I have my regular cache of new poems this week and old poems from my most recent poetry book,
Places and Spaces.
Places and Spaces is a book of five extended travel poems, bookended by short introductory poem and a short closing poem. The five long poems are each way to long for "Here and Now" so I'll just extract a few lines from each.
A quick look though my library didn't present to me any anthologies I wanted to do this week, so all the poems that aren't mine this week come from my library.
These are them, plus mine.
Me
exquisite child
the storm that became us all
Annamayya
from God on the Hill - Temple Poems from Tirupati
Me
spring storm
home court
Paul Guest
Regarding Your Application for Many Imaginary Positions
Me
yes, we have none today
John Updike
Bird Caught in My Deer Netting
Me
from On the Cusp of Confederate Winter
Grace Paley
Having Arrived by Bike at Battery Park
Me
from squirrels
Sharon Olds
Sunday Night in the City
Station
Late
Me
from Ruidoso
Lucille Lang Day
desert
Me
Liar's Club
Terry Borst
It Was Love at First Sight
Me
from To the Rockies
Shah D. Patel
Mine
The Rule
Me
stumbling on the way
Suni Freeman
For My Grandfather
Me
from Sleeping with Andy Devine
Yuan Hung-Tao
Saying Goodbye to the Monk Wu-nien
Me
I can hardly wait until October
Jack Kerouac
The 101st Chorus
Me
too hot
Me
from Silver City and Beyond
Lorenzo Thomas
Lifelong Learning
Me
storm
I start this week with two new poems, written on successive days, the second an elaboration/extension of the first.
exquisite child
she's a tiny
young woman,
five feet or less,
and slight,
like a sprite
dancing in the forest,
like a cat, she
purrs, likes to rub herself
against every man
as blameless as the cat
she reminds me of...
what an exquisite child
she must have
been,
a doll
not built
for
the rough hands
of little boys -
innocence and beauty
in a world
that honors neither,
uses both
for ugly
ends...
the storm that became us all
meant to write a poem
yesterday
about an imaginary woman,
a woman from True Detective
magazine, not the big-breasted
blond over-flowing her skimpy dress
but the other one
the dark-haired one,
like Theda Bera of silent movies
full of dark possibility,
she
who seduced from a lost-child face
in a can-be-yours-for-a-price
body,
a price most men are always
willing to pay
---
but, with
the poem's first lines complete,
a child sits in the booth
across from me, a young girl,
maybe ten years old,
a very pretty girl in a child-girl
way, open eyes, ready smile,
telling stories to her younger brother,
wise and bright, and somehow
merged in my mind with the vamp
I invented, the two together
becoming a new
invention
in a different poem
from the one
I started
a story of
Eve
reborn...
---
meanwhile,
thunder outside,
strong winds, another storm coming,
a reminder that Eve,
seeker of wisdom
brought the storm that became
us all
Tallapaka Annamayya, who lived at the hilltop shrine of Tirupati in South India in the fifteenth century, is said to have composed a song. a day for the god of that temple. The book,
God of the Hill, Temple poems from Tirupati is a collection of many of those songs, translated by
Velcheru Narayana Rao and
David Shulman.
Following are several of those songs.
You needn't come any closer.
Just ask me from a distance.
Did I ever say no to you?
Don't stand beside me and beg.
The flower in my hair might fall on you.
You don't have to squeeze my hands.
The stones in my rings might hurt you.
You needn't some any closer.
Don't take on your lap and stroke me.
The musk I dabbed on my ears might stain you.
You don't have to hold me to make me say yes.
You might be scorched by my sighs.
You needn't come any closer.
You embrace me, you coax me:
you'll have sandal all over you,
straight off my breasts.
You made love to me, god on the hill.
Now you're drowning in my passion.
You needn't come any closer.
----
Anyone with love
would become like him.
He's addicted to both his wives.
That's why he needs four hands.
He's done it thousands of times
in all kinds of ways.
No wonder he has so many forms.
Anyone would become like him.
He especially likes love after quarrels.
That's why at times he turns his face away.
He's handsome beyond compare. Playful, too.
Notice his long fingernails.
Anyone would become like him.
Because he likes pleasure to last forever,
he's come to live on this solid mountain.
Bound to life in this world,
he lives inside everyone.
Anyone would become like him.
----
It's not easy to see you.
We're human and you're god.
Thank god for demons.
They pester the gods, and then you want to help,
so you come down to earth, and we get to see you.
It's not easy to see you.
It's even good when goodness fails.
The wise appeal to you, and you come down
to bring goodness back. Then we get a chance
to serve you.
It's not easy to see you
If you ask us, you devotees
are better than you. You're always with them,
wherever they are, god on the hill.
They tell your stories, and we listen,
over and over, so we have you.
It's not easy to see you.
As I said, I'm featuring this week pieces from my ebook of travel poems. I begin with these two poems, the introduction and the closing poems to the five poems that make up almost all of the book.
spring storm
clouds
dark as the devil's black
eyes
behind
as we race to clear skies
ahead
home court
there is pleasure
in travel
but comfort
in routine and everyday
so
i'm back,
second table from the rear,
by the window,
back to the river,
looking out on the corner
of Martin
and Soledad,
San Antonio, Texas
life
in the slow lane
looking
for a poem
in all the old familiar places
I know I've used this poem before, but it's so funny, every time I pick up the book, it seems to fall open to this poem. The book is
My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, published in 2008 by HarperCollins. The poet is
Paul Guest.
Regarding Your Applications for Many Imaginary Positions
Regarding your applications for many imaginary positions,
such as Glorious Leader of the Lutheran Jihad,
which you were good enough to explain
would pay no salary and convey no health benefits
or eve obligate us to acknowledge you
as a fellow human being,we wish to thank you
for every assurance your tendency
toward unfettered rage is in you past,
and that a movie like
A Clockwork Orange
or the good parts of
Saving Private Ryan
would give us an idea of how you'd wasted
the best years of your life. All of us
nodded when we say ourselves in you
and your poignant cries for help
even as we forwarded them to the legal department.
We trust you don't mind.
We appreciate you seemingly robotic sense
of initiative and attention to detail,
to say nothing of the shockingly candid
photographs of you in bed with your girlfriend,
though we respectfully suggest
there are very few women who enjoy
what the professionally shot set
appears to show you doing,
and further we have reason to believe
you picked her up on Ninth Street
behind the weird carwash
one night when the desperation was too much to bear.
That is why it gives us pleasure
to say we have found someone else
who best seems to fit our imaginary needs
at this time. Not only do we wish you luck,
we wish you would stop burning effigies across the street.
yes, we have none today
sociologically,
metaphysically,
and astronomically
I believe that
yes,
it is true
we have no bananas
today
and probably many more days
to come
since the decline in power
of the guarantors
of our bananas, the despots,
tyrants,
and banana barons
of Central America
and
I believe it is true
that this is why the lyric
bird
bird bird
bird is the word
bird bird
bird
is the word
has been rummaging around in my brain
for at least three weeks
and also the probable cause
for my inability to remember
if the bird in question
is part of actual song,
or a jingle for Thunderbird wine,
or a song lyric
transposed to Thunderbird wine
by those of us who drank
too much too often
of the bird
waking on subsequent mornings
with a thunderbird
of a headache
which is the likely reason
some of us learned no algebra
in algebra class, what brain we had available
at the time concentrating
on our algebra teacher's exceedingly fine
legs, disgusted with ourselves
at how in our post-Thunderbird stupor we were lusting
after veritable ancient, 40, at least,
but damn fine legs
and a nice ass
too
as she, with her back to us,
scribbled nonsensical numbers and letters
on the blackboard, as if we were to pay any attention
to those numbers and letters and the totality of algebra
with that ass staring us in the face...
which is why it took me ten years
to finish college,
pining for the long-legged past
all my subsequent math teachers
warty old men with barely any ass at
all
and maybe even why I continue
to attempt
to be a poet, being as how our English teacher
was 87 years old with varicose legs
and a droopy ass (what could be seen of it),
leaving nothing for us to do but read
the classic canon of fine
literature,
"Silas Marner," et. al.
while writing deathless lines of poetry and prose
to which, of course, she never extended
any hint of appreciation near the extent we though it
deserved
which probably explains
why
Faulkner was a drunk
and Hemingway pulled a shotgun
on himself
all of which proves
how complicated and interconnected
is the world and the universe
of birds
and wines
and teachers
and, of course, bananas
of which we have none today
Next, something a little unusual, a poem by
John Updike, from his book of poems,
Endpoint, and other poems. The book was published Albert A. Knopf in 2009.
Bird Caught in My Deer Netting
The hedge must have seemed as ever,
seeds and yew berries secreted beneath,
small edible matter only a bird's eye could see,
mixed with the brown of shed needles and earth -
a safe, quiet cave such as nature affords to the meek,
entered low,on foot, the feathered head
alert to what it sought, bright eyes darting
everywhere but above, where net had been laid.
Then, at some moment mercifully unwitnessed,
an attempt to rise higher, to fly,
met by an all but invisible limit, beating wings
pinioned, ground instinct denied. The panicky
thrashing and flutter, in daylight and air,
their freedom impossibly close, all about!
How many starved hours of struggle resumed
in fits of life's irritation did it take
to seal and sew shut the berry-bright eyes
and untie the tiny wild knot of a heart?
I cannot know,discovering this wad
of junco-fluff, weightless and wordless
in its corner of netting that deer cannot chew through
nor gravity-defying bird bones break.
This next piece is from very early on in
On the Cusp of Confederate Winter, the first of the five extended travel poems that make up my ebook,
Places and Spaces.
Each of my travel poems is essential a daily journal of where I went and what I saw. This trip was a long loop from San Antonio, through Arkansas, Tennessee, a touch of Kentucky, and West Virginia to Columbus, Ohio, where I picked up my wife at the Columbus airport. (I like to drive; my wife doesn't, so typically I take off several days ahead with my dog and then she flies to where we meet her, about halfway.)
After I picked up Dee up at the airport, we spent a day in Columbus, then went back through West Virginia to Roanoke where we spent two days, then started back south on the Blueridge Parkway. When the weather got too bad on the Parkway, we headed home through, again, a sliver of Kentucky, the through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and, through Houston, back to San Antonio.
It was a great trip.
...Dallas to Little Rock
on I-30
a pick-up
pulling a horse trailer,
alone in the back,
one horse,
a palomino,
golden mane and tail
and eyelashes
flaring
in the wind,
brown eyes watching
as I pass
Temple, Belton,Waco,
places
where dull people
go
to get duller
a hawk
slips slowly from the air
to land on a fence post,
watches,
sees all with yellow eyes
that view all that moves
as potential
prey
Red Oak,
little town before,
now just a raggedy
little spot on the road
on the poorer fringe
of the ever-spreading Dallas
metroplex
I stopped once for dinner
in Red Oak,
heading home from a
meeting
in Dallas 25 years ago,
a wonderful dinner
prepared
and served
by a little old lady
no more than four feet
tall
Dallas,
where snooty
white
right-wingers
go to get snottier,
whiter,
and even more right-wing
xurbs follow I-30 to the
northeast,
a paved-over world,
the only grass that
survives
struggles
in the cracks
in the concrete
Waxahachie,
I like it
because saying the name
makes my mouth feel good
and the only reason
to say it
is when you're passing
through it
orange sky
like mist
through a forest
of orange leaves
Texarkana...
...Texarkana,
where a line down the middle
of the street
in a business district
divides
one state from the other -
appealing to my dislike
of lines and boxes
and borders
that don't mean anything
lakes and ponds
and waterfowl,
a crane passes over the road
low,
long neck outstretched
wings spread
a dark shadow
against
a nearly dark sky
dark dark
nigh
in Arkansas
red sky
in my rearview,
the road like a tunnel
though the dark,
tall thick forest
on either side
Hope behind me,
Little Rock ahead...
Now, something else a little different, a poem by
Grace Paley, from her book,
Leaning Forward, published by Granite Press in 1985.
Having Arrived by Bike at Battery Park
I thought I would
sit down at one of those park department tables
and write a poem honoring
the occasion which is May 25th
Evelyn my best friend's birthday
and Willy Langbauer's birthday
Day! I love you for your delicacy
in appearing after so many years
as an afternoon in Battery Park right
on the curved water
where Manhattan was beached
At once arrows
straight as Broadway were driven
into the great Indian heart
Then we came from the east
seasick and safe the
white tormented people
grew fat in the
blood of that wound.
Here's another new one from last week.
from squirrels
squirrel
stalking a nut
in the middle of the busy parking lot
silly squirrel
ripe for squashing
soon
---
dog almost caught
a squirrel
in the park last week...
missed the squirrel
only because
I, holding on to her leash,
wasn't fast enough
but,
close enough
to raise the existential query
in her face,
up against a first-time ever
event - i.e.
what does one do with a squirrel
if one catches it
---
squirrels barking at us
from the trees
as we pass through the wooded
area of the park, knowing
they were safe, telling
the world about it - arrogant
little bush-tailed rats, Bella would climb
the trees to get them, has tried,
but can't
---
ducks and geese
and egrets
and all other manner of water birds
along the river - in the water,in the trees,
waddling on their webbed feet
along the bank - Bella,
consumed by the squirrel wars, has no interest
in them, does she just not see them,
I wonder, or does she understand
that those without wings
shouldn't waste their time chasing
those with (unlike cats, who with feline cunning,
catch the winged ones anyway - and if you've ever
watched a cat stalking, you might consider
that some form of hypnotism might be involved)
or, it could be Bella
has chased the slower more inattentive fowl
and just doesn't like the taste of
feathers
---
a small turtle scrambling
across a concrete apron as the water goes down
in Apache Creek - such an odd mixture
of flippers running and flippers swimming in the inch deep water
before plunging, with a slow turtle sigh, back
into deeper waters...
Bella didn't see - wonder how she would store
in her canine mind such an odd
sight
---
she pushes me into the street to avoid the mud near the curb; doesn't
want
to get her feet dirty
since it's five in the morning, pre-traffic time,
I allow her to follow her dainty
way -
a small risk to avoid mopping the floor
---
mud just dirt with a dash of water, dirt again and easily swept when dry
except in politics when it may never dry or ever be swept away
Next, three short poems by
Sharon Olds. The poems are from her book
Satan Says. The book was published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 1980.
Sunday Night in the City
Hand in hand, we lie on the bed,
our long legs crossed like folded
wings, our long feet touching the
footboard in shadow, carved like a headstone
with grapes. Your hair is ruffled, dark
as black walnut, curled like the tendrils of
vines. Your right hand is in my right
hand. My left hand is in your left.
Arms linked like skaters, we lie
under the picture of farmland: brush
dark and blurred as smoke, trees
lifting their ashen fish-skeletons,
and central to it, over us,
the calm pond
silent as if eternal.
Station
Coming in off the dock after writing,
I approach the house,
and saw your long grandee face
i the light of a lamp with a parchment shade
the color of flame.
An elegant hand on your beard. Your tapered
eyes found me on the lawn. You looked
as the lord looks down from a narrow window
and you are descended from lords. Calmly,with no
hint of shyness you examined me,
the wife who runs out on the dock to write
as soon as one child is in bed,
leaving the other to you.
Your long
mouth,flexible as an archer's bow,
did not curve. We spend a long moment
in the truth of our situation,the poems
heavy as poached game hanging from my hands.
Late
The mist is blowing across the yard
like smoke from a battle.
I am so tired of the women doing dishes
and how smart the men are, how i want to
bite their mouths and feel their hard cocks against me.
The mist moves,over the bushes
bright with poison ivy and black
berries like stones. I am tired of the children,
I am tired of the laundry, I want to be great.
The fog pours across the underbrush in silence.
We are sealed in. The only way out is through
fire, and I do not want a single
hair of a single head singed.
Next, a few lines from
Ruidoso, the second of the five long travel poems in my ebook,
Places and Spaces.
This was a trip I made on my own, with my dog. I had known someone many years before who was from Ruidoso and I had always been curious about the place. I made a loop to Ruidoso then around central and south central New Mexico.
I was disappointed with Ruidoso (in fact, I barely mention it in the poem), but, for me, the getting there is always a bit of a disappointment to me, being more interested in the journey than the destination.
...passing Mescalero -
across the road
from the Tribal Center
2 Apache boys
play
King of the Hill,
rolling
over and over each other
in the rose-colored dust
stylized art
on concrete abutments
along the highway tell
the tribe's
story
which of the stories
to the boys
reenact?
the down slope
from Mescalero to Tularosa
opens up between wooded
mountain sides
to the desert below
desert grasses so dry
they are white
in the morning sun,
like sand,
like a wide ribbon of white sand
between the mountains
I had thought to do a mountain drive,
but a third of the morning
is spent crossing he white grass desert
from Tularosa to Carrizozo,
a desert so unremarkable
I have to stop three times before
Reba finds something interesting
enough
to pee on
Reba
my quiet travel companion
is bored,
sleeping in the back, head
between her paws
a spike of interest
as I pass the Oscuro Bombing
Range
but nothing blows up
oscuro,
the Spanish word for dark or
dim
maybe something did blow up
and I just didn't
notice
entering
Carrizozo,
I skirt the Valley of Fire...
...on the road
by 6:15
the sky
clear overhead,
but all around
dark clouds
lightning flashing
within the clouds,
blossoming pools of
soft white light through dark
gauze
strong winds from the north
and a morning chill
in the air
in the east, a small
break in the clouds,
like a knothole in a fence,
and through it the peach-orange
glow
of the rising sun
still too dark
to see anything
but the sky
no le hace
home bound
i have eyes for nothing
but the road ahead...
Lucille Lang Day is another poet from my library this week, with a poem from her book
The Curvature of Blue. The book was published in 2009 by Cervena Barva Press.
Day, whose work has appear widely in addition to her four books and three chapbooks of poetry, received an M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University. In addition, she obtained and M.A. in zoology and Ph.D in science and mathematics education at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to founder and director of Cervena Barva Press, she is also the director an interactive children's museum in Berkeley.
Desert
The hills are quilled with saguaro cacti
rising from roan soil, some straight
as green telephone poles, others with arms
curving upward, mocking surrender.
Teddy ear cholla looks soft
as a stuffed toy, but sprouts barbed spines;
rufous hummingbirds dip to bright
red tubes at the tips of ocotillo.
Deer mice, desert shrews, gopher snakes
and rattlers hide in the earth
under barrel and pincushion cacti,
all fishhooks and claws.
Horned lizards savor ants
as dust devils hundreds of feet high
spin over mesquite, hedge nettle,
desert rue, creosote and yucca.
This suffices: if my dreams are dashed,
I want to be like the desert - harsh
beauty teeming with life,
proud and prickly in my lack.
Another new piece from last week, thinking about a very interesting discussion I heard on National Public Radio (that happens a lot there).
liar's club
there are two kinds
of reality,
I've learned,
the reality we live
as we live it
and the reality we
remember
later
and the reality
of the lived moment is lost
the moment it passes
leaving the reality remembered
only approximation and
invention...
our memory
does not remember all
it seem,
but just the embed moments
captured
in a strobe light's
flash
of passing reality,
filling the shadows between
with elements of desire
and fear...
this is why you and I
never remember things
as they were, and
sometimes remember things
that never were at all
as a poet
I sometimes try to recreate
the past,
knowing as I do, much of the past
i recreate
is
fiction...
---
it is our brain
that is the storyteller,
we just transcribe
the story
it tells us today
swear on a bible
if you must,
but know as you do
that we are all still liars in many of
our best moments
The next poem is by
Terry Borst, from the Winter 1977 edition of the
Berkeley Poetry Review.
It Was Love at First Sight
sitting in the box
by the turnstile
in the library
were the finest finger
nails in town
painted danish blue
accentuating two complementary
cornflower blue eyes
she fluttered her long lashes
& said thank you
to admirers
a thousand times that day
i/ll bet
i/m in love with her fingernails
i want to chew on her delicious fingers
& lick the polish off
i/m in love with you
marry me
we/ll be happy together
we/ll have a dozen kids
& they/ll all wear
danish blue fingernail polish
be as pretty as you
& i will die fulfilled
i didn/t propose just then
it was the wrong time
i was checking out
a book by james tate
another dippy poet
she would have thought
they/re so impulsive
the town/s overrun with them
what color will she try tomorrow
lavender seagreen jetblack
i will lie away
at night
wondering
Here are two excerpts from
To the Rockies, third of the five extended travel poems in my book,
Places and Spaces.
Our destination this trip was Denver. As has been our custom, I went ahead with our dog, then picked Dee up at the Denver airport. After several days, Dee flew back to San Antonio, and I drove home, passing through some very beautiful parts of Colorado I had not been to before.
In the first we are on our way to Denver; in the second we have reached our destination and, after staying a couple of days, have turned around and are heading home.
...but there's plenty of time
after about 40 miles
i look behind,
a long, straight road
gradually rising
the wind is blowing hard
again today
and like most of yesterday
it's blowing hard against me
little twisters cross brown fields
on both sides of the highway
most throwing up clouds of dust
that move with the wind, but one,
a smaller one, forms a perfect funnel,
about five feet across, keeping
its shape up to a hundred or more
feet above the ground
a tumbleweed the size of a beach ball
blows in front of me,
seems to pace the car for several seconds
then crosses the road
green fields,
perfect circles, planted
to fit the path of the irrigation sprinklers
that circle
circle, circle
spraying their water around ad around
like a merry-go-round whose horses
spit as they pass
the perfect circles of irrigated green
laid across the landscape
of dry and duty brown, the part
that lives or dies depending on the rain
passing through the little derelict towns
that break the tedium
of grey highway
behind and ahead...
---
...a turn south,
and a faraway view of the Rockies,
snow-covered,
looking
like billowy white clouds,
white like fresh laundry
hung in the sun to dry, hugging
the horizon instead,
growing taller into the sky
as we approach for one last
passage
twelve bison
in a line across
a snowy slope
each following the tail
of the other -
at the head of this
strung-out regiment, a bull,
the leader,
knows where to go
and when to go there
and two or three miles
down the road
elk scatter among
a stand of pines,
pushing aside the snow
and pine needles
to graze
canyon wall
reaching high above me...
Here are two short poems by
Shah D. Patel. The poems are from
Poetry, October, 2007.
Mine
Pain trains an undisciplined mind.
I will end yours if you end mine.
Little feet, little feet are playing
Hopscotch among the landmines.
Hope has worked miracles before.
If yours didn't, how can mine?
I could have learned to welcome night,
if only you had been mine.
How dare you put words in God's mouth,
Shail? Why not. He put ashes in mine.
The Rule
Discipline, Free will
Doesn't mean freewheel.
But what about Eros? Let
Eros harrow whom he will.
I have sipped my sip
And poisoned the well.
I am well pleased with my thirst.
I know my thirst no evil.
You'll die of thirst, Shail.
If the salt sea wills.
I wrote this piece last week.
I'm usually pretty laid-back, not normally a hater, but I knew I hated this guy after only about fifteen minutes watching him. It wasn't so much the way he was treating the waitresses, but the arrogant sneer on his face, his obvious enjoyment at what he was doing that caused my reaction.
stumbling on the "Way"
I didn't like
the fat
man
who was here
a couple of days
ago,
kept his hands
clasped
over his bulging belly
like he didn't want
it to get
away...
changed tables
three times
before he found
one
sufficiently clean
for his taste;
found fault with everything
the server did,
sarcastic, smiling all the
while,
creepy smile, like a child
ripping
one wing, the the other
from a captive
fly,
so much fun,
the fat boy thinks,
cats
next, maybe
that yellow tabby that sits
on the porch of the old lady
next door,
more fun than flies
because flies
are mute
and you cannot hear them
scream, not so cats
who yowl with each slice
of the knife, each
poke of the stick,each
flare of butane,
cats,
so much fun
to have a
kitty...
---
my diagnosis - the fat man,
a narcissistic psychopath,
pulling the wings
off
hard
working
waitresses,
probably an element in a
psychopathic sex
fetish...
I didn't like the
fat man,
an asshole,
I might have called him
before my essence was moderated by
finding the Way...
but, may the Masters forgive me,
I still like the pure clarity of it
best...
asshole
This poem, a fond remembrance, is by
Sunil Freeman. The poem is from Freeman's book,
That Would Explain the Violinist, published in 1993 by Gut Punch Press.
For My Grandfather
After the serious part we went downstairs,
as you'd planned it, and told Lem Freeman stories,
recalled your ninety-nine years,
warmed ourselves before the embers of the flame
which burst from the backwoods of South Carolina.
It was a great roast, you'd have loved it.
Liberal Southern Baptist preacher, professor
and fiddler, who pondered reincarnation
and Darwin, held interracial study groups
in your North Carolina home in the 1940s,
and faithfully turned your radio to Jesse Helms,
'cause he was so dumb it was funny.
This whole crazy family is a thundering echo of you.
I once suspected I was your favorite grandchild
but now I think a few of us hoped we were -
and that's the way it should be.
Next, I have a couple of excerpts from
sleeping with Andy Devine, fourth of the five long travel poems in my ebook,
Places and Spaces.
As I said earlier, all of my travel poems are written daily, as I travel. This trip was to Lake Tahoe and back, a long drive, five states if you count Texas. But lots of fun, it being my first time to drive across Nevada, a much wider state than I thought it would be.
As usual the dog and I left several days early, then met Dee in Reno. We drove together from Reno to Lake Tahoe, spent several days (in very lousy weather) then drove home together, catching I-10 in California, the the rest of the way through Arizona and New Mexico, a different route than the one I had taken through those states on my way earlier.
As I said, I love to drive, but this one a bit harder that usual because of bad weather and snow, driving in which I have not experience.
...strong winds pushing across me,
fight me,
steady pressure
pushing me toward the
shoulder
tumbleweeds
whip across the road
in front of me,
chasing the wind,
never catching it
i've known people like this
blown always
by capricious
winds,
never finding
rest
i see a buffalo
in its shaggy brown
coat
eating green sprouts
between red boulders
that's buffalo,
not bison,
Bison Bill is too ludicrous
to consider...
...and on a roadside sign,
"Mojo's Gourmet Coffee"
just in time
i find Mojo's
and a skinny barista with more
tattoos
lots of folks have skin,
and in the corner
a little group of cowboys
sitting at a round table,
some just listening,
two singing
and picking their guitars -
country ballads, Marty Robbins
and the like, and some of their
own
composing
"I once loved a girl in
Albuquerque," sang one
"I wanted to be a cowboy,"
sang the other
as i was leaving,
"but i was always afraid of
cows"
finally,
the end of the day
and my stop for the night
in Kingsman,
getting close now to Nevada
my hotel is on
Andy Devine Trail...
...snow clouds
flow
over mountain peaks
on both sides of me
like buttermilk
over hot cornbread
light snow
dusts desert stones
and plants
with points of silvery
shadow
the snow falls
faster
and soon they all
support white
caps
until
they all disappear
under the white sea
a herd of horses
twenty or thirty of them
chase and play
in a field of snow
past Hawthorn
my route begins
to take me into new mountains...
Running against time constraints this week (I took a day off), I'm sticking with just one poem this week from the anthology,
Pilgrim of the Clouds (Poems and Essays from Ming Dynasty China).
The poem I've selected is by
Yuan Hung-Tao, who lived during the Ming dynasty that ruled from 1368 to 1644. Yuan was born near the end of the dynasty in 1568 and died in 1610.
I like the matter-of-fact, day-to-day nature of classical Chinese poetry, as exemplified by the close of this poem - practical, good-natured advice, one colleague to another.
Saying Goodbye to the Monk Wu-nien
Each five years we meet
then grieve when we must part.
It has taken only three farewells
for fifteen years to pass.
I recall how I tried to study meditation with you
but I was like the yellow poplar
which grows for a while
the shrinks again.
A hundred times I heard you lecture
but my mind remained a tangled knot.
I was like a man born blind
who has never seen red or purple -
try explaining the difference to him
and the more you speak
the more confused he'll get.
I can't bear to leave you now
but it is impossible for us
to stay together.
It is October - the river winds are blowing hard;
please let your hair grow back in
to protect our head from the cold.
I ran across a job possibility that, though I've been completely retired (except for the poetry) since I turned 65 five years ago, I think I would have really enjoyed, a director position in Veterans services at a state university. Having worked to one degree or another with veterans' issues beginning in 1971, it seemed a natural fit for me.
Then I thought about it too long.
I can hardly wait till October
Clint said once,
"A man's got to know
his limitations.
that was right before
he shot the bad
guy
who had failed to recognize
his limitations
Clint never said
a man would always be happy when learning
his limitations
thus
I am not happy today
considering
a return to real life,
a job, a worthwhile endeavor
I know I would
enjoy...
but
I understand the job
too well, and,
as I considered my limitations
last night,
it became clear to me
that
I don't,
anymore,
have the mental discipline
or physical stamina
required
to do the job the way
I'd like to see it
done...
understanding that
bothers me,
but it's
that single word,
"anymore"
that bothers me most
like if I went to the doctor
and she said,
"well, I have some bad news
for you - you'll never
play the piano
again," but since
I never played the piano
in the first place,
it's not like I've lost something precious
I used to have...
there is no lose; there is no
"anymore"...
but in this case
there is a
loss -
a no-more what used to be
before
we expect these loses
when we age, but always something
we'll deal with next week,
never a thing to face
today
---
or maybe,
I tell myself,
it's not age at all,
maybe it's that damn humid
summer
outside the window,
sucking
out of me all
the best of me
maybe
I'll get it all back
when winter winds
blow again
maybe I'll get back
to Mr. Eastwood when mountain fresh days
blow through the hills, when cold air braces
me...
maybe, I'll tell him, we all have our seasons.
Clint, and limitations
that come
and go
with them...
---
I can hardly wait
until October, when the old me
will rise again
---
that's what I tell
myself
Next, by
Jack Kerouac, I have one of the numbered series in his book,
Mexico City Blues.
101st Chorus
We strove to go to movies
And re-discover the happiness
of the baby -
We built up towers of prayer
in ivory and stone -
Roused denizens from their proper
rat warrens -
"Simplificus the baby,
what hast thou thought,
should he be serried
and should we be clobber
the agent of the giant
in the picture?
or let him guess?
I say, let's
let him guess
Then he'll come crying
& sneaking thru the tent
looking for the showing
of proud discontent,
the circus of mirkus,
pile it on thick,
- befriend -
it's a show to go to the movies
but a blow to the baby be"
It's been a really bad start to the summer in San Antonio, not so much the heat, but the humidity.
too hot
too hot
for hair, so I cut it
all off, down
to skin level
no more morning
bed-head
solution,
also,
to the problem of
how to hide my
bald spot
wife says
it makes me look younger
I think it makes me
look
like a pink buoy
in the Houston ship channel
bobbing
bobbing
bobbing
in the wake
of
slow-moving
super
tankers...
but,
whatever it looks like,
it's just too damn hot for
hair
This is from
Silver City and Beyond, the last of the extended poems in my book of travel poems,
Places and Spaces.
I had seen the Silver City road sign on the highway many times. I knew it was some unknown number of mile out there somewhere, but hadn't paid a lot of attention, except that the name reminded me of towns in the western paperbacks I read by when I was ten or so.
Then I read somewhere that it was developing as a little artsy town, so I decided to check it out. Turned out that the only thing I found truly exceptionally was the best coffeehouse I had ever visited to that time. Not wanting to waste the seven hundred or so miles I had already driven, I decided to make a big loop up around northwestern New Mexico to see what I hadn't seen, then through Albuquerque (which, though nothing like it was in 1964 when I went through Peace Corps training at the University, still,being the first place I ever saw a mountain, has a favored place in my heart), then back to Texas through areas of southeastern New Mexico I hadn't been to before.
It was the last trip I made with my dog and constant travel companion, Reba, who, with me, investigated the highways and byways of 20-25 states over the course of several years. It was after this that she developed arthritis and couldn't travel because of the pain, the same pain that eventually became so severe and so constant that it took over her mind and we were forced, after nearly twenty years with us, to the mercy of putting her down.
...558 miles
and one time zone
San Antonio
to El Paso
a long day's drive
in the country
stone-wrapped hills
to long-stretched fingers
of pink Chihuahua Desert
blue sky, blue on blue
on deep ocean blue sky,
to jagged clouds
dark and sharply racing
and little towns along
the way
Segovia Senora Saragosa
Sierra Blanca
Allamore
Belhmora
and Van Horn
all pass
the miles and hours
and skies and hills
and deserts
and all the little towns
pass quickly
on the ridge
a line of dead trees,
oak blight killing scrub oak
all around
reminding me of a picture
I once saw
of a lone tree,
bare and burned,
among the ruins at
Hiroshima
these trees like that,
bare limbs
black
reaching up,grasping
at the sky
in the pasture below
a mare and her foal eat grass
generous and green
the roadway
blasted through stony hills,
in the rock walls on either side
layers
of geologic time...
there,
near the top,
a woman and a man passed,
nearly human,
and down here, by my feet
a fish
struggled,
crawled awkwardly
from the sea...
...going down now,
still on the dirt-rocky-rough road,
but believing an end was in sight
and a herd of deer
cross the road in front of me
a very large buck
and 25 to 30 doe and fawns,
fluffy white and brown stub-tails
flicking
in the wind,
all together as a group,
coming down the mountain
in great bounds, over the road,
then back up
on the other side
winged creatures
who, through fate or folly,
lost their wings
but still try to fly, almost
succeeding
with each great leap
passing through a burned out
portion of forest,
pine and aspen tall and limb-less
black as the coal
they have become while still they
reach for the sky,
i stop and listen to the wind,
all around deep-forest quiet but
for the wind
passing through these poor
standing-dead
ghost whispers...
The last poem from my library this week is by
Lorenzo Thomas, and it's taken from his book,
Dancing on Main Street, published by Coffee House Press in 2004.
Lifelong Learning
One day my Dad
Decided
Whatever else we were in life
We should be rich
I don't like being poor
He said, I don't like
Getting up at 4 o'clock dark
Day after day
a subways to somebody's job
To put 3 dollars ever week
into a Christmas Club
And after scrimp and save and all
What came
The end of every month
The same rob Peter
To pay Paul
There's got to be a better way
"Direct mail"
was the road we chose
To riches
We sent away for
Mailing lists, ordered a crate of doohickeys
Printed 1,000 flashy ads
Return address embossed
The name we picked
H. HAMILTON RICKARD & SONS
Would sound to suckers like we'd been
In business for a century
"Purveyors of fine doohickeys"
We didn't do so well
Of course
A small fortune in stamps was lost
By Christmas
No cash left to shop
We did the best
With what we'd got:
Doohickeys went to all our friends.
What never broken never mends
Here's my last new poem for the week. We've had wonderful rain beginning near the end of April, then through most of May. It has turned the world green, bringing our aquifer that we depend on for just about all our water near high enough to pull us out of rationing for the first time in several years. Two feet short of the mark, and, as the drier part of the summer begins, it seems that's about as close as we can get.
This last rain was a couple of days ago. A storm like this, still something to celebrate.
storm
storm
from the north
from nowhere, massive
front of yellow and red on the radar
a contradiction in rain, falling
like poured from a bucket,
but with no force,
no urgency,
no wind...
but with massive lightning
across the sky,
thin
interconnected
spider webs of light
stretching from horizon to horizon,
some like brilliant lances
spearing the ground
all around,
one striking a light pole
about thirty yards from me,
sparks and very bright light,
then, on the other side of the road,
an even brighter light,
an electric transformer blown
and it's the brightest light I've ever seen,
blinding, white light,
overwhelming the dark
night,
the promised light Revelation,
the sun exploding,
all our worries burned away,
dust
within the charred ash
of our remains
and it's all over now...
As usual, everything belongs to who made it. You're welcome to use my
stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and
me.
And I haven't mentioned it lately, but I'm allen itz owner and producer of this blog.
And diligent seller of books as well, specifically these and specifically here:
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBookstore, Sony eBookstore, Kobo,
Copia, Garner's, Baker & Taylor, eSentral, Scribd and eBookPie
Poetry
Places and Spaces
Always to the Light
Goes Around Comes Around
Pushing Clouds Against the Wind
And, for those print-bent, available at Amazon and select
coffeehouses in San Antonio
Seven Beats a Second
Short Stories
Sonyador - The Dreamer
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