Loving The Crow

The Three Word Wednesday site master writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words... This week's words:
hint, lust, sheen

This poem is my response. Go here 3WW CCIX to get access to the work of the other participants.

Loving The Crow

I've been looking high
and low, under rocks, behind
the dusty curtains
that make me sneeze hard
trying for a hint, some clue
left behind, some taste
of your red ripe lust
for life.

I would stroke
your feathers until
the sparks would leap off your back
leaving the blue black
sheen of your bird life
for all to see spun large, large
on my pallid shape.

Poetry Conversation

I have this habit that manifests itself, I think, primarily as a musical phenomenon. It is the sort of thing that musicians do with each other, where it is called improvisation. They play with each other back and forth, embellishing the theme and changing it, listening to each other with a joy of the moment.

This can happen in poetry too. Rachel Westfall has a lovely poetic voice. I don't need to inquire why she touches me like she does. She has been very kind, and apparently this works for her too. The following conversation is only the latest of several we have held. It is easy to write to her, which involves going into some world or other and revealing what life would be like there.

Rachel lives in Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory of Canada. That is fairly far north. I live in Gladstone, a town south of Portland, Oregon in the USA. Rachel and I have never met, but in some ways we may have known each other for a very long time. You can see this poetry conversation in its original location here. This conversation or collaboration started last Monday and has continued throughout the week as you may notice. There are two more poems that extend the conversation beyond the four I have chosen, one by Rachel, one by me that appear here but these poems are not included directly in this response to the Big Tent prompt. It's been a busy week.

You might stay and read other things this beautiful lady writes. If you look hard, you will find other examples of our collaboration. She was also kind enough to post one of my poems in her sidebar. For that matter, you can find our conversations from time to time in my archives too because when the fancy strikes it may be her posted poem that starts it, or it may be mine.

Go to Big Tent's poetry prompt, to see the prompt that the Big Tent poets are responding to.

Go to The Big Tent Come One, Come All site for the responses.

Rachel wrote:

shoreline

Something froze on the shore
etched in lines
scratched by feet of the passing gulls
cast in red-gold rays
of the sudden dawn startling night’s chill
scuttling back to a huddled place
under rocks, in the cool moist dens
of the red-backed crabs
Something froze
on the shore in the salt-tinged sand
where the wind braided hair
and summer freckles smiled
as we combed
tidal pools to fill our treasure chests
Something froze
and I’ve lost your name

Rachel Westfall
October 4, 2010

I replied:

The Gray Sea

You know my frantic
hopes, my pleas that you decide
to stay in my arms,
but like the gray sea
of this late autumn morning,
like the slick scaled sides
of the creatures there,
you slip free and go. I can't
keep you home this time.

This forces me out
of my dream. I must admit
I no longer know
your true and private
name.

October 4, 2010

Then Rachel wrote:

The day you lost my name

I was sleek, limbs fresh
and soft as wax
newly emerged
when you first drew me up
in a long embrace
and spoke
my true name in my ear.
You told me I was real,
grew me lean and strong
to run colt-limbed
across the sand, the wind
stroking long ripples
through my hair.
You say you do not know me
now, you say
you’ve lost my name.
Without your hands,
your breath, your hawk’s whisper
I have no name at all.

October 4, 2010

And I replied,

Your Gone Away Posture

To me you have gone
and taken your name away.
I no longer know
what it is to say
it, what aroma
and shape it takes when I say
it in day's early
light or in moonshine.
It's your gone away posture
that strafes my soul's face
with large caliber
plugs of gray sea ice
and my peeled back skin reveals
my sunk thews and bones.

October 5, 2010

Field Theory II

A theoretical M theory multiverse. One of the bubbles is ours. This is theoretical. It is background radiation bubbles that we see in this picture. We cannot see past the background radiation. The universe goes opaque at that point, with all the light trapped along with everything else because the distances are too small and everything is too hot. The background radiation was the first thing that can now be seen when the universe went transparent. It is very far away which is equivalent to saying it was a long time ago. This is because it is space/time and there is no real separation. Light travels about 6 trillion miles in a year. Almost 14 billion years ago the universe formed and in less than half a million years became transparent. So something around 13.7 billion light years is the location of the background radiation in every direction.

So today this is a science blog and the poem is a science poem. It won't last long. Tomorrow is Three Word Wednesday and I am hopefully going to post a poem freshly written to use the three words.

"The goal of becoming a better person is within the reach of us all, at every moment. The tool for emerging from the primitive yoke of conditioned responses to the tangible freedom of the conscious life lies just behind our brow. We need only invoke the power of mindful awareness in any action of body, speech, or mind to elevate that action from the unconscious reflex of a trained creature to the awakened choice of a human being who is guided to a higher life by wisdom."
- Andrew Olendzki
Unlimiting Mind


Field Theory II

The long redaction
of strings reaches past the rays,
theoretical
motion faster than
little dots of stranger light,
lonely hordes, photons
all, corpuscular
at this precious momentum
but field theory
holds firm just the same.

July 29, 2009 10:11 AM

The poem is titled Field Theory II because I used the title in another poem. That one was about losing love after working to insure its presence in my life. This poem is about connection. If field theory holds firm then there is a way that each little photon is connected to all the other photons. Indeed, when you look at the situation in a certain way, just as there is only one electron manifesting in uncountable ways, there is only one photon also manifesting in uncountable ways. Perhaps there is only one of us too, manifesting in uncountable ways. There is no us. There is only one. There can be only one. This sounds like the Highlander story.

Littering

Here's a little reality for you.


"Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult "What is that?"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I spent time on the streets. All streets are mean streets when you are in a certain condition. I was more interested in getting high than I was in keeping an apartment, in working, in bathing, in eating. I found ways to get by but I was literally starving. I weighed 148 pounds at 5'11". I would stand at a street corner and wonder which way led to more dope, which way to an escape from my trap. I knew I was trapped, that it would take an act from outside to get me out. I couldn't get myself out. I had dropped below the event horizon.

At one stage, I was living in the back of my car, a Rambler station wagon that only had second gear. The rest had failed somehow. That didn't matter because I didn't have any money anyway. I had parked that car in front of a vacant lot, so no one really objected. The car was full of my stuff but there was room for me to sleep. My toilet was where I could find it, but I peed at night in that lot. Later I snuck into empty apartments and hooked up with a guy who had an extra bed in his rented room, a bed that was supposed to rent out. The bed was terrible. Still later we went to jail for walking down the street late at night. My friend was carrying pot, less than an ounce but more than enough in those days.

I still marvel at one thing. We were all so broke, all so not into finding ways to make a living, all so out and out incompetent at keeping shit together. Just how is it possible that we could find all that dope?? We thought it was weird then. There is magic in the world and that is part of it. Every dope freak knows this. You need the dope. It is rare that it doesn't come. When it doesn't come it is a horror, an effing disaster and also it is like a violation of the law of dope. On any given day there is enough dope, often more than enough.

This poem is about that kind of life, but not about me.

Littering

I'm watching tv.
This ad comes on, tells me Stop
littering! Shows a
Red Man in full dress
with a sweet tear in his eye,
wounded at the mess.

This won't stop me now
any more than what happened
when I dropped my rig
in that field running
from the dealer I ripped off.

Turned out, was shit dope.

July 28, 2009 11:06 AM

Predator Words

A White Tailed Deer. I hope it was only hunted by camera. In looking for a photo I found a hunting site, with photos of hunters glorying in the kill. I cannot have a real opinion about an activity that is basically millions of years old in the human lineage. I will only say I am not and cannot be a hunter. I hope it never comes to that. It would break my heart. I am a meat eater. I don't care that eating meat is hypocritical for one in my position about hunting. I just don't care. I won't be able to get over it.

The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

One of my favorite images of success is the image of the King's Hunt from the ancient chinese wisdom stories. It is told that the king goes on the hunt with his whole retinue, who form an open box formation, but with a line of beaters directly in front of the king. There are three sides to the box, the king's right and left, and behind him, and as I have already said, there is a line of beaters blocking the direct path to the king as well. The whole formation moves at a stately pace, driving game before it, and the open side ahead of the line of beaters in front of the king allows all game to escape in that direction, to get out of the box. So the game must wind up somehow going down a corridor sideways to the main direction of travel or it will not reach the king's range, and always the game can turn around and escape by reversing its track and then running in the direction still open to it. The reason for this is that then the game that ends in the corridor directly in front of the king has wound up there from a series of turns that indicate it is God's will that the king take the game. There has been ample alternatives that the game has chosen from to escape or not. It is assumed then that this game is God's gift to the king. Also then, it in its own way mirrors the gift that a successful hunt is in the world of nature.

It is well known that hunters in the shamanic traditions are expected to treat the gift of meat as a royal gift, an offering of the totem spirit of the animal, and a participation in the web of life. In this way, sometimes my poems come to me as offerings.

Predator Words

The northern sun sits
high above the horizon
of auroral dreams,
dreams of the long way
home, of singular bare trees,
dry and hot, leafless,
dying or just dead.
In the wild of my long life
around the corner
there lurk predator
words that ache for expression,
aching for the truth.

July 22, 2009 12:40 PM

Thinking Like A Hawk

Swainson's Hawk

"Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It's the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now."
- Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin

I sought oblivion for many years, just a small one for a time, a little time each day, to make the rest tolerable. I would organize around that opportunity, support it with space and effort and intention. I would defend it with my slippery ways and with an earnest weasel's capacity to evade my own better forms. I would tie one hand down and gesticulate with the other, sure that was all I needed, all you all deserved of me.

I was so sure I was right. I would exclaim, don't you know I have to be like this to live? I would point out at peak voice some aspect or other of our approaching doom and I would discover and display what was wrong with you all, or Him in filigree, burnished, bright mirrored tales telling the truths I knew, not that I was above things but that I ached at my entrapments.

When I was called forth out of myself, I was hugely angry at the rudeness of that call, and terrified. Such was oblivion for me, a place very near an unending supply of wine and words circling the drain and justifying my mandala of despair.

When I was stuck in and on myself, this was my course.

Indeed, even though I write in first person, I am no longer always the person who writes. In fact, several poems in my growing body of work are poems of shape shifting and I take that ability to be a great blessing. How else can I be a great mage or a tiny frog or a lover of a goddess?

How else can I tell the world?

I do not know why I say these things just now, but here is another poem of shifted shape.

There is a type of hawk who is known as a locust hunter if at all possible, accepting small mammals as prey if it must. It is widely distributed, found as well in Oregon, and competes directly for territory with the Red Tailed Hawk. It is known as Swainson's Hawk. This hawk has the longest migration route of most hawks from North to South America and does not vary its route. The hawk migrates around 14,000 miles each season, a distance traveled in two months, eating locusts along the way if it can, but there is a point in the journey where it eats nothing for a few weeks, neither eating nor casting its pellets.

Thinking Like A Hawk

Sitting and thinking,
waiting for the big legged bugs,
the flyers to come.
I may have to eat
thin red squirrel if I must.
But really locusts
are my choice. They get my juice
flowing, my heart filled with joy.

July 22, 2009 12:10 PM

What I Will Do

Coyote makes an appearance, intent on her message. I shall be intent on mine.


"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming."
- J. B. S. Haldane

The Big Tent told me to go outside for inspiration so I wrote of the journeys I would take, willing to go to any lengths (I heard that phrase somewhere) for love, for adoration, to witness, to win. What? I'm a fool? Maybe so. Maybe I am revealed, dancing along my path toward the abyss, dancing in the open with my little dog Tige. Turns out Tige was an American Pit Bull Terrier.

Go here to learn about Tige, the first talking pet in American comics (probably) and me. Thing is, I didn't die suddenly in early middle age, and I have never lived in Amityville. OOOh. The movie about Amityville is not funny.

What I Will Do

Tell me anything.
Tell me where to go. I will
go to blazes for you.

I will crawl up steps
and through the nave just to show
how far I will go.
I will cross oceans,
walk on water. I will fly
to the sun and stars.
I will take extra
chances as I go, looking
for wild green dragons.
I will touch and soothe
the troubled souls of great beasts
and return the grail.

I might even go
outdoors, walk around out there,
take the air and sun.

September 30, 2010 8:18 PM

Don't Blame Me

Here It Comes!

Three Word Wednesday has offered the words, engulf, imminent, tamper. I used them several times in my romp through space/time. Perhaps there is some sanity somewhere, but probably not here today. I am wandering in search of an honest man, while carrying a sputtering whale oil lamp. The aroma is arresting. It's all rock and roll.

Don't Blame Me

You engulf the sun,
imminent heat death:
yes indeed, you tamper
with the scheme of things.
Holy crap!
I stand accused but I deny it,
I am innocent, innocent I say!
Even though my condemnation
is so goddam imminent,
I hate to tamper with your life,
don't you know I do.
I'll engulf my days with due regret.
(Perhaps I shall fly off at speed
to the far, far indolent corners, there
to lick my weeping cheesy wounds.)
You eat time with red sauce,
engulf space with hot intention,
and I am pregnant with ideas now
soon to wobble forth topsy-turvy,
soon to tamper gracelessly with
your imminent majesty,
you very freaking eminence.
Hope you can guess my name.
That's what Jagger said.

September 29, 2010 6:26 AM

Not That Many

"Most of our life is spent using behavioral strategies to cover or avoid our pain—the deep sense of basic alienation that takes the form of feeling worthless, hopeless, or fundamentally flawed in some way. When our strategy is to help, when we need to be helpful, this requires that we need to find people who seem helpless, or situations that seem to call for help. It’s true that we may also have a genuine desire to help—one that isn’t based on our needs—but whenever we feel an urgency or longing to help, it’s often rooted in the fear of facing our own unhealed pain. If our basic fear is that we’ll always be alone, what better way to avoid it than to find someone who needs us? If we have an underlying feeling of worthlessness, how better to prove that we’re worthy than by doing good deeds? If we’re trying to avoid the feeling of being fundamentally powerless or ineffectual, doesn’t it make sense to take on the identity of someone who can affect people and outcomes positively through service?

"The “helper” syndrome I’m describing is not outwardly harmful. What makes it dangerous is its potential to keep us blind to what is really going on. Yet it’s easy to see how this lack of awareness, multiplied throughout our society, could lead to the social and political chaos that we live in. Failure to work with our inner turmoil—our need for power, our self-centered desire to possess, our fear-based greed and need to control—results in hatred, aggression, and intolerance. This is the source of all conflicts and wars. Without inner understanding, individuals as well as societies will continue to flounder. This is why it is so important for each of us to come back again and again to the practice of awareness."
--a talk given by Ezra Bayda

"To do good is to be good." Earlier in this talk Bayda pointed out that we who are raised in Christendom, especially here in the West, are given this message. Implicit coercion is involved. Parents and caregivers are looking for behavior from us that creates easy parenting conditions. We are rewarded again and again. We are punished for falling short again and again. The consequence is how completely it is instilled in us that we need to be helpful in order to feel good. If there is any natural impulse to generosity or other goodness in us, it is buried under layers of coercion. "To do good is to be good" is a maxim that guarantees suffering in the name of goodness. That suffering perverts any natural impulse into activity that is undergirded by a selfish and self centered attitude. Any goodness arising in these conditions cannot be trusted and will often be doubted by our intended recipients if not by witnesses and ourselves.

We need to dismantle the hidden agendas which block open hearted generosity.

Here's another problem:

Not That Many

The migraine blind eye
would look not on the wide world
but on dim dark holes
to lessen the pain
just the tiniest wee bit,
and the gout driven
toe fears even sight
when someone looks at its heat.

There are things worse than
a dry writing spell.

July 21, 2009 12:47 PM

It Passes So Quickly

"Of course, even when you see the world as a trap and posit a fundamental separation between liberation of self and transformation of society, you can still feel a compassionate impulse to help its suffering beings. In that case you tend to view the personal and the political in a sequential fashion. "I'll get enlightened first, and then I'll engage in social action." Those who are not engaged in spiritual pursuits put it differently: "I'll get my head straight first, I'll get psychoanalyzed, I'll overcome my inhibitions or neuroses or my hang-ups (whatever description you give to samsara) and then I'll wade into the fray." Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation - and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready.

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up - release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened."
- Joanna Macy
World as Lover, World as Self

I dove in at the end of the sixties, after an exile of two years to get my head straight. When I came back I became a dope dealer, among other things, and I was conscious that doing that was a revolutionary act that stressed the system as it stood in more than one way. That is how we thought in those days, and though it is no longer true mainly because the money was too good and attracted the wrong folk, it was true enough then. That is not only what I did, nor what others close to me did. We really were subversive. In the end we were our own enemy though, and the best of us got out and did other things of note, like Stewart Brand did and so many others, and like some of the musicians did too.

Through changes beyond my control, this thing slipped through my fingers. I tried one more time here in Oregon, coming at it from a radically different direction but I was drinking too much and other obstructions were involved. In the end, I just kept going further away from that energy, in acceptance that it was no longer my path if it ever was. This is one of the heartbreaks of my life.

Now I am only interested in those matters that concern people who are old but awake. It is what I do here.


It Passes So Quickly

I can't help thinking
how spring is gone now, summer's
half over, my life
more than half over.
Fall is my season these days.

Spring vitality,
such grand bright tensions,
like birds on lookout, this fades
to white summer heat
and from there to dry
fall colors, the reds and golds,
with a hint of cold.

I shan't look beyond.

July 20, 2009 12:40 PM

With The Goddess

Nemesis, by Melanie Delon

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"

I remember well. To consort with the Goddess, has ever been my privilege. I do not fear.

With The Goddess

As you approach me
I find the edge of myself
tremble, then dissolve
as your sea takes me
into the orbit
of your lunar gravity.

There I find that I'm
overcome, must be
with you, conjunction of sun,
moon, total eclipse,
full corona, flares
on all sides of me as I
burn, nuclear fire.

July 19, 2009 2:43 PM
Modified September 26, 2010 12:02 PM

Like Starlight

Morning fog

Author: jedzer

"Here lies the misfortune of philosophy: we encounter on our travels some exceptional freak to which the philosophical rules are found to be non-applicable. Which are right - the freaks or the philosophical principles?"
- Michal Ajvaz

I have bet everything on the turn of a moment. This has happened several times in my life. Sometimes it didn’t work out as I hoped, falling short. Sometimes it turned out beyond my best possible dreams at the time, with one thing leading to another. I follow a spiritual path which allows for such things, though I hesitate to call them acts of God. I love the word serendipity, which to me means happy good luck, luck which carries the aroma of the divine about it. I am in Oregon in this way, and I have made my living in a career that started from one of these events. My poesy in its present incarnation comes from an investment in a woman that I made in a dream in 1983 which did not come to fruition until the last days of 1998. I had no idea such a thing could happen. That relationship led me to a poetry intensive of more than two years duration.

I began blogging by accident too. I stumbled across a blog that completely surprised me and that blog led to some others. Then I haunted the comments for a while, slowly spreading out and finding other blogs for a couple months before deciding I had the willingness to start my own. None of this would have happened had I not found that first blog, That blog so completely impressed me that I got the motivation to span the gap. I came to blogs fairly sure they were going to be time wasters, perhaps even worse than computer games are. I was biased against blogging. That was before I ran into a way of using haiku to my own purpose while haunting the comments of a couple blogs and that’s what led to this blog.

I can confidently say that everything that is of any deep value in my life has come in this “accidental” way. I deeply believe in the concept of destiny, that somehow in some way the outcome of my life is a meaningful participation, a collaboration between me and mystery, between me and forces beyond my ken.

Like Starlight

Everything turns
on one moment: before you
touched me I was not
much to look at or
listen to - no resonance.
I did not notice
as you approached. Why?
Why should I? Nothing
mattered. But your finger touched
my cheek like this, like
starlight and I changed
in that moment, noticing
who I really am.

July 19, 2009 1:13 PM

The Old Farm House

This picture came from Living Off The Grid, a site dedicated to homesteading.

"The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns."
- George Santayana

I have no idea what it would really be like to homestead except I am afraid, I know, of that much of that kind of work. Of course with this old body it would be out of the question. However, as with all poetry of the kind I like, everything can be read allegorically. This could be allegory for how a relationship with lovers is going. How about my relationship with God? Or for that matter, the relationship between my insides and my outsides? Or yours? That's the poetry game.

The Old Farm House

Hard packed, the floor feels
so old to my bare feet, toes
slip in fine grit missed
when last you swept with
the old straw broom that works best
to take the messes
out the door. The gloom
within suits my mood this day
better than the hot
sun bleaching color outside.
All that is light there
turns darker within.

July 19, 2009 10:53 AM

Coyote Grief, or How I Became A Poet

"Coyotes are incredibly adaptable," Gary San Julian reports. "They can switch from eating small mammals, including mice and voles, to dining on melons and apples and berries. They eat garbage. Some prey on domestic dogs and house cats. Coyotes are comfortable hunting on their own—catching small rodents in newly cut hayfields, for instance—and they also cooperate with each other to take larger prey, like deer."


The basic unit is a family group: an adult male and female, plus any grown offspring that have not yet dispersed into territories of their own. "Coyotes don't form large packs the way that wolves do," says San Julian. "A typical family group may number four of five individuals."

Coyotes have no problem coping with suburban sprawl…

exerpt of an article written by Charles Fergus based on his interviews with Gary San Julian, Ph.D., a professor of wildlife resources and an extension wildlife specialist in the College of Agriculture at Penn State.

Coyote Grief
(How I Became A Poet)

In the long ago, before this new world overran the stories, I would run with coyotes beneath the stars that hung much closer then. I had power then, I could fly. So could they. There were paths of light on which we loped, paralleling our brothers the wolves. For me the wolves were too serious, and I stayed with coyotes for the laughter. Sometimes when the light was right and the moon hung closest of all, in those days, in the deep dark of the nights of those days, we would gather and sing among ourselves all the old stories we knew. Those stories were fresh and new then. Time itself is different now.

Sometimes the night stills,
hardens, and the tight stars choke
and fall to flat earth,
dead embers. The sky
is no longer black, dim gray.

It was far away that it happened, in a drier land than here though of many rivers from nearby mountains. We gathered on the plateau to watch the world we knew die. I still don’t understand it. The earth shook and our hearts shattered. I stood and sang one last time in the way I could then, deep throated and free, not only bass but up through the tenor range, pure and open.

Coyote's sadness
is deeper than hope.

The sky fell. I don’t know what this means, but that’s what it did. I noticed her then standing in the circle, magnificent, of a different shape and color, and singing with higher notes than I can. She took my last song and my last breath. I have not sung those songs since and she howled beyond belief while my shattered heart turned to dust in my demise. The others wandered off to the ends of the world. She remained there solitary in her grief, breathing the stale air of that old, dead world.

She snuffs at dead stars amazed,
confused, wants to put
them back, cannot reach
that high, to the dim flat sky.
They won't burn again.

Me, I can never go back to the place where I died, to the land with no stars and that dead sun. I dare not if I could. Coyote, she holds vigil there, unable to go, unable to die, unable now even to sing. She tries to sing, but she has no voice any more. Her voice faded with the stars that fell to earth. As for me, my power is inside now, in my reborn heart. My power is no longer visible. So are my new words found inside me, though they are evoked, called forth by the things of this young world. They come rapidly lately from the mystery inside me and I write them down faithfully as fast as I can. Time is short. However, the music that we sang is still lost to me and to them too. That is why though the coyotes still howl, that howl is no longer a song but now more like a yodel.
**************

This prose is fresh. The poem was written in February, 2009. If you count syllables you will see, as with most of my recent poetry, that I use Haiku syllable counts for my lines, 5-7-5, repeat.

If you are interested in reading the work of other poets who participate in the Big Tent you can find their links or their work posted here: Big Tent Postings

Before There Were Men

This image found on this site: http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/17/roam_the_wild_h.html


Three Word Wednesday wants us to use these words in a poem: gait, nudge, ripen.

These words took me to the long ago time in North America. The fossil record shows that North America was a part of the evolving horse story though the horse was extinct pretty much completely as men spread throughout the continent. Here's Wiki:

Pleistocene Extinctions

In Western Canada, there is clear evidence of horses until 12,000 years ago. All Equidae in North America ultimately became extinct approximately 11,000 years ago. The causes of this extinction (simultaneous with the extinctions of a variety of other American megafauna) have been a matter of debate. Given the suddenness of the event and the fact that these mammals had been flourishing for millions of years previously, something quite unusual must have happened. There are two main hypotheses. The first attributes extinction to Climate change. Beginning approximately 12,500 years ago, the grasses characteristic of a steppe ecosystem gave way to shrub tundra, which was covered with unpalatable plants. Another hypothesis suggests extinction was linked to arrival of and over-hunting by humans. Extinctions were roughly simultaneous with the end of the most recent glacial advance and the appearance of the big-game-hunting Clovis culture. Findings published in 2006 showed that it was not yet possible to claim with confidence that the extinction of horses in Alaska preceded the arrival of humans.

Horse fossils disappear from the fossil record from about 10,000 years ago,[dubious – discuss] but begin occurring frequently again in archaeological sites in Kazakhstan and the southern Ukraine from 6,000 years ago. From then on, it is probable that domesticated horses as well as the knowledge of capturing, taming, and rearing wild horses spread relatively quickly, with wild mares from several wild populations being incorporated en route.

Before There Were Men

(The North American Plains)

I run with horses
across the plains with matched gait.

I nudge them, call them
forth with plaintive cry
for all that once was, before
we were to ripen
on the vine of time.

You were busy elsewhere then,

dreaming Asian dreams.

September 22, 2010 11:00 AM

A Singular Fate

This is a painting by Kim Waters of The Fool, part of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Kim partners as lead singer with Hans Christian. Together they form Rasa and they sing devotional music in the Persian and Indian styles, among other things.

The Fool is a holy figure, closer to saying The Divine Innocent, than to some more modern vision of some stupid person, bound to fail for lack of something essential. The Fool often succeeds, and he succeeds because he is so innocent that he trusts God completely. The Fool is often depicted as one who is just about to step off a cliff edge.

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James

A Singular Fate

I've been left alone.
I am the man they knew well,
nobody wanted.
They say, I am not
like you, not your kind, could not
ever be like you.
Then they sniff and snort,
they hem and haw, take themselves
away, leaving me
to my singular
fate.

July 19, 2009 8:24 AM

The Limpid Path, a reprise

Originally posted January 23, 2010. I reprise because I am so fond of this poem, so fond of the word limpid, and so fond of the linguistics and etymology I was able to display, to show how rich these disciplines can be with certain words.


"The Dechainee" by Melanie Delon - one more from Melanie. Dechainee-seems to mean "to be the one to lift or exalt through passion."


Here comes a complex post. You guys speak of favorites among my poems. I have my own of course. This poem is one of them.

This word Limpid is one of my favorite words. I also love the etymological thread of the word limpid. Limpid is related to lymph and through lymph to nymph and to nuptial. Limpid means clear and serene as in a limpid pool, but also as in a limpid style of writing. Lymph once meant pure and clear water, and then the sap in plants, and now the colorless off white fluid similar to the plasma of blood but filled with the substances and the white cells of the immune system.

Nuptial is related to wedding and to the primary point of wedding which is procreation, and thus as a fluid would be the potent sexual fluids. To say Nuptial Fluids might be unusual but would be obvious. This is a bonding of light as in how it passes best through transparency and sex. The sexual light might be an unusually clear light that can penetrate deeply and change things.

This word complex also demonstrates several linguistic substitution rules. The L of limpid is similar to the N of nuptial. Notice in sounding the L and the N, that the position of the tongue in the mouth demonstrates this similarity. The I and the Y and the U are related this way too. The MP in Limpid is the MPH in Lymph and Nymph, is the PTI (pch) in Nuptial. The MP takes the closed lips of M and adds the plosive of P. This is transformed to the fricative F in MPH. Finally the M is dropped, leaving the plosive P joined with the soft CH sound spelled ti in Nuptial. These transforms are all "legal" and commonly used in linguistics to trace the evolution of a language.

Finally, while Limpid comes through French from Latin, Limpa or Lumpa (water), alternatively Lympha, all of this is a modification of earlier Greek Nymphe. A nymph is a semi divine figure evoking the rise of life fluids in men and women both and also meant bride. Nymph is also connected to feminine sexual parts, the labia minora, which are also called the nymphae, nymph in plural latin form. The labia minora are the inner lips of the vulva.

Wow. It is this kind of connection which reveals the wisdom inherent in language, why it is there is magic in words, even when you don’t know it. This is one rich example of the interconnections, clarity with light and with water and with life fluids and with sexual bonding, and the very gate of love. Using limpid brings this all to the sentence, to the poem. While limpid basically means "clear", see how much would be lost if that word was chosen over limpid.

Before getting to the poem itself, I want to add something written by Natalie Goldberg.

The Importance of Illusions

In the beginning, our illusions are important. In some ways, those illusions bring us to practice. Hopefully, in the process of practicing, we wake up to how things really are. But it's not bad to have some dreams at the beginning. When I started writing, I didn't know what it was to be a writer. I didn't know what basic hard work it is. But my dream to be a writer brought me along, and then I met the task.

In betrayal and in failure, there are some real jewels. But wouldn't we much rather have a relationship in which we mature slowly? For instance, isn't it better to have a relationship with your parents in which you grow up and move away from them in a natural and beautiful way? Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. And in spiritual communities, it doesn't always happen, either. So what do we do? We take what is in front of us and wake up from it.

- Natalie Goldberg from "Beyond Betrayal", Tricycle, The Buddhist Review (Spring, 2005)

The word Limpid evokes the kind of clarity Natalie writes about.

The Limpid Path

At a loss for words
about the broken winged
bird who flew away
except to say one
small word of true love above
all others set free
to fly after her
along the limpid path still
high above her pain.

March 21, 2009 9:33 PM

Witchcraft

Here's a fellow looking for truth, I suppose, or a way through, or maybe a fish for dinner.


"Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering."
- Gary Snyder

Magic, real magic, is the art of breaking free in the judicious use of the Divine brought near as sufficient power gathered through ritual and incantation. It is based on the assumption that God loves to be used. One must take care. There are consequences that follow in every endeavor on the planet and magic is no exception.

Witchcraft

The coven has met
within your heart and fallen
into trance, power
flowing out of stones
all around as if water
(struck by Moses' staff).

All those witches lurk
on darkened shelf, watch me write
these words waiting for
one main chance to pounce.

July 17, 2009 12:57 PM

Twelve Points

This work by Melanie Delon is one that bears close investigation. I would suggest zooming in on it and wandering around. The details are exquisite.

This is the Wordle that was offered at Big Tent Poetry's Monday prompt. I was directed to use as many words as I could in my poem. I used them all.


Twelve Points
(A Gangland Reverie)

Your half-eaten swarm
of words illuminate us
in frames of debris,
piles a child might build
on a temporary dock
of echoes called up
from the chant, your skirt
swirled to embellish inner
peace.

What's evidence
to me? An answer,
proof of your sturdy backbone
in the scheme of things.

September 16, 2010 6:23 AM
Go here to see all the other contributions to the Big Tent.

3 Word Wednesday - Political Predicament

-Elena Dudina
This is NOT a demure anemic virgin. May she cross my path. Please?

Three Word Wednesday has asked that today's participants use demure, offend and volatile in a short creative work. At least it seems to me it ought to be short to meet the spirit of the challenge.

Here is my contribution. The first lines were given to me by my Webster's Unabridged dictionary as part of their first example of usage. Arnold Bennett wrote "...by hustling male assistants very energetic and rapid, instead of by demure anemic virgins..."

Being an old acid head helps at this point.

Political Predicament

Demure anemic
virgins shall cross my wanton
path and shrink from me.
They shall not offend
the up-tight prudes who have thrown
us out of office.

Volatile odors
emanate from the gassy
members of our clan,
those who ate the stew
with billowing impunity.
Far from anemic
and hardly demure
themselves, they do not now care
that they will offend
the jolly stewards,
all frothy gaiety,
volatile worthy servants.

What now shall we do?