After the Rains, a Day in May on Mayfair

Of Fathering and Mothering and Gardening

Once upon a time

in spring,

a little cottage-dwelling in

a valley,

(where the mountains bring

and bring and bring


and bring

and bring),

many a thing

set out to pluck a wintering;

the little boy

and little girl

stood up and left their footprints in

the gatherings

of singing things

and greening things

and other things



born to leave

once upon a time,


in spring.

dear verses of the twenty-first
century,
with your double
wide
enlightened
pride,
what you most 
need
is a thorn in your side.




-------




Merchant Culture

for Clem

I’ll trade you a drop of snow

for a lyrical poem,

a parking lot 
for a muffled moan,

the justice card

for the nine of swords,

a soldier’s heart

for a kettle of gold,

the perfect verb

for the face of a lord,

a Persian word 

for an off-chord, 

a thousand tears,

a million tomes,

one drop of snow

for a lyrical poem.

At the gallery the other day, I said to a customer, If there's anything I can help you find, just lemme know.  He replied that just that morning, he'd lost a sock in the laundry.


 It was the deadpan delivery that made my day.


----

Rewind

Once

certain,

twice

blind.


-----

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.  


-  Annie Dillard

The Hoop, the Hut, the Raised Hackle

A little learning is a dangerous thing; 

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Pope

-----------------



Last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice.

TSE

------

The poem

The poem as clergy, 

birdie,

infomercial,

heart 

of pearl,

and snapping

turtle, 

florist, 

forest, brown

mustard,

mortar, knuckle,

ghost

buster, 

lizard, laser, 

fuck

of cluster, 

peasant, 

crescent, feather

duster.

------------

A Few Things: 


"Poetry has become sterile, but we can still find realism, humor, and intensity in the satiric impulse."   David Yezzi

Yezzi, New Criterion

"Science may be awe-inspiring, pictures of distant galaxies and so on, but it is not mysterious."  -  John Whitworth  


Walter interviews Whitworth 

------------





Stabbings, poisonings, and beheadings: A Death Guide to Shakespeare: 

E-Verse Radio

*********************


Passings:


 Poet, publisher, and friend Paul Stevens has passed on.  His last word to me was, Onward.  A great loss for many of us:

Fare thee well, Paul Stevens

Joining him, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

Jhabvala

and the great storyteller and wisdom teacher, Chinua Achabe:

Chinua

 




















On the Road

On the way home,
wrote a blue poem.

Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.  And all you can do is go where they can find you.

- Pooh

****

          Yoo Hoo

Some of us are shallow round the edges,

others through and through.  

--------

--------

 Do you suppose we're breeding the subtlety out of the species ?

I twitch,

said the bird.


Me too, said the word.

A Grievance, a Groan, a Redemption

Reading modern literary theory, it often occurs to me we've come to confuse feeling and passion for psychological state, but that's another story for another poet's grievance.

Great Mother of Poetry, forgive me, I have lost all patience for mediocrity.

Mediocrity of feeling and imagination is widely railed against among people of letters, and well it should be, but mediocrity of thought is quietly forgiven.

There are more journals than ever, and every one is filled with mediocrity.  I am regularly asked to blurb mediocre books.  And I write my very own mediocre verse.

A couple of weeks ago, a young unknown poet sent me a few, select poems.

These were not the usual poems.

These were stunning, moving poems.  Heartfelt, keenly observed poems. With depth of thought !  Device, yes, and craft, of course, but depth of thought stood out like a jewel.

I about fell out of my chair.

For all the pokes I take at modern poetry, I do have my moments where all my weary faith is restored.

Mediocrity's saving grace: without it, there is is no excellence.  Yea, that's the ticket.

  

A Grand Total of Hunger, Fire, Stones, and Bubbles

In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, 
boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.

- Elizabeth Goudge


Another warm day in the desert, collecting dirt and little stones, images and bones, and on the way home,  I get to thinking:

Be wildered.

Pulling into the drive and wandering out into the garden with its unfurling lilac, a few more words emerge:

We're all justa buncha bubbles.

Tell that to the people whose home just up the road today up and exploded.

Gas leak, some say

Meth lab, others say --

Either way

I'll bet that family isn't feeling we're all a buncha bubbles.  
Great fingerlings of flame, perhaps, paper, twig, tinder. 

Tell that to the child a world away doubled over in  fear. 

A grand total of hunger, fire, stones, and bubbles fill the air.

I read somewhere

the world was made round so that we can never see too far ahead. 
Or too far behind, I would add.

This makes a bit of sense to me,  all the same, if I were the great creator,
I'd have made perhaps a few more rivers,

which might have made for a few more beans and a little more rice
and a little less hunger

And would you also do away with flame, 
replies the sorrow to the pain. 

Still standing in the garden, Auden begins to fall like rain:

...May I, composed like them 
Of Eros and of dust, 
Beleaguered by the same 
Negation and despair, 
Show an affirming flame. 

Still morose, I step inside and stand before a pile of books on the table.  

I have been studying the Oglala women, alongside Goldblatt on  Early Modern Culture, (specifically, on the public debate which took place re: how  Western Civilizations ought best extinguish indigenous tribes encountered here and there across the globe) -- both of which pound like hammers, and burn like humble homes.  Says SG: How best to appeal to the fears of the civilized during the Renaissance than to convince them the natives were a people devoid of eloquence ?  By which was meant, these were a people with no books.   In the public debates on record, it was relentlessly argued that Indians simply had no language, spoken, written, or otherwise.  And that particular argument, more than any other, seems to have made all the difference.

In the beginning was the word.  

My thoughts begin to blur.  

Still morose, I move into the living room and turn up the music, loud.  

Scattered Pictures, Scattered Poems

In spring, at the end of the day, one should smell like dirt.  
-- Margaret Atwood

First they came for the Twinkies. 

I looked the other way, because I was not a Twinkie.

- Richard Epstein

-

---



The road is long, and the destination has no diagnosis.


-------



---


Poem for Jack

Dear Jack,

When I think of you,

I think of hard knocks,
and soft
shoe.

----





--

---



There Appears to Be

There appears to be a hole in my shoe
says the old
to the new.



----

Poem for a child

with apologies to RPW 

It is always a matter my darling, 
of character 
and metaphor.  

-----

---

I set out to study Spanish, Impressionism, Mme Blavatsky, poetry, children's literature, horticulture, and Hopi civilization, but wound up immersed in the Coven of Grandmothers and the Buffalo People, whose rituals and cosmologies have immersed me in Spanish, impressionism, Mme Blavatsky, poetry, children's literature, horticulture, and Hopi civilization.   

Alcohol Inks on Yupo

There is nothing more supernatural than an egg.

----



Of Western Civ, Coyote, and Indigenousness

No, Virginia, poets are not shamans.

We go to the doctor,

(I've found doctor less
divisive than
scientist) --

We go to the doctor,

we go to the singer,

we go to the lover,

we go to the printer --

some even roam

the dark side of the river,
but I ain't seen a poet
levitate
or walk on coals
or swallow fire

and risk it all

in a long while.


--------





For the shamanistic poets of our day,
may we look to the Middle East.
And weep.

Poem for the Pilgrim in Me

Long may you swim

and long may you roam

and may you never stay too long 

where tribal councils don’t begin

and end on a song,

                a smoke or a poem. 

I have been learning to say no graciously.


It works;

it is sublime

 four

out of seven times.



--



As usual we arrived
a little late

a little stoned
a little wind blown.





-----------


Spring

The parrot down the street is squawkin
time to pick up Vin for stalkin
back roads and broken gardens,
old stones and smokers walkin
bleached skulls and tulips poppin.

Randoms

This from the Atlantic:

Reading Lists of the Itch and Famous

This from Jill Alexander Essbaum:

Obey no rule that impedes good art. 

This from the Guardian:

New Kipling Poems Discovered

Divining Rods

Divining ghosts and goddesses,
mountain tops and river beds,
my guiding star, my nemesis,
my post-modern wards
of Bacchus and Appollo's fest,
deliver me from restlessness.
Extend to me the virtues,
shopworn, grey and borrowed,
but not quite yet --
tomorrow.


---

In art, as in life, when falseness reveals itself,
spirit conceals itself.

--


There's little false about a bird
or a pear,
reports the blossom to the air. 

They took everything from you,

the white gowns, the wings,

even your name,

but I still believe in you,

messengers.

- Milosz

Give thanks for all things

On the plucked lute, and likewise

The harp of ten strings.

Have the lifted horn

Greatly blare, and pronounce it

Good to have been born. 

Lend the breath of life

To the stops of the sweet flute

On capering fife

And tell the deep drum

To make, at the right juncture,

Pandemonium.

Then, in grave relief,

Praise too our sorrows on the

Cello of shared grief.  

- RPW