Hughlings Himwich

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.

 

The Darkest Blue

 

I. 

This poem is a wingéd

thing, hovering

above the western sea,

seeing all

that isn't there. 

II.                                                                 

The day is dying,                                            

soft like glass,

what we've lost

is all that lasts. 

III.

The song leads on

to a hidden isle

where nothing is

is reality.

IV.

Song shields the eye

from the final fire,

the darkest blue

at the sunstruck hour.

 

Presence

I walk along the spinning
shore, the moon, a wheel
of a thousand nights.
We shared a dream
of another life,
you here with me
in the dying light.

 

A Reading

Our life hangs

by a single thread

That holds the weight

On which itself depends:

Words burn to the touch

the hand that holds

the pen and die(s).

There is no other light.

Hear the Wind

This poem tells those
who do not listen
that something happening
may not happen
but like stone
fall to ground
and mock the earth
from which we come.

We first were birds
that once were leaves
the wind tore off
and taught to sing. 

The tree's still there.
Hear the wind?

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.  

 

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 it

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.

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, saying

He was looking for treasure

But had so far found only gold.

 

Thinking Along with Henry David: 1-4

1. SOLITUDE (First entry in Henry David Thoreau's Journal, Oct. 22, 1937)

To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present, — I avoid myself. How could I be alone in the Roman emperor’s chamber of mirrors? I seek a garret. The spiders must not be disturbed, nor the floor swept, nor the lumber arranged.

The Germans say, “Es ist ailes wahr wodurch du besser wirst.”

(Translation of the German: All is true through which you become better.) 

Meum Mihi

What makes us 'better' is, of course, problematic. It is not necessarily what makes us happier or wiser or less at odds with the world or more productive or whatever is yet more better (stet). As the Romans say, suum cuique, to which I would add tuum tibi, ergo meum mihi. For me, happiness is overrated. As for wisdom, I am with Socrates: he is wisest who knows he is a fool. If it were the case that I knew something worth knowing, it would still be of no use to you. Happily, for all of us, Henry lives now only as stale prase on the lips of his admirers. I would rather be elsewhere. Nor does work make me a better person. I put no stock in the Protestant work ethic. Doing nothing at all suits me quite well. What is better than dillydallying all day? When I am doing nothing I feel more a part of whatever all of this is, itself without purpose, ever in se sibi. Of course, what I have said puts me at odds with worldly ambitions and with those who would win applause. What a waste! I would rather not even be myself if I could not go dark. Henry David, my Henry David, wrote his first journal entry in the autumnal bloom of 1837.  As for me, I am writing during the plague of 2020. It's spring.   

 

2. Spring

Oct. 25 (1837) She appears, and we are once more children; we commence again our course with the new year. Let the maiden no more return, and men will become poets for very grief. No sooner has winter left us time to regret her smiles, than we yield to the advances of poetic frenzy. “The flowers look kindly at us from the beds with their child eyes, and in the horizon the snow of the far mountains dissolves into light vapor.” GOETHE, Torquato Tasso.

Spring before spring

Henry David wrote this journal entry in late October.  It must be that the autumnal bloom of leaves, the chill air, crisp and aromatic, the silvery breath escaping his lips, makes him think of a spring before spring, which to the poet’s eye is always arriving in all times and places. It is the poet’s gift to us who might otherwise forget that we are always beginning, recreating the world for ourselves and others. Feel the wind on your skin like a kiss. Spring is here.

3. Virgil

Nov. 18 (1837) “Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles” is such a line as would save an epic; and how finely he concludes his “agrestem musam,” now that Silenus has done, and the stars have heard his story, — “Cogere donee oves stabulis, numerumque referre Jussit, et invito processit Vesper Olympo.”

Vesper

The line that would save an epic is from Virgil’s Sixth Ecologue, Pulsae referent ad sidera valles: the struck valleys echo to the stars. The trees, the rivers, the valleys, and stars are the musical instruments upon which the poet strikes his song. Yet, significantly, Virgil’s words are not from his Aeneid. He elevates the "agrestem musam" to the heavens. When all the epic clatter of arms and shouts of heroes have passed away, the pastoral poem reasserts the prior authority of nature’s rhythms: Evening rules even unwilling Olympus and the stars remain as they always are, night and day. 

        From Eclogue 6

        ille canit: pulsae referunt ad sidera ualles:
        cogere donec ovis stabulis numerumque referre               85
        iussit et invito processit Vesper Olympo.

        he (Silenus) sings: the struck valleys echo to the stars:
        until to gather the sheep in the stables and to tally their number
        he bid and, Olympus unwilling, Vesper advanced.  

        agrestem musam: rustic muse

 

4. NAWSHAWTUCT

Nov. 21, (1937) One must needs climb a hill to know what a world he inhabits. In the midst of this Indian summer I am perched on the topmost rock of Nawshawtuct, a velvet wind blowing from the southwest. I seem to feel the atoms as they strike my cheek. Hills, mountains, steeples stand out in bold relief in the horizon, while I am resting on the rounded boss of an enormous shield, the river like a vein of silver encircling its edge, and thence the shield gradually rises to its rim, the horizon. Not a cloud is to be seen, but villages, villas, forests, mountains, one above another, till they are swallowed up in the heavens. The atmosphere is such that, as I look abroad upon the length and breadth of the land, it recedes from my eye, and I seem to be looking for the threads of the velvet. Thus I admire the grandeur of my emerald carriage, with its border of blue, in which I am rolling through space.

We belong to nature

It may be that Henry David is thinking here of the divinely-crafted shield of Achilles. There is, however, great irony between what Achilles' shield depicts and the hero's subsequent slaughter of Trojans. Certainly, strife and death are present in the scenes Hephaestus creates but these take place within a balanced cosmos: the shield’s rim is Oceanus, the sun and moon crown the heavens, there are two noble cities, one at war and another at peace, and there is a young boy plucking his lyre, his song “so clear it could break the heart with longing”:

    and what he sang was a dirge for the dying year,
    lovely ... his fine voice rising and falling low
    as the rest followed, all together, frisking, singing,
    shouting, their dancing footsteps beating out the time.

There is nothing depicted on the shield Hephaestus has made that even remotely approximates Achilles’ murderous rampage, against which the Scamander River protests:

   “Stop. Achilles! Greater than any man on earth,
     greater in outrage too—
     for the gods themselves are always at your side!
     But if Zeus allows you to kill off all the Trojans,
     drive them out of my depths at least, I ask you,
     out on the plain and do your butchery there.
     All my lovely rapids are crammed with corpses now,
     no channel in sight to sweep my currents out to sacred sea—
     I’m choked with corpses and still you slaughter more,
     you blot out more! Leave me alone, have done—
     captain of armies, I am filled with horror!” (XVIII, Fagles)

There is no irony of any sort in Henry David’s description of his rustic shield, though one may wonder what protective purpose his may serve. We know he abhorred the intrusion of the ‘machine in the garden’ and the ‘discordant drumming’ of urban life. If this imagined shield is to provide any meaningful protection, it must be that the pastoral landscape he surveys serves to recall Henry David to himself and fortifies him as he engages in the necessary business of everyday life. Just so we may carry within ourselves Henry David’s rustic shield! It will protect us against all harm, not because we cannot be bruised or broken or put to death as Socrates was, but because we have within an inner resource that cannot be touched. We belong to nature.

 

Windflower

 

Come with me, two

three jumps but

don’t look back.

Lately angels

have been falling.

The garden is rank

With anemone.

 

 

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.

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

 

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. 

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

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. 

Some More

Sewing

Is it possible to love
and be alone? he asks,
but she, worrying at buttons,
just mutters, Some days
are better than others.

 

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.

 

Getting it up with Shakespeare

Love, friends, is deadly.  You may wonder,
Am I suffering from a broken heart
Or has love, freely given,
Not been returned? To which I say,
Yes, O Yes, Yes!
Beat the drums and let the bagpipes play
And I will march ripe into that narrow patch
Of mind and sand and play, She loves me
She loves me not, and haply saw
My soul in two.
I shall send her flowers,
Long purples that prickly boys
Call a grosser name, 
But she will say as maidens do, 
"How could you be so lame?" 

 

Personae

I play the round

'til at last alone adrift

almost a ghost I

lose myself

and take to bed 

and play the part

of one who's dead. 

Still alive

It was the long, cool time between sleep and waking, nestling in the morning light like a fledgling, though by the counting of the clock the world outside was buzzing, he impervious to its insistent question, What now? What to do if not everything at once? He remembered the previous night when he had talked himself to sleep, giving himself to the Oblivion that soon enough would put an end to all the questions, the time when there would be nothing at all to do and the chance to forget, giving himself to the future with nothing on his mind but the GIVING AWAY, the questions no more than the flutter of leaves just outside his window that was more like the chatter of children than a farewell. And now in the eternal Before and After, he lay there in the half-light and was glad, surprised to be still alive. 

(112020)

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.  

Occasional verse

From which all life comes

for Brenda

We bury this bird
Where it fell.

It goes to earth
Where its mother dwells.  

Morning Light

The junk in my head gathers dust
Year to year, day to night

But rises with the call of birds,
Becomes a choir in the morning light.


For Alex Thomas Coming To My House

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

Could make an old man cry. Not me! Round

The back my grandson plays hide and seek.

I’ve not the slightest idea what that means

But, Alex, you will know! I can only dream

And look for nuts on airy ground.

You see, I’ve placed a charm about the house

And made my home among earthbound clouds.

Alex, you deserve this stupid poem. Take the blame!

If you were me, you would do the same.  

If that’s confusing, Lord, just let it rain.

 

A Flea

Having not heard from you in days

(seems like years to a flea like me),

I worry, no doubt needlessly,

but there it is – the worry

worrying me, knowing

it will do no good,

and that’s a worry too,

so let’s call it prayer,

which likewise does no good

except it makes me feel better

or worse about myself,

depending, as it does,

on a dog.

All x 1 & done

At a certain age time passes more quickly,

we count days by a two by four

then all x 1 & done.

 

IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

Porridge, she said,

Doesn't rhyme with orange,

And then, as if upon a stage,

Danced a golden tango

About my bed. O, I said,

That's how it's done,

A golden orange in my head. 

 

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.  

                                                            

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.

Being Blue

(for my students)

Just remember the orange
Is not in the orange.

It is always you
Like a thumb in the eye.

The blue sky
So glorious today

Is also you.
Be beautiful!

Isabel

When I was but a toddler, some seventy or so years ago, our family would travel during the summer to the beach in our roomy Kaiser-Frazer. As we motored along, I would draw near to the pulse of the tires on the road. It sounded to me like “Isabel Isabel Isabel Isabel . . . . " The memory is so strong that all I have to do is feel the sun on my arm through the car window or hum along with my  Ford Ranger, peacefully rolling along country roads, or discover at the beginning of the school year that I have a student named Isabel, so that when I say something like “Isabel, that was a great poem you wrote” or “Thank you, Isabel” for waking me up and informing me that unless I get to class in the next two minutes, my students will scatter like the wild birds they know themselves to be, or if I meet a woman at a social gathering who introduces herself as Isabel or Izabel or Isabella or Izzy or even Bella, though her real name may be Annabella, my ears ring like a bell that calls children in from play.  Why Isabel and not Alexandra or almost any other name? Isabel was part of our family, though it is more factual to say that she worked for our family.  She was a benevolent dictator and a shoulder to cry on. My most enduring memories are of the times when she would take my brother and me to her house to churn butter. It seemed like hard work back then, a blessing now. That Isabel had been a black woman is not something that registered with me at the time and that happy blindness may explain both my dislike of the word race, that is in itself a lie, as well as the outrage I feel when anyone is treated better or worse for no other reason than their perceived racial or cultural identity. I trace my moral character back to Isabel. The steady, muscular kindness with which I try to treat my friends, students and total strangers also comes from Isabel. Finally, it was in the sound of the tires of that old Kaiser-Frazer that I discovered poetry, the power to give the world ‘out there’ inner meaning. My debt to Isabel is unpayable, eternal and long overdue.

On Poetry

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 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.

Metaphor

Metaphor is the mystery. The poetic act is both a participation in and apprehension of that mystery.  A poem may affect us by its lyricism and its passion, by its matching sound with sense -- but without metaphor and the mystery it confers, poetry belongs solely to the decorative or rhetorical arts. It is by metaphor that a poem draws us back again and again to trace the lines that lead to the heart of being and to ourselves.

The Meaning of a Poem

The meaning of a poem comes not from the words, but from the transmutation that occurs in the heart of the poet at the time the poem is written.  In all poetry that is not simply decorative, there is an elemental activity of consciousness, a sustained golden moment that triumphs over raw experience.  The meaning of a poem is that activity of mind, triumphant over the despair that the words of the poem may convey.  

The poem that follows has elicited the dreaded no comment except from one good friend who did me the kindness of asking about the word ‘gimble'. Nevertheless, I continue to enjoy the poem as if it were written by someone else for whom poetry brings into view such beauty that we but suffer the more for its absence. It is a backward way of praising poetry.  That’s what I think antipoetry is doing. Anyway, here is the worthless little bit of a stinker in its final ode-rous form. Hold your nose . . . . .   

 Poetry Stinks

    Poetry gives us just enough of what is real
    to make us howl and gimble in the night,
    too far from moon and what is our fate
    To make it right.  It stinks a lot!

At Seventy-Two

As I have grown older, I have plunged into language as though I were one of Melville's Catskill eagles. Poetry has given me a kind of second sight that sustains me in the dark places and makes me invisible in the light.   Now, at seventy-two, poetry is leading me into a deeper knowledge: to be truly alive means to experience myself as essentially compounded of earth and wind and all other living things. It all breathes fire. I now want more than words. I seek to understand simile and metaphor as reality itself.  Man is as much wolf as wind, as much rain as mind and so I would be.  I know that I am approaching the age of oblivion whose plentitude is ALL, an empty mirror that is yet full of life.  What I tell my students is that to be truly alive is to strive passionately for one’s own truth. My truth is the poetry of mind and heart and of Being itself.  

Translating sound into verse

When the wind spoke to me to this morning, it was laughing, another time it was oracular, at another like the whisper of one lover to another. How are we to represent these sounds? The laughter was a flutter of leaves, the prophecy the swoop of eagle fast upon its prey, the whisper a vanishing ‘yes’.  In these different sounds I hear a flute, a waterfall and the new moon's own shy, silvery voice. The sound of all of these is translated into images and may be represented as phlooooemmmm. Let those who are not poets worry about onomatopoeia. Poets are more resourceful translators.

 

 

What she came to say

Though he is dying and lost in time,
She will not permit the truth be spoken
Or any other game be played
Until she says what she came to say
To one who knows her wilder ways.

(The sun and moon now count the time;
The trees and shadows bend his mind.)

She, undressing on the forest floor,
All green and gold and shimmering song,
Takes him to ground and shapes his soul:
You will not die and never know
What it is to love and be alone.  

(She holds him in a last embrace
And turns his eyes to see her face.)

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. 

 

Man

What goes
like a wolf
in the morning
like the sea
in the afternoon
and the wind
at night?

The wolf is desire.
The sea is the journey.
The wind is what remains.

The answer is always man.

Philosophical Journal Entry 1

“Others give you the appearance of happiness, but I give you the reality.” (Socrates, Apology)

 

What is the difference between seeming to be happy and actually being so?  How can it be that I am not actually happy when I think I am? Does this correspond with my own experience? And if it does, what does Socrates offer in place of the “appearance of happiness”?  What good to me is Socrates’ dictum that the “unexamined life” is not worth living?  Is that dictum not some sort of self-torture? I certainly acknowledge that I often feel that there is something lacking in my life, that there should be something more in the daily round of my activities. But what is this “something more”? What for me is happiness? It is sustained activity in accordance with my basic being.  What do I mean by “basic being”? Though there are many possible answers, the one that comes to me again and again is that my “basic being” is ethical – that is, I want most deeply to be a good human being. I believe no harm can come to me if I am actively living in accordance with my own ethical intuitions.  I don’t mean that I would not suffer but that whatever suffering I experience would not be able to touch me. The happiness I experience when I do live “from the inside out,” acting out of that ethical core, makes me inviolable..  Not even death can harm me.  So what about what Socrates offers, the examined life? Is that not precisely what I am doing here and now in this journal entry.  It is.  His dictum recalls me to myself, my basic being, my ethical core.

 

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 

As you once were

Set out beneath the stars
on a solitary raft
that drifts along the shore
on a current
that will bring you
out to sea and sky
beyond all imagining

as you once were
as you will be again.

The Oracle at Delphi

 

    He saw the child in the woman, wild, innocent, mischievous, vulnerable and a nuisance to herself and others, not unlike how he had been when he was six, but try as he might, posing before his nemesis the mirror, he could barely conjure up the feeling of what it was like to be so young. Then one day, seeing his students for the first time after cataract surgery, he became unaccountably double or rather blind-sighted, seeing each of them as younger and older than they actually were, side-stepping reality, if you like, but yet somehow getting it all right. There was Sally, for instance, with flowing red hair, freckles, of course, and a smile that betrayed her awareness of how beautiful she was. Now, however, he saw her crying for papa when he would leave for work and crying again for papa when he departed this earth. She would in time become the sort of smartass, assertive woman, ever and anon unsparing of her smile, who would one day become his boss, if he were to live so long. And then there was Leo, a tortured face hopelessly entangled in his own arms and legs that would flop about like Udon noodles, his hands and feet dangling precariously at the extremities. Now, however, he saw Leo as an infant, well-composed in his mother’s arms, being rocked to sleep to Ariel's own sweet music in his mother's lilting voice, Where the bee sucks, there suck I and Come unto these yellow sands and Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies, complete with all the dings and dongs of the bells and the strangely soft crowing of roosters, and it seemed to him like riding on a bat's wing, and then, at almost the same moment, he saw Leo as a father, impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit, having finally realized the benefit of his mother's theatrical training, with one daughter clinging to his leg as if it were the trunk of a tree, complaining that it was her turn, and another, younger, smaller daughter whom he was dangerously throwing up in the air and having to lurch to catch in the nick of time, dragging along the first daughter who refused to let go of his leg, and miraculously not a trace of fear in the eyes of the at-risk child. After all, papa was strong and now he could dance. He could even feel Leo's future strength and grace in his own arms and legs, and, naturally enough, found himself, the teacher, 73 years of age, intending on his next visit to ask his doctor to approve a disabled parking permit, now waiting like the other students for class to begin. He heard himself announce an in-class writing assignment: they were to write about a childhood memory and then trace how that memory was like an oracle -- you know, like at the Oracle of Delphi that we all learned about in the sixth grade. So embarrassing, his student-self was thinking, surely the old man can do better than that. All that Greek mythology was just a boatload of malarkey. Still, he knew he could hit that assignment out of the park just as he had actually hit a home run when he was thirteen, his team losing by three runs in the championship game for interstellar glory. It had been the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, bases loaded, etc. He had even been disciplined enough not to allow his minuscule batting average of .023 or that he was leading the league in strikeouts to shake his resolve. The coach, not wishing to tempt fate, gave his butt a good smack, keeping his exhortation brief::  “It’s just another at-bat, son.” Of course, he was totally making all this up, but on the other hand, he had imagined this moment so often that the fantasy had come to substitute for any known facts. Indeed, everything he wrote for that assignment was a shameless fabrication, yet he knew that, like Odysseus, who was himself a skilled and inveterate liar, he could find within himself the resourcefulness to take on any Polyphemus he was likely to meet and prevail. He noted with satisfaction how he had worked words from their class vocabulary list into his essay -- stellar words like nemesis, precarious, anon, inveterate, and malarkey and, coming soon in lines yet to be written, peripherality, baptize and charlatan -- and was confident that he had hit yet another home run, though he was also aware that his teacher-self, spying on him with annoyingly persistent peripherality, was laughing at his student-self who had just previously sneered at mythology. Nevertheless, despite this handicap, he believed he had in fact become like his students or, as matters stood, like his fellow students, fearing as they did that he would finally be discovered to be a charlatan, a nobody, and so consequently baptized himself a true student of the game, always striving to learn new tricks to beat the system that, despite all his best efforts and those of his classmates, would still win out in the end and beat the crap out of each and every one of them.

 

Natura naturans

It hit, which is another way of saying ‘it happened’, whatever the pull of gravity or the water rising over the banks into homes built on the flood plain or the constellations in their peculiar but inevitable configurations countenanced. It hit like a hot iron let stand too long and so became a sort of dark commentary de rerum natura, ironic, steaming with the smell and heat of compost, natura naturans. And so she left him and traveled near and far until she came to where all the trouble had begun, the yearning, pure and simple, without an object or home, without knowing, and there things stood as they had always been except now she was on her own for the first time and became somehow heedlessly clairvoyant, stirring up memories and desire and crosstalk among the young and the old, sounding more like the bleating of goats and howls of wolves, each on edge for what would happen next, though it be but more of the same. It hit, which is another way of saying, everything and nothing changed. 

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

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. 

 

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.

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.

The Fall

He fell (he was always falling)

Or rather, he jumped, missing the water

That would have taken him, leaving his remains

to flow in the rhythms of his speech,

Washed clean like one hoping to please

Instead of what was, a silent heap,

Though there was heard from a nearby street

What some would call a melodious scream.

For Alex Thomas Coming To My House

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

The thought of Alex Thomas coming to my house

Could make an old man cry. Not me! Round

The back my grandson plays hide and seek.

I’ve not the slightest idea what that means

But, Alex, you will know! I can only dream

And look for nuts on airy ground.

You see, I’ve placed a charm about the house

And made my home among earthbound clouds.

Alex, you deserve this stupid poem. Take the blame!

If you were me, you would do the same.  

If that’s confusing, Lord, just let it rain.

 

For Rachel

 

    I do not know the pain you feel, dear one,

    But it must be more than a soul can bear --

    I feel that and would say no more

    Than what the towering tree nearby

    Would have me say: we feel it,

    Earth and root, leaf and wind,

    The sky itself would fall for you

    and comfort you. It knows

    no other blue.

For Mary and Emma

Video Recording: For Mary and Emma

 

Hey Mary, Hey Emma,

Let’s say together

what we have made our own:

κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.

Those who know no Greek

will understand what is essential:

we are friends.

In class, you let me ramble,

which I do well,

while you do all the work,

if you call it work

to play qui, quae, quod

and quack like ducks.

Some folks say Latin and Homer’s Greek are dead.

They’ll know better

when they hear angels like you

speak only bella Latina

and reckon things by the Αlpha and 0mega.  

Those who know no Latin or ancient Greek

will find themselves back in school.

Not you!

Valete, vos amo magis quam dicere possum.

 

For Christine -- May, 2020

 

In times like these

Christine is our Christine

Not for better or worse

But for her gift not to dwell

On what’s not possible

But on what is

and do it so well.

 

Thalassa

What poets know is what is not.
It sets us free upon the shore to dance like rain
And cry out to the sea as to a friend,
Who leaves and calls us home, its true name.

Its name is οὐ τόπος, the sea of tears,
In whose waves we would gladly drown.
We dance, I say, to enchant the sea
and make it sing: κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.

οὐ τόπος (ou topos): not a place
κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων: (koina ta tōn philōn): common are the things of friends.

A Flea

for Charles

Having not heard from you in days

(seems like years to a flea like me),

I worry, no doubt needlessly,

but there it is – the worry

worrying me, knowing

it will do no good,

and that’s a worry too,

so let’s call it prayer,

which likewise does no good

except it makes me feel better

or worse about myself,

depending, as it does,

on a dog.

 

Nocte

 

He tripped and fell
and had a tale to tell

But all you could hear
was a door closing.

O there were whistles
and wolves and owls

But all anyone could hear
was an old man gasping,

alone at last
with a tale to tell.

 

Kiss and Tell

 
Who but a god

Could look at you

Sweetly laughing

And not die


For a kiss, dying

Again and again

Like gods of spring

that never truly


Die. Your lips

Like night

hold back the day

And close my eyes . . .

Awake! Awake!

You are no god

To kiss and tell

Of life and death.

 

Where is that?

During a thunderstorm when everyone else was running for cover, one woman remained outside and seemed not to be bothered in the least. They all looked out from their hiding places and wondered at her.  It didn’t hurt that she was strikingly beautiful.  Well, soon enough they all came out into the storm, feeling a bit ashamed, I suppose. At first, they couldn’t keep their eyes off her, glistening as she was in the rain and flash of light. Eventually, however, their eyes followed hers to the sky and what they saw was only a roiling grayness that seemed to envelop the earth. They asked her what she saw.. Home, she said. And they, like the dumb little fish of another story, asked, “Where is that?”