Featured Poet
( Galesburg, Illinois )
A winch,
with its drag drum and hoist drum, is strong.
Grief is stronger,
yet weighs no more than the pattern
of leaf and sun on the bark of a tree.
—Jane Hirshfield
Deepak Chopra lisps endearingly of the Word made into flesh and I flash back to my student’s anger in yesterday’s philosophy class: “If a tree falls … and there is no person or squirrel or bird to hear it,” I said, “Is there a sound?” “Of course!” Michael said. “What lunatic invented this problem?” Denise then chimed in , as follows: “But wait—What does it mean? There’s a wave, a vibration?” “Yeah!” breathed Jenny, with a warm, happy sigh— “who’s there to detect it?” At this point I stole a point from Gertrude Stein and asked, “Is there a there there?” I wrote mater, matrix, and measure On the board and thought of Jane Hirshfield. A scale weighs the outer world in pounds and ounces. The sum does not alter, whatever happens within and between us. Today, a few raindrops dotted the windshield as I drove to school, worrying about wet leaves tracked in on my soles. Meanwhile, Deepak Chopra continued to speak of the polar opposites, pleasure vs. pain, divine vs. diabolical— and of their roots in Sanskrit & how in the birthing of the Word into flesh. these opposites have the same sounds, And so I decided to play with the tape and figure out which track were best (#4, it turns out) to play in class next Tuesday, for Michael, and Denise, and Jenny—and Jane and Deepak, yes and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Karl Rove. And yes, for the children, the mothers caught in the hell … in the hail of heavy bullets from M-116’s somewhere up and over there, somewhere you and I do not have to go, somewhere on last night’s News where if a Tree falls--?
Author’s note: The italicized lines that introduce the poem are lifted
from “A Scale Weighs the Outer World in Pounds and Ounces”:
Given Sugar, Given Salt, by Jane Hirshfield (HarperCollins, 2001).
Speaking in tongues, dipthongs, my ex-,
my first beloved, for instance—
you take her exaggerated oblong thongs –
dark lips – red --
to stand for carnival –
Is there not a whiteness, a spongy Form of forms,
sans eyes, sans ears, all mouth &
dark rampant hair –?
Uttering the syllable ‘aum’
of all sounds--
or no sound—
kissing my ex-love’s piece of meat,
thinking of Vico’s philosophy of history?
Memory does-a-no serve. So call it
a jazzed up Minute Waltz, if you will.
Perhaps I’da been training
unsuccessfully
to become
a CTA bus driver
after the War.
All memory
can offer is the following clear broth
in place of truth:
(a) physicality -- being on a bus late at night,
going northward, probably on the wrong
long northwesterly slanting avenue, I forget the name,
plus (yes, you interior, envious inferior
Ms. Ardithgonaught Ball)
some scattered cheap effects, cum
(b) mentality –not realizing that dis limbo,
(c) this
dark fatigue and absence of real feelings & ideas
(d) possibility –it would be saved decades hence, as one of the
‘happier’ moments, or
‘spots of time’.
(As Eckhart Tolle correctly suggests, modern art
–due to excess of mentality, Mind Stuff
[hence, absence of ‘Now’ & Being]—is almost totally devoid
Of Beauty.)
ii.
Sort of like a kid’s first recollection of the brass vacuum tubes
in Woolworth’s bargain basement that took the elders’ money
and brought back a yellowing receipt with change.
-ossia-
I bought the damned thing, $27.50, at
Prairie Lights in Iowa City.
“Here’s a monist who thinks
he knows something of Zen.”
She
At the cash register
smiled dubiously.
“Probably a mistake.”
As in Jimmy Durante’s classic exit
In which he pauses under each spot to doff his hat.
Fifties TV :
Black and white
The actual nonduality –
let’s say the clearing --
(why ‘happy’?)
-- before he croaked?
The hungry shades who populate these pop-up
props of sand and sage,
the tap-tap of a loose
bleached board
on the saloon façade,
the nickel bar at noon
blinding the blind
who lead the blind—
“Bar keep! Puh-leeze
Lower the god damned blinds,
why don’t yuh?”
“Let me show you the scar where
they cut me open—“
“I don’t feel sorry for them people in Nagasaki
ner them Ko-re-ans
our bright boys’
phosphorous-
scorched to the bone”
These heroes, these living dead,
soon-to-be ghosts
who shall pay no taxes, fight no wars--not even
the paunch of
New Slippery West’s white
picket fence dream—
no, nor even the bulge of
Classy Duke & Classic Jack’s
ACME cubicle
A-1
swivel chair—A crow is pecking the red meat. A glassy eyed stare, the squirrel’s white belly-- the usual, prayerful gesture-- forearms curled in space. Last night a future perfect aircraft monitored my every rent-a-car move. I sought an illegal bookstore, a Florida park bench in puckerbrush, an asphalt cul de sac. My old professor insists, “We, we hold the higher ground. “The Afghans are different. I can’t stand Chomsky.” Dear old teacher, I’m you now, standing by the fence surrounding some cryptic altar, some wrought iron icon, in the mall. There is a row of televisions. In serial sameness-- The President is explaining our presence in Iraq. Nobody is taking note one. Someone is mopping the aisle. The floor is spotless. The bucket is full of blood. Does it matter?
You who must worship the rod & the child & the ruse,
Sidereal vision is one of the tools you might use.
I’m always lost in distraction, reason & rhyme.
Soon I shall yield up to you the balance of our time.
I’m practiced in that, you see—it’s what I do.
I am that self-born, unregenerate O,
Waxing or waning, ripe as a red Bartlett pear—
Full of myself like an essence I borrowed somewhere,
Some party where all we did was taste and hum,
Some place I’ve forgotten, some scent still lingering
for some.
You know me in aspects I do not contrive to control.
Some see me revolving in aspic, some barter my soul.
One of my favourite sons, a disciple named Cohen
(“Ai, yi yi yi, take this waltz, take this waltz, take this waltz”)
Thinks constantly of me, although he sings of the Sun.
I go by these habit-worn names, Dame Luna, Cynthia,
Artemis, you know the ones. The wind in the hair
Of the hunted, the doe & the owl – So dear to me.
Dearer than anyone knows. Look up,
Dear ones, dearly beloved: behold
The beloved--whomever you’re thinking of.
A tear’s but a beam of the Moon. if you’re true in your love.
As I go on circling the sphere of your habitant gaze
May you go on circling that genial demon, the Sun.
This sphere, this loka, this Earth who gazes like you,
In wonder, in weather of love, of grief or bliss—
Gaia’s her name-- I hope you may treat her well.
So many ways there are to kneel down, kiss the earth,
The sun-warmed grassy ground, as my son Rumi knew.
Treat her well. For she is constant, as I am, sailing
Yet staying, still also sailing away. And now
May I yield up to you the balance of our time--?
I look up the disc sampler
Pete and Barb burned for me
on Amazon dot com ..
Only I mix up Paolo Conte
with Carlos Ponti—
(dyslexia)
And then wonder how come
only movies are listed
I discover this, crawling under a huge truck,
Out in our Carl Sandburg College parking lot
Where the disc has rolled—
God--The security guard
comes by
To see if I have fallen,
my door is open,
Fumes are escaping, egressing
Into the public Air
But though just now I put into my Amazon shopping cart
$144.98 worth of the Italian master’s discs
I see no books not written in Italian.
Or out-of-print,
whence I might get
some background, some translations.
Still, it is fun
Listening in a language
I do not understand----