Year: 2014

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Swallowtail: the making of a haiku

spicebush swallowtail caterpillar

I found this photo in my camera when I went to download my Stockholm airport photos. I took it in late August, I think. There’s a spicebush (Lindera benzoin) next to my front door, and the fact that this spicebush swallowtail caterpillar was now climbing the storm door suggests it was in its last instar and looking for a place to pupate. The fake eye-spots on its butt are of course evolution’s way of protecting it from predators (mostly birds).

I got to thinking about the photo in the shower this morning. Perhaps I could post it to my sadly neglected Woodrat photohaiku blog? Then my mind wandered to certain people — you know the type I’m sure — and I came up with:

big fake eyes
your real gaze is in the glass
poor caterpillar

Not bad, but “glass” was too ambivalent (it could mean a drink), while “mirror” would be a little too much (especially given the final “r” sounds of “poor” and “caterpillar”). And what was supposed to be a sympathetic final line just sounded condescending, an insult compounding the injury of anthropomorphism.

where to pupate?
the caterpillar’s own green
repels her now

I wasn’t dissatisfied with this, either, but it seemed altogether too cerebral for a proper haiku. I just wasn’t ready to accept that I couldn’t pack a bit of nature education into (approximately) 17 syllables. This despite the obvious fact that the species name itself was much too long to fit.

big fake eyes
the poor caterpillar’s
only defense

The more I pondered it, the more laden with significance this caterpillar became — poor thing, indeed! I had strayed pretty far from the spirit of haiku, but who cares? I was having fun.

big fake eyes
searching for a quiet spot
to don black wings

This semi-surrealist take would be, if nothing else, a good fit for the Halloween season, I thought. Why not?

I was tired; I had gotten up after only four hours of sleep so I could make bread this morning. I caught myself staring.

big fake stare
the caterpillar is tired
of being a caterpillar

And that, for better or worse, is the one I went with. Spontaneous insights are damn hard work sometimes.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Outbreak

At the office all the morning, where we had a deputation from the Duke in his absence, he being gone to Portsmouth, for us to have the whole disposal and ordering of the Fleet. In the afternoon about business up and down, and at night to visit Sir R. Slingsby, who is fallen sick of this new disease, an ague and fever. So home after visiting my aunt Wight and Mrs. Norbury (who continues still a very pleasant lady), and to supper, and so to bed.

where is
a mouth for us

who is fleet in
the afternoon
and at night who
is fallen sick
of this new ague
and fever

who continues


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 22 October 1661.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Seconds

And give me the not-quite-gold,
the earring found on the sidewalk
without its clasp, the little sip
of coffee left in a paper cup—

Give me the bit role with no
speaking parts so I can be near
the ones whose hearts sing as if
at the point of breaking—

Give me the ache of light
that licks the undersides
of leaves just before dusk,
that dot of butter in the tea—

Give me even that brief
moment of rending, visceral
shudder after the god has grazed
the hills in his passing—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Ukiyo.

Posted on by Laura M Kaminski

Tree Ring Cantos

I. airport geese

geese on the tarmac
look up occasionally, watch
large metal-feathered

humans set out on
migrations, sometimes wonder
if we know we’re late

II. stump 2

years pass, we know this:
all things reckon time in circles
orbit and revolve

why is it easy
for us to imagine these leaves
have always been old

III. lakeshore weeds

and why do we strive
for fortune, fame? these lakeshore weeds
are simple, common

yet they still set fruit,
array themselves in shades of gold
welcome their own end

IV. lingonberries

if we cannot, like
unassuming weeds be rooted
in humility

shift with the seasons
in time with trees and leaves and geese
perhaps we can still

share the same table,
feast with our better, wiser kin
on lingonberries

V. swirly weed skeleton

ready or not, we
will leave this place some rotation
and revolution

perhaps the question
should not be how long do we have
before departure

but whether there’s some
way for even our decaying
to be beautiful

VI. fly agaric

icebergs and mountains
volcanoes and okinamis
all share a teacher

this fly agaric
on the surface only shows us
little of itself

VII. old oil tank

it seems the carcass
of us, our species, our habits
will take centuries

more of exposure
before we grow into beauty
rancho la brea

VIII. roots

origins nurture
roots are footing and foundation,
knife spoon cup straw fork

arteries and veins
maybe change my name to Alice
take another bite

from the other side
of that fly agaric mushroom
shrink to fit, resize

to molecular
catch a piece of capillary
action, mind the gap

IX. stump

a prayer: let me age
generously, this limbless tree
both headstone and home

X. pine resin

is poetry not
a sticky sap that oozes up
through cracks in our hulls

whether we will it
or not, sometimes captures
accidentally

a small winged moment
preserves it for eternity
memory, amber

—Laura M Kaminski
10 23 2014
In response to the first ten photographs in “A nature walk at the airport“

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Service

This entry is part 6 of 27 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014

What are you supposed to feel
when asked to preside over
a ceremony— to move

or be moved
without warning
or preparation just

after coffee and toast,
the ride on the trolley
or train, identical hands

zipping up jackets
and straightening ties,
touching a button or collar

or badge, folding a newspaper
under an arm, shielding the eyes
from the too-bright sun?

Here is the guard,
ceremonially robed in black,
bearing the silver sword

and golden mace
across the threshold
of a hall bathed just

yesterday with the blood
of assault. And the reporter
notes how the heads

of the houses of Parliament,
more accustomed to disagreement,
break ranks across the aisle

to shake hands, to touch—
circumstance urgent enough to prise
hearts from their catacombs.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ukiyo

Early with Mr. Moore by coach to Chelsy, to my Lord Privy Seal’s, but have missed of coming time enough; and having taken up Mr. Pargiter, the goldsmith (who is the man of the world that I do most know and believe to be a cheating rogue), we drank our morning draft there together of cake and ale, and did make good sport of his losing so much by the King’s coming in, he having bought much of Crown lands, of which, God forgive me! I am very glad. At Whitehall, at the Privy Seal, did with Sir W. Pen take advice about passing of things of his there that concern his matters of Ireland. Thence to the Wardrobe and dined, and so against my judgment and conscience (which God forgive, for my very heart knows that I offend God in breaking my vows herein) to the Opera, which is now newly begun to act again, after some alteracion of their scene, which do make it very much worse; but the play, “Love and Honour,” being the first time of their acting it, is a very good plot, and well done. So on foot home, and after a little business done in my study and supper, to bed.

“Time enough” is a cheat;
we make good sport
of losing. Give me
the passing of things: heart
breaking in the opera,
a love done
after a little sin.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 21 October 1661.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

A nature walk at the airport

airport geese

Sweden’s Arlanda airport is an $40 train ride from the Stockholm city center ($80 round-trip), and thanks to congestion at JFK, my eight-hour layover had dwindled to just five-and-a-half hours, not all of it in daylight. I weighed my options as I ate lunch in a randomly selected airport restaurant. Then I noticed the flowers on my table were real, and moreover were seasonal wildflowers — some kind of native aster, it appeared, along with a sprig of spearmint. If these people are as nuts about nature as I’d always heard, surely it must be possible to go walking right outside the airport, I thought. Continue reading “A nature walk at the airport”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Meal Ticket

“Art too is just a way of living.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

And I am the coin surrendered to the mouth of the machine, the ticket that the chain will perforate, indifferent to how or where. I am the payment collected in advance for a carnival ride that ends before it even begins. Here I am again, among the tents where strays and midgets sit, where the natives polish the foreman’s shoes; where the sad girls in torn tutus comb through their high wire repertoire of dreams. Not even the camel knows how narrow the door. Not even the needle knows the jaundice in the eye. Line up, line up for the rations and the dinner bell. Remember, as they ladle out the dregs, what it is that feeds you.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sunset Boulevard.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Dreamliner

Aircraft. It sounds like something one could learn: how to breathe, how to oxidize. But this craft is the kind that floats, and it is enormous. It takes us the full width of Norway at its widest point to reach cruising altitude.

The Boeing 787 is nicknamed the Dreamliner, and its crowded cabin, though far from silent, is filled with a lovely hush of white noise that makes it difficult to stay awake. The only light left in the sky is a band of red above an oddly low horizon which goes before us like Yahweh leading the Jews out of Egypt, on and on into what my body assures me should be night.

five-hour sunset
a movie plays on the back
of every seat

Our original flight map had shown the plane going farther south, but I wake to find us over northern Iceland. In little over an hour we’ve made the journey that used to take the Norsemen more than a week in their own formidable crafts, part Dreamliner, part F-22. I’m not sure what always makes me favor window seats on the left side of a plane, but this time it pays off: that stream of bright orange in the near distance can only be the lava flow from the volcano Bárðarbunga, which on Google Earth—accessible from my seat-back video screen—shows as a great round hole. Now it is the rest of the island that is black, and the caldera, when it periodically appears, is as livid as a setting sun.

a glowing wound
in the darkness six miles below
Bárðarbunga

Volcano! in half
a dozen languages
we gape through our portholes

A little later, as the lava flow recedes into the distance, I start to see the lights from settlements along the north coast. Pressing my face right up to the glass, I realize there’s still just enough light to distinguish land from the slightly darker sea. I recognize Vatnsfjord from the maps that accompanied translations I’ve read of Vatnsdæla Saga and Grettir’s Saga, and then the fern-frond-like Westfjords from, well, every map of Iceland ever (though I do think of the ill-fated hero Gisli). Then we are back out over the north Atlantic, its waves and storms as remote as a legend from our comfortable, high-tech bubble. The west seems brighter now, but it will have faded to blackness by the time we land in New York. I remember with a smile something someone said about the pilots as we waited to board at the Oslo airport: “If they’re too late, they won’t have time to fly up over the top of Canada as they usually do.”

curve of the horizon
even from this height
it’s hard to believe

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Lycanthrope

(Lord’s day). At home in bed all the morning to ease my late tumour, but up to dinner and much offended in mind at a proud trick my man Will hath got, to keep his hat on in the house, but I will not speak of it to him to-day; but I fear I shall be troubled with his pride and laziness, though in other things he is good enough. To church in the afternoon, where a sleepy Presbyter preached, and then to Sir W. Batten who is to go to Portsmouth to-morrow to wait upon the Duke of York, who goes to take possession and to set in order the garrison there. Supped at home and to bed.

A bed in
my mind,
a hat on the house:
I fear a good sleep.
It goes to take
possession and
to sup.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 20 October 1661.