Skyline Tectonics

Growing up, the Chicago skyline

demanded imagination: my dad arched

his Midwestern back to sell us on Sears—what

my kids would call Willis, stepping out

on the 103^rd in suspended boxes,

seeking reconnaissance of John Hancock,

once the signature of all heavenly architecture,

trumping the Empire State for the claim

until stark Standard Oil marbled

the score: Chicago now towered beyond

its own dreams. Malaysia, meanwhile, Shanghai

and the Burj Khalifa Dubai would coolly

upend the scene: maybe Midwest

Asian dads had due reason to bend their

backs Myrtle-the-Turtle style (blast all the burp)

and maybe Chicago needed a boost to get

back on its track: enter Trump—a

ludicrous way to get politics done, a name

that does nothing good to no one, even Ivana his

erstwhile bride—she’ll do just fine waiting

in line for the bail when the bedrock

breaks. And it will, whether this millennium

or the next. As middle child (here see me Trump)

deflecting the lightning that’s bound to seek

wise old John Hancock & Willis anew,

I’m out of the Loop—these towers don’t do

anything to a Midwestern brother who gallivants

in and tiptoes out, quick-as-white-lightning,

to let the new skyline speak for itself:

Trump has his attention, but notably nature

draws double the bolt to the north and the south:

Willis and Hancock are duly recharged, and

Dad (in his grave) can relax his back.

Chicago has honored its volts,

and skyscrapers all are

blips to our notes.

Sandstone Heights

            Sandstone Heights

(on climbing Drábské Světničky in Český Ráj)

of course, the rule without debate

atop a canopy of sandstone obelisks

and jutties—none manmade, if all

acclaimed by gradual stampede—is

to stay at least a meter from the edge.

‘Moirai,’ the kids could groan, and

damn straight down they’d be right;

a Greek sense of fate hasn’t borne

its weight and prayertime this night

is on some toehold of a political ledge

instead of the gratitude that a fall

hasn’t come to us yet. We climb and

descend and hoover each ancient,

carved-out enclave by passing hand

and foot and face to the lofty redoubt.

A cistern three thousand years old

and strong-lipped with stone blocks

adds light to my sense of the scene:

the dwellers chipped into the rocks

for their caverns, then journeyed out

to build from the earth they freed.

In this case a cistern: drilling again,

yet needing a blueprint to pinhold

the plan, cinders to anchor that end.

Obelisks now could rise up to the sky.

Of course, without the Babel myth,

such measures only have the height

to fear, their rules without debate.

Like lemmings we scurry recondite,

if any caver nowadays questions why

a song not to shoot

A second big plane from Malaysia went down,

A third Gaza war in less than ten years,

Malala’s in Africa to find those schoolgirls,

Charybdis has centered a stake in our world,

and what a wild world it’s been.

Arguably Atticus Finch shouldn’t have gifted

his kids what they wanted for Christmas:

air-rifles to shoot at tin cans (fair game)

and bluejays (ok, if less so). But this know:

“it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Mimus polyglottos can echo any birdsong,

even the bluejay’s, if so inclined, though why

would one summon the whims of a child

with an air-rifle? Better to imitate angels,

or lay low for a season or two.

We’ve learned a few lessons from Babel, at

least how to translate what doesn’t make sense;

We’re still prone to mock another’s beliefs

and put them to memes out of hand and sight

while Atticus peaceably fights.

We Will Draw Near

This is inspired, at least in part, by brother Josh's persistent challenge to us all to get out another "S2L2A&A" list: songs to listed to again and again.  I don't have a full list together for this year yet, but I think I'd like to start it with a favorite song from Kirsten's Jubilate Choir days, music that I still like to turn to now and again, eight years later.  The song is Adiemus by Karl Jenkins, the lead part of a full album and the premise for a beautiful choral concert called Songs of Sanctuary.  What makes Jenkins work especially unique is that it's all done in a pseudo-Latin with no specific meaning.  The first lines, for instance, are:

Ari adiemus late
Ari adiemus da
Ari a enatus late adua.

It turns out the title can be roughly translated as "We will draw near" in Latin, but Jenkins claimed not to know this.  Anyway, it's musically rich, solemn, dramatic, full of crescendo and sanctuary but also, at least for me all these years, intriguing in how it seems to beg for more meaning.  So this year I finally decided to give the song my own words.  In the process, arbitrarily or not, I have turned to the well known "bless you keep you" benediction, enhanced with one  of my favorite words, Immanuel, a word worth repeating, again and again.  And yes, the descant remains: we will draw near.


We Will Draw Near
An interpretation of Karl Jenkins' Adiemus

Brother, may the Lord be with you
Like a shepherd in the field
Giving you the meaning of Immanuel.
May that mean the whole world to you,
God's world ever given to you,
Blessing you no matter where you are.

Sister, may a world of peace be
With you everywhere you go,
Everywhere the meaning of Immanuel.
May it mean that God will hold you
Like a mother holds her child who
Looks into the eyes of loving care.

Refrain:
And may God's face shine upon you
With an everlasting smile,
Giving you the meaning of Immanuel.
May you know that God is with you everywhere.
(We will draw near.)
May you know that God is with you everywhere.
(We will draw near.)
Immanuel! 
Immanuel!

(Repeat Refrain)

Child, may the grace of God be
Something you will come to know
Living in the meaning of Immanuel.
As you wander through the fold and
Grow beyond the mother's hold, may
You still know you are a child of God.

(Repeat Refrain)

May the hands of the father bless you.

(Immanuel!)

May the arms of the mother keep you.

(Immanuel!)

May the face of God shine on you.

(Immanuel!)

May the grace of the Lord go with you.

(Immanuel!)

May the peace of the world be in you.

(Immanuel!)

May you know God is always with you.

Immanuel!

Immanuel!

On a Vienna tram

Heaving, the mid-life woman in a wheelchair

had evidently heard some horrific news,

and the stolid man sitting straight behind

must have been the purveyor of such blues.

‘Divorce’ he may have whispered, or ‘be gone’:

their final ride from Ottakring, a journey

many years too long or scarcely just begun.

The wheels below her changed into a gurney—

maybe so: a prognosis of stage five

that only sunk in now and in a tram

familiar, blocks away from CAT scans, teams

of doctors, chaplains, those who give a damn…

At Volkstheatre, someone else stepped on

and stretched her neck to ask what she could do:

‘You’re stranded? Oh, I see you’re with that man—’

He nodded not, as the woman sobbed anew

and reached her hand to touch his stony face.

He never flinched but stared outside and then

perhaps at me—blinded not by tears, he

could not view the spectacle they’d been.

I’d taught that day Szymborska’s poem: ‘for me

the true tragedy begins with Act Six.’

The actors play their different parts and greet

the devastated world with smiles that fix

relations, households, rubble from the past.

They’ll ruin again tomorrow; for now, well,

let the evening rest. I gotta catch my tram,

lest my lady (or my man) gives me hell.

Reluctantly, I disembarked and left

the couple to their corner in the tram;

the city opened up, I walked my part

and mouthed a prayer for those who give a damn.

from Stella, collector of frogs

Fully rely on God:  that’s surely said, because when we

Rely on God, fully, we realize such ponderous provisions.

On God rely fully—whether croaking, spawning or sleeping.

God, fully rely on amphibious inklings to dive in in due season.

Reasons to Run

I never needed any reason to run,

not when the neighbor’s hogs burst the fence

and surrounded our home. As a lone

electron I coursed to consider them all;

Dad warned me in, then joined my valence,

less to protect than to share in the run.

When summers kindled all kinds of fire,

I sought out cool springs like a Jesus bug,

skimming the surface of things, I circled

the shoals of my undisclosed road

and ran through the waves with a shrug,

plumbing the depth of dreams on fire.

Loves here and now made sustenance then

and logging the miles meant less in the end

than legging them as I could. I needed

no reason to run, no medals from races,

no personal bests, no college letters to send,

no fleeing from cops or crooks. But then

my father died, and my step-father too.

My brother got cancer and though he came

through, my inchoate teaching of Hamlet

would never resort to by-the-book notes.

The twenty-third psalm is one and the same:

a valley, still waters, a chapel to run to…

God knows each story veers from the rest

and cancers return in ways no one would think.

Five miles in Lake Forest meant everything,

pacing the weeks and the years gone by.

Nature ensures water striders don’t sink;

they run, ruminate, and relish the rest.