Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Education


For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words false, sallow, illustrate. Also submitted to dVerse OpenLinkNight

Education

He labored hard
at his homework,
tongue hanging out

in deliberate effort
as if the future
happiness of humankind

depended on his
answers. Squinting
in the sallow light

of the desk lamp,
the little boy
chooses True or

False, or arranges
numbers in neat rows
on a page, or illustrates

the digestive system
in Crayola cross-section,
while a single bird

lands lightly on a limb
outside  his window,
singing for joy.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Time to Get Better: or Hot Dang! I'm a Food Blogger!!

I don't like doctors. I suppose doctors, as people, are tolerable, but I don't like waiting interminably with my clothes off just in order to be poked on. (I know, putting it that way sounds half-way enjoyable, but you know what I mean.) I don't have a primary care physician, since I so rarely go, and only go when at death's door--my physician is whoever happens to be manning the ER at the time. At my last doctor visit--I was delirious with fever--I was in the ER for about 6 hrs. They ran a few simple tests, gave me some Tylenol, and charged me several hundred dollars for the honor. (I'll pay up eventually, St. Joes.) Anyway, I've been sick for the past few days, so I figured it's time to pull out the cure-all. I'd rather not have another violating visit to the ER.

What we have here is homemade chicken noodle soup, lovingly assembled by The Good Wife. Chicken, noodles, carrots, onion, garlic, the usual. Since I firmly believe in the healing qualities of hot stuff I added a special feature, Georgia Peaches hot sauce. Simple ingredients: peaches, habanero peppers, onions, celery, sugar, peppers, sour mash bourbon, and spices. (I covered up part of the label for my younger readers' sake--the well-placed peaches on the model look surprisingly like boobies.) The beverage is a SweetWater porter, Exodus. Strong, thick, and chocolaty. I should be better in a couple of hours.

Thomas Wolfe, Prose Poet

(Credit: Carl Van Vechten, p.d.)

Not many readers feel the need make their way through Thomas Wolfe's 700 page doorstop, You Can't Go Home Again. Wolfe's writing is, shall we say, splayed out--for readers who appreciate regular plot sequence and terse sentences, Wolfe will not satisfy. But I like it a lot. One thing I like most about his writing is its poetic feel. He wrote prose paragraphs in the most enjoyable poetic feel of any novelist I have read. Others have noticed this long before I have, and one editor has gone so far as to take some of Wolfe's prose and line it out. In his Forward to the book I am about to quote, Louis Untermeyer wrote, "It has often been suggested that Thomas Wolfe was a poet who elected to write in prose." I agree. The following paragraphs from You Can't Go Home Again are arranged by John S. Barnes in his book A Stone, A Leaf, A Door

Going Home Again

All through the night
He lay in his dark berth
And watched the old earth of Virginia
As it stroked past him
In the dream-haunted silence of the moon.
Field and hill and gulch
And stream and wood again,
The huge illimitable earth of America,
Kept stroking past him
In the steep silence of the moon.

All through the ghostly stillness of the land,
The train made on forever its tremendous noise,
Fused of a thousand sounds,
And they called back to him
Forgotten memories:
Old songs, old faces, old memories,
And all strange, wordless, and unspoken things
Men know and live and feel,
And never find a language for—
The legend of dark time,
The sad brevity of their days,
The unknowable but haunting miracle
Of life itself.

He heard again,
As he had heard throughout his childhood,
The pounding wheel, the tolling bell, the whistle-wail,
And he remembered how these sounds,
Coming to him from the river’s edge
In the little town of his boyhood,
Had always evoked for him
Their tongueless prophecy
Of wild and secret joy,
Their glorious promises
Of new lands, morning, and a shining city.
But now the lonely cry of the great train
Was speaking to him,
With an equal strangeness, of return.
For he was going home again.

But why had he always felt so strongly
The magnetic pull of home,
Why had he thought so much about it
And remembered it with such blazing accuracy,
If it did not matter,
And if this little town
And the immortal hills around it
Were not the only home he had on earth?

He did not know.

All that he knew
Was that the years flow by like water,
And that one day
Men come home again.

The train rushed onward through the moonlit land.


Thursday, October 25, 2012

Emerson on Politics




My last political post was such a rousing success I thought I'd try another. I think Emerson is on to something here.

Our only safe rule in politics heretofore was, always to believe that the worst would be done. Then we were not deceived. 

--from Journals, January 1862

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Wild Onions, (edited for dVerse)


[I don't like to start with disclaimers or explanations, but I feel the need this time to introduce this poem. Some of you have read this one before--I wrote it a few weeks ago for a different poetry prompt community. Forgive me for reposting (I have, hopefully, made a few edits that improved the piece), but one of my friends commented on the original post that she enjoyed my use of enjambment. Since enjambment is what we are after here in this prompt, I automatically thought of this poem. And I also think it meets the criterion of including disparate subjects. Anyway, here goes, for my new friends at dVerse. Join in!]

Wild Onions

Traveling south down the interstate
I passed the mowers mowing,
laying low the overgrowth

along the shoulder of the road.
The sweet smell of cut
grass was mixed with wild onion

which grows in patches here.
Strange how memory resides
in our bodies, not only in our minds;

our very senses pave a road
into the past. I remembered
how, as a kid, I loved

to find these patches,
would crush the thin
leaves in my teeth and wince

at the bitter-ripe taste. But mostly
I remembered a later time,
when I would crank up

the old red Massey Ferguson
to mow the church yard,
twenty sloping acres of grass

and wild onion patches. And you
would come along to ride
beside me, standing on the sideboard

with the dignity of a sentry,
proud to be with me
and I with you. We went

up and down in long
passes, the roar of the rattling
diesel making speech impossible.

Now, for other reasons
speech is impossible,
and I know the meaning

of the words cried out
by David the brokenhearted:
“My son! My son!”


* The last stanza makes use of a story from the Judeo-Christian tradition concerning the Israelite prophet/king David and his son, Absalom. Absalom revolted against his father, and ended up being killed in battle by one of David’s generals. When David heard the news of Absalom’s death, he “wept; and as he went, thus he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’” 

Christian Wiman

(Credit: http://imagejournal.org)
Lately I have been drawn to writing poems that deal with faith . . . and doubt. So, it was with deep pleasure and compassion that I listened to this Bill Moyers' interview with Christian Wiman, poet and editor of Poetry Magazine. Mr. Wiman speaks profoundly about faith, doubt, pain, death, and poetry, and I cannot recommend this interview enough. Take a listen.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Answer


For Three Word Wednesday. Prompt words calm, rattle, know.
Also submitted to dVerse--better late than never. 

The Answer

Long nights,
restless turning, too many
rattling thoughts.

I rise from my bed
wrapped in blackness;
the dark house holds
no comfort. Out
of doors, I walk the
uncultivated field, footsteps
muffled by the long
damp grass, the silent
ground calmly keeping
all her secrets.

I keep walking
onto the new-plowed soil,
the moonlight refracted by
millions of dew-mist prisms.
Coming to the old oak standing
in our field God knows
how long, I kneel
and lay my head
against that ancient bark.

My heart longs
to say something meaningful,
to find words
that will bear witness
to the soul’s awareness
that it is not alone
in this stumbling journey.

I look into the moonlit sky
and know that everything
has already been said.

Friday, October 12, 2012

The Scholar's Opinion--Emerson




A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home & look up his manuscripts to know. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Journals, 1885

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Last Hunt

For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words brisk, detached, miserable.


Last Hunt

We tugged and pushed Mr. Floyd,
sweating at our work
in the brisk January air.
Finally lifted fifteen feet
into a longleaf pine,
he sat on an old upturned bucket
atop an assortment
of splintered planks.
We left him leaning there
against the weathered trunk.

Seventy seasons
he’d hunted here, as his father
and grandfather before.
Many deer had passed
beneath the pine—
some too quick,
some too young,
some missed chances
lamented at evening camp.
Still he came every year,
and waited at winter’s pace.

We returned to the stand
when sunlight slanted
through the trees
in promise of the night.
He nodded, grinning
as he detached himself
from his bucket. “Boys,
I reckon I got her broke in.
Someone else can ride her now.”

The end of spring, twenty-six years
after, I wind my way
through tangled palmettos
and vines in the thick
Osceola woods, braving
miserable mosquitoes to find
the deep-lined pine and climb,
fifteen feet up. The bucket is gone.
A few rotten boards,
the only thing to show
that anyone was ever here.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Until March


Until March

Early spring. I watch
what cannot be seen
in a glance—the seeds
coming to life,
slowly pushing the soil
upward, outward, making
their presence known.

And I wondered why it is that life forms so far from brightness, deep within soil or womb. What fearful mystery does the dark protect? One of the tender plants, curling toward the light, gave me to know that darkness and chaos are not to be feared. It said, “Formlessness and void yield to Spirit—strength comes from weakness, light from darkness. Only when you have known darkness can life upspring.”

Late fall. The
tender plant, now
tall and strong, gives
food for my mouth,
the taste of light sweet
to the tongue.

And deep within the dark center are seeds. I take them in my hands: dried, stored until March, when once again they will take the plunge back into darkness, feel the Spirit,

and burst into light.


--submitted to dVerse. Trying out poetry that incorporates prose passages. 

Mitt vs. Obama--A Political Post!

(Image credit: http://www.justjared.com/)

I'm going to take a chance here with a political post. I know how divisive this can be, and I have no wish to start an argument. But I am a one-issue voter this year. Let me walk you through my penetrating analysis of the current political situation. Read intelligently, and then deal with it.

Here's my issue. As a good Mormon, Mitt does not drink. This means that I stand no chance of being called to a Beer Summit at the White House should Mitt win the election--there will be no more Beer Summits. Sure, it's a long shot with Pres. Obama that I will be called up to add my expertise at the next Summit, but at least with him there is a chance. And from what I understand, the last Beer Summit featured SweetWater beer, my favorite brand. I cannot vote against a man who showed such great taste and sensitivity--it would violate everything I believe in, everything that is great about America, land of the free and brave and thirsty. God Bless America!

**UPDATE**: I stand corrected--SweetWater did not play a role at the last Beer Summit. Treason! Whoever told me this should be thrown in prison for life. Evidently the Pres. drank Bud Light. Is a Beer Summit featuring Bud Light better than no Summit at all? I'm going to need time to consider how this changes things. Certainly Pres. Obama has fallen a few rungs in my estimation.



Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Wild Onions


For Three Word Wednesday. Prompt words dignity, lacerate, ripe

Wild Onions

Traveling south down the interstate
I passed the mowers mowing,
laying down the overgrowth

along the shoulder of the road.
The sweet smell of cut
grass was mixed with wild onion,

which grows in patches here.
Strange how memory resides
in our bodies, not only in our minds;

our very senses pave a road
into the past. I remembered
how, as a kid, I loved

to find these patches,
would crush the thin
leaves in my teeth and wince

at the bitter-ripe taste. But mostly
I remembered a later time,
when I would crank up

the old red Massey Ferguson
to mow the church yard,
twenty sloping acres of grass

and wild onion patches. And you
would come along to ride
beside me, standing on the sideboard

with the dignity of a sentry,
proud to be with me
and I with you. We went

up and down in long
passes, the roar of the rattling
diesel making speech impossible.

Now, for other reasons, speech
is impossible. The thought
lacerates my deepest self, and

I know the meaning of the
words cried out by
David the brokenhearted:

“My son! My son!”



* The last stanza makes use of a story from the Judeo-Christian tradition concerning the Israelite prophet/king David and his son, Absalom. Absalom revolted against his father, and ended up being killed in battle by one of David’s generals. When David heard the news of Absalom’s death, he “wept; and as he went, thus he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’" 



Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Stephen Crane: A Learned Man


XX

A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way,--come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost."

--Stephen Crane, The Black Riders and Other Lines