America

 

The pictures from today are all about overcast and rain, So here is one from yesterday. I can't really explain why, but this quite pleases me. Maybe it is the red truck cab.

Your poem to tonight was translated from the German. This poet was recommended to me recently. Driving through America is giving me a chance to think about different kinds of American lives. And then there are the lives of wild creatures. Are you watching any peregrine cams, bear den cams, eagle cams, rookery cams? These things are more and more available and give us a chance to think about the lives of other creatures. I often find zoos depressing, but I am glad to have seen the tiger face to face.

To an Okapi in the Munich Zoo

The clank of a steel door, and the ignominious entrance

Of the heraldic beast, trembling, because it's feeding time,

And the keeper wants to knock off, and the beastly onlookers are laughing . . .

These are things not written in any unicorn legend. Okapi---

The word is from jungle languages, now themselves extinct.

Insufficiently tall for the savannah, this patient, rust-colored

Throat merits its pellets of straw, and its locked stall at night.

Because the free range will be strange to him,

As strange as to the bemused visitor

This combination of giraffe and zebra,

Equally remote from the familiar childhood cutout of either.

One more ruminant from the olden days, a sentry

Planted on the astrological roadside, as though to warn

Against the pathos of the exotic throwback.

Durs Grunbein, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

Ashes for Breakfast, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, Page 177.

Tonight we made it as far as Billings and are comfortably ensconced in a Kelly Inn there. All day through gorgeous country, Gallatin River, Yellowstone River, cloud, sun, rain--seasoned with a few buffalo with calves. I took several hundred fromthecar pictures. I decided to think of raindrops on the windshield as a feature, not a bug!

Storm in the Mountains

Even God can't take the lightning back,

once the old forest wakes in the night and all

the arch of the sky stares aghast at that fall

saved in quiet so long we forgot its attack

that says nothing, nothing till it comes and is over: black

sky again, but cuddled in a snag silent and tall

a fire seed begins a new life, so huddles, so small

that no one looks there till another crack

and its eyelids gleam. Oh, the long tumble! The whole

world on its way home somewhere with us helplessly

clinging to keep our place!--clutching our selfish

bodies that finally crash and ignite the soul

to spark, or maybe to spark, maybe to smoulder

while God reconsiders light and dark over and over

and over.

William Stafford in My Name Is William Tell, Confluence Press, page 55.

Rest well and dream of buffalo grazing a a spring meadow with yellow flowers. Good Night!

All day traveling east and north through Idaho

I was marveling at these open western skies all the way, including those produced by fierce rainstorms after Pocatello. Because we were in the car, I didn't hear any birds, but I saw some. And I should be in Emmet County, Michigan in time for the last three burdwalks of the spring season. Thus tonight's bird-in-a-poem which I've been saving for as I get closer.

How You Know

Everyone first hears the news as a child,

surrounded by money-changers and pharisees;

amid all the twittering, one flash of sound

escapes along a creek---some fanatic among

the warblers broken loose like a missionary

sent out to the hinterland, and though the doors

that open along the creek stay closed for the cold,

and the gray people in their habitats don't look out,

you---a homeless walker stabbed by that bird cry---

stop mid-stride because out of a thicket

that little tongue turns history loose again, and holy

days asleep in the calendar wake up and chime.

 

William Stafford, from Even in Quiet Places, Confluence Press, page 57.

An Elegant Form Makes Elegant Shadows

This is a vase by William Morris, who shares a name with an elegant craftsman from the British Isles. whose beautiful textile and book designs I love. I think this form is completely lovely. It also isn't really much use as a pot or even a vase. But I love looking at it. Its tranquil beauty quiets something deep inside.

Sharon Olds' poetry has been much admired for many years. It is beautifully crafted and seems to attempt to be deeply honest, in a way that people often avoid. We/me try to smooth the rough edges. Her poems often dealt with subjects that seem utterly private to me. While I know that there shouldn't be off-topic items in art, some topics make me nervous. So I admired her poems, but she was not one of my favorite poets.
However, I read so many nice things about her new book, written since (and concerning) her divorce that I decided to stop being such a subject wimp and get it. It just came, but because I was packing, I didn't get time to read it right away. Last night I was putting it away (to read in a few months when I come back) and tried a few poems, then a few more. Then I went and put it in my suitcase, after copying out this poem.

THE HEALERS

When they say, If there are any doctors aboard,

would they make themselves known, I remember when my then

husband would rise, and I would get to be

the one he rose from beside. They say now

that it does not work, unless you are equal.

After those first thirty years,

I was not the one he wanted to rise from

or return to – not I but she who would also

rise, when such were needed. Now I see them,

lifting, side by side, on wide,

medical, wading-bird wings – like storks with the

doctor bags of like-loves-like

dangling from their beaks. Oh, well. It was the way

it was, he did not feel happy when words

were called for, and I stood.

Sharon Olds from Stag's Leap, Cape Poetry (Jonathan Cape) 2012, page 33.

Heading back

Gonna put out my suet and sunflower seeds and see what I can stir up out of the Michigan Woods. Leaving Sunday and hope to stay long enough to see the spectacular fall color. This fellow was very fond of suet a year ago. He's quite shy, so I had to take the photos through the kitchen window. See what a woodpecker can do to a tree? I must admit that the tree wasn't in great shape, but now it has given up. A woodpecker has some kind of mechanism that protects its brain from damage as a result of the repeated impacts. Several years ago, a pair of Eastern Bluebirds nested in a woodpecker-made hole in a tree behind the house. But by the next year the tree had blown down in a windstorm. Not everything turns out the way we think it should, as in this prose poem. (My grandson says poems must be rhyming and metrical, but Vern Rutsala wouldn't agree.)

THE LITTLE CIRCUS

It advertised the only trained hippopotamus in the

world. We had to see that. It was Iowa and it was sum-

mer with all that oppressive heat. The tent was small

and there was only one ring, the grass inside it scarcely

trampled down---not a good sign. Early on we noticed

there weren't many performers but they put on differ-

ent costumes and took different names, too, for each of

the acts, Part of the fun was to spot them in their new

personas. The buxom bareback rider switched to tights

and labored up the trapeze. We decided they were all

one family, Finally, the hippo entered looking smaller

than we expected—maybe it was one of those Iowa

hogs in disguise. An older man, the catcher in the tra-

peze act, walked the hippo slowly around the one

ring. It shuffled along looking none too happy and

then disappeared through the tent flap. You asked,

What's the act? What does it do? I said, I'm afraid

we've just seen it.

Vern Rutsala in A Handbook for Writers; new and selected

Prose Poems, White Pine Press, 2004. Page 57.

Fathers

Here Mr. Mallard guards the entrance to the stream. (He waited for them and went down just before they did, as if leading them.) They had all just been up to my house for a lawn snack.
And here is tonight's poem:

The Bridge

The stars report a vast consequence

our human moment joins.

Or is it all the dark

around them speaking?

And if someone who listened for years

one night hears Home,

what is he to do with the story

his bones hum to him

about the dust?

Let him go in search of the hiding place

of the dew, where the hours are born.

Let him uncover whose heart

beats behind the falling leaves

And as for the one who hears Remember,

well, I began to sing

the words my father sang

when he knelt to teach me

how to tie my shoes:

Crossing over, crossing under, little bird,

build your bridge by nightfall.

Li-Young Lee from Book of my Nights, BOA Editions, LTD, page 35.

Memory Thread: My best friend from high school,also named June, visited us when my oldest child was a little girl and my first son was a baby. When I put the little girl's shoes on in the morning, I tied them and tied the bow over again, so the tying would last all day. During her visit, June decided to teach the child how to tie her own shoelaces. It hadn't even occurred to me! June patiently spent a lot of time on this task, which my daughter was eager to master. And did! It was one of the early times when I realized that the child is an actual person who needs to master tasks, not just have things done to/for them. (I was very young. . .) That was a good lesson, and a good indication of the kind of wonderful person my friend is. We graduated from high school in 1953, and we are still in touch. Teach a child something useful in the coming week. My mother-in-law showed me how to make homemade noodles--you don't even have to measure anything!-- that I still make. Sleep well!

Flower made of watered silk

This delicate flower--the rhododendron bush too delicate to survive in our yard when we were away and the watering system failed-- has almost certainly nothing to do with the much more stark and manly poem I found for tonight. It is in American Poet, Spring 2013, on page 40. Gary Snyder's presence there celebrates the Wallace Stevens Award (recognizing outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry!) from the Academy of American Poets given to him this year. There's a nice chunk of change with that. This poem has been one of my favorites for years and years and years and years. It has a kinship with the ancient Chinese poetry that Snyder loves, too.

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

I'm quite tired tonight. I finally did paint the peeling board on the patio railing. The painting was easy, but the scraping and preparation were harder. And the cleanup was rough, because I used outdoor oil paint, and had to clean the brush. I still have a few white spots on my hand, like the remnants of virtue. Now I have two more days to pack for summer and autumn in Northern Michigan. I also hope to leave this place in a decent shape.
Went to my last-of-the-season Camera Club of Eagle tonight. It was a great critique of lots of submitted photos by a woman whose whole name is, if I have it right:  Beatriz Fabiana Loverde de Huffaker. She goes by Fabiana, and has the most excellent eye. She is ever striving to improve her photography and wants you to ramp it up, too! I enjoyed every bit of this and will miss my CCoE when I am not here.