Another Week of Poems

Every Thought Is A Prayer

Week 6: Roman Sans Clef

No more than a short-month twelfth of my poems are hopelessly romantic, but this is the month to share them, and this week, without a key, reflects the beginning of the journey.

02/05: North Side Story
02/06: Paris & Valentino
02/07: They, Bearing Roses
02/08: Love, Revisited
02/09: Carpodacus
02/10: Warming Up
02/11: Moleskin 1.6: That Prayer Continues...

02/05:

North Side Story

Compare: the rich fools and the poor losers,
happiness and misery, as if the surface was their story
through and through, as if the smiles upon their faces
ran as deep as the scowl on yours.

And more: you dream big dreams constructed of envy,
green as grass, born in shadows,
from which the mansions in your mind stretch higher,
around which the bitter grass grows greener.
 
Despair: it is not fair, the way they never finished high
school, how they cheated everyone to get ahead, leaving you
looking through fences, cursing the gods of sides,
of giving and taking.

But what for? Your misery wins you nothing,
your curses even less, the vacuous disapproval
of your neighbors shaking their heads, tut-tutting
and casting down their eyes on your poverty.

(2001)


02/06:

Paris & Valentino

I’ll never trade you in for Paris, Baby
And you will never have the man
Who makes his million Euros
At a Metro sandwich stand
With a fifth grade education,
But I yam what I yam
And you will always be
     the one for me.

We once walked along the river;
I still hold on to the dream
Of lovers on a starry night
Before the stars became
So complicated.  Anyway,
I yam what I yam, etc….

Stand me next to Valentino, Baby,
I will never have the tan
Or the money or the fame
But I’ll keep doing what I can
To make you happy….

(2001)


02/07:

They, Bearing Roses

Rose: the loveless petals always fall
away like pages of a good book cheaply bound:
no matter how great the story,
the crumbling glue of time ever puts the good book down
one spent page after another, until
nothing remains but the bud—
no matter what the story has to say
the crumbling glue of time ever puts the good book down
one spent page after another, until
nothing remains but a pile of petals
and the memory of a story.  But one day
we will know the plot of each good book by heart.

(1990)


02/08:

Love, Revisited

In the beginning they (happy lovers) decided they (in love) would never fight.  Even romance knows the tinge of reality, though, and soon they (beautiful partnership) revised their love-based rule: they (the perfective pair) would still not allow fighting, but they (in each other’s arms) would be permitted to disagree —in prim fashion, of course: it was decided they (beyond the puppy stages) would be mature about their —dreams —differences and would discuss things rationally, always moving eagerly toward the beautiful ends of kissing, caressing, making up and making it better than before.

They were in love.  And they (a serious couple) eventually decided to be married.  The date was set for seven months in advance.

And they (reality-based) continued to disagree, here and there, but there was always a make-up, and they (pioneers of their own realm) continued to climb.  The way grew steeper, though: “here and there” became “here, here and here and there and there.”  They (trying their hardest) decided to re-revise the rules.

“We’re fighting,” he said.

“Yes, we are, aren’t we?” she agreed.

“But it doesn’t mean we’re in trouble, does it?”

“No,” she said, “but we’d better be careful.”

And they (a team) devised a clever set of brand new rules —of which they (man and woman, woman and man) would each try to claim exclusive credit —nevertheless, the rules seemed to be practicable and rational; they (the affianced pair) agreed that this would be a great foundation for their marriage.

The rules were as such: Whenever one or the other of them would disagree about something, they (together) would go into the kitchen; they (she and he) would clear the kitchen table and sit down facing each other with the table —across its shortest dimension —between them.  They (the two sides) would keep all four hands on the table where they (the hands) could be seen by all four eyes.  This table would be bare, except for one initial addition, the centerpiece of their list of rules, and a literal centerpiece, too: an arrangement of roses, over which they (the one-to-one) would have to carry out all their marital discussions and disagreements and fights.  The table was of a size that neither party was far from the other and both of their faces were practically forced to endure the flowers’ scents.

“We will not change this rule,” she exclaimed.

“No, we must not,” he agreed, and together they (the happy lovers) smiled.

And eventually they (living dreamers) were married.  The honeymoon came and went, and they (steadfast partners) remained in love.  Over the years dimensions were revised and definitions changed, but basically they (adherers to a promise) stuck surprisingly close to their rules of the kitchen table.  And long after the honeymoon, they (the desperate diplomats) were buying each other roses two or three times every week.

He sometimes thought that he couldn’t stand the smell any longer, and she sometimes wondered if it made any sense to pay good money for something that died after a few days, but the roses were continually replenished, and they (the hopeless lovers) remained in love.  (1990)


02/09:

Carpodacus

The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter —and the Bird is on the Wing.
  — Omar Khayyam, tr. Edward Fitzgerald

Sometimes when winds of winter seem to linger
And providence forgets to fill the feeder
I feel the fundamental pangs of hunger
Making me curse the backyard life we lead here.
Our everyday to day existence hinges
On seeds and crumbs that others think to leave us;
I’m tired of living life out on the fringes
And waiting for the seasons to relieve us.
Yet daily I am saved from being bitter
By rays of sunshine breaking through the dinge:
I hear the sweetest music in your twitter
And see the rosy beauty of your tinge.
With you beside me, winter doesn’t matter
And I don't need the fates to make me fatter.

(2005)


02/10:

Warming Up

I don’t know when our world began
to melt away
                     but suddenly
we’re closer to each other than

we’ve ever been before.

                                      I see
each day a little
                         differently,
a little clearer
                      knowing that

I’m here with you;
                             I want to see
tomorrow even more.
                                  It matters
to me now.  It matters that

you’re here with me,
                                 that we can feel
the fire of the same sun setting

on a distant shore,
                             that we’ll

have this,
               as days turn into years,
to share,
             as distance disappears.

(2009)


02/11:

Moleskin 1.6: The Prayer Continues...

That prayer continues, seeking courage and wisdom, but these too I'll save for the later chapters: perhaps I'll be bolder and smarter with experience and age, somewhere down the river a ways, past 50, 60, 70...  for now, though, it is enough to accept the things I cannot change, to let my fears be taken by the quiet current ---to simply be! Existing, persisting, maintaining, remaining: keeping my place in time, or the space, in any case, that I've been given for the moment. Here I stand. And if, for the moment, I let intellect distract me, to exist somewhere between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, surely I would falter; likewise, if I let my blood boil within me, like a fanatic or a patriot, I might lose my place, this moment in which I find myself. It is not too deep to pray this prayer though, a singular pray in need of being prayed: Grant me, God, serenity.  (2015)

ETIAP 5 - Is It Friday Already?

Every Thought Is A Prayer

Week 5: Starry Night Over The Rhone

A convergence of tributaries: Here, in a poem about a painting about a river, is another simple prayer poem, and also one of several “co-opted” poems that have found their ways into songs to listen to again and again.

01/29: Ellipses
01/30: Song To M
01/31: Co-Opted
02/01: Liner Notes To A Starry Night
02/02: Starry Night, Revisited
02/03: Love Beyond Reason
02/04: Moleskin 1.5: Serenity

01/29:

Ellipses

This is my dream, my satisfaction:
the only truth I can control,

the only way I can survive
the lonely nights, the distant silence:

I dream my song into the darkness:
forever listening, waiting,

forever calling, wondering;
I live by sending and receiving.

----

This is my song, my record keeping:
the only way I can hold you.

I send my song into the darkness
and quietly wait for your reply

And in the pause I feel the distance
as lonely as the midnight trees

But with my song I break the silence
and I can feel you close to me.


01/30:

Co-Opted

...This next piece is inspired by brother Josh’s persistent call for submissions of S2L2A&A: songs to listen to again and again.  Josh would have everyone in the family compile and circulate annual CD-length lists of our favorite songs, and what a beautiful way of showing and sharing a part of what makes us tick, of celebrating our variety and expanding the awareness of our collective souls. Josh also encourages us, by making this an annual project, to keep adding to our life-list of favorite songs and to think year-round of what might go on our next year’s list.  So, one song at a time, I came up with the following twelve...

I am calling this collection “Co-opted,” as it is centered around several of my own poems that I have set to other people’s music.  Consider these co-opted works my P2SA&A:  poems to sing again and again.


01/31:

Song To M

To the tune of Pictures of You, by The Cure

M, you are a name,
You are a quiet invitation,
Briefest braille for the blind
Start of a simple conversation,

Title on the cover page
Without any explanation,
For now, for the moment
Such a pleasant presentation

And I want to remember you:
I want to remember you

From the first scene of your story
Full of unexpected chapters,
Uncharted adventures,
Untold ever afters,

From the first note of the measure
Of music I don’t know
But want to hear more of,
La canto da capo,

You’re a language that’s new to me
From the beginning,
A song to repeat
For its gradual meaning,

And somewhere in the melody
I just want to learn you
And find in you more than
A tune that I turn to.

I want to remember you:
I want to remember you.

From the first word,
I want to memorize you,
Learn every line of you,
Look into your eyes

And discover you.  M,
You are a name so far,
But I’ve only started
To see who you are

And I want to see more,
I want to speak you and sing you
And know you by heart,
You and everything in you.

Somewhere in this fantasy
We’ll sing our songs together
And hope that the harmony
Plays on forever,

And if you’ll indulge me
I promise you this,
I’ll keep every secret
And hold every kiss

Between us, and even if
Things never change
And we remain strangers
I’ll always remember your name.

I want to remember you.
I want to see that you’re more than name.
I want to remember you.
I want to know you,
           know that you're more than a name.

Just say the word, and
I’ll stay here as long
As you can keep on singing
And there is a song

Between us, and even if
Things start to change
And we become strangers
You’ll always be more than a name.


02/01:

Liner Notes To A Starry Night

Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous Starry Night painting shows a wild sky with swirling, pyrotechnic stars that cast a blue-gray glow on the town below it. It must be late at night, as there are no house lights and no people. This is the Starry, Starry Night of Don McLean’s song Vincent, reflecting how the artist “suffered for [his] sanity.”

It is a powerful moment, but I prefer Van Gogh’s earlier astral painting: Starry Night over the Rhone.  The night is calmer, the stars are more balanced and the city is still awake with its own lights; a river flows across the canvas and there are exactly two people on the riverside, standing together and quietly inviting us to take it all in.

Years ago, when I was one of two people, we bought a copy of this painting for our living room. My other is no longer with me; she is somewhere else, suffering for her own sanity now, and my days with her are forever in the past, but I still like keeping that painting on my wall...


02/02:

Starry Night, Revisited

Co-opting the tune and refrain of Widow's Grove, 
by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan

The sky above, the earth below;
The city stirs, the river flows.
We walk at night that we may see
The stars and know we’re not alone,

That we may breathe a different air
And stroll along a quiet shore,
Stand silent where the river laps
Up to our feet (wandering where
we were before).

      I followed you to the river
      That washes out to the sea;
      Between city lights and stars at night,
      That's where I'll be.

The earth is black, the sky is blue;
The river bends a mirrored view
Of the evening glow of lights familiar,
Heaven down and shore to shore.

We meet the night.  We take the time
To be together, you and I,
Across the river and in between
The city and a giant sky.

      I followed you to the river
      That washes out to the sea;
      Between city lights and stars at night,
      That's where I'll be.

We feel the earth and we breathe the sky
And find our place beneath the stars,
Your arm in mine and mine in yours.
The world is right and the night is ours.

      I followed you to the river
      That washes out to the sea;
      Between city lights and stars at night,
      That's where I'll be.
      Between city lights and stars at night,
      That's where I'll be.


02/03:

Love Beyond Reason

from Walled Gardens

While reason is still tracking down the secret, 
you end your quest on the open field of love. 
        – Sanai, tr. David Pendlebury, The Garden of Reality, 1976

Love is charity, and charity
is giving with nothing to gain.

Love is serenity, courage, wisdom,
the considerations of change.

Love is peace beyond understanding,
a song in the silence, a calm in the storm.

Love walks through the noisy street
and delights in being a part of it.

Love stands in an open field
and listens to the song.


02/04:

Moleskin 1.5: The Serenity Prayer

Serenity: now there's a prayer! A wish and a word: I might as well fly to the top of the world or trudge across vast deserts.  I could just as easily become one with this big river.  "Calm down," says the ferryman.  Yeah, sure, easier said than done.  If peace were as easy as pausing I would stop everything and let this water flow.  To know serenity, santi, salaam, shalom, I should not trouble you, or myself, with these opening chapters or the easier pages of this story.  Let me skip right to the faith and love and healing; let me sit down, close my eyes and surrender.  A wish and a word, to accept the things around me just as they are, to not be afraid of the world I'm in, to find my perch a few miles out of town.  A prayer, even before I confess my faith, before I know what to believe. Here, at the beginning of my story: serenity!

ETIAP 4

EVERY THOUGHT IS A PRAYER

Week 4: Melodia

Melodia, originally from my Thirty Birds collection, is one of eight poems that I have kept memorized over the years; these are also the bases for the eight simple prayers shared in Week 1.  Let me step into character...

01/22: Pitch, Part 1
01/23: Gnostos, Agnostos
01/24: Preaching To The Choir
01/25: Melodia
01/26: Simorgh
01/27: Pitch, Part 2
01/28: Moleskin 1.4: As I Write This...


01/22:

Pitch, Part 1

(from a college notebook)

—I don’t want no characters. I’m not going to have any.

—What do you mean? You’ve got to have characters.

—No I don’t. I don’t want any. I want to be alone.

—What are you going to do then? You can’t just sit there.

—Yes I can. Why can’t I?

—You’ve got to have a plot. You need action.

—No. Who’s writing this thing anyway?

—What about a title?

—What about it?

—Nothing. Forget it.



—Exactly. I’m not going to have a setting either. And no diction and no conflict and no theme.

—What about an audience? You’re not going to have an audience either.

—Yes. Yes I will.

—No, no you’re not. You know, with no plot you never could call this, this whatever it is, a story. And now if you say there’s no theme, then you can’t really call it anything.

—I don’t want to call it anything. You’re the one trying to call it something.

—Okay, never mind. But the point is, who’s going to care? Who’s going to give a shit? If it won’t have any substance why should anyone bother.

—I don’t want substance. I especially don’t want the shit.

—Right. But you want an audience. You just said that you even expect one.



—That’s right. But let me tell you something. Maybe this will make you see. Last Tuesday I was taking a walk through the park. It was noon and I saw this old bum curled up on the edge of the sidewalk, eyes closed, not doing anything. And I stared at him for a little while. He didn’t move. Flies landed on him and he didn’t brush them away. He might have been dead.

—Maybe he was.

—I don’t know. But I stood there and stared at him for I don’t know how long and he never did move. He was positioned in such a way that I couldn’t tell whether he was breathing or not. I think he was alive though. I’m pretty sure he had some sort of soul.

—But what’s the point?

—Maybe there is none.

—So what are you trying to say?

—I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just saying it, there was a bum in the park and I happened to notice him and I think he had a soul.

—And for that you think you’ll have an audience.

—Hey look. Someone will notice this some day and maybe even several people will stop and stare and eventually someone will tell somebody else, like I just told you. They’ll even come up with the standard speculations: he looks dead, but I think he’s alive. He’s just a bum, but what was he yesterday and what will he be tomorrow? Who knows? Who cares? Maybe it’s a mental illness, or maybe it’s a statement of choice ...or maybe he really is dead. He’s motionless, but he’s got a soul. People will wonder, I promise. Wait and see.



01/23:

Gnostos, Agnostos

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither are attended...
— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Eclipsing black, as if in punishment,
With a heaviness he tarries through the winter,
Eating scraps by the altar, praying unrelentingly
Loud to God in case there’s something in it.

He knows who to harass and who to flatter,
He’s learned to ride the sheep and avoid the fox
And he shows he’s smart enough to get the water
But cursed to never quench his thirst with rocks.
 
He casts his lot with murderers, pretending
To portend with all the ravens and jackdaws,
Like every soul, it seems he’s doomed to die,
Unsaved from an inevitable ending
And unable to impress the passersby
Who miss the meaning of his revenant caws.



01/24:

Preaching To The Choir

Good morning.

I’ve got a song for you today.   It’s a little song that doesn’t have any music, just words, but it’s something I’d like to share with you if I may.

I’m a little nervous though.   It isn’t easy to stand up and sing, or talk, or share things, and I’m really not much of a singer, but here I am, learning as I go...

I’d like to believe it gets easier.  Believe, that’s all I’ve got to begin with.  It’s all any of us has: we believe that God takes care of us, then we believe a little more, that maybe, just maybe, God smiles on us when we sing.  We of little faith: We are the sparrows.

I remember the songs we used to sing when they brought the offering plates up.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow. We give thee but thine own.  It’s as easy as that.  God smiles on us, and that gives us a reason to smile.  We are the face of God.



I’ve noticed your smiles, too.  Some of you put beautiful music to the words: thank you for what you do.  Some of you are on the sidelines: you are the teachers and coaches and parents, and your music is just as beautiful in the ways you cheer on and encourage.  Some of you do not have loud voices, but you share beautiful songs, too, in the way you use your hands and your talents, or in the time and the care you give.  And then some of you are at your best when you’re singing in the pews.  I’ve noticed that it gets even easier to sing when we hear everyone around us.  We all have songs to share.  We are the choir.

My song today is a poem. It’s about a sparrow who gets in God’s face about joining the choir.  And God puts him in his place.



01/25:

Melodia

And God is revealed...

     I

Lowly sparrow, you in your stubble field
Are God’s example and encouragement
To stand behind a thinly-feathered shield
With nothing more as an accouterment
Than simple faith in what tomorrow brings:
All things are set before you, every seed
And sunray comes delivered without strings;
God will provide you everything you need
But gives you more, the time and voice to sing!
Sing boldly, bird, across the stubble field,
Show us your color and your gilded wing,
Your air of confidence, that all may yield
And pause, to see what stands behind the fable
Of fearlessness and food at every table.

     II

The sparrow chirps, “But who am I to be
The center of attention?  I believe
Your story: God is good, even to me,
And daily God provides, and I receive
Abundantly beyond what I deserve,
But that’s the point.  You call on me to sing
For all I’m worth; you’re telling me to serve
In song as if my voice made everything
Acceptable, but take a look at me:
My feathers are the shades of sand and dirt,
My wings are short and my ability
To fly will never take me far from earth,
And now you’re asking me to join the choir
Of angels, as if song could take me higher?”

     III

Yes, little sparrow, by your very word
You are acceptable; indeed, you were before
The first note of your song was ever heard,
But you will please your maker even more
If you will sing.  Sing loud for all you’re worth,
But louder still for all that you’ve been given:
From seed and stubble of your mother earth,
To air and sunshine sent to you from heaven,
For every camouflage and coloring
Designed to keep you safely unrevealed,
For all the intricacies of your wing
Designed to let you navigate the field.
O sparrow, sparrow, know that you are gifted
And by your song the whole world is uplifted.



01/26:

Simorgh

Only after completing the first draft of my first book of poems and giving the book a title did I discover that "Thirty Birds" was a legendary bird-king from 12th century Persia.  The story was told 800 years ago in a 4500 line poem called Bird Parliament by Farid ud-Din Attar. Briefly, all the birds go on a quest to find their king. The journey is difficult, and only thirty birds make it up the final mountain, where they find their king, Simorgh, or "Thirty Birds," is nothing but a reflection of themselves.... 01/27:

Pitch, Part 2

—Is that your story? Kind of depressing. And you can’t just end it like that.

—Settle down. That’s not my ending. It’s not even my story.

—Whatever.

—Right.

—So will you bring your readers to any conclusion?

—No. No one ever does, really.

—Now that’s arguable. Platitudinous even.

—Of course it is. Everything is.

          .....


—So that’s your story.

—I told you, call it what you will.



—But it is a story you know. Whether you pretend it’s something else or not.

—That’s your conclusion. But it sounds like you changed your position.

—Sure. You’ve got everything in it that you said you wouldn’t have.

—What are you saying?

—There’s theme, there’s conflict of characters, style, even a plot of sorts...

—All incidental, I tell you.

—...and you’ve got lots of thought.

—All incidental.

—What do you mean, incidental? It’s there, isn’t it? And you said it wouldn’t be.

—But there’s no one here.

—Sure there is. Me and you. And an audience, maybe.

—No, there’s no audience. Not now. The audience hasn’t come by yet. They will, later, but not now.

—And I suppose we’re two bum characters on the edge of the sidewalk.

—No. There are no characters.

—What are we?

—We’re the writer of course.

—But we’re fighting. There’s conflict, so we must be characters.

—No, we’re just the writer. We’re just words.



01/28:

Moleskin 1.4: As I Write This...

As I write this I am sitting on the edge of a river.  I have found myself here many times, perched pretentiously where the Fisher King wept, where Siddhartha attained peace, where many before me have waited and drawn pictures in the sand.  There is a river in every big city, it seems, and streams across every page of history, throughout the world and even into the realms of mythology and legend.  I like a big river, an important river that connects with all others, a river with a famous name and a powerful flow.  Give me Mark Twain's river, but let me find it as Huck did, a few miles out of town; let me sit along its rich banks with nothing but time, away from instructions and factories, unconcerned with obligations and inheritances.  Let this be my Stillwater, full of life and purpose, with destiny beneath its gentle surface, and tomorrow I may weep and seek and wait along these banks, but for today, let me know this river's simple serenity.

A Week Well Spent

Dawn offers no surprises to certain

   strains of you and me; I may be

a reveler tonight and work the book

   like Luther until half past three,

panning blurry plotlines for nuggets

   in the stream: Jordan’s tributary

where angels dream of Jacob’s idols’

   infidelity. That’s enough for me.

You, more wisely, sleep the cadence

   of the clean: why allow detritus

into any evening’s scheme? Lessons

   of Luke 9 are bound to jostle us,

Peter et al pretty sleepy in the midst

   of things (a due alarm for Titus)

as the clockwork dead will bury their

   own dead, succoring the masses.

We must get on in stride: fat old Sun,

   bright Earth and Moon, planet 9,

whoever designates the unseen path

   of spheres tonight—yours, mine;

some wooly mammoth’s destined to

   unfreeze when untold stars align

and sojourners let life unfold as only

   God ensures that Day 8 is benign.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2016)

a math minute

or more--Eric, we need your oversight!

This is the 400th post on Stillwater Symposium. 400 is a wonderfully square number, as 2x2 and 10x10 equal 20x20--not the first time that multiples of squares make a square (144 does, and I suppose 4 is the first), but 400 is still quite 'rounded'.

Squares imply dimension; cubes even moreso. So if anyone out there is turning 8, 27, 64, 81, please post your impressions!

Only after having helped my kids with their math homework, I realized I've turned a square number: 49. My running line for the past couple years is that my age has become a good Scrabble score (and y'all know I don't score that well in Scrabble), but this year should show its difference.

Ergo this slapdash poem, replete with an animal at the end, to qualify for Lost Menagerie:

       post-calculus

The serene inside a square

is why I want to wander

there, circling the edges’

truth or dare, then backhoeing

the fields we share for better

schools, paths, and sanctuaries:

Noah’s dove seeks out this prayer.

ETIAP 3

Week 3 - An opening note to the symposians: As you can see, each week I am picking up a different theme.  When I started with this project last year, I had called it “Confluence,” as an assortment of tributaries coming together.  One of those tributaries was, and is, Stillwater itself.  

In this week’s Thursday moleskin installment I give some acknowledgments, and let me add here: thank you all for indulging me with these weekly installments and helping me to brush up my efforts. Also, Anne, my moleskin acknowledgment to you deserves some further explanation.  It was about three years ago that you and I went out on a run, and along that way you had encouraged me to tell the story of my decisions to move to Minnesota as a ninth grader, to join the Air Force before college and then to move back to Chicago after growing up a few years.  As it turns out, my moleskin project doesn’t get past the age of thirteen, all before you were born, but you were a spark to telling this story.  Thank you!


EVERY THOUGHT IS A PRAYER

Week 3: Stillwater Symposia

Stillwater Symposia is our family blog of random poems, stories, photographs and ideas. The blog is there for all to see but it remains our intimate gathering of riverside contributors.

01/15: Writing For The Symposia: Part 1
01/16: What Would You Write?
01/17: Dear Symposians
01/18: Reflective Study Of Howard
             Nemerov's Blue Swallows
01/19: Writing For The Symposia: Part 2
01/20: Carrying It Forward
01/21: Moleskin 1.3: Acknowledgments


01/15

Writing For The Symposia: Part 1

This I write for the symposia
inspired by stillwater dreams
and turtle songs and prayer requests
and trappist breweries.

I raise my glass to those a’ ya
who have known the wilder seas
but are still led to restfulness
along God’s peaceful streams,

and as the quiet river flows
with more movement than the
     surface shows,
let these odd words be for those a’ ya
who celebrate such things
but would convive to bring to life
your erstwhile hidden dreams.


01/16

What Would You Write?

O sister, brothers, water is not
The point.  Watching it flow, that
Is the point, and celebrating
Truth at every shore..


01/17

Dear Symposians

I have another poem to share, and this time with some spindrift analysis.  The poem is another one by someone else: The Blue Swallows, by Howard Nemerov. The analysis is a parsing of the poem’s abundant allegories.

I first planned on sending this just to Dan, as I thought he might be more in to my urge to deconstruct, but then I remembered that I had once shared a few lines of this with you, Anne, and then I discovered some Stillwater symbolism in the poem, and then I realized how much this poem reminds me of the birds of Windmill Creaks (the swallows at the millstream, and a midstream tie to of one of my most Windmill Creakish poems (“What would you write, Ruben...”).   With all of that, I knew I had to post this on the Water-blog.

For those interested in the allegories, my first fascination was how this poem brought together so many subjects of which I know next to nothing (D’Arcy Thompson’s force diagrams, Jung’s archetypal Self, Occam’s Razor, the Kaballah, the Vedas, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Plotinus’s Enneads, even a Hamlet allegory).  How ironic it was that the poem would pique my interests in these subjects before ultimately directing me to find the world again and see things without the “spelling mind”!

I purposefully found the allegories on my own efforts, with the help of Google and Wikipedia but without reading anyone else’s analysis of the poem.  Occam’s razor was easy enough, because I had actually heard of that before, and the author of the second quoted passage was quickly revealed (Thompson), but it took me a while to learn that the first quote is a less common translation from Marx’s manifesto.  I wasn’t keen on embarking further into communism, let alone delving into an introduction to cabalistic history or Jung’s capitalized Self. But the kaleidoscope of allegories kept appearing.  From Hamlet, “ Alas, poor ghost.” From the Vedas, Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (I.3.28): “From the unreal lead me to the Real.”  From Plotinus: “Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like.”  Or more expositively, from Plato’s Republic: “Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye.”

What led to all of this?  Wanting to pick a poem, other than one of my own, to memorize. I’ve always liked this poem but never fully understood it, and I thought a quick study would help me commit it to
mindfulness.  And it has.  I’ve done it! Memorized it, I mean; I think I’m only about halfway to understanding it.

And why, again, this interest in memory work?  In getting back to those walking hours in the mornings and afternoons (birding interests having been set aside by full time parenting duties, then being more directly replaced by having a dog to pull me along), I have found it invigorating to exercise more than the legs.

But why do I bring this to the Stillwater Symposia?  I suppose Nemerov would say that I am missing the point with this poem, and yet in our own way, with this blogsite, we, brothers and sister, are finding the world again.   But there’s more.  I’ve got a paraphrase, just for you symposians.  And in my efforts to understand this poem, I don’t think the poet would mind if I brought God back into it (as long as he was not too Selfish, or political, or scientific, or cabalistic, or presupposed)....


01/18

Reflective Study Of Howard Nemerov's Blue Swallows

Across the millstream below the bridge
     from where I work and where we cross
Seven blue swallows divide the air
     into big patterns all their own
In shapes invisible and evanescent,
     as if to thwart the witnessing:
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s
     imaginative stagnancies
Or memory’s power to keep them there
     but there they are.

“History is where tensions were,”
     giving stages to society, and
“Form is the diagram of forces,”
     seeing patterns in biology:
Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge,
     between birth and forgetfulness
While gazing down upon those birds—
     having the time and taking it
How strange, to be above the birds!—
     to end up here, so out of place!
Thus helplessly the mind in its brain
     wanting to make some sense of it
Weaves up relation’s spindrift web
     trying to trace the winds of waves
Seeing the swallows’ tails as nibs
     in nature, begging imitation,
Dipped in invisible ink, writing . . .
     an ever-changing rhyme.

Poor mind, what would you have them write?
     Poor poet, sticking out your chest,
Some cabalistic history
     of old traditions being reclaimed
Whose authorship you might ascribe
     to fit your backward preference
To God? to Nature? Ah, poor ghost,
     leading the living to their unrest,
You’ve capitalized your Self enough
     and overscored the trinity.
That villainous William of Occam
     trimming off inelegance
Cut out the feet from under that dream
     in search of more simplicity
Some seven centuries ago
     out of the dust of time.

It’s taken that long for the mind
     collectively, immortally
To waken, yawn and stretch, to see
     beyond its unreality
With opened eyes emptied of speech
     and turned to continuity,
The real world where the spelling mind
     in a state of higher consciousness
Imposes with its grammar book
     of meaning being read into
Unreal relations on the blue
     brushstrokes over stream and sky,
Swallows. Perhaps when you will have
     time to gaze awhile,

Fully awakened, I shall show you
     what you have not seen before,
A new thing: even the water
     sharing colors with the sky
Flowing away beneath those birds
     dancing above the moving stream
Will fail to reflect their flying forms,
     can't capture what they seem to be
And the eyes that see become as stones
     bewildered in the river bed
Whence never tears shall fall gain
     nor add life to the stream.

O swallows, swallows, poems are not
     O sister, brothers, water is not
The point. Finding again the world,
     the point.  Watching it flow, that
That is the point, where loveliness
     is the point, and celebrating
Adorns intelligible things
     truth at every shore...
Because the mind’s eye lit the sun.
     to become the fire.


01/19

Writing For The Symposia: Part 2

This too I write for the symposia,
inspired by blue winged teal
gliding on a river surface
and becoming one with the water.

I do give credit to those a' ya
who do not show their busy feet
or the power of the carrying current,
who offer poems without words
like faith without argument.

We would be symposians,
but you are the better Siddhartas
showing us the river for what it is.


01/20

Carrying It Forward

Inauguration Day, 2009

     I

Paine wrote it,
Washington read it,
Obama retold it
in the depth of winter:
“Let it be retold...”
and “Let it be said
by our children’s children...”

...that when we faced
our coldest cold,
our hardest hardship,
when it seemed nothing
but hope and virtue
could survive,
city and country
came forth to meet
their common danger
together, braved
the icy currents
and coming storms
and safely delivered
that great gift
of hope and virtue
to their future
generations.
And now we mark
the day again
and remember when
we carried forth
God’s grace upon us
and wouldn’t let
our journey end.


     II

Seward proposed it,
Lincoln pronounced it,
Obama proclaimed it
with the resonance
of fighting words:

...stretching out
from battlefields
and patriot graves,
the mystic chords
of memory played
from Concord to
Gettysburg
and Normandy
to now: This time,
our time, has come
to choose our
better history,
to summon the
better angels
of our nature,
to remember
who we are, how
far we’ve come.
This is our moment.
This is our time
to be renewed
and reconciled.
This is our
day to take
responsibility
and seize our duties
gladly.


     III

John Locke asserted it,
Jefferson declared it,
Obama offered it
as old and true:
“We hold these truths...

...and carry them forward;
Paul said this too:
we set aside
the things of youth
and see at last
what must abide:
our faith, our hope,
our charity,
and equally,
intrinsically,
our rights to life
and liberty
and free pursuit
of happiness:
These things are old.
These things are true.
And now we return
and rejoice in the truth,
that precious gift,
that noble idea,
the God-given promise
that all are equal
all are free, and
all deserve a
chance to pursue
the fullest measure.


     IV

Carry it forward,
Thomas, George,
that we may bear
the winter winds
and see the spring.
Carry it forward,
William, Abe,
that we may hear
and learn to sing
the battle hymns
that came before us.
Carry it forward,
Thomas, John,
the glorious burden,
price and promise
of our birthright.
Carry on, Barack,
that we may know
the greater purpose
of our present
season. Carry
on, that we
may take
responsibility
with what we’re given,
the old and true,
the truth renewed....

...your story, too:
now carry it
and call on us
to serve with you.


01/21

Moleskin 1.3: Acknowledgments

My story is your story, too: you, to whom I turn, are in these pages, every one of you.  Sister Anne, who prompted me a few summers ago with a passing what if.  Brother Dan, who has inspired and reinspired the ink to flow.  Brother Josh, who shows beyond scribbling down how good it is to live. Son Andrew and daughter Kirsten, my flesh and blood, my dreams and hopes, wonderfully determined to be more than a reflection.  Mother Marilyn, and father Joe too, whose own faces I sometimes see in the mirror, and there you are in my smile.  And more of you: family, friends, associates, neighbors, fellow congregants.  Ghosts from the past, strangers I have yet to know, and many more whose names I'll never learn: thank you all the same, for being the faces I see before me and within me, the very mirrors to my soul.

From Ground Control

For the quondam Davey Jones, the Thin White Duke:

Like a Birdman taking to the stage, an old actor in a new world,
even as the house fills up, feeling naked and alone,

you are never alone.

Like Tiresias, between two lives, leaving work but not ready to play,
a mere spectator in the wings where the sexes meet,

you speak to us all.

Like Lazarus, all wrapped up, put on the shelf and starting to smell,
even as the mourning’s begun, and it seems too late,

it is never too late.

Like John Lennon, we’ll remember where we were, somewhere
between a tear and a smile when we read the news,

it will always be news.

Like Marilyn Monroe, you are legend now, a song for the waves,
a personage more than we will ever know

or can ever relate.

ETIAP (2)

After great new poems from Mom and Dan, I'm reluctant to go back to the archives, but I'm also resolved, for as many weeks into the new year as I can keep this project going.  Here, with a few older, hopefully recognizable poems, is the second installment of Every Thought Is A Prayer.

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Week 2: Thirty Birds

Thirty Birds, my first published tributary, offers poetry devoted to thirty different aviary species.  The book has names and photographs, but I’ve decided to keep it to the poetry this time.

01/08: And I Shall Broadcast, Saying Nothing, The Starry Echoes Of The Wave...
01/09: Looking Forward
01/10: What Rubin Saw
01/11: Rubin's Robin
01/12: Ben, by the way (A Guest Poem For The Menagerie)
01/13: Thirty Birds : A Foreword
01/14: Moleskin 1.2: A Proper Introduction

01/08:

And I Shall Broadcast, Saying Nothing, The Starry Echoes Of The Wave...

Y yo transmitiré sin decir nada 

los ecos estrellados de la ola...

       - Pablo Neruda, from Deber del Poeta

 

Social creatures of the neighborhood gather,

   one by one, to sit and watch the waves roll in.

There will be another time to jump into the water,

   to splash, to play,

       to catch fish and work the waves.

There will be a time, too, for leaving this place,

   riding the winds and

       finding inland treasures.

But for now, and here, they are content

   to gather, to pause,

       to gaze and ponder.

They take their place on the sand,

   a few yards away from the water’s edge,

       a few feet one from another,

And quietly converse without words:

 

There will be a time, soon enough,

   to engage in raucous

       playground laughter,

And there will be a time as well

   to broadcast complaints

       and call neighborhoods together,

But for now, and here, they are satisfied

   to stop, to compose,

       to start to consider.

They take their place under the sun,

   pulling up one leg

       in restful balance,

This is their moment of peace;

   this is their poem to remember.

And there will be a time for recitations,

   as there will be places without peace,

But it is enough,

   here and now,

       to sit and watch the waves roll in.

01/09:

Looking Forward

To my daughter, on her birthday

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.

01/10:

What Rubin Saw

In an older generation

of still life souls, one

paused mid-conversation

on a summertime patio

and saw (or almost didn’t,

if not for the breeze

and an offhand chance

for the mind to wander)

more than ever before,

more than anyone else

took time to consider

the peripheral scene,

a remarkable moment

of cause to give notice

to that which in the

greencut grass was

never even there as far as

conversations go (so

far as he had ever known),

and in that pause,

for all that it was,

found poetry, perhaps,

or a minute, at least,

of something more

than prose...

01/11:

Rubin's Robin

What would you write, Rubin, of this odd bird

That sticks out its fat chest and bounces through grass

Dancing with butterflies, pulling at worms,

Covering ground with a chirp and a hop?

What gives you pause, Rubin, and what have you heard

That we didn’t notice and started to pass,

Ever commuting through everyday terms,

Running through seasons with no time to stop?

  

What did you see, Rubin, that we didn’t see

Or set to the side long ago and moved on

To whatever matters have caused us to be

Blind to the beauty of birds on the lawn?

  

How does it feel, Rubin, discovering spring

in the middle of August and finding a song

in your own back yard and suddenly starting

to look at those things that were there all along?

 

How sad,  to think  we laughed,

To think  we laughed  and thought,

We laughed,  thought  you absurd

To stand and cheer an ordinary bird.

01/12:

Ben, by the way 

(A Guest Poem For The Menagerie)

Ben, by the way, when

 one of our parakeets

died last week, was the first to say

when freer days were

 over, and the summer,

alas, had ended coolly,

when I didn’t have

 time for such a poem

as this on the Lost Menagerie,

as we lowered

 the birdcage from our Russian

rafters, Ben was the one to pray.

He prayed, especially

 when I dug the lifeless

bird into the autumn earth,

not quite a

 see-you-later prayer, more

than an hasta-manana blessing,

days before the

 pet store’s replica would

join its brothers in the chapel cage

Ben prayed with

 a grateful appreciation,

saying “thank you for your worth.”

And now the other

 parakeet, placed beside

those who would live another day

  and lifted with them

 to hang from the rafters rising

over one who had died

is placid, quiet

 as a gravedigger, or

confused, with no words to offer,

and it was for this

 parakeet, too, by the way,

that Ben was the first to pray.

01/13:

Thirty Birds : Foreword

I do not know which to prefer, the birds of photography or the birds of poetry, flight in a frame or songs on a page. 

Of course, I would really prefer a walk in the woods, across the prairie or along the shore to see the herons, thrushes, sparrows and gulls in their proper places. I would give you the birds themselves if I could, and if I could be sure they wouldn't fly away.

But I will give you what I can: my own thumbnail pictures and sets of sonnets, mixed in with fair use snippets of classic poetry by Yeats, Neruda, Oliver, Baudelaire and more than thirty other familiar poets. Like the birds, I would give you the whole of these other poets if I could, that you might walk into their woods and along their shores. 

It will be enough, though, if I can inspire you to see and listen for yourselves.

01/14:

Moleskin 1.2: A Proper Introduction

The big chapters are daunting: love, faith, health, pride, humility, so let me start with tamer subjects: diversions, distractions, digressions.  You can skip this section if you want, but this is what defines me: old fashioned poetry, watching birds in their natural state, listening to human music; joys of discovery, paddling down a slow river, taking time for an arthouse movie; aerobic meditation, finding rhythm in routine, sometimes changing the pace. Noticing the rule of threes. The big chapters, love and God and healing, the ups and the downs, will be more important I suppose, or as important as a story for posterity should be.  But this is me, and this is my proper introduction.  Chapter Two, then: I am alive.  Maybe, whimsically, this will be the whole story.

Epiphany, abundant

It's been a wonderful new year: thankful notes and appeals to prayer, time to play chess and hike and read and rejoice. I've taken on a new contract to develop online literature for Philpot Education, the IB provider that called on me to present 'Teaching poetry for enjoyment and assessment' in Milan a month ago. After a pretty full week of attending to this venture, I wanted to keep up the 'poem-a-week' encouragement, and the faithful ravens (Jon remembers the Czech term 'havran') came to help me make the 150th poem on http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/. Here's to Epiphany extending to our neighborhoods and beyond.

       'To the Least of These'

As if to punctuate the advent of the snow,

migrant ravens perch and pick apart the

remnant walnuts clinging in the breeze,

pelting down like hailstones—lo, a couple

months ago the drunks that wander up

and down our streets would gather these,

grinding nature into nutmeg and maybe

into eggnog, preparing as these ravens for

anything to antidote against the freeze,

mild as it’s become in schemes of global

things. The neighborhood seems numb to

entertain who’d reconnoiter walnut trees,

but coming home I could not abnegate the

clue of ravens clattering above me, carving

nutshells of survival with existential ease.

Sing it, Sinatra!

Sing it, Sinatra!

by Marilyn Jaeger

It was a very good year
When I was seventy-six
And Dick, seventy-nine.
The immortal Frank,
Jersey boy, born a hundred
Years before.

It was a very good year!
Memorable, to say the least.
Dick's heart stopped
Six minutes
And started beating, beating
Again, God and medics working as one.

What should I say when
A new year arrives
And friends say
You must be glad that year
is over?
But no, it was a very good year.

Let me bless you with the truth:
A very good year
May have trauma, catastrophe,
But know: God covers it,
Provides channels of thanks
And praise and blessing.

It was a very good year.
I bless you with this word.
Green pastures or pools of blood?
Find the redemption in it,
Glory in new dawns and old,
And that our minds still mesh as before, and more.

It was a very good year:
Learned more of God,
Able to love larger.

Isms of race and terror cage earthbound views,
Who wants another that?  But Shepherd vows,
It will be a very good year!