Tough Season

We have been overwhelmed by illness, moving, gas leaks, AT&T, and kitty wounds. At least, I have been overwhelmed. Today the kids put the tree up. I've been on FaceBook a bit. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I have no poems, except the one I tried to write in 140 characters per stanza for Michael's 65th birthday. Under the Alhambra. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Again. Such brave hopes.

In this picture you can see how I've used clothes pins to attach the stockings to the candelabra above the fire place. It's working for now. I need to find permanent places for the pictures, the clock.

This post really should be in the Ziegler Brown Remodel blog. Dang.

Almost 49 "if all else fails, sharks have a keen sense of hearing"

Yes, tomorrow is my birthday. I have elaborate plans, and several new empty notebooks, for getting my "50th year" off to a good start. Diet, exercise, vitamins. Water. Walking a little, swimming a lot. Keeping a daybook -- half diary, half journal, half sketch book, half PAD -- that's just like me, too many halves. I've been in a tiny email correspondence with Angela, who's raising money for flood victims in the Philippines, and I've started my thesis planning in earnest. Al is being very generous, and gently prodding, and I have to get going before I blow it. I even left a message for Laurie on her 50th birthday -- the actual day. My poetic life is up for grabs -- I plan to catch it myself.

I am happy to have found "What To Do About Sharks" by Vivian Shipley on the AAP website. What a great poem, and I hope to teach it to my 5th graders at Regnart this spring. They've asked me to come back, although I can't imagine where they are getting the money.

I'm intrigued to try to find and read something written by the new Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Herta Mueller (with an umlaut, not an 'e'). I like what the committee said about her: "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed" -- and I love the title of one of her books, at least the English translation, The Land of Green Plums. (Heart-animal is good too)

Herztier, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1994. Published in an English translation by Michael Hofmann as The Land of Green Plums, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996

I just finished reading Francine Prose's 2000 novel, Blue Angel, which I adored, and kept me good company yesterday while I was home sick -- a cold? swollen throat -- headache -- I think it's more likely Remodel Pneumonia.

Here's a little lovely poem from Heidy Steidlmayer, published in Poetry in 2007. I know, I should have read that issue a while ago, but I am slow. I love the sounds in this poem. And the form. I'm a sucker for sound and shape and poems that have body and not just mind.

Scree

I have seen the arrested
shrub inform the crag with grief.
Lichens crust the rocks with red.
Thorns punctuate the leaf.

Sorrow is not a desert
where one endures the other --
but footing lost and halting
step. And then another.

A Pain in the Hip

So, I have early mild to moderate arthritis in my hips. Worse in the left. Probably. Still need x-ray confirmation. I need to take good care of my hips so I'll have them for a long long time. I'm looking for inspiration in poems (where else?) and found Lucille Clifton:

homage to my hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

— Lucille Clifton

audio clip
May 03, 1983
Guggenhiem Museum
From the Academy of American Poets Audio Archive

I'm going to keep looking for poems. But I'm not allowed to sit at the computer as much any more, so I guess I'll just have to be sporadic. Or, more sporadic.

Borrowing From Robert Creeley

I've been depressed, the natural progression from busy, overwhelmed, and stressed. It's an old story. It's even an old story among poets.

I found this little gem in an old copy of American Poet -- I'm trying to recycle years of magazines so I don't have to move them back into the newly remodeled house. Anyway, I love it, it speaks both of the blackness and the energy that eventually comes again (if your drugs are good enough to keep you alive that long).

I Know A Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

Thank you, Robert Creeley. From The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2008)

Poem of Kathy's Photo

"grasshopper on rudbeckia"



I think I've cheated this way before: a photo from Kathy's garden with a title I think makes a good poem. Here's one for September.

Slowly Getting The Poem Back In

I've been dead. Getting back to life, slowly, and finding blogs I want to link to, photos I want to share, snatches of poems I want to listen to and lift out. First steps:


1. Found a great great visual art blog: Accidental Mysteries: and today's post is "Poultry In Motion" -- great poem bird pun. Here. I won't plagiarize the photos, but do go look. My favorite ones are the face out of toilet paper tubes, and the Newspaper Blackout Poems. Here's one of them. Make sure you click on it to enlarge and read.



2. I've had some little poem publishing success. The 2009 issue of The Sand Hill Review has two of my poems, one of which is technically in four part. 'The Wife' (which I already need to revise) and 'Concussion Sonnets'. Am currently thinking about Depression Sonnets. And Anxiety Sonnets. I'm grateful to Janice for asking for my work. I don't get "out" much any more these days.

3. I also had a line of mine accepted into Nils Peterson's project: Santa Clara County: A Family Album 2009. Nils is the poet laureate of Santa Clara County and he invited poets (like me and you) to submit short lines, which he wove into a single ode to the valley. It was fun, and even though I got my entry in late, I got it in! You can read the poem here. My line is, 'with my wet laundry, I startle a doe.'

That's enough -- two days worth of posts. Whew. I'm reading Suite Francaise (thanks to Ray for the suggestion) and just finished Wind in the Willows again, although I'm not sure I ever read the whole thing before. What a dreamy book. My husband's favorite children's book.

The Ovaries Are Superior

My friend Kathy makes beautiful photos of her beautiful garden. Actually, she's my friend Alice's sister, but I claim friendship in beauty. She also has excellent captions for her photos, many of which would be poem titles if I had the time. For example: the ovaries are superior.

Gutter Poetry & Flowers in the Street & Amy Lowell

So, I can't tell if this is a real poetic genre or not. I should try writing a gutter poem to find out. In the mean time, read about my gutters on my remodel blog. I'm too tired to do much else right now.

Here's a nice photo, though, of flowers doing their best springtime thing -- growing up through the cracks.

While searching for poems about gutters and flowers in street cracks, I found a lot of interesting things by Amy Lowell. She didn't write a poem specifically about this topic (that I can find) but I did find this great poem 'Winter's Turning' that describes buildings shooting up through the streets like flowers. For some reason, some of her books are digitized in Google Books, so you can read the poem for yourself there, or here:

Winter's Turning

Snow is still on the ground,
But there is a golden brightness in the air.
Across the river,
Blue,
Blue,
Sweeping widely under the arches
Of many bridges,
Is a spire and a dome,
Clear as though ringed with ice-flakes,
Golden, and pink, and jocund.
On a near-by steeple,
A golden weather-cock flashes smartly,
His open beak "Cock-a-doodle-dooing"
Straight at the ear of Heaven.
A tall apartment house,
Crocus-colored,
Thrusts up from the street
Like a new-sprung flower.
Another street is edged and patterend
With the bloom of bricks,
Houses and houses of rose-red bricks,
Every window a-glitter.
The city is a parterre,
Blowing and glowing,
Alight with the wind,
Washed over with gold and mercury.
Let us throw up our hats,
For we are past the age of balls
And have none handy.
Let us take hold of hands,
And race along the sidewalks,
And dodge the traffic in crowded streets.
Let us whir with the golden spoke-wheels
Of the sun.
For to-morrow Winter drops into the waste-basket,
And the calendar calls it March.

Even though I found this poem while looking for flowers and streets, the image of 'we' who are 'past the age of balls' really breaks my heart. That we would be us, my love and I.

Silicon Valley Poet Laureate?

Who knew? I live here, and I didn't know.

Nils Peterson is the grand old poet of San Jose, that's true, but I'm not sure his old orchard slow poems are representative of the nasty snatch and squeal I think of when I think of Silicon Valley. Still, who am I to tell?

Poetry Center San Jose has a good range of information on him and his work.

A very cool thing he is doing is having a contest of 13-syllable poetry lines, which he will assemble into a word collage. I heard him on the radio describing how this is like an elegy -- interesting poetic form to use for a up-and-coming valley. See my comment above about his old-timer's view.

Santa Clara County recently chose its first-ever poet laureate. Nils Peterson was named to the honorary post, and one of the first things he's done is to put together an unusual competition. He wants county residents to submit a single poetic line about life in the Valley. One hundred lines will be chosen for a special 'word collage.' We take a peek at some of the early submissions. [If you're a Santa Clara Valley resident, you can submit your own line of poetry. Email your 9-13 syllable line to poet.laureate@ceo.sccgov.org or by mail to Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, Office of Public Affairs, County of Santa Clara, 70 West Hedding St., 11th Floor East Wing, San Jose, CA 95110.]

A nine to thirteen syllable line? Here's mine.

With my wet laundry, I startle a doe.

My Mother's Day Poem

Still Life for Mother's Day

Who's making pancakes, I wake

to their call, not really, I've been long

awake. There's no wrapping

paper, get out of my way. You’ve
gone out to buy the steak, then bring

back lavender, pink, white sweet

peas, so many they don't fit

in the vase. I asked for something

smaller, quiet, something like a song
for my heart, but today's treat
is they -- one by one -- leave me.
Lozenges for my wounded lips,
oil for the bitten teat. Sunday
regular with laundry on the line
and my babies fighting
in the kitchen over their place
in the deep hole they have dug through
me with you. It should be they,
but on Mother’s Day, you
flip the hot cakes in the pan,
slip your hand into my shirt,
ask me still love. I do.

The photos are from my son's birthday, but you get the picture.

Espaliered Pear Trees

Kathy, a gardener who's blog I follow, uses some great words to describe her garden and her hard work. I had to look up "espaliered" -- always the right thing to do when you are a serious poet.

According to North Carolina State University: Espalier (ess-PAL-yer) is the practice of controlling plant growth so that it grows relatively flat against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis. In the 17th Century, espalier originally referred to the frame or trellis on which the plant was trained. Today, espalier refers to both the plant and the horticultural technique of actually training the plant. Espaliered plants can be used to create a focal point and as a form of art. In an area where space is limited or where a plant is needed to accent a large blank wall an espaliered plant can be an outstanding landscape feature. A mature espalier plant will catch the eye of almost any visitor to your home.

I have not written a poem about this phenomenon, but I will. In the meantime, pictures.

Poetry Chair

Good for you, Albert!

A chair made of poetry books, happy in the hills and sunshine of Marin's hills and wind. (Click the photo to read the article.)

I have some books I could have donated, had I known you were in need. Shall we make an entire dining room set??

Poem In the Making -- Or -- Process Flow??

This is a the cover of a thank you note I received from one of the third graders who came to hear me speak at Discovery Day, Regnart Elementary School's annual day when community members come and tell the kids what they do for a living.

Even though I don't make my living as a poet, I love to talk to the students about how a poet lives and works. They love me, too, which is the best reason to go. I get four third grade classes, for about 35 minutes each. We write a poem together as a class, I give them prompts, they shout out, we write on the board, we argue about which word is best, and their classroom teacher writes down the finished project. Then I answer the inevitable quesitons: "do you have a book" and "are you famous" (no, and no) and we all break for lunch. Then their teachers make them write me thank-you notes, which I love love love, especially the ones that say "Mrs. Brown, you are the BEST POET EVER." Who wouldn't love it??

Anyway, this year, one of the boys drew this on his thank you note. It's a picture of the process -- me writing on the board, the kids all shouting out their ideas. I love it, because it's not one of the overly cute and perfectly scripted letters that third grade girls are so good at. I showed it to my boss, and he was amazed -- this kid may have a future in business! What a kick.

And here's the poem we were creating:

School

Third grade floats as high as Ms. Cavanaugh.

We are smiley, shyly, shoelaces,

highly smart.

We float to another galaxy, like a television.

School obeys, does what we tell it to do,

comes up, starts dancing

with screamy, colorful moving pictures like a TV,

floating

squeezed tightly in a box.

Don't you just love it??

Haiku for Jackson

Rain in May, and hot.
Get ready, boy, it's coming,
Not what you expect.




Happy Birthday to my boy, who's 13. Ready or not. Here we come.

Saturday Might Be The Day

Will I write today? There is still hope, even though the furnace is broken in my house, even though it's raining in California in May, even though I'm cold, Jackson has a baseball game, and I must do the laundry, I might still write a poem.



In the meantime, there is fabulous poetry news in the world: After 341 Years, British Poet Laureate Is a Woman! Even though I don't know anything about Carol Ann Duffy's poems, I like several things about her already. She has three names, one of which is the same as an entire beloved branch of my family (Duffy) and she's got great book covers. Here's a glimpse.



"In Out of Fashion Carol Ann Duffy selects the best and most stylish contemporary poets and asks them in turn to select their favourite poem, from another time or culture, which looks at how we dress, or undress, how we cover up or reveal. In these vibrant poems, we are shown how clothes, fashion and jewellery are both a necessary and luxurious, a practical and sensual, a liberating or repressing part of our lives."

If she's really collecting poems about clothes, then she's my kind of woman/poet: one for Laundry Songs!

More about her at the Guardian, and the Academy of American Poets. Harder to find any of her poems published on line -- at least in the obvious first choices that Google coughs up. Here's one, called 'History' that I found at AAP. It's not very nice, but staggeringly powerful and beautiful. As usual, Blogger has mangled the formatting, so check out the AAP link to see it in its intended shape.

History

She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand--twigs, stained gloves--
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;

witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,

seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting and stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,

in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor.

Poem In Your Pocket and Bundle Boards

Jackson surprised me last night by telling me he had to have a poem for "Poem In Your Pocket" day today for school -- Mrs. Sharma, bless her Language Arts teacher's heart -- was requiring all the kids to pick poems, write them down, and carry them around! So, I dug out of the garage (where it is in temporary storage while we are temporarily living in this funky mint green rental house on a hillside) my box of poetry books I use when I teach. The good news, is that right away Jackson and I were able to find a poem, about wolves howling. "They howl and it seems to comfort them" or something like that. A perfect teenage boy poem. He wrote it out by hand, and by the time he was done, he almost had it by heart, a fine unintended side effect. He also sat on the couch and read from that anthology, "Talking to the Rain," for at least 30 minutes. I had to bite my lip to keep from telling him how happy I was to see him reading poems -- not a perfect teenage boy's mom thing to say.

(Check out the cool blog about books I found while looking for the wolf poem!! They have a whole list of kids books.)

In the meantime, I'm writing two poems: one about bundle boards and one about something else I can't remember right now. I'm tired. It's not as bizarre as it sounds.

PAD 10 Crash

Michael called yesterday morning, Monday, why would he think anyone would be here on a Monday morning, except we all were, Jackson and I sick, Bob eating strawberries and reading Andrew Sullivan. Michael was trying to sort plastic containers and find their matching lids. What a waste of talent. Here's a photo of Stella, after we moved into the rental house, after she performed the miracle Tupperware Sorting Trick -- I don't think many of them are actually Tupperware anymore, but I still call them that. Can't forget those great parties.

Here's the poem I wrote about Tupperware, I wrote it yesterday.

Elegy for the Dead That Held Fast

Envelope flower pot jewelry box coffin
Handbag briefcase coin purse satchel
Mason jar hat box girl scout canteen
Letter box ink well match box tureen
Canister cake tin wardrobe cradle
Tool shed wood shed button box cedar chest
Pickle barrel laundry basket soap box
Wheel barrow soda bottle lobster pot

And here's a photo of a beautiful hat box I found -- somebody still makes a beautiful thing out of wood.

PAD 8, 9 Rehashing

Okay, three days to make up for, two here, one in the next post, I don't trust blogger. I have been writing, just not blogging. Still waiting for my fans. Fat chance of a fart on the farm finding me.

pad 8 from about april 2

This is not a poem filled with symbols,
symbolism, images. Driving to work
I'm always writing these poems,
looking for birds, egrets white
in their wedding dresses, wings
tucked into their tails, tight
dive maneuvers or wide
right over my car, speeding
the ugliness of the cars,
hawks, always I see them only
one at a time, decked out in his
claws, proud on tall chain link.
Today the white and brown,
the possible wings, are just
trash, muddy newspaper nests of
rain water, flapping bags,
electric white slashed to
those same fences. Not a poem
among them. Not even irony.

pad 9 from march 20

in my car
small against my legs, back
big view, hills, rain
enormous sky flying by
blue or wide

my head touches the roof
air tastes like breath, mine, kids'
breath off banana peel
debris

it's very quiet here
except the banging of my mind
against the glass
a hammer, a song,
a laugh.

PAD on Bad Days and the Comfort of Sharon

I've been sick, Jackson's been sick, Stella's still sick. Not the swine flu, the "high school field trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon" flu -- Stella brought it home with her. Today I ran my car into the back of someone in a dusty Lexus on the way to a meeting in Palo Alto. Our heater's broken so it's very cold in the house.

I had my last GATE class this morning at Regnart, where I've been teaching fifth graders. This year we had fourth graders in the fall and fifth graders in the winter. It's easier on me that way, only 20-25 kids at 7:30 in the morning instead of 45 all at once, mostly incredibly smart boys who want to write about exploding toilets, hate, and Sponge Bob, unless it's the mostly incredibly smart girls who want to draw pictures of cartoon fairies on their notebooks and write poems with long words about flying and colorful rainbows and other things that make me want to scream. It's also always the most badly behaved boys who write the most interesting things -- and girls -- well, it's just the wrong age for them. It's a miracle that I kept writing after I was in fifth grade. At all.

So, I didn't pad on Sunday or Monday, and today, I have some notes but I don't like them. We'll see. I've discovered Mark Doty, whose name I've long heard, but whose poems I've just begun to read. Reminds me of Larry Friedlander a little bit. Lots to learn. He has a good blog. I'm also reading Sharon Olds again, because no matter how crappy I feel, her poems always make me feel better, no matter how grim her poems are, how crunchy with sex (embarrassing) or slimy with parents, her poems comfort me. I wish she had a blog. Too private, I guess, which is strange, considering what she writes -- or at least, considering the voice in her work. She is so beautiful. Someone confused me for her, once, at Squaw Valley, accross the parking lot. My hair was long and out of control, and hers wasn't so gray yet -- I've never felt as beautiful again as I did that summer. Mark Doty is pretty beautiful, too, it seems. Maybe I just need new glasses.

PAD 7: Not A Baseball Poem

Jackson's team didn't win today, but almost, it was very close. He made a diving catch behind first base and dropped the ball, even though everyone thought he had caught it, even the umpire. Your son has a problem with honesty, said another parent, which I guess is true since he told the umpire he dropped the ball and the runner was safe. We all laughed, even Jackson, who takes these games so lightly, I wish he took his life lightly, too, the anxieties of his adolescence creep up around him day and night.

Today's poem starts with baseball and ends with pregnancy. I'm grieving for Stella who is separating from me so easily, and I am realizing that after my life of keeping my distance, of holding my mind separate from her, she is going to leave for real very soon, just as I am learning to love her with my mind as well as my heart.

(Suddenly) The Doe

After Jackson’s baseball jersey, number 10,
dries, the Gatorade splots, ketchup smeary and
grass-stained dirt scrubbed out quickly in cold
water, I open the front door to move
back against the house my pink folding chair,
on which I had dried it, actually on which
it lay while the April sun dried the damp
places, and step into the yard, and there
see her leap up, too awkward to leap
quickly, it’s more of a slosh and heave,
like a dinghy too heavily laden with
children in life jackets, the bag full of lunches,
and the blanket, soft blue and oyster shell plaid
I remember from my childhood, bumping
against the side of the bigger boat as the last
kid steps in, and he falls into his seat, as
the little boat soon turns and lumbers away
toward the beach, an up stumble onto her sharp
small black hooves, butt and tail caught in old
holly, before she backs off and escapes through
torn chicken wire and falling fencing, long
ineffective again her and others of her
kind, brown deer who continue to thrive
at the edge of the city of Cupertino in
shady garden corners, like this one
where she rested until I came, with her
burden in her brown belly, with my clean clothes.

I think it might be fun to write a whole sequence of poems, in which the word 'suddenly' never appears, but which describe a series of events that do happen that quickly, in a present that doesn't really exist, between the series of moments that are either the past the past the past or the future the future the future.

Seahorse Interlude

My friend Michelle posted a photo on FaceBook of a seahorses at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It made me think of a seahorse poem I wrote a long time ago -- right at the beginning of my own personal poetry renaissance-- after a prolonged dry spell, no poems. Here it is, for Michelle and any one else who likes seahorses -- I wrote this in 1997. I wrote several version of it over the next 3 or so years, and I would write it differently now. I remember I wrote it during a workshop at UCSC -- and one of the other participants said it was indecent -- too much sex.



Seahorses

My lover wants me like the sea
He lays me down in fields of seahorses, blue and green

In our secret ocean the white fish die
and spill their eggs like gold coins

His singing anchors me to this
underwater world, I can drink
the whole sea full of salt

Anemones like hungry children
reach up for us in their pale
friendly way

luring us down
into the dream
down into
his arms

His brave brown ship carries me
away rocking on scarlet wind,
endless, and liquid, and true

I don’t care for anything here
except that he plays--

play yourself like the dark waves

play me like the foam on the storm--

PAD 6: John Lennon Saved My Life Again Today

Well, I'm having a good time with pad -- that's for sure. I love this one.

John Lennon Saved My Life Again Today

Sharpening my pencil in my

mint green battery-operated sharpener

shaped like a Hopi fetish of a bear,

my mother-in-law

had one on her mantle, a lovely

half clamshell shape, turquoise

with a strand of dried grass wrapped

around it, almost a belt, at the widest

part, or a Zuni fetish, as I learn

at the Native American Southwest

belt buckle website, with pencil

shavings where the face would be,

pointed down toward the table

in front of that green body,

maybe more of a light sea green,

and sparkly like a sandy beach

sparkles, or the pearlized finish

on a bowling ball, or glittery

fingernail polish, anyway

sounds just like the first four bars

of Revolution before Ringo

hits his drum once, six before

Paul starts his funny scream

and eight before John starts in

singing – that grinding wood

graphite sound I normally can’t

stand, sets my teeth on edge

like a blackbird on a black

board – well, not really –

except this grinding is exactly

the right pitch, I think of

John every time I sharpen

a pencil, and depending on

the day I might feel like

crying, or like today, not.

PAD 4 & 5: Yes, it's discouraging but that's okay

Since I've taken such a stand -- write a poem a day! -- nobody has come to the blog to comment or -- probably even -- to not comment. And it was a drastic stand for me to take, and the commitment is hard. But at least I love the outcome. I wonder if I can take a similar stand with regard to losing weight, or flossing my teeth every night, exercising enough -- only yesterday I promised my physical therapist I'd stretch every day and today I have not. There is still tonight.


Yesterday's PAD (April 22) should have been this:


For Michael's Heart

For Michael's heart
I would. And he
doesn't need to know.
Weights and measures,
scales, turning the pages.
This faucet, that
doorknob suffices in beauty
or does not, but when
we don't ask those
questions, I propose,
the heart hears voices
filled with answers
still.



Today's poem is going to be harder. I want to write about Paul, my contractor's foreman, who's from the Bronx, but who speaks Spanish to the guys working on the crew remodeling our house. Oscar and Jose, they were on the roof today, pulling out the old sky light, framing in the space for the new one. Paul was babbling on in Spanish, and then he said "siente and a quarter" and then more Spanish, and then "siente and three quarters" and it caught my eye -- as if he'd flung a fly fishing line at me and snagged my ear with the fluffy feathery hook. Ouch -- got me to turn my head, and when I said it back to him, they all laughed, all three of them. I want to put this in a poem, but I don't know how to. And, even though this is a lot of writing, this blog entry does NOT count as pad. This paragraph is not a poem. Even if I call it one. Not even a prose poem. I don't believe in that form, anyway. (A topic for another day). So now what?

I put this idea forward as a poem a couple of days ago, but that was cheating. As penance, I made it into a sestina for today's pad.

The New Season: A Baseball Sestina

Oh boy, I can smell it in the evening, the boy
Glinting in a white uniform, still clean, the ball
Fresh in his hand, now fleeing from his hand, now away from him
Fleeing through even the new air
And the new grass, green
The way a new green is brighter next

To a new clay infield, next
To the boy
Leaping across the new green
Outfield where he catches the ball
Like a new boy. The air
Is not really new, but these molecules belong to him

In a way that the grass belongs to him
And the next
Swing of the bat through the new air
Belongs to the boy
With a new taste in his mouth, and the ball
Still white, not yet having met not even one green

Blade of grass is his. You put up the green
Umbrella in the stands for him,
I bring my cooler, we grip our hats, we clench our fists into new balls
Of baseball fury, rows of brand new parents next
To definitely not wiser rows of parents, my boy
And your boy battling out there in early spring air

Pushing the fine tasting air
Back and forth between themselves, across green
Sprawling fields, themselves sprawling one boy
After the next
Into the dirt, their bodies rolling full out with the hymns
Of sliding, ballads of dropping the ball,

Haiku of pop-up, ball
Drops out of air
Into glove. Or in the next
Inning perhaps an entire symphony of green
And brown stains up and down every inch of him,
My boy.

It’s a game of give my boy take your boy glove hat bat ball
Yell for him, spit into that clean gleaming air
The green vowels, the white consonants, the next game.

PAD: 3 Very Small Baseball Poems

Baseball Season



1.


Oh boy

he caught the ball

threw him

self into air

over green

running between

one white

base and the

next



2.


Night-time light
warm air smelling like
boys in the grass



The first poem was originally intended as a sestina but I obviously have a lot of work to do to get that going -- the second one is a non-traditional haiku -- not much apart, together I'm more hopeful.

I'm interested that W. S. Merwin got his second Pulitzer today -- I'm still not sure if I like his poems, but so many other people love him (Pulitzer number 1) and now love how he's such and old man (Pulitzer 2).

I shouldn't be so cynical during baseball season.

PAD 2 Jumble Beams Holding Air

My friend Michelle (the only person who reads my blogs besides my father, boo hoo) commented that a photo of me in the new house was "jumble beams holding air" which is a great start to a poem. Here goes. Thanks, M.

A Remodel Nightmare

Where I live is no longer there –
roof ripped up, walls ripped down,
jumbled beams holding air –

a house’s privacies laid bare
to anyone who happens by from town.
Where I live is no longer there.

No bed, no piano, no window, no chair.
Ghosts of blankets, ghost of gown,
only jumble beams holding air.

Up along disfigured stairs
I step, gutters sag like a widow’s frown,
where I live. No longer there:

a place for me to brush my hair
a room to echo with my sounds.
Jumbled beams holding up the air

don’t look that much as if they care.
Safety and chaos now must share
where I lived, but am no longer there –
just a jumble – beams holding air

Aeneas in the Underworld

I know this may seem a bit off topic, but in Boland's poem "The Journey", she riffs on the journey of Aeneas into the underworld that Virgil writes up so horrifically in Book VI of The Aeneid.

"Immediately cries were heard. These were the loud wailing of infant souls weeping at the very entrance-way; never had they had their share of life’s sweetness for the dark day had stolen them from their mothers’ breasts and plunged them to a death before their time."
—Virgil, The Aeneid, Book VI

Here's a link to a blog "Monster Brains" where this is described, and with a beautiful photo of Brueghel's painting on said topic. (You have to scroll down to Sunday, June 22, 2008 to see the entry, but the whole blog is worth checking out -- amazing photos of monster art. Who knew?)

Jan Brueghel The Elder - AENEAS AND THE SIBYL IN THE UNDERWORLD, Oil on Copper 1598

Okay: A Poem A Day: For Bob

I used to do this whole poem a day thing, actually for about 18 months, then stopped for a long time. I heard all the clarion calls to write a poem a day (PAD) for this year's Poetry Month, but I have been negligent. Then I started cruising the blog land of poems and started to feel badly. So I will pad again, starting now. And since it's the 19th of the month already, I will pad until May 19th. It's going to be really hard. I'm warning you, those of you who may notice, that I am seriously out of shape. Let's see what I can do.

Moon Over Half Dome

My love borrowed
a corduroy jacket,
golden, soft, too small.

My love knelt
in new weeds, old dirt.
In evening wind.

My heart, startled,
rose like a search light
behind ancient granite.

Anyone
who looked that night
saw the moon.

Disorganization

Today I found the quote that I need to launch my thesis. I've been reading and reading about Eavan Boland -- poems, essays, articles, criticism -- and here's the sentence that will get me in, get me a title even, if I am lucky.

"The disorganization of the beloved moment"


Isn't that great? It's from an interview with Elizabeth Schmidt, titled "Where Poetry Begins: Eavan Boland in Conversation" published in American Poet (Spring 1997). You can read the entire essay at the Academy of American Poets website.

I'm not crazy about this photo of her, but there needs to be one, shining above me like a beacon right now. So here:

Egret on a Guardrail

Today's poem. I really saw such a bird. I sent the poem to my friend Amy, who I love and miss.

Egret on a Guardrail

Beak up, doll yellow inverted snowboard, sharpened at the end like a pencil,
Or your sharpest sword; piercing gaze, laser bird eyeballs
Black and again sharp, obsidian arrow head, tiny suture needle.
Observing cattle, black, brown slowly muddy walls
Of rough animals, shaggy winter coats munch plod along the hill.

Poised, ready, lift to float soar over four highway lanes
70 miles per hour, slick with gray dirty rain wash.
Cars pouring into morning, we scream aim
Our boxes and bodies, steel, fiberglass, swash-
Buckling catapult torpedo bones and brain.

Bird white, a white not made by men.
Quiet watching, watching for what
I cannot know, I’ll see, seek you again
On the guardrail, in dreams, egret.

For Zina Who Noticed the Petals

(A poem from 2001 for my friend Zina who took a photo today.)

The Census

He’s having a great time.
The radio announcer explains the historical relevance,
the number of flush toilets, what time you leave for work,
don’t you see, the sewer schemes, the masterminded water,
plotting traffic like a novel of anthills.

Waiting in my car, as inside a toaster,
my tea in the black and chrome cup with the smart plunger lid,
I finish listening; I am polite and happy.

Outside the wind is blossomy;
on this late March morning the street is a marathon of petals,
each separate from its flower, one of a million,
a gesture of unpainted fingernails,
tiny, white and pink steering wheels rolling
up on their edges, a full field uncounted, racing,
racing, racing like water or children running or rushing
,or even racing like nothing,
racing to be the day.

The Wife

Knees up under pillows
book balanced on the massed
quilts and sheets,
she reads, tea cooling in a blue and brown
mug, leaning against another fold
of bedding. When she reaches
for her pencil, the liquid leans
but does not spill.

Bifocals gangly on the table,
a white plate, crumbs like leaf shadows
in the sunlight on the floor,
she moves the tea mug there, and pulls
up her note book, flexible and empty
now for many months.

The pencil presses against
laundry and gardening cracks
in her thumb. She squints
and leans forward with her gray bangs,
now the sun has slipped to the foot
of the big beg, where a grey cat mocks
sleep, ears alert.

It is so much like a sketch, or a song,
but no one else in the room describes
the angle of the page to catch
the light. No one sees these
adjustments of paper and hand,
pillow and knee. From other rooms
she hears a radio, a bathroom drawer
thud, then another.

They know where to look for her,
should it be necessary, but
they do not come. The wife
reaches for her glasses, her
empty plate, hesitates,
waits.