Friendship

This past Thursday, I arrived home to such a wonderful gift. My friend, poet, and creative man extraordinaire sent me a copy of his new book signed. What joy!

I highly recommend it to all. A taste to wet your appetite.

Bliss is never the end of the
journey, but a happy bowl of
soup along the way.

~ Gavin Geoffrey Dillard

What I'm Reading #99

A new volume of Poems from Randall Mann has entered by collection.

These are smart, engaging explorations of contemporary life with an understated accessibility.  I have been reading them slowly the way I choose to enjoy each cherry off of the tree.  Lolling the fruit around and savoring every nuance that I can taste from the flesh of the fruit before moving on to the next one.

For example:

PROPRIETY

In a precisely lighted room, the CFO speaks
of start-to-start dependencies.
Says let me loop back with you.

Says please cascade as appropriate.
It's that time of morning; we all can smell
the doughnut factory. If scent were white

noise, doughnuts would be that scent.
The factory won't sell at any price.
The building next to it burns the animals

we experiment on. I have worked
on a few preclinical reports in my time.
The rhesus monkeys become

so desperate that they attempt suicide,
over and over again. I am legally obligated
to spare you the particulars.

How could things be any different?
Here many choice molecules have been born.
Here. This pill will dissolve like sugar.

Your last five months will be good ones.

~ Randall Mann, 1972 -

Ablutions

ABLUTION

So it is. There comes
a day in early December
when all the holiday cards
from the previous year
get stripped from the back
of the front door.
The little loops of sturdy
Scotch tape are pulled away
and the batch of last year's well
wishes and tokens of love and friendship
are retired, archived for some
purpose or not.

On the newly barren
canvas of the door
there resides the first card
whose advent awaits what
random and diverse array
of companions who
will join in community
this year...

~ R. W. A., 1612.02

What I'm Reading #95

 A new book of poems by W. S. Merwin.  This alone is all the reason you need to buy this book.  Glorious!

Perfect Note Card in the Mail

I am so very fortunate to have two friends who have each been awarded Pulitzer Prizes.  One for the play she wrote, and the other for her poetry.

My poet friend sent me this beautiful card and included a handwritten poem by Bernice Johnson Reagon!  Someone I'm sure she knows, and someone who's work I have also long admired.  How wonderful life is. 

What I'm Reading #90

Apropos of my recent post on the Pike Place Market in Seattle, I share this volume of poetry by a northwestern poet and which I purchased at a little bookshop at the Pike Place Market.  Tom Crawford was a new poet to me, and in a freakishly sweet turn of events--this copy was signed by the poet.  The inscription reads "For Tom from Tom, Good Meeting You".  And thus I met Tom via his poems through which he explores a deeper understanding of himself and his place in the world.  Stellar.

Here's a sample:

RAIN

Rain in Chongqing is pretty much

like rain in Portland--

it comes down wet from Heaven

and when it's sudden,

without warning

in both cities people shriek

and scatter.  Newspapers double

for umbrellas,

dirty sidewalks glisten,

a mother runs out

to pull in her little boy.

Flags go up everywhere

in excitement-- "We surrender,

we surrender."

~ Tom Crawford, 1939 -

I feel completely at ease in recommending this poet to one and all.

"Winter Poems"

Tonight's holiday book for children is a collection of poems called "Winter Poems" selected by Barbara Rogasky and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. The book is intentionally nonsectarian. You will find poems by Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay among the many. I will label each illustration I include here with the title and author of the poem it goes together with to further this point.

 "Something Told The Wild Geese" by Rachel Feild

"A Merry Note" by William Shakespeare 

"A Winter Piece" by William Cullen Bryant 

"Laughing Boy" by Richard Wilbur 

"Waiting For Birds" by David Kherdian

The Park's Placard And Flyers

 The placard in the park is currently celebrating the birds of winter. Every morning I watch them from my second floor windows as I shower and shave--chickadee's with their unique way of flying with crests and troughs that only they see. Cardinals whose only competition against the blandness of bare trees and fallen leaves are the holly berries they crave. And my favorite, Carolina Wrens! They are so friendly, frenetic and furtive--I suspect they may actually be trying to build a new nest in the folds of my closed table umbrella on the deck. I do hope I am mistaken... The flyer includes a snippet of a poem by David Wagoner. I love my town!

Haiku

Haiku

Autumn Diplomacy

Norway Maple leaf
finds refuge in the arms of
Japanese Maple.

~ 1511.22

Today's Sermon

from MY GARDENS

If I could put my woods in song,

And tell what's there enjoyed,

All men would to my gardens throng,

And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow, --

Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;

And rank the savage maples grow

From spring's faint flush to autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge

Which older forests bound;

The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,

Then plunge to depths profound.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

Poem

Today's Sermon

ODE TO TOMATOES

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

~ Pablo Neruda, 1904 - 1973

Today's Sermon

PITTSBURGH

I burn your Highland Park. I acid your Carnegie
car dealerships. Your Squirrel Hill, sheer terror
in winter. But most of all, I hate your Liberty Avenue,
the last place, one night, I saw my closest friend
saying, Wait here, outside the after-hours club. I wait,
hating your Strip, half your Shadyside, all of Bloomfield,
the bluffs and flats where my friend trades himself.
I wait hours, then trace your Mexican War
Streets looking for his car, so I could declare a truce
in the battle he was fighting against himself. Your Hot
Metal, your Fort Pitt Bridge that leads headfirst
into the Monongahela. In the morning, he’s home.
He cannot tell me where it hurts. I help him shower
off the Duquesne residue, the priesting old world
shame. Pittsburgh, you’re all grit and gristle turning crystal
track marks, turning a man meth mouth. I feed him,
put him to bed. I’ll keep watch tonight in a cable car
ascending Mt. Washington, your smokestacks
blowing clouds over the confluence until all you are,
Pittsburgh, is a sleepless shimmer I will watch
diminish down to the savaged seed of morning,
as impossible to watch as you are to name.

~ James Allen Hall, 

What I'm reading #84

"Darkness Sticks to Everything" by Tom Hennen is a collection of poems that speak to the nether world which resides between our pedestrian moments and reality's more sobering concerns.  Lest you wonder, the answer is "no."  No, it's not depressing.  The poems take this theme and uses it to reveal the light behind the clouds that gather.

Today's Sermon

ON DEATH

I think it is a good thing
to think about death
on a regular basis. Not
too often, but enough so
the idea is not awkward. After all,
you don't want to be caught
so completely off guard
that it's nothing more
than a
fright.

Not that anyone
gets the opportunity
to approach it casually.
I can't imagine it's like
deciding to flip a switch--well,
not for most of us, anyway.

I think I'm probably like most people.

I don't want it to be too painful--
it doesn't seem realistic
to imagine that there
will be no pain, right?
And if
I have the piece of mind
when my death comes, I would
so like to be able to smile.

Of course, laughter would be better,
but I don't want to be greedy.

~ R. William Ash

Crocuses!

Crocus

In my backyard, there are

a few crocuses.

I've dabbled at planting them--

mostly without any success.

So now they amount to

a dribble and drab of wannabe beds

or isolated individuals and usually

for every one that never appears again,

some new ones pop up!

Such is the mystery of

the propagation of crocus .

And yet, I have this

one small faithful flock, this

sublime shtetl...this colony of crocus

that year in and year out arrives

and is just glorious.

I don't know what

they've been dreaming about

all the year long in their

subterranean hovels, but

I do hope that my utter admiration,

my delight at their primavera beauty

somehow pleases whatever it is

that constitutes a crocus' conscience.

~ Randy William Ash

What I'm Reading #78

Another collection by the poet Jeffrey Harrison.  Love his understanding of the world.

Here's an example:

ENOUGH

It's a gift, this cloudless November morning

warm enough to walk without a jacket

along your favorite path.  The rhythmic shushing

of your feet through fallen leaves should be

enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you

when you catch yourself telling off your boss

for a decade of accumulated injustices,

all the things you've never said circling inside you.

The rising wind pulls you out of it,

and you look up to see a cloud of leaves

wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue

and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day

were sighing, Let it go, let it go,

for this moment at least, let it all go.

~ Jeffrey Harrison

Romeo's Favorite Haiku

Today's Sermon

THE END OF THE WORLD

has already happened 

is happening 

here it is 

what to prove 

nothing 

here it is 

no other 

than 

the small coiled teeth 

of mollusk radula scraping granite tidepools 

clean 

seen correctly 

every bush 

is a burning bush

~ Meredith Stricker