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High, Wide, and Handsome
Friday, October 07, 2011 I needed the break to happy to be back again, after a super 10-day visit to the mountains in New Mexico and Colorado. My photos and my poems (most of them) were taken or written on the road. I also have my usual quota of great poets from my library and a shameless little announcement at the end. Junkman's Obbligato Me eager-eyed Marina Tsvetaeva From Poem of the End Me San Antonio to Carlsbad Rosemary Catacalos With the Conchero Dancers, Mission Espada, July The Lesson in "A Waltz for Debbie" “ One Man’s Family Me Carlsbad to Santa Fe Sundeep Sen Shattered Pieces of a Quarrel Sun Streaks on Telephone Lines Me a morning in Santa Fe From Poetry - February 1973 Leroy Seale Turkey Shooting on Mount Monadnoc Robert Pinsky Waiting Me Santa Fe to Durango Aaron Silverberg Morning Aikido Prosperity Me day trip to Ouray From Poetry - February, 1973 Michael McGee The Hand Lynn Strongin Countdown Me day trip to Telluride Gary Soto A Simple Plan Me a day off in Durango e.e. cummings From Love Poems X XI Me homebound, Durango to Albuquerque Monica Youn Ignatz in August Ignatz Oasis Semper Ignatz The Death of Ignatz The Subject Ignatz Invisible Ignatz Me homebound, Albuquerque to Fort Stockton Mary Crow Montserrate Me last leg home, Fort Stockton to San Antonio Bruce Weigl Black-and-Tan Dog Meeting Mr. Death Me rainy day confabulations John Updike Stretch TV Me path to enlightment  I start this post with a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from his book A Cony Island of the Mind, A New Directions book, originally published in 1955. As I mentioned before, I had a copy of the book from a seventh printing, which I bought in very early 1960s. During the course of many years since then, I lost the book I was excited to find a copy, aged yellow pages and all, of that 1958 edition in my secondhand book store. The book originally cost less than $2.00, less than I paid for it at the second-hand book store. With eBooks, we can finally match that price again today, and maybe move reading poetry back outside of the academic circles where it's been stuck for years. The poem I borrow this week is one of Ferlinghetti's best know pieces, and one of seven in the book conceived, not for the page, but performance reading with jazz accompaniment, subject to change at every reading. If you can find it anywhere, a performance of the poem by the poet in a reading with Kenneth Rexroth and the Cellar Jazz Quintet was recorded by Fantasy as "Poetry Readings in the Cellar." Not having that recording, this is the paper-bound best I can do. Junkman's Obbligato Let's go Come on Let's go Empty out our pockets and disappear. Missing all our appointments and turning up unshaven years later old cigarette papers stuck to our pants leaves in our hair. Let us not worry about the payments anymore. Let them come and take it away whatever it was we were paying for. And us with it. Let us arise and go now to where dogs do it Over the hill where they keep the earthquakes behind the city dumps lost among gas mains and garbage. Let us see the City Dumps for what they are. My country tears of thee. Let us disappear in automobile graveyards and reappear years later picking rags and newspapers drying our drawers on garage fires patches on our ass. Do not bother to say goodbye to anyone Your missus will not miss us. Let's go smelling of sterno where the benches are filled with discarded Bowling Green statues in the interior dark night of the flowery bowery our eyes watery with the contemplation of empty bottles of muscatel. Let us recite from broken bibles on streetcorners Follow dogs on docks Speak wild songs Throw stones Say anything Blink at the sun and stretch and stumble into silence Diddle in doorways Know whores thirdhand after everyone else is finished Stagger befuddled into East River sunsets Sleep in phone booths Puke in pawnshops wailing for a winter overcoat. Let us arise and go now under the city where ashcans roll and reappear in putrid clothes as the uncrowned underground kings off subway men's rooms. Let us feed the pigeons at City Hall urging them to do their duty in the Mayor's office. Hurry up please it's time. The end is coming. Flash floods Disasters in the sun Dogs unleased Sister in the street her brassiere backwards. Let us arise and go now into the interior dark night of the soul's still bowery and find ourselves anew where subways stall and wait under the River. Cross over into full puzzlement. South Ferry will not run forever. They are cutting out the Bay ferries but it is still not too late to get lost in Oakland. Washington has not yet toppled from his horse. There is still time to goose him and go leaving our income tax form behind and our waterproof wristwatch with it staggering blind after allycats under Brooklyn's Bridge blown statues in baggy pants our tincan cries and garage voices trailing. Junk for sale! Let's cut out let's go into the real interior of the country where hockshops reign mere unblinding anarchy upon us. The end is here but golf goes on at Burning Tree. It's raining it's pouring The Ole Man is snoring. Another flood is coming though not the kind you think. There is still time to sink and think. I wish to descend in society. I wish to make it free. Swing low sweet chariot. Let us not wait for the cadillacs to carry us triumphant into the interior waving at the natives like roman senators in the provinces wearing poet's laurels on lighted brows. Let us not wait for the write-up on page one of The New York times Book Review images of insane success smiling from the photo. By the time they print your picture in Life Magazine you will have become a negative anyway a print with a glossy finish. They will have come and gotten you to be famous and you still will not be free. Goodbye I'm going. I'm selling everything and giving away the rest to the Good Will Industries. It will be dark out there with the Salvation Army Band. And the mind its own illumination. Goodbye I'm walking out of the whole scene. Close down the joint. The system is all loused up. Rome was never like this. I'm tired of waiting for Godot. I am going where turtles win I am going where conmen puke and die Down the sad esplanades of the official world. Junk for sale! My country tears of thee. Let us go then you and I leaving our neckties behind on lampposts Take up the full beard of walking anarchy looking like Walt Whitman a homemade bomb in the pocket. I wish to descend in the social scale. High society is low society. I am a social climber climbing downward and the decent is difficult. The Upper Middle Class Ideal is for the birds and the birds have no use for it having their own kind of pecking order based upon birdsong. Pigeons on the grass alas. Let us arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree. Let loose the hogs of peace. Hurry up please it's time. Let us arise and go now into the interior of Foster's Cafeteria. So long Emily Post. So long Lowell Thomas. Goodbye Broadway Goodbye Herald Square. Turn it off. Confound the system. Cancel all our leases. Lose the War without killing someone. Let horses scream and ladies run to flushless powderrooms. The end has just begun. I want to announce it. Run don't walk to the nearest exit. The real earthquake is coming. I can feel the building shake. I am the refined type. I cannot stand it. I am going where asses lie down with customs collectors who call themselves literary critics. My tool is dusty. My body hung up too long in strange suspenders. Get me a bright bandana for a jockstrap. Turn loose and we'll be off where sports cars collapse and the world begins again. Hurry up please it's time. It's time and a half and there's the rub. the thinkpad makes homeboys of us all. Let us cut out into stray eternity. Somewhere the land is swinging. My country 'tis of thee I'm singing. Let us arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree and live the true blue simple life of wisdom and wonderment where all things grow straight up aslant and singing in the yellow sun poppies out of cowpods thinking angels out of turds. I mus arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree way up behind the broken words and woods o Arcady.  Our journey began the day before. eager-eyed breakfast done, newspaper read, headlines and comics only, having discerned some years ago that everything you really need to know in the world can be found in the comic pages - headline-reading, only habit and patriotic duty to confirm that everything that’s been happening is still happening, sun still burning. earth still turning, clouds still fluffing, fools still fooling, ball still rolling, no further attention from me required… poem struggling to emerge from the cocoon of a morning-dry and entangled mind - will find its way out of the morass, one way or another, love child or circus freak, a chance taken every day, like flipping a coin, what it will be, what it has no choice but to be on this near 25,000th day of my life - I will wait… in the meantime, today, I take our Queen Reba to Austin to visit our son for ten days, while Dee and I venture, beginning tomorrow, to parts not entirely known, mountains, but which and where to be determined by the most promising horizons that approach us - two to fhree thousand miles, not certain I have the stamina for that kind of drive anymore, that and ten nights in hotel rooms, but I know it is time to get away from these low hills for a while, to find a vista requiring a greater arching of neck, a longer view, to see where the road meets the sky… ** my last stationary poem for a while, beginning tomorrow, ten days of poems written to the hum of asphalt, the cool of thin mountain air, the evergreen scent of forests - pictures of the beautiful and the absurd, seen as we pass, eager-eyed.  Next,I have several exerpts from a long narrative poem by Marina Tsvetaeva. The poems are from Poem of the End, Selected Narrative and Lyrical Poems, published in 2004 by Ardis Publishers. It is a bilingual book, Russian and English, with translation by Nina Kossman Tsvetaeva, born in Moscow in 1892, published her first volume of poetry in 1910, attracting notice from some of the most important critics an poets in Russia at the time. Following the revolution, she went into exile in Paris in 1922, becoming one of the leading writers of the emigre community. After she returned to Russia in 1939, her husband was arrested and subsequently executed. She committed suicide in 1941 in Elabuga, a small town to which she had been dispatched at the onset of World War II. From Poem of the End 1 In the sky, rustier than tin, Is a lamppost like a finger He rose at the appointed place, Like fate. "Quarter to. Have I kept you...?" "Death can't wait." exaggeratedly smooth, The doffing of his hat. In every eyelash, a challenge. The mouth, contorted. Exaggeratedly low, His bow. "Quarter to." "On the dot?" His voice lied. My heart - fell.(What's with him?) My brain: a signal. ______ Sky of bad omens. Rust and tin. He waited at the usual spot. Six o'clock. This soundless kiss: the stupor of the lips. Thus - empresses' hands are kissed, Thus - dead men's hands... A hurrying laborer Elbows my side. Exaggeratedly dull, The train-whistled howled. Howled - yelped like a dog. On and on, angrily. (The exaggeration of life, In the final hour.) What yesterday was waist-high, Suddenly reaches the stars. (Exaggerated, that is: To its full height.) Thinking: darling, darling. "The time?" "Seven." "To the movies,or?" (Exclaiming) "Home!" 2 Gypsy brotherhood - This is where it led! Like thunder on the head, Or a naked blade, All the terror Of anticipated words, Of a house collapsing, That word: home. ______ A lost spoiled child Wailing: Home! A one-year-old: "Give me! Mine!" My brother in sin, My fever and fervor. They dram of running away The way you dream of home. ______ Like a horse jerking at its tether - Up! - and the ropes in shreds. "But we have no home!" "Ah,but we do. Ten paces away. The house on the mountain. "Not higher up?" "The house on the top of the mountain, The window under the roof." "Burning not only with the light Of dawn?" "So we start over again?" "The simplicity of poems!" Home means: out o the house And into the night. (Oh, whom shall I tell My sorrow, my grief, Horror,greener than ice?...) "You've been thinking to much." Pensively: "Yes." 3 The embankment.I keep to the water - A dense thickness The hanging gardens of Semiramis, There they are! The water - a steely strip of it, Deathly pale. I stay with it like a singer Sticks to the score; like a blind-man Sticks to the edge of a wall...You won't turn me back?I stay with it, the quencher of all thirsts, Like a sleepwalker sticks to the edge Of a roof... Oh, but it's not the water That makes me shiver - I was born a naiad. to hold onto the river, like holding hands When your lover's here And faithful. The dead are faithful. Yes, but not all in the same casket... On my left side, death; on my right - You. My right side seems dead. A vivid sheaf of light. Laughter, like a toy tambourine. "We need to have a..." (shivering). "Will we be brave?"  Our first travel day took us from San Antonio to Carlsbad, New Mexico. San Antonio to Carlsbad Holiday Inn Express, not where I wanted to stay but I couldn’t find the hotel I wanted on the web, but… a bed that doesn’t feel like something liberated from a medieval Abdizhwanni torture chamber, fluffy towels and plenty of them, a shower with hot water and a generous spray that doesn’t require running around in the shower to get wet so the day ends well… the day began, as usual, not as early as I would have liked - the male person, being me, in the morning scenario, wants to leave, vamoose, hit-the-road- jack, pedal-to-the-medal, put the get in the get-on-going, while she who must not be named in any but the most serious and loving manner wants to sweep the kitchen and do a load of laundry first… so, as anyone familiar with the history of domestic contention surely suspects, we finally got on the road at ten, after sweeping and doing a load laundry ^^^ the first leg - San Antonio to Carlsbad, New Mexico, a short day, only 398 miles, northwest from home, neon-green mesquite, yellow huisache, purple sage, black creosote brush spread over rolling limestone hills, the hills split for the highway, millions of years of geologic history on either side as we pass through the cuts at 85 miles an hour, time displayed, from now to that distant past when all around was covered by a salty sea, layer upon layer demonstrating the truth of constant change, the earth we walk upon with such confidence is always shifting, never what it was; never what it will be, I can only look and be humbled by my transience… to the flat pastures and cotton fields of southern New Mexico, to the city of the great cavern… a night’s sleep before Santa Fe and the first mountains  I used a poem by Rosemary Catacalos in my last post. I'm going back to her again with several poems from a different book than the one I borrowed from last time. This time the book is the anthology After Aztlan, Latino Poets of the Nineties, published in 1992 by David R. Godine, Publisher. Catacalos, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Prize in Poetry, former recipient of the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, and former director of the Literature Program of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. The Mission Espada referred to in the first poem is one of five 18th century Spanish missions that line the San Antonio River from Mission San Antonio de Valero (most commonly known as the Alamo) in the center of downtown San Antonio to Mission Espada, last in the string of missions, on the far south side of the city. All the missions provide regular weekly Mass for congregants, many descendants of the original worshipers, as well as weddings and funerals and other religious and cultural activities. With the Conchero Dancers, Mission Espada, July There is something in all this. The heat heavy on us till it might as well be the mesquite beam the young goat drags to each day's thin grazing in the courtyard. It might as well be the babies, fitful in their baskets, in our arms. Their cries go out alongside the thick smell of copal burning, as we do, in frail clay vases, Xelina, who is seven and doesn't know the goat will soon be meat, wants to touch the beginnings of its horns, buries her trusting fingers in the tufts on either side of the mouth. And there is an old woman in black whose days are a dark slow vine retreating into memory, even in full sunlight: the middle son lost in Korea, the comet-eyed cousin in San Luis Portosi who loaned her gold earrings and died in childbirth. Buenos dias, el sol como siempe, no?. Si,senor, the sun as always. Celebrating the mass, strangers embrace as though history were more than it is, resuming their fanning with the Sunday bulletin. There will bge a jamaica at Cabrini, a parish council meeting Tuesday. Something in all of this. In the lightning strings of the mandolins tuned tense as lovers arching their backs, the unerring summons of a tree becoming drum, bare feet hugging limestone, the earth's bones, plumed crowns flying in light of everything. This ancient prayer from the high valleys of Mexico, spinning and spinning for dear life, this world to be learned by heart. The Lesson in "A Waltz or Debby" in memory of Bill Evans Amazing how this world manages to be all of a piece. In Beirut an old woman haring guns that are nothing like drums pulls her apron up over her head and wrings the air in entreaty. In La Resurrection, Guatemala, Mayan Indians in bright handmade cloth are hung in trees with their wrists slit and left to die slowly, turning like obscene ornaments or jungle birds. And on a strait named Juan de Fuca off the coast off Washington state, a stranger is within peaceful shouting distance of six whales rising and falling on the water: the usual and regular breathing of God. All this has everything to do with how you wrote "Waltz for Debby" when she she was three and still had a right to believe life would always come in gentle measures, the swoop and sweep of a good dream doing what comes naturally. You knew better but went ahead anyway. Just as today I balance in sunlight with my own three-year-old nieces, chambering around one of Fuller's dreams become a toy, the joyful geometry of a dome turned into triple-sided air. Even if Demetra refused to step where her favorite tree cast shadows and twice wouldn't pronounce the name of her missing uncle, suspecting the pain it would bring out in the open. Later she was sullen with the weight of it. Her swing would not fly, though she leaned with all her might and crazily against gravity. I thought how all the waltzes in the world wouldn't save her from learning this. The man watching the whales, meanwhile, may fear that in a few years there won't be whales on the coast. Men either, for that matter. But more he remembers your fingers as wingtips. Your remains, clear notes phased with possibility. And since jazz musicians mostly work nights, how you were always finding you way in the dark. One Man's Family in memory of Bill Gilmore There was the Dog Man again today, bent under his tow sack, making his daily pilgrimage along St.Mary's Street with his rag tied to his forehead, with his saintly leanness and his bunch of seven dogs and his clothes covered with short smelly hair. Pauline,the waitress up at the White House Cafe, says he used to be a college professor. In a college. Imagine. And now he's all the time with them dogs. Lets them sleep in the same room with him. Lets them eat the same thing he eats. Pauline don't like it. All them eyes that light up in the dark like wolves'. I imagine he carries his mother's wedding dress around in that filthy sack. I imagine he takes the dress out on Sundays and talks to it about the dogs the way he might talk to Pauline if she ever gave him the chance. About how to him those seven dogs are seven faithful wives, seven loaves,seven brothers. About how those seven snouts bulldozing through neighborhood garbage and memories give off a warmth that's just as good as all the breasts and apple pies and Christmas trees and books and pipes and slippers that a man could use on this earth. But mostly about how they're dogs. Friends that don't have to be anything else. About how nothing could be more right than for a man to live with what he is willing and able to trust.  Our second day took us to Santa Fe. Carlsbad to Santa Fe leaving behind Carlsbad and the rough scrub flatlands of southern New Mexico, we enter a topography of rolling hills, slowly climbing toward the Rockies to the north, the hills, covered by short yellow grass, become broader and higher as we drive on toward Santa Fe - mountains shadow the horizon to the north and to the west… cattle walk single-file on the crest of a higher hill, black forms against the blue, cloudless sky, an orderly line, like a military platoon, led to feed by the boss-cow, one in every herd, who knows where to go and when to go there below that disciplined line, an unruly rush by calves and big mama bossies, running to catch up with a truck crossing the pasture, loaded with hay, the God-Truck, bringing afternoon vittles for its bovine charges, manna from the bed of a Ford pick-up… then Vaughn, small town among the wide, rolling hills, a diner, like an old-fashioned city diner built around a retired railroad dining car - great music from the fifties, and a really lousy hamburger… past Vaughn, past Encino, the hills roll on, ground beneath the low grass, now pumpkin powder orange, shining in the sun, slipping, as we pass on to a light rose color while the mountains become near companions on either side… until we are there - the near edge of Santa Fe according to my GPS, but it doesn’t look like “there” - high, rough, tree-covered hills, steep, deep canyons, even as the GPS tells us we are close, and even as I am a disbeliever, we follow directions, left turn, right turn, left turn, the road getting smaller and rougher, asphalt to washboard gravel, narrower and narrower as we climb steeper and steeper slopes - until directly ahead of us, a gate to a private drive, and on the gate, a yellow sign with a simple and direct message - “you are not where you think you are,” the sign says, suggesting we are not the first misled by our GPS… a strategic retreat… back to where we figure we ought to be, and, our instincts proving better than our GPS, finally, eight miles from the sign on the gate, our hotel in the immediate downtown crush of narrow Spanish-laid streets, three blocks from the central plaza, within walking distance of all the places we want to see in the two days we expect to stay here - here, among the tourists crowding sidewalks in every direction - (what I always wonder when myself a tourist in a place of many tourists, are we really as funny looking, I think, as these people crowding all around us) dinner at six, seven our time, $80 for two, great grub, but, I’ll never get fat at $80 a pop, contrary to the usual description of travel as broadening…)  Next, I have two poems from the collection Postmarked India, by Sundeep Sen. The book was published by HarperCollins India in 1997. I've included Sen's work many times on "Here and Now," complete with biography. Since I'm a little pressed for time this week, I'll let readers do their own Google search. Scattered Pieces of a Quarrel we listen while a dustpan eats the scattered pieces of a quarrel. Vern Rutsala Every night, for many years now I hear voices next door through the thing of the wall, every core of the crackling scream, like an old stylus needle on a scratched gramophone record, stuck. Every night it happens, shriller and fiercer every night. At midnight, the ritual starts over: the first conversations barely audible, then the decibel levels, a plateau of maimed muffles before taking off sharply, into the crystal air of coded cries, on a steep delirious climb until breaking glass-ware scatter smithereens as the soprano of anguish startles a bluebird in nest outside, on the terracotta ledge of my alcove. Every morning when the sun's edge clears the neighbour's roof, I sweep the apartment floor trying o extricate rolls off dust from under the doors. They somehow seem to huddle in fluffy balls insulating the crevices between adjacent flats, the same wall that simultaneously separates and shares, just like the array of dust coils clinging together, in fear of being swept away. Sun Streaks on Telephone Lines In Japanese she said it was amae, though the translation provided only a weak dependency. The telephone rang all night, the next day, and on and on for a whole year, in metaphoric exchanges as the pulse matched the tones. Tones of a new language defied the stasis of the existing ones. Even the sun's power couldn't scorch the linkage, its rays streaking into a Brooklyn apartment, to cast the bleach, roasting the innards, and a human being. The same sun in the evening spread over the vast view: over blackened roof-tops and the rippled bay, its light tinting the metallic verdure of the Statue of Liberty, the geometric axes of lower Manhattan towers, and the silver criss-cross of telephone lines. On cue the calls came through, regardless, from another island, the lines humming, "ame, amae, amae." Amae it had to be, after all, telephones work only on the dependency of their senders and receivers, or else why would such lines exist. The sun had set long over the East River peninsula. but had left enough energy stored, in excess, for the unfinished conversation to carry on, with her, undeterred, in glinting solar pulses.  Although we had passed through Santa Fe a number of times, but had never spent any significant time there. So, for the third day, we decided to stay in Santa Fe. a morning in Santa Fe walking around the plaza at six a.m. in the downtown were nothing opens before eight, cool, quiet, no one out but me and an old lady, looking , like me, for first light, pictures to be taken as the sun turns the night sky glowing pale light… Starbucks! the mythical Starbucks, a known entity, but lost on an inadequate map, like black planet in a black galaxy on the other side of the moon, there, in front of me, a half a block from where my walk ended yesterday… latte and a Times, sharing a long table with the Indian vendors who spread their jewelry on blankets around the plaza… seven a.m. - the vendors leave to lay out their wares and the first dim morning light softens the night-shadows creeping back into the corners and a crow, flies, like the closing night's own dark devil, lands among the towers of the Lorretto Chapel, cries, it's guttural hacking call echoing, bouncing from adobe wall to adobe wall in the high thin air… at eight, the bells from the three missions near the square begin to toll, bring in the morning, open the day for hiking from gallery to gallery, up hills, down hills, reminding by noon that, as to the condition of my knees and hips, things just ain’t what they used to be  Here are two poets from the February, 1973 issue of Poetry. The first poet is Leroy Searle, in 1973, an assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester. I think I may have use this poem, maybe a couple of years ago, but it's funny and I like it so I'm using it again. Also, the journal is falling apart as I page through it so this might be my last chance to use it again. Turkey Shooting on Mount Monadnoc I saw all the signs: "Turkey Shoot on Sunday." Well now. Come in your pick-up; drive right to the village green and load your shotgun Blusterer of feathers, gobbling in a wire cage, neck-tics gesturing the shape off space. I took my turkey, a Swift's Premium butterball weighing eighteen pounds. Hung it in the tree where it swayed there, peaceful as a moon of fat, glistening like a great carbuncle. And I sat down calmly and shot it several times. It seemed like the thing to do. My second poet from the journal is Robert Pinksy, who, in 1973, was teaching at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Waiting When the trains go by The frozen ground shivers Inwardly like an anvil. The sky reaches down Stiffly into the spaces Among houses and trees. A wisp of harsh air snakes Upward between the glove And cuff, quickening the sense of the life Elsewhere of things, the things You touched, maybe, numb Handle of a rake; stone Of a peach; soiled Band-Aid; book, pants O shirt that you touched Once in a store...less the significant fond junk Of someone's garage, and less The cinder out o your eye - Still extant and floating In Sweden or a bird's crop - than the things that you noticed Or not, watching from a traIn: The cold wide river of things, Going by like the cold Children who stood by the tracks Holding for no reason sticks Or other things, waiting For no reason for the trains.  Day four - on to Durango. Santa Fe to Durango a good breakfast… - food, especially breakfast, an integral part of the pleasure of travel for me - and an early start with another GPS glitch, but we are saved from a lengthy detour by my innate sense of direction and my intimate knowledge of such as on which side of the tree does the moss grow, and as regards the sanitary habits of coyotes who are known to pee on either north or south sides of the pinon bush depending on the phase of the moon - my advice to all GPS users…turn your machine off upon crossing the borders of the not always so great state of New Mexico, they seem most often lost and quite pleased to have you join them - but on, north by northwest, past the mountain road outside Santa Fe that would take us up the mountain and through the high forests. past Los Alamos, where secrets still hide in the thin, cold air, and around, a wide arc spinning, us back to Albuquerque, a five-hour drive over mountain and forest roads, among the most beautiful drives in the state, if you have time to spend five hours going where you could go in forty-five minutes on the interstate… but we have no time this trip and push on… past Espanola, following the Rio Grande River, the same river I grew up alongside more than 67 years and a thousand miles ago… green pastures between the mountain foothills, small valleys where cattle and horses feed, and running through the pastures, the river, and along the river, tall trees, yellow in their seasonal change, yellow like sunshine gathered in a bouquet shifting like flowing gold in the wind, yellow so bright it makes you blink - like when you turn a light on in the dark at midnight - yellow leaves blown across the road by the wind like golden snow flurries… and the road, after dropping from 7,000 feet in Santa Fe, begins to rise again, until, as we pass Tierra Amarilla the small town in its valley of yellow earth, we see the first snow-tipped mountain, at over 10,000 feet, the southern tail of the Rockies, and just a few miles further, as we pass through Chama, a stone’s throw from the Colorado border, the mountains and their snowbound peaks surround us on three sides, all sides but south… the anti-climax, Pagosa Springs, and a turn to the west, an hour from Durango, to our hotel, to our fourth floor balcony overlooking the clear, frigid Animas River flowing fast over rocks ground round by the flow, a second home in my mind, a city that reminds me of Austin in glory years in the 70s, before all the rush and crowds that are too much a part of it now, a small liberal-arts college atop a hill overlooking downtown, sidewalks through town, quietly and un-hurriedly busy with young people and a few of us, the more grizzled, passing through, and Magpies Coffee and Espresso, on the corner, my place to watch and write and drink in the air breathed by only a very few before me - my place in Durango, still there after all these years and all my visits…  Here are two poems by Aaron Silverberg, from his book Thoreau's Chair, published by Off the Press Enterprises in 2001. Morning Aikido deep breath in unison resounding clack! the one body of many hissing into the rafters - arises! cool wood on bare feet muffled thumps silent spinning bodies tumble and tumble and tumble across the floor stiff gis yield to warm, round bellies. the long hall is cut into circles snapped out into delicate origami. just outside the breath still steams... On-nee-gosh-e-mas! let's play. Prosperity several hours outdoors daily, moving freely, juicy conversations, tears of happiness, a good mess, animal sounds, a nap, a hand-written letter, chance encounter, candlelight at night, subtle aromatics, singing in the shower, watching children play, gazing at an entire sunset, inventing constellations, helping someone in person, listening, a sacred place alone, wind on bare skin, giving what others can receive, receiving what others give, remembered dreams, staying in bed, certainly home.  Using Durango as our home base, we took a day trip to Ouray on the fifth day. day trip to Ouray no train for us today, for it goes only to Silverton, while our destination, Ouray is further up the road - but if you’re so inclined for a train ride through canyons and forests and up the side of a mountain, riding in the open observation car at the train’s tail, smelling the pine-scented forest, the fresh cold wind blowing in your hair, I surely recommend it… but our trip was by automobile beginning by following the train tracks past green fields, and, on the east side, aspen groves lining the Animas River, that same fast river I watch from my balcony at the hotel… the train follows the river back to its high mountain source, sometimes alongside the river, the river in view of the passengers and sometimes not, sometimes the train on a cliff-ledge barely more than the width of the train, with the river hundreds of feet below … in the car we see the river only intermittently as we climb our highway path up the mountain, at lower altitudes, driving through groves of aspen on either side, like driving through a cloud of golden creamery butter, then higher, where the leaves have already fallen, the bare white trunks like patches on the pine-greened mountain side, then, above us mountain crests covered by clouds flowing over the top like melted marshmallow, snow blown over the top and down to us, frozen to ice pin heads, hitting our windshield like river pebbles thrown against us by some wild mountain child resenting our intrusion… then higher, over Molas Pass, more than ten thousand feet now above the low lands where I grew up, four thousand feet above our hotel in Durango - all around mountains white in clouds of blown snow, and the road wet with ice and snow melt, the temperature dropping,… then down from Molas, skirting Silverton, and up again to Red MountaIn pass, even higher, eleven thousand feet, the temperature has fallen to thirty four degrees, half what it was when we started… then down and into Ouray, determined to cut our visit short, certain we didn’t want to tackle the two passes again, after dark when the wet might have started freezing… Ouray, a silver-rush survivor like Silverton, though slightly larger, almost all the buildings on main street (the only paved street we saw) dating from mid-to-late nineteenth century, mostly brick and native stone, the thought of getting the bricks up the mountain to here suggesting of the determination of the people who made a life here, even after the silver was gone, the determination that kept the city alive for the hunters and skiers who are it’s lifeblood now the stubborn strength of mountain people never to be denied… a very fine lunch of beef stew and a visit to a bookstore, the proprietor pleased to sell me a book of poetry by a poet I never heard of, not much interested in buying a book from me, a poet he’d never heard of - truly the life of the poet in a nutshell, a buyer often, a seller rarely to ever be… and the way back - a reverse of the way we came under sunshine all the way, ups and downs and twists and turns and switchbacks and views of our road high above or far below that it takes ten minutes of maneuver to get to, uneventful but for the tumbleweed the size of VW bus blown by the wind in front of us as we approached Durango… the biggest tumbleweed I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few  Now I'm back to the February, 1973 issue of Poetry for two more poets. The first of the poets, Michael MaGee who studied creative writing at the University of Washington and was making his first appearance in Poetry with this 1973 issue. The Hand I I watch the sun rise in my hand, the rays break light between my fingertips, until sunshine fills my palm. It stretches itself and yawns, uncurling as the sun mounts higher, extends those fingers spreading outward, trembling before the heat of day. And as the noon descends to dusk, it marks the change and shivers. Inside the thumb, a crescent moon emerges as darkness creases a closing palm. And as the night secures its hold, knuckles whiten, fingers clench, and veins grow blue with cold. II And when the dawn came, it opened again, but I was closed and it had changed. Veins stiffened like a mountain range, rocky knuckles spiked the back country, the fingers tightened to a fist. The flesh raged on all day, all night: I looked at it as though a world away. My last poet from Poetry this week is Lynn Strongin, a teacher, in 1973, of creative writing at the University of New Mexico and recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Countdown Going out into clear moon-flooded night in my oilskin. So full of joy today I wanted to rape the paperboy then grocer's boy still wet behind the ears & with cowlick. But it's a dark act for a girl to commit. "Rope the eye in on me, scoot those sweetrolls 'cross table." : (Southern accents have suddenly become sweet, yellow : : Texas rose.) Guests arrive with white wine (can they never be on time?) Paperboy, who came in morning, and grocer's boy by : : afternoon, your news is flat; your loaves are stale by evening. Got a roomful of guests on my hands who stack like priests out at ten. The real news, the nourishing loaves are that my dear in schoolgirl coat and nervous hands is waiting round the corner, lightning matches, counting : : down.  On the sixth day, another day trip, this one to Telluride. a day trip to Telluride a block away, the train hoots it’s long, loud moan and a cloud of steam rises from behind the trees “all aboard, all aboard” but not us… today we go west, past Mesa Verde, where the Anasazi people, the ancestral people, built their stone villages into the sheltered walls of deep canyons atop the high mesa, a green table high above the harsher prairies, a Eden in the clouds, with wood for the fires that blackened the carved out ceilings of their cliff dwellings, where prey roamed to be killed and eaten where they found safety from their enemies, from where, one day, they left seemingly all at once, all together, moving their culture and all their people, seeking what, fleeing what, no one knows, but leaving behind stores of grain, assuming, it suggests that one day they would return, though they never did, becoming after they left, what… who… no one knows that either… but we’ve been there, walked the ruins, heard the ghosts of the disappeared people whispering in the pines and down the canyons - today we go on to Dolores, little Dolores on the Dolores River, Dolores Del Rio, I cannot pass up the chance to say, on our way to Telluride, stopping at the Old Post Bed and Breakfast on the northeast corner of the square, an old hotel from the mid-nineteenth century when the trains ran through and stopped and people would stay for a night’s lodging on their way to the silver mines higher up, bought three years ago and run now by Sheryl and Doug and Dan, the place threadbare now, like most everything in Dolores… breakfast in a little kitchen area, listening to Sheryl and another woman, discuss the relative merits of men from the oil fields in Alaska as compared to the local product, finding and ennumerating each as to their merits and demerits in the areas of practicality. reliability, physicality, grace on the dancefloor, and sexual inventiveness and stamina… breakfast - fair eavesdropping opportunity - outstanding… the drive before and after Dolores, along the river most of the way, not so twisty, except for a few miles before reaching Telluride, and much easier than the route to Ouray, a steady climb to the little town in the mountains, famous in song and cinema, surrounded on three sides by mountains in the 13,000 to 14,000 range, snow peaks looking down on the town, it’s sidewalks full of young people, many more people than I expected, considering that ski season is still several weeks away… our main object for this trip - aside from the pleasure of seeing someplace we had never seen before - Bridal Veil Falls - the longest continuous fall waterfall in Colorado, it’s base, accessible, it turns out, only in a four-wheel drive vehicle, the picture I had driven 100 miles to take, despite the best efforts of my hardy little SUV, turns out to be a far dribble on the side of the mountain, like a white thread draped over a not-very exceptional oil painting by a student landscape painter and lunch wasn’t very good either… the drive back to Durango unexceptional, mostly downhill, inured by now to the beauty of the trees and mountains, we don’t stop for more pictures, the going down side of the beautiful trees, etc. pretty much the same as the coming up side but for the herd of elk breaking from a stand of trees and loping across an open pasture, the only wildlife we’ve seen on this trip, more than worth the quick glance we got in passing… back to Durango by five, and, finally, in the early evening, a very fine dinner at the Italian place we found years ago, which has, in the years since, changed it’s name and moved to a different location, and which may not really be the same place at all, except that, for the purpose of the narrative of our lives, we will identify it as the same place and be pleased with ourselves that we found it again, no matter if it is or not, real life, after all, is just a lengthy narrative which can often be brightened by a skillful application of fiction which I am good at… five days of driving, plus a day climbing up and down streets in Santa Fe and I’m ready for a day off tomorrow…  Here's a poem from Gary Soto, featured frequently on "Here and Now" and one of my favorite poets. It is the title poem from his book a simple plan, published in 2007 by Chronicle Books. A Simple Plan for V.M. To get rid of A dog, you put on Your brother's shoes, Slip into a shirt Hanging on a nail In the garage, Smack Dad's hair oil Into you dirty locks, The scent of confusion. You call, Let's go, boy, And with the Dog's neck in A clothesline noose, You follow your skinny shadow Down the street And cut through A vacant lot, Same place Where you stepped On a board with a nail and whimpered home, The board stuck Like a ski to your shoe. You walk past The onion field, Little shrunken heads Hiding hot, unshed tears, And stop at the canal. the dog laps water, Nibbles a thorn from his paw, And barks at a toad In the oiled weeds. The sun's razor Is shining at your throat, And wind ruffles Your splayed hair, Where a hatchet Would fit nicely - You feel the sharpened Edge of guilt. Come on, boy You say, and leap On slippery rocks Set in the canal. You stop to Look inside an abandoned Car with a pleated grill - Three bullet holes in the door On the driver's side. You think, Someone Drove this car Here and killed it. You brave another mile. When you arrive, The dog prances with Joy. What is it? A jackrabbit in The brush? Feral cat Or stink birds? You pick up A board, one just a little Smarter than the one That nailed you with pain. With all your strength, You hurl it end over end. The dog knows What to do. He runs After it. Time for you to spin On your heels and, arms Kicked up at your side, Lungs two bushes Of burning fire, Get back home. That night it's steaks On a grill, a celebration Because someone In the family won A two-hundred-dollar lottery. You eat to the bone And then nearly Choke on the gristle. You drag your full Belly to the front Yard, and stake Yourself on the lawn. The neighbor's porch light Bursts on, and a shooting Star cuts across the sky - You touch your throat And think, Something just died. You lay your hands Laced behind your head. Somewhere up The block a dog barks. My dog is out there, You think, and behind Your closed eyes You see him, a nail In his bloody paw, A board in his mouth, And shooting stars Passing over the curves Of his wet pupils. If you were a better person, You would stab Your own foot and let him pick up a scent Back home.  Five days on the road and a day walking in Santa Fe, by the seventh day both of us were ready for a rest. a day off in Durango Wednesday, seventh day on the road… a rest day - for Dee a day to restock at Walmart, a nap, and a walk along the river to the park, later a walk with me downtown to find that Italian restaurant that was so good when we first found it five years ago… for me a morning at Magpie’s to catch up on work undone since the road intervened - process and prepare pictures (159 of them), upload them from the camera then transfer to Photobucket so that I can process them to bring out the color of the leaves and the green of the pines and the white snow laid like clouds across mountain peaks; post pictures on the draft for my next blog post next week; review the proof and suggestions my friend, Erin, made to my next book, make corrections as she suggested, submit the manuscript to my publisher; and somewhere and sometime in all that, write my poem for the day, recounting the adventures of the day before; a dip in the hot tub; a short walk along the river; nap; and, with Dee, walk downtown, look at and laugh at the properties posted to real estate offices windows, everything half the size of what we’ve got at twice the price , possibilities of moving to Durango, dead and buried along the roadside; walk the aisle of a shop full of very strange things tourists apparently buy,; visit the bookstore where I sold a couple of copies of my first book to a couple of years ago (closed and for rent, apparently I have that effect on booksellers); enjoy an end-of-day drink (Tequila Collins, my choice on those infrequent occasions when I drink anything stronger than Pepsi One) in the elegant ambience of the Diamond Lil Bar and Grill at the historic Strater Hotel (100 (and a whole bunch years old on the corner by the train station where the trains seems to hoot on an irregular schedule whether it’s going anywhere or not) followed by superior $5 hamburger, both drink and burger served by a scantily-clad young woman with superior legs and breasts (Dee didn’t mind my appreciation of said legs and breasts, understanding that after a certain age men viewing superior legs and breasts are doing so out of appreciation of beauty, unrelated to any carnal desires or intentions, recognizing impossible dreams when we dream one... in the end, a pleasant day of rest and work… tomorrow, a start on the way home, first stop Albuquerque  Next, I have early work by E.E. Cummings, the final two poems from an eleven part series titled, Love Poems. The series is from the collection, Etcetera - The Unpublished Poems, published in 1983 by Liveright Publishing. The poem were written during Cummings Harvard years, 1911-1916. It's heretical to say, but I like Cummings early poems at least as much I like his later work, (maybe more, when, it seems to me, despite his most famously sharp exceptions, he lost faith in the force of his narratives and began his final phase as the experimental trickster. But even in these very early poems, signs of the future Cummings and his innovations can be seen. To me, this is the poet at his best. X You are tired, (I think) Of the always puzzle of living and doing; And so am I. Come with me, then, And we'll leave it far and far away - (Only you and I, understand) You have played (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and - Just tired. So am I. But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight, And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart - Open to me! For I will show you the places Nobody knows, And, if you like, The perfect places of Sleep. Ah, come with me! I'll blow you that wonderful bubble,the moon, That floats forever and a day; I'll sing the jacinth song Of the probable stars; I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dreams, Until I find the Only Flower, Which shall keep (I think) your little heart While the moon comes out of the sea. XI Let us lie here in the disturbing grass, And slowly grow together under the sky Sucked frail by Spring, whose meat is thou and I, This hurrying tree,and yonder pausing mass Hitched to time scarcely,eager to surpass Space:for the day decided; O let us lie Receiving deepness, Hearing,over The poised,rushing night ring in the brim Of Heaven;then, perpendicular odors stealing Through curtains of new loosened dark;and one - As the unaccountable bright sun Becomes the horizon - Bird,nearly lost,lost;wheeling,wheeling. Then, on the eighth day, time to head for home. homebound, Durango to Albuquerque US-550, a different road back from the way we came, straight to Albuquerque, south from Durango, then through the western side of New Mexico, avoiding Santa Fe… beginning on the edge of Durango, a long climb on the side of a steep, steep hill, the city and green pastures far below - a gentle, green landscape, farms, pastures - from the road, an idyllic pastoral life, not seeing this time off the year the isolation of winter snowbound homes and cottages, drifts across the road and up against the side of the houses and barns, feeding horses and cattle in the cold… just a few miles and we cross into New Mexico and the pastoral life is behind us, the view to road side showing the rougher side of rural New Mexico, brush, desert sand, tiny towns far-separated, low rolling hills, growing steeper and larger until we pass Aztec and Cuba and into the badlands, the splendor of stark desolation, deep arroyos cut by mountain run-off, cliffs of soft stone, sculptured into fantastical forms and figures through erosion, angels and gargoyles carved into the cliff’s sides, or standing tall between sandstone towers and spires high against the pale blue sky, cold looking skies, like the blue inside ice in the sun, mounds of black volcanic gravel, huge, irregular shaped volcanic boulders, black as a catastrophic night on pale rose sand - incredible to find such beauty in this end of the world landscape, minimal and stark, old, so very old, changed so very slowly over the course of eons, that it appears new as the day the volcanoes blew and the earth shook and human kind still far ahead in the stately passing of time, sea, to swamp, to desert, to eventually humans, generations and generations of us, who, in our modern arrogance will turn it all to swamp again… the day ends in Albuquerque, a city of special meaning to me - September, 1964, 20 years old, climbing down from my first airplane ride to see my first mountains, the Sandias, to the east, hanging, in my mind, over everything, air sweet and clear and dry and so thin to my coast-grown lungs, a few months later my first snow… September to December, Peace Corps training at the University of New Mexico, consorting with people the likes of whom I never imagined in my small town life, the birth of a new me, no going back, grown different from where I started… ____ a restless night, my back objecting to consecutive nights of hotel beds, early coffee at Starbucks while Dee sleeps, red dawn through the window, the new day begins… today - nearly 400 miles to go, through Carlsbad again, then to Fort Stockton, tomorrow, home  I bought this new book today (used as are all my new books) that looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. The book, by poet Monica Youn, is ignatz, a collections of poem concerning the additional imagined adventures of "Ignatz" the obsessive mouse character from the comic strip, Krazy Kat, created by George Herriman. The strip ran in daily papers from 1913 to 1944. Youn is an attorneey at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she is the Director of the Money in Politics project. She has been awarded poetry fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Stanford University. She has taught creative writing at Pratt Institute and Columbia University. This book, published in 2010 by Four Way Books, was a National Book Award finalist. It is her second book. Ignatz in August you arch up off me sweat flowers white out of my every desert pore Ignatz Oasis When you leave me the sky drains of color like the skin of a tightening fist. The sun commences its gold prowl batting at tinsel streamers on the electric fan. Crouching I hide in the coolness I stole from the brass rods of your bed. Semper Ignatz How could it have been other than abrupt when as ever im medias Ignatz remarked, Sometimes I don't like fucking. Whoosh! a billow of white cambric sheets the scene, through which her nipples glow dully. taillights in snow. The Death of Ignatz The mesas sink to their knees and let the snickering dunes crawl over them. The Subject Ignatz once more an urge; once more a succumb. Even as a lawn or tree is more attractive when configured as individual leaves than as a seamless green integument. * Asbestos interlude: the rubber button replumps itself. The pin pokes through the black wax and scratches the bottom of the pan. * All the unseen valves of the night click open, a blue-violet pour down a fretless throat. * There can be no launch, only trajectory in this elastic room. Invisible Ignatz I would forget you were it not that unseen flutes keep whistling the curving phrases of your body.  The next leg home is Albuquerque to Fort Stockton, in Texas. Not the place I'd prefer to stop for the night, but every other place in every other direction is too far. homebound, Albuquerque to Fort Stockton back to Texas today, Albuquerque to Fort Stockton… from our hotel three blocks from Old Town, Albuquerque, I-40 through the pass between the Sandia and Manzana mountains, an easy drive east through rolling foothills at expressway speeds, then south at Cline’s Corners, a city consisting of a glorified gas station for long-haul truckers and not a single other thing that I can see… south on US-285, the highway we followed north to Santa Fe eight days ago, nothing ahead but a long, long drive and small lost towns, until Roswell, Carlsbad, and then, 60 miles across the state line, Fort Stockton and a night’s rest before the last leg home… not a journey suggesting poetry, epic or beautiful or even poetic, from north of Roswell to Fort Stockton, flat brown nothingness, stretching in every direction except west, where a mountain range tries to hide barely above the horizon… desolation, not beautiful like the stark and severe desolation of the badlands, but desolate like beige paint on an institutional wall, lost people, it seems to us traveling through, knowing, but still faintly disbelieving. that there are people who live here, convinced, to obvious appearances, that it is a good life - on the other hand, there is an inordinate number of UFO sightings in this Roswell to Fort Stockton region, possibly , I theorize, because of the very large number of persons living here who’ll do anything to get away, including, if necessary, hitching a ride with little green men with bubble heads and knobby knees and a perverse interest in examining the sexual organs of ranchers and oil well roughnecks (it’s like hitchhiking, those who wish to escape must think, a ride is a ride is a ride and as long as it’s going the other way from here, it’ll work in a pinch and a little sexual organ examination might be fun, and better than they’re getting at home anyway) ____ but perhaps I am being overly harsh… I’ve been away from home for nine days after all, and have seen mountains and streams and forests and clear blue skies and all manner of things far and beautiful and I miss my bed and my easy chair and my dog and my favorite comics in my daily newspaper and my early-morning breakfast place and my coffeeshop and all the other pleasures of home not always recognized until taken away - all of which will be returned to me tomorrow afternoon, by which time I am sure I will be feeling better  The next poem is by Mary Crow, from her book, , published by BOA Editions in 1989. I bought the book in Durango at a bookstore whose proprietor expressed disinterest in buying a couple of copies (cheap!) of my first book, Seven Beats a Second. This bookstore was several blocks down the street from the bookstore whose proprietor bought several of my books a couple of years ago and which is now closed and boarded up. I try not to take any lessons from situations such as this. Crow, the poet, was winner of a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984 for her own work and a Translation Award for her book of translations of Latin American women poets. At the time this book was published, she taught creative writingt at Colorado Staste University in Fort Collins. Montserrate They climb the mountain on their knees Dirty, their patched pants breaking open the dark-faced lady sobbing A child holding his crutch over his head hauls his body up a foot at a time and the sky is so beautiful full of green fingers of pine below clean clouds the blue color of church windows At the top in the church racks of tiny candles 50 pesos each burn for the dead for the living in that dark church the moreno Christ looks darker blood streaming down his arm down his leg The people think he is theirs but the priest has wrapped him in plastic to protect Christ's knees from their wet kisses and dirty fingertips They have crawled up here their bloody knees burning and like Christ they wear drops of sweat on their foreheads and backs Here they are in this high church in their temple of trees the sough of wind a music the white and blue sky church and Mary a cleanness they desire But Christ the Chis of Sorrows collapsed above the pulpit leans on his arm and can't raise his head to look at them They have left their crutches their walking sticks here for him here for love and think they will walk again without their cross Urchins pass through the pilgrims as they arrive looking for worshippers blinded by tears or tourists snapping the worshipers the urchins' faces hard their eyes beady as Christ's  Finally, the last leg home, 300 miles to go, out of 2,500 traveled over ten days. As usual, mile by mile, the longest we traversed. last leg home, Fort Stockton to San Antonio from Fort Stockton, first, flat mesa after flat mesa, each spiked, in this area of constant wind, with turbines, so elegant and beautiful against the sky, sharp, straight lines, vanes turning slowly, alien, in a way, like giant steel grasshoppers overlooking the highway from every side, but still a marvel of beauty and utility, promise of a better cleaner future in this desert where grit blown from giant coal-fired electric plants in Mexico floats in a haze between the mesas… then flat for a while, a high plain between Sonona and Ozona, a dry plain, little to see in any direction but black creosote brush and small mesquite, and an occasional hunting stand high above the highway… until a stop in Ozona for breakfast at Pepe’s, off the expressway, on the road through town, the only thing open, a small purple and gold stucco building, inside walls covered with the owner/cook’s art, everything from a copy of Warhol’s Marilyn to creations from the artist’s own imagination, including excellent eggs over easy and sausage, strong, rich, coffee, the first since the weak brew at the hotel a hundred and fifty miles back - a drive through town, small city square with grand stone buildings in the late nineteenth century Greco-Roman style of important people and important places… sic transit Gloria mundi… past Ozona and the high planes, entering the long, steep inclines of the high Hill Country, high rolling hills, highway cuts showing the different colors of all the geologic ages since the sea-covered beginning, limestone surface, dark to light green, yellow, large chestnut (what the original Crayolos called “Indian Red”) patches, like red-brown rust stains across the hills, occasional deep red and white, the foliage of central Texas in the fall… then home, grass high, plants in the back, limp and brown from ten days of inattention, things to do tomorrow - but not today…  I have now two poems by Bruce Weigl. The poems are from his book, The Unraveling Strangeness, published in 2002 by Grove Press. Weigl is the author of thirteen books of poetry, a memoir, three collections of criticism, translations (as sole or co-translator) of three books of poetry from the Vietnamese and one from the Romanian. He's received the Pushcart Prize twice, the Academy of American Poets Prize and fellowships from Bread Loaf, the Yaddo Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. Black-and-Tan Dog I hit a black-and-tan dog with my car, at night on a windy road at 50 mph. Thump, thump was all that it said,sitting strangely in the middle of my lane like a suicide, and it saw my eyes in a moment that I didn't want to have with him, so the next morning I drove back to find who owned the dog, and to say my grief under gray autumn clouds that hung so low they seemed to want me. We shift around from thing to thing inside our minds. The geese have come to rest all over these cornfields. There are so many, like a blanket, but on one home at the farmhouse, where there's a bloodstain in the road near the driveway where the dog must have landed, or where they had dragged it earlier in the morning, and stuck in the weedy ditch nearby a homemade wrath of wildflowers bound with a wire. No one else in the car had seen the dog. I was driving too fast. It was sitting in the middle of the road. There was no chance for me to stop. I've played it over in my mind more than once, and there was no chance for me to stop. Meeting Mr. Death You could say I kept my cool when I met Mr. Death. I even made him laugh by offering my hand to shake in the bullet-torn morning hours, and then I said, Are you looking for me and he got the joke. Death gets the joke or else our whole lies are a lie and a waste. He didn't take my hand, but he laughed at my jokes and he made me feel welcome inside the grace he still wore, shawl of the ghostly angel he had been but could not remember. Mr. Death, he was hanging around some pals of mine, some boys of the unspeakable rapture of war. He could have had me that morning too, when I looked away to the monsoon-heavy river where the bodies had come to rest in the last eddies, but he changed his mind.  Trip over, but post yet to finish. I'll end with a couple of poems I wrote before we left. rainy day confabulations summer’s bitter days washed away in a night of lightning and thundering rain which is both wonderful and true but doesn’t change the fact that the old man at the table across from me has the shiniest bald head I’ve ever seen, maybe the shiniest thing I’ve seen since the spit-shined shoes of my DI in basic training way back when, really shiny shoes, that fellow maintained, and expected us to do the same but it was damn hard to do making me wonder how the old guy at the table keeps his head so shiny, making me wonder if he requires his wife, the very prim lady in purple, to spit-shin his head, that’d be a sight to see, unlikely, I know, but the only way I know to get anything that shiny …but wait! I think it must be shiny day today since a very tall older fellow just walked in with the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen, gunmetal gray flowing back to his neck, shiny as the barrel of a Colt 45 Gunsel Grappler revolver like Sheriff Jimmie Mac Wayne wore in the movie Gunsel Grappling at Flat-Rock Creek Crossing Flats, or some such cowboy title… really shiny hair that fellow - I had fairly shiny hair until I cut it all off, but not shiny like this guy, dull shiny more like the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Wisconsin which I was on once and found amazing though the only really shiny thing on it was the teak deck which was deep brown, shiny and beautiful… perhaps I could grow my hair long again and make it shiny like the tall fellow or , maybe easier, clear it all away, even the stubble that remains, shave my head bald like the first fellow and spit shine it, except I can’t do that myself and don’t know anyone who’d do it for me, and i know better than to even ask my dearly beloved to help on such a particular task what to do? conundrum upon conundrum this fine Sunday morning, refreshingly though that, while I think about it, conjugate the perimeters of the issue, collaborate with my inner know-it-all, I can at least watch it rain, which it has been doing now, after a night of lightning and thundering rain, for about six hours, and I’m wondering about the man with the shiny bald head, does the rain bead and run off like it does on a Windex slippery window… that’s what I like about Sundays, slow, quiet mornings , with time to think about all sorts of things usually unconsidered in the normal course of a regular day  And, last this week from my library, two short poems by John Updike. The poems are from his book, Endpoint and Other Poems, published Knopf in 2009. Stretch What light is tenderer than this of early February at 5:05 p.m. or so, just trying brightness out The trash cans lie emptied and cockeyed on the curb, the trees in the little park hold old snow in their shade, but a bird's rude song pierces the cloud of expectant twigs while a real cloud turns magenta in the newly prolonged blue. TV As if it were a tap I turn it on, not hot or cold but tepid infortainment, and out it gushes, sparkling evidence of conflict, misery, concupiscence let loose on little lashes, in remissions of eager advertising that envisions on our behalf the the better life contingent upon some buy, some needful acquisition. A sleek car takes a curve in purring rain, a bone-white beach plays host to lotioned skin, a diaper soothes a graying beauty's frown, an unguent eases sedentary pain, false teeth are brightened, beer enhances fun, and rinsed hair hurls its ting across the screen: these spurts of light are drunk in by my brain, which sickens quickly, till it thirsts again.  And here it is, a final travel poem of a sort. Well, maybe uniquely of my sort. And my final poem of this week's post. path to enlightment I intend to put my brain on a leash this morning because I’m thinking I want to be taken seriously as a poet and adult human being of the masculine persuasion and nobody takes nobody serious who’s always running off at the brain like I’m prone to do, chasing every little bushy-tailed squirrel that happens to cross my path to enlightenment, meaning making it hard to get to the end of that path, difficult to find the enlightenment that one naturally expects of a human being of the masculine persuasion and a poet to boot never even close chasing squirrels instead… but, second-guessing myself, something us chasing-every-squirrel types rarely do, and never without good cause, I’m reconsidering my decision to adopt the leash-constrained mode, thinking to abandon the chase for the mantle of seriousity expected of poets and adult human beings of the masculine persuasion because there are advantages to the chasing-every-squirrel state of mind, like flushing out a bird bath, getting rid of all the leaves and algae and bird poop that collects in the presence of birds and shallow water, giving it a good flush, a good scraping out, leaving behind clear water, water free of entrenched distraction, water renown for it’s clear thinking, water that knows its own mind - and I’m thinking that is a clear advantage for the chasing-every-squirrel state of mind, because how is one to find enlightenment when the path is strewn with leaves and algae and philosophical bird poop? just won’t work… if you want to find enlightenment you have to clear the path, flush the pump, like you flush a birdbath and that’s what a chasing- every-squirrel state of mind, freed from the leash and on the chase, is good for, stirring up such a frenzy, a regular twister of misdirection that blows all the extraneous crap out of the way, leaving a clear path, enlightenment just over the next rise… seriously…  The end. All the normal stuff here, and this  POEMS AT AN EBOOK RETAILER NEAR YOU |
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