Don's Blog The Divers Clothes Lying Empty 12-30-21

This poem will test your cognition and your personal ontology.



The Diver's Clothes Lying Empty

You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking
in a field at dawn.

You are yourself the animal we hunt
when you come with us on the hunt.

You're in your body
like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you're wind.

You're the diver's clothes
lying empty on the beach.
You're 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 Barks
"The Essential Rumi"

Don's Blog Forgetfulness 1-3-22

I can't remember who sent this to me years ago. Probably my brother.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

Don's Bog In Autumn 1-1-22

Happy New Year

In Autumn

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

Don's Blog Memory

In August of 1969 while on leave from active duty in the Air Force in Anchorage I went on a sheep hunt with a friend in the Wrangle Mountains of southeast Alaska.  Each day we went out of our camp on Blue Lake climbing the surrounding mountains in search of the elusive Dall Sheep - a northern relative of the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep of Colorado. Each day the sheep outwitted us and when we were on the steep side of one mountain the sheep were always across the valley on another. As our time was running out we changed our goal and each took a caribou. The Barren Ground Caribou were from the White River Herd. Each of our caribou had just shed the velvet covering their rack. The velvet has an exceptional blood supply from the bone beneath so after the velvet is shed  the rack becomes blood red.

We were several miles from camp. We dressed both caribou and cut off their racks. This was made more exciting because we had just seen a blond grizzly bear in the distance and were concerned that he would come over for a taste of  fresh meat. Luckily the bear left us alone. It took multiple trips  to pack the meat back to camp and then another trip for the racks. Back in Anchorage our family ate delicious  caribou meat all winter. (Going into winter the caribou has the most fat it will have. We also had the butcher make us some sausage (regular and summer) with added fat.

I had my rack mounted - it was so large that it almost engulfed our small Anchorage living room. We had the hide tanned. Later the hide ended up on the wall upstairs in our A-Frame chalet at Innsbrook. The hairs on the hide are hollow which is great for keeping the caribou warm but not so great for tanning and after some years the caribou rug began to shed. The rack has been on the wall of our family room in Kirkwood. I have used it each year to uniquely add to our Christmas decorations. Here is the rack 52 years later. It's part of the family.

Don's Blog Our Parents 12-29-21

Our parents though long gone are not forgotten.

Our Parents
Stephen Dunn

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 some justice
in this world. In their graves, our parents' need
for us is pure, they're lost without us.
Their honeymoon in Havana does or does not
exist. That late August in the Catskills—
we can decide to make them happy.

What is the past if not unfinished work,
swampy, fecund, seductively revisable?
One of us has spent his life developing respect
for the weakness of words, the other for what
must be held on to; there may be a chance for us.

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. 

Prairie schooner 

Volume 73, Number 2

Summer 1999

Don's Blog Sam Mc Gee 12-27-21

I memorized this poem when I was 14 years old. Later I used to recite it during beer parties in college. Sam McGee

and an endless list of limericks assured me a brief reign of banal  popularity. I can still do the limericks but 

only a few stanzas of the Robert Service poem remain available in my receding memory.

                     The Cremation of Sam McGee

By Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:

"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;

And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.

I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

Don's Blog Further In 12-25-21

Merry Christmas. Here is another poem by Tomas Transtromer.

FURTHER IN

It's the main highway leading in,
the sun soon down.
Traffic backs up, creeps along,
it's a torpid glittering dragon.
I am a scale on that dragon.
The red sun all at once
blazes in my windshield,
pouring in,
and makes me transparent.
Some writing shows
up inside me--words
written with invisible ink
appearing when the paper
is held over a fire.
I know that I have to go far away,
straight through the city, out
the other side, then step out
and walk a long time in the woods.
Walk in the tracks of the badger.
Growing hard to see, nearly dark.
Stones lie about on the moss.
One of these stones is precious.
It can change everything.
It can make the darkness shine.
It's the light switch for the whole country.
Everything depends on it.
Look at it . . . touch it . . .

Tomas Transformer

Translated by Robert Bly

I have an urge to pick up stones that "can make the darkness shine". They grace my

gnome garden. For instance - a magical reddish stone with light stripes from the banks of the  

Thelon River - and many more.

Don's Blog The Tree and the Sky

This poem by Tomas Transtromer, Swedish Nobel laureate, was sent to me years ago by my brother.

The Tree and the Sky 

There's a tree walking around in the rain

it rushes past us in the pouring grey.

It has an errand. It gathers life 

out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear
nights waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space. 

Tomas Transtromer

Translated by Robin Fulton

Don's Blog Sunset 12-21-21

As the days start to lengthen again the sunsets will occur later also. We all are amazed by the image of sunsets.

Here are some sunset quotes from various poets collected by my teacher Chris Fahrenthold.

And the sun, as it always does,

   dropping into its slot without a click [The Other Side of the River]

Sunset. The sky, over Arkansas, inflames

Like the new flesh in a scar [The Bolivar Letters]

The weightless, unclarified light from the setting sun

Lies like despair on the ginger root [Depression Before the Solstice]

The flash from the setting sun

Is more than a trick of light, where half-life

Is more than just a watery glow

   and everything's fire… [Going Home]

Sun like an orange mousse through

A snowfall of trumpet bells on the oleander [Dog day Vespers]

Already sundown has passed you and follows me up the road,

Color of dragonfly wings [Three Poems of Departure]

Sunset like a girl's robe falling away long ago…[T'ang Notebook]

Sunset like carrot juice down the left pane of the sky

Into the determinacy of somewhere else  [Arkansas Traveler]

Down below Prato, the sun was lowering its burned body

Into the shadows [A Journal of True Confession]

Sunset again: the color of rose leaf and rose water

 [Journal of the Year of the Ox]

The sun set like a coffin

Into the grey Pacific [Tennessee Line]

Sky white as silk

  opening mirror cod-sprung in the west,

Sunset like dead grass [Poem Half in the Manner of Li ho]

High-Fifing in charlottesville,

Sunset heaped up, as close to us as a barrel fire [ The

Appalachian Book of the Dead]

Orange Crush sunset over the Blue Ridge [A Short History of the Shadow]

the Indian paintbrush sundown [Buffalo Yoga Coda III]

Sunset soaks down to the last leaves of autumn trees [The

Gospel according to St. Someone]

Lagoon light, sunset and cloud blaze,

  red of the cardinal entourage [Rosso Venexiano]

Cloud-gondolasfloating in with the east-moving wind-waters,

Black-hulled and gilt-edged,

   white on white up above, smooth pole.

Later, the sunset, flamingo, great bird of passage [Nostalgia  III]

Sunset sheen like old wax on the steps into the sky [La Dolcemara Vita]

The slit wrists of a sundown

   tincture the western sky wall [Scar Tissue]

Sunset, line like a long tongue-lick above the Blue Ridge,

Mock orange, then tangerine,   then blush [Littlefoot, part7]

As the sun goes down.

What small light there is drains off into its spikiness.

And glows like a severed head against the darkness [Littlefoot, part30]

Don's Blog -Poetry

Several years ago I was invited into a Poetry group at the Green Center in University City. Despite its pretentious name,

The Green Center Tea Society,   I went and was hooked. The teacher was Chris Farenthold, who taught poetry at a local college. 

He awakened my interest in an area of literature of which I was unaware. We read his selected poems and discussed them.

We also learned about poetry itself. Here is one of his contributions.

from "The Poem as Journey"

by Charles Wright

"Poems are not just about journeys, of course, they are journeys. Like any organism, the good poem is a self-contained adventure, 

both physically and metaphysically … without the interior journey the exterior one is impossible. (32)

At the heart of every poem is a journey of discovery. Something is being found out. Often the discovery is merely technical. …

From time to time the discovery is spiritual, a way of looking at the world that affects the way we lead our lives, or how we think of them.

Poems that cause us to say, after having read them, "Oh, that's nice," or "Ummm, not bad," do not participate in this voyage of discovery. 

No matter how new their paint job is, no matter how sharp and crisp their sails, they never get out of the harbor. The journey belongs to others.

(32-3)

There is a kind of spatial negation, a visual power in absence that painters understand and employ, and which I'm interested in poetically.

Its a sort of white hole that has a kinetic draw to it that the lines of the poem float on and resist. Part of my interest in the dropped line for

me is that it sets up for me a bit of this power field within the line itself; a rhythmic jolt sometimes might appear, small as it is, that kicks the line and the poem along , keeping it alive over the top of a force that would founder and sink it at any time. But everybody knows this. You

keep the composition apart just a little to let this energy in and to, and to let the poem in and out of the energy generated by this emptiness.It's all about the same thing, the power  and domination of what's not there, the energy of absence. (173)"

Here is an example of "dropped lines":

  A dropped line is a line which is broken into two lines, but where the second part is indented to remain sequential visually. For example, in the poem "The Other Side of the River" by Charles Wright, the first and second lines form a dropped line, as do the fourth and fifth lines:

  It's linkage I'm talking about,

  and harmonies and structures,

  and all the various structures that lock our wrists to the past.

  Something infinite after everything appears,

      and then disappears.

  — Charles Wright, The Other Side of the River

So,  those dropped lines and indentations are part of the purposeful structure of the poem - very interesting for a neophyte.