So named by painter Georgia O'Keeffe, the "white place" (La Plaza Blanca) is a geologically unique and stunningly picturesque area near the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (USA). It was a favored painting location for O'Keeffe and is visible from her house in Abiquiu Pueblo. Nikki and I spent a beautiful morning there during our visit to New Mexico in November of 2019. Nikki had a vigor that had been absent since her diagnosis, and it seemed as if the chemotherapy through which she had been suffering was perhaps working. Little did either of us imagine that she had only ten weeks to live. This was the last hike we took together.

This song was the first track recorded during the "She Who Watches" sessions in December of 2020. It features guitar, Native American flute, mandolin, and accordion.

La Plaza Blanca
 
 
You could see it from
her house in Abiquiú
across the Rio Chama
Georgia’s skull-white
landscape muse
owned now by a mosque
that grants us heathens
and pilgrims of Other
respectful access
to this pallid sanctum
of tuneful wind
raven song ringing beyond
chalky hoodoos and
along milky ledges
pastel creek beds
that seem to run
more ways than
one.
 
Then silence
then song again
then wind
then none.
 
With Georgia’s ghost and
the hosts of Muhammed
we track a shadowy past
slipping through fences
of barbwire and bone
pondering strange exhibits
of black stones on this ashen canvas
stretching beyond time.
 
This sun-bleached forever
is quite hard to find
there are no signs
and the address in the local guide
is 1234 Fictitious Lane.

This was the sky over Portland on the morning of January 30, 2020. I shot the photo through the large window of Nikki’s room in the ICU, where I had spent a sleepless night on a recliner next to Nikki’s bed, holding her hand across the bed-rail, whispering and weeping. At one point during the night, she stirred and opened her eyes. I squeezed her hand and said, “I love you, baby.” She looked at me, recognized me, and said with a smile, “I love you, too.” These were to be her last words. Not long after sunrise, Nikki was transferred from her room in the ICU to an adjacent ward, into a room with no windows at all. I asked a nurse if another room could be found, pleading, "I don't want her to die in a room without a window." Around 3:30 that afternoon, half-asleep on a bed in that same bleak, windowless room, I felt the nurse tapping me and heard her say, “She stopped breathing.” I have no idea what the sky looked like then.

You Continue
To Nikki

My dearest love, you are
No longer in the body that
I used to recognize, the body
That I walked with and made love to
You are no longer in the form that
Graced this earthly plane
But you have not ceased to be
You are here in other forms that
I will love and always love
Your bright spirit, your loving kindness,
Your joyful energy and equanimity
Continue
You are not gone, you continue

You are in the rain
You are in the cloud
You are in the flame
You are in the smoke
You are in the seed
You are in the flower
You are in the wind
Your are in the trembling leaf
You are in the snowflake
You are in the sunbeam
You are in the dusk
You are in the dawn

You are not lost
You continue
Always

You are in my breath
You are in my blood
You are in my heart
You are in my soul

You are
Always

Late afternoon sun on
The jade sparkling stream
I hear your voice in the riffles, soft currents
Soothing whispers, tender murmurs
And joyful sighs
My own voice trembles to answer
To sing you a song
To speak you a poem
Of deep running love and
The deep grief I bear,
Of devotion never dying
Solid like the mountain, like bedrock
But with words like the clouds
Of yesterday
Here then gone
Like you, my angel
My truest love.

Dawn on the river brings
A soft rain, gauzy fog
Geese barking on the sandbar
Wet madrone, color of tobacco
Songbirds muted by mist.

I come from strange dreams
To you, your picture by my bed
Altar of petals, mala, candle
Swath of beautiful fabric gifted
By a loving friend, to honor
Your spirit, your smile the brightest of
Anything in this unfamiliar room
Here by this river with
Its stained-glassy glimmer
Grey clouds and oak leaves weeping.