HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
 I will be using a number of pieces in this post that I didn't include in my book, Places and Spaces, because they didn't fit with the plan I had for the book. beginning with this one, from our first visit to Durango. We've been back many times, as recently as a month and a half ago. Animas in the A.M. 5 a.m. walking main street downtown dog impervious to the cold not me across the railroad tracks past the hotel slick sidewalk alongside the Animas River snow deep on both sides river iced at the bank solitary duck climbs frost-glistened rock mid-stream slips scrambles honks no other sound but the rustle of the river as it eddies and curls and slides over rocks across the river five deer gather in a clearing graze silent as the morning a car crosses the bridge at the end of the block lights reflecting on snow all around tires crunching froze-crisp ice shell on the road and the deer flipping their tails flee high-leaping (Durango, Colorado, 1997)  Cold truths of life and death in black and white atop a rise a mound of earth an ancient burial mound looking out over a snowed-over field white field black skeleton of a winterized tree thin black line of a frozen creek five black horses led by a white horse ghost against the snow legs lifted high above the snow crossing (Colorado, February, 2008)  A cemetery a cemetery on a low mound between the highway and the Rio Grande the humble markers of poor people from the cluster of casitas I passed a quarter mile back, small houses of native stone, like the more elaborate markers, the ones not of rotting wood, crosses, bowing toward the ground, native flowers gather at the base of some, stone or wood, nothing, stone or wood or flowers, around the indentations that mark the oldest graves, the unmarked, the never marked, those of transient markers no match for the inevitable decline of time that leaves these shallow dimples over a grave in which nothing but a few scattered bones remain, poor people, cowboys and shepherds who lived and died, then faded to nothing beneath dry badland sand… (Hwy. 170 between Terlingua and Presidio, May, 2003)  Come the resurrection the path down and back is steep and arduous, especially for older people, though benches along the way provide a place to stop and rest, a moment to breathe thin air and listen to the wind passing between the canyon walls, the stubby trees restless in response birds call along the way but go silent among the ruins, homage to the ghosts who patrol the bare adobe rooms, guarding the ancient walls until those who left return again, pull from storehouses the grain and seed they left behind for this very day of resurrection we are silent visitors, with the birds, waiting for the tread of soft footsteps so long absent from their home (Mesa Verde, 1979)  Continental divide snow field backed up by pine 7 years old, the first time he’s seen this much snow, out of the car pushing through hip-deep snow... first snowball, hits me on the chest, I return fire, snow battle ensues until we collapse laughing in the snow… shadows pass in forest silence, behind the thick pines, deer, giving no apparent notice to the strangers and their loud, unfamiliar games in the virgin snow… fresh storm coming, first flakes fall, fat wet flakes hitting with a splat on our coats, the windshield... time to get off the mountain (Colorado, late October, 1990)  Dust to dust to dust wind howling outside the car sand popping against our windows like tiny fingers tapping, blowing across the highway thick as a mid-winter fog on a Gulf coast morning tumbleweeds fly in front of us and behind like prickly missiles shot from a silo somewhere in Iowa or Kansas a big one, the size of a small car, rushing at us broadside, tossed airborne, right over the top of us, one side to the other… (Texas Panhandle, March 1981)  From 2014, not a travel poem, though the picture is, from 1967 while studying Russian at Indiana University for the Air Force. King of the serial heroes breakfast downtown again, my favorite place for breakfast, the best $40 breakfast in town… and why am I telling you this? because I have to tell you something I suppose and until I have something interesting to tell you my breakfast plans will have to do… the restaurant at the Pearl, about a block and a half from my coffeehouse, so I’d be going that way even if I wasn’t going there for breakfast 7 o’clock now, meeting Dee at the restaurant at 8:30, which means I’ll be leaving here about 8 o’clock - here being my regular breakfast haunt where I just had coffee and toast this morning, with a turkey sausage patty for the dog (here being were I am every morning - here for a symbolic cup of coffee so the servers won't feel disrespected by my absence and so they won't call the sheriff to investigate the possibility of foul play having befallen me) but still niceties aside, I must leave room for the coddled eggs… then, going downtown on the interstate on a misty-slick road, commuter clogged, half the traffic intimidated by the wet road, driving 50 miles an hour, and the other half hitting 85, on the theory that slick roads won’t be a problem if you drive fast enough to fly above them see, there, I finally got to the exciting part, will I make it downtown or will I die in a wet, dripping and twisted wreck half-way there? it’s a real drama this poem a cliff-hanger, just like when Zorro rides his horse off a cliff into a deep, dark ravine you have to come back next Saturday to see how he survived, "how", not "if" because we know he did survive just don’t know how, Saturday afternoon movie serial heroes, like God himself, moving in mysterious ways to always beat the odds, survive for a second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. coming… I am the hero of all my stories, as you well might know, so expect a dramatic, bloody car crash, from which I will crawl, unhurt, to continue my Wednesday morning quest for my $40 breakfast King of the Serial Heroes - that’s me  another travel poem not included in the travel book, "Places and Spaces" Musical mystery tour he and I, father and son quality time together driving through the mountains and deserts and vistas of the American Southwest, me celebrating my first retirement, he celebrating the end of another year of high school at fifteen, a musician himself, he had an advanced and eclectic taste in music, so that by our fourth day I was introduced to musicians new to me that are still among my favorites more than 20 years later, listening to Bella Fleck and his Flecktones as we pass through Santa Fe, Dave Matthews while visiting Red Rocks, near holy site to Chris, where Dave and his band played in their early days, about to get too big for such small venues, imagining the band’s improvisations echoing off the rocks, Denver’s tall buildings on the horizon, and over and over as we passed through state after state, a Willie and Lobo CD, two guys with about a half-dozen modern and exotic string instruments, a mix of musical styles and themes from the Moors and the Spanish, intricate compositions from all the different strains of Spanish musical influences with a little modern jazz mixed in, thinking how amazing and wonderful it would be to watch them play… somewhere in Arizona, a small town whose main and near only street followed along railroad tracks from city-start to city-end, a rusty town, everything rusty red, a mining town, the red dust of its mines the only thing left of the towns reason to be… a night in a motel beside the highway, brought awake several times though the long night by trains passing, their lonely whistle moaning at every crossing, up early for breakfast and coffee at a café beside the tracks, sausage and eggs and a flyer on the cashier’s counter, Willie and Lobo, never knowing they would be there, we missed them by just two days… I didn’t tell Chris how close we had come, but I still have the CD and play it often (Somewhere in Arizona, 1998)  The next poem is by Frank O'Hara, taken from his book, Meditations in an Emergency. The book was published by Grove Press in 1957. O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England. From 1951, he worked in New York, first for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art as assistant curator. He was killed in an auto pedestrian accident in 1966 at the ate of 40. He wrote of postwar art and of his experiences as a gay man. Radio Why do you play such dreary music on Saturday afternoon, when tired mortally tired I long for a little reminder of immortal energy?4 All week long while I trudge fatiguingly from desk to desk in the museum you spill your miracles of Grieg and Honegger on shut-ins. Am I not shut in too, and after a week of work don't I deserve Prokofieff? Well, I have my beautiful de Kooning to aspire to I think it has an orange bed in it, more than the ear can hold. (note: I nod in agreement with the thrust of this poem. My local classics station seems to define worthy to air as anything written over 300 years ago. I long to hear some music from the great scores in cinema, the popular opera of our time.  Gravity’s gold Bella and I, her golden fur blazing like the bright of a second sun shining, and me, devote disciple of the church of intermittent napping, sit together on a park bench in the central plaza crawling with people seeming all tourists, the only likely resident habitues, the aged hippies sitting behind us strumming guitars, talking about everything from starships to moon shadows on the plaza in dim early morning…. the tourists who pass, old couples, pretty girls with accents, all stop to talk to Bella, to stroke her head, as if she were, indeed, the sun with the sun’s gravity, pulling them to her orbit… while she, usually so distant and unwelcoming to anyone who is not me, more like a cold far star than the warm draw of an afternoon sun, basks in the attention… doesn’t want to leave when I get tired of sitting (Santa Fe, 2013)  A flight to Kabul from Peshawar, Easter week, 1969 Moonscape mountains high and bare our small DC-3 struggles as highest peaks pass below within arm’s reach, it seems, from my window seat life below if there is such must be harsh and hard with hard people harsh and unforgiving to those who intrude without invitation... not to be messed with as centuries of armies and great generals have learned - from Alexander to even now ourselves ruing the lesson - if you decide you must fight here make sure first you have the merciless moonscape mountains on your side (Flying over the Hindu Kush, April, 1969)  This poem is by Andrew W. Greeley, taken from his book, The Sense of Love, published by the Ashland Poetry Press of Ashland College in 1992. Greeley, a priest ordained in the diocese of Chicago nearly four decades ago, has been a noted scholar for many years (a professor of social science at the University of Chicago and the author of scores of books in sociology) and has been a constant best-selling fiction writer. A Conclave Sonnet (For Grace Ann) Our great glacier-melted lake turns most fair When, troubled, it gropes for uncertain calm A Like a girl combing wet and tangle hair, Rain swept and twisted by a manic storm. Hair-line traced, fragile vase more lively made, Lightly marked by steel-pointed sorrow's knife, Ready still for flowers too long delayed To grace subtle lines in the bloom of life. Children do not mourn for the lost half day When the noon sky lifts after summer rain But praise the blue with an afternoon of mirth... Hope broken, shattered, stomped on, then reborn: First life lost, it was said, then found again... Seeing death as the vespers of rebirth.  Remembering the caves
so it’s like this, we preserve memories in our brain and when our brain dies so die the memories but there are also memories that reside in our genes that do not die with us but are passed on to our offspring, memories encoded in genes that are part of the inheritance just as are the rest of the genetic mix that makes us generational memories, passed on and passed on so that some part of us remembers the cave, remembers the man-things, the almost-us Neanderthals who we remember as we remember so many other fantastical things beyond our experience, things we explain through tall tales and myths and fairy stories… and beyond that, it is said, all living things animal and plant have these genetic memories just as all living things have a consciousness, the whooping cranes in their winter marsh home, finding this refuge every year not though some trick of navigation, but because they remember it, generations of genetic memory remembering its comforts and where it is and how to get there and also the forests and the prairie grasses and the sunflower who turns its face to the sun before the sun rises, knowing from generations that it will rise and that it will rise in the east and generations of warm sun memory tell it when it is time to turn… science learning from myth, myth suggesting new science, and with each new thing we learn, new mysteries, all knowledge an accumulation of ignorance addressed,, universal consciousness, memories from all becoming part of all… where have we heard that before… ``` this the state of knowledge expanding today theory always questing to be challenged, questing to be debunked what does a poet know of this and what advice can such a dabbler provide not much only enough to consider one suggestion - maybe we should all talk to our petunias today though we know they will not talk back, science tells us there is a good chance they will hear and warm themselves in the genetic memory of kind words spoken by those who in the far past knew them better than we
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 Poems and stories in this post will come from my book, Always to the Light, and later poems never collected or published in a book, as well as from other poets I haven't selected yet.  Listening to Mussorgsky Listening to Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” From the speaker overhead just as I start to write my poem, Wondering how my little hiccup of a poem can imagine a place for itself In the same world as the great gates of Kiev, Having second thoughts, in fact, about writing anything today, Deciding in the end, to be true to my philosophy that the value of art is in its doing, Not its product, that product being merely an artist’s footprint, Sign to the tracker that the artist was there, Valuable to collectors of fine footprints but as irrelevant to the artist’s nature As the remains of a grand banquet laid out on a cluttered table, Evidence of a feast, but not the feast itself… So, hear me, dear reader, I am afraid this poem will never mean as much to you As it did to me in its making It was a great pleasure for me And I’m sorry I can leave only the bones for you  Poesis interruptus I stopped off at my friendly Gas-grocery-beer-cigarettes convenience for money After my usual morning coffee and newspaper read At my usual table At my usual diner With the usual Sunday morning dueling church folk To the behind and either side of me, Including an extra place or two Filled by the twice-a-year Christians Who, it seems, get all the saving they need on Christmas and Easter, Securing all other Sunday mornings for sleeping late or golf… Discovering After my third cup that I had no cash but for four pennies, three dimes, two quarters And a Canadian coin I’ve trying to get rid of since our trip to Vancouver two years ago, Leaving me to pay my $1.94 tab with my debit card ```````````` It is at this point in the story that the poet is interrupted By life outside the poem – poesis interruptus – and the question is four hours later As to whether he can get it up again to finish what he had most ardently begun… At first you might think that returning to the earlier story half-finished Is a process of separating the wheat of earlier inspiration From the chaff of the humdrum interim… But that’s not the case because, with proper poetic recognition, All could be one and each could be the other with no separation necessary or possible Integration is needed instead, finding the wheat in the essence of all chaff And the chaff that infiltrates all wheat – Like the small shopping center by the gas-grocery-beer -cigarette store Where I stopped to use the ATM machine, Anchored by a large vacant $1 store Close up to the “X-treme Impact Church” Next to “Alive MMA – Brazilian Jiu Jitsu” Adjacent to the “Gathering of Grace Church” Neighbor to “Fantasy Nails and Tan” Snuggled up tightly to “Tattoos and Piercings” Sharing a common wall with “Gin’s Chinese Restaurant” It is all, in this world, like the shopping center, All the disparate bits and pieces, All the wheats and chaffs of everyday urban life Swirled together by the Mix Master of everyday living, Making the single and complete Here and now of this particular and unique Easter Sunday morning, Another party to which I am not invited because I will pay the price of admission – Separation of sinners from the saved, rather than embracing unity of all mankind, Some sinner in every saint And a bit of saint in every sinner Wheat from chaff, I am one and I am both And cannot separate my own self from the other Or either from You  Happy Confederate Heroes Day the biggest problem with being a non-believer is I miss all the best holidays... Christmas and everybody tra-la-la-laling all over town and I'm in a funk because every place I like to go is overcome with manic Christmas fanatics driving me crazy with their lousy Christmas spirit and I know after six months of this the day will finally come and everything I like to do will be impossible for twenty-four hours because everything will be closed so people can go tra-la-la-ling at home with their tra-la-la kids and if I see that damn scrooge or that yellow brick road or that stupid angel getting his wings one more time I might just get medieval with my TV and right before that there is Thanksgiving which requires me to eat turkey for three weeks and I don't even like turkey... and next, just as that dumbass angel finally gets his wings we jump into Easter and the whole cascarones breaking confetti-filled eggs on my head thing, leaving me with a headache for two days and a week and a half of pulling paper bits from my hair... those are the big ones, except for the 4th of July which would be great if it was the 4th of October or something like that instead of right in the middle of the hottest part of summer when I'm supposed to eat bar-b-que in the park, outside and watch fireworks and listen to the symphony, with help from the canons at Fort Sam Houston, play the 1812 overture outside outside outside outside everything outside and who the hell wants to be outside when it's 114 degrees in the shade and there's damn little of that that doesn't leave me with anything but Confederate Heroes Day which causes family issues with one great grandpappy on one side and the other great grandpappy on the other and the minute we start talking about it we have to fight the whole frigging war all over again who needs it! (NOTE: Confederate Heroes Day dropped in Texas as a state employee holiday about 20 years ago in favor of LBJ's birthday.)  The catch of the day Is not the fish we catch Or the one that got away The catch of the day is the time we stay and the walking home together  Eastern sky the eastern sky red like an angry rose by any other hue would it sweet so smell end of days of 2012 approaching a new year’s ending beginning in two days and I have no reflex for an old year a new year an in-between year a sky red as an angry rose the hue so sweet no reflex to measure the new number the old just a day you know like any other day no reflex for seeing new what I’ve seen before or new days or old days or roses angry red no matter how sweet hue the smell it’s just another damn day in another damn year just another damn moment just another damn angry hue and I have no reflex to understand or to teach it must another momentary rose angry then gone like me hasta la vista huesome rose On the South Texas Coast  This poem is by Carol Coffee Reposa. It is taken from her book Underground Musicians, published by Lamar University Press in 2013. This is Reposa's fourth book of poetry. A professor emeritus of English at San Antonio College, she has received three Fulbright-Hay Fellowships, along with three Pushcart Prize nominations. Los Amantes de Sumpa First she died And then he died Ten thousand years ago. She was twenty. He was twenty-five. Both were well off for their time. Mourners laid him next to her, Placed his arm around her waist, His leg across her thigh. This man and woman Could have watched The sun come up each day In bursts of red and gold Or listened for the early morning birdsong While they thatched their roof. Perhaps they married Had a feast She might have borne a child. I look at the tangled bones His skull crushed From centuries of earth Hollows of his eyes Filled long ago with bright desire What remains of him still turned tdo her It doesn't matter When they died Or why, or how All that counts this afternoon Or any other Is his arm around her waist, His leg across her thigh.  Written today, if written tomorrow perhaps entirely different. Too long, too personal, written in poetry form only because that is the form most natural to me, like breathing Taking stock A picture from 50 years past, Me, In the tiny trailer I lived in While returning to university After military service A pen in my shirt pocket, always, Even today a pen in my shirt pocket, A jacket, part of an Afghan soldier’s uniform, Received in a trade with one of the soldiers Who guarded our compound, that I wore that day Even though it was a little too small for me Years passed since then Long ago, those days when the end of life Was a dim dot, a spec, far away, Far enough to easily forget it was there Years passed since then And today the tiny dot Is a black pit I stand at the edge of There is no forgetting the dark At my feet Years passed And I feel a need to take stock… Born and raised In a small South Texas town near the border, High intelligence creating high expectations around me I lacked the will to meet, A disappointment, even to myself Leaving that town at eighteen, Finding opportunity to grow closer To the me others expected me to be, But, still floating on a dead sea, I lingered behind Until military service, I fought the call, but gave in to the inevitable, And, once in, achieving rank early Despite being mediocre at my job at best, The beneficiary of expectations, those who led me Seeing in me a future leader Then, military service complete, University degree in hand, The beginning of a career that fit me As if made for me, Ambition discovered, power and influence, And though temporary as such power always is, I liked it and took advantage of it To do things that, on the scale of my life, Seemed great things But the great things that gave me such pride Passed, like the power that created them, The accomplishments that seemed so large, Eroded to doodlebug dust like the power That created and sustained them A second life then as a poet, Twisting stories of my life into A form of poetry mostly known To be unknown, a blip, then forgotten And then a third life as an artist, A talent-free artist, creating art No more memorable than the poetry And now the pit lies deep and dark Before me and, leaving all that past Behind me, my stock, my portfolio, Is simply this, a wife who loves me And a son in whom I have as much pride As anything in my passing powerful past That’s all… And it turns out, It’s enough  Old homes left behind taking a little trip in a couple hours a two-hour drive to the coast, to Corpus Christi first, the city where I lived for fifteen years before ambition drew me to the hills twenty years ago I'll see if any old haunts remain - it seems every time I visit, a few more are gone, the old city slipping away, a whole new city grown up on the south side where grain and cotton were the only cash crops before… I’ll wander around downtown, called now in my hotel brochure “The downtown entertainment district” (Which it was some years ago, until the folks at the old folks' home complained about the noise - we’ll see, I guess, maybe all the old folks died or have become accustomed to noise with their oatmeal) breakfast tomorrow morning at the top of the Omni, the bay and bayfront laid out, the water rippling in early morning tide, shinning orange and red under the rising sun, the lights of the shipyards tiny pin holes through dim early morning on the other side of the bay… --- taking the long way home tomorrow, across the bay bridge to North Padre and Mustang Island, stopping for pictures of the beach and the fishing boats in Port Aransas, then the ferry across the ship channel, back to the mainland, first Aransas Pass, then down the coast to the little cities that lap the water's edge, Ingleside by the Bay, Rockport, Fulton, with lunch at Charlotte Plummer’s, pictures along the way if I can find anything I haven't snapped before after lunch, west to the flat highways of the coastal plains, plowed fields on either side, fields settled in for winter, awaiting early grain, and the wind farms, new, spread along the coast, facing southeast to catch the constant gulf winds, winds converted to electricity, the sustenance that feeds our civilization, then, pasture and old oaks spreading wide across low hills that grow over the miles to the curves and up and down highways of hill country highways, just past my home in my little divide between rolling ridges and the creek that runs alongside it… home at the end of day, old homes left behind again  Ride the tiger early clouds turned to wide-open sky as the sun rising burns away the night cramps of dead memories and lost dreams a new day, old swept away in the dark processing of midnight shadows and the sighs of slow-hobo winds the old day surrenders its night, back broken by the crack of an orange horizon, the bright new tiger stretches, gathers together the hours of its dominion, metes them out to us with the lick of her red tongue, sharp extension of bright claws… ~~~ welcome… ride the tiger as you must, until the next dark sends her slinking back to her shadow den  Here are three short poems from my library. The poems are by Eric Greinke, taken from his book Wild Strawberries, published in 2008 by Presa Press. Greinke is the author of several book, including poetry, fiction and non-fiction. He has a Master's degree in Social Work and has twenty-five years experience working with disturbed and disabled children. He has also taught creative writing in an alternate high school and has worked in the Michigan Poets in The Schools program. Dust Obnoxious cosmetics Drip from the face Of the Statue of Liberty. Diamonds gleam From teh President's teeth. Old dogs argue Over the skulls Of rock stars and senators. A battalion of metal roaches Dances around the captured flag. In the middle Of a moonless night Old men remember the Third Reich. Alarms ring in gladiolas, Cueballing yet another Spring. Northern lights A roar of jeweled leaves Titillates the dark northern sky Celebration above the trees Aurora flares Sun spots dance the edge Owl turns to small sound Marten clings To a a red pine branch Outside my sleepy head Liquid Wild ducks Scoot a landing On blue eyes  Usual suspects the old guys are here and the tattooed fat lady is here and the always neat and clean homeless guy with his tightly wrapped foam bedroll, heavy-looking backpack and professorial look with little half-lens glasses as he spends the day reading in the air-conditioned cool, and the mama with her little blond girl trailing behind, baby-doll in one hand and pink little purse in the other, and little plastic dangly bracelets on both wrists that she shakes as she passes, and the young mother with two little girls, heading double-time for the bathroom, passing a new guy, a long, white-haired Sam Elliot looking guy in short pants reading "Guns and Ammo" magazine, and a couple of medical student regulars, and the short-haired cowboy guy with the bad arm, and the two gay guys that show up a couple times a week (and, OK, maybe they're not gay, but they sure are sharp dressers) and the middle-aged woman, a mid-life student who always looks like she's mad at me because I always get here first and take the table by the door next to an electric plug where she'd like to be, and the dorky-looking guy and his dorky-looking wife who come in and stare at each other and never say a word the whole time they're here, and the old guy with thick glasses and a magnifying glass who writes tiny numbers in columns in a spiral notebook, eyes inches from the page, and the table of law students, arguing with each other like it was a Supreme Court appearance, and the Asian guy reading Shopenheimer haiku and the girl with long auburn hair and acne scared cheeks, a cheeky girl with a constant air of amused observation, and I'm thinking if she was 50 years older she might share the joke with me, assuming it's not me that's the joke, of course, a possibility I do not discount... all the familiar faces in all the familiar places on a mostly typical Thursday...  Campfires around campfires beings not so unlike us as we imagine, told stories of the trials and victories of the day, shared news of the hunt with their clan brothers and cousins many stories reached into the hearts of those who heard them and were told again on other nights around other campfires, passed on through generations and geography… traditions were born, expressed in all the many languages of man… and we who call ourselves poets bear the weight of that tradition with every word we write, a burden, but not heavy, light instead and full of promise an invitation to join kindred souls, to retell the old stories and sometimes our own new story, so well told its telling sets a new spark rising in the dark night, passing from our own campfire to others brightly burning, we will never see… keeping aglow the ancient embers… it is our job, undertaken with the humility of those who understand their place in a long and vibrant history… it is our joy, however well or poorly we do it Diorama morning north wind blows hard against me, cold hand on the nape of my neck, trickles under my coat down my back clear blue sky sharp as a diamond’s cutting edge bright sun like broken glass falling long night’s sleep, waking to a five-year old’s diorama world, construction paper city construction paper world bright colors sharp corners Finishing this post with a reading from my book, Always to the Light, available as always wherever eBooks are sold. |
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