Step Back from the Abyss

"Take a moment. Step back from the abyss. Think about what you are doing."

This is what one of the protesters called out during the Senate session in Wisconsin last night, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online.  What eloquence and wisdom, amazing under the pressure of protesting the powers that be. Let the people be heard, and let this wonderful change in our country happen without violence.

Oh, I do hope we can find a way to work together in cooperation and collaboration, with fair wages and salaries, living wages and salaries, health care for all. Why can't we? We've been a proud, industrialized country for years, admired for our freedoms and our working democracy, a haven for so many. Why fall down now into a land of petty mini-tyrants? And greed.  Well, alas, we know why. The money and power question always answers itself. It's the "business as usual" answer.

Still, I think we are more creative than that. I think we can find solutions, shift to sustainable living (to use the new jargon), and be proud of ourselves again. It will mean providing and encouraging real education, not teaching to tests. It will mean real American workmanship again, not manufacturing intentionally disposable products. It will mean supporting a real economy, not an economy that depends on endless consumption of intentionally disposable "goods" many of which are bad for us (bad foods, products made with toxic materials, etc.) Sigh...

I'm not a journalist, politician, nor political pundit, but it is Thor's Day in the blog. So I am shouting out with the protester.

Now I will stand up in my own field and sing out some good fortune:

--3 poems in the new blossombones, just out--by coincidence, in sparkling white against a black abyss
--2 poems out soon (April) in Right Hand Pointing, a hilarious place to do business
--a poem in the new issue of After Hours
--a poem in the new issue of Ekphrasis (poems about paintings)
--a poem in the new (print) issue of Burnt Bridge
--work forthcoming in Adanna and Poetry East
--work in the anthologies Brute Neighbors (just out) and Solace in So Many Words (soon to be out)

Sometimes I wonder if I am speaking out enough, but I see I have been doing my own proper work and speaking in my quiet but steady voice all along. I hope so.

More from Jonathan Koch Galleries.

Ashes

It's Ash Wednesday, and I've given up buying books for Lent. This puts me on the same, strict diet my brother is on: no more books till you read the unread books you already have. One of the books I already have is The Springhouse, by Joyce Wilson, and today I read it straight through.

The book opens and closes with the springhouse, literally, a title poem and then "The Springhouse in Winter," to end the book as the year ends, with all kinds of life in between: natural life--poems about chickens, a fox, tadpoles, hoar frost, the brook, a spittle bug, a walking stick, and a dead bee--and poems about family life, which include trouble and grief.

But, in honor of Ash Wednesday, I'll share with you a favorite (in which family and nature mix):

The Ash Tree

To reach so wide, it must have been alone
for a long time and in an open field.

Our mother walked an old hemp rope around
the trunk of the ash tree and marked it,

and then we spread the rope out on the lawn
to measure just how much our love had grown

in the ten years since she had counted lengths
with him, our father died, and we had moved.

Ten years since she had wrapped her arms around--!
It showed an increase of eleven feet.

We got the car to take us back to town

and left the tree, our house, and our old street.

I love the simplicity of that first couplet, and seeing the tree there alone, which I can do thanks to the title. Other poems in this book contain lots of true rhyme, even rhyming couplets, and well-used slant rhyme, but I like the subtle and mere echoes of rhyme in this poem--how "alone," "lawn, "grown," and "town" ring together like church bells, how "around" is repeated, how "feet" and "street" make the poem end on a rhyme.

I like how the nostalgia here is restrained.

I love learning things from poems and poets.  I learned from poet Richard Jones that ashes are good for the garden.  I learned from Joyce Wilson how love can and can't be measured.

To learn more about Ash Wednesday from a poet, take a look at Kristin Berkey-Abbott's blog entry on it. To see more paintings by Jonathan Koch, who has let me decorate my blog with his, go here.  The one above is called Mandarin, Shell, Junebug.

Mardi Gras

So, yes, this morning I draped the former Valentine's Day, former Christmas tree with colorful and shiny beads, and now it is the Mardi Gras tree! I began the celebration early (but not earlier than people in New Orleans) yesterday, when I forgot to eat breakfast before it was time to go to work and had a bit of the Chocolate & Nut Frenzy on my way out the door.  (Just a handful, OK? A few chocolate-covered raisins and cashews.  As a breakfast, that's not so bad. Cashews are evidently so good for our teeth that a cashew toothpaste has been in development for some time, but, ew....)

On my way home, I stopped by the Borders store closing sale, and, yes, here began the real indulgence, and perhaps I will now have to give up something for Lent. Books. Not reading them, of course, just buying them. It makes perfect sense. Don't buy another book, no matter how good the sale price, until I read all the unread books in the house. And then, like so many sensible people, go to the library.

Already, I quibble with myself: What about the books already in my cart at Amazon, that I can get free with the coupon that comes when I pay my credit card bill? Nope. Wait till after Easter.

Sigh...

So, at Border's I allowed myself three Christmas items drastically reduced: a box of beautiful Japanese bird cards and the Tori Amos and Pink Martini Christmas CDs, to wean myself off James Taylor and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at Christmastime. I had just filled my latest personal journal, which is why I went to the Borders sale in the first place, and the nicest journal left was the Desire journal, with lock and key, that has steamy quotations in it. I can write with that.

And the books I got were the ones I told myself this about: "If these happen to be on the shelf, I will get them. They probably won't be there." But they were: Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell.

So I have fattened up. And now no more.

What is Writing?!

I am still reading Gourmet Rhapsody, by Muriel Barbery, a perfect book to be reading on the Blue Monday before the actual Fat Tuesday, let me tell you. And I'm not even Catholic, nor planning to give up anything for Lent.  Certainly not the Chocolate & Nut Frenzy array I got to serve to the Poetry Someday workshop I now teach at my kitchen table! (But what you see above is a Charlotte Russe.)

Last night I was even inspired by the book to watch Ratatouille, thinking it might somehow be a vague, uncredited source material for the film, which sometimes happens...but I have enjoyed reading about Ratatouille in Wikipedia and I applaud the on-the-scene research done by all those who made the film!

Of course, I fell asleep in the middle, so I will be watching it again, little by little, and as I continue to read the book. And will simply make mental notes of the remarkable coincidences.

Anyhoo, I was struck by this passage:  "What is writing, no matter how lavish the pieces, if it says nothing of the truth, cares little for the heart, and is merely subservient to the pleasure of showing one's brilliance?" Exactly!

The narrator of this section of Gourmet Rhapsody is reflecting on his work as a food critic and on the excellence of the tomato, but his words (which are of course the words of Muriel Barbery, a writer) apply to imaginative literature as well.

We could ask, "But who can know the truth?" and yet we know our personal truths and can be honest about those. Caring for the heart, to me, means caring for the hearts of others, not just my own. I wonder about this any time I read a virtuoso poem somewhere, enjoying it like a cream-filled, gloriously rich pastry. Afterwards, I remember nothing of it; it was a momentary delight, did not nourish me beyond the moment. Did it set up a craving? Not even that, in most cases. Will I enjoy the pleasure of such a pastry again? Yes, a thousand times, yes!

And so I do not judge the poem, nor write a critical review of the sort that Anton Ego writes in Ratatouille, the kind that can remove a star from a restaurant rating. I guess I simply note that this poem is a luscious dessert, and I will read others for sustenance.

Spliced with Emily Dickinson

The brake light came on in my car last night, driving home from the volleyball tournament in fresh snowfall, roads newly slick. I came up slowly on the first stoplight, testing the brakes, gently pumping.

All was well.  I was bringing my daughter home, so I would have stopped and called for help if there were any trouble, but I continued to drive with extra caution and reduced speed, honoring the weather conditions and dashboard light.

I was about to take US 51, aka Main Street, home, instead of the faster-paced beltway, but my daughter said, "Aren't you going to turn?" and I sensed her hunger.  "It's usually faster," she said, thinking of her dad's driving, or perhaps her own, the one time we let her drive herself to practice, in daylight, no weather issues.

So I signaled, took the beltway, but as soon as we got on the ramp, I could see a string of cars, a police car at a slant, blocking one lane, lights flashing.

Life is short, isn't it?

It wouldn't be faster, and just as well. We were in regulated traffic, steady but slow, occasional stop and go, and eventually we passed the trouble, nothing awful, a row of cars bumped.

When one is done, I wonder--is there not another?

"It's a teenager," said my daughter.

And then, if God is willing, perhaps we are neighbors again.

We got home safely, and I fed everyone. Life's fragility makes me grateful for each safe return, every meal.

I cannot tell how Eternity seems. It sweeps around me like a sea.

My folks got home safely from their two weeks in Florida yesterday, too.  I had taken the moldy stuff out of their fridge and checked their house in the morning, before the brake light came on.  Most clocks were on, but the stove clock was flashing, and the microwave clock off, so the power must have flickered, probably during the hailstorm last weekend.

And this world is such a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises.

And now the dear sweet husband tells me, "Your brakes are OK." It was the brake fluid, he refilled it, and in the spring he will replace the brake pads. In our driveway. But it's too late to go to church. I'm in poetry mode, laundry mode, pyjamas.

So let us keep fast hold of hands, please, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing!