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Introducing Francina Hartstra
Friday, June 19, 2009 Photo by Francina Hartstra IV.6.3. Francina Hartstra has been with us on "Here and Now" as a poet several times, but this is the first appearance as a photographer. All of the images in this issue are hers. Francina was born in 1947 and spent the first thirteen years of her life on river cargo vessels visiting Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. Since then she lived in many different places, including the United States for 12 years, and has traveled widely in Europe, North Africa, The Caribbean and Asia. She moved back to The Netherlands some 10 years ago and continues to live there today. In addition to Farncina's images, we have these fine poets with us this week as well as a closing tribute to Rosalie "Connie" Walker who passed away earlier this month. Connie was a poet known and enjoyed by a number of us who became her friend via the internet. Two Thousand Years Me garage sale Barbara Moore The Model Child Frank O'Hara Romanze, or The Music Students Christopher T. George Zero Hour All Hail, Miss Dash Union Station, D.C., 3:48 P.M. Me a ride in the Intestinal Falcon Nikki Giovanni A Poem for Carol A Fishy Poem The World is not a Pleasant Place to Be Dan Cuddy Myth of Venus Me cra-z Margo LaGattuta Drawing Dirty Pictures Polly Opsahl Dreaming Postal Fances Downing Hunter Early Morning Music Me Gabriel Norman Stock Buying Breakfast for My Kamikaze Pilot My White Wife Me take this woman, please Kathryn Stripling Byer from Mountain Time Roland Flint Early Cutting Walter Durk Requiscat in Pace Me first step Tributes to Connie by Her "Blueline" Friends Thane Zander Connie's Tribute Alice Folkart Connie on a Camel Helen V. Lundt Connie's Journey Gary Blankenship For Connie Me Dear Connie  Photo by Francina Hartstra Susan Griffin describes herself as an eco-feminist author. She sees her work as "drawing connections between the destruction of nature, the diminishment of women and racism, and tracing the causes of war to denial in both private and public life." She received a MacArthur grant for Peace and International Cooperation, an NEA Fellowship, and an Emmy Award for the play Voices. Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1943 and has resided in California since then. We begin this week with one of her poems, this, from her bookLike the Iris of an Eye, published in 1976 by Harper and Row/ Two Thousand Years 1 There you are at the stove again a woman too intelligent for absolute paranoia, stirring the cereal again, is there something that draws you back and back to this the light, the plant you must water, the bacon, the eggs in the pan you consider five years in this place, two lunches made in the ice box, your daughter with one big tooth crowding the babies makes blue snakes in the next room, the cereal is poured in blue bowls with the blue rims, you have chosen the color chosen you daughter chosen the number on the house 2 You say the entire world can exist in one imagination And you tell the story of the sisters over in your mind how they longed for the city how they died in the country and that not in the city but somewhere behind them not in the country but behind them, as a shadow, a glimpse, a thought lying under speech 3 Always one step ahead of despair I dreamed last night the men made plans for the future your husband and mine with the correct explosions underground, they said, we locate caves and stay there while the holocaust rages on the surface, then according to the laws of probability we will find our way out in two thousand years 4 No, I woke up screaming I would rather die in the fires. 5 And you wake to a quick silence like disaster, like the moment the pot falling seems to rest in air before it splits in two and you wonder is the fire real 6 You remind yourself how easily you forget the mind thinking itself quick recites outlines and leaves out all the textures, invents a reason and is irritated by the wrong details. The body goes on defending itself every movement, the boiling of water on the stove, the pouring of salt in a shaker a proof of theorems, when suddenly I remember every moment. 7 Self-preservation in the making of breakfast. Self-preservation in the cry on waking. Self-preservation in reason. Self-preservation in memory. I remember every moment, I am shocked at the daily loss.  Photo by Francina Hartstra My mother-in-law had a garage sale a couple of weekends ago. My wife, Dora, went down to help. I contributed to the effort by writing the following poem about it. garage sale it is the day before garage sale weekend and D is off, heading south to help with her mother's semiannual get rid of junk sale, her little red Camry, loaded to the windows with a dozen varieties of crap that, with luck will be sold for the grand amount of maybe three dollars and forty cents assuming 28 miles per gallon over the 517 miles between here and there and back, i anticipate our weekend losses to be at least 50, but surely no more than 75 dollars, buy high, sell low capitalism fit for the day having scheduled myself for a colonoscopy early Monday morning, i was given a pass on the trip a desperate measure, perhaps, but the procedure only lasts a couple of hours, and given a free weekend besides, it seems like a bargain greater than anything likely to be sold at the garage sale  Photo by Francina Hartstra Here's a poem from our friend Barbara Moore. Barbara was born in Danville, Virginia in 1948, but has lived in New York long enough to consider herself an almost native. She earned a B.A. from Hofstra University, majoring in English, and an M.S.W. from Fordham University. She has been a research assistant at Reader's Digest as well as a substance abuse counselor at Long Island College Hospital. The Model Child I'm handicapped by etiquette Hog-tied to the falseness Of its swollen barren belly. From time of understanding words, Drilled into my head were these "Mind your manners, child." My playmates were spontaneous In the moment, whole I was to the side of things Punctuating pauses with "Please" and "thank you" And like Red Riding Hood "What a nice house you have" "What a delicious dinner that was" To the point where I never fully saw I never completely savored Editorializing, summing up I was the last to leave With the most words said And the fewest feelings expressed I'm handicapped by etiquette Thank you for listening.  Photo by Francina Hartstra My next poem is by Frank O'Hara from the book Meditations in an Emergency. The book was published by Grove Press in 1967. O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in Massachusetts. He served in the South Pacific and Japan as a sonarman in the Navy during World War II and with the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University. Although he majored in music and did some composing, his attendance was irregular and his interests disparate. He regularly attended classes in philosophy and theology, while writing impulsively in his spare time. O'Hara was heavily influenced by visual art, and by contemporary music, which was his first love (he remained a fine piano player all his life and would often shock new partners by suddenly playing swathes of Rachmaninoff when visiting them). While at Harvard, HE began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love of music, he changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English. He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan and received his M.A. in English literature 1951. That autumn O'Hara moved into an apartment in New York City and soon after became employed at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art and began to write seriously. Over the years he was active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, and in 1960 was Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was injured in 1966 in an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck by a man speeding in a beach vehicle He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40. Romanze, or The Music Students 1 The rain, its tiny pressure on you scalp, like ants passing the door of a tobacconist. "Hello!" they cry, their noses glistening. They are humming a scherzo by Tchyerepnin. They are carrying violin cases. With their feelers knitting over their heads the blue air, they appear at the door of the Conservatory and cry "Ah!" at the honey of its outpourings. They stand in the street and hear the curds drifting on the top of the milk of the Conservatory doors. 2 the had though themselves in Hawaii when suddenly the pines, trembling with nightfulness, shook them out of their sibilance. The surf was full of outriggers racing like slits in the eye of the sun, yet the surf was full of great black logs plunging, and then the surf was full of needles. The surf was bland and white, as pine trees are white when, in Paradise, no wind is blowing. 3 In Ann Arbor on Sunday afternoon at four-thirty they went to an organ recital: Messiaen, Hindemith, Czerny. And in their ears a great voice said "To have great music we must commission it. To commission great music we must have great commissioners." There was a blast! and summer was over. 4 Rienzi! A rabbit is sitting in the hedge! it is a brown stone! it is the month of October! it is an orange bassoon! They've been standing on the mountain for forty-eight hours without flinching. Well, they are soldiers, I guess, and it is all marching magnificently by.  Photo by Francina Hartstra Next I have three short poems from our friend and frequent contributor, Christopher T. George. Chris was born in Liverpool, England in 1948 and first emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1955. He went back to Liverpool for, he says, a refresher on his Scouse accent, living with his grandparents while attending Rose Lane and Quarry Bank Schools. Chris returned to the U.S.A. in 1968 and has lived there ever since. He now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, near Johns Hopkins University with his wife Donna and two cats. He is a frequently published poet, as well as the lyricist for Jack - The Musical, written with French composer Erik Sitbon, http://www.jack-themusical.com/. Chris is also an editor at Ripperologist magazine published in the UK, http://www.ripperologist.info. Zero Hour Were passengers on Titanic munching iceberg lettuce when disaster struck? Was anyone at Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Ground Zero thinking of Zero Hour when the fiery javelin pierced their hearts? All Hail, Miss Dash! To Emily Dickinson Ah, right here in the very middle of Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, I meet you once again, Miss Dash, your lovely "We grow accustomed--" I'm waiting in the air-conditioned quiet of the Marc train to pull off--watch a Sleeping Beauty doze with his Blackberry. And I'm here writing this on the ripped-open white of a money envelope! Ha! All hail, Miss Dash--Godhead! Keep conversing with our souls. Union Station, D.C., 3:48 P.M. Congressman Bluetooth berates an intern, hands flapping, guarding Samsonite luggage like a mother barracuda. Homeless man with ebony skin touches each granite block. Pencil-thin-moustache guy with Stars and Striped tie pulls a screwed-up ball of dollars from deep within a pocket of his baggy pants, scrutinizes each bill, Marlboro on lip.  Photo by Francina Hartstra Here's a follow-up on my garage sale poem, one I'm very proud of it since it isn't often someone figures out how to write a poem about a colonoscopy. a ride on the Intestinal Falcon they let me watch the procedure on TV as they were doing it, kinda cool... reminded me of that part of the first Star Wars when Hans Solo hid himself and his ship the Millennium Falcon and the Princess and the rest from the Imperial evildoer whosits who were chasing them in those little bug looking ships and of course it wasn't a cave but a gigantic worm's gigantic worm hole and whooooosh they barely made it and since it was the first of the series we weren't sure they would and anyway even though there weren't, thank goodness, any gigantic, hungry-for-a-space-ship worms in my case, that part of the movie came to mind as i watched the procedure and in the recovery bay i was next to an old man singing western ballads in a creamy smooth Ray Price kind of voice and that was the best part of the morning  Photo by Francina Hartstra Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1943, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1960, she entered Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she worked with the school's Writer's Workshop and edited the literary magazine. After receiving her bachelor of arts degree in 1967, she organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati before entering graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her honors include three NAACP Image Awards for Literature in 1998, the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters in 1996, as well as more than twenty honorary degrees from national colleges and universities. She has been given keys to more than a dozen cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and New Orleans. Several magazines have named Giovanni Woman of the Year, including Essence, Mademoiselle, Ebony, and Ladies Home Journal. She was the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award. She has served as poetry judge for the National Book Awards and was a finalist for a Grammy Award in the category of Spoken Word. She is currently Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since 1987. This next poem is from her book My House, published by Quill in 1972. A Poem for Carol (May She Always Wear Red Ribbons) when i was very little though it's still true today there were no sidewalks in lincoln heights and the home we had on jackson street was right next to a bus stop and a sewer which didn't really ever become offensive but one day from the sewer a little kitten with one eye gone came crawling out though she never really came into our yard but just sort of hung by to watch the folk my sister who was always softhearted but able to act effectively started taking milk out to here while our father would only say don't bring him home and everyday after school i would rush home to see if she was still there and if gary had fed her but i could never bring myself to go near her she was so loving and so hurt and singularly beautiful and i knew i had nothing to give that would replace her one gone eye and if i had named her which i didn't i'm sure i would have called her Carol [20 dec 71] A Fishy Poem i have nine guppies there were ten but the mother died shortly after the birth the father runs up and down the aquarium looking at first i thought i wasn't feeding them enough so i increased and increased until the aquarium was very very dirty then i realized he was just a guppy whose father was a goldfish and he was only following his nature [11 jan 72] The Wold Is Not a Pleasant Place to Be the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by a river would stop its flow if only a stream were there to receive it an ocean would never laugh if clouds weren't there to kiss her tears the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone [17 feb 72]  Photo by Francina Hartstra Nothing can lead a man to day dreams faster than the passage of a beautiful woman (especially when she's optional on a clothing optional beach). Here's our friend Dan Cuddy to tell us about it. Myth Of Venus today a poem comes out of the language like Venus riding a seashell the zephyrs pushing the very naked naturally curvaceous Botticelli babe onto a 21st century beach a nudist beach and i am wrapped in a towel too much fat to fry in the sun and a little old none of my bathing suits fit I just want to be incognito catch a peak at the women au naturelle feel free unencumbered with clothes that show I have no taste in clothes Venus has a dimple on two cheeks one on the face one in another place and she is so tan she wasn't born yesterday her skin is so smooth a mole here or there like an exclamation point saying the woman is real just out of Penthouse's pool dripping wet brown eyes wonderfully smiling and I would jump up and say "hi" if I knew her and the lifeguard with big muscles wasn't guarding her life her telephone number her email address I turn seaweed green with envy watch them kiss furiously as violins come from somewhere and a voice gruff a smoker's voice With intermittent coughs "this is my daughter watch it" I watched her the goddess of Black's Beach, California and I said "gawd, what a woman" a disembodied voice said "that's right fatso. Only In your dreams."  Photo by Francina Hartstra Several of my fellow poets on the Blueline Forum poem-a-day forum have begun writing alphabet poems. I am enjoying reading their poems, but don't get much fun out of writing them myself. I did decide to try to do one though, and, being contrary as I often am, began at the ass-end of the alphabet rather than at the beginning. cra-z zounds! cried the commizzar of zucchinis, zambonis, zebras, zephyrs and zinnias known for their zing when plucked like a string who is it, the rascal, who zipped off with my zinckenite zippers, truly zonked they must be the zig zag papers a clue, and the Zapata-mustache and the double-chocolate brownie zits, surely signs of a zeitgeist surfer - no zen needed to know the trees have fallen in that forest but no fear, the zeppelin is here, so round up the zubus and my favorite zero gravity zoot suit and the zulus and the zunies and all the zaftig cuties who zone out on zirkons and don't forget, whatever you do, my zydeco cd's for without them i'm zilch, a zoophyte or zooplankton at best so off we can go, bring me my zarf and my snazzi zither and i'll settle in for a traveling snoozzzzze leave this forsaken zek to Zorro and the his Zoroastrianian zealots i don't want to be the zorille at the party, but i think it's time to move on  Photo by Francina Hartstra Here are three poems from the anthology Everywhere is Someplace Else, published by Plain View Press of Austin in 1998. The first poem is by Margo LaGattuta an editor at Plain View Press at the time the anthology was published. She had published four books of her own and has appeared in numerous journals had won several national poetry awards. LaGattuta received and MFA from Vermont College and, in 1998, was teaching writing at the University of Michigan (Flint). Drawing Dirty Pictures I knew it was something really bad. Me and Douglas Payea played on Sunday morning while my parents slept in. He lived five square houses down, five little brick houses, each with its own row of round azalea bushes in front. We hid in my yard, drawing people and their private parts with ballpoint pens on a yellow scratch pad from my father's desk. I was the detail person. He would draw the figures and I would fill in the fancy parts, like curly hair and round, red nipples. There was the thrill of outlining and filling in with parts we weren't supposed to mention. There they were - real naked bodies right on paper. He'd scrunch up the sheet and hide it in the bushes, chase me around squealing, till we'd both fall. Then I'd run back to take a look. Taking a forbidden look at a piece of wrinkled paper in the bushes gave me a rush. Every car that drove by was a threat. I'd duck down in case it was the dirty picture cops. I never wanted to look at Douglas Payea after that. I'd roller-skate past his house, my eyes looking straight ahead. I'd pretend not to even know him, That all those lines and curls were never real at all, and none of us had any secret body parts hidden underneath our clothes. The next poem, is by Polly Opsahl, a postal worker and union activist when the anthology was published, writing regularly for the union newsletter. At the time, she was active in a number of poetry societies in Michigan. Dreaming Postal I dream of work again. This time we try to make a movie of life in the P.O. It features cave people, The ones with the clubs are the bosses. On a break from filming, we visit the workroom floor. A carrier approaches me with the latest directive issued by management. Highlight in yellow, it reads, French fries may only be eaten individually. The carrier asks me what it means. I admit I am not sure. The postmaster and I review a portion of video to make corrections before shooting resumes. Fluffy clouds shot at time-lapse speed roll across a slate blue sky. George C. Scott, dressed as General Patton, drives a mail truck up to a curbside box. The address reads, One Heaven Place, with the name God above. The general announces, The Post Office - where everyone receives the same service at the same price. The postmaster shuts off the tape. I remind her we need to view it all so we know what recommendations to make. No time, she says and calls the carriers together. We have a video to show you. There will be no time for questions, no time for answers, and no time for popcorn. Just watch it and get back to work. She puts the tape in the VCR. Snow crackles on the screen. It's broken, she announces. I'll just tell you what was in it. She starts speaking in Latin. I pull the tape from the machine, examine it to see what's wrong. The postmaster keeps talking, doesn't notice that no one can understand her. I open the plastic cassette. Someone has tied the tape in knots. My last poem from the anthology is by Frances Downing Hunter. Hunter received her Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi and, at the time the anthology was published, taught English at Arkansas State University. She was a finalist in the 1997 Atlantic Review Poetry Competition and received an International Merit Award in Poetry in 1997. Early Morning Music That precious hour before the alarm's assault, a crosstown train wails like a late night jazz horn riffing slowly toward morning. Closer now, the staccatoed rumbling of wheels on tracks drums the back beat as a bird closer still, picks up a high note, holds it, then scats home. Slow rain thumbs the bass. Inside our wooden cocoon the black dog stretches, retracts, as the man slumbers. Wishboned around me, both breathe in rhythmic counterpoint to melody, as i search for a space, an opening to stretch, an unbound leg to tap.  Photo by Francina Hartstra Sitting in a coffee shop looking for interesting people, someone who suggests a story, and you look and there they are - that's what I do. Gabriel a very tall man walks in, a very old man moving very slowly, his shorts reveal knees crisscrossed with scars and above it all, a large, rectangular head, like an Easter Island head, but with a rockhard grace to his his face, a "visage" one might better say to describe a continence of such strength and character a white thatch of hair combed back, white eyebrows above deep-set eyes, and a neat, white mustache covering a broad upper lip a face from Bergman, the face of Death playing chess a face from Fellini, the face of Quinn's strongman a face from Scorsese, el capo de tutti capi, boss of all the bosses such a face to face in a bookstore at 10 in the morning i look around for the cameras and, finding none, think i might have seen the face of a fallen angel, an aged Gabriel, stripped of his youth and light, humanity showing through the bones of his former glory then from nowhere, another face, a mother enters with her young son, blond with deep-set eyes, the saddest eyes i have ever seen Gabriel, again, returned to childhood, though still with the memories of all the sadness he has ever seen  Photo by Francina Hartstra Poet Norman Stock is the author of Buying Breakfast for My Kamikaze Pilot, published by Gibbs Smith in 1994 as winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Contest. Since 1984 he has received several awards for his poetry, including the Writer's Voice New Voice Award, Poets and Writers New York to the Heartland Award, and the Poetry Prize of the Bennington Writing Workshops. He has been a National Arts Club Scholar and Alan Collins Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Stock's poetry has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. He lives in New York City and works as a librarian at Montclair State University in New Jersey. I have two poems from his book, the first, the title poem. Buying Breakfast for My Kamikaze Pilot she always takes us down for a crash landing I don't know whey she does it am I the enemy is she it's hard to tell on this particular morning but I buy her breakfast anyway I give her all I have and she gives me all she is whether in anger or love as we go crashing through the breakfast plates upsetting the orange juice and eggs and the coffee shop becomes our battleground where we both die together holding on to each other for dear sweet fucking life My White Wife my white wife looks at me funny, and says, when will you change I can't help it, I say, I have always been like this although I never noticed it, until I met you I am not white, she says, and you are not black as usual, you have exaggerated the situation till it is impossible for us to talk but we are married, I say, you and I and all the others the others? she says, there you go again oh, you know what I mean, I say with a cunning smile get lost, she says, please get out of my life so soon? I say, out! she says, away! I am not married to anyone then I will take my blackness, I say, taking my blackness and I will go with it to another, and I will never come back good riddance! she says happily, and you can take my whiteness with you, since only you can see it thank you, I say, but I will need another white wife, the the embodiment, not just the quality you and your fantasies! she says contemptuously, go already, go, please go all right, I say, all right, I'm going, but you will be sorry someday there was something in it for you, too, you know but already she has forgotten me, has turned away so completely, I can barely see her standing there and suddenly I am not longer black and she is no longer white and nothing exists except the space we stand in this is worse than I thought it would be, I say, but it is also better, considering what could have happened, I guess it's time to move on  Photo by Francina Hartstra Sometimes it's just too damn hard to be gracious about other people's failings. Like this. take this woman, please she's driving me crazy today, swing from the trees and pound my chest nuts i come here in the morning because it's quiet and i can read my Times and write my poem - not in a cone of silence, that's too quiet - but in the soft sonic swell of people in quiet conversation, interesting people, or at least interesting looking people, subjects of many a poem but not when she's working behind the counter, she and her loud bray of a voice that never gets beyond inane, corpuscular in its intelligent reference to anything beyond the mundane, beyond her own bloated ego, like living in a haze of the mindless tweets of 13 year olds and so damn loud she can't be ignored better an hour of fingernail scratching on a blackboard than another minute of this i'm going to a movie  Photo by Francine Hartstra Next I have two poems from the anthology Across State Lines, a free publication ot The American Poetry & Literacy Project, free that is unless you get it at a used-books store where you pay $3.98. The book collects poems about the fifty states from different poets, some very well known and some you never heard of before. The poems I selected for this issue are for the two "north" states, North Carolina and North Dakota. The first poem is by Kathryn Stripling Byer. NORTH CAROLINA From Mountain Time Up here in the mountains we know what extinct means. We've seen how our breath on a bitter night fades like a ghost from the window glass. We know the wolf's game. The panther. We've heard the old stories run down, stutter out into silence. Who knows where we're heading? All roads seem to lead to Millennium, dark roads with drop-offs we can't plumb. It's time to be brought up short now with the tale-tellers' Listen: There once lived a woman named Delphia who walked through these hills teaching children to read. She was known as a quilter whose hand never wearied, a mother who raised up two daughters to pass on her words like a strong chain of stitches. Imagine her sitting among us, her quick thimble moving along these lines as if to hear every word striking true as the stab of her needle through calico. While prophets discourse about endings, don't you think she'll tell us the world as we know it keeps calling us back to beginnings? This labor to make our words matter is what any good quilter teaches. A stitch in time, let's say. a blind stitch that clings to the edges of what's left, the ripped scraps and remnants. whatever won't stop taking shape even though the whole crazy quilt's falling to pieces The second poem from Across State Lines is by Roland Flint. NORTH DAKOTA Early Cutting For Ed Elderman When they take the winter wheat at home all the other crops are green. In granaries and tight truck boxes farm boys are slow scoop-shovel metronomes singing harvest deep in the grain. The old men come out to watch, squat in the stubble, break a lump of dirt and look at it on their hands, and mumbling kernels of the sweet hard durum, they think how it survived the frozen ground unwinding at last to this perfect bread of their mouths. Where they call it the Red River Valley of the North there are no mountains, the floor is wide as a glacial lake - Agassiz, the fields go steady to the horizon, sunflower, potato, summerfallow, corn, and so flat that a shallow ditch can make the tractor drivers think of Columbus and the edge.  Photo by Francina Hartstra Our friend Walter Durk was born in New York City, lived in Asia and numerous places in the United States. His work has appeared in "Here and Now" a number of times. Here's his latest. Requiescat in Pace In the holy hush of ceremonial air suffused in smoke of wandering souls sits a woman in a forward pew, (the mother of the boy who's here today.) She kneels in homage to his passing soul, freed from his body where it now lay. Hush, hush. Let Dies Irae play. Let myrrh thicken turbid air, and thuribles sound their tinkling sounds while aspergillums spray their holy spray. And let the mother pray: Ah! that day of tears and mourning! From the dust of earth returning man for judgment must prepare him; Spare, O God, in mercy spare him!  Photo by Francina Hartstra This next poem was the first poem in my 25th 30-day poem a day cycle at Blueline's "House of 30". That might seem like a lot of poems, but only if you don't know that one of my fellow poets on this poem-a-day exercise is in her 50th cycle - that's like 1,500 hundred poems in 1,500 days. That's Alice Folkart, our perpetual poetry machine, the Energizer Bunny of poets, who appears in "Here and Now" often. Anyway, here's my first in my paltry 25th. first step so now it's the beginning of a new chapter and i don't know what i'm going to do with it first but that's the way it has always been with me i've always set my goals twenty or thirty steps ahead, not worrying too much about each new step as long it goes in a direction taking me closer to the last step like maybe the first step today would be to note the fresh breeze that cools the beginning of what will be a very hot day in June and the way the nature of the day changes as Reba and i walk from cloud cover to sun and back again, the way our whole walk is done in splotches of hot and cool, dark and dazzling light every well remembered marker along the way noted by each of us for our own reasons, the shaded alcove where there are always squirrels, the shaded alcove where Reba always wants to stop, hoping, i'm sure, that some day the squirrels will get too close as they mock her, close enough that she can reach them and mete out her revenge for their disrespect or the Gap for Kids, with the headless dummies in the window, a display of finely dressed decapitated children, gruesome and grotesque, thinking how i, as a child, could only have been dragged screaming into a store where they might chop off my head, too much like the Brothers Grimm to ever be entered without trepidation and thus it is, our morning walk, each of us, as we pass our familiar way, finding our own fascinations - routine, broken this morning by birds in aerial combat, a larger bird, a blackbird, maybe, chased through the morning sky by three smaller birds, attacking, dive bombing, nipping with beak and talons as they pass the small birds, attacking in flurries of fury, like hawks, but too small a mystery for the morning  Photo by Francina Hartstra I end this week's issue on a sad note. Those of us who post our poetry regularly on the Blueline Forum's "House of 30" were saddened this past week to learn of the passing of fellow House mate Rosalie "Connie" J. Walker. Connie, in her 71st year, had lived a full and active life. A graduate of West High School in Columbus, Ohio, and Grant Hospital School of Nursing, Connie was a nurse in the U.S. Navy, also serving as a nurse at King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and at Grant and Mt. Carmel Hospitals mainly in the ICCU. She was a resident of Bremerton, Wa for 18 years before returning to Columbus. Connie had a passion for writing and teaching poetry, and enjoyed knitting, reading, solving crossword puzzles and traveling the world. Restricted due to poor health to staying close to home during her late years, she wrote beautiful nature poems from her memory of all the places she had been and all the beautiful things she had seen. I close this issue this week with several tribute poems from her "House of 30" colleagues. Beginning with Thane Zander, a New Zealand poet and frequent contributor to “Here and Now." Connie's TributeI In the winter of your life dear friend you would bring summer to my eyes, your spring would bubble eternal and when the fall approached, ever cheerful. In the trees that surround you we find birdsong, and leaves of colour, in the plants of your house, a poem. Now you are at rest, your poetry a lingering flavour, your words spread across a tableau of the universal, you remain in our hearts, in our minds, in time, a special person who touched all with her grace. I learnt from you Connie and that's the biggest grace you had to offer, may you rise and star in your new life as surely you must. And next, our Hawaiian poet, Alice Folkart. Connie on a Camel Connie, I always think of you riding a camel across a dry desert, entering the black tent of a nomad chief, fearless, adventurous, observing all with an open mind and a loving heart. I always think of you making music out of everything, out of the heat and dust, our of the dangers, out of the sand storms, and the questionable food, because that's what you were there for, to live and to love it. In the years we knew you, you sat in your cozy home, watching the seasons change, the birds leave and return, the trees explode in color, go naked, and reclothe in green, the snows come and go, crafting it all into graceful poems that put us by your side. You may not be able to tell us what you're seeing where you are now, although if anyone could, it would be you, but we hope that it's beautiful, and are sure that even there, your poetry and kind heart will be treasured. And we have this poem from Connie's friend from New York, Helen V. Lundt. Connie's Journey If thoughts and love of nature were to make their way around the world as seeds fly from flower to fertile soil implanting themselves for next season, If nimble fingers were to soar over computer keys in spite of physical discomfort - ignoring pain to surpass it with written sights of the world so others may view her love of life, If the sands of time in her world changed as she changed, one would not have known. For Connie kept it to herself, the seeds of her arts renewal continuing their journey. Her journey will keep on growing, keep on going and her love of a new life will continue each season, especially as new flowers blossom and bloom. For she is remembered as a nature lover by so many. And this poem from our friend from the Pacific Northwest, Gary Blankenship For Connie Through your eyes, I saw the hickory turn along the frosted banks of the Ohio, climbed the mounds and heard the tribes pray, saw the geese wind South as winter drew near. Now, I hear the loons cry in their mourning, the last wolf howl his despair you've passed, the moose bow, the whitetail, beaver, rabbit, the northern lakes freeze in their sorrow. We will plant a buckeye along the far shore, and morning read your poems to the North star. And finally, one from me. Dear Connie Dear Connie, I walked with you Through the fields and forests And streams and quiet meadows Of your memory I walk with you still, But in my memory, now, And every shaded grove That offers me respite From the heat of summer's sun; Every broad field of wildflower color That brings pleasure to my day: Every gold leaf that falls In Autumn's transition; All these natural glories Passed unseen before, I will see them now with your eyes And be reminded of you,  Photo by Francina Hartstra And so ends this week's post of "Here and Now." I'll back in a week with more poetry and pretty pictures. I haven't done that much work on the next issue yet, but so far it looks like I'll have poems by Luci Tapahonso, Charles Bukowski, Marilyn Hacker, and at least one poet new to me, the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy. Who knows what else might slip in. Until we get there, remember, all of the work presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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