Don's Blog Our Parents 11-21-19

On this my 84th birthday it is appropriate  to send out this poem sent to me by my brother many years ago.  

     Our Parents

        — for my brothers

      Our parents died at least twice,

      the second time when we forgot their stories,

      or couldn't imagine how often they craved love,

      or felt useless, or yearned for justice

      in this world. In their graves, our parents need

      for us is pure, they're lost without us.

      Their honeymoon in Sea Island does or does not 

      exist. That late August in Lakeside

      we can decide to make them happy.

      What is the past if not unfinished work,

      swampy, fecund, seductively revisable?

      We try to say what happened in that first house

      where we were ,  like most children, the only

      needy people on earth. We remember

      what we were forbidden, who got the biggest slice.

      Our parents, meanwhile, must have wanted something

      back from us. We know what it is, don't we?

      We've been alive long enough.

     Stephan Dunn

     Prairie Schooner

     Volume  73 Number 2

     Summer 1999

Don's Blog "The Diver's Clothes Lying Empty"

My humble suggestion: read it at least five times / don't try to 'understand' it or what its about/ who wouldn't want to 

experience the 'sound of no shore'?

The Divers Clothes Lying Empty

You are sitting here with us,

but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.

You are yourself the animal we hunt

when you come with us on the hunt.

You are in your body 

like a plant is solid in the ground,

yet you are wind.

You are the divers clothes

lying empty on the beach.

You are the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands

and many dark strands like veins that are seen

when a wing is lifted up.

Your hidden self is blood in those,

those veins that are lute strings

that make ocean music,

not the sad edge of surf

but the sound of no shore.

Rumi, translated by Coleman Banks

Don's Blog The American Kantorei 11-18-19

Yesterday afternoon we went to a concert by the American Kantorei at St Pauls Luthern Church. They played four complete cantatas by JS Bach - BWV 93 (1724), 27 (1726), 156 (1729) and 37 (1724). That is a long time ago. They were inspiring and quieting. Its not easy to slow down our inner voice but this hit the spot. It may sound heavy when one of the headliners is, "Ich steh mit einem Fuss Im Grabe " (I stand with one foot in the grave),
but Bach had it right , "Denn Ende gut, macht alles gut!" (A good ending makes everything good).
It is always fun to exercise my German muscle.

Don's Blog 'In Autumn' 11-16-19

This poem was sent to me by my brother exactly 8 years ago.

IN AUTUMN

I know there are those who ask: Why does he not

sing the same wild harmonies as before?

But they have not seen the labors of an hour

the work of a minute, the prodigies of a year.

I am an aged tree that when I was growing,

uttered a vague, sweet sound when the breeze caressed me.

The time for youthful smiles has now passed by:

now, let the hurricane swirl my heart to song!

Ruben Dario

Selected Poems of Ruben Dario, translated by Lysander

Kemp, University of Texas, Austin, 1988.

Don's Blog Settling in for a Long Winter 11-13-19

Well the flowers are gone. I thought I would send out a few poems. Enjoy them. They will deserve more than  cursory glance - several readings - but winter slows things down - no excuses not to. 

 After Reading Wang Wei,

I Go Outside to the Full Moon

Back here,old snow like lace cakes,

Candescent and brittle now and then through the tall grass.

Remorse, remorse, the dark drones.

The body's the affliction,

No resting place in the black pews of the winter trees,

No resting place in the clouds.

Mercy upon us , old man,

You in the China dust, I see in my past life.

Salt in the light of heaven.

Isolate landscape. Worlds grip.

The absolute, as small as a poker chip, moves off,

Bright moon shining between pines.

Charles Wright

Chickamauga, 1995

Final Flower for the Day Night Blooming Cereus 11-8-19

The cold weather has finally arrived. I am down to four indoor plants - hoya, palm, lemon tree and my

trustworthy Night Blooming Cereus. The NBC stays small because I trim it back ruthlessly each year when I bring it in. Despite this it has become a multiple bloomer in August and later. I missed six blooms this year as I was out of town each time. The last bud appeared last week when I brought the old timer inside. It  was a beauty and a fitting end to another blooming year.

Flower for the Day Wild Radish 11-5-19

This plant came up in late August but I could not identify it. I got some 'naming' help. It is called wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) and is also known as jointed charlak.

          
           

The small flowers are striking.

           

           
            It is a mustard in the Brassica Family and may be an ancestor   of the common radish (Raphanus sativa). Its leaves taste 'peppery' as does the peeled tap root.

       

I think I will stick with R. sativa.