Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Cleaning Up After the Poetry Salon

It's not always easy.

Proper nouns are manageable.
They stack well.
Biggest on the bottom -
The Great Plains, Idaho, Mt. Rainier -
then the smaller stuff left behind -
Boxcars, photographs, you know.

Adjectives are remarkably tough to clean up.
The dry ones catch on the furniture,
bury themselves in cracks
hide in the pocket of an old sweater.
They crumble to awkward, ungainly,
unmanageable, yes fragile
pieces …that somehow cunningly avoid
the shedding broom some poet has
left behind.
And wet ones like sticky and slimy - yikes!

Cleaning up the leavings of Wendell Berry?
it's a grange meeting hall.
Rich black dirt everywhere,
corn stalks, the lingering thick odor of
compost and just a hint of cow manure
on your shoes and your best carpet.

And Jesus! Those poems about stars -
the poets have no idea.
Whole constellations left behind -
Watch it with the Pleides, they have sharp points
And yes, the Dog Star does bite.

My rule would be -
you brought 'em, you take 'em home.

Food is good in a poem.
Mom's apple pie and romantic dinners for two
are usually digested by the salon - no leftovers.
It's the ethnic dishes with strange names
luedafisk, sauerkraut, gefiltafish
and anything made with hot peppers
Well, you know.

Poets - a little consideration -
slip in some sponges, maybe
a mop or really - just a mouthful of food,
a spoonful -
yes, spoons for everybody.

And come on,
no animals bigger than a cat or small dog.
polar bears and coyotes are disasters.

Oh I could go on…
mixed metaphors sliding
down the walls and tangled
in the drapes.

Cliches hiding their heads in the corners.
shy, embarrassed marmots standing by dead seals.
stinking sea weed and sharks behind the sofa
And fish - fish beyond number -
flopping on the floor.

Verbs are easy - they move around
so much - just
open the door and they
take care of themselves.

But poets,
It's the birds left behind…
Egret, Robin, wrens, a flock of seagulls,
a murder of crows…
For God's sake leave a window open.

But eagle, oh my friends, the eagle
he glowers there
from the chandelier
Royally pissed!
A moment in a poem
then forgotten
in the closed room.

I know, I know.
I'm making a new mess now -
I'll need some help here with
Idaho and that eagle.

For the rest
I brought 'em.
I'll take 'em home.

- Doug von Koss

Let America Be America Again



Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where it is free.


(America never was America to me.)


Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That anyone be crushed by one above.


(It never was America to me.)


O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.


(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free".)


Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?


I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.


I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the people! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!


I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.


Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free".


The free?


Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that's almost dead today.


O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-the land where every one is free.
The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.


Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!


Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!


- Langston Hughes

Antepasados We are one because America is one continent tied by the slender curves of Panama. We are one people tied by the buried bones of ancestors the buried bones of ancestors from Asia to America from Africa to America from Europe to America Back to the first mothers and the first fathers back to the first gardens of flowers and fruits, where vegetables grew wild. The soft thick grasses cushioned their bodies when they lay down to love. Warm water gurgled up from the earth and spilled down into clear pools. Feathers waved their heads and floated across their bodies as they strutted in the afternoon But then the snake of greed grew like a weed planted the seed that made one person think that to fill their need or to succeed they had to use someone else's labor for their own profit. Wars came. Animals died. Women and cattle became property, Slaves were chained, put to work, endless work that finally built factories and smog, rich parts of town and poor built on the buried bones of antepasados the buried bones of ancestors. Shake the bones hear their ghostly moans. We learn from our past to build our future. - Nina Serrano

Morning Prayers


I have missed the guardian spirit
of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.


This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.


This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.


I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.


This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.




- Joy Harjo

Splendor

One day it's the clouds,
one day the mountains.
One day the latest bloom
of roses - the pure monochromes,
the dazzling hybrids - inspiration
for the cathedral's round windows.
Every now and then
there's the splendor
of thought: the singular
idea and its brilliant retinue -
words, cadence, point of view,
little gold arrows flitting
between the lines.
And too the splendor
of no thought at all:
hands lying calmly
in the lap, or swinging
a six iron with effortless
tempo. More often than not
splendor is the star we orbit
without a second thought,
especially as it arrives
and departs. One day
it's the blue glassy bay,
one day the night
and its array of jewels,
visible and invisible.
Sometimes it's the warm clarity
of a face that finds your face
and doesn't turn away.
Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,
that will radiate farther
than you might imagine.
One day it's the entire day
itself, each hour foregoing
its number and name,
its cumbersome clothes, a day
that says come as you are,
large enough for fear and doubt,
with room to spare: the most secret
wish, the deepest, the darkest,
turned inside out.

- Thomas Centolella

Wow.

Leaving Enterprise


Walking away
from the rental car
feeling clean, finished,
practice


for a future walking
away from all
I thought I was.


- Max Reif

Skunk Cabbage


Dust of fresh snow on frost heaved earth
January's brown stalks flutter in the breeze.
A quest in search of skunk cabbage,
a plant both common and magical,
first wildflower of spring
using the stored energy in its roots
to create a bubble of warmth
in its strange purplish spathe
like hands cradling a candle flame.


Lots to see on the way.
Flock of turkeys,
marching single file across the trail.
one, two, seventy-five, seventy-six.
And the dark upright skeletons of cockle burr plants.
Burr after burr, hooked barbs
and double seeds inside every one,
one will sprout this spring, and one the next,
a natural insurance policy for survival.
These fed the multitudes of Carolina parakeets,
who fly no more in these faster paced days.


Harley told me this plant biography,
one long ago summer day
as I painfully plucked the burrs from my dogs,
sending an arrow of beauty into a dark, cussing moment.
He seemed old then, full of jokes and
facts he slipped in about how he loved this natural world.


After the hike and the miracle of
flowers in the frozen ground,
we go to the hospital to see Harley, now ninety six,
bruised arms and wasted body,
swathed in sheets and confusion, and still
a glimmer in his eyes.
He takes the chocolate malt, and sips hard
through his straw while we talk,
old stories pulled from the cobwebs of memory,
taking their last bow in the afternoon's pale light.


"My hands are cold", he says as I take the cup,
and wrap my hands around his,
the strength and warmth of mine
cradling what seems now so cold and frail.
The strength and warmth of mine,
hewn long ago from these shadowy roots I now hold,
like the skunk cabbage,
returning last summer's sun to this day.


- Alan Cohen

Notice


This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into his street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.

- Steve Kowit

A Reminder To Myself


Reading about writing
is not writing.
Having the perfect pen and paper
or notebook
is not writing.
Thinking about writing
is not writing.
Procrastinating about writing
is not writing.

Mashing and wedging words
and ideas and feelings
and thoughts
onto a flat surface
then turning them on the wheel of time
is writing.
Centering the mass,
shaping it with the
hands of experience
and its invisible playmate imagination,
is writing.

Opening the center,
building the walls, feeling them
thin against your fingers--
but still hold--
is writing.

Cutting the pot free
to stand on its own,
to hint at its future as
useful and beautiful,
is writing.

Trimming, carving, firing,
glazing, and firing once more,
are re-writing.

Removing the work from the kiln
and seeing that it is transformed
yet whole, uncracked, unflawed,
perfect in its inperfection,
is writing "The End."


- Jane Mickelson

Circles


See how the daughter cleanses her mother’s
cracked mouth with lemon swabs
feeds her tiny bites of ice cream from a plastic spoon
as when the mother unhinges her bra and places her nipple
between the child’s eager open lips


how she strokes her arm with the tips
of her fingers, rotates it slowly at the shoulder
whispering that’s it, you can do it
like the mother holds her child’s hands over
her head and walks with her while she takes
her first steps


now she rolls the socks down her
swollen ankles, applies cream to the cracked
dry veins above the shin
as the mother unwraps the diaper
from the child’s hips, undoes the pins
from the wet cotton and wipes the skin clean


watch how she arranges the soft blanket
around her mother’s wrinkled form, leans down to
kiss her good-night, pulls the metal
cord on the over head light
fading blue linoleum to grey


in the half light of the room the child sleeps
with one hand against her cheek, the other on the
white pillow, mouth open, lips moving
as if speaking to God.




- Claire Drucker

The Excesses of God


Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.


- Robinson Jeffers

Song Original
A dream remembered on reading Denise Levertov's 'A Tree Telling of Orpheus'




When the sun rays of the night
first caress the insides of my body
waking me from thick-wooded slumber
faint notes begin to surge within my sap
and as they swarm through my veins
vibrating with the eddying air
my roots stir to the strain of chords—
dying to dance.


My branches sway while
out of my crown issue clear
resonating sounds, the silent pulse
of unfurling leaves
high pitched melodies
in an ancient tongue
that know my name
that know each atom of my being
so sweet and wounding.


All night I revel
abandoned to its might
even while my knotted trunk
harbors a secret fear.


All through that day I marvel—
yet before three full moons
steal over my limbs
dewy mists dim my remembrance.


Weighted by pelting rains
blinding gales, dark snows
countless weathered seasons
one star-filled sky
a slivered moon
slides down a beam
splintering my being.


My screams tear at the frenzied air
until high pitched notes
driven deep within
gush out
echoing in rippling pools—
in all you are and do
my ancient song sings you.




- Raphael Block

The Good Man

The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
in the time of oral
grave grave legalities of hate - all real
walks our prime registered reproach and seal.
Our successful moral.
The good man.
Watches our bogus roses, our rank wreath, our
love's unreliable cement, the gray
jubilees of our demondom.
Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly excluded blue.
Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land.
Put hand in hand land over.
Reprove
the abler droughts and manias of the day
and a felicity entreat.
Love.
Complete
your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew
stance, testament.


- Gwendolyn Brooks

The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the, market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.


- Charles Bukowski

Matins


Now we are awake
and now we are come together
and now we are thanking the Lord.
This is easy,
for the Lord is everywhere.
He is in the water and the air,
He is in the very walls.
He is around us and in us.
He is the floor on which we kneel.
We make our songs for him
as sweet as we can
for his goodness,
and, lo, he steps into the song
and out of it, having blessed it,
having recognized our intention,
having awakened us, who thought we were awake,
a second time,
having married us in the air and water,
having lifted us in intensity,
having lowered us in beautiful amiability,
having given us
each other,
and the weeds, dogs, cities, boats, dreams
that are the world.




- Mary Oliver

Making Peace


A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light--facets
of the forming crystal.


- Denise Levertov

Even The Smallest Trees Have Tops




Even the smallest trees
have tops.


Even the smallest hummingbirds
have wings.


Even the smallest rain drops
Hold the sea.


Even the faintest quail call
is enough to open the heart.


Even the Silence on top of Vision Mountain
has Sounds


Even the smallest ant
has legs to go.


Even the poorest of people
hold life's riches.


Even the damaged
have curiosity.


Even the tortured
embraces a bit of peace.


Even those who fail a thousand times
still will come and come again.


- Mary Morgan

A Diamond in the Rough


A faint glimmer glitters under
her hardened, dusty surface
as the guy at the bike shop says
"She's a diamond in the rough!"


Rusty spokes on ancient wheels
placated and worn
still effortlessly spin
willing to ride and be ridden
like new!


Tho' the world has made a mess
of her paint job
metal rubber aluminum hardware
and skin, tough on sight...


Her bristled curves turn smooth
softening as she rides
freedom's wind sweeping through
pedals licking the air
handle bars trembling in the quickening
her frame firmly rooted
steady open leaning
into the distance


Pushing forward wanting nothing
less than
this joy-ride
through time and space
holding firm
holding true
to the invisible force
of God's Hand


No more reckless far out deceptive
"I'm doing it alone!"
clanging beneath the surface
I choose now to lean in
to listen and to hear
God's voice breathing life
from the heart of creation
into this breath of life
called julie.


- Julie Bennion

Villanelle for Our Time




From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.


This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.


We loved the easy and the smart,
But now with keener hand and brain
We rise to play a greater part.


The lesser loyalties depart
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.


Not steering by the venal chart
that tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.


Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.


- Frank Scott (1899 - 1985)

A word on statistics

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.

Ready to help,
as long as it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four--well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain,
without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three,
sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred--
a figure that has never varied yet.


- Wislawa Szymborski

(from the collection Miracle Fair, translated by Joanna Trzeciak)

Hunting

Hunter’s Moon – a full moon in October, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise, which facilitates the hunting of nocturnal animals
One October evening, under the waning influence of a Hunter’s Moon, I went to hear three poets read in Occidental. They spoke of wisdom and doubt, their own and ours. Mike Tuggle read from his new book, What Lures the Foxes, but had nothing to say about foxes that night.

Later, as I pulled out of the parking lot, a grey fox slipped from behind a bush and ran down the road alongside my car. The street lamps outshone the moon as the fox shape-shifted, adapting under some ancient instruction, now beaten silver, now beaten gold. Pitched between dream and waking, we traveled that road together, she with her wisdom – or so I like to think – I with my doubts – as I know only too well. She and I have met before and I pondered how diminished I would be without her. But as we reached the edge of the light, the fox dashed across the road and vanished.

Under the night’s cool dappling of redwood and fir, having found what I had not sought, I drove on wondering what lures the foxes and how I could spread the news when some cowardice keeps me in this car, speaking in dead tongues.


- Susan Lamont

Keeping Cool While Being Transported




The time will be here.
I will be carried away like a fish,
or a bird scooped up from a pond of sky.
Winged creatures of mythical belief will assemble
at one synaptic point, just for me.
The time will be here
when I will go hot and heavy,
or coolly into the flowing night,
into darkness or light carried by one nose hair.
Perhaps I will be tethered to a bloodless back,
new grown moth wings curled and singed
as I pass through thestral drapes?
The time will be here
or over there, where I pause.
The cold side of the moon may open
like a pure Day-Lily,
a ghost writing of God's best seller,
reflecting at that time
the white satin lining of funeral flowers,
once more boxing me snugly in,
against infinity.


- Eric Ashford

Benedicto


May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than
your deepest dreams waits for you--
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.


- Edward Abbey

God, I love Edward Abbey. At age 18 I went on a week long river rafting trip with Outward Bound, and during the slow parts where the river widened and we just let it carry us downstream, our guide would pull out Edward Abbey and read to us. Abbey's environmental activism and deep love of nature really spoke to me then and still does. What a passionate voice. Thanks for this poem Larry. It brings back those great memories.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Benedicto


May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than
your deepest dreams waits for you--
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.


- Edward Abbey

---

Blue


Picasso, the favored one, didn't suffer, but
Knew some form of suffering should be
Sought to leave the comfort of good-enough.
Then, a friend's suicide spirals the world into winter. Blue
Begins the path that belongs to those
He'll never be, gifted as he is with genius.
Suffering, for him, must be to be imagined
Or sought. He begins the road
That belongs to others, journeys
Where none of them have ever been, nor
Will ever be. Blue and beyond.


- Rebecca del Rio


(after visiting the Picasso Museum in Barcelona)

Walking Ahead


They'll walk ahead, they tell us, and my
brother and I don't argue-we know the
drill, and love it:
our wives, two peas in a pod, walking
ahead, husbands behind them
surely and steadily
losing ground, until behold the women
are out of sight, but not before
the men have studied their
receding figures, backsides in a jiggling
syncopation-bear cubs wrestling in
gunny sacks, the one
beside me says, and I nod. And now, the
bear cubs having disappeared,
we pause on a small bridge
spanning a branch of the Republican.
Early October, early afternoon,
autumn flaunting itself
one hundred thousand falling leaves at
a time. Overhead, blueness
accented by white clouds
billowing. We lean on the wooden rail
to study the clear running water:
beneath it,
pebbles too many to count, glistening.
No aches, no requests, no
complaints. And
no one else to be seen. We therefore
unzip and relieve ourselves
into the river. Oh,
it's a perfect day to be doing what we
are doing, minnows at school
in the clear running
water, bird noises from a grandstand of
branches above us cheering
us on. And the girls?
Lost somewhere in this wilderness, we
say, and no doubt walking tirelessly in
circles-bear
cubs in gunny sacks, wrestling. So when
the time is ripe, and the spoils of separation
have been sweetly and equally
depleted, we will leave
this Elysium where
we have found relief and, by the power
derived from concern,
we will join them.


- Bill Kloefkorn

A Geography of Poets is all wrong, ed what poets now live where they say they do where they started out where they want to half the midwesterners did time in new york the other half in california only new yorkers write as if they are from new york and mostly they are not the ones in california were wounded elsewhere when they feel better or can't afford the rent they'll go back where they came from this is america you get hurt where you are born you make poetry out of it as far from home as you can get you die somewhere in between the only geography of poets is greyhound general motors rules them all ubi patria ibi bene or ibi bene ubi patria bread out of nostalgia not a lot of it either some of us came from very far maps don't help much - Andrei Codrescu

Some of us come from just right here
And hold our West Coast traumas dear ...

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.

- Sherman Alexie