In the foyer, I’ve installed
a tabletop fountain: four
gradated stone-like bowls
balanced lip to bottom, one
atop the other; water pouring
from a fluted edge down to
the basin, where a tiny engine
drives the stream up and up
again. Miniature homage to
perpetual motion, its murmur
audible until we pull the plug
before we go upstairs to bed
at night. And it will never
ice over, never fill with pond
scum, floating koi or iridescent
insect bodies, its purpose simply
to distill some part of what teems
without cease outdoors, without
relief but only momentary stay—
Today, bitter cold; high wind
at sunrise sends small clouds
in search of sun— perpetual errand,
as leaves keep trying to transmute
the thin, harsh sounds of tearing
before they flutter to the ground.
Last night’s wet snow sticks here
or there, creating alpine trails
beneath the shadow of low walls,
leaving blank spaces where the wind
has drawn its hasty maps and then
like some cartographer unsure
of where the continents might lie,
erased them… In one of these
pockets drawn as wintry latitudes,
bergamot heads confer, a little
brotherhood of toques blanches.
Wild Geranium by Jennifer Schlick (click to see larger)
Geranium maculatum
Alum Bloom
you of the shocking
blue pollen Chocolate Flower
root once used
as a styptic Old Maid’s Nightcap
fruit like
the head of a bird Cranesbill
bursting open
expelling the seeds Crowfoot
each seed with a tail
that curls & straightens Sailor’s Knot
pulling itself into
a likely crevasse Rockweed
what fool
invented these names? Shameface
a flush beloved
of the bees
“Caeditur et tilia ante jugo levis…”
(“A light linden-tree also is felled betimes for the yoke…”)
–Virgil, Georgics I
Inside, all the clocks are blinking,
as though even time could not fully
wake to Monday morning. Should I walk
down the hall and flip each limp clock face,
counting and stretching in succession?
They droop along the mantel’s edge, unstuffed
quesadillas before the hot comal and the salsa picante.
Did you know that if you put ham and cheese
between two flour tortillas, you have instead
what they call a syncronizada? Cut into pie-
shaped wedges they might resemble six
two-hour bites of the clock, which might explain
the reference to time-keeping. Or perhaps
it’s simply from our habits of always
keeping time, watching the clock: no more
than three minutes in the shower, five
to grab a coffee and banana, an hour to get
the kids to school and ourselves to work
if we should be so lucky; an hour for lunch,
a morning for sifting through the flour
and meal of correspondence… Who
has the time anymore to notice the squirrel
tunneling back into the icy snow, the neighbor
walking to his truck a quarter mile away?
Above our heads, the rough-hewn hours
shift into shapes of ploughs. Soon,
along the avenues, leaves will mottle
the linden trees: whole libraries of green
lifting their faces in a chorus to work and time.
UPDATE (11/12) — Deadline extended by one day, through Sunday, for all you slackers.
I’d like to produce another episode of the Woodrat Podcast with multiple contributors, like the one for Emily Dickinson’s 180th birthday back on December 10, except this time, I’m asking for original contributions on the theme of Platonic love for an episode to be published in one week — on Valentine’s Day. By Platonic love, I probably don’t mean whatever Plato meant by it, but the modern definition: a close friendship between two people which does not involve sex (but theoretically could, either because they are a heterosexual man and woman, two homosexual men, two lesbian women, or combinations in which one is a bisexual… you get the idea). I’m interested in what happens to love when sex is removed from the equation. Continue reading “Woodrat Podcast call for submissions: Platonic love”
I share a lot of links on Facebook. This is some of what I’ve shared since last Monday, with the exception of links to new posts on qarrtsiluni, Moving Poems, Woodrat Photoblog, The Morning Porch, and here on VN. (Have to wonder how many of my Facebook contacts have blocked my posts by now!)
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Poetry for the Masses has a new website with PDFs of recent broadsheets. These aren’t the arty kind of broadsheets that cost $40 apiece, but the true, 18th-century kind designed for mass distribution.
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Cloud Studies — a sonnet sequence
Take a half-hour to listen to these extraordinary poems by Christine Klocek-Lim, Whale Sound’s most impressive audio chapbook yet. (And that’s saying a lot, because the first two also kicked ass.)
New York Times: “Nabokov Theory on Polyommatus Blue Butterflies Is Vindicated” by the always wonderful Carl Zimmer. “Nabokov was right – so was Stephen Jay Gould wrong?” asks Jessica Palmer at Bioephemera. Yes, turns out he was. Which makes me happy, because Gould was a very over-rated writer and a pompous ass.
Voice Alpha: “To read or to recite?”
My simple question about public poetry performance theory elicits a number of quite varied and passionate responses.
Marcia Bonta: “The Beautiful Beech”
My mom’s monthly nature column. For once, she picked a subject I had no trouble illustrating with my own photos — one of my favorite trees.
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(watch on YouTube)
The ultimate annoying little sister (brother?). This is one of the latest captures from the den cam in Minnesota, showing an unusual multi-age black bear family (Hope is one year old, her siblings just a couple weeks old).
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Writing Our Way Home is a new online community I’ve joined. Founded by British blogger, novelist, and writing coach Fiona Robyn and her fiance Kaspalita, a Buddhist priest and the resident tech guru, it’s for people interested in writing with attention, especially in the form they call “small stones“: “short pieces of writing that precisely capture a fully-engaged moment.” Since this is obviously something I’ve been trying to do at The Morning Porch for quite some time, I couldn’t not join, despite feeling already a bit over-committed online. The site uses Ning, and has most of the same functionality as Facebook, only easier to figure out: groups, forums, personal pages with walls (and blogs), etc. Do join if this interests you. I’ve been interacting with Fiona online for quite a few years, and she even edited an issue of qarrtsiluni once for us — the only solo editor ever to do so — so I am fairly confident in predicting that this community will still be around five years from now if she has anything to do with it.
(text) So you tore yourself away
from news of revolution
to stand under an umbrella in the woods
as the trees made rain?
Yes. The news means nothing
if I close my eyes & ears.
But what did you see?
Not the trees & ice around you—no.
But a pressed-down people
righting themselves with a shower
of broken shards, bowed limbs rising,
rising.
Those were incommensurable events.
There was nothing the trees could’ve done
to resist their liberation.
And what did you do
while the forest was shedding
its only copy of itself?
I tried to freeze it
with a pair of cameras,
one for motion,
one for the moment’s immortal soul.
Why didn’t you drop everything
& join in?
* * *
Adapting my ice-storm videos to a pre-existing poem, In the Ice Forest, proved impossible, so instead I tried the ekphrastic approach and wrote a poem in response to the footage — and the experience. For me, it usually happens this way. That link goes to a post at the Moving Poems forum, where I talk a little bit about the making of my first documentary-style videopoem, as well.
The topic of the poem was influenced by discussions at the new online community Writing Our Way Home, which celebrates “writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment.” Unfortunately, perhaps, the felt obligation to record things for later sharing or for record keeping distances oneself, prevents one from becoming fully engaged. If someday you see me abandon photography and videography altogether and just stick to writing, that will be the reason.
“Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap
or gather into barns…”
Matthew 6:26
The sky and ground are the same
flat white, as if for once the sights
trained by the worm low in the earth
and that of the bird dangling from a branch
have merged with one another, and now
there is no difference between earth
and heaven, duty and desire. Your mother cheers
the squirrel bounding over the icy crust; and mine,
by text from thousands of miles away, reminds me
of small creatures that do not glean or gather,
and yet increase. In a book fallen open
on my lap, a poet I’ve just met* has penned
a song of sorry lovers, who’ve whispered
“Take me. You know you want to.” In this world,
how are we supposed to know how all these bridges
connect to one another, why it is that some exact
a toll while at others, the way seems clear as bright
ribbons of space and light, merging with the horizon.
