The ramblings of an aging, retired English teacher
30 May 2012 Leave a comment
Summer slows mentality,
Slides a hand over the heart,
And saddens old sentimentality.
Marshy days ooze toward sodden ends.
Luminous dusks linger,
Resolving into shimmering specks,
While night weeps in the long grass,
And sleeplessness seeps toward dawn.
Vivum est iudicium sine iudicio.
20 April 2012 Leave a comment
My neighbor, Mike, inspires my gardening
By his example of helping things live and thrive.
He runs a sprout orphanage next to his garage.
He houses a seedling nursery on his patio table.
His elderly junipers overrun the front walk way.
Cutting it back hurts too much. He is its friend.
Legs moving like tree limbs in the wind,
He ambles from alley way to back door.
The wind has knocked things over.
He rescues a fallen, potted rhododendron.
It is waiting to be planted. It needs a friend.
The wind knocks things over that are not wary.
When Mike was a child, he lost one of his sisters.
I never had a sister. I can’t imagine losing one.
I didn’t know Mike back then. We didn’t live here.
Thirteen years ago, we moved in
Next door to Mike and his mother and father.
Theirs gave me hope for our dog-edged yard.
Mike’s mother died shortly after we moved in.
I wanted to say something about it to him.
I wanted to say the right thing, to say I was sorry.
I wanted to rescue him, to be his friend.
I guess Mike just wanted to cope with his pain.
I think he wanted to get back to gardening.
I don’t think he wanted to deal with his grief.
I don’t think he wanted to deal with his father’s grief.
I know Mike didn’t want to deal with his father.
I don’t think his father wanted to deal with his own grief.
Maybe they didn’t know how to grieve.
I know I didn’t know how to be his friend.
Three or four years ago, Mike’s father died.
Mike buried his pain. Mike’s family came to bury his father.
His father had been old, and too much and not enough in charge.
Mike said he struggled to live with his father.
He spent his time gardening, moving plants around.
He rescued alley furniture and rebuilt broken tables.
He had held yard sales of refurbished dressers. I had joined in.
I think maybe we had become friends.
Now one of Mike’s brothers is quite ill.
Mike takes his brother to the doctor sometimes.
His brother has been loud and quirky and kind.
Mike has made out that his brother is a pain.
Now Mike’s brother is in pain. He is dying.
Mike rescues upstart garden plants, ferns and flowers.
He puts them into plastic pots to sell at a yard sale.
I ask about his brother. I don’t join in on his plant sale.
I am glad Mike’s my friend.
April 2012
21 February 2012 Leave a comment
In my well planned garden in the spring,
A blowing rain ungrimes the moiling earth.
As hawk-winged sunshine stoops upon the soil,
Up poke the giggling prepubescent sprigs
That lagomorphic whiskers glibly nip.
In my well planned garden in the spring,
A warm wind sweeps across the land,
Awakening buds that burst from orchard twigs.
‘Til dark and still, in creeps the late night frost,
Whose pruinose talons coldly grip and kill.
The hungry rabbit and budding bloom
Do not know the hazards of the spring.
Such precious newness lacks immunity,
In my well planned garden in the spring.
February 2012
8 December 2011 2 Comments
A long straight rolling road
Brown between autumn fields
Late at night on the high plain
Comes a brilliant shooting star
Arcing through the twinkling black
Burning fiercely fast and bright
High across the inky starry night
Through thin and unsustaining air
Flaming hot and dying in a wink
Briefly seen alone that night
And now
Gone.
We reconvene at the car,
Loaded with our pumpkins.
We return to young lives,
Still burning bright.
December 2011
4 November 2011 1 Comment
Even now, I feel the sight you in the dry August dawn,
Running, bounding fawn-like through the dry grass.
One, two, and then flight, arms rising, fingers spreading…
Wings, dispelling those unwary spirits caught basking in the early sun.
Four, five, and once more leaping, cervine, chin rising, eyes blazing…
Their enchanting fire snaring my unwary gaze in their net of golden flight.
And once again the feeling opens my heart,
And you leap in to take possession.
You wrap me around you in this unimaginable way,
Imprisoning me in your freedom.
You, leaping down the hillside, barefoot and laughing—
At me? behind the glass? looking out?
How many times has this scene shot my thoughts?
How many nights has this morning sun lit my dreams,
Drawing shadows around my heart? And I have said nothing.
And I say nothing now, years later when still I cannot part from you.
To you, the absent companion to everything in my life,
I said nothing.
When you, my heart’s enchanter, said that soon you’d have to die,
The words froze in my heart,
And stuffed my mouth with dumb confusion.
I could not say, “Let me go.”
And now, many years later still, I look into the void and see
The bounding, fawn-like boy floating away from me.
My heart imprisoned in his grip, my freedom in his eyes,
And even now beyond life,
He once more takes up residence in my enraptured heart,
And still, I cannot say the words, “Let me go.”
November 2011
My comment:
This is based on an event from 46 year ago in Evergreen, Colorado. The image lasted a few seconds, but struck me so strongly at the time that I have never forgotten it Nor have I been able to describe why I was so captured by this moment. The subject of the poem fell victim to AIDS in the 80’s, while living in California. He called me here in Minnesota shortly before that. The image of his running down the slope outside his mother’s house the morning after I met him returns to me like reminders of unpaid medical bills over the years, often in a dream. It is not the history I have tried to capture however, but the almost indescribable feeling that accompanied the moment and accompanies the recollections of it. Any comparison to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is coincidental, but serendipitous. I think a symphony could perhaps capture this better, but is certainly outside my scope.
10 August 2011 Leave a comment
The gym is only half an arena.
Bleachers are pulled out on one side but not the other.
Maybe the opposing team, because they are in opposition,
Couldn’t send supporters. So they don’t need bleachers.
Or maybe because God is their support,
All they need, and he doesn’t need bleachers.
Our girls run out onto the floor,
Black and brown and short and tall,
A couple white; a couple fat.
There are cheers and some clapping hands. Our supporters.
What an unlikely looking team! How can they be contenders?
How can these voluptuous, brash children win?
They see me here and smile.
They are not the stuff of pros.
The other girls run out onto the floor.
They are not black or brown or yellow or red.
They are white and blond as straw.
They are tall and thin and only tall and thin.
They come from a small Christian school.
Are all the girls at their school white and blond as straw
And tall and thin? Are all the boys?
Maybe there are no boys at their school,
No Christian boys at their Christian school.
They play basketball, these girls, ours and theirs.
More home team fans show up, late.
They are mostly black and brown, but not all.
They do not all look alike.
They do not look at all like me.
They see me here and smile.
The girls play basketball.
We score; they score.
We score; they score.
We score; they score.
I cheer for our team. I know them and love them.
I call our players by their names.
They see me here and smile.
I don’t cheer for the other team. I don’t know them.
I don’t know their names.
I can’t tell which ones have scored.
They all look alike to me.
I don’t know the name of their school.
They don’t see me and they don’t smile.
August 2011
31 July 2011 Leave a comment
Asked Julian of Maddalo[1]:
“How come the mad to be wise,
Or the wise to go mad?
Which was Tiresias[2]?
Is what they say madness,
All the dark backside of understanding?
Is what they say wisdom,
all illuminated by such understanding?
Does madness make what’s imagined seem brilliantly illuminated?
Does wisdom make what’s sensible seem darkly obscure?
When we peer into San Servolo[3],
Do we see the sun set over Venice?”
“Such debate is vanity,”
Answered Maddalo to Julian.
July 2011
Note: While attending a lecture on “Julian and Maddalo” given by John Gilroy at Cambridge University, I was struck by the number of times, in film and fiction, I had observed characters, frequently, descending into an asylum to consult, or at least visit and inmate, often having been hidden away there, and always suffering some form of madness. Yet what these mad men and women contribute to their narrative home is often crucial to the understanding of in important character, and sometimes to life itself. Furthermore, the asylum, and indeed the whole narrative, seems always to be set in Greece or Italy or Spain or some other Mediterranean land. Now why is that?
Just a jolly folly poem.
[1] “Julian and Maddalo” is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, sub-titled a conversation," it reflects discussions between Shelley (Julian) and Byron (Maddalo) at Venice in August and September 1818.
[2] In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years.
[3] By the beginning of the eighteenth century, or soon thereafter the Senate of the Republic of Venice designated San Servolo as the site of a new military hospital, needed due to the continuing war against the Turks. Later the hospital was used to care for the mentally ill.
25 February 2011 Leave a comment
You ask me, “What will you miss?” and
I will tell you, “The pain of caring.”
You ask me, “Why did you do it?
When the effort is so much,
Why did you care?”
I cannot tell you.
I know I will miss this, but
I can never find the words to say
What it is that exists
When my eye and
Their eyes
Meet.
When caring means something,
There are no words, and
If there were words,
They would be
Your words and
My words,
Because we have only
Our eyes and not
Their eyes.
There are no words,
Only eyes.
February 2011
15 January 2011 Leave a comment
Don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night,
Stealing around us, holding us tight,
Like water surrounds us, this warm moist night,
Soothing our bodies, but bringing on fright.
Don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night,
Brought with the kindness of those who adore,
Powerful masters who dreamt up the night,
Whose wealth of mild dreams gives us soothing delight,
Whose soft, patient hands hold back the cruel light.
Don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night.
The dreams that it brings are beautifully pure.
You dream the strangeness. You make the fright.
Yours are the monsters that prowl through the night,
Stealing your pleasures, stealing delight,
Stealing and stealing as always tonight.
But don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night,
Brought by the wise ones who mean you no harm,
Who know you would perish without any light,
(Who know you would perish, a warming delight,)
If they don’t protect you in the dark of the night.
No, don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night.
It isn’t they who give you this fright.
You dream the terrors that prowl through the night,
Turn masters to monsters, where there’s no light.
You dream the evil they do to your soul,
Imagine the menace that lurks down the hole,
Make up the terror that seethes from the gloom.
You are the one who’s alone in the room.
You dream the peril that skulks ‘neath the bed,
Phantasms of your mind make up your dread.
Yes,
You dream the terrors that prowl through the night.
These are not dangers.
There’s nothing to fear.
Those are not strangers,
Those voices you hear.
Don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night,
The masters of darkness will make it all right,
Quelling your fears, and calming your fright,
Controlling what’s there in the absence of light.
Don’t be afraid, for it’s only the night,
Stealing around us, holding us tight,
Like water surrounds us, this warm moist night,
Soothing our bodies, but bringing on fright.
October 2009
My Pain
15 January 2011 Leave a comment
The screams and shouts come loud into the room.
They come in and they go out and come in again.
The screams and shouts and smiles and laughter
Ring around the room.
They are a pain,
As child birth is a pain I guess,
That brings great joy.
Why do I come here? The alarm blats and blats and blats.
Is it the methodical making and meting out of mind matter?
Why do I come here? The house is cold and dark and empty.
Is it the damned demanding and remanding by mandate?
Why do I come here? The streets are pocked and crowded and long.
Is it the closeted bickering and snickering of colleagues?
Why do I come here? The halls are empty and the room is a mess.
Is it the knowledge that no matter what I do,
I will stand condemned by a nation of sheep,
Who neither know nor care,
But are trained to pour their bile
On those who know and care.
I come here because
The screams and shouts come loud into the room.
They come in and they go out and come in again.
The screams and shouts and smiles and laughter
Ring around the room.
They are my pain,
As child birth is a pain I guess,
That brings great joy.
March 2010
jay@jaezz.org
Filed under Poetry, Social Commentary