Crocus, Sure Sign of Spring, photograph by Mary Clark
I’ve decided to pause my blog for a while. I know “to pause” is a privilege not everyone in the world has. When war, natural disasters, and famine hit, people cannot say, I think I’ll take some time off from this. I’m fortunate and grateful for that. What does it mean? Consider being idle, unproductive, lazy, possibly losing meaning in your life, is that the same as taking a break from the routine? I hope not. The value of a pause can mean reflection leading to change or renewed energy to re-engage with many if not all of the same challenges.
Pauses are built into our lives, in religious holidays and national holidays, even birthdays are meant to give people time to stop and reflect and do something different that day, or do nothing much at all! Taking a vacation usually means vacating a space and our sense of time often alters. Then there was the pandemic, when the pause was not voluntary, and many of us wondered what we would do to “fill” the days. I filled my belly and gained the usual 15 pandemic pounds (which I’ve since lost, well, most of it).
So, without more ado, here’s my pause.
And a pause poem.
Theodore Roethke’s poem, The Pause
I have walked past my widest range, But still the landscape does not change. . . . My eyes are used to sights like these: I stand between familiar trees.
Two wind-blown hemlocks make a door To country I shall soon explore.
Recently I updated my book Community: Journal of Power Politics and Democracy in Hell’s Kitchenon Amazon and Draft2Digital with more than 20 photographs of my life in New York City, along with editing and a few additions. Here are two photos from the book.
That’s me and my first cat in NYC, 1982.
David Dinkins, who would later be elected mayor, and Peter Yarrow singing and playing guitar, on a campaign bus on Ninth Avenue near West 42nd Street, NYC, 1985. Photograph by Mary Clark.
When I lived in New York, the world came to me. Now that I am old and gray and live far away, I don’t meet new people and have adventures much anymore – except in books. Here are some of the Literary Trips I took in 2023.
Landlines: The Remarkable Story of a Thousand Mile Journey Across Britain, by Raynor Winn. I hiked along with her and her husband through dust and rain, across bogs and up mountains, immersed in the environment, and appreciating her humor and perseverance. After this book, I read her first book, The Salt Path, about their walk along the South West Coast Path in southern England. This book will be a classic, I think. Her second book, The Wild Silence, which I’m reading now, is about the time after that walk.
The Last Wilderness: A Journey into Silence, by Neil Ansell. A trek through the “Rough Bounds” of Scotland. Wetness abounds whether rain or “lochan” or the sea. This book may be for afficionados of nature writing, but I liked it for its straightforward approach. Ansell gives the reader a new view of what we call wilderness, how little of it is really left, but also its resilience.
The Seed Keeper, by Diane Wilson. The story of the Dakota (Dakhóta) people who lived in Minnesota, specifically, of Rosalie Iron Wing, a girl who was placed in foster care with white families after her father’s death, and later married a white farmer. She found seeds in his cellar, which had been kept by his mother. A parallel story tells of her female ancestors, how they and their families were removed from their land and taken west to reservations. The women kept the seeds so they could plant them wherever they went, an act of survival. An informative story, with occasional pedantic passages, but one worth reading. Foreword by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Showboatand Fanny Herself, by Edna Ferber. Showboat is not a novel in the usual sense, it meanders about, much like the Mississippi River it takes place upon. It is unforgettable. And I’d take that trip again! Fanny Herself is an expose of being Jewish in America, and as with Showboat, of the diversity and tensions of American life. Great trips through the Midwest. Both books are important documents of this country, and of the city of Chicago, as is another of her books, So Big.
Shadows on the Rock, by Willa Cather. A lovely book, a mood poem that presents a simple story of a father and daughter and the history of Quebec City. Although there’s little action, her writing carried me along. Weather is the great character here. I felt completely immersed in this place. It’s as if I’ve been to that part of Canada in the 1690s.
Take What You Can Carry: A Novel, by Gian Sardar. A naïve American woman travels with her Kurdish boyfriend to Iraq in the early days of Saddam Hussein’s rise to power. She begins to realize the danger they are in but tries to keep her sense of normal life as the Kurdish village and her boyfriend’s family come under attack. She forms a bond with a young, orphaned girl. He decides to stay to protect his family, while she returns to the U.S. That’s not how it ends, but no spoilers!
No Longer at Ease, by Chinua Achebe. I’ve read all three books of the African Trilogy now. The first one, Things Fall Apart, is the most interesting as it describes life before and just as European colonization begins. He gives us a clear picture of the transformation across time. The feeling of disconnection is palpable in his main characters.
Shadows on the Grass, by Isak Dinesen. Africa from the colonial point of view, but with an outlier’s sense of things. She buys into some stereotypes, but not the one that says this is really her land. She knows she can never physically return, but her heart and soul remain there. This short book wraps up her relationships with people she knew when she had a farm in Kenya. Dinesen (Karen Blixen) is one-of-a-kind, giving us some of our most illuminating word adventures. Out of Africa is a classic, but my favorite book of hers will always be Seven Gothic Tales.
Another book by a strong-willed woman, African Stories, by Doris Lessing, is also worth reading for its beautiful language and point of view, which can be juxtaposed with the beautiful language and different points of view of native African writers.
How Beautiful We Were: A Novel, by Imbolo Mbue. People in a fictional African village struggle to survive as their land and crops are destroyed and the water and air are polluted by an American oil company. Those who protest or dare to speak to authorities disappear; some are imprisoned, and others executed by the African government which is in cahoots with the oil company. The villagers meet with representatives of the oil company but attempts to resolve issues are ultimately undermined by the company, the government, and a few of their own leaders. Getting their story out to the world seems the only way. Several people risk everything to save the village, but it may be too late.
Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, by Dawn Turner. Three black girls from the Chicago projects become friends. Their journeys begin to diverge as they grow into adulthood. One girl pursues an education and a career, while the other two have trouble finding their way. They rely on one another for the kind of support only found among friends. There’s a history of the area, along with descriptions of the projects as new and later falling into disrepair as the social fabric also disintegrates, which is woven into the story.
Telling Sonny: A Novel, by Elizabeth Gauffreau. A young woman goes on a journey through the Eastern United States, especially New England, with her new husband who performs in a theater group. This is a time when carnivals and traveling theater were the only entertainments available to people. Train stations, hotels, and theaters form her life of passing through. Everything is transient including her relationship with her husband. He married her out of obligation after basically “taking advantage” (as people used to say, and I add to that, there is and was no sense of guilt) of her one lonely evening. The marriage breaks up; she returns to her little town with a son. What can she tell her son when she learns his father has died?
Not all my journeys were as satisfying. The books I was disappointed in:
Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett. The “secret” is not a surprise, the whole story not that interesting. I think she missed an opportunity to delve into gun violence and mishaps that take so many children’s lives.
Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather. This reminds me of a textbook in a history class. For her great work, see her books in the O, Pioneer Series, in particular, My Antonia.
A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. I didn’t finish it. Early essays about flora and fauna are good but become repetitive. His ideas about conservation were ground-breaking (ha ha) at the time, but not now.
The Last Gift, by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Again, the surprise isn’t surprising. Depictions of life in his home country are the best parts. I will read another of his books, one set in Africa or Madagascar.
The Magic Kingdom, by Russell Banks. The real story is more interesting. Why he left Carrie Nation out of his fictionalized account is unfathomable. I lived in this area of Florida and knew all along the section he was describing was NOT the one that was bought by the Walt Disney Company. I enjoyed his writing about the land and waterscape of Central Florida. However, the story of the early utopian experiments in America are important to understanding American history. Maybe best to read the original sources?
Wishing everyone a peaceful and prosperous New Year!
Hello, blogger friends and readers, I wish you Happy Holidays! This season is filled with the songs and echoes of eternal joy that we sense, and of the peaceful and creative life this joy creates.
Bing Crosby and David Bowie September 11, 1977
Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Christmas Mail
by Ted Kooser
Cards in each mailbox, angel, manger, star and lamb, as the rural carrier, driving the snowy roads, hears from her bundles the plaintive bleating of sheep, the shuffle of sandals, the clopping of camels.
The world has changed, once again. In my lifetime the internet and the smart phone. Ecommerce and Emojis. While we were busy fighting for old paradigms, the computer techs staged their own revolution. They do not understand it, they only follow the paths that open up as they dither onward. Will it lead to good or bad or a mixed up world that does not resemble the past mixed up world?
An AI Cover of “Sultans of Swing” featuring the “voices” along with doctored images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden (removed from YouTube shortly after I viewed it) showed them as aging rock stars, and almost made it seem possible that peace could exist between them and among us. An alternate universe.
A computer’s ability to learn at mach speed can be of great benefit to humanity in the fields of medicine, climate change, and other sciences. Can it be used to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? End hunger and war in Sudan and Darfur?
OpenAI uses all the work it’s scoffed up on the internet, original writing and artwork by actual human beings who posted their work online for free, and now it belongs to the machines. AI uses these works to generate simulacrums. To some extent we already live in a human-created world of simulacrums, where nature exists in parks and preserves and farms, and families exist on Facebook. AI is building on this, like new towns on the sites of old ruins. Except the the creators of the ruins were alive and struggling to survive and thought their lives had purpose. We’re now giving purpose in the form of tasks and missions to computers.
With what is going on in the world it is hard to hear the poetry, to take the time for its lessons of humanity, for art’s meaning in our short lives. I thought of doing a selection of short poems. Writing, though, has its way of coming on, pushing through like a birth that cannot be denied. I feel for the people caught up in war, famine, and hopelessness around the world. My heart goes out to both Israelis and Palestinians, and to hope for a change in heart for those infused with dogma and hatred, and to the valiant Ukrainians and closed-off-from-information Russians. I think of where I get the news, reminding myself to look further, read more, communicate more. At the end of this blog, I am adding some of my thoughts.
Different takes on the world as it is today. Some hopeful.
My daughter wouldn’t hurt a spider That had nested Between her bicycle handles For two weeks She waited Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said It will simply know This isn’t a place to call home And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others Become refugees isn’t it?
From Alight
Island by Langston Hughes
Wave of sorrow, Do not drown me now:
I see the island Still ahead somehow.
I see the island And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow, Take me there.
Aharon Shabtai is a famous Jewish poet. His poem, “Lotem Abdel Shafi”, includes the lines:
My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence;
only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress.
My friend Richard Spiegel wrote this after the October 7 attack.
Haven’t turned on the radio yet today. Staying away from the news. Everything changes moment by moment.
Tumbling through unbearable lost bearings arms reaching out swinging slapping bruising bodies where is an embrace?
In the distance rumors of mountains while here shadows cast by homes along streets lined with trees.
Counting steps and breaths. What counts?
Thoughts on Israel and Palestine October 2023
What does an Israeli ground invasion accomplish now? I don’t believe a military solution exists for Israel. It’s a propaganda war. Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen and women are spinning one-sided stories of victimization. Neither side admits any responsibility for the current situation.
Right now the narrative is that the U.S. and President Biden fully support the Israeli war machine. Listening to Biden’s speech I hear him advising caution, thinking of long-term goals, putting the hostages’ safety first, providing humanitarian aid, and following the rules of war, that is, trying to minimize civilian casualties. Palestinians wanted more sympathy for their plight. This is because we are all human. We need to be recognized as having meaningful lives, lives that are important as any other lives.
The cycle is the same every time, and with so much distrust the truth about specific events doesn’t matter, which means people can fabricate narratives that support their side.
The cycle. Every time the peace process was making progress, an attack by a suicide bomber or gunman would be carried out against Israelis by a Palestinian extremist who rejected the existence of the state of Israel and therefore a two-state solution. Wouldn’t that have been calculated in after the first several times? Yes, there’s going to be an attack by someone who doesn’t want peace and co-existence between the two, and we know that, and when it happens we will not be deterred, we’ll continue the peace negotiations. But no, it worked every time. And it continued to be a tool of those who opposed peace in the region.
Narratives. How easy it is to descend into conspiracy theories. What if? Netanyahu and his right-wing government knew they were losing popularity, and on hearing there might be an attack, made sure there was minimal security along the Gaza border. They thought the attack wouldn’t be that bad. Then they could rally people around them again. The attack turned out to be horrific. But that only plays even more into Netanyahu’s hands. A country’s not going to change presidents during wartime, right? Rather than hold him and his government and the military leaders accountable, Israeli citizens appear to support a full-scale response. And we hear the war may last ten years!
Truth. There are alternatives to bombing and a ground war. Strengthening the border, beefing up security, infiltrating Hamas, stopping the flow of money and arms, judicious use of special forces, changes in policy, diplomacy and public relations might be a better course.
The hospital attack happened just before Biden was to meet with other leaders in the region. Who benefits from this attack? Hamas or another jihadist group, since they do not want peace with Israel. Their stated purpose is to end the state of Israel. Another possibility, the hard right Israeli government which thrives off conflict with Palestinians. Biden was suggesting changes in direction that Netanyahu and his followers oppose, such as working with the Palestinian Authority, which means looking at root causes, and showing support for Arab leaders in the region.
When Yasser Arafat changed from violence to diplomacy, Israeli leaders worked to de-legitimize him, saying, once a terrorist, always a terrorist. They undermined the PLO’s efforts to seek a peaceful resolution. Arafat came close to succeeding when President Clinton tried to broker a deal with Israel, but he could not accept the two-state solution as presented because it meant Palestinians would be living in two separate areas (West Bank and Gaza), and he knew his people would not accept that.
In the intervening years, Israel has continued to build Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, an area not granted to them by the original U.N. agreement. President Obama urged Israel to extend its moratorium on further settlements but stopped short of calling them illegal, in a balancing act that has become wearisome for all. Unfortunately, more settlements were built.
The jihadist movement has only grown stronger because of this ongoing conflict. War serves the purpose of Iran and its vision of an Islamic caliphate or allied Islamic states.
Richard writes, Peaceful coexistence is a reality that must be embraced. People do not have to live in constant states of war, or threats of war. But not in a Pax Romana (any state of peace imposed by a strong nation on weaker or defeated nations).
By one-sidedly supporting Israel or the Palestinians, we keep people in their silos, and in endless conflict. Making excuses for either side, justifying the taking of hostages or displacing people from their homes, should never be acceptable. Root causes must include the actions of Israel but also the Islamic jihadist groups (and their sponsors) that harbor among peaceful Arab and other regional citizens and disrupt any attempts at peace.
This is an eclectic blog post, but isn’t that what a change of seasons is about? One world receding while another comes on? Every September a small town in Southwest Virginia hosts a music festival called Bristol Rhythm and Roots. It’s mostly country and country rock music, but includes the blues and jazz and blended music. Crowds come into town, attending concerts indoors and outdoors. Most are outdoors and the weather plays a part: thunderstorms and hot as summer, or a chill in the air. The audience dresses for the festival in Nashville chic: ripped jeans, short denim skirts and jackets, bell bottoms, or just ordinary folks. One older man I saw was sporting a Margaritaville tee-shirt. From Friday night through Sunday noon downtown rocks with amplified music: drums, electric guitars and fiddles. I live nearby and can hear concerts on one of the stages when I open my living room window. After the festival the town seems strangely quiet. My neighbors and I have to readjust, some gladly and others like me feeling the music’s absence.
Among the groups this year: 49 Winchester’s Russell County Line really captures what it’s like living out here, the singer’s accent Southern but with a hearty edge of Appalachian Country.
Others I like are Amythyst Kiah, Sons of the East, Momma Molasses, and Allison Russell.
Watch out for this young group: Arcy Drive.
RIP Jimmy Buffett. He kept me in contact with the ocean and the coast, my true home. He was a national treasure and a darn good poet!
Now, to collect leaves from ancient times, a return to Old England. From Solomon and Saturn:
A woman and man must bring into the world a child by birth. A tree on the earth must lose its leaves; the branches mourn. Those who are ready must go; the doomed die and every day struggle against their departure from the world.
Old English:
Sceal wif ond wer in woruld cennan bearn mid gebyrdum. Beam sceal on eorðan leafum liþan, leomu gnornian. Fus sceal feran, fæge sweltan ond dogra gehwam ymb gedal sacan middangeardes.
A little while the leaves are green; then they wither again, fall to the earth, and die, turn to dust. Just so fall those who for a long time continue in their crimes, live in wickedness, hide their treasures, hoard them eagerly in safe places at the pleasure of the devil.
Old English:
Lytle hwile leaf beoð grene; ðonne hie eft fealewiað, feallað on eorðan and forweorniað, weorðað to duste. Swa ðonne gefeallað ða ðe fyrena ær lange læstað, lifiað him in mane, hydað heahgestreon, healdað georne on fæstenne feondum to willan.
Translated on the blog, A Clerk of Oxford.
Jane Austen weaves character, action, and setting together so that everything falls into place. In this case, from one of my favorite books of hers, Persuasion, the season is Fall.
Anne’s object was not to be in the way of anybody; and where the narrow paths across the fields made many separations necessary, to keep with her brother and sister. Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied her mind as much as possible in such-like musings and quotations; but it was not possible, that when within reach of Captain Wentworth’s conversation with either of the Miss Musgroves, she should not try to hear it… After one of the many praises of the day, which were continually bursting forth, Captain Wentworth added —
“What glorious weather for the Admiral and my sister! They meant to take a long drive this morning; perhaps we may hail them from some of these hills. They talked of coming into this side of the country. I wonder whereabouts they will upset to-day. Oh! it does happen very often, I assure you; but my sister makes nothing of it; she would as lieve be tossed out as not.”
“Ah! You make the most of it, I know,” cried Louisa; “but if it were really so, I should do just the same in her place. If I loved a man as she loves the Admiral, I would be always with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him than driven safely by anybody else.”
It was spoken with enthusiasm.
“Had you?” cried he, catching the same tone; “I honour you!” And there was silence between them for a little while.
Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth, and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.
The idea that sound exists out there in space is intriguing. A continuous rushing sound, with intermittent booms or crackles and hints of melody? Scientists believe they have captured the sound of the “big bang.” Gravitational waves roll over the earth, creating vibrations in the fabric of spacetime (a faint but pervasive hum).
The sounds of the earth are all around us, drowned out by our own noise, unless we walk into quiet spaces, or simply listen: the wind in the trees, birdsong morning and evening, crickets and cicadas in summer, the hush after a snowfall. Our human voices also keep us connected, sometimes too much, others not enough. Silence is a form of speech too. Let thoughts and feelings fill the spaces between us.
Stone By Danusha Lameris
And what am I doing here, in a yurt on the side of a hill at the ragged edge of the tree line, sheltered by conifer and bay, watching the wind lift, softly, the dry leaves of bamboo? I lie on the floor and let the sun fall across my back, as I have been for the past hour, listening to the distant traffic, to the calls of birds I cannot name. Once, I had so much I wanted to accomplish. Now, all I know is that I want to get closer to it – to the rocky slope, the orange petals of the nasturtium adorning the fence, the wind’s sudden breath. Close enough that I can almost feel, at night, the slight pressure of the stars against my skin. Isn’t this what the mystics meant when they spoke of forsaking the world? Not to turn our backs to it, only to its elaborate plots, its complicated pleasures – in favor of the pine’s long shadow, the slow song of the grass. I’m always forgetting, and remembering, and forgetting. I want to leave something here in the rough dirt: a twig, a small stone – perhaps this poem – a reminder to begin, again, by listening carefully with the body’s rapt attention – remember? To this. to this.
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens
The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
We live in a world of singers and the song is loud or soft, sweet or shrill, sometimes silent. But listen. With a storm approaching someone shelters a robin’s nest. Another whistles to a black dog on the beach. One laughs to herself, reading alone in the kitchen. In the woodlot someone grunts as he swings the ax. There’s the sound trees make after the wind stops and there are those who look into the eyes of nurses coming off the night shift, those greeting the undertaker when he arrives with his unique instruments. A man has just argued with his wife. Now he stands alone on the dark porch, watching the rain. One hums at the workbench, carving a delicate bird (last night she groaned with relief after a phone call). One sighs as he imagines Odysseus tied to the mast, and one looks up when a bell rings and a customer enters his shop. One is astonished hearing the fox bark its own peculiar song and one just stands on the rocks, listening to the sea.
From At Bunker Cove.
“The Sound of Silence” by Wuauquikuna, Ecuadorian musicians
Music Video
Tomorrow by Barbara Crooker
there will be sun, scalloped by clouds, ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong. It will be a temperate seventy-five, low humidity. For twenty-four hours, all politicians will be silent. Reality programs will vanish from TV, replaced by the “snow” that used to decorate our screens when reception wasn’t working. Soldiers will toss their weapons in the grass. The oceans will stop their inexorable rise. No one will have to sit on a committee. When twilight falls, the aurora borealis will cut off cell phones, scramble the internet. We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek, decorate our hair with fireflies, spin until we’re dizzy, collapse on the dew-decked lawn and look up, perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines of cold code written in the stars….
Summer is dirt, earthworms, tilling of the soil, pruning and weeding, choosing what lives and does not, surprises and anticipation of harvest. These poems celebrate the nitty gritty of our existence and the “big” things that move below the surface or in the celestial sphere.
Late Ripeness By Czeslaw Milosz Translated by Robert Hass and Czeslaw Milosz
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before.
I was not separated from people, grief and pity joined us. We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.
For where we come from there is no division into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part of the gift we received for our long journey.
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago— a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us, waiting for a fulfillment.
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard, as are all men and women living at the same time, whether they are aware of it or not.
Bad News Good News Marjorie Saiser
I was at a camp in the country, you were home in the city, and bad news had come to you.
You texted me as I sat with others around a campfire. It had been a test you and I
hadn’t taken seriously, hadn’t worried about. You texted the bad news word
cancer. I read it in that circle around the fire. There was singing and laughter to my right and left
and there was that word on the screen. I tried to text back but, as often happened in that county,
my reply would not send, so I went to higher ground. I stood on a hill above the river and sent you the most beautiful words I could manage,
put them together, each following each. Under Ursa Major, Polaris, Cassiopeia, a space station flashing, I said what had been said
many times, important times, foolish times: those words soft-bodied humans say when the news is bad. The I love you we wrap around our
need and hurl at the cosmos: Take this, you heartless nothing and everything, take this. I chose words to fling into the dark toward you
while the gray-robed coyote came out of hiding and the badger wandered the unlit hill and the lark rested herself in tall grasses;
I sent the most necessary syllables we have, after all this time the ones we want to hear: I said Home, I said Love, I said Tomorrow.
Viral Rain, photo by Mary Clark
Dear Dirt
Sharon Olds
Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you, I thought that you were only the background for the leading characters—the plants and animals and human animals. It’s as if I had loved only the stars and not the sky which gave them space in which to shine. Subtle, various, sensitive, you are the skin of our terrain, you’re our democracy. When I understood I had never honored you as a living equal, I was ashamed of myself, as if I had not recognized a character who looked so different from me, but now I can see us all, made of the same basic materials— cousins of that first exploding from nothing— in our intricate equation together. O dirt, help us find ways to serve your life, you who have brought us forth, and fed us, and who at the end will take us in and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.
A song by Ferron, sung by Cheryl Wheeler; if you don’t know Cheryl, I recommend you get acquainted. She’s a singer and songwriter. #American #music
Ain’t Life A Brook, Cheryl Wheeler
Song For The Rainy Season
Elizabeth Bishop
Hidden, oh hidden in the high fog the house we live in, beneath the magnetic rock, rain-, rainbow-ridden, where blood-black bromelias, lichens, owls, and the lint of the waterfalls cling, familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age of water the brook sings loud from a rib cage of giant fern; vapor climbs up the thick growth effortlessly, turns back, holding them both, house and rock, in a private cloud.
At night, on the roof, blind drops crawl and the ordinary brown owl gives us proof he can count: five times–always five– he stamps and takes off after the fat frogs that, shrilling for love, clamber and mount.
House, open house to the white dew and the milk-white sunrise kind to the eyes, to membership of silver fish, mouse, bookworms, big moths; with a wall for the mildew’s ignorant map;
darkened and tarnished by the warm touch of the warm breath, maculate, cherished; rejoice! For a later era will differ. (O difference that kills or intimidates, much of all our small shadowy life!) Without water
the great rock will stare unmagnetized, bare, no longer wearing rainbows or rain, the forgiving air and the high fog gone; the owls will move on and the several waterfalls shrivel in the steady sun.
Three passages from my books about the changes we experience as we grow and age, through the seasons, from spring to summer wine to fall and winter (w)rapture. Prose to accompany photos I took over the years in Manhattan, New York City.
Eighth Avenue looking south from West 46th Street
From Community:
Whenever I walk down the avenue, and it’s quiet like this, I hear a sound like a river or a loving sigh, a song like a dream, music of the dawn of an era and its end. And how the area is filled with people from across America and the world, singers, dancers, actors, cabdrivers, ushers, senators, sailors, lovers, fighters, dreamers, re-filling these tenements and churches and temples and schools, and in the end, the world comes around.
Ninth Avenue at West 44th Street looking southeast. This view of the Empire State Building is blocked now by development on West 42nd Street. The original photo is lost apparently; this one was in my newspaper.
From Passages:
Years ago, I was waiting for the sun. I’ve found it now, thrown myself into its aura. In daylight, the city is awash with steam and grit, waves of alarm and subterranean booms, bones in the soft crushing crowds, metal gliding and banging against sudden turns, all carrying me along, a willing cork in turbulence.
On another plane, the city unfolds as a spiraled lotus, enticing me into its petaled paths toward new vistas and seemingly infinite realms.
I’m in the vortex of the “crossroads of the world.” Midtown Manhattan splays light, white hot, ruthless, spurring us on. Multi-tiered buildings promise many directions, redirections.
As darkness falls, a change in design. Shadow and light, revolving signs, blinking messages. Mischief, dreams, endless interaction. And a change in timbre. Sweat cools but heat remains, passion finds its channels. The lotus in shadow and light, revolving.
And rising neon and fluorescent, the midnight sun of Times Square.
From Into The Fire:
West 46th Street past Ninth Avenue, St. Clement’s Church on the right with green spire, January 1996
Miles to go, miles of snow, a transfigured night and all in sight covered in a winding sheet of white. Stopping at a snowy Ninth Avenue, face and hands wrapped against the wind, my poetic license in the back pocket of my blue jeans, I contemplated the divide before me.
The city streets were deserted, and I was alone in the canyoned silence. Ice-crystals glittered in streetlights, snow camel-backed cars and fenced sidewalks. On the avenue’s arctic slope, deep within the haunting sound of a muted city I could hear gypsy cabs snorting dragon-breath in the dark, and I would have stayed to watch fringes of icicles on fire escapes glow in the dying light.
I will be blogging once a month during June, July and August. I treasure the connections I’ve made in the blogosphere and will continue to read others’ work.
A small literary magazine published my poem about a Pride festival and parade in my town. I’m in a mostly rural area with three towns or cities, known as Tri-Cities, in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. It’s a conservative area, making this event more remarkable. However, a strong progressive presence is also in the area. Though I am not gay or transgender, I support people’s freedom to be who and what they are. In my poem I tried to convey the good feeling that emanated from the TriPride Festival.
TriPride Parade and Festival
(Kingsport and Johnson City, TN and Bristol TN/VA)
In the style of the Song of Amergin*
We came holding rainbow flags
We came with 22 floats
We came with 1000 marchers
We’re 10,000 strong and peaceful
We’re the flood of humanity
We’re mothers, sisters, brothers
We’re cousins, and friends
We know love can be lost
We know the rush to judgment
We know our song comes from the mountains
We sing and our music flows over town
We know our song is heard ’round the mountains
We’re the fire and flood of humanity
We see a few mutter and turn away
We know we belong
We’re here with rainbow-striped socks
We’re here to dispel hate and promote care
We’re here with love as our companion
We’re here
*“English poetic education should, really, begin not with Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin.” – Robert Graves
Published in Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Volume 43, No.11, May 2023
The 1970s. New ideas on how to live. Being young in the city, searching for identity and love and the most amazing life possible – that was the story of many back then. They were trailblazers. Martin is one of them.
Mary Clark, Writer 