Going home for Christmas

My friend Rick and I are going to walk around in downtown Seattle tonight, and then on Sunday I get to spend some time with my son Caleb; but best of all, on Monday, I get to go home to my beloved Nebraska! 

Here's a poem for Christmas --  My all-time favorite:

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see    i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look   the spangles

that sleep all year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel" 

little tree, by e.e. cummings

All the irony of praise and sorrow are here, I think. 

For 'M' --as always

Dick Allen, Ode To the Cold War

Night Sledding

From Lookout Hill it was a long way down to the village.

The plowed steep road no cars would dare until morning

And the pine trees snowed into each other, forming ruined

Castles and English manor houses and gamekeeper huts

In the ravines and gullies and stark on the ridges,

Seemed more ours than anything would ever be again,

Whether our lives were short or long. I glanced

At the others to see if they felt it: the loosened knot

Of boys whose fathers were mostly off in World War II.

Kneeling and panting in the snow, their bodies

Gnomed by bulky jackets, their faces small round windows

sunk in wool, and saw their tremors

Of frozen-tongued awe, and how they tried to hide them

As I was trying, also, to not say anything

Too stupid or old. There were gusts of wind

Constantly sending clouds of powdered white

Off the rock outcroppings. Above us, a half-blasted moon

Was painted on a white sandpaper field of stars. 

"Let's get going," someone said. Hand-me-down sleds

Lined up, lying on our bellies, boot tips dug into snowruts,

We studied the village below us, the far-off lights

Of the D&H station, the Methodist church steeple,

Lights in the upstairs window of a dozen cottages

And "Isn't this something," the boy beside me whispered,

"Isn't this something!" who started, I don't remember,

But suddenly, faces held up, yelling for dear life,

All of us yelling and whooping, we were steering

Our sleds in great S's as we fell,

None of us trying to win, all of us half-crazed, shouting,

"Watch out! Hang on! Steer to the side!

Steer to the middle! Drop behind! Go ahead!"

Sparks from rocks our runners scraped, and then

At the last sweet drop, an absolute silence among us

As we swooped down, and some of our mothers and sisters

Waiting beneath the streetlights, some applauding

With soft mittened claps as we slowed. Walking home,

My house the last one before the village became a meadow,

I saw a comet streak, leaving in its wake

A crowfoot of light, gone the moment I blinked.

From : Ode to the Cold War Poems new and Selected

By Dick Allen (Sarabande Books, 1997) 

In this narrative poem, the speaker simply describes a group of boys sledding at night; but his description is so exact -- with just the right mix of the real, the imagined, and the philosophical -- to evoke his indelible memory of this moment. The reader can almost hear the "mittened" hands clapping.  I particularly love the line "As I was trying, also, not to say anything too stupid, or old." -- The war looms present, yet is distant enough and the boys who aren't going to be boys for long, some even having "short lives" are awake to life in this moment, perfect, the "sleds in great S's as we fell."

  

Three poems by Denise C. Banker

Oak Glen

Each day my dog Rosebud

and I hike to this same spot

at Oak Glen where prairie

crisp in late January calms

despite a chill wind

We muse among bur oaks'

rutted, furrowed trunks

and gnarled limbs

Rosebud, let us always return

We wait for wind's timbre

voice to fix us in its hum

to this horizon of grass

To set loose our calamities

To scatter memory's mulch

in lichen, leaves and acorn husks

Let these blow away from us

We walk off a friend's conceit

We lay a stretch of regret

beneath blue berried juniper

We soak a load of animus,

its ugly vapor hissing,

in the beaver's creek

Everywhere the hush alive

invites us to let go

Rosebud, let us let go

Preservation

The future belongs to anyone else.

I'm staying in the past

where your blue eyes hold me

in their smile, where nights are star-

filled and fragrant, where autumn

has arranged dried leaves in unmown grass.

In the future you will have faded,

so I cling to our past. The map

of your palm unfolded

and held out to me.

I finger our route along

the work-worn surface.

I give the future away,

the box wrapped in silver

and gold, like Christmas,

and write myself into a snowglobe:

the net of snow, the prairie, a dog,

two boys, and their parents walking.

Sculpture

The Platte river pulls a rim of fog

to its lip, and trees in fresh nakedness

toss. There was hard freeze last night.

I wind the clocks,

your old job,

so I take pride

in having learned

to turn the key

eight turns to the left

Wednesday and

Saturday nights.

A silence is here

like in the study of art.

It chisels your absence

into shape:

this fog-scarved river

and these bare trees

shift of stone unnoticed,

sap deep in heartwood,

fog diaphanous

shrouding the river.

John Lennon Imagine

When Will All The Fighting End

Le Sacre Du Printemps by Pina Bausch

Give me Love, Give me Love

William Shakespeare Sonnet 71

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell.

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it, for I love you so, 

That I in your sweet thought would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O if, I say, you look upon this verse,

When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,

But let your love even with my life decay,

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,

And mock you with me after I am gone. 

The Sonnets of Shakespeare 

The Laurel Shakespeare

Francis Fergusson, General Ed.

Text Ed. by Charles Jasper Sisson

Dell (1960)

In this poem of three sentences, the speaker is telling the beloved not to mourn too long when he/she is gone. The poem is a love poem, a warning, and a lament. The speaker, as is made evident in the bitter, sardonic tone, is angry at having to die. The poem is almost humorous in its self-pity. "The wise world" can almost "mock" the dying already. But we shouldn't ignore this bitterness. The speaker loves being alive, and loves whoever is being spoken to. One would do well to heed the poem's warning.  

It's as if the speaker, let's say it's a man to his wife, is saying: death is the ultimate humiliation; please don't let me be further humiliated by you having to suffer, in your inability to overcome your grief, the mockery of the "wise world". I love you too much. I love myself too much. If thinking of me "should make you woe", then please don't think of me. When I am dead ("in the clay"), if to read this verse and "rehearse" my name (long for me) makes you "moan" (cry), I'd rather your love for me decay with my body than have "the world" mock you with my death.

We can apply this sentiment to people we have lost who are still alive, too. 

Sometimes the people who say things like this are serious, and what they are saying makes sense. It's best to remember how a person's life filled yours up, rather than to dwell too long on the anguish the death, or the parting, causes to you. 

Dr. Jill Bolte My Stroke of Genius

This is worth watching. Inspirational.

11 (67)

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
to comprehend a nectar
Requires a sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Hosts
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

as he defeated - dying -
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson's Poems
Ed., Thomas H. Johnson
Little, Brown & Co., 1961

In this poem the speaker is lamenting her/his own defeat or, out of some deeper loss suffered that restricts her/his ability to "win" graciously, is mocking those defeated . So at once the poem is the defeated's bitter lament, and the bully's vicious, bitter crowing. We can't know Dickinson's intention exactly, but her point is crystalline: the loser clearly knows the anguish of defeat, and at the same time, clearly knows the definition of success. We all lose at some time in our lives: maybe it's a lover, a beloved spouse, a child, a brother or a sister to death, or to worse; maybe it's our innocence, our faith in government, our resilience, our sense of fair-play.
Sometimes we are the "purple Hosts:" we do demonstrate how much we love someone or want something by trying, with all of our might, to comprehend that person, achieve that something-- "the nectar," as Dickinson says. But to no avail. And sometimes, (go ahead, "write it" as Elizabeth Bishop says), we, for whatever reason, want to add insult to injury: we know the defeated is hurt, but we're too hurt by losing whatever it is we lost to be able to care. How agonized and clear those strains of triumph burst on the forbidden ear.

Here's another poem by Emily Dickinson:

310 (761)

From Blank to Blank-
A Threadless Way
I pushed Mechanic feet-
To stop-or perish-or advance-
Alike indifferent-

If end I gained
It ends beyond
Indefinite disclosed-
I shut my eyes-and groped as well
'Twas lighter-to be Blind-

Same source as poem above

The phrase "indefinite disclosed" coming right after acknowledging "gain" always "ends", is masterfully despondent. And the tag "as well" tells us the speaker is so "Mechanic" in this "Threadless Way" that she/he may as well "grope" around in willful blindness too. The pun on the word "lighter" is sardonic. To say it's "lighter -to be Blind" is to say it's less of a burden to choose to "not see" what you're doing, what's being done, or, simply, what is. Again, we can't be certain of Dickinson's intention. We do know, however, that this is an intense grief, and that neither of these poems is a recollection in tranquility. Poems that are simultaneously personal, private correspondence and open correspondence with the world are what the writer wants to achieve. Dickinson has achieved this in both poems.

Fresh snow on the mountains this morning, chiffon clouds

King Lear

"The poem is the poet's way of suspending time and attending to the minute vibrations of the inner and outer world." Morris Dickstein "The Undying Animal" Columbia Magazine. more»

November 22

Sunny and cool, thin clouds.

In his drab gray overcoat

unbuttoned and flying out behind,

a stocky, bullet-headed owl

with dirty claws and thick wrists

slowly flaps home

from working the night shift.

He is so tired he has forgotten

his lunchbox, his pay stub.

He will not be able to sleep 

in his empty apartment

what with the neighboring blackbirds

flying into his face,

but will stay awake all morning,

round-shouldered and glassy-eyed,

composing a poem about

paradise, perfectly woven

of mouse bones and moist pieces of fur. 

From Winter Morning Walks, by Ted Kooser

Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000

  Used by permission of the author

Ted Kooser wrote his way out of the fog of cancer, with all of its density-- by walking each morning at dawn, or before. He addressed his "postcards" to his good friend Jim Harrison. Often writing our way out of an emotional funk is as good a mental practice as it is an exercise for writers. I know Ted and his poems have taught me a great deal about living and surviving life. 

Welcome to Mutable - insides out

A poet's word, a painter's touch, will reach

The innermost recesses of the heart,

Making the pulses throb in unison

With joy or grief, which we can analyse;

There is the cause for pleasure and for pain:

But music moves us, and we know not why;

We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.

Is it the language of some other state,

Born of its memory? For what can wake

The soul's strong instinct of another world,

Like music? Well with sadness doth it suit

To hear the melancholy sounds decay,

And think (for thoughts are life's great human links,

And mingle with our feelings) even so

Will the heart's wildest pulses sink to rest.

From Erinna, by Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1827)