A good start

Intro

I am going to begin this blog with one of my all-time favorites. It was written by Henry Reed, English translator, poet and WWII radio dramatist in 1942. Unfortunately it is still contemporary.

NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts.
Yesterday, we had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

A Writer’s Lament

Novels and plays lie moribund in drawers.
Poems we need not mention.
All forgotten in the heap
of cinema and websites
and sound bites designed
to suffocate imagination.

But some of us still dream that somewhere
among unremembered piles
lies the work of someone
who can write again the Iliad,
Slaughterhouse Five, Macbeth,
or maybe even the Bible.

A Speechless Poet

I do not have the words.
I need language to make executives and politicians
feel the pain of lives destroyed, the tragedy of the dead
and maimed, the hopelessness of children
surviving in the hell that is the
“collateral damage” of their unholy wars.

I need phrases stronger than I know.
Phrases that can make the terror stalking the streets
of Iraq or Afghanistan or Rwanda real in the minds
of leaders grown immune to the sorrow of lives wasted,
destroyed by their “tough” decisions
and the waging of their “just” wars

I cannot find words
to give voice to the screams inside my head.
There is no alphabet to give form to
the desperate sadness and fear I feel
when scanning the pages of the Times  or the Post or
watching atrocities march across my TV screen.

I need to express the hopelessness
in the eyes of a child, or the pain of a woman searching for family
in the rubble and ruin that once was home,
or the horror of mangled bodies and frightened families fleeing
their now to a an unknown fate,
that may be worse than the their today.

I search for words
terrible enough to describe the camps, where thousands
are caught in the maelstrom of a war they did not make
and cannot understand, go on existing;
living on memories and the forlorn hope
that tomorrow there will be enough to eat.

I want to counter priests and politicians and all men
who shout that war is just, or needed, or will bring “freedom”
to people whose only wish is deliverance
from the devastation that has become their life.
But my muse deserts me and description dies in tears
I do not have the words.

Autumn High

High on autumn gold
and the russet smell
of burning leaves.
Clear -bright air
tasting of apples
and peaches, stolen
from a neighbors tree.
Air warmed by memories
of last summer
But crisp enough to
let you know that
it will not be long before
the river freezes over
and the north wind
slithers in through
unmended cracks in
the window caulking.

Insomnia

Another sleeples night
My eyes so tightly shut they hurt
But little drops of time still
run down the window of my mind
And I lie watching myself
in each tiny capsule
living moments that have been
or could be. Wondering if the drops
will dry up and disappear
when I am gone.

Fly Fishing for Sanity

Yellow-bright, sun draws leaved patterns on canvas,
ending dreams of creels full of shining speckled beauties.
Woodsmoke, smelling of boiled coffee, drifts in ethereal patterns
telling me that Paul has already begun our breakfast.

Coffee with day-old doughnuts

Quickly we collect our gear and clamber carefully down dewdamp banks.
Slanting sunlight begins to warm our shoulders and we take care
to drop no shadow on the water to warn of our approach.
The brook burbles and rills ’round rocks and through the shallows.

Long shadows of Walnuts, oaks and doomed butternut trees

Crouching we peek silently over edge to see dark shadows
and silver flashes of sleek bodies suspended or sliding through
copper-clear depths of water pooled behind a tree-trunk dam
where mirrored surface breaks with silver flash of feeding fish.

Tackle boxes hold our hopes clipped to our waists

We search among bits of yarn and feathers with
names like Black Gnat, Blue Dunn, or Bitch Creek Nymph,
looking for a lure that looks so like the hatch that wily trout
cannot refrain from catching it and so in turn be caught.

We tie the hooked temptations to tapered ends of transparent leaders.

Sun begins to break over the trees and warms away the early chill.
The lightest of breezes whispers, rearranging leaves in shifting patterns of green.
The sounds of brook and birdsongs break the morning stillness.
Rushing water gurgles icy around waders and the current tugs and tries to pull us over.

Fly line swishes overhead and lures land lightly where intuition tells us lunkers lie.

Too soon the rise is ended. The last ripples no longer break the pool’s reflections,
and speckled bodies are only passing shadows seeking shade of undercuts
and overhanging trees. We pack our gear and head to camp, content with
creels full of sleek bodies … or holding only drying leaves …

It really does not matter!

because for one tiny bit of time
war and politics and
headlines filled with news of
man’s inhumanity to man
were just a murmer,
a babbling undercurrent
that could be submerged
in shadowed pools
and flashing bodies.
And for that moment
we lived in peace
and proper awe
of all God’s gifts

Solitary Stroll

Walking the city streets,
seeing you in strangers faces,
breathless when I catch sight
of a hairdo, or a walk, or
the smell of a cologne that
makes me think,
just for an instant,
that you are there.
Once I even followed a girl,
who from behind
reminded me of you,
four blocks past my subway
not wanting to lose her
but afraid to overtake her
and break the illusion
of you again in my arms