Tenemos

Spirit calls me from this quotidian world
Celts speak of the thin places
Where the veil between time and the timeless 
is as shear as a dragonfly's wing

On an early summer's day on the Holy Isle
I lingered by the  old Abby church 
Its ancient stony fence, deceptive
in it's simplicity,
has weathered the western ocean's
 cutting salty winds for centuries

As they repaired the weather worn barrier,
two young islanders fingered a small stone
with great care as if 
They were restoring  an Arras tapestry 

An inner voice held me motionless
We were enmeshed in the eternal
They were in prayer, you see,
And I was, as well

Note: Tenemos is a Greek word for sanctuary.  The Holy Isle is Iona located in the Inner Hebrides just off the coast of Scotland.  It is the seat of Celtic Christianity as St. Columba founded a monastery there in the latter part of the sixth century.  

Beads

Slumped in my immobile car
Interminable freight train
rumbles by
My grumbling mind starts to wander
Box cars morph into gargantuan beads,
giant's necklace or mala beads?
Forgotten photo emerges
Ancient forest stone temple
Japanese monks
each holds a giant bead
unified in prayer and community
I no longer grumble at freight trains

Endnote: This is the first poem I've posted since March. Numerous health problems intervened. I have finally turned the corner health wise at least for now and the Muse has returned. More poems to follow.

Emissaries

Like an autumnal shower of brilliant leaves,

butterflies float in a lush conservatory garden.

A winged emissary rests and caresses my hand,

wonder and quiet joy.

To the Celts they were renewal and transformation,

emissaries of the eternal

clothed in gossamer wings.

Ice Box, 1949

I remember the burly man with great metal claws

As he toted a huge diamond into the kitchen,

a chunk of ice for the box.

It glowed like a crystal chandelier,

but froze my small probing fingers.

Small items were on the top shelf,

A buttery slab, ruby hued strawberries, a lone ear of corn.

Sparkling glass bottles of milk with cream on top

filled the lower shelf.

They looked like snowy penguins

huddled by an Arctic sea.

The bottles felt as smooth and cold as polished stones

in a gushing stream.

In the summer I loved to touch their smooth coolness

and sip the creamy delight,

a taboo so delicious to breach

and not get caught!

Early Summer

As I drive past the median

Two blue jays dance on a lush grassy carpet

They squawk at each other as they hop,

One tries to outdo the other

"I am the king of the mountain!"

Childhood memories of

Summer's first days,

Exuberant, carefree, everything was possible

Summer seemed endless then

The Sentinel

A single dandelion stands in a sea of splendor,

Her neighbors, clad in myriad and variegated hues,

Release their floral, woody perfumes

Into the moist welcoming air;

Pinks, magenta, deep reds, and

More shades of green than I have ever seen.

An exuberant bush with shimmering pale green leaves

Compels one to linger and finger it.

Silvery green lamb's ears

rest very close to the earth,

Furry leaves are hands as soft as velvet,

Beckoning to be caressed like

Those of a child.

One flawless golden sentinel keeps watch.

Endnote: Revised on 5/13/10.

Gaman

Forgotten, unlamented, lost in the dusty corners of time,

An extraordinary story, shameful and long ignored,

A blot on our nation's soul,

Laden with latent racism

Sanctioned by our government,

Finally emerges in the form of exquisite art,

Giving voice to the gaman from which it came.

During a world war Americans born in Japan were interned,

An egregious euphemism for imprisoned,

As their neighbors watched and applauded

Their government betray its' essential core,

While the internees responded with gaman.

Stripped of their cherished possessions,

Forcibly removed to hastily built desert camps,

Their living quarters little better than stables,

They bore an undeserved and cruel fate

With gaman.

The cauldron of psychic and physical pain,

An alchemy of loneliness, despair, and boredom,

Transformed the detritus of quotidian life

Into the extraordinary art of gaman.

Delicately fashioned bird pins, furniture from scrap lumber,

Intricately woven baskets of twine, musical instruments,

Toys, teapots, a Noguchi sculpture, and poignantly evocative paintings,

Created from the ephemera of exile

With gaman, enduring the unendurable with patience and grace.

Endnote: Written after viewing "The Art of Gaman" at the Renwick Museum, Washington D.C. in April 2010. The exhibit features more than 120 objects, most of which are on loan from former internees and their families. These were produced between 1942-1946 when 120,000 Japanese Americans in California were forcibly relocated to internment camps for the duration of WW II.

Oops

I backed into

the car

that was near

my driveway

It was

your sporty

pretentious

new one

I should be sorry

It looked so fine

with an iridescent

shine

But, in fact,

I don’t care

Your car

was blocking mine

Endnote: This is a parody I wrote of an apology poem by William Carlos Williams. In it, he sincerely apologizes to his wife for eating all her breakfast plums. I decided to be brutally honest instead.

Driving in Perverse

The key to success is mind over matter

I cannot unlock the car's jammed door

I wish I wasn't anywhere near this blighter!

If doors open, I have to start the piker

The key is stuck like Arthur's Excalibur

The key to success is mind over matter

Its' engine sounds like choking crows aflutter

My humor descends to depths below rancor

I wish I wasn't anywhere near this blighter!

It's brakes convulse with random grabs and falter

The fender bender wasn't my fault, señor

The key to success is mind over matter

Its' tires are tired of movement's brisk canter

All four are flat as mats on parquet floors

I wish I wasn't anywhere near this blighter!

I walk away from 'rent a wreck,' a biker

My driving sojourn's torture I abhor

The key to success is mind over matter

I wish I wasn't anywhere near this blighter!

Endnote: The vilanelle is a 19 line poem related to the sonnet. I wrote this one in iambic pentameter.

Mornings at Eleven

I find my place in the geriatric parade.

We limp, creak, sidle, prop each other up,

Rather like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

The pool looms as water aerobics class begins.

Our instructor, Vivian, glares at those who slowly immerse.

She never gets in the glacial water herself, however.

The dominatrix snaps staccato orders like a demented woodpecker.

“ Balance, Balance, Balance!”

I wear a flotation belt, which further distorts my center of gravity.

Balance isn’t an option.

“Noodle, Stand” she commands.

One attempts to remain upright on this contrivance.

Of course, the belt accelerates the downward spiral.

A chemical cocktail floods all one’s orifices.

“Barbells, Stand” she bellows.

I pass on this one as the bobbing ‘bells’ drift away.

We are then bidden to run laps in the water.

I encounter the second lappers whilst still on my first.

This elicits unbridled scorn.

She is too exercised to speak.

Why, you may well ask?

Exercise is good.

Corporate misery fosters friendship.

And, irritating Vivian is such bliss!

The Poetry Reading

The ancient rocking chair sways back and forth like an eccentric pendulum.

Three moppets catapult into the kitchen.

They’re followed by a frenetic puppy who skids into her food dish.

The room smells of freshly cut flowers and dog food.

Mom squats on the lurching chair appropriated by assorted tykes and the dog.

It’s time for “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight!”

The tale of Bessie and her beloved, Basil Underwood, in Cromwell’s England is our favorite poem.

Well, it’s one of our favorite poems.

The dog squeals as her tail gets squeezed.

We all yell ‘hot dog! because we’re young and not too vociferous.

Little CC tells everybody what to do.

We shout in unison “Curfew must not ring tonight” after each stanza.

We love the sound of it sans meaning.

The multicolored feathers of strange words and flowing rhyme tickle our imaginations.

We’re as excited as crows waiting for trash pickup.

With Bessie we hang on to the large bell’s ringer to stop the sound.

If the big bell rings, Basil will be executed,

“Curfew must not ring tonight!”

Bessie stops the capricious bell.

Basil is pardoned.

The ponderous bell thinks “Omnia vincit amor.”

The old chair continues to rock.

Reference: Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight, published in 1870 by Rose Hartwick Thorpe (1850 – 1939), an American poet. This poem was one of Queen Victoria's favorites.

Martha Incognito

Brief glimpse of a Hermes scarf

As an impeccably coifed and garbed figure

Ducks into McDonald’s back door

She ingests her Big Meal with gusto

Using her Hermes as a chador

Martha developed her fast food craving

During her confinement at Bedford Hills

Being Martha she mulls over potential profits,

Surreptitious silent partner or outright take over?

As she considers more and more scenarios

She indulges in another order of fries and a sundae

This repast stimulates my creative flow

I must get more of this to take out!

Who can venture a guess as to what she might do next?

So far, there has been no M and A activity

Capitalistic machinations, or

hopeless Big Mac addiction?

Vernal Equinox

Spring begins with the vernal equinox on March 20 at exactly 1:32 P.M. EDT. 

The word equinox is derived from the Latin for “equal night” and is used now because the days and nights are of nearly equal length. The vernal equinox is the point at which the center of the Sun passes over the celestial equator from south to north, signaling the start of nature's renewal in our hemisphere. 

After the equinox, the Sun will appear higher and higher in the sky, and length of day will grow longer than the length of night. (Farmer’s Almanac)

Here is a lovely poem welcoming Spring by Swinburne:

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green under wood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

When I Am an Old Woman...by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people's gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Endnote: I am posting this marvelous piece by Jenny Joseph to help my dear sister, Joan, celebrate her big 6-0 birthday today. It was unfortunately appropriated by the 'Red Hat Society,' a group of nonconforming conformists that I have no affection for.

blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that Endnote: Lucille Clifton, a wonderful poet and former poet laureate of Maryland, passed away on February 13. She was a winner of the National book award and was nominated for the Pulitzer prize more than once. For additional biographical information and to read more of her poems go to www.poets.org.

The Rustic Cavalier

A huge rat hid in the woodpile behind Billy’s house,

Also magenta hued worms, multi-limbed insects, and an occasional slimy snail with petite ears

Mornings Billy and I flipped over the weathered wooden planks to wake everybody

Speculating on where the little creatures came from,

what they ate, and what they might be thinking

Transported us to enchanted ventures,

On a schooner sailing the oceans, a long shiny limousine driving to posh resorts, an airplane playing tag with the clouds

Billy had a ‘specimen cart’

On collection days we chatted about matters of moment

Where the clouds came from and their ever changing shapes and colors

and how robins knew where the worms were

Billy said I could learn about life just by watching wild things,

How they took everything in stride, just as it came, and never acted out of spite

I was six and Billy was sixty

He wasn’t very tall

He didn’t shave very often and bathed even less

He always wore a floppy old brown hat and held up his pants with a rope

My mother said he was a rustic cavalier,

But she wished I wouldn’t go on so many jaunts with him

The more charitable of our neighbors referred to him as the town eccentric

Others called him an old bum

I adored him

He taught me to spit farther than anyone else

He lit up my imagination like a Roman candle

He introduced me to philosophical musings

He drew me into the art of true conversation

He listened to me

Endnote: Revised on 2/17/10. Dedicated in loving memory to my rustic cavalier, Billy Hall.

Winter Musings

What is it about Winter

That induces unease in some and reflection in others?

Bleaching whites, drab muted hues, denuded trees

Have become elemental

Familiar surroundings exposed as in a x-ray

The frozen desert induces introspection

Welcome guest or feared intruder?

I have learned from the wintering birds

That avoidance eventually breeds disaster

But exposure elicits un-mined resources

And trust in the Now is my probing beak

Endnote: The photo is by Jayne, blogging friend and bird photographer extraordinaire.

January Thaw, a Tanka

A midwinter thaw

Evening’s dappled darkness

Crows drifting home

A traveler pauses

Serendipitous repose

A Limerick for New Year's Cheer!

There was an eccentric named Clare

Who despite all had oodles of flair

She penned limericks galore

To confound all the bores

Who were miffed by her savoir faire

Another poet on the Old Year's passing

Good-bye, kind year 


We walk
no more together


But here in quiet happiness
we part.

–Sarah Doudney (1841-1926)