Hughlings Himwich

Nothing Shines Like Back

 

Nothing Shines Like Black

 

play you play you
Circe’s bouncing boy
ol' man bring back
your leaping joy!

play you ol' man
wolfish grin to hide
moly moly
molly in her sty. 

playyou playyou
Circe’s whip and crack
O O O NO
nothing shines like black. 

Note: Circe is a dark lady for many reasons. Most readers will know her from The Odyssey. It is told there that Odysseus spent a year with her on the island of Aeaea on his way home to his beloved and faithful Penelope. Circe is the one who turned Odysseus' men into pigs, a consequence our hero avoided by using against her the magic of the herb 'moly', all white but for its black root. The herb had been an unlooked for resource provided by Hermes, that traveler between the worlds of light and dark, known thereby as Psychopompos. The herb worked! Later it would be Circe who sends Odysseus far west to where the Titan Helios does not shine (i.e. Homer's version of the Underworld, at least in The Odyssey). Helios does, however, sometimes threaten to bring his light to this dark region of the earth. And so, Odysseus is off to the far shore of Oceanus. Such is the fate of the moly-bearer. It is in the Far West that Odysseus learns from the prophet Tiresias, the only shade among the dead who yet keeps his nous (i.e. mind), how to navigate the dangerous journey home to Ithaca.

 

The 'Molly' here makes a guest appearance here from JJ's  Ulysses; she appears in that work as a thinly disguised Penelope. In Dante's version, however, Odysseus chooses upon his departure from Aeaea to sacrifice home and hearth for still more adventures at sea. Apparently, he does not want to give up his Oar, as Tiresias tells him he must. Ultimately, in Dante's version, he goes down with his ship, landing in The Inferno in the company of other great liars.

 

And so it goes. Sometimes it best to know when to say no more. Let others suppose, provided they do not know. (Let's see, the Latin for that would be: Alii cogitent dum nescient. Keep it handy. A little gift from your Hermes on your travels to the Far West.

Windflower

 

Come with me, two

three jumps but

don’t look back.

Lately angels

have been falling.

The garden is rank

With anemone.

 

 

As Beautiful As Ever

   As Beautiful As Ever

                 for my students

If you watch the ripples spread out

from what was once the smooth, blue surface of a pond

before you threw a rock, searching for an answer

for what troubles you, scattering the light, 

and if you wait,

for however long it takes

for the smooth, blue surface to return,

you will feel the ripples yet spreading within you

from the very center of creation

and you will have your answer. 

Everything has changed

and you, dear ones, are born again

just as you are, as beautiful as ever.

 

Prophecy

Prophecy

There is an ancient alibi

That one day we will not know

The difference between the downfall

of the sky and the shadows turning blue

Amid the blessed ruins of our lying eyes.

 

So to the moon I turn

O the bird in me wants to fly

To where there is but open sky

But alas the earth calls me home

Where all lost souls must live & die.

So to the moon I turn at night

And catch the wings of love and song

And there you are, close by my side,

Aloft in the trees and lost in sighs.

 

Ber and Dad One

 Final Edition, 1/17/2021 Download Ber and Dad One

 

 

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. 

 

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. 

Carmen Nocturnum

What do I do to sing like you?

Die, be born again and sing the blues?

It’s not the same. There’s another song

in the song you sing, buried with you

in the cold cold ground. The earth

to the moon now sings for you.  

 

Directive

There is a song
that must be sung. 

No time for work
‘til the song is done. 

This morning bird
sings all day long.

 

Hypnos and Thanatos

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

Sleep makes death 
bearable, even
possible.

 

du Pré

 

The song falls below sound

and begins again beyond our hearing,

erupting now as light bird wind and sky,

your fingers driving the bow across the strings

your hand arm a hammer beating

against the silence that holds all

and you rise one last time

alive as never before

calling to us to hear the music,  

to breathe again, to dance and die

as every day the night and night the day,

and you, grateful for the applause,

stand before us as ourselves.

 

Autumn's Child

 

I see you now, child, wrapped in vines and visions,

happy to find a place to hide, laughing hoping someone will find you.

Don't call out. No one will come.

Let the wind be your voice, just as you hear mine now.

It's autumn and the leaves rustle alive for one last song before winter. 

Someone will hear the wind laughing in the trees.

They will see you in all your glory.

 

Starry, Starry Night

Both poetry and mathematics are forms of madness, the latter well disguised by what appears to be its rational method and application, e.g. facing west we plot a course to the third star to the left of that cottonwood where we pledge that someday we will travel. We are eagerly triangulating when a poet comes by and we dazzle him with our mathematical machinations. He seems for a moment unsteady on his feet and asks us to sit with him. We do, feeling sorry for our hyperbolics, but then, as if our diverging equations had actually driven him crazy, he begins to spout utter nonsense. He tells us we have already arrived where we seek to go and that the leaves are laughing at us. “Can you not see how the descending darkness of the evening is becoming one with the shadow of the tree?” We politely acknowledge the plain truth of what he says and, using that same darkness as an excuse, say we have to go. As we are walking off, we look back and then stare at each other: there’s no one there. We return to where we thought he had been and now, a little unsteady ourselves, sit again beneath the cottonwood, laughing ourselves into each other’s arms.

 

 

One and done

You sit across the page, spelling

Your name like mine

Except it rhymes

And no one suspects you are lonely

Or looney or so hungry

you could eat this paper,

folding it into a star

popping it in the microwave

where you and I and the universe

will be one and done.

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.

What is not there

Though I am known to God
As Hughlings, my friends call me
Hugh and leave it at that --
Grace takes care of the rest.

Though I do not believe
In anything or have any Jesus,
Yet I retain a kind of genius
For harmless lies.

It is as if during the day
I can still see the stars
Blazing out of the night
And truly see what is

not there. Some say
it is a harmless madness --
My friends though look deep
Into what were once my eyes

And all they see is night.

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

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

 

Summer Rain

 

This morning air is what remains

of one I met when all was lost.

She offered shelter for a night.

I woke to find her gone, adrift

in days, she left a note: There wasn't

time to say farewell. There was

no name. Alone again, I walked away. 

Her touch upon me like summer rain.  

 

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.

 

Emily Dickinson's "I saw no Way --"

Though some read Emily Dickinson’s “I saw no Way” as a description of a crisis of faith or declaration of profound loneliness, the way to Heaven barred, it for me an ecstatic statement.  It may be that these perspectives can be reconciled.

    I saw no Way—The Heavens were stitched—
    I felt the Columns close—
    The Earth reversed her Hemispheres—
    I touched the Universe—

    And back it slid—and I alone—
    A Speck upon a Ball—
    Went out upon Circumference—
    Beyond the Dip of Bell—

When I sing this poem to the tune of Amazing Grace, it seems to me to be in praise of what cannot be rationally circumscribed. There she is a speck upon a Ball, her poem, like the rhythmic swinging of the tongue of a Bell. reaches out beyond itself (beyond its lip).   I often ring a bell for my students and ask them where the sound goes.  Wherever it goes, it goes beyond the bell itself and takes us with it, escaping into silence.

    I sing in praise.  
    Of what cannot be known -- 
    We breathe – no paper 
    Stained with ink.

 

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

Not a myth

Out of blood comes anemone

Comes the flower the maiden holds

And falls in love with death, the truth

Of spring, not the myth,

a bird that sings at night

and sings alone,

the love herself denied, a sacrifice

that makes of art a vow

be true to death in life, no signs

but discarded treasure found,

a comb for her golden hair,

a paper knife, a silver coin, 

a button missing from her blouse,

the relics of an empty house.

 

A Bullfrog

Though “First Fig” by Edna St. Vincent Millay is better suited for other purposes than “Now I lay me down to sleep. / If I die before I wake, / I pray the Lord / my soul to keep,” it has become for me a bedtime prayer:

    My candle burns at both ends;       
          It will not last the night;
    But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
          It gives a lovely light.

I know there are other versions of “Now I lay me down to sleep” but the one I know I have always known, despite the best efforts of my parents to laugh it off. I still love the poem but believe not a word. Poetry is like that. Edna’s “Fig” too. True, the candle will not last the night, but in the morning I will ‘doubly’ light another and then another, though that depends on the supply of candles and “if I wake”— meantime, such candle-burning does give that lovely light, as she says.

So, last night as “I lay me down to sleep,” thinking of the absurdity of life, of drawing meaning from nonsense, of burning precipitously through candles in short supply, these lines came to me like a serenade from a bog (pace Emily Dickinson, "I'm a Nobody! Who are you?"):

    A Bullfrog

    I laugh and cry, then laugh again,  
    And cry— it doesn’t seem quite right,
    But do you or you or you, my friends,
    Know another life?

It’s really just “Another Fig” via inspirationis magistrae millay, but it served the purpose of another good night’s rest.

What prayer or poem ushers you into that sleep from which, of course, you will wake? What bedtime words spring to mind? If there are none, there’s still time to make them up.

That’s an invitation, folks, to compose yourself and send the lines to me.

Here is one I have already received from Margie Keck, burning brightly:

    Burden me equally
    With the sublime and the common.
    The necessary honoring of both
    Is an issue of utmost importance.
    Leading to my spiritual awakening,
    The true work of my life.

 

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 dug, 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. Cadmus in founding Thebes had for good reason slaying a dragon, sacred to Ares, and was advised by Athena to sow its teeth. 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 Harmonia, his wife, became snakes. It does not seem to have been a punishment. It is worth noting that Cadmus is said to have brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. The result we all know well. One might ask why are snakes sacred to the gods. To understand that would be a treasure. It may be necessary like Cadmus to become one.

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. 

When I say the wind speaks to me . . . .

 

When I say the wind speaks to me

Like a lover, I am not speaking

of the wind the leaves reveal

Nor of any lover who draws me near.  

There’s neither hope nor cause for tears.

She promises she’ll never leave.  

 

Another kind of seeing

For Eve

Even if I were blind

      your golden

Voice would light

       the way, my

Eyes forever shining.

 

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. 

 

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.

 

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.

Goat Song, a collection of my writings

Download Goat Song

Leaf Fall

Follow the path
of leaf fall,
the short cut home
twixt sky and dream.

When you're there,
you'll be right here,
safe with me. 

 

The High Ridge

   
   The mist on the mountains lifts

ghostly greens glimmer

   and a new day darkens the valley

far below—your fingers tracing

   a line across the high ridge

that runs just above my eyes:

   I hold my breath—a sudden

swoop of wind and wing

 

Msicarism

Sometimes a lie is so big that even after it explodes

It yet infects everything we do and say,

Ready to blossom again and spread its poison. 

To defeat the lie requires we repeat the lie,

And so it lives on, happy just to hang around.

We become like liars who tell us they are lying.

Give me words that go from truth to Truth

Like a stone thrown to Heaven

That returns to earth

As Rain.

 

If you will not dance with me

If you will not dance with me
I’ll sing for the stars and the trees

And there where lovers should be
I’ll gather the flowers for thee

Then buzz with the buzz of the bees
And offer their honey to please

And if you don’t dance with me
Then a waltz with the sea it shall be.

 

White Lies

We too wear the mask

But when we blush and smile

And tell our lies, our lies

Taste sweet all the while.

 

Screethes and Sciffs

The big wind, press
of leaf, earth-edge
who creeps there

pleynly arcing wur
screethes and sciffs
erth chilly clumfs lern

 

pleynly arcing wur
screethes and sciffs
erth chilly clumfs lern

 

There’s no one here to tell me true

My song is like a buzzard’s wing,
Like night it paints itself as blue.

                                                for Charles

 

One to live, One to die

We’re like a wire strung

From eye to eye,

From yours to mine. 

The last day, when it comes, 

Binds all as one. 

 

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.  

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. 

 

Begin in not-knowing

Whitman in Section 6 of "Song of Myself" gives readers a way into their own expansive poetic consciousness. Whitman models for us how asking a childlike question, e.g. What is the grass? Where does the sound go?  -- is able to stir the creative imagination. First, the question and then, rather than being the wise guy or gal, simply acknowledge what is true: I do not know, and continue, I guess . . . maybe . . . . .perhaps it is . . .  and soon enough Whitman will greet you like the morning light: 

What is this morning light?   I do not know

Perhaps it is the song of my heart.
In the end, we know no more 
Than the fall of rain upon dry land.

Where then come these flowers?

Perhaps they hear me calling

The Singer of Oceans

for Niko Dellios

No one should die young
But they do
No one should die alone
But they do
No one will forget
Listen!
Wave upon wave
Breaking its heart
Like thunder
On a distant shore. 

Niko, a student in my Humanities class back in 2010, died in a car accident in November 2020.  He was a wonderfully creative young man and a joy to teach. For more information about Niko and how beloved he was: Niko Dellios.

Scarecrow

 

                                                                                                                                            Photo by Ber Himwich

The Scarecrow

Some say I am wise.
O what a joke!
Nothing like So-crates,
Not even a pose.
Silence is golden
Or so the rhyme goes,
Yet I will do nothing
But sing with the crows.

 

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

Journey to the Shore

 

The song is beautiful; the singer gone 

The best of us are lonely and forever in love 

Maybe not tonight but soon this silence 

Though there is a chill in the air Ono still purrs

The girls chatter happily.  Who can help but smile

Sea and sky are one.  So too the sand 

In the distance, I hear a voice.  An echo 

Words. Distant thunder 

No two alike.  This night and day 

Alone at last: earth air fire water

 

Sweet Mary

 

Sweet Mary down on the farm

took my hand and led me on
down to where the river wept
and lay with me while I slept..

Now it is of her I dream, 
lost forever in the river’s tears.

 

I never meant no harm

 

And don't you know it,

What will be always was

And don't you know it,

What was wasn't. 

It's like when we say,

I never meant no harm

But hurts before

The man the boy strikes

Down the father, cold

And stiff beneath the stone.  

 

Call it love, an irrational equation

 

        2(y² – 9) = 2

 

 

 

Discussion of the 'Irrational'

HH: David, is this just a stupid equation? (I was fiddling around trying to make a mathematical expression for love): 2(y² – 9) = 2 / Call it Love.

DM: I wouldn’t say any equation is stupid, but I’m not sure exactly why that one would evoke “love”. There are equations that yield graphs that are quite distinctly heart-shaped, though
.

HH: Does the square root of 10 result in an infinite, non-repeating decimal?

DM: Indeed it does.

 

HH:  So then, what is the value of ‘y’ in this equation?

 

DM: y would equal plus or minus root(10), to be sure.

 

HH: Would it be fair to call this an ‘irrational’ equation?

 

DM: You would definitely say its solutions are irrational, but it wouldn’t be standard to call the equation itself “irrational” since the numbers actually appearing in it are rational.

 

HH: I am looking for a little poetic license. 

 

DM: With poetic license, one could definitely refer to it as an “irrational equation."

 

    (DM is Dr. David Metzler)

 

 

Love is so strange

 

Every time he looked at her he scowled.  She finally had enough and asked him what his problem was.  He said, “You’re so beautiful.  I can’t help myself.”  She didn’t understand. “But your face is so ugly when you look at me?” He didn’t understand and, of course, all the while he was scowling and making himself look ugly.  Finally, she asked, “Can you smile?” and he answered, “I thought I was.” “No, a smile looks like this,” and she smiled for him. He scowled. Then, for some reason, she kissed him. When people see the two of them together now, hand in hand, he scowling and she smiling, they wonder aloud, “What an odd couple!" Love is so strange.