POEMS -- JANUARY
(Please send suggestions, feedback or commentary to timiimit@mockok.com )
January 5, 2014
Such Singing in the Wild Branches
It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb
in an island of shadewith his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still
and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that’s when it happened,
when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,
and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward
like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed
not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky—all, all of them
were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
So was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last
for more that a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
Like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,
is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?
Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then—open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
May already be drifting away.
Mary Oliver
Owls and Other Fantasies
January 1, 2013
Flying into a New Year
Said you sprained your ankle dancing
to all our favorites from the seventies
performed hopping live at Lenora's Ghost
for a raucous New Year's eve crowd.
I think it was the moon-guided walk
to the Lukiamute River flood ponds.
Their roar left us both off-balance.
Your body, startled heavenward
by an otherwordly symphony from hundreds
of rising wings and frantic calls,
was pulled back from the ankles
by the earth's mud and gravity
like a rapturous lover tugged down
for another kiss--or a spirit kept from
leaving the body before its time.
Tomorrow, when you tell the doctor at the clinic
my theory, I wish I could be there
to hear her eyebrows rise up in wonder.
--If You Live, Your Time Will Come
January 24, 2012
Waiting for You
under a half moon
my mouth moves round
empty as the night
before devouring the light
from your full mouth.
--If You Live, Your Time Will Come
January 14, 2012
Spider Bite
Guess a brown spider
Not recluse enough
At quarter-to-three
Got a bare left foot
When my camper's bladder
Goaded me to pee.
The arch stopped throbbing--
And not located
For a quick look-see
I soon found myself
Seduced by this mantra,
"Just temporary..."
You've come weeks too late
To cut poison out.
It's seeped to the heart
Of your pedestal.
Lose a foot to venom,
Pride to surgeon's art?
The irony sears--
It's been my job to
Replace worn-out parts
For cylindered beasts
Which in just in my life time
Displaced horse-drawn carts.
Looking at my pair,
I can't save your foot,
Science lacks the clout!
The doc said firmly
With muted baritone
That plain knocked me out.
Now this handicap
A far better man
Might easily flout,
But at least it means
I'm left with one less place
To suffer from gout!
--If You Live, Your Time Will Come
January 8, 2012
Damn Black Funeral
Damn funeral, black everywhere.
It was all great heart, what people had to share.
But so about used to be--really hard to bear.
Goddamn funeral is what it is; is still hurtin'.
When people talk about me like that, I know I'm hurdlin'...
Why can't we do this on every tenth birthday?
Man, let the living hear all that good say!
Why save it for the funeral and the wake?
All that good stuff gone--make our hearts break
into tears, flowing faster than the wine.
Coulda made his soul sing, hearing all that poetry and praise.
Nothing wrong with praising a person who is still alive.
Every ten years, I say.
-- If You Live, Your Time Will Come
January 2, 2012
Flowering Child
--for Larissa
Creative warden
of earth garden;
you've gotta tend it,
you'll need to mend it
(even get to send it) --
but in the end it
will get grown
with a life of its own.
-- If You Live, Your Time Will Come
January 30, 2011
Dear Left Knee
Take this surgery as my apology,
my benediction to our ten thousand
running miles of changing pavement
and mountain hillsides, cushioning me over
boulders, frozen trails, and the all-night run
over Death Valley roads. Forgive me
for judging the world the way a knee bends.
By jolt, by jar, by quick jumps I
abused you. A min is killed for less.
Still, there was no sadness in shoes hitting
pavement. I admit I wanted my body
to be a guitar, scream high notes, float up
to rising dusk. I admit my knees were no
more than a clock's face in my mind, no brighter
than yappy dogs chasing us through downtown
streets on our runs to the mountains. Forgive me.
But damn we cursed those trails into blessings,
turned ourselves streetwise racing marathons
in American cities. No one passed us up
Heartbreak Hill. How you flexed and grinded.
You had more knee grind that winter had snow.
All your bruises spread like broken words no language
could accept. Until I watched the arthroscopic
screen, I never knew the pain that raced
through you like riptides. Sorry. You are numb tonight.
Call it Percoset holiday, knowing nothing
of polar bear-sized pain that pulses
inside your tendon. You'll like the incisions,
narrow as indigo leaves. In time we'll probe
the still earth, the reefs and volcanic ash
in our blood, in a pale gold summer,
in a moment, in a cloak of snow, in our running
world without end, Amen, Left Knee. Love, J.D.
--John Davis
(published in UNCHARTED LINES)
January 25, 2011
Poet Dying of Alzheimer's
Diagnosis
I do not fear death
by water, by fire, by ice.
I fear such courage.
I fear death by unweaving,
the husks of images,
the stone tongue.
Darkness laps up my light,
my pool of knowing,
the mirror of "I am."
Cocooned in void,
I will lie nameless,
doubt made flesh
I am the word unspoken,
the coiled question
in the orchard of innocence.
Requiem
We celebrate the end
of your heart's song.
This is the blessing
we have prayed for you.
This we have learned from you--
a crystal in the dark.
Now! You are going out,
guttering weary on a spent wick,
your death comes as a lover
dancing you around a new sun,
whispering the semantics of silence,
fighting you with shadows.
-Judith Boudreaux
published in UNCHARTED LINES
January 12, 2011
Tribute From John
you will creep in silent shadows
of all those past
daring not to disturb
the crowd as they chant unknown elegys
for your sons and daughters
Raise your head, unfold your arms
lift your voice above the crowd
through your conscience you have come to know
the sound of tomorrow awakening;
a lark sang,
you were awakened from your slumber,
were not trees dancing in the wind?
How could you not listen to the roaring sound
of the eagle soaring effortlessly
above you eyes?
Let your tongue taste the rumble
of these threatening skies.
thunder and lightening bring tears to my eyes,
shedding no tears you look away.
Will you ever know the serenity of peaceful skies?
Let the clouds part,
and the morning star will spread its light
on this desperate world.
For it takes no more light
to bring hope,
than a whole minutes flash.
let the morning light dance in your eyes,
for it may be your destiny
to dance with it
John Van Ert, jr. 1975
January 9, 2011
John, I Rememeber You
Asking me to spread my arms
To lift my eyes
To reflect the blue
Where the eagle flies.
Like me, I know you
Did not spend much
Of your time there either,
For you have eagle heart
Not eagle body.
Still, when I look in your eyes
Always scanning yet focused
I imagine a beak sharp
For bringing back home
The day's wriggling prey.
Baby John we used to call you
And still we call you
And still we all are babies
For these fifty-two years
Crying with you.
Now we cry over you
--No, we cry under you--
As your Spirit released
From its broken body vial
Rises to heaven above.
Thank you for showing me
--Yes, showing all your world--
How the human heart
(Though of vulnerable
Muscle and sinew, too)
Can carry us to the dawning day
We'd thought we'd lost
Forever
To incessant tripping
Over these feet of clay.
Like your beloved blue sky
I produce rains as I cry
To see your nest unattended.
Then the storm is moved along
With wing-beat winds strong
From your eagle spirit.
--Tim Van Ert
in memoriam
January 31, 2010
The Rollover
Some of us primary producers, us farmers and authors,
are going round to watch them evict a banker.
It'll be sad. I hate it when the toddlers and wives
are out beside the fence, crying, and the bid kids
wear that thousand-yard stare common in all refugees.
Seeing home desecrated as you lose it can do that to you.
There's the ute piled high with clothes and old debentures.
There's the faithful VDU, shot dead, still on its lead.
This fellow's dad and grandad were bankers before him, they sweated
through the old hard inspections, had years of brimming foreclosure,
but here it all ends. He'd lent three quarters and only
asked for a short extension. Six months. But you have to
line the drawer somewhere. You have to be kind to be cruel.
It's Sydney of the cash these times. Who buys the Legend of the Bank
anymore? The laconic teller, the salt-of-the-earth branch accountant,
it's all an Owned Boys story. Now they reckon he's grabbed a gun
and an old coin sieve and holed up in the vault, screaming
about his years of work, his identity. Queer talk from a bank-johnny!
We're catching flak, too, from a small mob of his mates,
inbred under-manager types, here to back him up. Troublemakers,
land-despoiling white trash. It'll do them no good. Their turn
is coming. They'll be rationalised themselves, made adapt
to a multinational society. There's no room in that for privileged
traditional ways of life. No land rights for bankers.
--Les Murray (1997)
(published in SUBHUMAN REDNECK POEMS)
January 30, 2010
Looking for the Cat Grave
1.
Sunlight stripes a wall.
Silent pumpkin sleeps in a river of sun.
Some moments we have spent
our whole lives walking towards.
2.
Dry grass, earth whiskers,
red sweater snagged in a tree.
Being alive is a common road,
it's what we notice makes us different.
A birdhouse becomes a floodlight.
Girls sit in a circle, learning each other
like words to be spoken in lonely places.
3.
I wish this could last. I wish we could stay outside,
sun on our cheeks, a distant engine's roar, forever.
I wish I could remember people's faces
as well as I remember my dead cat's eyes.
--Naomi Shihab Nye
(published in YELLOW GLOVE)
January 29, 2010
The Synchrony of Bones
Mad Dog has buried the bones
of his generation, not unlike
his father and grandfather, his
mother and grandmother who
also wearied of digging graves
and burying the bones of their
time's follies and good intentions--
not just the fallen best, but
all those felled by war, disease,
drug overdoses and alcohol,
poverty, knife-wounds and suicide--
all the simple and complex problems
of bodily fluids running out, of
seconds, minutes and hours
running out, of life uncontained
in the little cupped hands of being
whose fingers tire and loosen.
Mad Dog once believed there was
a song that could stop it, could
stem the flow but now knows that
all songs are songs of passage,
and one must learn by heart
the peculiar dance steps of each;
one must learn how to form
the circle with linked hands
and how it moves first in
this direction and then in that,
how sometimes arms are raised,
hands flung up in unison with
a burst of laughter that welcomes
someone new to the dance and how
he or she must be taught
the fancy footwork, how the circle
tightens and expands by turns,
how it inhales and exhales, and
how one's lips learn the exact
shape and sound of one's
personal word for God when
someone falls away from this
breathing orbit of song, this
terribly joyous synchrony of bones.
--Scott Lubbock
(published in ON THE WAY TO WATER)
January 28, 2010
Blood Pressure
The white-sleeved woman wraps a rubber
sleeve around your arm, steps back, listens,
whistles.
How it pounds in you, how it
urges through you, how it asserts
its power like a tide of electrons
flashing through your veins, shocking your fingertips,
exhausting the iron gates of you heart.
Alive, alive, always alive, it hisses,
crackling like the lightning snake that splits
the sky at evening, alive, a black rain
lashing the hollows of your body,
alive, alive
You sit quietly on the cold table,
the good boy grown up into
the good man. You say
you want nothing, you'll diet, you
won't complain. Anyway, you say,
you dream of January weather,
hushed and white, the cries of light
silenced by a shield of ice.
Behind your eyes, something
like a serpent moves, an acid tongue
flicking at your cheekbones, something
voracious, whipping your whole body
hard: you're sad, you flush a
dangerous pink, you tell her
you can't understand the fierce rain
inside you, you've always hated that awful
crackling in your veins.
--Sandra Gilbert
(published in SUTURED WORDS: Contemporary
Poetry about Medicine Jon Mukand,
editor)
January 27, 2010
Feeling My Way
When I woke up to this life
like a scream trying to empty itself out
they couldn't put their arms around my anger.
Born too soon, even the details of the leaves
wouldn't let me breathe. Then I learned
how God chose me to wear a skullcap
like a bad child, and I put my face into my hands--
the only thing I ever invented--which came to pass
for a lifetime of long thought. It was there
I heard the very hum and wheel of myself turn
which I turned into my religion. Finally I was in charge.
Then one day I spied a woman, head in hands,
who sat listening to herself. Kindness lifted her face
and we had many children who said the things that took me
all my life to learn. Who doesn't want to start over
with one tooth, a little candle, and long hours of sleep?
But then will come the scream. Then again, like the blindman
feeling his way up an elephant's leg until all he imagines
is a skyful of leaves, maybe only half of this is true.
--Jack Myers
(published in AS LONG AS YOU'RE HAPPY)
January 26, 2010
Words
Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes travelling
Off from the centre like horses.
The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock
That drops and turns,
a white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road--
Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.
--Sylvia Plath
(published in CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY
edited by Donald Hall)
January 25, 2010
Farewell
If I die,
leave the balcony open.
The little boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I can see him.)
The reaper is harvesting the wheat.
(From my balcony I can hear him.)
If I die,
leave the balcony open!
--Federico Garcia Lorca
--translated by W.S. Merwin
(published in THE SELECTED POEMS OF FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA)
January 24, 2010
Eastern News
In his saffron robe he stepped
out of the airplane doorway,
bringing clouds he'd flown through,
real clouds out of a sky
above the jig-sawed swirly earth.
With a frown, then a smile,
he spoke of new sandstone walls,
old tree-scribbled winds;
his petal-fingered hands
open the door behind the altar
and he moves to the desk
on old lion's feet, under the
bronze-leaved chandelier...
He says Ramakrishna dreamed
he saw a doll made of salt
walk into the waves to measure the depth
of the Indian Ocean,
and dissolve...
He saw a bubble anemone loosen, rise,
become water,
unattached algae float everywhere...
The statues
in their niches--
Jesus, Buddha, Ramakrishna--
blink and watch, watch and wait.
--Ron Linder
(published in ANIMALS ON THE ROOF)
January 23, 2010
The Return: Orihuela, 1965
for Miguel Hernandez
You come over a slight rise
in the narrow, winding road
and the white village broods
in the valley below. A breeze
silvers the cold leaves
of the olives, just as you knew
it would or as you saw
it in dreams. How many days
have you waited for this day?
Soon you must face a son grown
to manhood, a wife to old age,
the tiny sealed house of memory.
A lone crow drops into the sun,
the fields whisper their courage.
--Philip Levine
(published in THE SIMPLE TRUTH)
January 22, 2010
| The Moose | ||
| by Elizabeth Bishop | ||
For Grace Bulmer BowersFrom narrow provinces of fish and bread and tea, home of the long tides where the bay leaves the sea twice a day and takes the herrings long rides, where if the river enters or retreats in a wall of brown foam depends on if it meets the bay coming in, the bay not at home; where, silted red, sometimes the sun sets facing a red sea, and others, veins the flats' lavender, rich mud in burning rivulets; on red, gravelly roads, down rows of sugar maples, past clapboard farmhouses and neat, clapboard churches, bleached, ridged as clamshells, past twin silver birches, through late afternoon a bus journeys west, the windshield flashing pink, pink glancing off of metal, brushing the dented flank of blue, beat-up enamel; down hollows, up rises, and waits, patient, while a lone traveller gives kisses and embraces to seven relatives and a collie supervises. Goodbye to the elms, to the farm, to the dog. The bus starts. The light grows richer; the fog, shifting, salty, thin, comes closing in. Its cold, round crystals form and slide and settle in the white hens' feathers, in gray glazed cabbages, on the cabbage roses and lupins like apostles; the sweet peas cling to their wet white string on the whitewashed fences; bumblebees creep inside the foxgloves, and evening commences. One stop at Bass River. Then the Economies Lower, Middle, Upper; Five Islands, Five Houses, where a woman shakes a tablecloth out after supper. A pale flickering. Gone. The Tantramar marshes and the smell of salt hay. An iron bridge trembles and a loose plank rattles but doesn't give way. On the left, a red light swims through the dark: a ship's port lantern. Two rubber boots show, illuminated, solemn. A dog gives one bark. A woman climbs in with two market bags, brisk, freckled, elderly. "A grand night. Yes, sir, all the way to Boston." She regards us amicably. Moonlight as we enter the New Brunswick woods, hairy, scratchy, splintery; moonlight and mist caught in them like lamb's wool on bushes in a pasture. The passengers lie back. Snores. Some long sighs. A dreamy divagation begins in the night, a gentle, auditory, slow hallucination. . . . In the creakings and noises, an old conversation --not concerning us, but recognizable, somewhere, back in the bus: Grandparents' voices uninterruptedly talking, in Eternity: names being mentioned, things cleared up finally; what he said, what she said, who got pensioned; deaths, deaths and sicknesses; the year he remarried; the year (something) happened. She died in childbirth. That was the son lost when the schooner foundered. He took to drink. Yes. She went to the bad. When Amos began to pray even in the store and finally the family had to put him away. "Yes . . ." that peculiar affirmative. "Yes . . ." A sharp, indrawn breath, half groan, half acceptance, that means "Life's like that. We know it (also death)." Talking the way they talked in the old featherbed, peacefully, on and on, dim lamplight in the hall, down in the kitchen, the dog tucked in her shawl. Now, it's all right now even to fall asleep just as on all those nights. --Suddenly the bus driver stops with a jolt, turns off his lights. A moose has come out of the impenetrable wood and stands there, looms, rather, in the middle of the road. It approaches; it sniffs at the bus's hot hood. Towering, antlerless, high as a church, homely as a house (or, safe as houses). A man's voice assures us "Perfectly harmless. . . ." Some of the passengers exclaim in whispers, childishly, softly, "Sure are big creatures." "It's awful plain." "Look! It's a she!" Taking her time, she looks the bus over, grand, otherworldly. Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy? "Curious creatures," says our quiet driver, rolling his r's. "Look at that, would you." Then he shifts gears. For a moment longer, by craning backward, the moose can be seen on the moonlit macadam; then there's a dim smell of moose, an acrid smell of gasoline. |
||
January 21, 2010
First Offense
I'm sorry, officer, I didn't see the sign
Because, in fact, there wasn't any. I tell you
The light was green. How much is the fine?
Will the tumor turn out malignant or benign?
Will the doctor tell us? He said he knew.
I'm sorry, officer. I didn't see the sign.
Not every madman is an agent of the divine,
Not all who pass are allowed to come through.
The light was green. How much is the fine?
Which is worse, the rush or the wait? The line
Interminable, or fear of coming late? His anxiety grew.
I'm sorry, officer. I didn't see the sign.
I'm cold sober. All I had was one glass of wine.
Was anyone hurt? Is there anything I can do?
The light was green. How much is the fine?
Will we make our excuses like so many clever lines,
Awkwardly delivered? Never to win, always to woo?
I'm sorry, officer. I didn't see the sign.
The light was green. How much is the fine?
--David Lehman
(published in AN ALTERNATIVE TO SPEECH)
January 20, 2010
The Face
Die alte Frau, die alte Marschallin!*
Not good any more, not beautiful--
Not even young.
This isn't mine.
Where is the old one, the old ones?
Those were mine.
It's so: I have pictures,
Not such old one; people behave
Differently then...When they meet me they say:
You haven't changed.
I want to say: You haven't looked.
This is what happens to everyone.
At first you get bigger, you know more,
Then something goes wrong.
You are, and you say: I am--
And you were...I've been too long.
I know, there's no saying no,
But just the same you say it. No.
I'll point to myself and say: I'm not like this.
I'm the same as always inside.
--And even that's not so.
I thought: If nothing happens...
And nothing happened.
Here I am.
But it's not right.
If just living can do this,
Living is more dangerous than anything:
It is terrible to be alive.
--Randall Jarrell [1950]
(published in RANDALL JARRELL SELECTED POEMS
Edited by William H. Pritchard)
*The Marschallin alone among the characters sees the
future passing through the present into the past, and wonders what it means.
Philosophers may say that time is only the measure of change. Poets may say
carpe diem � grasp time while you can. But the Marschallin finds that, in
fact, in a human life one cannot measure or grasp or hold. Each irreversible
moment is already gone in the instant of becoming.
January 19, 2010
The Tree House
for my mother, Marion Spies Hughes, 1940-1978
The two of us climbed gray boards
nailed to the white oak.
We brought supplies: Devil Dogs,
two cigarettes, a Budweiser. I carried
a Playboy I had traded fireworks for at recess,
nervously walking through the yard,
school bag zipped tight.
Inside, October was dark.
Jays scratched
at the plywood roof.
It was cold, but the shiny pictures
kept us looking,
looking, wishing. John twisted
his cuff over the bottle's sharp cap.
I remember looking out a knothole in the wall--
the thick trees, chain-link fence,
the white-lamp curtains of the kitchen
where my mother flickered
over the counter. She gave me money
to buy Peterson's Birds. I spent in on a gross
of bottle rockets. I had a lot of homework,
beer on my lips.
Ten years later I bought the book,
and now, in the yard, holding its pages open,
I imagine my mother hanging
an onion bag of suet from the clothes line,
spreading grain in an old baking pan,
asking the names of birds she thought I'd know.
They are here now: fox sparrow, pine siskin, purple finch,
rusty blackbird, winter wren.
I pronounce them loudly so she can hear from the steps,
but she didn't wait for me, didn't wait to lift
these heavy words from my head.
--Henry Hughes
(published in MEN HOLDING EGGS)
January 18, 2010
Chief Leschi of the Nisquallies
He awoke this morning from a strange dream--
Thunderbird wept for him in the blizzard.
Holding him in their circle, Nisqually women
turn to the river, dance to its song.
He burned in the forest like a red cedar,
his arms fanning blue flames toward
the white men claiming the camas valley
for their pigs and fowl.
Musing over wolf's tracks vanishing in snow,
the memory of his wives and children
keeps him mute. Flickering in the dawn fires,
his faith grows roots, tricks the soldiers
like a fawn, sleeping black as the brush.
They laugh at his fate, frozen as a bat
against his throat. Still, death will take
him only to his father's longhouse,
past the flaming rainbow door. These bars
hold but his tired body; he will eat little
and speak less before he hangs.
--Duane Niatum
(published in COME TO POWER)
January 17, 2010
Blowin' in the Wind
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
--Bob Dylan
January 16, 2010
Spirit Level
Held tight to a door jamb
or flat across the sill
a spirit level shows how far
from plumb a house has tilted.
It is the spirit of the house that leans
away from straight, away from level,
slouching like Saturday against a porch rail,
settling comfortably into joist, into beam,
into post and block and graded dirt beneath it.
If the house were a woman she might shift
her weight over one hip, maybe rest
her hand there as she watches hummingbirds
feeding outside the kitchen window.
If the house were a man he might turn
his radio on and halfway listen,
sagging on the back step as the sky revolves
over his garden, over his uniform lawn.
At the end of seven, the announcer might say,
no runs, no hits, no errors, or out of nowhere,
Angels wear red shoes, and hearing this
the man might think of buying his wife
new shoes as red as her hummingbird feeder,
but in the spirit of the house he would not get up;
instead he would settle into the thought,
tilt for a while with its weight,
with the gravity of it.
--Joseph Green
(published in DELUXE MOTEL)
January 15, 2010
Up The Mountain To Basic Training
The road that winds upward
Has been etched
Into the side
Of the mountain.
When the buzzing cars in the city
Look like shiny beetles
The heart flutters
And the stomach knots up.
The cold steel highway rail
Hardly exists.
On the edge of the
Icy road
--Wayne-Alan Lamb
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
January 14, 2010
The Rain's Marriage
In an African folk tale, the rain
falls in love with a blacksmith.
At the wedding, the downpour dies out
to a single stream, a column of water.
At first the drop touches soil,
feet appear, then legs, a torso, arms...
The woman, waves of transparent hair
falling over her shoulders, is called
the Water Bride and doesn't fully lose
her identity as rain. Once,
I was certain of the boundaries between my body
and whatever it touched, as if
touch itself were a way of defining exactly where I stopped
and the rest of the world began.
Then I lost the sense that I was hemmed in
by skin. My body felt like something loaned to me--
it might break, or dissolve to ashes,
leaving me stranded,
a pure thought without a skull to inhabit--
like rain falling into any shape that accepts it,
every hollow place made equal by its touch.
The mind of rain
contemplates even the smallest crack in the parched dirt
where nothing will grow.
Why can't I fall effortlessly in love?
If I knew the exact place where my body stops
and everything else begins, I'd marry.
Like the Water Bride, I'd be unafraid,
though surely trouble would exist, as between rain
and a blacksmith's fire.
--Marcia Southwick
(published in WHY THE RIVER DISAPPEARS)
January 13, 2010
Saying One Thing
Today the angels are all writing postcards,
Or talking on the telephone.
Meanwhile, in Nowheresville,
A rabbit is running into a bush. This, I tell my friend,
Means good luck. The next day,
The sun is out, the fix is in,
And we're ready to throw in the towel.
Anytime now, our number might come up,
And the telephone will finally stop ringing:
Don't call before three,
Knock four times,
Show me the way to go home.
Back and forth and back again,
Like some idiot boomerang.
"Kerpow" and "schlock" are our favorite words,
Lately, and are about what things are amounting to.
Still, the stories of airplane disasters
And overnight flings in far-off cities have a kind of allure,
Like metallic paint, or something expensive
You want but can't have.
O toothpaste commercials, common house fly,
Fall is in the air again. On this spaceship
The code word is "blond," or "good dog."
Night begins to fall, the atmosphere is electric.
--Robert Long
(published in WHAT HAPPENS)
January 12, 2010
An Imaginary Happening, London
In the lower left-hand corner
of an album landscape
I am walking thru a dark park
with a noted nymphomaniac
trying to discover
for what she is noted
We are talking as we walk
of various villainies
of church & state
and of the tyrannies
of love & hate
the moon makes hairless nudes
An alabaster girl upon her back
becomes a body made of soap
beneath a wet gypsy
Suddenly we rush
thru a bent gate
into the hot grass
One more tree
falls in the forest
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(published in ENDLESS LIFE: Selected Poems)
January 11, 2010
I Saw a Child
I saw a child with silver hair.
Stick with me and I'll take you there.
Clutch my hand.
Don't let go.
The fields are mined and the wind blows cold.
The wind blows through his silver hair.
The Blue Vein River is broad and deep.
The branches creak and the shadows leap.
Clutch my hand.
Stick to the path.
The fields are mined and the moon is bright.
I saw a child who will never sleep.
Far from the wisdom of the brain
I saw a child grow old in pain.
Clutch my hand.
Stay with me.
The fields are mined by the enemy.
Tell me we may be friends again.
Far from the wisdom of the blood
I saw a child reach from the mud.
Clutch my hand.
Clutch my heart.
The fields are mined and the moon is dark.
The Blue Vein River is in full flood.
Far from the wisdom of the heart
I saw a child being torn apart.
Is this you?
Is this me?
The fields are mined and the night is long.
Stick with me when the shooting starts.
--James Fenton
(published in OUT OF DANGER)
January 10, 2010
Journey of the Magi
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-firs going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
--T.S. Eliot
(published in THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS)
January 9, 2010
The Toes
This foot's giving me nothing
but trouble. The ball,
the arch, the ankle--I'm saying
it hurts to walk. But
mainly it's these toes
I worry about. Those
"terminal digits" as they're
otherwise called. How true!
For them no more delight
in going headfirst
into a hot bath, or
a cashmere sock Cashmere socks,
no socks, slippers, shoes, Ace
bandage--it's all one and the same
to these dumb toes.
They even looked zonked out
and depressed, as if
somebody'd pumped them full
of Thorazine. They hunch there
stunned and mute--drab, lifeless
things. What in hell is going on?
What kind of toes are these
that nothing matters any longer?
Are these really my
toes? Have they forgotten
the old days, what it was like
being alive then? Always first
on line, first onto the dance floor
when the music started.
First to kick up their heels.
Look at them. No, don't.
You don't want to see them,
those slugs. It's only with pain
and difficulty they can recall
the other times, the good times.
Maybe what they really want
is to sever all connection
with the old life, start over,
go underground, live alone
in a retirement manor
somewhere in the Yakima Valley.
But there was a time
they used to strain
with anticipation
simply
curl with pleasure
at the least provocation,
the smallest thing.
The feel of a silk dress
against the fingers, say.
A becoming voice, a touch
behind the neck, even
a passing glance. Any of it!
The sound of hooks being
unfastened, stays coming
undone, garments letting go
onto a cool, hardwood floor.
--Raymond Carver
(published in A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL)
January 8, 2010
My Left Leg
Last Spring,
I accidently buried my leg.
It was the left one lost
Above the ankle and a little below the knee.
It's deep in the garden
Between the lobelias and the pink peonies.
My wife asserts that I should have been more careful
With the rusty spade,
But I really don't mind,
For it was an often stubborn leg.
In the mornings it refused to get out of bed,
Feigning lameness,
And in various idle sitting positions
It disappeared altogether
Without even a "by your leave."
My wife asks if I miss the leg, and I quietly reply "no."
But sometimes I do.
Yes, it was a bit of a bother,
A bit shorter than the right,
And had a tendency to dance to its own tune,
But often in the long evenings outside
I sit and muse about digging it up,
And moving it somewhere nicer,
Over by the wild sweet peas
Where it can feel
The cool evening breeze.
--Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
January 7, 2010
The Cat in the
Kitchen
(For Donald Hall)
Have you heard about the boy who walked by
The black water? I won't say much more.
Let's wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.
Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand
Reaches out and pulls him in.
There was no
Intention, exactly. The pond was lonely, or needed
Calcium, bones would do. What happened then?
It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,
And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman
In her kitchen late at night, moving pans
About, lighting a fire, making some food for the cat.
--Robert Bly
January 6, 2010
Children's Rhymes
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January 5, 2010
What Doesn't Go Away
His heart was like a butterfly
dropped through a vacuum tube,
no air to lift it up again;
each time the fluttering began,
he opened his eyes, first seeing
his family staggered around the bed,
then seeing that he didn't see.
While he died, the nurses wouldn't budge,
blood pressure gone too low, they said.
I, who used to play bad jokes on him,
my laughter in his shaking head,
bent and held his hand and talked Lamaze,
"your breathing, concentrate on your breathing."
And he did, like a well coached athlete,
believing I could get him through
his heart's slow, syncopated pains.
I do not know how long we worked that way,
but after he died, I couldn't straighten up.
"Your breathing, concentrate on your breathing,"
instead of, "I love you. Thank you."
A respirator tube put down his throat
made what I'd said to him ridiculous.
One last practical joke, an off-speed pitch
I'll never retrieve.
--Philip Dacey
(published in VITAL SIGNS, AN ANTHOLOGY
edited by Ronald Wallace)
January 4, 2010
The Moment
We passed the ice of pain,
And came to a dark ravine,
And there we sang with the sea:
The wide, the bleak abyss
Shifted with our slow kiss.
Space struggled with time;
The gong of midnight struck
The naked absolute.
Sound, silence sang as one.
All flowed: without, within;
Body met body, we
Created what's to be.
What else to say?
We end in joy.
--Theodore Roethke
(published in THE COLLECTED POEMS OF THEODORE ROETHKE)
January 3, 2010
Dust
I walk through motes
like a swimming creature
in a sooty sea. The thick air
haloes the halogen bulbs.
By shift's end, a coarse grit
sticks between my teeth.
Black rings circle my nostrils,
a double zero in the middle of my face.
The dust settles on the floors,
weeds, slabs, railings, roofs,
our hard hats, the thin frames
of our safety glasses, the time cards.
It smudges our names
on the card rack, combines
with grease to hard globs
blacker than cold tar on our boots.
I sweep it with a push broom
in long lines across the shipping floor.
AI wonder Irish is joking
when he says, It's either God
or death. Because it never stops
falling, like a slow, hazy brown snow,
sometimes I forget that it's there,
gathering in the creases of my face
and tracing the sweat-streams
on the back of my neck.
--Peter Blair
(published in LAST HEAT)
January 2, 2010
Woman Work
I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got the shirts to press
The tots to dress
The cane to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.
Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.
Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.
Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.
Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.
--Maya Angelou
(published in AND STILL I RISE)
January 1, 2010
Friends for Life
When I felt
the back you gave me
it helped.
It didn't carry
all my loads
but it helped.
When I feel
the back you give me
it helps.
When I smelled
roses placed beside me
it helped.
It didn't change
that last day
but it helped.
When I smell
roses placed beside me
it helps.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
January 31, 2009
the DANCING
As our bodies, as our beings
You and I are dancers
Run and flow together, moving
Pulses and rhythms
Perhaps only Mother Ocean can understand.
Individual mysteries we glide
Through One all-flowingness.
Sometimes we pass and smile
From bodies warmed with love
And we taste recognition of Other
Sent like Manna from above.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
January 30, 2009 WE'VE
Suffering and love,
strengthening and ease,
with actions we color
the loom as we please.
But suffering and love,
life's woven with these.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
January 29, 2009 COMPANIONS
That's not the Parker farmhouse ghost.
Twister's softly thumping four-time
up bare wooden stairs to the attic
where her first mouse was surprised.
In Liz's attic it was the other way,
first roses surprised her.
Yellow-orange petals dipped in red
released their own alluring scent.
Now neither will kiss like before--
after Twister's sister was packed home
from the vet for the last time.
--Tim Van Ert
January 28,2009 1964 MODEL, WITH DAMAGE
Some things in life are priceless,
Who has not been so informed?
And cures, like game, elusive --
For health is not just purchased,
Nor some diseased bastions stormed.
Hollow words as he refuses
To cover his boneless spine
With those red-ribbed galoshes
Before sending warm splashes
In back of that car of mine.
Must have lost it on that turn,
It hurts to finger the dents.
Not totalled but deeply churned,
For the diagnosis burns
As I sting from herpes' rents.
Are there bad acoustics here,
And why my peeks at the clock?
Not a single word's been clear --
A smokey weight in the air --
Since you mentioned 'simplex', Doc!
--Tim Van Ert
January 27, 2009 UNDER A FOOL, MOON
Under the full moon
(a moon eclipsed by shadow
turned smokey, yellow, red)
the daffodils speak to us.
Throughout the neighborhood
in different patterns:
Grandma’s, early, shout yellows,
Richard’s tall lemons bellow,
ours cream and pastel orange;
their different patterns
speak the same language—
heart songs. Frog and cricket
ecstasies; open up,
listen to them sing
to the glories of Spring:
open up, open up!
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
January 26, 2009 JESUS LIZARD
The basilisk sometimes runs as a biped. Basilisks have the unique ability to "walk" on water and, because of this, they have been dubbed as "The Jesus Lizard" or "The Jesus Christ Lizard" in reference to the biblical passage of Matthew 14:22-34. On water, the basilisk can run at a velocity of 1.5 meters (4.8 feet) per second for approximately 4.5 meters (14.75 feet) before sinking on all fours and swimming. Flaps between their toes help support the basilisk, creating a larger surface and a pocket of air. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You've caught me on my knees.
I cock my head, aiming eyes at you
like the Jesus lizard from a rocky bank
ready for a walk on water.
Just gotta get my timing right.
Pump some reptilian push-ups.
Send the blood humors racing.
Open up five-fingered fins.
I can flatten out stream roils
quicker than walking over coals.
Like that, gone to the other side--
off to life's next minor miracle.
You hunger to see me perform again.
Not caring about what never happens,
I tire of my prancing amusement.
Time to sprawl out for more sun.
Good. Nothing notable happens in the sand.
There. No one asks for more than a man.
Here I think myself more than animal--
could you tread lightly on rushing water?
--Tim Van Ert
(from Seeds On a Wind Ride)
January 25, 2009
all poet re
reminding me
re mystery
--yessiree--
of how we be
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Book of Hai-Choo: Little Sneezes of Dittycism)
January 24, 2009
SIMPLE NEEDS, SIMPLE DEEDS
There are times of simple needs;
their tempos paced solely
by rhythms of simple deeds.
Paris held this zone for me
although I really do not know,
could it be found as easily
between the pages of Thoreau?
It's a time when nothing happens
(there's time enough for plans);
the fruit of reflection ripens
and the feast is in our hands.
Unheralded pass such times,
yet we are those truly blessed
who won't let them slip our minds.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
January 23, 2009
BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE
If you cannot laugh,
lower your eyes
as this day dies--
crawl with the sun's light
out a window towards night.
The day
delivers too much sun
to see this particular piece of earth,
produces so many sounds
the mind jumps onto dream stage.
My eyes open
to a dark window and begin
to question the morning.
Clock tells me
it's that time
to begin a day of trying to do
what has never been done so well before.
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
January 22, 2009 ANGST
Love--
I go through the motions,
she goes through emotions--
where?
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
January 21, 2009 ARBORETUM WALK
Its hard to hear silver fir when walking.
Stand more still than air--firs will disperse
Fragrant notice before discourse begins.
Tamarack suggests walk slowly, prepared,
With prayer baskets of upraised needles
Held sky-open from their common huddle.
Valley oak, coarse and solid as concrete slab,
Waits for wind to voice in its crackling lisps
Subtle warning to check a sweaty grip.
Yellowed willow droop evokes loveless shame,
Feathered branches rustling their rude snickers
As stripped maple offers flicker's display.
Redwood's dirt-red trunk speaks like some fathers,
"Walk strong, youth--age leans on old laments."
Simple phrases boom as small shakes frighten.
Ghost grey except where inferno charred black,
Boulder-stout redwood snag recalls forests
Less confused by crowding-starved branches.
Western oak stripped by frost's sharp pinches shouts,
"Stay alive!" Relax your warrior posture,
Climb his lap. Cease shivering fears of life.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Architrave)
January 20, 2009 A DESERT PAST BLOOM
Seeing the Zygocactus
alone on a bare table
warms the stomach
with its own sad drug
before morning's first cup.
Withered blooms sag
like mist-sodden bathroom tissue
on naked sycamore branches
after a fraternity yard-papering.
Frail red flags lie unattended
on their linoleum mausoleum--
impolite tears that won't disappear.
What does it take to sweep up,
pluck the plant clean?
--Tim Van Ert
January 19, 2009
PALPATE THE GOLD
They hoped to be lucky
and that hope was their only joy.
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Finger every coin:
hard, cool and cruel.
(How we hate to know
we lose all we've gained.)
Squeeze them for the wager
you love to desire,
to make a gruel so thin
it slips through your fingers.
Shake them fiercely until
like golden butter they melt,
so you may drink again
adrenaline's elixir.
Stack them as a stage
for feelings in your mouth--
a foodstuff nourishing only
for certain life forms.
Raise these offerings
as a churning mind's alms
to the suffering selves
matter-bound by fears.
Riddle: what is it that
when finally felt
will never be gone,
but when you reach deeply
and can't find it within
you are left with despair?
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
January 18, 2009 PAPER BOY
Released to morning air still as dew,
coffee's aroma shoves past sluggish
molecules of mowed-lawn smell,
alerting a canine underworld
to humanity's renewed assault
on their once-dark empire.
One of man's red-haired young,
with asthmatic puffs and TIMES bag
billowing ghost white,
whirs by on his three-speed.
Unmindful of amber light leaking
like honey from bedroom shades,
he disjoints conjugal caresses
with wads tossed through a silence broken,
like explosive pops of snap beans,
by the whip of a wrist and the slap of impact --
good morning delivered in dense thuds.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
January 17, 2009 MATURITY
When we learn to live
For what we've got
Rather than to strive
For what we've not.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Book of Hai-Choo: Little Sneezes of Dittycism)
January 16, 2009
AS IF A MIND COULD FEEL
Packs of wild ideas run
headlong past hours and days,
trip over weeks, splash into months
like our young spaniel,
who now drops tussle-feathered robin
to cool slowly at my feet
then drools--dumbly longing
a pleased master's praise.
Plump, proud creature of flight
led the soaring life I daydream,
soft in familiar chair. But tumbled so near,
Here, take death and deal with it!
strange emotions blaze my body
with the flash of this summer's brush fire.
What can a man of the mind do
with flurries of feelings plopped at nap?
They are a deer carcass
discovered during the morning's walk;
the unexpected toe-stub disgusts,
cold corpse awakens worry,
while the story of its death raises intrigue.
--Tim Van Ert
January 15, 2008
DAY LABORER
Fingers carry moist, warm crockery
from dishwasher to cupboard
smoothly, quickly, quietly
as Brahms' radio concerto plays.
Grab both cuff ends, cross.
Shoulder to shoulder, fold.
Measure steps in hummed cadence
to pile the laundry neat and snug.
He has only a moment
to note the detergent air
before fingers rough both collars,
then flick his tie onto the pile.
One lasting labor--
undressing to Debussy.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Seeds On a Wind Ride)
January 14, 2009
ONLY ATTENDANTS
Earth yields offspring
more movingly
with our midwifery--
unceasingly without it.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Book of Hai-Choo: Little Sneezes of Dittycism)
January 13, 2009 FORGET SOME THINGS
I forget some warnings
in the presence of beauty.
Clematis' nursery instructions
remind of winter's freeze.
Cat's mole-prey dumped in root hole
need not be an omen.
But this December brought
such warm amnesia.
Hope directs knowledge vacuums
to draw in lush beliefs,
Such as how unpotted clematis roots,
finding perfect placement,
Respond like young Olympians: sprinting
fragrant, flowered vines.
If only bathroom's metal pipework
alone had frozen,
Sweet clematis would not have withered black,
dropping curled leaves.
But fingering green buds on twining limbs in spring
redeems challenged faith:
Clematis will bloom again
through summer and fall.
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
January 12, 2009 BLIND MEN
Sitting upright as if to sniff
for color in his bleached hospital bed
the blind man says he feels red
and the presence of a woman
(whom I see only on the video monitor.)
How I envy his awareness.
His finger antennae wave from cut-off gloves
like hydra in a favorable environment,
but not so quick to retract.
"When you're into feeling that deeply
there's no place to withdraw."
Now I fear this awareness.
I stand upright, stiff,
as I put on my gloves
aching to be spared the stings
of barbs unforeseen.
If only he could see
how I grope
I might hope to feel his smiles
yellow, blue or red.
Still, my fingers would peek out of pockets
like immature marsupials--
for they, too, know red
and the feeling of a woman's presence.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Mediphors)
January 11, 2009
WINTER WALK
Can you feel Nature's beauty
Warm
Beneath blankets of snow,
Or my strong pulse
Quicken
As into these woods we go?
Spring's buried beckoning
Pulls us through
Winter's cold reckoning
As if we knew.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
January 10, 2009 TULE RIVER
Sierra's melting snow pack
gives birth to the Tule in drops
gravity guides back to the sea.
River's journey sounds its alert
like a dog whistle; while friends walk on,
unaffected, I run alongside
to see a water body trap air.
Silver balloons keep escaping
from those growing below.
Rocks throw liquid splashes
(like Pollack his paints)
to form clear, kinetic sculpture.
Cool steam and liquid snow
juggle over smooth stones--
a diversion along this year's trek.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Seeds On a Wind Ride)
January 9, 2009
NEAL ARMSTRONG
"I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks,
but for the ledger of our
daily work."
-- Neal Armstrong
I kneel beside my bed
head bowed, back bent
not to send prayer to Him on high
but to see if this is where it went.
Dropping to my knees
I lose two inches more
as I sink into porous loam
to plant what I can buy at the store.
Fever brings me here--
sweaty nightshirt tripping me
as I kneel-walk in my delirium
to the tub's cool water of mercy.
Lifting up from all fours
I ache from toes curled tight
waiting for just the right moment
to pounce on you with all my might.
You bid, "Come down to me."
And I say, "On my knees?"
Knowing pumps through both hearts
I do what it takes to please.
I tell you then and there
my heroes are those blessed to see
beyond the lofty, honking geese
without rising higher than their knees.
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
January 8, 2009 SLEEP'S SIREN CALLS
Three
hours of sleep is not enough to forget the world:a
4 AM darkness pants damply against the window,with
deep, dull clangs and high frequency hisses the radiator launcheswhile
beeper's unbloodied blade repeatedly pierces splayed-out senses.I'd been dreaming
too sweetly for this offensive--the mind's first stirring is
to question everything.
The
inky apparitions piled in my clothes surrounded by name tag,3
x5 cards and clipboard menace my mind into chanting:"Swarming
vat of mental vapors let risebarely contained visions of marked surprise
to put
the steam again in sleepy eyes."Nearly awake,
I still question everything.
Like the
wayward chutist wrapped in a web of branchesI
wonder if I can make my arms and legs move.As a creepy
panic scrambles over exposed nervesI count how many more
call nights I have to endureand wonder how other doctors
shake this stupor;do they
also question everything?
Talks with patients, serious and humorous,
and conversations with 5 AM-punchy colleagues
drag back with
me to my suite"to get my one
last hour of sleep"crowded with dreams who visit,
nurture and leave memarveling that
I questioned anything.--Tim Van Ert
(published in Western Journal of Medicine)
January 7, 2009
LIFE SMILES
Live non-evil:
unveil the vile
in life--smile.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Book of Hai-Choo: Little Sneezes of Dittycism)
January 6, 2009
THE YEAR IS NOT OVER
Some thing was wrong this year.
The figs did not ripen
before the first frost.
Every mole escaped.
All the pumpkins came out
quart-sized.
Dad did not drop by with walnuts.
Donald succumbed to the
Security Guards.
Dana never showed up for work.
Each eggplant grew--infertile.
All flowers bloomed--purple.
Rats snuck out for corn husks
despite two white cats.
A war continued on
while another was begun.
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
January 5, 2009
GENERATION GAP
I was ten. My parents sat
solemnly together to tell me
I was conceived one pouring night
after their movie-watching was interrupted
by weak, shrill complaints.
A pure black kitten trembled at their door.
I guess they said that to make me feel special.
But they never told me, exactly, what conceive was.
--Tim Van Ert
January 3, 2009
REESE CREEK SINGERS
What has silenced the Reese Creek frogs--
something here I should know?
Could it be my taking their pulse
in the near-full moon's glow?
God do not grant these crooners this
wretched self-consciousness;
as if we did not already
share too much commonness.
While I would not sing with them,
do not let them take their show.
I stand here not to be critical--
just lightened from below.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create that Love that Love Creates)
January 2, 2009
ANNULARITY
A cycle--a circle which turns, which returns
our anniversity.
Is it this mill-wheel machinery which makes us think
each year of overhaul?
Even as I secret seeds within, I sometimes hope
the massive crush will expel me,
clarify the concealed germ by husking the principles
from protective practices.
Then I ask you, once again, to climb into this combine
that we may harvest our sacrifices.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Fireweed)
January 1, 2009
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1996
Seeing her stout, squat form
forged to walk up and down
coastal mountain slopes
I smile to myself,
(though, of course, she sees)
"Ah, pregnancy--
inescapable shift of weight,
heavier and lower;
bearable only because
the brooding presence of birth
ransoms irrefutably."
Barefoot paces
softer, warmer, heavier
than tonight's snowfall
carry born and unborn back
to their electronic manager
without a Joseph,
a mother,
or any familiar face.
Her dark-headed star--Constantina,
newborn messenger of amazement--
catches the eye
of a wandering charge nurse
just fifteen minutes into second stage,
"Hey folks, I think I see a crown!"
The first hour of Christmas
she suckles in
her seventeen year old
mother's warm colostrum--
not a wise man in sight.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Mediphors)