anyway,
we were all new and yet long time here
as time robs of youth, the spirit stays
stays on year after year
festival after festival, dance after dance
plan after plan, job to job, place
to place within a place, this place
of little places, we come and we go
in a village, and some died many died
and we’re living now families of families
changing growing up generations generating
and children from tiny to teen to adult
as different unwanted unneeded wars
come and go and we’re stuck here
with the gangster wealthy gone mad
as we weather another political storm
with still our integral spirit
singing the song of the Earth the Fathering Sun
the urgency of the local informed by
the local
it presses on to celebration do you hear
that music which is this music
the heart beat of memory in this circle of
love and cooperation to get things done
the theater we had is the theater
we are.
Have we been here we have been here
you and me and many others
some came and left
many came and left, many stayed
and here we are
we have been here and
here we are.

/larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 2019 11 26