Sojourners

When I first came to college I was in the midst of a religious episode in my life.  I felt very strongly moved by presence of God in an extraordinary way.  Later, and by the time this poem was written, circumstances had changed and with them an estrangement.  This poem was an attempt at the time to deal with the feelings I had that somehow I had lost touch with experience of the numinous, that Holy Spirit that had led me to study Scripture and prepare for a life in service to God.  I knew something had changed, but I wasn't sure what. This poem was a struggle to find out why I felt the way I did. Sometimes, the girls will ask if I believe in God.  My answer is in those last two lines.

Too long have we reclined with them, asleep.
In Egypt's halls we drank away the nights.
We praised their templed plains so fair, their works
Of art so awed our hearts we wept for love.
We lust for fragrant flesh, for golden coin;
We take on vices not our own, but theirs.
Forgotten now is promise made, our bid
For freedom lost.  Hope slips, is gone away.
God turns aside and hides Her face, her child
forgets Her name, too long sojourned with them.

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Number Thirteen

Today's image is of a full size model of a molar that my father carved over 50 years ago as a test in dental school.  A couple of years ago, after he had closed his office, we were going through some of his stuff and I asked him if I could have it.  It is carved in wax and, I am told, lifelike in every detail.  I can imagine him as a young man, laboring over this carving as his children whooped in the background in the tiny trailer in Rockland.  This poem is new.  Recently I had to have one of my teeth extracted, the first. The title refers to the number of the tooth I lost, upper left side.

There it is again, that damned gap.
The tongue just can't resist exploring 
The ghost of the guard for fifty years, 
More or less.


Your permanent record, a permanent job
Permanent teeth, yeah, well, so much for that.
Cells die every day and are reborn again,
Except this can't be replaced, I am no shark.


This is how it goes he says,
"Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.";
The clever bastard.


The broken crown is cast away,
New bone building for a robot molar
Of titanium and God knows what.
The balance tips 
A little bit more 
Toward the end.

The Pull of Blood

Sometimes poems come from a single idea and have to be built and rebuilt around that idea.  Sometimes they come 'whole cloth' and this poem today is one of those.  I was cleaning out a drawer last weekend and found it tucked in with some other papers.  I don't know when it was written, but I have a single copy without changes, exactly as it appears below.  I don't remember what the circumstances were when it was written.  But I have read and re-read it several times and I think, hey this is not bad.

The pull of blood is weak betimes.
When wind blows snowflakes upward
We drift, we pitch, we roll away
As easily as the Sun will hide itself
At the edge of night.  This close. So you
Are called to go alone but here
The genes drift closer in the air then
The dust of love and I am called
To make amends beside the ones
I spawned, with joy to share their light.




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Endings and Conclusions

This week I experienced two endings that I wanted to share with you.  The first is an unabridged reading of The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison.  I read this novel of High Fantasy when I was a teenager, along with Eddison's other novels, The Zimiamvian Trilogy. I have always imagined a conversation with Peter Jackson.  "Hey, Peter, yeah Lord of the Rings, do-able movie.  Let's see you film the Worm!"  Even the third leg of my personal fantasy triumvirate, Gormenghast, was made into a passable series.  I just don't see The Worm being made into a film.  For one thing the language is Tudor/Jacobean archaic English.  (Imagine Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe writing The Lord of the Rings and you get the idea.)  Secondly, it is so detailed a vision of a world that beggars the mind.  Here is a typical description from The Worm, the first two paragraphs, actually:

The good news is that there are a couple of good unabridged readings of the book and I just finished listening to one by Maureen O'Brien as part of her Maria Lectrix podcast  You can find all 53 MP3s for download at http://www.archive.org/details/WormOuroboros .

The second ending I experienced last week was the final episode of Babylon Five. I originally caught part of the first season on cable years ago and after it's original debut, I think, in 1994.  However, over the last two years, I have been slowly making my way thru the five years of episodes via Netflix.  The final disk and episode had me in tears for the entire time (OK, maybe the bottle of wine I drank magnified the effect just a little).  Unlike other series that I watched and loved (like the Star Trek series) at least the B5 ending tied things up in a nice satisfying package. To watch all 110 episodes, along with the commentary and related materials, has been a commitment and I am glad I did it.  I know that there are other series that have a similar loyalty (Battlestar Galactica springs to mind) and B5 was not perfect. However, like reading Lord of the Rings, or the Harry Potter series, I think you are changed always by the experience and by the characters you meet and care about.  So here is a little fan created video taste and an invitation to go check it out.  All of Babylon Five is out there on Hulu.com, free for the asking.

The Armful by Robert Frost

Last week I published a poem that I had carried with me in my wallet.  This poem is another one that I carried for quite a while.  I had hoped to memorize it, and at one point I could get most of it from memory, but that is gone now.  It is a funny thing, when I was young, I was in plays in school and could memorize large amounts of dialog, but as I have gotten older, my ability to memorize has been diminished.

"The Armful" isn't about shopping, obviously.  But when Frost wrote the poem, I don't think he could possibly have imagined the 'parcels' each of us in the 21st Century would carry.  And yet, wasn't life just as hard?  Just as complex?  Was it easier to farm in the early part of the 20th Century than to write I-phone apps for a living in the 21st?  I doubt it.  I think the key line is ' . . . I will do my best to keep their building balanced at my breast.'  It is the commitment to balancing all that life throws at us, even as we realize we drop the whole thing from time to time, that to me is the key to the poem.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
 I lose some other off my arms and knees,
 And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns
 Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
 Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
 With all I have to hold with hand and mind
 And heart, if need be, I will do my best
 To keep their building balanced at my breast.
 I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
 Then sit down in the middle of them all.
 I had to drop the armful in the road
 And try to stack them in a better load.

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