February: The “Love” Month

February means Valentine’s Day, the season of the heart, so I’ve collected some love poems for you. Of course, there are famous ones, such as Elizabeth Barret Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways,” and W. H. Auden’s “The More Loving One.”

These poems are by contemporary poets as well as those who were writing long ago.

And poetry can come in other forms. In Australia, voters are preparing for a referendum on the “Uluru Statement from the Heart” giving a voice to the original inhabitants, the Aboriginal people.

History Is Calling, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, video

A medley of poems and songs begin with one of my favorites, “The Reclining Gardener,” by fellow poet and blogger, David Selzer.

THE RECLINING GARDENER

“The Reclining Gardener” by David Selzer

Camomile Tea

by Katherine Mansfield

Outside the sky is light with stars;
There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.

Another writer and blogger, Diane M. Denton, has completed a novel about the poet Christina Rosetti. You can view Diane Denton’s blog here.

Christina Rosetti’s poem, “A Birthday” is a marvelous love poem.

The Look
Sara Teasdale

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
      Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
      And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
      Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
      Haunts me night and day.

_____________

Serenade
Djuna Barnes

Three paces down the shore, low sounds the lute,
The better that my longing you may know;
I’m not asking you to come,
But—can’t you go?

Three words, “I love you,” and the whole is said—
The greatness of it throbs from sun to sun;
I’m not asking you to walk,
But—can’t you run?

Three paces in the moonlight’s glow I stand,
And here within the twilight beats my heart.
I’m not asking you to finish,
But—to start.

_____________

Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
Emily Dickinson

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the winds –
To a heart in port –
Done with the compass –
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor – Tonight –
In thee!

____________

Here’s one to make of what you will: Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion by Wallace Stevens

And The Beatles sing, “When I’m 64.”

Edward Kaplan (return to sender)

Baltimore Avenue looking west at sunset early these short days. Photo by Ed Kaplan 2020.

Two years ago in January Ed Kaplan, a good friend and fellow poet, died in his city of dreams, Philadelphia. He wrote this about himself:

“Ed Kaplan came ashore in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Since then, his work has been published in well over a hundred magazines and journals – as well as books including Alvin (1974, Triton Press, Boulder Creek, CA), Seraphics (1980, Avalon Editions, Oxford), & Pancratia (1983, Swamp Press, Oneonta, NY). Educated as a boy living in Atlantic City, walking home by the ocean, participating in the roar of waves, inspired by the vastness and the grain of sand underfoot.”

Ed was influenced by the Beat poets, but his closest association was with Vincent Ferrini, the sprightly irritant and muse of the “Big Man,” Charles Olson. Ferrini was the grain of sand that caused Olson to form a pearl of words. Vinnie was a good poet himself, living by the sea in true urchin fashion in Gloucester, Massachusetts. In 1981, Ed and Vinnie and came to the poetry program I ran at St. Clement’s Church in Manhattan. After this, Ed read at the St. Marks Poetry Project with Ferrini and Joel Oppenheimer, saying this about it in 2020: we each were shades of that dynamic that asks… make a poem or be the poem? three different answers. back then, i didn’t get it at all; vinny did and joel wasn’t pushing it on me, kind of in the middle. but it was a great reading! tho vinny & me read at st. clements, hell’s kitchen (not lost on us). He told me in an email (after reading a draft of my book, Into The Fire: A Poet’s Journey through Hell’s Kitchen) that Steve Levy, writer and journalist now with WIRED was in the St. Clement’s audience. Ed’s generosity, humor, and “poetry like weight-lifting” earned him respect in the writing community. He was not an academic poet, earning his living as an administrator; when I knew him in the 1980s he worked for a temple in New Jersey. In his later years he became a student of Zen and practiced meditation.

On December 27, 2020, Ed left a note on his Facebook page, saying, “ram dass was cremated, put in a cardboard box, marked . . . return to sender.” At the time his friends were unaware this was to be his last post.

He once told me the Facebook page would be an archive of his work. For the first year or so, I copied his posts and kept them on a computer file. Here are some of my favorites from those early posts as well as several of his poems.

first came the swimmers, lost on land, then the beatniks who commented, then the nudists then the fashion designers & models, poets, comedians, chefs & of course the players gangsters & spoilers, then modernists, then the big collider proved we are entangled, all one, not separate, then the music started & in 2525, we held hands and started over!!!!!!!!!

back from my morning ritual sending love to the street world…cold out there: one man, a regular of mine, refused gloves because his fingers are too swollen…one is too crazy to accept money (I think he may eat it). but the world rests there at that intersection of walnut street, 40th and love.

in the sabotaged ashes of my life, I sit; in the squandered pieces of my life, I sit; keeping my heart soft in spite of the complaining self, undeserving of this miracle, and at times, crying do over. I get it; I stay lost in it.

so much hatred manifest in our selfish melodramas, causes, opinions for the moment – judgments on everyone in the circus – awaking to this day, i seek to fill my heart with the good of people, their ability to change, to help each other with kindness, to drop the shouting, no matter how noble you think your path is – to honor the contradictions of being human while holding fast to the emptiness and the fullness of this too quick life.

still looking for something in the world – but it’s getting better – my story gets more ridiculous and less fantastic than I thought…and it’s perfect.

just a little history in zen about humor – sure, they smile those smiles, and the idea of “mu” or clown in Chinese Buddhism is dear to me, and in most traditions, real humor is in the background. You’d think that cosmic humor would sneak into any relevant theology. but zen isn’t theology. SO: as we turn a page on time everyday, another fiction, my prayer for the world is more laughing, vast laughters; laughter and wholeness before the big bang, and after, laughter in spite of, laughter because of, and laughter in the face of karma, just for a moment in our suffering. in between failed hopes & dashed dreams. at the site of hurting, directly on the wound. laughter at dying! give laughter a central role in your heart seeking. Apply a joke to your ambition. stick laughter on your frustrated relationships. watch children laugh like they are on fire!!

Ed Kaplan, poet, 2016

Power of Man
(from Table of the Permanent) 
a cold hand above the sea, to be immortal, he thinks
coals must be fed with stars, which, on eagles’ backs
lands in the rockslide sky like broken thunders.
he owns small cats & slate. he swallowed
the moon straight & it burned an albatross
inside his clumsy process from which he draws
his power of hammered gold & oyster foam.
poor men, he thinks, poor women: any of this earth
will survive your failure. his short days
have only flowers & no roots for memories
as he throws them into the open mouth
of his working riddle, the deep black guess
that somewhere he is considered the only one of his kind.
he cries better than anyone else. he staggers the mind.
he is the only wave that has come this far unbroken.
he is stubborn which means he crawls in her hair
shaking his fist in the soft face of the earth, arming himself
with dreams that only will be sold & gone & cold.
he is in front of a firing squad ready to prove otherwise.
he knows it's forever, that others will take everything
but that away. he touches the future which he keeps with him.
all these magnificent lies through which the little good
we do, one drop at a time, remains: he was a salesman or a
carpenter or a company man. he provides & clears his pride.

Power of Appointment

Indiana night driving in heavy snow
a single car stretched across route 74 at midnight
a truck two miles back slides out of the mirror
fierce wind & onelight houses by the highway
bones of prehistoric animals & lovers & theorists

100 miles of crowded solitude & jelly beans to stay awake
tossing cigarette ashes on the floor

we are salesmen in the thirties with belted luggage
we have families back home
it’s Thursday January 24
Indianapolis to Cincinnati

the brain is one third fat
two thirds extravagant gold sash

you are therefore never alone
angels are deft & spidery
drawn to drapes & lampshades
sit like parakeets on our shoulders or shadows

standing out in the cold between a satellite dish
and a double vision

as in love
as in death
as in the organized sex of our red bandanas
as in the serious theatre of her blood
as in being alone in the middle of a country at night
as in forest

I am surrounded by a ton or two of man’s rigor
peeling off into the organ moon as we always did
constantly surprized in our trauma
it’s a kingdom of crabs chains mace plums
emeralds brats and the unretrievable
the wood in the trees

the wind in the wind

As Olson lay convex

As Olson lay convex his liver

the ruling part

caught the attention of the Angel of Death

he tried deception
wanted to make the Angel
a fool
said
touch me & I will spoil

he tried accepting authority
Angel as physician
said
please don’t hurt me
you are a permanence
whose function it is
to terminate life on earth

he tried moving the cruel Angel
with his enormous need
to persuade her to shed a tear of mercy
he was a young girl
on the knees of an old gentleman
imploring
take her life instead of his

he used all the food at his table
his bones his animals his herbs his interior
a giant in the courtyard grabbing the fountain to his mouth
as if it would fit & quench

ran wild out of the ocean into jungles

a man who got taken in by lights & smoke

who was too damn heavy for the roof

he wouldn’t think of standing anywhere else

____

(I apologize for formatting problems. The first three and last three lines of “Olson lay convex” should be free-standing and single-spaced.)

The following video of the poem, “Seraphics,” about the issues around gun violence reflect his punchy style.

Songs of Winter

Blizzard January 1996 Hell’s Kitchen’s Ninth Avenue, NYC

Great winter poems include Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Can you think of others?

Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
 
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
 
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
 
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

The Window

A storm blew in last night and knocked out
the electricity. When I looked
through the window, the trees were translucent

Read more of “The Window” by Raymond Carver from Ultramarine. © Vintage, 1986. 

In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind
by Mary Oliver
 
On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind-
the other half having flown back to Bohemia-
 
spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,
 
and what shall I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.

Snow

by Kevin Hart

Some days
the snow has taken me in
to know the time of snow, to live
inside a world so quiet

i​ts music
is all a shimmering. Some evenings
when quite alone
I turn off every light

and watch the snow
enjoy the dark, moving lushly
through spiky air,
finding more time

in time
than when I stretch myself
and am
my father’s father. Oh yes,

there is
a sparkling choir, there surely is,
and dark ice air
through which we fall.

Sheep in the Winter Night
by Tom Hennen
 
Inside the barn the sheep were standing, pushed close to one
another. Some were dozing, some had eyes wide open listening
in the dark. Some had no doubt heard of wolves. They looked
weary with all the burdens they had to carry, like being thought
of as stupid and cowardly, disliked by cowboys for the way they
eat grass about an inch into the dirt, the silly look they have
just after shearing, of being one of the symbols of the Christian
religion. In the darkness of the barn their woolly backs were
full of light gathered on summer pastures. Above them their
white breath was suspended, while far off in the pine woods,
night was deep in silence. The owl and rabbit were wondering,
along with the trees, if the air would soon fill with snowflakes,
but the power that moves through the world and makes our
hair stand on end was keeping the answer to itself.

The Past Glows, The New is Fire

Going from the old year to the new, we pause for reflection and try to envision the future. The present moment fills us at the passing of the old, and we believe in that moment the future has endless opportunities and perspectives as it stretches out before us, beckoning. What is the truth of our position in time? Fleeting or part of an eternal process? Both, I suspect. Whatever you believe the poets have communicated the transitory moment, our death, our loved ones’ deaths, changes that upheave our lives. They have celebrated birth, new life, continuity, and the bonds of love that defy even death.

Which brings us to Shakespeare and one of the greatest poems about the waning of life and human resiliency.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Recently, watching YouTube videos of poets reading their work, Garrison Keillor said W.S. Merwin said that poetry always begins and ends with listening. I wish I had learned that years ago! Here is Merwin reading, “Yesterday.”

W. S. Merwin reading his poem, “Yesterday,” on YouTube

Another way is talking to the reader (as if to yourself), which many current editors will tell you not to do (ignore them).

Lines For Winter
by Mark Strand
 
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Another version of listening and talking is what I will title, “Generous.”

Sabbaths, 1993, I
by Wendell Berry
 
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

And the new season begins.

Wind Rising in the Alleys

by Lola Ridge

Wind, rising in the alleys,
My spirit lifts in you like a banner
   streaming free of hot walls.
You are full of unshaped dreams. . . .
You are laden with beginnings. . . .
There is hope in you. . . not sweet. . .
   acrid as blood in the mouth.
Come into my tossing dust
Scattering the peace of old deaths,
Wind rising out of the alleys,
Carrying stuff of flame.

Song at the Year’s Turning

by R. S. Thomas

Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.
The props crumble; the familiar ways
Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.
The heart’s flower withers at the root.
Bury it then, in history’s sterile dust.
The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.

Love deceived him; what is there to say
The mind brought you by a better way
To this despair? Lost in the world’s wood
You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood.
The earth sickens; under naked boughs
The frost comes to barb your broken vows.

Is there blessing? Light’s peculiar grace
In cold splendour robes this tortured place
For strange marriage. Voices in the wind
Weave a garland where a mortal sinned.
Winter rots you; who is there to blame?
The new grass shall purge you in its flame.

Also, for poets especially, poets talking over a beer: https://www.poeticous.com/r-s-thomas/poetry-for-supper

And “Instructions on Not Giving Up,” by Ada Limon. Again the last line! That’s the other thing I’ve learned, and I hope the poets who read this blog will also pick up on this.

Most of all, love others and love what you are.

Basho haiku

“Of no account”
think not this of thy self,
Festival of Souls

Now, for a lyric video, “Earthlings,” with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Holiday Season & News

Mastodonbooks.net

I’ve joined Mastodon and pared down my time on Twitter. My blog and daily emails from friends comprise the greater part of my internet life. However, Twitter allowed me to keep up with current news, often from the affected people themselves, and with my fellow book lovers. I used it to promote my books as well. Now that I’m on Mastodon I am enjoying the richer engagement I’m having with other writers and reviewers. You can find me at @Mclark@mastodonbooks.net

My Kindle Vella adventure continues. Passages had 6 readers in the beginning but as soon as payment was required that fell to zero. The message I’ve taken from that is to make it more compelling. I’ve discovered on reviewing the rules that episodes on Kindle Vella are not to be published anywhere else on the internet for free. I have to chose between publishing on my blog or on Kindle Vella. I’ve decided to keep working on Kindle Vella to see if it works. At least for the next few months.

In the spirit of the season, here are two poems. The first by Maya Angelou is well-known. The second is by Sally Young, now Sally young-eslinger, an old friend of mine. We knew each other in New Jersey before I went to New York and she to Chicago and later Kentucky.

AMAZING PEACE:  A Christmas Poem
by Maya Angelou

Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.

We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.

In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.

We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth’s tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.

We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IN THANKFULNESS

by Sally young-eslinger

Let me go!

Please! Let me go

Flying out along the city’s avenues

To observe all the gatherings and meetings,

To examine all the exchanges of everyone…

And I will find

The most certain way to honor you.

Let me go!

That particular regard seems outside

All my experience gathered to date.

There is no simple acknowledgement known

For all I have been given, even without asking.

Oh, surely, there are things I will find

Within the stronger, sweeter dedications

Among the all, one to another?

Humanity’s born caring brings touches of God. Oh,

Shall I discover all the notes of

Sincere appreciation to be enough?

Lately, my words try to reach you — even those

Torn from my heart — but only sound pretending.

I need to flee out

To stretch into the depths of all enfolding love

For that cache containing

The one thing that holds everything top

Place within it and pull from it

All the ways I may thank and honor you.

Perhaps, leaves will become diamonds

More quickly, but my being courses steadily on to

That some new day when I will come with witnesses

And I will honor you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

Harvest Poems

This time of year as fall turns to winter I have a feeling of contemplation and a sense of endings after a hectic year. The “Harvest poems” I found online reflected that feeling and sense. I’ve chosen one that is celebratory of harvest, and several that are reflective about the meaning of our endeavors. Each is filled with a deep appreciation of the force of life. Here are a few of them, along with Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” and the Native Song, “Ly O Lay Ale Loya” (Circle Dance).

Oh, ’tis sweet, when fields are ringing
With the merry cricket’s singing,
Oft to mark with curious eye
If the vine-tree’s time be nigh:
Here is now the fruit whose birth
Cost a throe to Mother Earth.
Sweet it is, too, to be telling,
How the luscious figs are swelling;
Then to riot without measure
In the rich, nectareous treasure,
While our grateful voices chime,–
Happy season! blessed time.

— Aristophanes

Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,

When the soft silver

Drips shimmering

Over the garden nights,

Death, the gray mocker,

Comes and whispers to you

As a beautiful friend

Who remembers.

  

Under the summer roses

When the flagrant crimson

Lurks in the dusk

Of the wild red leaves,

Love, with little hands,

Comes and touches you

With a thousand memories,

And asks you

Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

— Carl Sandburg

The Way In

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.

Sometimes the way in is a song.

But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,

and beauty.

To enter stone, be water.

To rise through hard earth, be plant

desiring sunlight, believing in water.

To enter fire, be dry.

To enter life, be food.

— Linda Hogan

Source: Rounding the Human Corners (Coffee House Press, 2008)

Harvest

I walk among bands of wheat fields gold and red on a low road where clouds sweep overhead. I walk among mountains steep and high where golden rods of wheat strike the sky. I reach to catch the spear-stalks as they fly. As day yields to clouds gold and red, I grasp fleet arrows of wheat and watch each seed as it falls through my hand’s reaping beat.

I walk through streams of grass yellow and red where stone pillars mark the dead. I walk among hills azure and green by the sea where white birds sing, an echo coming back from eternity. I grasp the feathers and rise above the waves. As day turns to dreams, my spirit fishes for ways to be – bring the seeds, ride the waves, be the echo, this is the harvest of every day, of my heart, my soul, my body, my life.

Mary Clark

I recommend W. S. Merwin’s “Thanks” / Poetry Foundation and the Native Song, Ly O Lay Ale Loya (Circle Dance)

Joni Jam Rocks the Summer of ’22

In late July, Joni Mitchell performed at the Newport Folk Festival, her first appearance in nine years due to illness. She was brought there by singer Brandi Carlile and accompanied by a large group of musicians and singers. Her voice is enriched by her years of experience. This extraordinary event was recorded and is viewable on YouTube. Joni is one of the best songwriters we’ve had in the past century. Her lyrics speak to us at our most vulnerable, embarrassed, despairing, but hopeful in spite of what we’ve been through.

“Both Sides Now” is a musical classic and a lovely poem.

Two of my favorites over the years are “The Last Time I Saw Richard” and “Amelia.”

The Last Time I Saw Richard (lyrics)

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café
You laugh he said you think you’re immune
Go look at your eyes they’re full of moon
You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies pretty lies
When you gonna realize they’re only pretty lies
Only pretty lies just pretty lies

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer and he pushed
Three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said, “Drink up now it’s getting on time to close”
“Richard, you haven’t really changed,” I said
It’s just that now you’re romanticizing some pain that’s in your head
You got tombs in your eyes but the songs you punched are dreaming
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
Oh and love can be so sweet Love so sweet

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright
I’m gonna blow this damn candle out
I don’t want nobody comin’ over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin’ behind bottles in dark cafés dark cafés
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away
Only a phase these dark café days
 
Copyright June 1971 Joni Mitchell

Other favorites of mine are "River" on her Blue album, and "Just Like This Train" on her Court and Spark album. An amazing version of "Just Like This Train" with her signature slap/scat jazz guitar style was recorded on the Dave Letterman show. She plays it at Newport as well, having had to relearn how to play the guitar after a brain aneurysm. One video of "Amelia" has her playing guitar while she sings and then walking away to let guitarist Pat Metheny finish it beautifully.

“Amelia” lyrics

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
Like the hexagram of the heavens
Like the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets through to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Full of picture post card charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

People will tell you where they’ve gone
They’ll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
And where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight
It’s so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

Maybe I’ve never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams Amelia, dreams and false alarms

Summertime Poems & Songs

Summer is here ablaze and awash in the Northern hemisphere. These songs and poems celebrate that season, the heat and rain, floods and fires, family picnics and travel to mountains or the coast. I’ve added a travel song as well.

To start out with the coolest, who better than Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald performing Gershwin’s “Summertime”?

Marge Piercy's poem, "More Than Enough," captures summer's bounty.

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads
into the wind. Rich fresh wine
of June, we stagger into you smeared
with pollen, overcome as the turtle
laying her eggs in roadside sand.

A poem about Florida summer, Lynda Hull's "Insect Life of Florida"

In those days I thought their endless thrum
   was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.
      In the throats of hibiscus and oleander

I’d see them clustered yellow, blue, their shells
   enameled hard as the sky before the rain.
      All that summer, my second, from city

to city my young father drove the black coupe
   through humid mornings I’d wake to like fever
      parceled between luggage and sample goods.

Afternoons, showers drummed the roof,
   my parents silent for hours. Even then I knew
      something of love was cruel, was distant.

To read the rest, go to the Poetry Foundation link for Insect Life of Florida.

Here goes! My poem, "Summer Rain."

Crickets sing counterpoint to the chorus of the heat,
a rush of wind, the scent of sea and pine forest
waking brains that have gone to sleep. 
A silence with ears—twitching ears of a doe, 
revolving heads of owls, a panthers’ stealthy prowl. 
Thunderclouds tumble into a mass, a quick sea breeze
and the surface of the heat falls, the chorus fades, 
steer huddle in the pasture beyond the railroad tracks, 
white herons rise from the field, broken bits of bread, 
angelic hosts flung to the winds.
Lightning finds the seam, scars the sky, 
magnetizes the children’s eyes.
The storm rolls over the land, resounding
in the shells of their brains, and rain courses 
from open veins. Rain-worshippers, 
they drink it, wine of their lives.

And now for some traveling music, "City of New Orleans," written by Steve Goodman and sung by Arlo Guthrie. 

Hope you enjoy the summer!

Sea Poems

Now that a heat wave is covering the Eastern part of the U.S., thoughts and dreams as well as lucky bodies turn toward the ocean and its beaches. Here are a few poems and songs for the season.

Sail Away

Rabindranath Tagore

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat,
only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our
pilgrimage to no country and to no end.

In that shoreless ocean,
at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies,
free as waves, free from all bondage of words.

Is the time not come yet?
Are there works still to do?
Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore
and in the fading light the seabirds come flying to their nests.

Who knows when the chains will be off,
and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset,
vanish into the night?

Another, different poem/song with the refrain, Sail Away is “Orinoco Flow,” by Enya, but here is a Medieval version by Bardcore with places known in that era:

Then for a taste of the pirate in all (or many) of us:

Son of a Son of a Sailor

Jimmy Buffet

As the son of a son of a sailor
I went out on the sea for adventure
Expanding the view of the captain and crew
Like a man just released from indenture

As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin’ man
I have chalked up many a mile
Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks
And I learned much from both of their styles

Son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a sailor
Son of a gun, load the last ton
One step ahead of the jailer

Now away in the near future
Southeast of disorder
You can shake the hand of the mango man
As he greets you at the border

And the lady she hails from Trinidad
Island of the spices
Salt for your meat, and cinnamon sweet
And the rum is for all your good vices

Haul the sheet in as we ride on the wind
That our forefathers harnessed before us
Hear the bells ring as the tight rigging sings
It’s a son of a gun of a chorus

Where it all ends I can’t fathom my friends
If I knew I might toss out my anchor
So I cruise along always searchin’ for songs
Not a lawyer a thief or a banker

But a son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a sailor
Son of a gun, load the last ton
One step ahead of the jailer

I’m just a son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a sailor
The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains
I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer

Son of a Son of a Sailor lyrics © Coral Reefer Music

Jimmy Buffet (this version with the Zac Brown Band):

And now for a more serious side, the serious side of the sea and its power, it covers 70% of the planet.

“A Salty Dog” by Procol Harum

I was thinking of Stephen Crane’s famous short story, “The Open Boat,” which is available online to read for free, and how in his life I think he wanted to believe in heroes but often saw something else. In “The Open Boat” there were heroes. I wrote a fantasy in which he played an even larger part:

Sea Poem

Evening comes, channel bells toll, dozing, 
off the coast of Florida, he is dreaming,
dreaming down beneath the ship
where shadows breathe and surf echoes,
the ocean’s roar in a huge shell of coastline,
but the dream of dark and peaceful depths
is shredded by howling in a larger shell,
bell of the sky, and he rises to a shuddering deck
into slashing rain and great rolling waves,
and in the water men with outflung hands,
in the night they are all around,
bodies twined around with seesawing lights,
skeletons dancing, constellations exploding.
The ship is wrecked, will they all drown?

He jumps to the lifeboat, pulls a man to safety,
a fist of a wave knocks him overboard
and he collides with the body of another man,
he holds the wounded sailor, cradles his shoulders
in the rollicking surf, swimming at cross purposes
to the sea, battered by wind and waves,
he keeps the man in his grip
as ghosts hover, seahorses teem in the rain,
and the hours smash his body, moonlight flowers
until dawn breaks amber and green,
and they are plucked from the sea into the lifeboat
and safe but shaken the survivors hear the sea
speak in all the voices of the world,
connecting those adrift to those onshore.

From “The Open Boat,” by Stephen Crane

“When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.”

On January 2, 1897, American writer Stephen Crane survives the sinking of The Commodore off the coast of Florida. He will turn the harrowing event into his class short story, “The Open Boat” (1897).

And by Derek Walcott:

Midsummer, Tobago

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms. 

And by Lewis Carroll:

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

Poems in Time of War

In too many countries, people are suffering today. These poems remind me of the families trapped in Eastern Ukraine, and those in Afghanistan and Yemen wracked by hunger and lack of medical care.

The first poem is by Kim Stafford.

Atrocity

Once war begins, you will need to decide
where to draw the line—carnage, after all,
has its courtesies: I will kill soldiers, but not
civilians…and I will bomb barracks, but not
hospitals or schools. In the smoke, though,
once it’s all flash and blur, in fear, thrill, rage
things get confused, something clicks, and soon
your fury spills over. What was a city becomes
atrocity. You shot civilians, then you are gunning
for civilization. You fired at the heart, but now
it’s the back of the head, it’s that boy on a bike,
it’s this grandmother offending by having a face
and hands, so you leave her in a heap. Retreating
through rust and wreckage, you abandon the soul
that leaked from your body, a sheen of slime, a stain.

This poem by John A. Huddart exemplifies the callousness of war, when countries recruit others or appeal to them to help in a war effort, but when the need is gone?

Empire Windrush

Empire Windrush. Grey ghost of war.
Twin-funnelled troopship bringing back
the Forces from their newsreels, outposts,
and jungle camps. From last posts, and lowering flags.

She’s slow and diesel driven – and launched
as Monte Rosa in a German yard.
A cruiser for vacations, and the middle classes.
And then the Kreigsmarine. Berthship
to the Tirpitz, Auschwitz ferry for Norwegian
Jews – endures air attacks and mines. Survives.

Under British hands, she pays the price
of peace. White paint shrouds sides
that buckled under war. Blighty-bound,
half empty, calls at Kingston and offers
passage to a thousand citizens, newly minted
by a government desperate for willing hands.

Curious to see the land so many fought
to save, they find the forty quid and come
aboard. Thus filled with hope she sails
for England, and a place in history the Equal
of Trafalgar, Agincourt or Waterloo.

New waters for the future meet
her prow. At Tilbury, grey frowning
skies rain blessings and surprise.
It’s June, but cool enough to stand
and shiver on the docks, and wait
to fill the shortages they’re here to satisfy.

The Windrush sails away. Empire sunsets
churned froth and pother at her stern. At last,
she burns and sinks, her contribution made.

A generation makes its home, ignoring
cards in doors and shops that advertise
“No coloureds”. The slums and cities make
them room, and heritage adds on another page.

Once enslaved, transported chained, plantation-
bound, then freed to poverty’s thin dreams,
they London’s voices richly spice with sun,
and suffering. Deepened and engaged, English
suddenly awake finds new rhythms in its feet.

It takes a dozen years or more for startled
whites to close the door on opportunity.
Betrayal shakes a hostile hand, minds fill
with wasting tribal fear. The voice of England
forgets the rights of man, the promises of war.

Each party over, every politician clamours
For the closing of the doors, and seeks a way to send
the yearning back to their hovels or the sea.

Windrush rises from the deeps and sails again,
evoked by ministers who bend the rules,
and marks the careless crimes of those whose biros
sign the orders to deport. Black heroes flew
and fought to hold the spread of camps, and
looked for better orders – now fall to age,
feel clerks’ indifference with quotas to fulfill.

The River Windrush flows and flows,
and adds more depths to English as it goes.

Empire Windrush on J. A. Huddart’s website.

And this poem by David Selzer about one of the universal symbols of the cost of war, and a human being whose life was taken too soon, as so many have been, and still are today.

4th August 1944

_{Anne Frank}

The canal dapples the office ceiling.
Upstairs, the fugitives are still as dust.
A siren unpeoples the city.
Into the waiting sky, with the raucous gulls
and the chestnut, her words like breathing…Her life
has turned, beyond all her desires, so
brutally to art…They packed and waited:
beyond, a locked compartment to themselves
and telephone wires curvetting by –
then countrysides of shuddering, noisome wagons.
She died alone. Her father made her grief,
her love public as Europe: spoke her words
into the empty sky.

Here are several poems of hope and resilience as well.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World, by Adam Zagajewski, a Polish poet.

Dance of Peace, by Gabriela Mistral

What poem or poems about war and human conflict do you think are the most effective? The most insightful?