Myriad Poetry

I have been housecleaning (desk cleaning?) in my office, following a complete (and long overdue) rewrite of the employee handbook. I've been tossing notes and samples and articles and whatnot, and today I went through an enormous bound Powerpoint handout from some seminar I once went to, checking for notes in case there was anything I *needed* to keep.

Well. There's a slide titled "The Myriad of Leaves".

I mean, who talks like that?

If it's not obvious, the leaves in this case are not the kind that grow on trees, but rather the different kinds of times off from work.

I was clearly bored and my mind wandered to the other kind of leaves ... resulting in a haiku in the margin.

Myriad of leaves
Falling from the autumn sky
A Powerpoint dream

You write poetry during boring workshops, yes?

---

PS Apparently "the myriad of leaves" is not incorrect, at least according to Dictionary.com and Grammarist. But it certainly sent me off on a tangent.

36 hours

The shadow
flying over there
is the plane
I am on.
We converge
with a shudder
and the rumble of
wheels on the ground.
Together again.




The girl and I just went to North Carolina for 36 hours, just like the New York Times travel section columns! We were there for a family wedding - but carved out enough time to go shopping, eat barbecue, have breakfast with old blogging friends, and tour the Governor's Mansion.

And today, I have spent the day moving papers from here to there, tying a little baby quilt, making weird seedy hardtack, and in the pile of papers, I found this little ridiculous poem that I'd jotted down once upon a time - on a trip to Detroit, in point of fact.

Flying is weird, and requires magical thinking, but I'd never have gone to North Carolina for 36 hours otherwise.

Glass Ceilings

Last weekend, there was a book festival in my town. It's a great event - lots and LOTS of authors, each at a smallish table with a big pile of books, chatting and signing, signing and chatting. There were food trucks doling out wood fired pizzas and artisanal grilled cheese, and portable mini-golf for toddlers, and lots of friends hauling boxes and running cash registers and ferrying cups of tea to parched chatty authors.

I bought a bunch of books: a September head start on my Christmas shopping, and a baby present for Flutter's baby. There is something wonderful about buying a goofy pull-tab book and getting it signed "Dear Baby Rob" by Matthew van Fleet himself.

The authors cover a wide spectrum - one lives in our town and has written one book, others have been writing tons of books over years and years. I had a copy of Vicki Cobb's Science Experiments You Can Eat when I was in middle school; Vicki Cobb was there with it and lots of other books.

Jane Yolen was there too. She's written a pile of books, all over the map. I'm kind of fond of Bad Girls, because I have a subversive streak and I am working hard on teaching my twelve year old to stand up for herself, to recognize sexist behavior, to be no shrinking violet.

But the sweetest part of the day? Jane Yolen gave a copy of a poem to the force-of-nature organizer of the event, who happens to be the number one rabble rouser in support of Hillary Clinton in our town, and asked that the poem get to Secretary Clinton. It's a terrific little poem:

HC: A Modern Ode

She stands there,
hammer in hand
staring at the ceiling,
measuring with her careful eye,
finding just the right spot
to ding it down.
No wasted effort,
no casual boast,
the eye not the I.
A flick of the wrist,
a perfect strike.
The suffragettes smile
in their iron cradles.
Shards of glass
fall around us
like the Perseid stars.

–©2016 Jane Yolen all rights reserved

I've given a copy to my little unshrinking violet, because glass ceiling? Here we come.

Dipping One's Toe In The Internet

You know what? The internet is the best. The other day, my sister-in-law sent out a picture of a whale in San Francisco. I - for reasons one need not go into - figured that a poem was the appropriate response, so I googled "poems about whales" (or something like that). And I found this:

Whales Weep Not!

D. H. Lawrence, 1885 - 1930

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale’s
fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale’s strong phallus, linking the
wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.

Honestly, did you have any idea that DH Lawrence wrote an erotic poem about whales?

In Which We Publish Other People's Poetry

In March, my 11yo entered a townwide Young Writers Contest, sponsored by the library. She entered pieces in each of the three categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry.

She didn't win, but she told me it was okay for me to publish her poem.

---

Afraid

A child is afraid of the dark.
There are monsters and shadows lurking around every corner.
The child has no parents, only a limp bear to protect her.
The monsters under the bed make noises to make the child jump.
The monsters in the closet make noises to make the child run and hide.
The child has the parents’ comfort in the day,
Only their snores by night.
Was that just a shadow, or is someone there?
No child thinks this by day, most by night.
A child is afraid of the dark.

An adult is afraid of the light.
The cruelties and pains of life wait for them behind a metal desk.
They have only the night for solitude.
The monthly rent makes them jump.
The water bill is designed to make them scared.
What they do during the day makes them want to stay in the dark for longer.
Making them regret the decision to face the light.
The stack of papers not yet checked, makes them regret the choice to seize the job.
Wishing they were younger, with so much promise and choice.
An adult is afraid of the light.

Photo Caption

Standing on
the platform
on a fiercely
cold and brilliantly
sunny February day
with his back to the
track, not watching
for the next train,
the commuter
tilts his chin up
to the sky, eyes
closed, dreaming of
the summer
that will come,
someday.

[Found] Poetry Friday: Brain Flame

BRAIN FLAME


Quite, in a virulent wafer but vacantly happens, the compensator –

Poised the beeps of minutes
not of he run
squat after I
to let infrequently on past that vast extravagance.

Achieving this can make your brain flame in different ways.


The moment was even and was not longer,

And it frowned dry.

There screwed the ended ocean in the plainness.

---

Why yes, I did just clean out the folder of "comments awaiting moderation", all of which were spam.

Serendipitous Musing

1) My husband texted me at 5:13pm. The cats had caught a mouse, which somehow ended up in the clean laundry. He discovered it as he was trying to put away his socks. The working theory is that the injured mouse took refuge in a sock, and there expired.



2) Some twenty minutes later, on my way home, I was walking through the underground labyrinth that is the Union Square subway station. There, at a small table with a manual typewriter, was a poet: “Name a price, pick a subject, get a poem!!”  I walked past, considered the mouse text, and returned. I paid, and shared the mouse text with her.



3) While I waited, she composed. While she composed, many people scurried by, someone stopped to admire her "cool typewriter, dude", a couple took her picture, and an unsanctioned opera singer filled the station with an a cappella aria.



And I swear, though I asked her if I could put her poem on my blog, I never told her its name. Thank you, Abigail Mott, for your impromptu eulogy to Tiny Mouse.

Piet Piet, Magpies and Toast

My sister-in-law forwarded to me an OED word of the day email, with a note: "Hey! Do you know this word?"

The word was "piet", and as I scrolled through the various definitions, I was delighted to find that one of them was "the magpie, Pica pica."



I loved learning that a piet was a magpie. The only other piet I knew of was Piet Hein, a Danish polymath whose poetry I'd been given by my sixth grade teacher, one Mrs. Gordon. They're tiny little poems, snips of wisdom perilously close to doggerel, but fun none-the-less.

That book of poetry is somewhere in my house; I know not where. Happily, his "grooks" are scattered hither and yon about the intertubes. Here's one, silly but full of truth:

TIMING TOAST

There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.

Gleditsia

Ahead of me on the sidewalk
A locust sheds a pinnate spray, golden yellow.
It wafts downward,
Alighting on a young woman’s head.

Serendipitously bedecked, she crosses the street,
But the breeze from a passing taxi
Lifts her hair ornament away.

She never knew of her momentary panache,
But I did, and it made me smile.

---

Note: the locust herein is a TREE, genus: Gleditsia.

Second Grade Poetry In My Heart

My heart is as happy as a cute cuddly kitten.
My heart is as angry as a stampede of buffalo.
My heart is as sad as when Slinky and YoYo died.
My heart is happy like a puppy.
My heart is angry like squawking geese.
My heart is sad like a rain storm.


(Yes, I'm still putting away the piles of school paperwork.)

Poetry: Gray Swaying Trees

I can't help it. The accumulated second grade paperwork is coming home from school in a fast and furious flurry. One folder the other day contained a whole pile of poems, two of which I have to share:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

SWAYING TREES



Swaying trees
In the breeze
Dance to the rhythm of the wind
Swaying trees
In the breeze
Look like Halloween ghosts
Coming closer and closer until
It catches me!!!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

GRAY



Gray is an ugly color
My mom makes me wear it anyway
It's like the gray is pulling me like a vacuum cleaner
I try to get away but I just can't!!!

Poem on My Blog day

It's Poem in Your Pocket day today, and spring is upon us, so pretend I just pulled this poem out of my pocket, just for you.

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

-Billy Collins

(with thanks to the Poetry Foundation for having such a nice website)

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

--Robert Frost

I had last week off, and spent much of my time puttering around my house, putting things away, organizing, sorting, tidying. Part of that puttering was at the computer, "filing" things where they belong, moving photos hither and yon. In doing this, one finds oneself enmeshed in a sort of aimless archeology, drifting off onto tangents (oh, and just another round of Angry Birds).

One of the things I found was a photo of a poem. I'd seen the poem back in April, in a subway car, part of what used to be Poetry in Motion, which then became Train of Thought. I liked the poem, and wanted to remember it, which is why I'd taken the picture with my cellphone.

Walking down my street after the Boxing Day blizzard, there were no crows. But the joy in the girl's soul as she scrambled through snowbanks, and as flurries plopped off laden branches? That lifted my heart.

Alas, Train of Thought is no more. The MTA has decided that they need "to communicate with our customers about what we've done in the past year to improve the system". Instead of lifting our spirits and provoking thought, they'd rather toot their own horn. They probably think that people will appreciate the fare increases more.

As for me, I'd rather have some food for thought, to have Frost transport me from the #6 train to a path through the snowy, crow-filled woods.

Love Me To Used Well You

I am generally too literal minded for poetry. Oh, once in a while, something strikes my fancy or hits my synapses just right, but generally speaking, I skip over the poems in the New Yorker.

Recently, though, they printed a poem which totally charmed me with its seductively witty and spare construction.

When I googled it, to see if I could find it for you, dear readers, I discovered that the poet - Ciara Shuttleworth - had tossed it off in her graduate Prosody and Form class, during class. Furthermore, it's a thoroughly rigid poem form, here wrought with great precision and economy.

Part of me wants to write a six word sestina myself, for the intellectual exercise. Most of me is happy to know that someone else has done it with such aplomb.

Many Things

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

(Lewis Carroll)

I have ever so many things to talk about, but work and life and a root canal have all gotten in the way. Not to mention the two different volunteer gigs which are eating away at my spare time.  And let's not forget Thanksgiving to be thought about (and traveled for, to a place where the sea will be icy cold and the bacon will not have wings).

And ideas for Christmas are sloshing around in my head.

I can't wait to climb into bed with my friend Vicodin.

Happy weekend, all.

Vanishing Point

Two parallel lines
Recede behind my train and
converge into one.

How banal. But I love watching out the front or back of the train, being mesmerized as the tracks go by. It's rare these days to get to watch out the front; they've got the engineer boxed into his* private compartment and unless he's breaking the rules by leaving the door open, we can't look out. So the end car, the erstwhile caboose, offers a more consistent view, and a more wistful one: where we've been, not where we're going. It also offers, on straight track, a perfect illustration of the powers of perspective. The parallel tracks appear closer and closer together, until they might as well be one.

*Always male - I think I've never seen a female engineer on one of my commuter trains. Conductors, yes - but not the engineers.

Kindergarten Haiku

Like a lightbulb in the sky,
Moonlight on the pond.

Okay, maybe it's not really a haiku, but it is poetry, at least in the eyes of the author's mother.

Literalmindedness

Me, reading aloud from "Now We Are Six":

No one can tell me,
   Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
   Where the wind goes.

Her, interrupting:

It comes from the South Pole!

Now you know.

Mourning Dogs

The morning after Moky died, I made a single phone call to a neighbor - a woman about my age whose family has been close to ours for a long long time. In what seemed like an instant, there were four women in the kitchen with my sister and me, drinking coffee, laughing, eating bagels, sniffling - someone called it "sitting shiksa".

The day after the memorial party, my brother and my sister and four of the grandchildren and I went for a walk down to the water, where the little people turned over rocks looking for crabs.

We're not Jewish. We don't sit shiva. But somehow, our walk to the bay was like what Jews do at the end of the shiva, a walk around the block to signify a return to daily living.

On the way back, we saw a lost dog sign plastered to a telephone pole. Moky would have liked the sign, and I believe she'd have assumed that the dog ran away because his owner is grammatically and punctuationally challenged:

Missing dog
Dogs name is jack
Problem is he is afraid of
people, so if you see him
call me at...

Or maybe his owner's a poet.