Hughlings Himwich

A way of dying

He held her feathers in his hand

But the wind took them for itself.

There was nothing but these words

To write on this dry coarse paper,

Her skin, the red ink she died of

Running off like a mountain stream.

What poets do

A hawk is as little

a darting thought

or glance

As it is a sky-wolf

or windborne voice.

It is a name

for what cannot be

named within ourselves

and would else be lost.

So we stop and die

But would bravely say,

We dive like hawks

and climb the sky.

So deep his eyes

for mickey

There is life and death

and life again, ground

to common cosmic

dust. Here we end

and begin again,

his eyes so deep

we find in death

his life and love

within ourselves.

Ber: Picture of the Day 209 - 213

Blue Iris: Photography by Alec Himwich

https://www.alechimwich.com

On not explaining ourselves away

It is a common response in light of all that neuroscience has told us of our circuitry to ask how a machine, however complicated, could ever exercise free choice and thereby allow individuals to be responsible for their actions, as we in fact experience ourselves to be. If we are machines, then free choice is not possible. We might well ask if there is not some other approach that would resolve the question of personal responsibility, one that does not require any determination regarding free will or the findings of neuroscience. One such possibility is simply to look to our engagement with life and allow our actions to speak for themselves as irreducible facts that are not to be explained away by any manner of ulterior reasoning. Our answers to the questions of value that life inevitably puts to us would be thus plainly stated and speak of the only reality and the only truth we can ever know.

Ber: Picture of the Day 204, 205, 206, 207, 208

To see more of Ber Himwich's photography, go to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/berhimwich/

No, not I / Revision

No, Not I*

I did not do
the thing I did,
nor say aught
that I have said.

Nor will I die
Like other men.
I will decline,
and lie in bed.

*Hamlet, III.i, 96-97; V, gravediggers

* * *

Revision

If only 'lie'
would take a nap,
but like my tale
it likes to wag:

nor did I say
what I have said,

Which I prefer, but
would miss the play.

Most would say, what’s the point?
Such slender threads are all my thought.

“I am not Prince Hamlet nor meant to be” --
Eliot says and does not say,
revels here are ever ended.

Dying well

She wore no more
than her eyes,
She held the ring
and spoke her vow.
Simple as breath,
as wind she died.

We turned now
to hear him speak,
but all we heard,
as he fell, was
the fall of rain
in every word.

We all agreed
they both died well.
We could not hear
each to each
their vows betrayed
in the river's deep.

A Letter from Charles Eaton

I have the great good fortune of having Charles for a friend. Just how fortunate I am you can see if you read his attached letter to me which, though typical of his correspondence, is in no other way customary. He is not just an old school epistolarian. He is a philosopher, whose conversation is as inspirational as his writing. Charles is the husband of Pauline Eaton, whose ecstatic pictures you can find on this site. Pauline is a consummate artist and, if she will forgive me, a determined mystic. What Pauline does with her paints Charles does with language. Though their work may look different, they are drawing from the same well.

Download Poems- Himwich Eaton Stevenson Henley[2]

Reading lesson

(for Peter)

Mom, who is dad talking to? Friends who write.

Where did he meet them? In books.

Is he talking to himself? Yes.

Is he crazy? Yes, a little.

Will I be crazy like dad one day? Just keep reading.

Can I read dad’s books some day? Of course, he is talking to you.

Are you crazy too, Mom? A little. I am talking to you, aren’t I?

But Dad is so quiet when he writes. Yes, he talks and talks.

Like me? Yes, little one, like you.

Moon walk

Walking through days
I have walked through
long ago, same
step and stride, same
heart wanting something

more; yet today
is the only day
I can’t remember you
Walking through the years
to find me standing

here alone, longing
for the moon,
Its light buried
in my heart of hearts:

Be with you soon.

Pauline, Charles and Hugh

Photograph by Ber Himwich

What the eye sees
Is true, though
only a shadow
of the truth.

What remains
Is ours alone
and holds us
All as one.

No one can take
What is not theirs
To give: a heart,
a mind, a simple

soul and what
at last is grace.
Just so are we
For what remains

So simply bound
As friends.

Some

For Emily

It's but a drop of rain -
However slight its sum -
It will dissolve the sky
and swallow up the sun
. . . . .

What can lift the fallen soul
And make it feel its toes?
Don’t hold your breath
That is the key
And be it but the air
You’ll light upon a wayward word
And turning -- dancing there

She

She unraveled
at my feet
like the sea

like the sea
She rose and wept
and called to me

Now I call to you
with a thousand voices
of a thousand seas.

What soft tune

What soft tune
Turns the moon
Through its stations?

No lover's art
Shapes the night
And makes it move

Only the note
Of a dying bird
In its dark nest

Sings it round
The earth
And calls it home.

To be wholly there

If we were wholly open
To earth, tree and flower,
There would be no poems
Only the chattering silence
Of wind, hoofbeat, and rain.
For to be wholly there
Is to die 10.000 times,
Each sight and sound
A thread that binds us close
and makes us whole.

Some More

Sewing

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

Nothing but wind

I’ve stopped dying and breathing,
But you, my love, fall upon me like skin,
Like rain that streams through my veins,
And you teach me to breathe again
And how to die again and again
Until I become nothing but wind.

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?"

Buttons

Smoke rising burnt orange then down around the edge until the tenderness binding flung into the night curving endlessly, her gift her fire dying in my arms her body rising until nothing but the bloom of sighing herself to sleep tight as the moon and flying.

(untitled)

You will come to the end
of your high story,
your body broken,
your spirit weak and alone,
the goal still distant,
yet on your lips a song
of no regret as you
set out a final time
on a ship unrigged,
your self the wind
and sky and sea.

Signs along the way

NO SPOONING ALLOWED ON CAMPUS

So young folks

have only soup

and are always

hungry.

DON’T TOUCH THE FLOWERS!

They are not for you!

(After all, you are not dead.)

NO HUNTING ALLOWED!

Students Are Out of Season.

Spring cannot be far behind!

Oracle

For far too long
I’ve been hostage
To the fates.
No more.
I will not play.
Do what you will,
I will not obey.

Of course, you will.
So runs the wind.
It's the air you breathe,
the song you sing.
So stirs the day,
You hear it still.
You will obey.

Uncommon Wisdom 1 & 2

If you want to praise acceptably, be very precise. Inattentive praise is almost an insult.

-- Eva Brann, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul, p. 423

I hope whatever you’re doing,

you’re stopping now and then

and

not doing it at all.

--- James Fadiman, quoted in Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind, p. 282

Aria One

Aria says

She’s worlds away,
In this one she is lost,
Though some would say
She’s found a home
And can never be
apart. She holds
So still she travels
fast, like love
before it’s asked.

Comments (0)

By lamplight

There is before me in my room
An old lamp that burns
With no bulb screwed in.
It gets its light from years ago
When my father would read to me
Of little mice who ruled the house
And left my room a fearful sight,
My toys and clothes all here and there --
He smiled his smile, as I do mine,
Beneath this lamp and its brief light.

Call Parra Neruda

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

He has a fine wife who does what she pleases

I see

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

Love’s cornered the market on health and disease

I see

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

Piss off at three, we’re shooting the breeze

I see

Call Parra Neruda and see how he likes it

We die so often we forget how to breathe

Either I am half-crazy or I am a non sequitur

(Disclaimer: This ‘poem’ refers
to no one living or dead
or otherwise not breathing
.)

Not sure what this is,
antipoetry or just
bad poetry, if
even that.

That’s what friends are for –
to bang the pot
and make it sound
like all is lost
or time for bed.

Surely, you will like this not!
Or else, I’m doomed,
though Daisy knows
there’s room enough
to brood for two.
(You know the tune.)

A rose is a rose
and nothing else
will do, she says.
A worm would settle
for nothing less. You,

you bitch and moan, then dance,
hand to hoof and hoof to hand,
dressed in nothing more
than you. You beg,
Bring down the moon!

But all I do is cough
and pee in bed
and call stray cats like you
a friend.

. . . . . .

Be well! Or if it is too
late, make the best
of a sorry fate,

Or slam the door
on what is a face
so much like yours

It must be fake.

(Myself? I can’t stop lying.
It means the world to me.)

(What is the sound of a door
already shut? A blue, blue sky
or a wish to die. Or not.)

(What do you know for sure?
Cogito,
ergo cogito.) No more.

Actually, I could go on
but Daisy says it’s time for bed,
time for love is what she means.
You know, hand in hoof or hoof in hand.
Whatever. Love or hate.
We'll not go quiet in the night.
That’s for sure!
In the name of father
mother orphan child,
let it be so.

Poetry Stinks / Antipoem

This poem 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!

A shot in the dark

Fault these eyes prying out the pain a bargain this time but next in line a drowning or sketching this day or night like any other point the shortest distance is dying is such a drag who were shot out of the dark and would go on bitching and so here we stand or suffer for what praying is to breathing and sometimes bark and other times bite like fire and god knows where you're bleeding

Comments (0)

Prophet Lamp Picture by Ber Himwich

This is a picture of the base of a lamp in our home. It's been in the Himwich family for generations.

Ber: Picture of the Day 114, 115, 116, 117, 118

Ber: Picture of the Day 112, 113

For more of Ber Himwich's Pictures of the Day, go to his site at https://www.splitsushix.com or see Picture of the Day links on the left side of the page.

Ber: Picture of the Day 110

For more of Ber Himwich's Pictures of the Day, go to his site at https://www.splitsushix.com or see Picture of the Day links on the left side of the page.