Christmas Is For...

 

Christmas is for lighting

And

Christmas is for loving

And

Each year we pass through it

We

Feel its unspeakable truth.

Kinnell in a Garage Time

I went into the garage to clear

Some trash into their bins and caught my eyes

Looking at the stack of books we have stored there,

Some classics, some not so, and then all but buried

There, the one, the master for me, 

A book of Kinnell’s gallant strokes.

So plentiful in your pages, in simplicity, in regular

To explain the heart of being, the felt moment,

As Fergus sinks deeper in his preponderance

Of innocence 

Of love and loving, 

Whatever, as you said,

What it is we mean and want to mean, is all

We want and need.

I was quiet and still there in the garage, all of it

Ready to be done and doing, sledges, axes and mixes,

Yet stilled in that moment and your words, just to be

Mattered sometime for some, who want to feel

It, who care less about knowing it. In that silent

Stack of feelings I could be together with them.

(Sometimes it’s personally important to remember that there is such a thing as poetry and poets as mindful as Galway Kinnell. Pick up any of his creations and feel the click of the human spirit.) 

what if Starshine

what if Starshine

had not closed her eyes

and willed the filament

of possibility

had not chosen

Marianne and yes

but, instead, chose no

and the stillness

of uncertainty,

full of alone,

herself, spinning

back into the prison

of her memories

before Ralph braved

the blizzard

of his soul and sought

her out to bring her

into his solitary searching,

which she dedicated

followed as part of him

and in that stead she found

a space, a could be

possibility

what then? what kind of

possibility?

conjure...or con...

the same

she fought the world

and swallowed hard.

 

Knowing

I think I know what 

I know, but 

how do I know

that I know?

or can I?

And this is important

Well, we think we

have things in or

on our minds…?

Do we know all this

stuff or does it come

in the ways

Lots of stuff comes

into us—

but is it all a knowing?

What if all the stuff we think 

we know

are just specious conjurings,

just the stuff of

learning and keeping?

What if there’s other stuff…

eternal mysteries?

Like the smell of lilacs, or

The touch of an infant’s cheek, or

The scent of a lover’s shoulder, or

The bristle of a lover’s beard, or

The scent of a coming storm…

Is this knowing?

If it is then we

ought to be able to tell it,

But can we?

After all,

what is it?

Columbus Day Or Indigenous Peoples Day?

 Today we Americans celebrate the European invasion, murder, rape, pillaging, infestation, and exploitation of an indigenous civilization. No amount of apology, reparation, sympathy, and memorializing could ever suffice. The pain and moral stain are eternal.

Willful Ignorance

 

If the United States of America is going to slide into the historical dust bin containing previous empires, it will happen because of the willful ignorance of so many of its citizens and the cowardice of so many of its timorous leaders.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

― Soren Kierkegaard

“Five percent of the people think;

ten percent of the people think they think;

and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”

― Thomas A. Edison

“Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.”

― Hendrick Willem Van Loon

“If it's a choice between a difficult truth and a simple lie, people will take the lie every time. Even if it kills them.”

― Paul Murray

“Willful ignorance is blissful only in the mind of a remarkable fool.”

― Tracey Bond

“So many it seems, have made it their life's goal to bask in the ignorance of their certainty.”

― John Chaplin

“There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias.”                 Elizabeth Moon

Summer's Eve

 (a children's song)

It’s summer’s eve and froggies call

And Mom and Dad are quiet now

You slip away and chase the sun

Waiting and looking for fireflies

Summer’s eve and all is well

The darkness wraps you up all cozy

Just the sounds of crickets and frogs

The hush feels soft and rosey

This is your time to think and dream

To look at stars and wonder 

All the things you want just seem

To drift out there in summer’s moon

Ulteriority

(Robert Frost’s wisdom)

They come as if from nowhere

Like the grounded finely clipped 

Twigs when things get hungry.

Probably squirrels. You can

Always bet on the squirrels,

The cute ratty crooks.

But they go also, like the

Clippings and prunings you

Left to the whimsy of winter.

If you look closely though in early

Spring, the first of the balmy days,

Something comes out,

Nothing you’d ever want, but

That’s the way they are. They come

Out as if from nowhere.

Someone said it better, ”the force

That through the green fuse

Drives…” us, but how can that be

We being so much above this or

That, we’ll never really know?

But there are times, like a chickadee’s 

Frustration to tell you that it needs you, 

Or that ratty crook clacking its warning 

to its pals that you, yes you, might just take them on.

And you go to lift a rock and there they 

Are and have they been waiting for you

To lift a rock and why did you and they

Pick that rock when sometimes they 

Aren’t even there? Something didn’t care. 

And still, they come as if from nowhere, 

especially at times that ought to be Usual.

These exceptions then will never not be

Around for us you and me who seem still 

unready for the comfort in the wonder 

they offer in such gentle surprises from out of nowhere.

A Splendid Virtue

 a splendid virtue called disobedience”  

(Oriana Fallaci, from Letter to a Child Never Born)

actually, within its circumference, I might have chosen

noble, for that’s what it takes to bear its necessity, alone,

and never so much as in that instance, no decision, just a tic,

thoughtless, of course, but mattering so much more, a flash of 

lightning striking, an energy of the cosmos marking deliverance.

placidly, in countervailing compensation, hope, like the child’s wistful

wishing, wide-eyed from under covers, silently thinking and not

speaking, reaches out into the stillness, and fades to pale yellow…and so

in each crucible of determination, like a bee hunting a hive spot,

difference hovers, “against the wisdom and certitude of ages and sages."

What is there in obeisant allegiance?  filling orders, timing out the day in 

an overseer’s drum beat, shining boots with your tongue, or hoping perhaps

somewhere the lightning will strike and wake us to be human.

For not to obey is to show the palm in the face of acceptance and calm.

It is not being nice and smiley-faced as bile surges into your mouth.

It is disrespect in the face of demeaning, shameless, mindless authority.

It is, perhaps, the most profound and useful virtue available to you.

 

Sustaining

 

To abstain,

To obtain, 

To sustain;

That, dear Prince ,

Is the answer…

The question doesn’t matter,

And it will drive you 

(and yours) crazy.

Questioning ends

In gross self-pity

(as though, as you know, 

there 

were another kind)

And warps the mind

No matter the good 

or Noble intentions.

But the curse

(in all this)

is the sustaining

(you know, where you

Find yourself) wandering

(as we see).

Yes,

Indeed,

Sustain is the crux,

And, of course, yes

The course, that 

must begin

With the others, 

What our new wise men

(very unlike Uncle P)

call foundational.

Thus, Sustaining is much

More difficult,

Despite TS  and

His 

(this, the dead land,

the cactus land, really?)

maundering,

Than Princing.

And so

Here we are,

Definitely not Princing

And, perhaps, glad of it.

The Dirt

First he thought it was the dirt.  All kinds of dirt.  The powdery dust in the worn out middle of the playground was first.  It would collect in the corners of his eyes and cling to his teeth. It got thick enough to feel with his tongue, and then he'd scrub it with his finger.  

It gets in your nose.  You know it's there because you're breathing hard through your mouth, because the caked dust in your nose forces you to do that.  Then you blow it out and it's this kind of gooey black mud in the palm of your hand. And you don't have time to think about it.  Not until now anyway.  You could play for hours then on the playground.  They'd start as touch, but then it would be tackle.  Nothing but shirts, pants, skin and bone.  The playground Saturdays and Sundays.  You never had a ball but someone did.  Someone always did.  It was usually Cheese.  He was small by comparison.  But his dad made sure he had a ball.  Then he'd be able to play.  He was older than most of them and too small to play with the older guys.  But Ralph was younger and bigger.  He always played, but he never got to touch the ball.  He blocked and tackled.  Always in the middle of the dust cloud.  He didn’t really think about touching the ball.  He was there for the banging.

No first downs.  Four plays to go the distance.  Right field to the third baseline, the goal line.  That was the deal.  They came up to the playground by themselves.  Like people showing up for something important.  Those Saturday or Sunday mornings all came before the days when the weekends got clogged with more games on TV from all over the country that no one cares about anyway.  Breakfast, sometimes a little church sprinkled in, especially for the Catholics.  Ralph could never understand that one.  Church was usually optional for him, especially after the Sunday school years.  Something about his father's perfect record of non-attendance justified that.  Ralph could walk to the playground in about ten minutes.  So could his father, but his father never walked there with Ralph.  He stayed home and did something.  Usually something that had little to do with Ralph.  So the playground and its dust became another kind of lone-hood for Ralph.  The other kids seemed to like talking about each other and what went on the other day or at school.  Sometimes girls seeped into the conversations.  But Ralph was eager to get on with choosing sides and getting player positions straightened out.  

He was about two steps slower than he needed to be to get his hands on the ball.  He only cared at these times, choosing sides and setting player positions.  At first he hoped a little.  But that faded.  Once he understood how to become especially good at what his player position required, he perfected it like nobody else on the playground could.   Even the older guys.   He learned eventually, after taking some very hard hits, especially the blind-sided hits, that physical force is less about strength than it is about speed and leverage.  He didn’t need to study the physics of it either.  He felt it and learned to use it.  He could turn and hurt much bigger and stronger players by carefully executing these lessons. 

Faith?

 Over my years I’ve thought a great deal about faith and have talked about it with scholars and religious people.  I think I began thinking seriously about it as an adolescent, just about the same time I stopped going to the Presbyterian church of my Sunday school years.  As someone who studied and taught about literature, culture and media, I think I considered the subject of faith from its major angles. I think Aquinas and Thomas believed that faith was everywhere, like the air we breathe. They believed that to attempt to discover the meaning or nature of faith is a fool’s quest (and perhaps a sin), because faith is what living a life is. To lose faith is to lose your life, or as Sartre would say, your sense of being. Faith is the joy we feel when the best things happen; it is the relief we feel when we think the worst things have happened but are not as bad as we thought they would be.

Once about 15 years ago I wrote something for myself about the sources of faith (not in the major religions) that are difficult to avoid. I’ve concluded generally that the notion of faith (finding it, doubting it, losing it, regaining it) is really, as they say these days, a process. I think we can’t escape faith, because, as “homo sapiens,” we are all looking for (hoping for) certainty. Faith allows for the possibility of certainty, even though our life experiences may cause doubts about certainty. In my early life, I believed in possibility. That’s why I left a phenomenal teaching job in a phenomenal high school in Chagrin Falls, Ohio to get hired as an assistant professor at a college in New Haven, CT and enrolled in a PhD program at NYU. I learned quickly about the difference between possibility and probability. Lots of life stuff chiseled at my faith in certainty from then until now.  I didn’t get the PhD, but even without it I managed to become chairperson of two different academic departments and represented the college to overseas joint programs and even taught a course in rap and hip hop at the college level.

And even after retirement, after carrying the scars of diminished faith, I managed to try out possibility.  Having no knowledge of managing the forces of moving water, I decided I could build a dam with a spillover and manage the stream in my backyard to create a pond. In the end, my pond was good enough to attract a series of mating mallard ducks and once a giant blue heron.  Everything remained possible about the pond, until I became weaker and lacked the energy (which is considerable) to sustain the pond.

So I guess I can answer the question by saying, “No, I have not doubted faith…at least as I have experienced it.”  I have a book in my library “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas” by Elaine Pagels that discusses faith outside organized religion.  She basis the discussion on the words attributed to the apostle Thomas (as in doubting).  Thomas’ life pursued the questions of acquiring faith and understanding that you have it. He concluded, with some uncertainty, that we humans simply have it. And we therefore can’t acquire it. It is in our natures, in our lives as we live them. The Judeo-Christian belief is that it comes from The Word, which is what created everything (“First there was the Word…”).  That belief was Thomas’ starting point, which, during his quest, became unsatisfactory. Hence, doubting Thomas.  

Pagels points out that in the Thomas perspective claiming to be an ardent believer is not evidence that you have faith.  In a discussion I once had with a former seminarian about the language of organized religion we discovered something interesting:  The word “believe” has predicate usage (i.e., things happen through it), but the word “faith” has only nominal meaning (i.e., nothing happens through it; it simply is), and this led to a discussion of the meaning of “is”, after which we decided it has no meaning without its complement. In the context of the current discussion, faith as a nominal has humans as its complement.

So hang in there everyone…and keep your faith.

terroir

 

A Thought About Poetry

 

Call Out the Light

 

We come to sing the turning of the light

Strike the fires, make us warm

Call out the turning of the light

It all began in chilled dimmings of the light

The empty darkness for empty bellies  

The snow and deadness in the night.

We were dreary in the darkness of our doubt

We were tear-filled and fearful

Then we conjured up the light

We needed the turning of the light.

Yes, we come to sing the turning of the light

Strike the fires, make us warm

Call out the turning of the light

Come all, make noise and wake the sun

Ring bells, bang pans, crash cymbals in the night

Make the sun wake and bring us hope again

We need the turning of the light

Children grab your friend and run

And dance and play and gather round

Hug your parents, hug your friends

Make us glad to see

The sun return and mount the sky

And so to show the sun’s gift of hope

Let’s all share gifts and cheer

To see this hope and sing with lusty glee

Yes we need the turning of the light

Strike the glory fires, make us warm

Shout out the burning of the light.

Sing the turning of the light

Shout out the burning of the light.

A Memorial

 ABOUT ROGER MY SON NOW GONE

 

He came at us in surprise

we too late know this warrior, soul poet,

for poets feel and feel becomes them

and from them their people come to

see more than they expected from anyone

a warrior, yes, against all odds, seeking and

slaying all odds with a smile and a wink

 

He came to me last night in a Starshine

and this evening he came with a smallest

Rabbit stance staring into woods and gardens,

proud, twitchy mostly unseen, they said he made them

better, in the starshine and more than enough but

not me, sometimes there in stasis but never

there rightly and wrongly…yet and still he enthralled

the throng, young, old, pedants and believers, all

drawn to the serious and to the silly, still laughing

 

But where has he gone now, where the likes of him

gather, but I don’t think he’d stop there, I think gatherers more

like come to him at least as they seem to have seen it

so we feel this known Soul Poet, but what of the Warrior,

the fighter of fleeting kerfuffles but now the big one

we know he was keen to and sought at least in tone, and

sought summarily as then we thought…but no not now,

no more that chance…but still we know he would and could

his Soul Poet let us know that for all time now wrapped in virtue and love.

Easter, in the year of the plague, 2020

You don’t really need to believe anything

just look around

And see the change

And nothing promises anything.

Get away from the noise and look around

That’s all.

Rebirth, resurrection, reincarnation—call it

what you will

it’s real

in life

way beyond

what you could

ever know

so

don’t worry about it

just smell the air

hear the mating birds

get close to the flowers.

It’s all good.

Thoughts on Her Majesty “Freedom”

You believed

then

that you could go to her serenely

gleaming Majesty draped on her perch,

you could go and shout and sing

and march a throng, seek, appeal

beseech in common, sing, a march along

sense

her granulated succor, at least

you thought, the man-child you had become,

yes, that one, even then still believing.

And now you know, now, and for all she’s truly

now

a snarling, smirking Majesty, her shameful,

bronze, a hollow pose now

shambolic, and now a slothic

grubbing mocking grifter laughing

at flaccid, hoary hope, at angered

frozen bile, defiled and hammered.

You are now woefully inured

to scum, soloing your bleats into

the blue green darkness.