Saturday, December 13, 2014

Undercurrents




New Orleans

The surface noise, at times tends too much
to distraction, tends, over time, for someone
like me, to tire—it’s the more

that keeps me coming back, the currents
that make the music and the dance
more than just a party. It’s the folks,

who will meet your gaze for no better reason
than your presence on the street—you get
greeted,

if you’re willing, you be noticed
with a nod, no matter the time of day.

It’s the genuine pull
of people toward one another,
hence toward you.

It’s the pull, that the people here go with,
that they don’t ignore, the deep pull of the true
and real that carries

all the rest—just like the river.


**


And of memories?

The thin curve of moon shoulders high,
keeping distance from the chill above the water,
some thirty degrees lost in the night.

A freighter shadows in the dawn,
the lighted tug groans, and the river, well,
the river continues—named or unnamed,

histories carry through waiting horizons,
under open skies and into nights of crystal-
chilled stars—nothing really ever lost.


**


The sun rises
among the sketch of clouds

just there behind where
the Mississippi bends,

but I can’t tell
if New Orleans is waking

or just now
heading for bed.


**


Even at this age…

It can’t be said enough how many times of late
I’ve used that phrase—even at this age—which suggests
of course, aging, aging advancing as against attitudes
and needs that have not too, moved along.

So here it is, a vow as such, to let the search
for reasons, for answers and plans, to here let all that

go—I’m here, right now, so,

as the masters were wont to say, I write,
sometimes chant or sing or dance, here, so walk
rivers’ edges, gaze grandchildren’s eyes, hold hands

with the wife and generally follow
the tangle of heaven and earth and my nature,
however and wherever it all unfolds.     

Amen.


**


Life really is about the spaces in between—it’s not nothing,
but something you cannot see, except by what it’s doing.

Like the fog this morning, like a veil-covered face—moonlight
shimmers the only sign of breath.


**


Streaks in the sky, south and west,
clear light despite early mists.
And the scent of fall

that comes of the crush
of crumpled leaves, that speak
of the last of their turn, this time.


**


The stretch of the eternal
cannot be heard in entirety,

thus leaving behind
the silence

within which we can hear
all that’s held in time.


**


Tides of miniscule movements, most unseen,
often missed, though sometimes not,
is where the poet works—

      what does this blossom
      on this apricot tree know
     
      about this late-November
      that I do not?


**


A day with no fresh air
is not yet

a day.

What if
you wake up

outside?

Well, that
goes without saying.


**


And still counting…


Awhile back, I cleared my shelves of titles
I knew in my heart I’d not return to, or for that matter,
those that hadn’t held my attention long enough
to have taken too much space for too long a time
on a shelf like mine—took’m down to the county jail,
where men with extended terms reside,

where books are read and re-read, re-cycled
hand to hand, and talked about—great life for books,
for words otherwise collecting dust, uncomplainingly
doing the work they’ve been cut to do, and maybe,

maybe even more—which is maybe the point, 
you might ask, they’re prisoners after all, but who
among us has not been there

before—the point is like butterfly wings
and weather patterns—everything’s linked,

everything matters, everything counts—each word
every time—and the best we can do is do them

as right as we can,  keep them out there,
keep them counting.

                                  

                               Cid Coreman:

                                   I count syllables
                                         because every
                                               syllable counts.”

Friday, December 12, 2014

Places further east--November 2014



After two nights of rain,
leaves in bushes along the road
gleam with the grey of dawn.

Bouquets of closeness,
wordless offerings for all
who belong, tasted

as certain as signals
from home.


**


Groundwater—a cautionary tale

Groundwater, not on, but under,
squeezed into the rock beneath, deep
reservoirs of reserve, some say
some ninety-five percent
of global fresh water supplies,
rapidly depleting—as so say
the satellites, of all things,
which like us cannot see
beneath the crust, but can be
and are, as are we, influenced by
gravitational pull—mass or its lack,
the latter being tracked

on screens —red splotches,
deepening red splotches of absence
growing beneath the world’s
breadbaskets—take note…

take note, grandchildren: oil is fool’s gold,
always was. So don’t be a fool
and don’t follow none.


**


There is no shortage of flags here in Nashville,
and patriotic sentiments are offered often
and spontaneous in public places.

I chose not to be recognized for my service,
such as it was. But did stand for those
they wished to honor.

“You can wave your flag,”
a twinkly-eyed old friend once said, 
“if I can wave mine.”

Only when it stands on both-and,
does either-or work
for everyone.


**


Nashville

We dined last night at the Palace—saloon
or club, you choose. But a vibrant venue
for what our waitress called classic country.

One song told of a bend in a river.
And while walking this morning I realized
we’re staying at such a place—the road itself
is named for it, Pennington Bend.

And I wonder at the sensibilities
that take such things as significant enough
to take note of them as such.

Lives turn where rivers bend, I suppose.
Clearly a tongue does, that then turns
and rounds its words

to flavor both place and people,
who then in turn choose their words
and how and where they’ll be told.


**


Our first morning here opens

a whisper of pink under high grey light
that shutters, slants, then quietly illumines
recollections of childhood

in rural New Jersey
transitioning to suburbs—a time, as a kid,

unquestioned, free.

It’s the stretch and roll of Tennessee landscape
that calls—leafy forest, occasionally broken,
wide swaths of farm land encircled by woods,

all of which then, there, was incrementally
being surrendered.

But what did we know? We played

war with dirt-clods from development work sites,
bicycled bare-headed on unpaved roads
and ranged those woods with few restrictions
beyond being home on time for supper.

I’d bike over to the Crow’s down the road,
for the entire day. The eldest, my friend, had
younger brothers, and a little sister, I think.
And two wildly vicious dogs,

always held barely in check by long chains
they dragged across earth made permanent dust
about them—I see now that the dogs were frantic

to guard something already gone—un-worked farms
and chicken coops long empty.

We’d inch past the dogs on our way to the coops
to play Cowboys and Indians, standing on the roofs
in the sun, backs to the woods, looking out

over weed-filled yards,
cap guns and make-shift bows,
unabashedly proclaiming our exploits.

We changed roles readily those days. They were
already Indians, of course, the Crows; and I,
I was already white. But what did we know,
what did we know, but to play?


**


William Everson

poet, then religious Brother,
then again religious and a poet, once said

“A religious man without a religion is in trouble.”

He favored in the end personal liturgy over public
and saw our life in language as a gift of the race, the gift
through which reflection takes place, the gift

given back through the words it gave—at its best,
a matter of thanks, a matter of grace.

He proselytized, but only the importance of awe,

of our awareness of its movements in us 
in the ordinary course of our day to day,

the groundswell of awe that pushes our words
to places we’d not imagined to go—which for some
will speak to the mystery and rush of the religious,

and for others is itself religion enough…
    
      wintered leaves
      fall from trees
      already barren,

      spinning akimbo
     
      through the air
      to the ground
     
      on the banks
      of the river
     
      Cumberland.


**


Found in the poems of Korean poet, Ko Un

“Yet the coming of spring is no repetition.”

A statement of the how
of our lived experience, before
manipulation, before abstraction,

continuing newness,

which when carefully considered,
naturally engenders

a muted pause of tribute.


**


After Ko Un’s, “October 19”

Time dropped away
without a whisper,

walls crumbled and fell,
and he stepped

ankle deep in the dust
of the bones of the ancients.

Their songs could still be heard,
but all he could do

was hum—they’d taken their words
when they’d gone,

leaving only the poems
behind.

This, I think,
is where we are today.