Life was hard in the valley / But I soon found out there was an even lower place to go.

::::::::

1

When I climbed down out of the Real mountains

Into the valley in the shadow of the mountains

There was a raven perched on my shoulder.

Life was hard in the valley

But I soon found out there was an even lower place to go.

2

I lived in a boxcar

Until I got cut up in a fight.

I quit my job in the "Best Damned Gelato"

And followed my favorite anima to Madrid.

But she got tired of us pretty quick

And I drifted, dreamless.

3

Now I am old, resting under a mangrove on a beach

Of salt-white sand

Trying to embrace my brother's advice

To never take oneself too seriously.

But it is hard knowing what I know

Harder still seeing what I see.

The large wakes from white boats

Are slapping the beach like spankings.

I think they really believe they are happy.

4

There is a lull.

5

I think the sun is rising.

5

When all is said and done

(which is never, but humor me)

I will consider myself lucky

If someday someone says

I wish I had known him.

(Article changed on Apr 08, 2026 at 7:35 AM EDT)

Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.


He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.