Hughlings Himwich

Yeats: Knowledge of Reality and the Coming of Wisdom with Time

The knowledge of reality is always in some measure a secret knowledge.  It is a kind of death. 

                                                                                    -- Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 482

                    Though leaves are many, the root is one;
                    Through all the lying days of my youth
                    I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
                    Now I may wither into the truth.

NO ONE IS FORGOTTEN

Moon Time

Moon Time: her gift her fire dying in my arms her body rising until nothing but the bloom of sighing herself to sleep and flying

 

ANGELS & VISIONS Exhibit by PAULINE EATON, NWS

He spoke to no one, no one dared

There came a day there were no more days

Only now we hear what he had to say:

A hard winter, a harder way

A bird of winter sang his praise:

He came to us like a silent word

He spoke to no one, no one dared

 

Leonora's Photography 175-177

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved    

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Equinoxe

(John Coltrane - Equinox-)

 

Leonora's Photography on flick

r

A Thanksgiving Poem

It is in these words

That a river carries the heart along

and makes every day a song

That shadows fall from the trees

to light the way in and the way out

That the rumble of rain and fire

brings this earth to life

And that this is all there is

and all there needs to be. 

Ber Himwich Photography 401

 

Amanda Kooser, The Dawn Hotel

 

 

 

 

Not that eye that sees the clouds

Above the mountains and looks

Someday to climb the heights

Nor that eye that sees the mountains

Roll like waves across the plain

But that other eye that sees itself

Becoming all that it beholds

Tree, branch, bird, and sky

And sees no more

 

My Safe Place

My safe place: I go to the woods, looking for my father, who died forty years ago, and now lives in the roots of an old oak tree and talks to me in the talk of the leaves and casts his shadow in the light. There! a bird! he too speaks like my father telling me all is well and that in every tree and shadow and every bird that flutters by is his promise to always be there for me. But what, I say, if there is no sun or winter comes or the trees die or the birds all fly away? What then will keep me safe? You have much to learn, he says, about storms and the cold and the silence of the night where not even a bird is heard.  Storm, winter and silence, all these will keep you safe as well.  All things are comfort – that there is anything at all, and not nothing, is your proof. You will understand when you hear thunder and you discover the lightning within yourself.  All is well.

 

Salve, pater -

As you would say to me -

I like the sound of it

and now hear mater filiusque

as if from an island

floating in the light – it’s there

where all the magic is –

or perhaps it is a memory,

a book of mirrors I guess.

Just happy to be still sailing about,

seeking yet another Ithaca

where I know the greeting awaits,

this time to be returned

to one who has marked his time

so well with love and care.

It is a birthday greeting of sorts:

Salve, pater – Cor cordis mei!

 

Out of Time

Out of Time

When they removed the tree they moved the place
Or rather the place became a barren field
Where light through the green, still moving shade
No longer marks the ground like rain. 
And yet here I am with you,
Your face bent over mine the air
rippling with laughter the tree
covering us in its bright shadow the earth
yielding as we fall out of time. Out of time?
What is left but song?
Listen! the ringing in the air, this rain
These tears hammering out the tune, time and place.
He, she, and all you love, draw near. 

 

If consciousness is an illusion . . .

The Sphinx: If consciousness is an illusion, it requires a consciousness or subject to whom it is an illusion.  That does not entail, however, that consciousness is not an illusion; rather, it means that we are unable to escape from that illusion. The necessity of the illusion permits us to say that the illusion is real; however, this same necessity does not mean that the illusion is what we experience it to be, only that what we experience it to be is inescapable, e.g., consciousness experiences itself as free from necessity -- it is not. Such self-contradiction creates the conditions for hope and for tragedy, the hallmarks of our humanity.--Oedipus, King of Thebes

Ber Himwich: Nothing to Photograph Here

 

 

 

What's left to say

He was watching the parade
The clowns, the words, the trumpeteers
And in his dream he was awake
Or he was awake and dreaming.
He closed his eyes.
No matter, he heard the drums.
He opened his eyes a second time
And saw himself marching
Now to a different tune
A martial cha-cha-cha
And wet his pants.
There is little more to tell.
The daily Tribune records
That during the St. Jude Day Celebration
Saturday passed and a forgotten man
Had died, shouting blessings
Upon one and all. 

Hypnos and Thanatos

Though sleep be not death,
it is a gentleness
upon which the head
may fall.

Sleep makes death 
bearable, even
possible.

 

All of It, Every Bit and Piece of It, is Poetry

Love has taken up knitting.

Truly, he was as alone as he had been in the beginning when there were only himself and the vast emptiness of space that seemed to want to swallow him whole.  

In that time before time, he had discovered that if he whirled like a dervish, bits and pieces of his colossal corporeal being would fly off and, as he spun faster and faster, he filled the space around him with feathery forms that floated aimlessly about him.

Some had the shape of white linen on a clothesline but others looked like bats. There were even eyes looking back at him, dazzled, and he saw sharp, heavier bits of silver and gold that had been flung far off and arranged themselves as constellations, though for him the great stories were yet to be told. Theseus had not yet sailed for Crete. They were not yet the museum pieces they are today, though he could not deny the wonder they evoked.

As he had never seen himself, he looked upon all this jumble as simply Other and called it Friend.

Then, on what we now would call inspiration, he let out a great shout of greeting (SAL WAY TE  wA LAY TE) and the bits and pieces began to attract or repel other bits and pieces.

In an instant that would seem to us endless time, doll-like figures began to emerge and some of these appeared to be giving parts of themselves to each other as though they were gifts.

He was still lonely, of course. After all, these figures, except for the eyes, were lifeless, but then, thinking he was making a joke, he began to play with these megoistic forms and discovered a power within himself to bring them to life and was able with practice to forget to remember that all their laughter, lovemaking, and quarreling were nothing but himself playing alone.

Some of these strange beings even seemed to be aware of their creator, but soon enough they began to vie for his favor, tearing each other apart, piling up body parts, and setting them on fire. Some, out of gratitude, made living torches of themselves. They thought he, their creator, would inhale the smoke and be pleased. He wasn’t. Indeed, he was appalled to see what had formerly been bits and pieces of himself going up in smoke.

It was then he decided to stop spinning and take up knitting instead, hoping to piece together what was left of himself into one colossal Other, who might one day be a comfort for his loneliness.

He worked day after day for seven days without sleeping until he could no longer hold off the night, though it would have looked to us today as if he had just given up.

When he woke from his dreams, however, he discovered his loneliness had vanished. Before him was a wingéd Other. He called her Anima because he felt she had always been as close to him as the wind. Anima Animus Animus Anima was his mantra.  

He now took up his knitting in earnest, but after every cycle of seven days, he would sleep and dream and discover upon waking other wingéd forms to whom he also gave names inspired by what he felt when he first saw them, names like Twilight and Shadow, Dawn and Cobweb, Shifting Sand and Trumpet, Midnight Blue and Riverunrun.

And all these lovely, strange wingéd Others would bring him earth, air, fire, and water as gifts, and he in turn would dream up worlds for them in which their strange and varied beauty would be at home.

He did not know exactly how all this had happened but felt as if he now had a purpose, though at the time he actually knew nothing at all about this. It was as if there were some great something at stake, but when the earth turned away from the sun on every seventh day, he would, like time itself, fall asleep and dream again.

Truth be told, he was still alone, but now the wind told him that all this, every bit and piece of it, was poetry.

 

Fifty Words

 

We blindly feel our way

Along the wall, then think

To dig, but never deep enough.

On the other side, we homer on,

Some fifty words to hold against

The light. A tiger leaps through us

As if we were not there.

It mauls its prey. We break

For lunch.

 

This I Believe

I believe in the Road.  

When I was a sophomore at Brown University, I returned home for spring break and asked my father to read some of my own poems and others by Rilke. My father, a pioneer in the study of the biochemical basis of mental illness, told me that my poems and those of Rilke revealed schizophrenia. I left home within the hour, on foot, never to truly return again. Before my father died, I had forgiven him and loved him as a father should be loved. Now, I am grateful to him. Grateful for endowing me with the same passion with which he lived his life, however imperfectly. My own life has been no less imperfect. That night, as I walked down a dark highway, singing to myself the Woody Guthrie song “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” I vowed never to allow another person’s assessment of me to determine how I felt about myself, my ideas or my poetry. I did not then return to Brown. When I did, I was married and a father.

That first long night on the road lead to two years of aimless but purposeful hitchhiking. There were others on that road. One bad man, the owner of an art gallery in Austin, Texas, lured me out to his ranch and tried to force me to have sex with him. I refused. Quietly but definitely. His hired man pulled out a knife. I said, “I will not.” Quietly but definitely. I was not afraid. He did not touch me. In that precarious moment, I knew myself. It was as if life had asked me a question and I had answered. 

Since that time, I have found myself in other precarious situations, as I do even today. I will not chronicle these critical moments here except to say they put the integrity of my life in question.  Each of these situations required of me an answer beyond any philosophy I had ever read. Philosophy does indeed ask essential questions, but it is only with our actual lives that we answer those questions. Such philosophical questions as Do we have free will? What is truth? Or Justice? are all too often illusions like the paradoxes propounded by Zeno. The illusion comes when we mistake the arena in which these questions are to be answered. What is truth? Observe how I live, not what I say. I necessarily live out my answers to what is true and good. I am my philosophy and all that I have suffered I own.   

I am always on the road, aimless but purposeful, knowing that the road is where my true self is revealed. For me the literal and metaphorical road have become one. I know I have at least one great road trip still in me. We may pass by each other in the East Mountains or between here and there. Know all is well even if I look sad, ragged and tired. Pass on. All is well. 

The Art of Michaela Romero

 

 

Graphite Pencil

 

 

Medium: black charcoal, white charcoal, and graphite pencil

 

 

Acrylic Paint and Ink

 

 

Digital Art

 

 

Digital Art

 

 

White and Black Charcoal

                                                                                                                Michaela Romero

 

Cum carmine in meo corde

For my students

As a child, he had always felt close to birds. It was as if the birds revealed to him some other way of being in the world, what he would now call, as an adult, another reality. As a 6-year-old and then a teenager and later as a father and a teacher, he never stopped hoping that the birds would not fly off when he came near or, more secretly, that the birds would actually come to him. They didn’t, and he blamed himself, thinking if he had been a better person or more at peace with himself and others, the birds would naturally perch on his shoulders or nest in his beard. He scolded himself for such foolish thoughts. Then one day, while on a long solitary walk in the mountains, a bird did come to him but only to drive him off from its nest. It made him incredibly sad. When he returned home from his long walk, he slept the sleep of the dead but woke in the morning with a birdlike song in his heart. To the birds, however, nothing had changed. Yet, to this day, he still sings with the birds. Sometimes they do not fly away at once but seem to listen and join their song with his. He knew he was yet again being foolish, but now, at last, he felt strangely at peace.

 

Spartoi

 

If we were to sow our teeth,

There would come stories

To make us shudder

Like the one about a desperately

Happy old man who gave up

His love of life to become

A gravedigger and lied

To those asking whose grave

He was digging, falsely saying

He was looking for treasure

But so far had found only gold.

 

Spartoi: the ‘sown men’ of Greek mythology, born from dragon’s teeth. In the founding of Thebes, Cadmus had slain a dragon sacred to Ares and was advised by Athena to sow its teeth. Only thereby could the wrath of Ares be placated. The genealogical line of the Spartoi ends in a great many tragic stories, those of Oedipus and his spawn among them. In death, Cadmus and his wife Harmonia became snakes. Their transformation does not seem to have been a punishment. One might well ask why snakes are sacred to the gods. To understand that, it may be necessary, like Cadmus, to become one.

 

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

Summer Rain

If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain

Surprise

                for eve

Suddenly
this morning
I knew the rainbow
to be a bird

of my soul
taking flight 
and vanishing
into cloud and sky

as I am bound 
to do, shimmering
not with color
but surprise

to be at last
not here. 

 

Is it poetry?

Poetry is inspired song. The breath is the soul of the poem. The poet gathers the air around, the blue from the sky and her curling eyes, the warmth from the sun and his lover's body . . . and sings. The air is measured, the lover's body rolls with the waves and her eyes become one with the night. In the morning, the poet crawls out of the sky like a bear, stretching full out, searching again for the sweetness, searching for the sun in the movement of cloud and leaf and desire.  He sings. If his words resound in skin and bone, in the stone-cold night, if he enchants the air with his song -- it is poetry. If you have to ask if it is poetry, it is not.

Rilke on writing poetry when one is no longer a young man

Ah, but poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simple emotions (one has emotions early enough)--they are experiences. For the sake of a simple poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighbourhoods, to unexpected encounters and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else--); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,--and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labour, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very well blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

Excerpt from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

How a man becomes the sea

 

The moment she touched the old man’s hand

He lost his sight, yet standing lost upon the sand

He heard the light upon the waves like keys.

She sang and let him go and like the wind he sighed.

None knows what song she sang or how he blindly

Played with light or how a man became the sea.

 

The only true word I know

I don’t know how you know you have to make a change. You just do it and think about the whys and wherefores later. And in any case, I would only be making it up to sound like I wasn’t crazy or something, as though I actually had reasons for doing what I did. Maybe it was the rain. Who in his right mind would throw a few things in a backpack, leave his car and bank account behind, and just set off walking in the rain?  That's what I did. At nightfall I found a place along the side of the road to sleep, but I couldn’t stop shaking.  It didn't stop raining until early the next morning when the sun came up as though for the first time. 

I had started out in Rhode Island but hitched rides that left me the next night in Georgia and the next day I was in the panhandle of Florida, walking down some back country road that would take me wherever I was going. I really had no idea, but I was going and I was going to stay gone. I know that this all sounds crazy, but it didn’t feel that way then. It felt right and for the first time in a long time my head was clear. 

When I had started out I had only a couple packs of cigarettes and about twenty dollars which paid for coffee and more cigarettes for awhile. The kindness of strangers supplied the rest. Folks who picked me up were curious about what I was doing and where I was going. What interested them most was that I didn’t know. They saw my sorry shoes, shook their heads, and gave me money for a meal at the end of the ride. One man said he had never picked up anyone before but now he thought he would the next time he saw some young person thumbing a ride. It had somehow been interesting. I told him that was a bad idea. 

I went wherever a ride would take me and that’s how I found myself in a small West Virginia town, where an old preacher picked me up and took me home for a meal. He showed me with pride the wooden casket he had made with his own hands and how he was all set for eternity. He called it his boat. It was really no more than a crate, though its dimensions where about right for a coffin. I don't know about eternity. What I was really curious about were the huge old books that were lying on the casket as if to keep the lid on. He said the truth was in those books and I could see for myself if I wanted. The first one I opened had the picture of a  young woman, tied to a stake, her breasts exposed, looking up at the heavens ablaze with lightning.  I swear her whole body looked like it was electrically charged as though she were having an orgasm or something. Beneath the picture were the words, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” I turned over the page and saw the words "I ad crucem!" scrawled over the English text. I knew what those words meant alright: "Go to the cross!"  On another page was the picture of some wild man who was having a crimson X branded into his chest. After that I was in a hurry to go, but the old guy kept me there talking about how half the town was dying of cancer because everyone was marrying their own kin and goin’ to hell. I got the crazy idea that he was about to ask me to nail him and his books up in that crate and set him adrift. I told him I had to go. He wanted to know why I was in such a hurry. I  told him someone was waiting for me in Winchester, which was just across the state line. He said he would drive me there, but I just walked toward the door and thanked him. I closed the door behind me and didn’t look back.  

My next couple of rides landed me in New Orleans. I was beginning to realize that though everything was new to me, I was not quite a stranger to the folks I met. In New Orleans, I fell in with others about my age who looked just as lost as I did. They had liberated an abandoned house, worked at odd jobs and did drugs at night. When I didn’t partake, they became suspicious and shortly came to the conclusion that I was a narc. I had never heard that word before but its meaning soon became clear to me. They said my story about going wherever the road would take me just didn’t add up. That wasn’t the last time I was suspected of being a narc, but later it somehow didn’t matter. They could just think whatever they wanted. The first time, however, it was a shock. I had been glad to have a place to crash for a few days, but they told me I had better leave.

I ended up spending a month or so in New Orleans, making some money by working out of a day load outfit that sent out sober men like me on jobs that paid ten dollars a day. If you didn’t quit the job – loading, unloading, throwing bricks out of boxcars and digging holes – you got paid at the end of each day. In the late afternoon after I was paid, I felt like some goddam saint. Cripples, men with no legs, drunks and drifters like me were lined up along the sidewalk with their hands out. One fella, mounted on a board with rollers, had no arms or legs, just a cup. I had a simple rule. I would give away half of what I made and keep the rest. It was more than enough for my needs. They would call me father, though I was younger than they were. Maybe I looked older because like them I had grown so thin. A fellow worker had his own room where he let me sleep on the floor and he knew all the churches and other places where a person could find a free meal, though sometimes you had to pay by praying after you ate. I didn’t like that and said so. I ended up basically stealing the food before the praying started. The problem with that was that they were on the lookout for you the next time. At night, I wandered the French Quarter looking in the jazz joints and at the girls who looked right through me as if I weren't there at all. I can't say I blame them.   

I forgot to tell you that before I left to nowhere in particular, I had been a desk clerk at an otherwise respectable hotel called the Pilgrim Inn that catered to a certain class of working girl. They were all somebody’s daughter and they sent the money they made back to their families. Some paid guys who protected them and would beat them up to keep them in line. I would take payment for rooms from the johns and take them up in the elevator first and then the girls. It became routine. I liked the girls, but they all thought I was queer because I hadn’t done anything with them even when they offered for free. They would laugh and ask me if I knew which hole to put it in. I didn't mind. Everything had been going along fine until one night I was arrested along with the girls in a police raid and spent the night in jail. The next day they just sent me home. The hotel's lawyers had worked something out. The girls had to pay a fine. After that, I felt like I almost belonged and everyone treated me as if I were one of them. Then one night a little later I got beat up really bad by a guy who demanded to know where a certain girl was and when I wouldn’t tell him, he came around the desk and let me have it. It all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to be afraid or even feel any pain. I was kind of numb or stunned I guess. After that, the girls treated me like a brother, which I guess I was.

After I had saved a little money in New Orleans, I set out again. I had heard from others about riding the rails. It was fast and straight but they also told tales of railroad bulls that discouraged me. I thought hitching was safer. My first ride, a long sleepy cruise through the night, took me to Texas, a little west of Austin. It had been a sweet ride; the stars out the open window seemed to pump their light right into my veins. My very next ride, however, changed everything, but I have written about that before. I don't really want to go into it again except to say I came out whole after a man tried to force me to have sex with him and maybe for the first time in my life I had been brave. That was then. What I really want to talk about is Richard whom I had met a year before all this craziness began, never saw again, and miss every day of my life. Before we parted he gave me a small carving, made from an odd piece of wood found on an east Texas beach. He had used only the sharp edge of a stone. It was like something out of the prehistory of man and had three faces on each side, one emerging out of another.  It is the face of every man I meet. For forty-six years I have kept this carving with me. It really is Richard's story that needs telling, not mine, though maybe his is in some way mine as well. You see, he taught me the only true word I know and he taught me by example and it cost him dearly.  He was the most honest person I have ever known and the bravest.   

https://www.hhimwich.com/hughlings_himwich/2016/03/song-for-richard.html

https://www.hhimwich.com/hughlings_himwich/2010/04/this-i-believe.html

Photograph by Her Himwich 

Wings

by Charles Eaton

From our bedroom window, I can see a Great Horned Owl. It is balanced easily on a swaying limb of a large tree buffeted by strong winds. I don't know where its mate is.  Pauline and I loved to watch the two huddle together. Sometimes one would shelter the other with a wing during rain.

These owls would both sit motionless for hours and then one would leave on silent wings for a destination beyond our sight.  I would that I could have alerted each of you personally and sooner, but I have been topsy-turvy––often sitting motionless while buffeted by strong winds.   

Last week on this day and hour, Pauline took flight on her own quite silent wings.

How is it that we can "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep"
[Romans 12:15], and that we can do both at the same time? How can we be so completely alone and yet un-separated? The strong bonds of memory, woven by cords of love, are both mystery and gift––perhaps as precious as Life itself.

 

That Bird

I. 

When I came to school today, I did not come alone. There was a bear with me. No one seemed to notice except for one young girl whose eyes were filled with the glory of the morning and whose red hair played in the light air.  She gave me a look, laughed, and asked who my friend was. "What do you mean?" I  replied. She laughed again and said "you can't fool me" and flew up into a tree.  Later, walking from one building to another, I heard a bird call, and there she was walking beside me. Cautious, I asked, "Who are you?"  She seemed surprised I didn’t know.  She said she was my student and had been with me from the beginning. This time when she flew away, I growled annoyance and padded on hand and foot to my next class.  

II.

So, I thought I was alone on that beach when a sudden gust of wind blew my old tattered hat away.  It was like the hat had wings or was some sort of kite, diving and lifting over the sea, but having no string attached, it disappeared over the water and surely landed wherever it is that kites go once they are set free.  But then there was this bird call. I turned around and there, where there had been not one solitary person for months, was a girl wearing my hat.  She laughed at my surprise, handed me my hat, and flew happily off.  I knew then I was not alone.  

                                                            

The Sound that Wind Makes

(for Maya)

I want words to breathe like I do, weep when I do, and bruise easily.

I want words to dream and remember those dreams that first set me on this path.

I want words to grow old with me and become like the lines in my face and tell me
      old stories that keep my stumbling spirit from falling and new ones that tell of
      love forever young and freely given.
I want words of no regret even for the sorry waste of all I have left undone, unsaid.

I want words to hold up a mirror and see there all who at some time have gone hand
      in hand with me through this life.

O what a wondrously crowded reflection that would be, all of them in the morning
     of their lives, young and old alike.  

O that words would fall like these tears and mark the page in silver and gold, the true
colors of night, that these words would live on in their hearts and find some rest there,
though I myself be nothing but the sound the restless wind makes on a cold night,
the wind that sweeps down the mountainside and past all the houses in which loved ones
have died and gathers up all those lost souls and scatters what is but dust and ash
through the deep space of time. 

Eve Gigliotti and Will Liverman: Rainbow - You'll Never Walk Alone (April 24, 2020)

 

Eve is my daughter-in-law.  She and Will recorded this beautiful duet while miles apart -- she in our dining room and Will in Brooklyn. It was part of a Benefit Concert for Artists during the Pandemic.

 

Something Else

For K

A young woman was combing through the grass with her fingers or rather that’s what it looked like. Her grandfather, seeing her out the window, thought to himself, she must be thinking about something BIG. He knew, because he, while thinking about all the questions that come naturally to an old man near the END, would himself run his fingers over the page on which he was writing as if to discover some secret he had been missing. He decided to go outside to be with her. She hardly noticed he was there, so he just straight out asked her if she was looking for something. And she, as if talking to herself, answered, “Something’s missing.” Her grandfather, who wanted to be helpful, asked if she was sure she was looking in the right place. Her reply surprised him: “It’s not here, but it’s only out here in the light of day that I can even think about it.” The old man thought he understood and began running his scarred old fingers through the grass  He was thinking of her, her young life in summer and winter, and then, for the first time, she looked up at him and smiled. Somehow each had found something.

 

Hold True

 

No one knows winter

If all they know is snow

The wind that chills the bone

The branches bereft of leaves

 

Winter is where we begin again

And touch the fire in our hearts. 

We hold true, gather round

The flame and pray for life. 

 

Each Alone Together

 

From where I sit
I can hear the rain
And see the desert bloom

It’s but a room
Like yours,
On a street like yours

What we’ve done
To each other
Cannot last forever  

Outside a girl plays
In the rain
And gathers flowers

She sees me watching
And laughs,
She could be crying

She’s rooted there
As I am here,
Each alone together

 

Nighttime in the Lyceum

Before the light changed and I forgot

the rules for how to see things as they are,

day was day and night was hidden in my heart.

No Nonsense Poems

A Bedtime Story

Last night
Papa

Fell asleep
Reading

I didn't
Wake him

 

So, So Sorry

If I could find
The words

I would not
Need

To apologize
For this

Also

 

Sparrow

Not a sparrow
But this sparrow

That has already
Flown away.

 

Sorry to have missed you

You weren’t there
Or I was late

Or this was not
The place

I waited
It’s not a problem

It's just that
As I told you

I am really scared
— Perhaps another time

 

Oranges

He was determined this time not to cut his fingers as he sliced the oranges.  He would focus and keep his fingers well away from the blade.   He remembered all too well how previously his blood had flowed onto the oranges and pooled on the plate.  He knew it wasn’t just because he was getting old, fading into memory and the lure of the trees and his first kiss.  She had been as nervous as he and had closed her eyes.  Now all he could think of was feeding her oranges and the taste on her lips.  And suddenly, she had bitten his lip, making it bleed. And then, more softly, she was feeding him. She was delicious and he . . . . he was lost in the trees.  He put the knife down and wept.  

Song for Richard

You spoke the only true word I know
And that word became an open wound
They cleaned with lye, not knowing
Your pain, your tears were like wine
That would save their shining souls.  

Pick up the rifle, son
No you said
That’s no SIR, son
Pick up the damn gun!
No you said. 

They called the captain
They called the priest
They called the doctor
Are you crazy, son?

No no no

Come with us!
You walked away.

I see you now forty years later
alone on that far thundering shore
    “I will not fight your fucking war!”
You are carving a face out of driftwood
the face behind the face of everyone I meet
I have it still and think of you.

You came back. True to your word.
And they sent you to Leavenworth
Where your bruises became sores
Your sores gaping wounds
Your screams the blessing
That saves our sorry souls. 

Quirky Little Love Poems

 

Ode to the Stars

O she is pretty
But she’ll never catch me
Looking
More’s the pity

O she’s so pretty.

So simple is love
If only she weren’t so damn 

 

 

Da Blues

 

You left me standing there
Alone

Like a tree.

 

Do you know what it's like

Just standing there

Looking up 

At all that blue?

 

 

 

Not Another Quirky Love Poem

Please, not another love poem

That’s not about love at all. 

You know, like Platonic love

Or hate mail. 

 

Time of life (with apologies to Zeno)

I have reached that time when I measure my life not by the years but by the months. Thus, I lengthen my life. I say to myself I may have only 6 years remaining, but 72 months is another lifetime. Soon, I will do the same with days and hours, then minutes and seconds. Each new measure will push life’s horizon back to a safe distance. The question is, of course, how long can I get away with this sort of time-chopping. Theoretically, forever. 

My Pick-Up Line

 

Be brave! No more sneaking around, no more affectation!
What great soul said that? Yours, of course! One soul
seeks another, that's how it knows where to go.
You and I the same, same with wings and wind. 
if you keep hiding, you may prove
you aren’t there at all, no hands no feet, 
not those beautiful eyes that catch the sky
(yes, your eyes are beautiful. It's never a lie.)
no joy or grief, just an echo that dims. 
Listen! the ringing in your ear is the tolling of your soul:
it's time, it's time, it's time, it's damn well time already!
Enough of all this hiding only to lose, a soul
only knows itself as the moon,
the one becomes two. 
The less we fear and sooner than now
the more we can dance and dance our own tune.  
Let the kite go and be where it goes.
That's poetry! It's like falling in love . . .

                Hey there, beautiful, where ya goin?
                —I'm going with you. 

 

now east now west

 

now east now west

the road has a mind of its own

and my feet obey

 

the rest of me stays behind
treelike

 

above

the sky grows gentle

 

MY HEART OPENS

the road goes on

as if not knowing

which way is best

Pedigree

The Gathering

The window talks to me,
I open and listen:
.
In the moonlight shadows
gather, beckoning
me to follow.
                      This time
the moon smiles upon me
and holds me in its light.

Out of time

Following the long clean broken line of sight we fill in the gaps with the only words that fit: separation, dust, fulfillment that is in itself no more than rain.  No, he did not love her, nor she him, but both knew with certainty what was at stake and a sort of dreamy dialogue between the two would follow and conclude in an embrace, as much understood as the speech of an idiot who says one thing and means another.  They spent their nights together, hungry for each other, the darkness as harsh as a hammer upon an anvil, leaving them both barely alive and without breath save the one they shared. In the morning, they would be strangers again and would remain so until the one, feeling on her skin an approaching storm or the dry cacophonous clattering of leaves, would fall upon the other as though he could bury her whole, devouring her cries like dry sand a sudden summer shower. He knew her then, knew himself, the long clean broken line disappearing from sight.

 

Wild Iris

 

for Zoe

There’s that garden

that none

need pardon.

There wild Iris grows

beneath the trees

it loves.

They catch the light

and make its song

their own.

 

Death makes strangers of us all

I met her first in high school. Her name then was Alice Cyan. We dated and did what teenagers usually do, being full of hormones. When we went off to college, we wished each other luck and that was it. I met her again in law school, though her name now was Francine Bedower. She didn’t remember me, but I knew her the first moment I heard her laugh. It was like wind rattling through dry leaves.  She was beautiful. I mean, really beautiful, statuesque, as they say.  I slept with her once then, but so did almost everyone else. We didn’t see each other all that much and, though we graduated from law school in the same class, there was really no reason to stay in touch. When I met her the third time, her name now Townsy Harper, she was working for a law firm in San Francisco and I happened to be close by. We would meet for drinks. She was divorced, had two kids, a daughter and a son, and a lot of cats, but no dogs. She had made a point of that, no dogs. She had grown so thin I almost didn’t recognize her, but she knew me. She reminded me that when she and I were dating back in high school, her father had died and that’s why she liked me. That puzzled me a little, but okay, that’s as good a reason as any I suppose. Then she  stopped coming by. When we met for the fourth and last time, I was in the hospital for what I was assured would be a routine colonoscopy. Her name was now Sally Caulder, same last name as mine, though spelled differently as it turned out. It startled me at the time. She was stooped over, staring down at me as I lay there, waiting my turn. I had recognized her right off, that same laugh, but tart. When I asked her who she was now, she spat her name Caulder in my face and told me she didn’t know me and that she never wanted to see me again, biting down finally on "asshole" but seeming to look through me like glass. I can't say I blame her. After all, as I was soon to learn, she did not have long to live either.

Digging in the garden

 

Digging in the garden I find

but earthy loot: worms, beetles,

pebbles and ocean shells

and a blackened shard to cast away

for luck and there in the shade

of a supple palm, taking hold

where it should not be, a girl:

I think of Phaiakia and Nausicaa

washing her clothes for some

beggar like me, rough-hewn

in all but speech and she lingers

beside the pool, wondering

if it be a god or beast or bard

that shapes her soul seaward

to be free. She looks and looks,

not believing what she sees

or what she feels. He tells her

of a younger, stranger man

who will come for her

when the spell is broken

and she as wild as the sea. 

 

Dry Grass

It was not you I was looking for or needed nor was I the Ramon or Ramona you hoped for. We made do, as they say, and built a house and a life several miles from the Itacah River to be safe when the spring rains came. There were no children, of course, but there was a garden of stone, sand, and stalks of jibati that kept the land and constellations in place. When you died, we went right on living together in the house built when you were as young and old as you would ever be. The folks on the other side of the Itacah never come this far west. They say these are the badlands, but we call it home. There's no need for talking. There's nothing to say. Don’t mistake these words for speech. It's just wind sweeping through tall dry grass.