Modern Day Haiku
Bone marrow patch blinks
firefly green through the undies,
saying, still here…here….
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Still don’t know if I’ll manage a poem a day for April–Poetry Month, but here’s a try. The patch described above is given to counteract immuno-suppressive aspects of certain chemo therapy drugs. All rights reserved. Have a good day.
Today’s Poem
It’s blue outside and in—
how to begin?
The horizon’s cloudy,
also my forehead.
The window cuts the view into panes.
So, what
am I saying?
That it is hard to see ahead
in this hard time, even though ahead
is still there. (We can’t stop it,
even if we would.)
I peer down at the ground, the low of the window that shows
where trees grow,
then notice how the leafless limbs
still cast a shadow—
And then—panes/pains—I see how my brain
can shape things so darkly
and call it poetry–ugh–
until the loom of gloom at last
makes me laugh; waking up to a self
that sits apart as on a raft; it is like a rhyme
of myself and says (as so many rhymes)
that those last lines
were a bit daft–
a part of myself that says, oh geez,
Louise—
and calls it poetry.
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A rather daft poem and pic for today! Stay well!
Casals
In Pablo Casals’ recordings, you can hear him singing along
with his cello—a gravely hum accompanying Beethoven and
his bow—don’t even get me started on
Glenn Gould—
Great musicians aren’t always great singers,
yet there is a delight we take
in their voices, the presumably unconscious drone seeming to show
how much they love the music, that they are playing
rather than performing,
their whole self
the instrument.
I suppose the hums could be considered “unmindful’,
and yet I wouldn’t mind living like that,
singing softly,
singing along.
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Happy April! I don’t yet know if I will write a poem a day for this month of April poetry, but this one came to mind today. Pic and poem are mine; all rights reserved.
Here are two early morning poems–one written yesterday, the other today–the mood lightened by frogs!
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Early
I get up taut
with what might go wrong, where
I’ll fall short.
It’s too easy to come up with
examples!
Meditators focus on the breath
but I resort, in the pre-dawn dark,
to actual prayer—in part
because it feels faster—
Big suffering in the world,
but my mind reverts to small
acts of kindness, what’s reachable, like the window
across the room, the door
downstairs.
It opens to a rush of air that pushes against me,
through me, but this is how air is, it doesn’t wait
for us to decide
what to do with it.
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March Morning 4:30
I open an early morning door
to a frenzy of first frogs,
flubbing, flabbering, the darkness rubbery
with rebirth, rapidfire gulps of
“let’s get going, gals” and, I guess,
guys too.
A dog barks; everything awake
and determined
to make the most of it.
Cold at the door—yet I stay,
listening away my hesitation at the hour—
insomniacs can feel guilty
for just giving in—but as I listen, life’s not
about me—how
glorious—
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Same Sun
I am told that when my grandfather went back to Sweden,
after fifty years gone,
he pointed up to the sky.
“Same sun,” he said,
and his brothers, looking up, nodded, knowing they’d have
that sun—even as they did not see each again.
There’s a morning moon today, brilliant, though just
past full, and I think of my grandfather, only now I think
“same moon”,
imagining it shining
over the world, in swathes of abandoned sky
above the Sudan or Rajasthan—the way
the moon glows
over a desert—
through grey black screws of smoke in the Ukraine,
a hard chill in Red Square,
by the dome of the Capitol, my hometown DC,
and reflected in so many tides
of so many
wine-dark seas.
I can see it too
in the cores of trees that have fallen
across this road, the trunks sawed through, pushed
to the side, the rounds at the wood’s heart bared—
and in the oh’s that a baby’s mouth forms, rooting—this picture
in my head—
I knew my grandfather, but can’t really remember him (or only as I’ve seen him
in photographs), he having a heart attack
when I was making my own oh’s, those
of a toddler—
There’s so much suffering in just having a body—
yet, people add to it, heap it on, as if to cause suffering in others
somehow allows them to control it
in themselves—
same sun.
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Another draft poem—yes, it could use more time! But writing and posting quickly is lifting me up right now and I hope of interest to you. Thanks. (All rights reserved in poem and pic, as always. And sorry that I am using drawings from my own archive–they are not always exactly right for the poem!)
Mid-March in North Country
We are in the brown season here.
Winter wilting; my husband no longer even trying
to enforce inventory control—(that, the rule
of using up the old
before starting the new.)
So, I reach into the fridge
for one of my two open almond butters, also
a peanut butter, started (nonetheless) yesterday—
sometimes you just prefer peanuts—
A cancer patient is sleeping
down the hall. I have learned of late
that you cannot fix someone, make them happy,
you can only try not to make them unhappy,
or more unhappy—
and to comfort, keep
them company—
I could expound, but this brown season
doesn’t brook more redundancy—
all those taupe barks on ochre fields,
brown bared earth—
It’s a landscape that doesn’t bother
to assert its right-now beauty—
though it’s there all right, a backdrop
of birds back, great tan puddles pearling
lengthened light.
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Another draft poem of sorts. Bear with me! I think of myself as more of a prose/fiction writer, but am in a hard place for extended narrative, so am returning to poetry–and have decided just to post rather freely, even if some things could probably use a bit more editing! Thanks much for your visits and kind comments. Have a good day–
ps – pic doesn’t fit so well, but is one of mine. All rights to poem and illustration reserved.
pps – this is a poem, i.e. somewhat a work of fiction–people in my life are remarkably happy even under difficult circumstances–
One Scene in Kiev ICU
I see a video of a family in a Kiev ICU, after
having been shot
by Russian soldiers, after having been told
by a Russian soldier
that it was safe to cross
some corridor,
the teen daughter especially wounded
because of throwing herself on top
of her little brother,
but what is perhaps
most remarkable about this particular video—well, the daughter, the entire
family—is also the laughter in the room
that happens when they are visited
by Zelensky—there are certainly also tears
in all corners,
but together they laugh at some small joke.
Zelensky triggers it, with a smile that you know he must
enforce on himself, though it seems unforced—one can’t help but think
of the discipline that smile takes, even as it works,
expanding onto all the other faces in the room, like the swell
of a wave
or heart.
And when he gives the girl an armful of white flowers—
he somehow manages to extend the bouquet in a way that says—“this
is for you,
I know it is not enough,
that it might seem trivial
in the face
of your suffering—“
And yet that silent admission, that near embarrassment,
somehow untrivializes
the flowers,
boosts them into the gallery
of meaningful gestures, the long history
of homage—the flowers, already so beautiful—
how do they still have flowers like that, I wonder,
with all going on; how do people still
make such flowers happen–
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A bit of a wierd draft poem about the civilian casualties in Ukraine, and a visit by Zelensky to the ICU.
Bad Night
A sick-to-your-stomach night
after the world accuses you
of wrong.
They’re wrong,
but still all night—maybe because
you actually told them they weren’t right—
whatever you have ever done
that could be thrown back at you
is thrown back at you.
You are not the kind of person who is energized
by attack; you are a woman of a certain generation,
certain age—when others rage
you blame yourself, this is how
you were raised.
So that, by the time the moon shines through
the western window, pulling at a body heavy
with the wish for rest,
you get up,
knowing that same body, that womanliness of a certain age
and generation, can make
extremely good tea, which may somehow
releaf you.
You smile at that little pun—
See,
it’s already working—
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Draft poem not for St. Patrick’s Day! Maybe I can come up with one of those when feeling better. Have a good day! (As always all rights reserved.)
Moon
After being woken early by the ring on a monitor
at the other side of a cancer patient, who is
in pain;
after the temp is taken, the meds given,
I step into the slippery cold to see a moon, which is not floating
on the single dome of cloud that hugs, like a fantasy of snowcap,
a low mountainside
on the opposite half of this valley.
No, the moon does not float
on that cloud, above that mountainside, but seemingly holds
a fixed place, more solid than either cloud
or mountain, looking
as if it were not suddenly full, though I swear
in the course of this one night
it has rounded,
and as if it were not setting, which it does,
on that side of the sky.
Rather, it glows with certainty; it feels as if it were a sure thing, the one
sure thing,
even as I know that when I go out later, which is now,
it will be gone.
Also not gone.
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I am thinking of getting back into poetry again. Here’s a draft poem written this morning. I’m not sure I have a great pic for it, the mountains in this pic based on a Chinese painting, which are a bit more vertical—have a great day—
(As nearly always, the illustration and text are mine. All rights reserved.)
It is so hard these days to think of doing art work, if one’s art tends towards the personal; if, it is, you know, “small story” work—work about a couple of lives or some incidents whose political importance is not particularly apparent.
Or, if, for example, it is work for children—work meant simply to entertain, to help little kids get through an itchy moment, or to bed. Work that simply says that silliness is fine, sweetness is fine; work that is, in other words, kind of cute.
It is hard, that is, if you make the type of art I do—PLEASE READ MY BOOKS BY THE WAY!—. I feel like there are political implications in my adult books– Nice; Momoir, Maybe; No River, and even in my new book of stories – Who Are You Kidding? but the political stuff is arguably subtle. The books are stories of small lives, individual lives.
As for the children’s books that I have written (GET THOSE TOO!), they are mainly about sound, color, letters, numbers, rhyme.
How does one justify making art about things like that in the face of ongoing events in the world, and in the country?
The candid answer is that one simply makes the work one makes. There is stuff that just comes out of your fingertips, and though you can try to slant that stuff—you can read more—think harder–edit pointedly— the work is based on what comes out. (At my age, I kind of believe in accepting that, if not truly honoring it.)
Frankly, it is hard enough to make your own work—practically impossible to make someone else’s.
This is not to say that I don’t believe in growth. (I believe in growth!)
Still, it seems (in my case anyway), that I’ve been given a particular kind of gift, and I mostely accept that. That’s the thing about gifts–some people get socks—others, search lights! (The very very lucky get ponies, but let’s put those aside for now.)
Still, even with some self-acceptance, it is hard to motivate one’s self to do one’s small work in the light/glare of suffering, and anxiety. Hard to motivate one’s self too when there is also so much division. (Shouldn’t you be busy trying to persuade someone of something?)
I try to remind myself how much pleasure/peace one gets out of simply reading (and even re-reading) small life things—I do anyway—mysteries, picture books, satirical fantasy.
And then I simply go back to the notion that you make the work that you make—
In any case, the above is some of the work I have been making lately—a yet-to-be-finished picture from a yet-to-be-finished picture book tentatively called Bug Cars.
Have a great week.
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Please do check out my books, available at these links on Amazon, and Blurb.
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