Here and Now: Snowball

Intense cold everywhere last week, so I celebrate this with a collection of snow photos. The pictures were taken over the last several years in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.

A collective shiver is in order.

I return to the anthology this week, taking poems from Language for a New Century, a collection of "Contemporary poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and beyond. The book was published by W.W. Norton in 2008.

I'm doing something different this week with my library poems. Instead of using my own library, I'm taking poems from a book lent to me by a friend. The book is River Flow, New and Selected Poems, by David Whyte. I have never read Whyte before and I'm looking into touring his poems with you.

Born in 1955, Whyte is an English poet. He moved to the United States and began his writing career in 1986 and in 1988 accepted an offer to become a corporate adviser on, among other things, creativity in the work place. He identifies himself as a British American so I assume, though it's not specifically mentioned in his on-line biography, that at some point he took American citizenship along with his natural British citizenship.

In one instance I went my own history for inspiration.

And my stuff old and new.

cold

Laurence Wong

Down in the Mid-Levels

a long time coming

Johnny Cash

Man in Black

my function

Rishma Dunlop

Saccade

a mid-winter poem

David Whyte

Horses Moving Through Snow

the vault

Fatima Mahmoud

Excerpt from What Was Not Conceivable

all brothers to all brothers

David Whyte

Light Over Water

King of Serial Heroes

Amir Or

blow job

illusions

David Whyte

The Wildflower

french fries

Yon Shu Hoong

Chicago

it's easier to imagine old than remember young

David Whyte

The Vows of Glencolmcille

truthies

I meant this to be a deep, multidimensional poem. Everyone who's read it has taken it on its face.

Keep it simple, stupid, something for me to remember from now on. Play to my strengths.

cold

I fight the coming
of this day,
no promise
to it

things to do
I don’t want done,
especially not by me

but it’s a cold
world…

cold

goddamn it’s
cold

My first poet from this week's anthology, Language for a New Century, is Laurence Wong.

Born in 1946 in Hong Kong, Wong received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Hong Kong and his PhD at the University of Toronto. His publications include eleven books of poetry, five collections of "lyrical essays," six collections of critical essays, and numerous translations in a variety of languages.

The poem is translated from its original Chinese by the poet.

Down in the Mid-Levels

Resting my head on the dawn chorus,
I am a green water weed
quietly listening to the soft silver ripples
streaming into the golden glass of dawn.
Deep in the glass, a transparent vein of light
is slowly flowing over lock and upon lock of lilac wind.
The lilac wind is your soft hair
floating over the golden comb of dawn, noiseless

From January, 2011, a story of another cold night.

a long time coming

fever

chills

aching bones

a dark poem
all the long night's
making,
forgotten now

black cloud
covers the rising sun,
dispersed
by the cold spreading
light

night to day

a long time
coming

Earlier this month was the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union Address when he summoned Congress and the country to a War on Poverty.

I was in the second semester of my sophomore year of college. By the end of that year I was in Peace Corps training at the University of New Mexico. I was the youngest, least educated, and certainly least sophisticated of the other members of my class. And, though I completed the training I did not, in the end, go on to an overseas assignment. Probably the best thing for all concerned because at 20 years old, I was not nearly ready for the level of responsibility required.

But the training was one of the defining experience of my life. In 1964, the Peace Corps truly did inspire and attract many of the best and brightest. For myself, essentially a displaced country boy, associating with this most talented group of men, living with them, learning with them, playing with them, gave me a chance to learn more about myself and my potential than any number of years of traditional education and experience could ever have. I discovered I could be a lot more than I had though I could ever be.

Those days of the War on Poverty and the start-up to the Great Society were heady times for those of us who shared the dream. The spirit of that time is still in me, leavened as it had to be, by more than 30 years soldiering in the battlefields of that war, learning the realities of the challenges.

But as I said, the spirit of 1964 has never left me, and I was reminded of that when I heard this song on a drive home last week from downtown. It is a naive and maybe cheesy song, but it is a song that holds the secret of that better, more hopeful time, and I treasure the way it made me feel as I heard it again on the radio.

I include the song this week to honor and remember the spirit of those times, as well as the song's writer and performer, the man in black himself, Johnny Cash.

The song was originally released in 1971 in an album of the same name.

Man in Black

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,

Why you never see bright colors on my back,

And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.

Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,

Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side off town,

I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime

But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,

Or listened to the words Jesus said,

About the road to happiness through love and charity,

Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' might fine, I do suppose,

In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,

But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held behind

Up front there ought'a be a Man in Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,

for the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,

I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,

Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,

Believen' that the Lord was on their side,

I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died

Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,

An things need changin' everywhere you go,

But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right

You'll never see me wear of suit of white.

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,

And tell the world that everything's OK,

But I'll try to carry a little darkness on my back,

'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black.

After all the cold, a warming trend.

my function

it is a beautiful day

today,

the kind of day I love,

temperatures in the mid-twenties,

bright sunshine,

the icicle splinters flying

in the wind gone, the air still,

trees reaching high

to reassert themselves

as tall guardians

of the day...

it's the early mornings,

before the sun has risen that

has been hard on me

for the past several days,

the cold, colder in the dark,

a silent knife slicing

skin from my cheeks and nose...

dog-walking in the freezing dark,

the dog loving it all sniffing and smelling

every leaf hanging cold and crisp

and dry on every ravaged

bush along the way, looking for,

who knows a dog's mind, especially

this dog, near strange

in the extend of her curiosity,

missing her cat friend

who would walk with us

and encourage dog along if she began

too long dallying, pushing her cat head

against dog's neck, time to go, time

to go, the cat, like me, not so happy

with the cold as the dog, the cat, Mama

cat, our morning companion, unseen

for over a week now....

I woke, as usual,at 5 this morning,

lying in bed, dog, as usual

impatiently rattling her collar

beside the bed, time to go, time

to go, lying in bed,

thinking of the cold and the dark,

wishing dog had an opposable thumb

so that I could give her the leash

and tell her to go walk

herself

she would in a minute if she

could, I know,, my small function

in our morning exercise,

we both know, is only to hold the

leash

Photo by Dora Ramirez-Itz

Rishma Dunlop is my next poet from this week's anthology. She was born in India in 1956 to Sikh parents who immigrated to Canada in 1958. She grew up in Quebec and her MA and Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia and is now known as an award-winning Canadian poet, playwright, essayist and translator. She is a professor of creative writing, English and education at York University. She has published five books of poetry.

This is my first reading of this poet and it left with a feeling of envy I haven't felt since the first time time I read Junkman's Obbligato from Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind, thinking, damn, I wish I could do that.

Saccade

The chronicle of the city unravels

like a prayer cloth

calm of storybook nurseries, book codes,

swift calligraphy of desire.

The city dreams us

gives us exigencies in eavesdropped

stories, undistinguished pleadings

requiems for forgetting.

There is a small star pinned where Hiroshima used to be.

It's late and someone's almost forgotten how to convince you

he's telling the truth.

Even in sleep he cries out for help

and you minister to him

a woman who likes history returning for it wounded.

Blackbirds drop from telephone wires

rose petals collect in birdbaths.

Everything stories you. You take Rilke at his word

Taste it everywhere. Wonderland signs:

Eat me. Drink me.

Your hands like hobbled birds

read the classics. The hero enters the arched gate of the city.

In these books it is clear where the story of the city begins.

In the book of lost entries

nothing is pure but the forgotten things

crossed out words on a haunted page

useless dark of ink.

Today the city is unwriting itself

in a coffin of glass.

In the blurred doorways.

in skyscrapers that rise silver and blue

cool as nothing could ever make them burn.

Sprayed on concrete walls

Where is my beautiful daughter

Emma was here

Escichame

I pray for you Lucas

Fuck the politicians

Recuerdame

Inamorata

the billboard with the women tall

with tall legs against white sand and blue ocean

red mouths puckered high above the crowds

smooth lipsticked smiles longing for cigarettes and sex.

Across the city, lights are shutting off

Good night, good night.

On the radio, the sirens are singing

Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch

ethereal lullaby Don't leave Nobody but the baby

Come lay your bones

On the alabaster stones

And be my ever-lovin' baby

Reading Emily Dickinson

Beauty crowds me till I die.

You feel the loneliness.

That's what is left of the dream of beauty.

Beauty

So many kinds to name.

You hope for a day soft at the edges

for something, someone to

know the small hands of rain

to be like rain

wet with a decent happiness

Kiss the gleaming armor of the world.

Feel its electric purr.

Close your hands on wind-stunned leaves.

Bluff the scars of history with your mouth.

Again from January 2011, the dark of the season bringing out the dark of me.

a mid-winter poem

I have the feel

of a string running out,

a slackness in my lifeline,

all I am reduced to

loose ends

I've done many things in my life,

good and worthwhile things,

though none lasted longer than

it took for my shadow

to fade around the corner

my proudest legacies

remembered only by me -

like clouds blown apart

by a rising wind, so much more

fragile

than I had imagined

and now the line that anchored me

to the future

has gone slack and I feel just another

of the world's many forgettable

loose ends

Here's my first poem from this week's featured poet, David Whyte.

Horses Moving Through Snow

In winter

through the damp grass

around the house

there are horses moving

on the snow

in the half-light

they move quickly

following the fence

until the mist takes them

completely

and evening

is the hollow sound of hooves

in the south field.

In the dark of a morning in the middle of a week, the past not always so past

the vault

there is no movement

in the opaque and enigmatic fog

but for the two of us walking,

and no sound

but the muffled hush

of my soft-soled shoes

and the click-clickity

of dog's nails on the

sidewalk...

the dark mystery

of the morning, adrift in dim haze -

a vault of old

memories stored

for years,

now

released

I open myself

to the past, not always

a good thing

for I am a realist

about all things

including my

past,

and there is no hiding

them

from me

for I know where the bodies

are buried, my own a

and others...

the vault opens

and in this enshrouded morning

shadows

linger behind every

tree

and it seems

I know

their every name

Here, from the week's anthology, an excerpt from a larger poem by Fatima Mahmoud, a Libyan poet and journalist. She published her first collection of poems in 1984, and in Cyprus she founded and edited Modern Scheherazade magazine about Arab women's issues. She sought political asylum in Germany in 1995 and continues to live there.

excerpt from What Was Not Conceivable

Carnations

flee

Carnations

spill their crimson autobiographies

I said:

the ember is the master of fire

the ember is its dust...

Then I became confounded...

what

to offer...

the master's repulsive...

and delicious mouth

I am singed with happiness

endowed

with the stamps of hollowness

lips

dipped in counterfeit songs

a scented

morning and our faces...

and spat out

in handsome

editions...

What

to offer

the master's repulsive

delicious mouth

(translation from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)

This poem is also from January, 2011, and it is included in the mythical "next book" that, so far, has been delayed more than a by one circumstance or another. I'm sorry to report that our beloved Reba and blind cat, both mentioned in the poem, are no longer with us.

all brothers to all brothers

yes,

it's true,

I talk to my animals...

even Reba

who can't hear me,

but she can see my lips move

and know

she is on my mind, like blind cat

knows she is not alone in the dark

when I stroke her head as I pass,

like the friendly nod

I exchange with people

I pass on the street

because we all need to know we are not

alone in the dark -

such an acknowledgement

of our shared passage we should

pass on to the creatures around us -

balm to repair the primordial weld that has bound us all

since creation, the weld that is separating now

as all become remote from the others...

if you believe in God, remember he created us all

as part of his plan and it is not our place

to redraw the blueprints of his creation;

if you do not believe in God,

remember instead

that we are all creatures at base

of common offspring, basic elements

that give us,

as our relatives,

the snake,, the bird, the fish in the ocean,

the lion in the field,, our neighbor

across the fence the daffodil growing

wild as any creature on the meadow,

the earth beneath our feet

and the stars that shine overhead,

all brothers of all brothers

in our most basic

construction

Again, featured poet, David Whyte. I'm really liking what I'm reading, especially his shorter poems.

Light Over Water

Through the light on the upper line of water

three birds

with wings extended into the center of brightness

turn south into the channel

flicking their wings through the currents of air

to a silent horizon that empties the wind of sound.

In that noiseless wind they turn

and in the sodden busts as they lift

the dark throats of the evening birds turn white.

A morning poem from last week.

King of the Serial Heroes

breakfast
downtown again,
my favorite place for breakfast,
the best $40 breakfast
in town...

and
why am I telling you this?

because I have to tell you something
I suppose

and until I have something interesting
to tell you
my breakfast will have to do...

the restaurant
at the Pearl, about a block and a half
from my coffeehouse, so
I'd be going that way even if I wasn't
going there for breakfast...

```

7 o'clock now,
meeting Dee at the restaurant
at 8:30, which means
I'll be leaving here
about 8 o'clock

- here being my regular breakfast haunt
where I just had coffee and toast
this morning, with a turkey sausage patty
for the dog -

- here being also where I am this morning
for a symbolic cup of coffee
so the servers won't feel disrespected
by my absence and so
they won't call the sheriff to investigate
the possibility of foul play having
befallen me -

but, still, such niceties aside, I must leave room
for the coddled eggs...

then, going
downtown on the interstate
on a misty-slack road, computer clogged,
half the traffic intimidated by the weather,
driving 50 miles an hour, and the other half
hitting 85, on the theory that slick roads
won't be a problem if you drive
fast enough to fly
above them...

see,
there, I finally go to the exciting part,
will I make it downtown
or will I die in a wet, dripping and twisted wreck
half-way there?

it's a real drama
this poem

a cliff-hanger,
just like when Zorro
rides his horse off a cliff
into a deep, dark
ravine

you have to come back
next Saturday to see how he survived,
"how," not "if," because we know he did survive
just don't know how, Saturday afternoon
movie serial heroes, like God himself,
moving in mysterious ways
to always beat the odds, survive
for a second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.
coming...

I am the hero of all my stories,
as you well might know,
so expect a dramatic, bloody car crash,
from which I will crawl, unhurt,
to continue my Wednesday morning quest
for my $40 breakfast

King of the Serial Heroes - that's me

Photo by Dora Ramirez-Itz

Amir Or is an Israeli poet, editor and translator. Born in Tel Aviv in 1956, he has published ten volumes of poetry with work appearing in more than 40 languages.

I can't say I know for sure what this poem is about. Some kind of political or cultural metaphor not available to me, I'm guessing, but the vivid imagery does attract enough to make me want to continue to try to figure it our. Or maybe it's just as simple as a love story turned torture nightmare. Or maybe it's just observations from a Mapplethorpe retrospective.

blow job

In the beginning there was desire, they say.
And then some.

The lips that clung to this dick
suckle ow, blind with rapture
a live dildo, a hard-on Truth,
the deeper the more blessed,
the more
the deeper.

Later,, blue as well. the hand that was tied
with the black stocking between the legs,
the groin tucked in the flayed hide (dressed and dyed).
the whip up the ass
will leave nothing
but doubt.

And primarily the grip.The involuntary
gagging motions take a small death first
before begging for more
only more
deeper:
heat up the blue rim.
Pull the trigger.

(Translated from Hebrew by Tsipi Keller

This is another poem from January, 2011, one not included in my off-rumored next book. Don't know why. I kind of like it.

illusions

running
late in the mornings
these days

helping blind cat
when she gets up from
her night's sleeping

find
all the necessaries,
food, water, litter box

so that I can put her back
in the chair
for her day's sleeping -

a great temptation
at that point
to put myself back to bed

because
getting up in the winter
in the dark-dark

an hour before sunrise
does not energize me like
getting up in the soon-light

of summer,
there being something about the dark
makes the cold morning colder

while the dim of early summer
morning
makes the promise of a cooler day

and lie
that it is,
I enjoy the illusion -

for illusion
is the soft wrap
that consoles us on sharp-edged

and prickly days
when goodness and mercy
do not follow us through the winter/summer

days
and nights of our lives -
and that fellow three booths down

looks exactly like a fellow I knew
forty years ago,
the suicide obsessed fellow,

the fellow
I talked into holding out for another
day twice on a rooftop-

skunk-drunk he was
and I was too
but we both came down -

and I am enjoying the illusion
that he looks exactly like he did
forty years ago

and that I must as well,
and that forty years passed,
he made it

and I made it, but mostly
he made it through the mummy-wrap mist of
his fearful nights

and that's a nice illusion to have at six-thirty
in the dark dark
morning

Here's another short poem by David Whyte.

The Wildflower

In the center of this wildflower
the names of things revolve like planets
and as if pulled by tides
and the gravity of deep space
the names of things move into form
through enormous distance.

Like electrons enchanted
by the atom
they show their undiscovered seas
as they revolve.

But for the dark flower
I give it the name of a hidden moon.

I am like the boy scout I wasn't - always prepared.

french fries

I have started
writing my obituary

not because
I expect it to be used

any time soon, but
because it will be the last piece of writing

to appear
under my name

and I want it to be right
and well written...

six pages
so far

and just leaving
Lee Elementary for a new life

as an entry-level
junior high scholar

```

I wasn't aware my lie
was so interesting...

so I'm thinking maybe
this isn't just

an obituary maybe I'm
writing a memoir

which impresses me
because "memoir" sounds like

a French word
and I've always admired French writers

```

or maybe I ought to just
take my six pages

and cut it down to
a more reasonable length

like maybe half a
page

because, me - except for french fries -
not having much French stuff

in me

Born in 1966 in Singapore, Yong Shu Hoong is an award winning poet and literary advocate. He holds a computer science degree from the University of Singapore and an MBA from Texas A&M University, College Station. He has published four volumes of poetry.

Chicago

The infinite extent of windows
on the observation deck
reminds me off illuminated fish tanks
that once held my gaze in Van Kleef Aquarium,
the therapy of bubbles. But here,
there's only the chatter of sightseers
drowning out the symphony of skyscrapers.

I navigate my nose closer toward the sky,
staring out with m fish eyes
from my enclosure into another realm.

Then, with the decibel of voices dwindling,
I look down over streets, the big shoulders
of buildings, watching the city bustle in silence
as my mind fills with strange thoughts
of the Flamingo sculpture suddenly taking flight,
the Art Institute's stone lions roaring to life -
How I have again missed out
on anarchy and outrage, trapped
behind the sheen of shatterproof glass.

Here's another from January, 2011, also in the book. In 2014, I guess I'm one of the junior-senior on my quarterly doctor's visit. In the school of getting old, one does advance quickly.

it's easier to imagine old than remember young

at 67, I'm
not the oldest person
in the doctor's office, more
of a sophomore-senior, a little older
than the spry and fresh-faced freshman,
younger than the junior-seniors,
but not nearly as old as the senior-
seniors

like la viejita,
shuffling in from the cold,
a little round dumpling
of a woman
all wrapped n a coat and cloak
and red knit tam,
moving slowly to the receptionist
on fat feet
overflowing pink house slippers

she thinks she remembers
a time
when she was proud of her
slim, dancing feet,
her delicate hands, long proficient
fingers,
her black hair streaming well past her shoulders,
the fire in her eyes
in flickering candle light

she thinks she remembers
this, but she's not sure -
she might be thinking of the pretty girl
on the novela that comes at 3 o'clock
weekday afternoons

Mija,
she says in Spanish
to the receptionist, I can wait

but tell the doctor not too long,
she says

Porqu Dios me espera,
and he will not wait for ever

Here the last poem of the week by featured poet, David Whyte. As noted in the introduction, his poems this week were taken from his book River Flow, New & Selected Poems.

The Vows at Glencolmcille

It's as if the solid
green of the valley
were an island
held and bound
by the river flow
of stone
and when
in summer rain
white headstone
turns black
and the central green
is light-wracked
round the edges,
that dark
reflective gleam
off rock
becomes
an edging brilliance
that centers
a field
and makes us
see it
as deep emerald.

New from last week; the last for this week. I've always wondered about those logo shirts. When did it occur to the corporate ad flacks that they could get people to wear their advertising for free.

truthies

fella
in the booth in front of me
is wearing a shirt
advertising
Squaw Valley

maybe he went skiing there,
or at least he wants us to believe he did,
he might have just bought the shirt
at the ski-shop at the mall
and has never seen any more snow
than he sees
when defrosting his refrigerator...

you never know

so many ways for people to lie
about themselves these
days, so many ways to create
an image of themselves, at least the self
they'd like to be - just for the price of a t-shirt
they can have been anywhere,
done anything, with
anybody...

not for me,
I don't allow my body
to become a billboard for anyone
or any place or anything, my shirts purposefully
"no-comment" shirts,
bland, but for the color of the day,
no products, no events, no vacation hideaways,
no sports teams get the pleasure of my free promotion

if I've been to Squaw Valley
you won't know about it from reading my shirt, for
my shirt includes neither truth nor lies,
just plain old shirt...

that's because I believe in truth in shirting, the old truth
that if you don't have nothing to say,
don't say nothing and I don't have nothing
to say on my shirt

that's because I do all my truthing and lying
in my poems and that's where
you might find the story my trip to Squaw Valley
if I've been there or maybe not

that's because truth in poetry
is about the same as truth in t-shirts,
you reads the story
and takes your
chances

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