Poetry Page

[BarbStAubrey]

Ah thanks, a great reminder - I must plan a few things so that I do not rattle around in this house the couple of days after Katha leaves. I think I will look and see what is playing in the movies and see if one of my friends would like to attend a matinée and then I should plan on meeting a few friends for lunch. And I need to fill my CD player with some music that I have not heard in awhile so the house is not so quiet. At least I pay a monthly fee to talk as long as I want on the phone and so for a few days we may just have a daily chat although I must be thoughtful since Katha will be tired after her drive back home.

Babi sorting out the kitchen cabinets I found food in the back of the bottom cabinets that went back to the early 1980s - and then lots of patterns from when I sewed and dishes that I will never use like clear glass cake plates that I had for the many larger gatherings and then, some casual party dishes and cocktail knives and forks that Katha could use since she is at the time in life when she has parties along with dozens of napkins. I hated paper napkins and ran up on the sewing machine dozens of colorful napkins to match the colors in the china - decided to give to my one Grandboy who loves being in the out of doors all my camping stuff since I will no longer be backpacking. Even found crystal gifts that I purchased on sale that I forgot was in the closets - best of all, I found stored in a storage bin my favorite shawl that I thought I left somewhere - I was in tears finding it.

Yes, our history comes and goes in our thoughts - and our life today makes us appreciate the difficult life in past years doesn't it - reminds me of a Wordsworth poem.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
          ~ William Wordsworth, 1807

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;      
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                    
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.                    

[Babi]

 It's good to find something that you can pass on and people can actually use and enjoy.  I
didn't have the strength for a 'yard sale', but I did find a few things that friends could use.
I haven't seen that Wordsworth poem in years, but I do remember it well.  It does have a
sad and tired feel to it, doesn't it?
  Time to rest, ..and to dig out some poems that make you smile.

[Octavia]

Trying to get online sometimes is like entering N.Korea. Not sure what's causing the bottleneck, perhaps the Olympics?
I have given out subtle hints that I don't actually need any more nicknacks, but it's falling on deaf ears, I'm afraid.
I remember that poem so well. English poets(well most things English) were no. one at school, we still felt very British. When I told my boys that we stood for God Save The Queen at the pictures, they said, you must be joking!
I feel Wordsworth was having a little melt down when he wrote that poem.

[BarbStAubrey]

—Emily Dickinson

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

[BarbStAubrey]

Kindness
          —Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

[BarbStAubrey]

NIGHT IN A SMALL TOWN
          ~ Cornelio Faigao

Here only the thin wind
The deep silence mars;
Here night seems always
Spread thick with stars.

I must by y window    (y translates loosely to and)
and a child am I
Beneath roof of nipa,   (Nipa is a tied Bamboo hut with Nipa palm leaves used for the roof)
Beneath palm of sky.

The dark roofs are coffins
'Neath heaven's blue bowl;
The winds fling black dirges
And the late dogs howl.

The treetops a quiver
Spell mystery, fear;
Above them is splendor
And beauty austere.

O night for the going
Of me on the tide
With Beauty above me
And Death by my side!

[BarbStAubrey]

One Year Less
          ~ Cheryl Mcdonald

There is no word, no label, no identifying moniker,
I am not a widow, not an orphan, not childless,
But one child less.
One less open laugh and little boy giggle,
One less challenging tete-a-tete;
One less artful, winking manipulation,
One less word of comfort, one less grateful hug.
One less chance to embrace a daughter;
One less new life to carry your eyes, your chin, your grin, your name,
No one word for the pain, the longing, the brevity
Of a life meant for living; an old soul meant to grow older than mine;
Would there be any one price too high, any sacrifice too great,
For one more moment, one more breath, one more warm touch;
I grasp desperately and sense the closeness –
the ONE just at the fingertips of my heart and mind,
Only to realize again and again and again,
There is no "One" – you are gone and I am – less.

[Babi]

 Knickknacks make such quick and easy gifts, Octavia. You will have to forget subtlety if
you want to get your point across.  "My dears, I have all the trinkets I can find room for.
 Please DO NOT bring me anymore!"

 Dear Emily, how I love her poems. Come to think of it, I suspect we flatlanders
romanticize her mountains as much as the mountain dwellers are awed by the sea.

  till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth
 What a poignant image. I really like this poem.  And the Cheryl McConald poem is
heartbreaking.
 
  Where did you find Nye and McDonald, BARB?

[BarbStAubrey]

Nye has been around for a long time Babi - this was a poem I was attempting to memorize a few years ago - clearing out I found the notebook where each day I was writing it out as my way of committing it to memory but it did not take - other things crowded my life and I abandoned the effort - where the poem fleets into my thoughts every so often I have not even memorized a stanza - now the McDonald I found on-line and it seems fitting given the news from Aurora.

[JoanK]

I love all the poems I see today.

"Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,"

YES! Having moved from inland to the sea, every time I catch a breath of that sea air, or see it, even in the distance, I feel it, even after several years!

[Octavia]

I loved them too, I am trying to decide which one I loved the best, and have to go with Kindness, that really struck a chord. Sometimes I feel we've forgotten things like kindness and consideration. Too much pushing and shoving, and I'm all right Jack. Even on Poetry Forums(present company excepted, of course) there's snide and cutting remarks.
I love wandering round the Net, going with the current, so to speak. Started with the UK Guardian newspaper, listening to Fiona Shaw and Edna O'Brian reading Yeat's When You Are Old together. Then read that she was doing The Ancient Mariner In Greece,  by heart. Wow, apparently she memorised most of it jogging in America, while she was making True Blood!
Then in the comments someone said that The Young Voices Theatre Company in Sydney had a short film about the poem, called of all things Bat Eyes. I clicked on that and thought it was really touching, a credit to the young people.
I was sad to hear the man who wrote Love In The Time Of Cholera and A Hundred Years Of Solitude has dementia and won't be writing anymore.
Babi, I'm sort of a squib when it comes to telling people not to do anything, but I'll work on it.

[Babi]

 I wasn't much of a hand at it in my younger days, either, OCTAVIA.  It tended to develop with
my responsibilities as a parent, tho'.  Looking back now, I can see where I might have been
better off if I had been a bit more self-confidant and assertive.  At the same time,  if it's not one's
typical pattern, it really makes an impression when it emerges. 

[Octavia]

The Horses



 Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.


Edwin Muir

[Octavia]

Horses On The Camargue

In the grey wastes of dread,
 The haunt of shattered gulls where nothing moves
 But in a shroud of silence like the dead,
 I heard a sudden harmony of hooves,
 And, turning, saw afar
 A hundred snowy horses unconfined,
 The silver runaways of Neptune's car
 Racing, spray-curled, like waves before the wind.
 Sons of the Mistral, fleet
 As him with whose strong gusts they love to flee,
 Who shod the flying thunders on their feet
 And plumed them with the snortings of the sea;
 Theirs is no earthly breed
 Who only haunts the verges of the earth
 And only on the sea's salt herbage feed-
 Surely the great white breakers gave them birth.
 For when for years a slave,
 A horse of the Camargue, in alien lands,
 Should catch some far-off fragrance of the wave
 Carried far inland from this native sands,
 Many have told the tale
 Of how in fury, foaming at the rein,
 He hurls his rider; and with lifted tail,
 With coal-red eyes and cataracting mane,
 Heading his course for home,
 Though sixty foreign leagues before him sweep,
 Will never rest until he breathes the foam
 And hears the native thunder of the deep.
 And when the great gusts rise
 And lash their anger on these arid coasts,
 When the scared gulls career with mournful cries
 And whirl across the waste like driven ghosts;
 When hail and fire converge,
 The only souls to which they strike no pain
 Are the white crested fillies of the surge
 And the white horses of the windy plain.
 Then in their strength and pride
 The stallions of the wilderness rejoice;
 They feel their Master's trident in their side,
 And high and shrill they answer to his voice.
 With white tails smoking free,
 Long streaming manes, and arching necks, they show
 Their kinship to their sisters of the sea-
 And forward hurl their thunderbolts of snow.
 Still out of hardship bred,
 Spirits of power and beauty and delight
 Have ever on such frugal pasture fed
 And loved to course with tempests through the night.

Roy Campbell

The Horse Poems are inspired by my midnight and 4am viewing of the Olympic equestrian events.

[BarbStAubrey]

Octavia I had to look up Edwin Muir - fascinating life story - both poems are powerful and enchanting- in keeping with the Horse theme this poem is long, very long with an emphasis on the strength of a woman written by just about my most favorite poet, a Muscogee Creek.

She Had Some Horses
          ~ By Joy Harjo

I    She Had Some Horses

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with eyes of trains.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their
bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet
in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.
She had horses who cried in their beer.
She had horses who spit at male queens who made
them afraid of themselves.
She had horses who said they weren't afraid.
She had horses who lied.
She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped
bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, "horse".
She had horses who called themselves, "spirit", and kept
their voices secret and to themselves.
She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who
carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her
bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.



II    Two Horses

             I thought the sun breaking through Sangre de Cristo
Mountains was enough, and that
                                                wild musky scents on my body after
       long nights of dreaming could
                                           unfold me to myself.
             I thought my dance alone through worlds of
odd and eccentric planets that no one else knew
      would sustain me. I mean
                                          I did learn to move
                                                                      after all
      and how to recognize voices other than the most familiar.
          But you must have grown out of
                                                       a thousand years dreaming
             just like I could never imagine you.
                        You must have
                                           broke open from another sky
to here, because
                        now I see you as part of the millions of
   other universes that I thought could never occur
    in this breathing.
                               And I know you as myself, traveling.
In your eyes alone are many colonies of stars
                                                   and other circling planet motion.
                                  And then your fingers, the sweet smell
                                     of hair, and
                                                       your soft, tight belly.
    My heart is taken by you
               and these mornings since I am a horse running towards
a cracked sky where there are countless dawns
                                             breaking simultaneously.
There are two moons on the horizon
and for you
                I have broken loose.



III    Drowning Horses

She says she is going to kill
herself. I am a thousand miles away.
Listening.
               To her voice in an ocean
of telephone sound. Grey sky
and nearly sundown; I don't ask her how.
I am already familiar with the weapons:
a restaurant that wouldn't serve her,
the thinnest laughter, another drink.
And even if I weren't closer
to the cliff edge of the talking
wire, I would still be another mirror,
another running horse.

Her escape is my own.
I tell her, yes. Yes. We ride
out for breath over the distance.
Night air approaches, the galloping
other-life.

No sound.
No sound.



IV    Ice Horses

These are the ones who escape
after the last hurt is turned inward;
they are the most dangerous ones.
These are the hottest ones,
but so cold that your tongue sticks
to them and is torn apart because it is
frozen to the motion of hooves.
These are the ones who cut your thighs,
whose blood you must have seen on the gloves
of the doctor's rubber hands. They are
the horses who moaned like oceans, and
one of them a young woman screamed aloud;
she was the only one.
These are the ones who have found you.
These are the ones who pranced on your belly.
They chased deer out of your womb.
These are the ice horses, horses
who entered through your head,
and then your heart,
your beaten heart.

These are the ones who loved you.
They are the horses who have held you
so close that you have become
a part of them,
                      an ice horse
galloping
             into fire.



V    Explosion

The highway near Okemah, Oklahoma exploded.

                                              There are reasons for everything.
Maybe          there is a new people, coming forth
                   being born from the center of the earth,
                   like us, but another tribe.

Maybe          they will be another color that no one
                   has ever seen before. Then they might be hated,
                   and live in Muskogee on the side of the tracks
                   that Indians live on. (And they will be the
                   ones to save us.)

Maybe          there are lizards coming out of rivers of lava
                   from the core of this planet,

                                                    coming to bring rain

                   to dance for the corn,
                   to set fields of tongues slapping at the dark
                   earth, a kind of a dance.

But maybe the explosion was horses,
                                              bursting out of the crazy earth
near Okemah. They were a violent birth,
flew from the ground into trees
                                              to wait for evening night
mares to come after them:

                then      into the dank wet fields of Oklahoma
                then      their birth cords tied into the molten heart
                then      they travel north and south, east and west
                then      into wet white sheets at midnight when everyone
                            sleeps and the baby dreams of swimming in the
                            bottom of the muggy river.
                then      into frogs who have come out of the earth to
                            see for rain
                then      a Creek woman who dances shaking the seeds in
                            her bones
                then      South Dakota, Mexico, Japan, and Manila
                then      into Miami to sweep away the knived faces of hatred

Some will not see them.

But some will see the horses with their hearts of sleeping volcanoes
and will be rocked awake
                                    past their bodies

                                          to see who they have become.

[Babi]

A hundred snowy horses unconfined,
 The silver runaways of Neptune's car
 A vivid image that caught my imagination, OCTAVIA. 

  Among a people who count their wealth in horses, Ms. Harjo has beautifully described where
her wealth lies.

[Octavia]

I loved The Horses because I thought of those beautiful gentle giants, the Clydesdales.
The Horses on The Camargue was a high school poem. We all cheered when they struck out for home.
Barb or Babi, could someone expand a little on the first poem. I'm not sure I'm totally on the right track.
I loved the second one.

[Babi]

 Coward that I am,  I think I'll leave Barb to do the 'expanding'.  She's much better at it. 
   I picked up my copy of Blake last night; haven't really looked at him in years.  I bought the
book because I loved 'Xanadu'.  Looking over his poems now, I was surprised to find myself
disappointed.  I don't believe, on the whole, he is as good a poet as I thought.  A few poems
that seem to me perfect, and most somewhat rough in meter and extreme in viewpoint.  Either
overly 'sweet' or overly gloomy or bitter.  Still, when at his visionary best he does shine.
     

[BarbStAubrey]

OK first it is all one poem in sections - As any poem you can enjoy the power of most poet's work using your own life views or like walking in someone's garden there is another enjoyment and appreciation when you know the name of the plants, when they bloom etc. and so it is with poetry.

Jo Harjo's poems reflect her heritage - like many American Native people the Muscogee Creeks have a different view of time that is difficult but, eye opening to wrap your head around - we westerners think in liner time - the Muscogee think is circular time so that in the same thought what we consider the past and the future is all in the present - what we separate in our heads as nature and science is all one. A grandmother could be the recent mother of your mother or, an ancient grandmother 'of you' - and that you are a grandmother although, you may not biologically have had a child much less that child have a child. We would think this expressing a metaphor where as, the Muscogee see this as real and talk to the ancient grandmother. Nothing is written and yet, there are ways that this ancient grandmother speaks as does the grandmother who is sitting in the next room. The world is timeless.

As you can see from this link Jo Harjo is a very educated accomplished women so trying to explain this view of time can sound like I am speaking about some aberration or voodoo but it is real. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize author, a Kiowa, writes from the circular time perspective as does Leslie Marmon Silko, from the Laguna Pueblo - there are many others but these authors are more well known.

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/H/HA021.html

Circular time is still difficult for me and after these many years - at least 20 of struggling to understand I recently had the awesome experience of sending a question to Jo Harjo and SHE ANSWERED ME -  you do not understand - a response from the Pope or the President himself or the Queen of England could not have struck me to my toe nails like hearing directly from this writer. Later I will find the exchange and copy it here.

Now to this poem - Many Indian doctors (we call them medicine people) are women, strong women. They carry in their strength, darkening their light the horrendous history of oppression and loss. Standing at a medicine pole with the symbols of their visions they tell the crowd of their Dreams, in language alive and rich. The Songs speak of disease that is living although in liner time we do not see evidence so we assume the disease bares no importance to us today.

Jo Harjo is a strong woman - a gifted women - she has Songs - She sings to us of women healing, women unafraid to stand before the ills of the world around us, poverty, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, internalized oppression - her songs tell us that many of these ills, to thrive and repeat in countless ways over time, is fear. Her Songs/Poems names what she sees - she sees the present predicaments not extricated from the past that is born and informs under us.

The theme of horses not only identifies all aspects of women but works to claim them, accept them as living parts of ourselves. Horses in all colors and shapes - horses of love, hate, those we escape on, those that race through our head, our heart, those we own, those that own us...all of us...she sees clear and sings out identifying the disease called...'Fear'.

Some of us need the power of a horse - horses know some people and relish their smell so they follow that person - the love of a horse will attract a horse to you as will the fear of them. In other words the heart generates all manner of ideas, including horses. In this poem horses ride out from history, travel without fear, by a fury of houses burning behind as the villages were burned when the Muscogee were forcibly moved from the area of the Tallapoosa River, Georgia by Jackson's Cherokee allies.

The force of memory for Jo Harjo includes her six generations back, to Monahwee, leader, included in the great alliance for justice as tribal nations joined together to stand against the destruction and removal of the people from their homelands. Monahwee suffered seven shot wounds but survived by sheer force of will and love for his people. He is known for his magic with horses as her Aunt, was known to travel so quickly on a horse she would arrive at a destination before anyone. There are other connections to horses that include her father keeping a horse, against city ordinance, in Tulsa and how a family outing was to the lake or Okmulgee Oklahoma to watch the horses. Even her son is named Phil derived from the English word meaning lover of horses.

The poem is listing aspects of the earth that is within us and metaphors of feelings and ways we hold on to behaviors like at times we throw rocks at glass houses and speak as if our tongue is a razor blade hurting others or, we are at times as gentle and joyful as dancing in our mother's arms. Regardless if we act out screaming out of fear of silence it is within us or, we would not have a clue what that means when we hear or read about it. Some of us carry knives or guns while others of us react to fear by not traveling in certain areas of town or speaking to certain people as we wait for destruction. Jo speaks to the uncomfortable topic of many women turning to a saviour, a father, a husband, a brother, uncle, grandfather, good friend, even a priest who ends up raping them.

She continues to express that yes, we have horses within us - experiences, thoughts, emotions, beliefs that we love and some we hate - and under it all we have the experiences, thoughts, emotions and beliefs lurking from out of the ancient past that often only surfaces where we can see and identify them in a Dream that is similar to deep meditation.  

Even if you have practiced meditation you learn things that are not laid out like a plan of action or a sequential time line - often there are symbolic persons speaking truths that must be interpreted to your current situation and so with the Dream Songs or a medicine woman.

And so from this rampage of horses within us we break loose and become...

[Octavia]

Superb, Barb!!!
I will read it very carefully.
Light bulb moment-I'm currently rereading Lively's City Of The Mind(gorgeous book) and it's mostly set in London through the eyes of an architect. This struck me >
"driving through the city, he is both here and now, there and then. He carries yesterday with him but pushes forward into today, and tomorrow."
Later, "He sees that time is what we live in, but that it is also what we carry within us. Time is then, but it is also our own perpetual now."
"We both take it with us and leave ourselves behind within it--flies in amber, fossilized admonitions and exemplars."
Here is another coincidence(I think). There's a news item today about an aboriginal telling a man that his grandfather,(I think, can't check just now) who has been missing for a month is dead, because his soul is not communicating. The man has accepted this.
I must go back and read more carefully.Right now, I'm freezing and I need some sun

[BarbStAubrey]

Ah mid winter in Australia - stay warm...

City of the Mind sounds like a worthwhile read - the write up on Amazon and the comments left by others makes it sound like a book worthy of a read.

http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Penelope-Lively/dp/0802140203/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344057020&sr=1-1&keywords=City+Of+The+Mind

I think there are other writers aware of and attempting to use circular time in their stories - recently finished (finally, a 3 year on the book pile, recommendation by my sister) Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, taking  place in the most eastern part of Norway. Paragraphs are filled with events during WWII, when the boy rode his bike and his father was in the underground to when the story is being told by a neighbor when the boy is an old man retired to the cabin - mixed in with a time when the war was over and he was a young man helping his father send lumber down the river with this same story telling neighbor - at first you cannot tell when and who is telling the story till after a bit it does not seem to matter - it all blends together making a stained glass window that if the piece of glass is blue or red it does not matter it is the whole that lights us to beauty.

Even the book The Snow Child that I have recommended to be voted on as an October discussion attempts limited circular time so that during the story there are passages that make 40 years as if one year.  

I have your recommendation on my list of books now - I love reading stories in which this concept of circular time is used - the novel is no longer a 'she did this and he did that, they handled this problem and learned this or that' - rather, the story becomes a bit of magic or maybe that is it - the story becomes an art form where the whole is greater than the parts or descriptions.

[Babi]

Wow!!  That is a masterly summation, BARB.  I naturally have a hard time wapping my head around the concept of time, too.  On the other
hand, I have had what one might call a  'glimpse'  of the past that gave
me a clue to the present, so that part is not entirely out of reach.
  If you ever want to consider an alternate career, BARB,  I have often
thought you had the instinct and skills of a professor.  You love to learn
and share what you learn.  I think you missed your calling.

[Octavia]

Totally agree Babi, re Professor. I was a bit embarassed to admit I didn't quite get it, but it was definitely. worth it

[BarbStAubrey]

Oh dear, but yes, you have nailed it - I do like to continue learning - I always have a new curiosity to satisfy - like now I am fascinated learning about the various groups that for years were lumped together and called barbarians that were busy chipping away at so called Gates of Rome - where these groups came from where they migrated and how they were called names like Goths and Vandals etc. I had no idea but I was facinated to learn that most early groups were categorized by language and that was how they were named -

When you think of how crudely they lived all of a sudden my school girl romanticized image of Charlemagne is in question - I am reading The Song of Roland - talk about being 12 years old again - I remember being thrilled with the story then where as now I'm thrilled with the rich language and innocent loyalty, bravery and duty  the characters pour into life. Today we are so busy trying to figure out who and what to trust that loyalty, bravery and duty is seldom an instantaneous reaction to leaders.

Here are a few lines that bring the kind of scene to mind that can only fill the head of a pre-teen - knights on white horses - where as the reality - dust flying, stinky for want of a bath, straggly beards with no pocket combs and since the water was seldom drinkable they were probably all slightly soused.

Translated from the French in the 1880s by John O'Hagan from Ireland.

King Marsil's council is over that day,
And he called to him Clarin of Balaguet,
Estramarin, and Eudropin his peer,
Bade Garlon and Priamon both draw near,
Machiner and his uncle Maheu - with these
Joimer and Malbien from overseas,
Blancandrin for spokesman, - of all his men
He hath summoned there the most felon ten.
"Go ye to Carlemaine," spake their liege,
"At Cordres city he sits in siege,
While olive branches in hand ye press,
Token of peace and of lowliness.
Win him to make fair treaty with me,
Silver and gold shall your guerdon be,
Land and lordship in ample fee."
"Nay," said the heathens, "enough have we."

Then King Marsil bade be dight
Ten fair mules of snowy white,
Erst from the King of Sicily brought
Their trappings with silver and gold inwrought
Gold the bridle, and silver the selle.
On these are the messengers mounted well;
And they ride with olive boughs in hand,
To seek the Lord of the Frankish land.
Well let him watch; he shall be trepanned.

Professor - ah well I did want to be a school teacher but as the oldest I had to work and help raise my brother and sisters - my sister, just younger figured it out and was a Nun for some 30 years where she earned two doctorates and was the Dean of the Philosophy department even after she got out of the convent - and my kid sister, who is 15 years younger put herself through collage and just retired this summer as the Dean of the English department - when my oldest started high school and my youngest was either 2nd or maybe he was in 3rd grade I started Collage - I lack about 46 hours but after so many years all my hours may not carry forward. I decided as important as my home is to me I wanted to help anyone who wanted a home to find the best they could in their price range so I took the classes needed to get my Real Estate license. That was in 1980.

I have had folks tell me with the years of work, reading and studying I did during my involvement with various associations I would easily have a degree - ah so - having a degree is nice but when it comes down to it there would not be a change in my curiosity and knee jerk reaction to find out and then, find out further and deeper and, and - I was always accused by folks being annoyed of having too many questions and never being satisfied. It used to make me silently angry and embarrassed but gradually I decided too bad - that is what I do...and I do like to share -

I figure I was not made this curious to keep it all to myself - others cannot do what they do plus do what I enjoy - it is exciting to learn and share about things that we were not even aware of - Interesting, my daughter was only commenting on this but then, if I had gone to college as a young women I would not have married so young and had her - then neither of us would be in awe of the accomplishments of her two boys - I have no complaints - it is what it is and as long as I can research my latest questions what matters if there are initials after my name.

[Babi]

Today we are so busy trying to figure out who and what to trust that loyalty, bravery and
duty is seldom an instantaneous reaction to leaders.

 Oh, my, BARB, you certainly said a mouthful there. So seldom do we find true statesmen
among all the politicians; they shine like stars. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell who
fits that acclaim until after the dust has settled.

  I do understand your desire to share what you know. There are things I would like to
share, but some of it is controversial and no one would care about my opinions without the
credentials to back it up. So I just put in a quiet word here and there as opportunity
arises and hope it has some effect.

[Babi]

  Since we are finding so many posts throughout seniorlearn on aging, and how to approach these last years, I found this.  I thought it was good.  It's by Alfred Huffstickler.
 
 

 
 Don't Ask The Angels How They Fly

Knowing there's only so much time,
I don't rejoice less but more.
Knowing how many things will now
not happen, I wish them Godspeed
and pass them on to someone
down the line. I honor my
regrets, the part of me that
never happened or happened wrong
and proceed on course though
the course is not known. Only
the end is known and some days
it's a comfort. We live on
love, whether it's there or
not and rejoice in it even in
its absence. If I had known,
I'd have come here better equipped -
but that's another one of those
things you can't change - as we
can't alter that part of us
that lives on memory, knowing
all the while that time is not
real and that what we are we
never were in the light of that
timeless place where we really
belong, have belonged always.
And what's left then is only
to bless it all in the light of
what we don't and will never
know or at least not here where
the light is only a shadow of
that light we almost see sometimes -
that light that's really home.  

[BarbStAubrey]

OH Babi what a perfect find - thank you, thank you for finding this a sharing it with us.

Knowing how many things will now
not happen, I wish them Godspeed
and pass them on to someone
down the line. I honor my
regrets, the part of me that
never happened or happened wrong
and proceed on course though
the course is not known.

These are the lines I will savor - and for me it is just that - while I still have energy and health I do not want to waste the days with letting the day take care of itself - I want some of my dreams if not to happen at least for me to be working on them - many of my regrets are tied to doing what others expected or wanted or to others not fulfilling their promises and commitments - old age has its benefits - younger folks, even family members like to think we have little impact - fine - then I can use my time and energy to do what is important to me... chip on shoulder - probably - but you get to the point Babi when enough is enough!

I keep remembering when I was a kid there was this women, who must have had all the money in the world anyhow, she would hire Carnegie Hall in NY and give piano Concerts that gradually no one came to but each year she kept on giving them - seems she was a terrible piano player but she plugged on playing the classics and even at time had other musicians accompany her - I need to find her name because that is what the Jewish people call Chutzpah... she did it -

[Babi]

 So glad you liked it. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Dry Summers
          ~ Kathleen Tenpas

Thunder and wind
blow in from the northwest
fog clears suddenly
and rain
scatters across the yard,
a near miss
with a storm centered north of us.
Our clouds break and run
in a breeze suddenly cool
and dry.
Twenty years ago,
in another dry summer,
Wilhelmina said,
“In the Bible it says
it rains on the just and the unjust.
What do you suppose that makes us?”
I can still hear her laugh
if I listen closely.
I think even God smiled.

[BarbStAubrey]

Mermaid
          ~ Kathleen Tenpas

If I were to walk out now,
open the door and step into rain
falling straight and solid,
it would be like walking underwater,
my bowing poppies and baby’s breath
become sea flowers, the daisies
starfish moving in the current.
I would learn to use gills
long abandoned, and make my hands
act as fins, pulling me across
this new sea’s floor,
swimming through rain falling
from clouds piled 40,000 feet high.
To walk out now would require
this sea change,
and courage.

[Babi]

 Wouldn't you be happy to brave the deluge, BARB, just to have it rain?  I like Ms Tenpas poems.

[BarbStAubrey]

  although compared to last year we cannot really complain - but then it seems a large portion of the nation is experiencing this year what we endured last summer. I still have swaths of my backyard that have not recovered - we had a front come in here over the weekend - some but not a lot of rain but there was something about how it brought cooler temps and we are now only in the high nineties for the rest of the week.

I have this feeling that yes, we could have another bout of 100+ all the way through early October but my feeling is this reminds me of times in the past when the 100+ days are over and we will slide into Autumn in the 90s.  

I am thinking of getting a few of those horse troughs that are all the rage now and setting them up in the yard where the grass is having the most difficulty recovering. Because of the Deer I cannot grow Veggies in them but even to fill them with more herbs just to have something different to look at rather than the large patches of calichie and bare earth. I did learn that rather than filling them completely with soil to fill them half way with the popcorn that is used in packing and then the soil on top of that - seems the popcorn, (plastic bits) is not crushed and water will run through it. The troughs all have an escape valve at the bottom to release water so they are very affective planting containers.

[BarbStAubrey]

First two stanza's of Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Mariana

    Mariana In The Moated Grange (after Mariana in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure)

    With blackest moss the flower-pots
       Were thickly crusted, one and all:
    The rusted nails fell from the knots
       That held the pear to the gable-wall.
    The broken sheds looked sad and strange:
       Unlifted was the clinking latch;
       Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
    Upon the lonely moated grange.
       She only said, 'My life is dreary,
       He cometh not,' she said;
       She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!'

    Her tears fell with the dews at even;
       Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
    She could not look on the sweet heaven,
       Either at morn or eventide.
    After the flitting of the bats,
       When thickest dark did trance the sky,
       She drew her casement-curtain by,
    And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
       She only said, 'The night is dreary,
       He cometh not,' she said;
       She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
       I would that I were dead!'

[Babi]

 Oh, dear, I wonder how old this Mariana is?  "I would that I were dead."   Doesn't that just
echo again in the ageless teen-age lament, " I wish I were dead!" 
  I can sympathize with the bare patches.  I have one where the grass is gradually recovering,
but it wasn't caused by drought.  There was a large patch of weeds there where I finally found a
spray that would kill them.  The troughs and packing material sound very effective.  Do the
deer eat flowers as well?  From your posts I gather most of your garden now is herbs.  How
do you use so many?

 Oh, a quote you might appreciate. "Gardening with herbs, which is becoming increasingly popular, is indulged in by those who like subtlety in their plants in preference to brilliance."
-   Helen Morgenthau Fox     

[BarbStAubrey]

  forced subtlety - you just cannot use up all the herbs they are like a shrub or other plant that is just there as part of the landscape - along the front I have a swath of thick Rosemary and Marjoram with a few large Cacti. I did find that if I can protect the buds and early shoots they will not touch the Daffodils when they bloom where as they gobble up the Tulips -

They leave a Salvia that blooms the most wonderful red and there is one that blooms blue that I do not have. Others that work are St. John Wart, which grows like a small shrub and blooms wonderful yellow flowers in Spring. There is Copper Canyon Daisy and Lavendar, Coreopsis, Canna, Chives, Thyme, Milkweed, Sweet Potato Vine, Japanese Iris, and the Lantana in various colors is a show that most use prolifically as up north you see Mums and Aster in late summer and through the Fall -

The list of Deer Resistant plants is pretty good but even some on the list the deer in my area will eat - like Lambs Ears are supposed to be Deer Resistant but they eat them like candy. Each herd has its own diet and what I can plant often others in this area only a couple of blocks away with a different herd cannot plant. For that matter, even among the herbs there are some that they will eat like the Basil and Pepper plants, even the hot peppers if you can get a plant to last that long to grow out a pepper.

It is fun figuring out what will work and there is not lack of plants just not the one you see in magazines or have dreamed was going to be in your garden.

[BarbStAubrey]

From one of our favorite poets - Emily Dickinson

A Wounded Deer—leaps highest—
I've heard the Hunter tell—
'Tis but the Ecstasy of death—
And then the Brake is still!

The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!

Mirth is the Mail of Anguish
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "you're hurt" exclaim!

[BarbStAubrey]

How to See Deer
    by Philip Booth

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

[BarbStAubrey]

Deer, 6:00 AM
    by Sarah Getty

The deer—neck not birch trunk, eyes
not leaf or shadow, comes clear
from nowhere at the eye's edge.
The woman's legs stop.  Her mind
lags, then flashes, "Deer at edge
of the woods."  The deer's eyes, black
and fragile, stare back and stop

her breathing.  The breeze drops.  Light
shines every leaf.  She enters
that other world, her feet stone
still on the path.  The deer stands
pat and takes her in.  Antlered,
static as an animal—
not a statue, photograph,

any substitute—can be
because it wants to, it includes
her in the world it watches.
She notes its coat, thick, stiff
like straw, with a straw-like shine.
There, where the ribs are, she sees
no rise or fall of breathing.

She breathes, shyly, attempting
the etiquette of quiet.
She goes over what she knows
of antlers, those little trees
of bone, grown for a season
and shed like leaves.  The deer's head,
she thinks, is hieroglyphic,

eyes of wet ink, unblinking.
No golden links clasp the neck—
no deer of Arthur's this, sent
as a sign.  The woman finds
and fingers these few deer-thoughts
in her mind.  But she's no match
for its stasis, she hasn't

the tact.  Tableau, entrancement—
but what's the second panel
of the tapestry?  She moves,
not back, discreetly, as one
would leave a king, but forward,
to have it done.  To free (or,
less likely, fall on one knee,
                              

petitioning).  The deer moves,
smooth as a fish, is gone.  Green
edges waver and reknit.
The light shifts.  The woman, two-
legged still, walks on.  "I saw
a deer," she will say, pouring
coffee.  Not "I was."  "I saw."

[BarbStAubrey]

Earthy Anecdote
    by Wallace Stevens

Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way.

Wherever they went,
They went clattering,
Until they swerved
In a swift, circular line
To the right,
Because of the firecat.

Or until they swerved
In a swift, circular line
To the left,
Because of the firecat.

The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping,
To the right, to the left,
And
Bristled in the way.

Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.

[BarbStAubrey]

 

Famous Poets and Poems - Summer Summer Poems Discussion Leaders: Barb

Sun...Sand...Surf...Wild Meadows Summer Poetry Emily Dickinson #122  A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds That threatened it — did run And crouched behind his Yellow Door Was the defiant sun — Some conflict with those upper friends So genial in the main That we deplore peculiarly Their arrogant campaign —