Walking on water


Video link.

Walking on water, I forgot about the fish
in their white gardens of coral.

Walking on the snow, I forgot about spring,
though others knew to dig for it.

My snowshoes kept me from sinking
& I glided over the drifts
almost as lightly as the shadows of the trees.

And watching those shadows,
I even managed to forget about the trees themselves.

This is what’s wrong with that dreamy kind of faith
that depends on miracles. We don’t need
one more way to keep our distance.

 

oak shadows

Odes to Tools available for barter

My weekly podcast is proving more expensive than I’d originally thought. Not only have I bought a new microphone (and am contemplating the purchase of a mobile digital recorder) but I’m having to buy more books, too, so I can interview their authors on the show. I believe in buying books and supporting authors, of course; it’s just that my income is extremely limited. I’ve actually thought about trying to get some underwriting support — that’s how desperate I am.

But this morning I got an email from John Miedema offering to barter his book Slow Reading — something I’ve been meaning to read for a while — for my Odes to Tools, and a lightbulb went off in my head. Why didn’t I think of this before? I lost no time in adding a note to the Via Negativa Contact page about the option of bartering with other authors (or musicians who have CDs out). It doesn’t have to be poetry, but obviously it does have to be something I want to read (or listen to). Self-published material is as eligible as anything else, but what will really help me decide is if you can point me to some of the content online. (For Odes to Tools, you can look at the first few pages on the publisher’s website, or even browse all the poems here.)

Now, if you’re shy, or otherwise uninclined to be a guest on the Woodrat Podcast, that’s fine — we can still barter. If you’ve already ordered Odes to Tools and would like to send me a review copy of your book for podcast consideration, that of course would be fine, too. My postal address — also on the Contact page — is PO Box 68, Tyrone, PA 16686 U.S.A.

Banjo Jubilee

This entry is part 15 of 18 in the series Banjo Poems

A pregnant woman
lays her hand on a banjo
for good luck.

A burglar flees at
the sight of a banjo
over his left shoulder.

A dog sees a banjo
go yellow in alpenglow
& begins to howl.

The coyotes answer
& the dog
tucks in his tail.

The locksmith pauses
to listen on his way
to the music store.

Just then
the baby kicks
& she jerks her hand back.

There are so many ways
to be lucky
& all of them are round.

Snow Flea

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Bestiary

Hypogastrura nivicola

The snow flea is rarely found alone.
Though if it were, who but another snow flea
would notice it against the snow,
a single speck of pepper, a mote of ash?
Come March & they move en masse,
transhumant across their blue-shadowed host.
Approach too close & they start to rocket about
like acrobats in a mad flea circus.
There’s safety in numbers, & in
the unpredictability of a random launch —
the wingless springtail’s main defense.
True, one sometimes goes straight up
& returns to the same, dangerous spot,
but what bird wants to mess with such
unquiet seeds?

The snow flea is as self-reliant
as its cousin the true flea is dependent.
It absorbs moisture through
a feeding tube in its abdomen
& breathes directly through its thick skin.
Its blood contains a protein
that prevents it from ever freezing
& hardening into knives.

The snow flea never stops molting, even
after becoming an adult.
Life alternates between two phases,
mating & eating, with a complete
change of skin after each.
Nor does the fastidiousness end there:
all reproduction is by post.
The male deposits a tidy packet of sperm
at some convenient location
& the female stops by later & picks it up.
To everything its season.
And when the snow melts?
The snow flea walks on water if it must,
& returns at last — recalcitrant seasoning —
to the soil’s dark goulash.


This is a complete re-working of a poem that first appeared here back in December 2008, “Like a Snow Flea.” For more on snow fleas and springtails generally, see Bug Girl’s Blog and especially the Marvelous in nature.

Where to look for miracles

If people are determined not to believe something, then no amount of proof will change their mind. You will be called a liar for proclaiming things that call into question the way people are living. But remember, you’re just one in a long line of Cassandras and Jeremiahs — prophets who were scorned for being right. They stuck to their guns, and so should you. What’s the alternative? You can’t change the laws of nature.

If you still think you can overcome people’s aversion to the truth by uncovering better evidence, hey, go for it. Delve into the mysteries of geologic time, subatomic particles, or the outer reaches of the known universe, and bring the clearest evidence you can find — see if that makes any difference. Only those who have learned to listen will actually hear, and that depends in great measure on whatever chance circumstances shaped their upbringing; you have no control over it. Those who can’t hear are as good as dead — and therefore soon to rejoin the cosmic mystery in any case.

Some will say: How come God hasn’t sent some sort of obvious sign about this? And all you can say is, signs and miracles abound! Most people just don’t know how to read them. All creatures that move on the earth or fly through the air belong to communities equal in importance to your own. God doesn’t overlook anything, and we’re all in this together.

The foregoing is my own rough paraphrase of several verses from the Quran, 6:32-38, based primarily on the Ahmed Ali translation but with reference to several others on the Internet, especially for the crucial passage about the equal validity of non-human communities (other translations offer “societies” and even “peoples”). I even found a Sufi blog that interprets 6:38 as a call for animal rights.

Note however that in attempting to make this passage a bit more palatable for modern secular types, I have stripped out most of the poetry. The part about geologic time and subatomic particles, for example, paraphrases: “Seek out a tunnel (going deep) into the earth,/ or a ladder reaching out to the skies, and bring them a sign…” Fascinating stuff one way or the other, though, I thought. I am seriously exploring the idea of writing a modern bestiary now, and looking for inspiration. Who’d have thought the Muslim holy book would contain such a radically inclusive vision?

Woodrat Podcast 6: The Least of These

A conversation with Todd Davis about life and death, religion and poetry

Todd Davis stops by to read some poems from his latest book, The Least of These, as well as from his previous books, and to talk about public reading, what motivates him as an artist, growing up with Mennonites and how that shaped his own beliefs, nature poetry, travel poetry, deer and deer hunting, how to kill in a manner that honors the spirit of the slain, and more.

Here’s a set list of the poems in the podcast:

If you live within driving distance of Altoona, Pennsylvania, don’t miss Todd’s reading on Thursday, February 18, at 7:30 p.m.

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Ars Poetica?


Video link.

Czeslaw Milosz reads his poem. This is a different translation from the one he did with Lillian Vallee for the Collected Poems.

I made this thinking I might post it on Moving Poems, but I’m not sure it quite qualifies as “the best video poetry on the web.” Nevertheless, I enjoy matching poems to footage like this, and I happen to think it’s a pretty good fit, assuming I’m correct in reading a fairly light-hearted tone into the poem.

I wholeheartedly concur with the sentiment that “the world is different from what it seems to be / and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.” The closing assertion, that poems should only be written rarely and reluctantly, strikes me as a rather strong prescription: potentially life-saving for some poets and very dangerous for others. I do love the next-to-last stanza, though (in the canonical translation):

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

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