Spelling Lessons

 

Perhaps a spell is lifted in the slumberous news today:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez has passed away, and students gone and gifted

sent him, and cc’d me, a wistful wave good-bye.

The spell began December third, some thirteen years ago

with the laureate of Chicago, Gwendolyn Brooks, whom I had heard

in ’eighty-two, enchanting us anew. ‘Is she alive?’

a student asked—no Google yet to see—and I replied

‘I hope she hasn’t died. She’s old, for sure and awfully spry—I bet—’

the bell for passing rang, the lesson came to close.

Then later, on the nightly news, I saw the haunting face

of Gwendolyn, a smile of grace: indeed today, an erstwhile vivid muse…

That student would conclude ‘that’s how it sometimes goes.’

Belles lettres studied next and next lent opportune lifelines:

Dickens’ best and worst of times, renderings of Shakespeare texts,

Morrison, Munro, Ishiguro let literature run free

and handed off to Saramago, whose Blindness we pined

to see. Alas, we find we’re in a place we’d been ten years ago—

‘Is he alive?’ and Google now confirms the man to be

but lessons later, mockingly, the Nobel Portugese expired.

Well, he was old and tired—imagine teaching Plath when shockingly

she sealed her flat to take the leaking gas alone…

Havel’s plays—abstruse, absurd—were finally sinking

in by mid-year break, and thinking we could commandeer the new year,

Vaclav moled away in Prague, our common home.

Szymborska’s ‘View with a Grain of Sand’ slid in. We shared

the view and then prepared to wonder with her why and what and who

and, spellbound as we were, this poet left our world.

We hadn’t set things down, when Heaney, digging well

before the mid-term break expelled the chance to see him in our town

(as I had twice before, and relished every word):

“A four foot box, a foot for every year.” Mere inches in,

the school year would begin as the stubborn bogland spell took root.

We studied on—what could we do?—and so

we’re celebrating Easter now, with Lazarus and friends,

and as his curtailed century ends, and as his magic would allow,

we raise Remedios the Beauty… now, for Gabo.

Before your iPhones entered in, we swam in Solitude.

Ambivalent to verisimilitude, the novel failed to find its center

in millennials who had no qualms or queries

about a race condemned or exiled from the memory

of men—whose armory had no time for Macondos on the mend,

no clutter for vacation breaks… or centuries.

Still, we wore three covers out—one had Macondo

on a hill, an island in a Day-Glo Babel, jungle-clad, an anthill stout

and mad, and maybe Ben, my son, saw sheer

delight in that tableau. He painted one his own:

a house and homme and chestnut tree, a sun and moon to look below

and unenormous wings of bluebird flying o’er,

stirring breeze to beat the hurricane. Ben bade

the spell adieu—he drew in solitude a more enlivened place to be,

and when he’s old enough to read the tome,

I hope he’ll see his instinct led him from the start:

his and Gabo’s fleeting art as noble, humble, immaculate, distinct,

and fit for classes, yes—our common home.

Why We Become We

 
Sixth-graders trying to be state champs

in the chill of April, seventy-nine, and who

but Chris Theodore, senior Hawk, by chance

surceased his journey home, ostensibly to

watch our novice, nonplussed play. We

had seen him in a huge parade atop a fire

truck: Jay Huyler, Jeff Baker, the community

of Maine South Hawks had dawned desire

to play this sport for all its worth. Such

fascination to palm the ball, pogo up, dice

the air with fingertips and backboard touch

as all spheres in a younger’s mind suffice.

Michael Jordan was a sophomore then,

struggling to make his own town’s team.

Chris Theodore would smile at that—again

he journeyed on to waken other dreams.

Standing in an Open Field

Because it is National Poetry Month, and because I do not have a new poem to offer at the moment, here is something from the archives.

Eight hundred years ago, A Sufi monk wrote a book of poems that he called Walled Gardens.  He wrote from his faith’s perspective, in his language and to the people of his Persian culture, and yet, as poetry makes possible, he speaks to me.

By Sanai’s inspiration, I offer my own poem, reflecting some of the monk’s existentialism but adding a bit of my own perspective.  Poetry also allows this, and I make no apologies for rewriting someone else’s poem and applying it to my own language and faith and life.

I do not pretend to understand Sufiism, nor will I let it threaten my Christian beliefs or Western biases.  To the contrary, just as I hear some of Ecclesiastes, or maybe Hemingway, in Sanai’s poetry (“The sun also rises!”), I appreciate that it is the same sun that rises on us all.

Standing in an Open Field

The sun of truth rises unbidden,

and with it sets the moon of learning.

In this halt of just a week,

to be is not to be, and to come is to go. 

- Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury

   

  For all that I know,

  that which I’ve learned,

I am a moon that mirrors

  a distant fire:

I watch the sun rise,

  and my reflected brilliance

   fades with the light of day.

   

For all that I know,

  that which I’ve found,

I am a rooster that crows

  in the early dawn:

I watch the sun rise,

  and my hallelujahs

   fade with the light of day.

For all that I know,

  that which I suppose,

I am a wildflower in

  a garden of shadows:

I watch the sun rise,

  but my morning glory

   fades with the light of day.

As long as I am living

  the sun will shine,

and the sun will shine

  when I am gone,

and the moon will rise

  and the rooster will crow

and the shadows will stir

  and the gardens will grow.

For all that I know,

  that which I believe,

life is a blessing

  beyond understanding:

I will watch the sun rise

  for as long as I can

   until I fade with the light of day.

As long as I am living

  the sun will shine,

and the moon will rise

  and the rooster will crow

and the sun will shine

  when I am gone,

and the shadows will stir

  and the gardens will grow.

As long as I am living

  and when I’m gone,

the shadows will stir

  in this garden of mine

and the sun will shine

  and the rooster will crow.

  Hallelujah for all I know!

I PRAISE I-PAD

It’s time to tell you what it means to us

Dick’s I-Pad is often at our table

Rude distraction?  Maybe at times

But this morning redeemed rudeness.

I told husband of a book I had just

Finished (on Kindle.  Are we wired or what?)

Name, Lady of Milkweed Manor,

Main character, Charlotte Lamb,

A pastor’s daughter in early-nineteenth-century

 Kent.  Disgraced her family.

Pregnant.  Much of setting was a

Lying-in hospital in London, with

Milkweed messily in the garden.

Much of the story was of wet nurses

Common at that time, and Charlotte

Became one, a wet nurse.

But oh, the interweaving of milkweed

And milk, and foundlings, and

Compassionate nursing.

Plus the therapeutic medicinal values

Of milkweed.

Then!  Dick said, “During World War II

We went out into the fields during

School, and picked milkweed

‘For the war effort’.”

“What was that about, anyway?”

So he looked it up on his I-pad.

Sure enough, a picture of

School children

Pointing proudly at sacks hanging

Over their heads,

Filled with milkweed floss

That would go to munitions plants

And be used for life preservers and vests

In the place of kapok.

Thank you, I-pad, for starting our day

Fulfilled with new knowledge!

Marilyn Jaeger

March 19 2014

March 19.  I did not choose this date,
but today has some significance to me,
because it was 25 year ago today

that my father died.  And maybe
I shouldn’t dwell on this, but
He was 51, the same age I am today.

And he died of a heart attack, which
apparently runs in the family:
all six of my dad’s brothers and sisters

have had heart conditions since then,
So here I am in the middle of Lent,
focusing on my mortality.

As we are supposed to do, I guess,
but what I really want to talk about
is the rest of the story.


March 19, 1989 was Palm Sunday. Lent
came early that year, and it was (imagine!)
a beautiful beginning-of-spring day.

The grass was turning green.  The sky was blue.
And I was going to get out and enjoy the day.
But then the phone rang, and it changed everything.

My thoughts ran all over the place: Immediately,
I missed my dad.  But then I remembered
that I hadn’t talked to him in over a month.

I thought about how 26 was way too young
to be making funeral arrangements.  And I thought
about the 600 mile drive I had in front of me.

But that call had come just as I was about to go
to church that morning, and something compelled me
to keep on going.  And it was a good thing.


Because for all of my scattered thoughts, I needed
to hear and sing those processional hymns,
and even though there were tears in my eyes,

it was good to be part of a crowd raising their
palm fronds and turning their eyes to Jesus
and maybe it was going to be a tough week ahead,

but it was nice to be reminded that Easter was coming.
And the reminders kept coming, all week long.
Everyone was so warm and close that week,

friends, family but also members of my dad’s church,
people I didn’t even know, and they were smiling,
even laughing, as they took time to remember Joe Vold,

and when we got to the funeral, there was even
a sense of celebration, because my dad knew
where he was going, and he wanted us to know it, too.


By Friday, I was back home in Chicago,
and Friday night I found myself back in church.
This time it was the Good Friday service:

the Tennebrae service, where they shroud the cross
and dim the lights and everyone slowly filters
out of the church, quietly, somberly,

and where the name of the day practically begs
the question: what’s so good about it?
But we all know the answer, don’t we?

And that’s the rest of the story.
You know, I might just live another 51 years,
and I have some encouragement in that:

of my dad’s six brothers and sisters,
five of them are still going strong,
and they’re all getting well into their eighties now.


But more importantly, I’m encouraged
by the daily reminders all around me,
encouragements from my aunts and uncles

and many of you, too, reminding me daily
that regardless of where we are in life,
or how tough the Lenten journey may seem

it is good to know where we are going.

Meerkats in my View

Little zoo northwest of Prague reminds me

of the least of these: the lonesome coda

at the end of John: “take care of my sheep.”

There were llamas at this zoo, and loads of

lemurs open-eyed; meerkats all upright,

sniffing the careless karakals nearby.

I dreamt of Dad again the other night,

our twice-a-year reunion since he died,

and what he said this time I will record:

‘Glory, hallelujah,’ he hugged me close,

‘And one more time tomorrow.’  All I’ve stored

in twenty-five years is a staunch repose

to ‘take care of my sheep.’ Back then, Bejou,

the pastor stole my fire and eulogy

on John 12:24. I thought of you,

Dad, on the Saturday night you finally

put this daunting question on me: “Simon

son of John, do you truly love me more

than these?” You asked not for yourself, your own

life leaving as we spake, but not before

we count the least of these: “You know all things;

you know I love you.” “Feed my sheep.” It hurt

to hear and say. And yet that gospel rings

harmonious today. The little yurt

in the zoo northwest of Prague holds more than

mere lemurs. They scamper fantasies of

jungle limbs that cannot be, perhaps to plan

a modest family. Whatever love

disseminates is what the species may

believe to be their tenderhook, their creed.

“Simon son of John,” I echoed that day,

“do you truly”—gulping any air I need—

“love me” (don’t say) “more than these?” I don’t

know what I’m doing, meerkats in my view,

the good folks of Bejou, like me, won’t

begrudge such scrutiny…. Jesus, will you?

chaos you embrace

Among one hundred million billboards

in Mumbai, a teenage girl wore two

sentences—breast to belly—that might

be missed in passing (so read fast):

          TODAY I’M

          IN CHARGE.

          MY CHOICE

          IS TO MAKE

          YOU HAPPY.

Tomorrow I surmised her t-shirt choice

to be EMBRACE YOUR CHAOS –“’cuz

that is all anyone not in charge can do.”

At least I had her reason in my head.

Traffic everywhere in Mumbai is sheer:

on foot and bikes with hand cranks,

with trucks that bid ‘HORN OK PLEASE’

as auto rickshaws beep and buzz by

complying to a freakish common sense,

sliding in and out and perpendicular,

and the motorcycles mostly helmetless,

never on the side-saddle kids behind.

They stream by endless games of cricket

in alleyways and any semi-open space;

girls play other games: blind man’s buff,

musical chairs, plying who’s in charge.

More than one dream weaver in the slum

is happy, past the fun and games. What

misery exists is also left and right, for life

extorts an everything and nothing to do.

At Sanjay Gandhi sanctuary, macaques

stuff their jowls with slow-dissolving pits

and sift the garbage for further harvest.

Their blackface kin, the langur, commands

the top of trees with no such agrarian pull.

Heaven may gather its plan and provide

in the way Buddhist monks here carved out

caves, joining in the crepuscular prayer.

          TODAY I’M

          CASTING U

          IN CHARGE.

          UR CHOICE

          MAY MAKE

…the shirt runs out of room. The fragment

is on you to fill out like a form, to steer

through on your journey home, your own

slum if you will, the chaos you embrace.

A Shared Poem

Good morning all

I’d like to share a poem written by someone else today, something we haven’t done for a while here (although folks, I did like your recent extra-Symposial sharing of Brian Doyle's poems). This is a contemporary poem out of this month’s Poetry magazine, and I’m sharing it because it demonstrates the best of what poetry can be, because it is another good bird poem and yet a bird poem I had never considered. Poetry should be about sharing beauty that the reader might otherwise have missed or getting the reader to look at something in a different, better way.  No, not all poetry is positive, but even poems like this one that touch on darker truths will, if they are any good, not just wallow in that darkness.  This one ends in a darkness, yes, but one that is immediately contradicted by the first line when you go back and reread it.  It argues against the darkness. 

I love the “no” of this poem.  And it fits with something I am right now working on, some thoughts I will be sharing at a Lenten service next month about how Lent always tugs me in different directions.  There is somberness, darkness, and yet we know there is also Easter, even before it happens.

With apologies and thanks to the poem’s poet, Jamaal May - a new poet, by the way, never widely published until last year, yet also one who is a teacher, a slam poet, someone who calls himself a “working artist.”

      There Are Birds Here
      by Jamaal May

      For Detroit

      There are birds here,
      so many birds here
      is what I was trying to say
      when they said those birds were metaphors
      for what is trapped
      between buildings
      and buildings. No.
      The birds are here
      to root around for bread
      the girl’s hands tear
      and toss like confetti. No,
      I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
      I said confetti, and no
      not the confetti
      a tank can make of a building.
      I mean the confetti
      a boy can’t stop smiling about
      and no his smile isn’t much
      like a skeleton at all. And no
      his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
      I am trying to say
      his neighborhood
      is as tattered and feathered
      as anything else,
      as shadow pierced by sun
      and light parted
      by shadow-dance as anything else,
      but they won’t stop saying
      how lovely the ruins,
      how ruined the lovely
      children must be in that birdless city.


from Poetry, February 2014

My dog was Pepper.
We came to Elstads as pups
Hallock-born and bred.

Once our dog was lost
While driving on vacation.
Running-board no more.

Two sad weeks later
Drove north.  What's that along road?
Pepper, heading home!


Ah! I smell new lumber:
Wadena, our first house owned.
Pepper still ruled roost.


(This is my dog contribution.  I guess I cannot separate it from my first homes - but then you symposiats have integrated a few dogs already with rich memories of our homes too - thanks!  
This is from Mom, with Valentine's-day love!)

For the Dogs

1. Walter

Sir Walter Dog was not the knight
we wanted him to be, and yet
he struck a pose on our front steps,
   perusing distant fields.

Nor was he quite the Scottish writer
we would have him answer to,
although I’d bet he had his own
   adventures to reveal.

He was a dog, we’ll give him that,
but nothing of the pedigree
some said he was —more terrier,
   less cocka, mostly poo.

But you’re one for the ages, Walter,
living on in memories
for more than thirty years, and we’re
   still calling out to you.


2. Leo

King Leopold of Vold once ruled
that portion of our Glyndon jungle
where the grass was not quite wild
   and the river didn’t reach.

We kept a chain around his golden
neck for his own good, we said,
but when he grumbled now and then
   we’d let him off the leash.

I want what Leo wanted then,
to have the lion’s share of life,
to run along the jungle’s edge,
   to chase what I desire.

But in a dog’s life, just a taste
of freedom turns into an urge
to hit the roads and try to bite
   the tires off of cars.


If anyone else is interested, please jump in.  We still have:

3. Duncan (he of the enlarged heart)

4. Blackie (was that his name, from the Greens?  And whatever happened to him?)

5.  Bruiser (talk about a good name story!)

6.  Thor (he who feared the thunder)

7.  Duffy (he of the running board (Kirsten's request))

8.  Blizzard (he of the balcony)

9.  Yoshi (yes, already done, but there's always room for another voice)

10.  Bronko (ditto - or even the same voice with a different look)

11. ...? (who am I forgetting?)

in the day's demand

I see my dog, stolid as a clam,

slumped in the day’s demand and

flat unconscious of his breed’s

statistics: a longer run of puppyhood

(three years, some say, to two); a

shorter span of livelihood—ten years,

I pray, to twelve. Along the way we

calculate the fetchings of a stick.

My dad had Walter, cockapoo,

who played a part in wild, unfurling

prayers. I was not there when

Walter died, but maybe thought of him

when, ten years later, dear Dad

did too, chipper than a clam, of course,

yet torn because his Godly house

was all asunder (politics) and his next

dog Homer, springer spaniel, had

run beneath a truck. I had witnessed

such when I was small, tracking

sugar beet rumbles along our gravel road:

Leo (the lion), our golden retriever,

felt duty-bound to chase those soirees

down. I’m sure the Children’s TV

Workshop played on sanguinely while

Leo literally coughed up his guts,

writhing in the brokenness of untold

bones. Now I see my dog, flat-coat

retriever, with nothing in my mind to

contravene. We have no trucks here

to track down; we wallow in our easy-going

town. We’ll live a dozen years or more,

depending on the sundry sticks we’ll fetch.

And, for you, lost Leo, Walter, poor

naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are:

we’ll live upon the promise of the

pelting of this pitiless storm, not more

potent than the heavens more just.

Dad loved King Lear. And, thus,

I’ll walk my dog in never-fledgling fear.

He has, of yet, no progeny. I have

such blessings I could never put to any

ledger. I’ll walk the dog for his sake

more than mine. He’ll walk and fetch to

satisfy a grander sense of time.

Isaiah's treasure

Circulating now, via internet,

the world is destined to be like

Venus: exquisite, contrapuntal,

very hot, unfit for life as we might

deem it in a billion years or so.

Science makes some sense, even

to the human-absent denouement:

a hundred quintillion years when

nothing feasibly could race away

from dying stars and Charybdis

holes we abbreviate as black.

We may view this from box seats,

or through a glass, darkly, or as

angels, gleaning and being gleaned

by grace and Word and faith alone

—facing the miasma, and falling

on our savior as foretold in Isaiah

forty-two: “Here is my servant,

whom I uphold, my chosen one in

whom I delight;…A bruised reed

he will not break, and a smolder-

ing wick he will not snuff out.”

My forty-seven years are about

apace to that of the human race,

between what Shakespeare says

is rounded by a sleep. I do believe

in angels—perhaps those who’ve

lived in other worlds to see what

sense and sentience we bind and

unfold here. I more believe in the

Lamb of God, who takes away the

sins of the world—we sing that

Agnes Dei to round out every day

and wake to a world that has more

than survived: it’s thrived, on whole,

teeming with unprecedented life

(some might say the walking dead)

that baby-bird-like long to feed

before they long to fly. We are such

stuff as dreams are made on—

from Eden’s clay to earth’s decay,

we are the reason all the atoms

act the way they do, insofar as reason

otherwise would nary have a clue.

I’m half-way through a life that

lives beyond my measure. I dream

of what exists—Isaiah’s treasure.

As Kirsten Turns Eighteen

Forward is the chance to see my
daughter and my son grow older.

Forward is the order of the seasons:
winter, spring and summer.

Forward wakes before the dawn, and
forward makes its way back home.

Forward sees the setting sun
and looks beyond.

----

Dawn gently breaks,
    not as a sudden thing:
the sun
    of a day’s ontogeny
        does not surprise,
nor does it sound
    a loud awakening
or slap
    the first breath out of me
or shine
    hard light accusingly
        into my naked eyes.
Dawn is the dark’s
    slow unraveling,
        the day’s revealing rise.

Time dawns on me:
I am inclined
    to set alarms at night
and run
    cold showers when I wake.
        I want to face the day
before it faces me.
    I need light
to put
    my clothes on properly,
but usually long
    before the break
        of dawn I’m on my way,
letting dawn
    distinguish those who work
        from those with time
            to play.

I am determined to beat the day,
though dawn,
    and in dawn’s easy pace,
is when
    and how I ought to rise,
        letting nature have its say
instead of doing
    it my own way, chasing
shadows
    to the next horizon,
courting ghosts
    of healthy, wealthy, wise
        to my dying day;
despite the dawn,
    I keep on facing
        life the other way.

But dawn keeps on
and on
    that day of final rest,
if I
    should wake before I die
        I pray the rising sun
will shake
    me from my sleepiness
and let
    me see the morning sky
wash over me
    once more before
        my daily dawns are done,
before
    my final east to west
        and the pull of a setting sun.

----

Forward is the chance to see my
daughter and my son grow older.

Forward is the order of the seasons:
winter, spring and summer.

Forward wakes before the dawn, and
forward makes its way back home.

Forward sees the setting sun
and looks beyond.

also posted on my daily blog, Poems by J.A. Vold

our kind of keep

Epiphany

Tři Králové

is alive today

whether braced

by polar vortex or

graced in Bohemian

balm, Magi still arrive

to focus their perusing

eyes where their camels

maps and heaven guide: a

baby in a feeding trough for

donkeys fast asleep, a mother

and a father keeping watch and

cradling what they’d long to keep

and swains inside to show the King

of David’s line will need their kind of

keep. The meager ware the Magi bring

hardly fits the scene:  the myrrh appalls,

the gold enthralls, the frankincense sheds

all the stable smell for a little while at least

but bothers not the native flock, which deign

to sleep through this epiphany. We are of that

flock—well before Gethsemane—if yet we stay

awake tonight. We’re practiced after all with the

ringing in of new years and vigils with our friends

who newly now assemble here, a life-sustaining sty.

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This:

Epiphany is alive because our Savior died

and we have nowhere else to look or be.