30-0-30

I wrote this poem for Emica's 30th birthday.  There are so many reference and mystical symbols (as all good poems should be), including the suites of the Tarot deck and references to one of my favorite poets - William Carlos Williams.  There is also a reference to my favorite Waterboy's song as well.  Friends will recognize the reference to 'stars are poured at your feet' -  go Phi Mu!  The poem is like Emica herself: complex, mysterious, joyful and magical.

Thirty, Oh Thirty, yes! Your apprenticeship

is over and you have your journeyman's card.

Grasp the cudgel and fill the cup, celebrate your

mad journey, study the tracks on the ground,

reflect on the sky until you are gobsmacked by it all,

and stars are poured at your feet.

Leave the Sea at last behind you.

(You can return to the water when Summer comes again.) 

Leave it swaying on its stalk and seek out the River. 

Look for the deer's path along the bank -

the deer and wolf's path as well.  Watch the

river follow its destiny,never more or less than

that way between the rock faces ordained .

The sword cuts and the coin buys,

never more than the subject requires. 

Angled in the rocks, the tiny plant survives,

Thrives in spite of every other ray of light and raindrop's course.

Seek out the headland's bluff - purple and in motion

toward the sky.  Your way now is proven

by the marigolds along the way and by

the sense of place you now possess. 

Range far and wide, but always with a compass

in your heart and good shoes on your feet.

Gather up the roses and press them into wine,

make haste down the rabbit hole, wander under the

tree-whispered moonlight, do all these things without

concern for the simple track, the bird or the salamander,

for the cat's breath on your cheek or the rabbit's claw.

You are full formed now: no tail remains, no gills. 

You are in your final state of change and metamorphosis

(as are all things that live). 

Let no ghosts haunt or ambling thoughts resist.

You are thirty now.

For Emica

03/05/2016

 

Mantis

The bright green armor of the thorax
Is mottled now and autumnal,
The eyes, like pools of ink,
grow dim.
That quick inquisitive look about
is hardly present,
Your head dips and exhausted body splays.
Only the once strong front legs,
Lined with tibial spines like a gladiator’s,
Still grope tentatively and reach out to the branch.

Gone now are the days when you devoured your mates,
When you hunted the spider with impunity and
All lesser creatures cowered before your majesty.
Head cocked, eyes bright, your raptorial legs cocked in prayer,
Ready to snatch your prey and draw it to your waiting mandibles,
Unrelenting devourer of the still living.

The arc of life is short and painted in a season.
I look in your eyes and see my own demise,
See time take power and purpose from us both.
Gone now into the ground of the lost past,
Sweet dreams of passion at the edge of the field,
Surfeit of pleasures now dusty with memory,
Youth behind and the abyss before.

There is no tenderness in this season for either of us,
Little solace in the children we have borne, or
The food we have consumed or bonds we made.
The arc closes and dusk comes in
When the air clicks with the promise of frost
And the end of Summer days.

September 24, 2016

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Nature, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,

Leads by the hand her little child to bed,

Half willing, half reluctant to be led,

And leave his broken playthings on the floor,

Still gazing at them through the open door,

Nor wholly reassured and comforted

By promises of others in their stead,

Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;

So nature deals with us, and takes away

Our playthings one by one, and by the hand

Leads us to rest so gently, that we go

Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,

Being too full of sleep to understand

How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

                               

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The Donkey’s Foot Is Sure Along the Path

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" 
No prayer - yet. 

There will be many days and nights to offer prayer.  

No, no prayer.  A shout of anger and frustration 

Barked up to an indifferent world.

Shame and fear, a calmer voice,

“Is there a chance they could have made a misdiagnosis?” 

None and now, 

Blood, 

Chaotic and lost, turns on itself 

And consumes the host.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Jesus Sweet Christ.  

Where is that muscular savior, 

That laughing God son?  

He has gone to the field with his disciples and 

I can see him at the crest of the hill, 

Boldly swinging his scythe.  

Bless this harvest.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  

Where is that rustling warmth?

Where are the delicate hands
Running through my hair, 

Drawing my throbbing head to rest

On the breasts that fed a child God?  

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  

There she sits in high crowned glory,

Robed in the sky, 

Her eyes glittering and indifferent.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  

So here we are 

Left with little Joseph.  

Patient as bees, 

Slowly he  draws the blade 

Along the beam edge 

To erase the last imperfection.  

He hears the crowd outside 

Swept along its way to Jerusalem and
He returns to his tools. 

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Joseph leads the donkey along the path, 

Unburdened now – no mother, no king.  

And I follow.

The donkey’s foot is sure along the path 

But so close to the cliff edge 

I can hear breezes lift

With the heat to move my hair.  

They whisper how easily the sparrows rise 

On their wings, how easy is the flight 

Across the river.  But if I gaze over the edge 

The rocky bed is very far below 

And the water is black with the dead. 

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Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

There is a very good article on Kunitz at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/06/a-visionary-poet-at-ninety/304941/2/.  There are also several videos on YouTube of the author reading his work.  I took the photo the accompanies this post.

WHEN MAN ENTERS WOMAN by Anne Sexton

Any man quoting a poem by Anne Sexton is probably on shaky ground.  You think you know what she is talking about, but there is an uneasy feeling that you are missing the point entirely and it only remains for some woman to point that out to you.  That being said, I still feel that Sexton speaks to me from time to time.  She once wrote "This loneliness is just an exile from God."  My entire personal theology could be summed up in that one line (the key? 'only').  So I am going to give this a go.  I think I have her point in this poem.   If not, there is a legion ready to correct me.  This poem is from The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975), a book that was a gift and a curse and has haunted me for decades.

When man
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth in pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman 
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.


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