OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS (6/14/21)

This old dog will have to learn some new tricks if he wants to do this new version of the old "Here and Now'."

For the twelve years or so I put out a weekly "Here and Now" post, my process was to first write the post, then publish it all at once.  Under the new process for "Here and Now (Again) it appears I'm going to have to write the post in full view of the world and readers, starting it, as I am starting this, then adding to weekly or daily, producing the blog, in effect, live. It means I will not send out an announcement when the complete product is finished. Readers will have to check in periodically if they want to see what's new. It is not what I prefer for several reasons, one of the biggest ones my concern about readership. The old blog was getting up to 12,000 page views a month. I don't expect to do that well here. I'm also concerned about the old readers who used to follow the old blog most every issue. I'm hoping I don't lose them.

And finally the process. I'm having a problem controlling the size of my images, getting them both the right size and consistent, a problem I will have to work out in public rather than behind the scenes.

In sum, this is turning out to be more of an experiment than I expected it to.

I guess that's going to be part of the fun.

​So, here we go.
​So, here we go.
 





​

Celebrate

 
My Stupid Tree - My Stupid Poem
 
this is the part where I lower my eyes
and mumble a humble response
like, well, thanks, it was nothing
 
but of course, it was something,
it was a poem,
and good or bad it was an effort at creation,
like the tree stump in my back yard
that I cut witih my father's day chain saw,
leaving big swoosh-like slashes
in the tree trunk from top to bottom
which I painted theprimary clolors,
red, blue, and yellow.
 
those colors to match the ceramic thing Dee made,
a mirror framed in a mosaic of red, blue, and yellow stones
that I propped up on the top of the stump
in a slot i cut with my chain saw
 
and I'm not done yet,
I'm thinking of little mirrors all around the tree
as soon as I figure out how to stick them on
so that they will stay
 
a truly atrocious thing to be stuck in the middle
of one's back yeard., but I don't care how ugy it might be,
or how unappreciated by the neighnors it might
​because I believe it is the creative instinct
that should be always honored regardless of that
which the instinct produces which may or my not
be honored as a final creation
 
the human creative passion
I invested in my stupid tree is equal
to any passion of Picasso,
just as my stupid poem is equal
in its creative passion to any poem ever written
 
it is that passion that counts before all else
 
it is what separates us from the animals in the field
and the fish in the sea, and the birds that fly over it all

Electra Glide in Blue

At one point several years ago, I did a series of poems playing with colors.

 
 
Rainbow Riot
 
Red flowers
Over yellow flowers
Among blue flowers
 
 
Blue
 
Blue eyes
Under clear skies
Ice
On cut crystal
 
 
Yellow
 
Lemons
Overflow a pewter bowl
Rose across the floor
Crying
Caution…caution
 
 
Lull
 
Black man
With a silver flute,
Sing us soft
A song to sleep
 
 
Fresco on the other side of sunset
 
A ridge of low clouds
Pink
As cotton candy
Against billows of virgin white
Above a Mediterranean sky
 
 
Sunset
 
Sun lies low
Behind scrub branches
 
Yellow jigsaw puzzles
At end of day
 
 
Red grill
 
Red grill on a field
Of brown leaves
 
Autumn come
And almost gone
With summer
Red grill begins
The long weait to spring
 
 
Red
 
Blood on white paper,
Bright red
Like an apple
On a bed of snow
 
Winter postcard
 
White horse
On a white field
Enclosed by a white fence
And I am blinded by the light





​



​

REMEMBER ME THE STORY OF IT

she had wanted to see this
most of her life

imagining it
from the backseat
for fifteen hundred miles
on our way there…

but age brought great fear
of heights
wouldn’t get out of the car
to see it

afraid
so afraid
the solid earth
would sink away from her
would be gone
the minute she put her foot on it

wants me to describe it
for her
wants me
to tell her the story
of it…

so I can remember
having been here, she said,
so I can remember it
and what it was
like

(Grand Canyon, 1988)


​

This old bed

T​his poem is by iconic Chicana/Native American Lorna Dee Cervantes from her fifth major collection, Sueno. She has long been a leader in the Native American literary renissiance and a favorite of mine.



People Talkikng In Their Sleep

Who comes out of that dead end
alive, untouched? The surface
of glass, gasping with breath,
the thick gauze touched up
with sighs. Out the woodwork
of dreaming comes freedom
from the dance of life, comes
the future in a wheel-barrel
filled with the nickels of nitghtmare.
Come up on the stoop, play
the marbles in your head
through the gritting teeth.

All the truths of summer
slumber here on a dime.
All the wits of winter
wake up to the grumble of games.
All the leafigs of autumn
cry out through the teeth
of sleep - in the dream
talking to its person.


​

The big lie

---

​Remembering the caves

​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




​

Grease

​






​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)

​

Santa Fe afternoon

​







history’s young victims
​
walking beneath
my second floor window,
in their school
uniforms,
walking in a disciplined line
lead by their teacher,
I could hear them
singing,
their high light voices
waking the thin mountain-air
morning

joyous morning
then,
a sweet and innocent
moment
in a strange and foreign
place

a morning
and a moment
I will not forget

a memory
struggling against the cruel beast of history

a memory
that cannot shield these children...

---

remembering...

trying not to think
of what happened to these
beautiful, singing
children
in the near 60 years since

those children, victims of
of the beasts
who came through years and bloody seasons
to devour their time
and place,
their life and the innocence
of that morning

(Kabul - 1969)

STOP HERE. NOTHING ELSE HERE, YET

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