Burnng the Old Year

Brent Cotton

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye

"So much of any year is flammable". I appreciate the idea of burning all the things that are unneccessary. Purging the past, cleansing all the partials, the half-ways, the debris and rubble - getting completely clear of it so there's space -"absence" as Nye calls it - room to move forward, to dance, to look off into the distance and make new plans and goals. It seems like the perfect way to end the year.

 

Painting a Wave

Lia Melia , "Songs of Melusina"

Painting a Wave

"Painting a wave requires no system,"
The painter said, painting a wave.
"Systems may get you flotsam and jetsam,
Seaweed and so forth. But never a wave."

There was a scroll or fine-lined curve
On the canvas first, and then what looked
Like hair flying or grayish nerves,
Which began to move as the painter worked.

"Painting the sea is a lot of trouble;
It never stops still for a moment, so
I try to make it internal, mental,
As though I stopped it, then let it go."

Something began to pulse and tumble
Out of the brushes, the ink, the chalk;
A long black line commenced to tremble,
Then, like a fishline, started to jerk...

With what at the end? "I think I've caught it,"
A drop of water hung by a hair,
"If I could only stop it a minute!"
The drop began to race somewhere.

Spreading out in every direction,
A bird of thread, caught in a storm,
Trying to say "Connection! Action!"
But in the end it was very calm.

Soon there was water under water,
And over the sand a sun...a moon?
Who could have seen that wave of water
One night ago? Or a thousand and one?

Who could have seen the lid of water
With its thin mascara of buoys and corks,
With its lined horizon's distant glimmer
Of maybe a skyline like New York's?

Now there will be that morning evening
Tide dyeing the water's pulse,
The wave drying in ink. The Wave.
Moving, momentous, motionless.

Howard Moss

Here is the question - how do you capture motion in art? Imagine the days before photography, before slow motion, the days when people didn't know if all four hoofs of a running horse left the ground midstride, or if one was always touching the ground. The things we have seen since! I've spent my share of time watching extreme slow motion videos of bursting water balloons and watermelons on Youtube, and it's utterly fascinating. But how does an artist approach the task of portraying motion - in a still, unmoving medium? I love how this poem looks at that question. 



  

From March 1979

Unknown

From March 1979

Weary of all who come with words, words but no language
I make my way to the snow-covered island.
The untamed has no words.
The unwritten pages spread out on every side!
I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow.
Language but no words.

Thomas Transtromer

It's something to think about. How much of our talk really says anything? How many of our conversations, writings, books - poetry even, is meaningful? Is it only when we're stripped down to life and death essentials that we actually speak?

 

A Christmas Hymn

Arcabus

 "And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." 
 Luke 19, 39-40

A Christmas Hymn

A stable-lamp is lighted

Whose glow shall wake the sky;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

And straw like gold shall shine;

A barn shall harbor heaven,

A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city

Shall ride in triumph by;

The palm shall strew its branches,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

Though heavy, dull, and dumb,

And lie within the roadway

To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,

And yielded up to die;

The sky shall groan and darken,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

For stony hearts of men:

God's blood upon the spearhead,

God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,

The low is lifted high;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

In praises of the child

By whose descent among us

The worlds are reconciled.

Richard Wilbur

That verse where Jesus says "If no one speaks about me, the stones themselves will cry out." has always got to me. Can you imagine? I mean, this is the Son of God, Creator of the Universe, and humanity does not recognize him, but all the rest of creation does. They know his voice, his step, his touch. The winds and waves obeyed him, illness and disease shrank away. And I have to say,  nature has been crying his name from the beginning - anything I look at, a leaf, a feather, and yes,  even a rock, when I look closely enough, when I see the beauty and complexity, the wonder in the smallest details - I hear his name over and over again.

Nest

Bruno Liljefors, "Song Thrush at Nest"

Nest

It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree 

into the house and up on the stand 

that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest 

tucked among its needled branches.

Amazing, that the nest had made it 

all the way from Nova Scotia on a truck

mashed together with hundreds of other trees 

without being dislodged or crushed.

And now it made the tree feel wilder, 

a balsam fir growing in our living room, 

as though at any moment a bird might flutter 

through the house and return to the nest.

And yet, because we’d brought the tree indoors, 

we’d turned the nest into the first ornament. 

So we wound the tree with strings of lights, 

draped it with strands of red beads,

and added the other ornaments, then dropped 

two small brass bells into the nest, like eggs 

containing music, and hung a painted goldfinch 

from the branch above, as if to keep them warm.

Jefferey Harrison

This story is a perfect reminder - underneath all our ways of dressing things up, repeating habits and traditions, carefully presenting ourselves, inventing plans for dealing with any situation we might face - life is wild. Sometimes beautifully so, and sometimes otherwise. 

Christmas Ornaments

Kim Smith

Christmas Ornaments

The boxes break,

At the corners,

Their sides

Sink weak;

They are tied up

Every year

With the same

Gray string;

But under the split

Lids, a fortune

Shines: Globes

Of gold and sapphire,

Silver spires and

Bells,  jeweled

Nightingales with

Pearly tails.

Valerie Worth

This is exactly how unpacking the Christmas tree ornaments was when I was a kid. I even remember the slightly musty smell of the boxes. There is something remarkable about those drab brown cardboard boxes holding such sumptuousness  Even now, getting out the decorations has it's magic.How often in our lives do we uncover treasures like we do when preparing for Christmas? 


 

Beach Glass

@nataliefeddema

Beach Glass

Mr. Calava rises at five

A.M., the first on the beach, but not

Because he's crazy about the sea.

He's crazy about beach glass. He has

Two thousand pieces

At the latest count.

An industry of idleness,

He's a connoisseur of broken glass.

Sucked candy bits as hard as lava,

The shards are no longer sharp and come

In every shape and every color -

The commonest are white and brown;

Harder to find are blue and green;

Amber is rare; yellow rarer;

And red the rarest of all. The sea

Is a glassblower who blasts to bits

Coca-Cola and Waterford,

Venetian as well as Baccarat,

And has carefully combed its five-and-ten

For anything made of glass. It isn't

Fussy. It knows that everything

Will be pared down in the end:

Milk of magnesia bottles honed

To sky-blue icy filaments,

And smoky cordial bottles from

Brazil - sunglasses of an eclipse.

Mr. Calava's kaleidoscopes

Are kept in apothecary jars,

As if the sea were a pharmacy

Of lozenges and doled them out

Without a prescription, especially

For Mr. Calava, who firmly believes

The best things in life are free.

But what the sea has relinquished it

Has relinquished only in part. You know

How childish it is in it's irony.

The jigsaw puzzle is here. But then

Its missing pieces are still in the sea.

Not all the king's horses and all the king's men

Could ever put it together again,

Though - chip by chip,

And bit by bit -

Rouault could make a King of it.

Howard Moss

from "Beach Glass and Other Poems" edited by Paul Malloy


Mr. Calava. Who is this Mr. Calava? What kind of person gets up at 5am. to search the beach for seaglass? I like how this poem jumbles different stories together. First there is this collector and his dedicated search, then the story of the rareness of each colour of glass, and the sea as an artist, a glassblower who doesn't care about the quality or origin of it's material because, and this is my favorite line, "It knows that everything will be pared down in the end." I love that. Think about that awhile. It's so true. What does it matter the quality of my possessions ? What matters in the end is what was useful to me, what I actually did something with, what I took and turned into something more. And then there's the story of the sea as a pharmacy - that gets me too. For myself, and I know I must speak for so many, the sea has so many medicinal benefits - how could I even name them all?! And then, the story of the puzzle pieces forever scattered - I don't know if I feel sad about that, or happy. Is Mr. Calava slowly gathering these puzzle pieces  together again, or is he intent on putting them together in a new way? A new art from a scattered and broken original? What a thought. (Georges Rouault was a French artist whose painting "Old King" looks very much as if it could've been a mosaic of seaglass.) All these parts of stories jumbled together seem rather like the bits and chips of coloured seaglass collected in Mr. Calava's apothecary jars, don't they?

Snow In the Suburbs

Taki Katei

Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Thomas Hardy

If I read this poem slowly and deliberately, the scene springs up in my mind's eye, vivid and real. It feels as if I could 

have written it myself, after all, it's merely a line by line description, right? And yet - and yet! Try it yourself. Just try.

Hardy is so good, so very skilled, he makes it feel natural, easy, a simple flow of words. But every sense is included -

sight, sound, hearing, touch - okay, maybe not taste - but there's emotion too, that poor thin cat - tell me you don't 

feel pity for him.

 

A Coal Fire in Winter

Stanley Spencer, "Fire Alight"

A Coal Fire in Winter

Something old and tyrannical burning there.

(Not like a wood fire which is only

The end of a summer, or a life)

But something of darkness: heat

From the time before there was fire.

And I have come here

To warm that blackness into forms of light,

To set free a captive prince

From the sunken kingdom of the father coal.

A warming company of the cold-blooded–

These carbon serpents of bituminous gardens,

These inflammable tunnels of dead song from the black pit,

This sparkling end of the great beasts, these blazing

Stone flowers diamond fire incandescent fruit.

And out of all that death, now,

At midnight, my love and I are riding

Down the old high roads of inexhaustible light.

Thomas McGrath

"I have come here/To warm that blackness into forms of light". This is a sort of fantasy/fairytale/mythic concoction of a poem. "From a time before there was fire", "a captive prince", "sunken kingdom", "serpents", "blazing stone flowers", "incandescent fruit"... And yet the subject of the poem is common coal. What a mystery it is that such black, cold stuff, should light and warm us. What a treasure poetry unveils one line at a time. 

Shells

Dirk van Gelder

Shells

Driven from the sea by calloused tides,

How prettily they lie

Stretched out in rows upon my shelf!

I give each shell a name

And feelings to replace it's emptiness -

Poor shells, so dispossessed

From the loud, possessive, passionate sea! -

That I come to pick up

By chance along a long and sandy shore,

Fragments of a coral dynasty

Now banished and uncoiled, then flung

Through the thought-spinning years.

Hy Sobiloff

Here is another example of giving human attributes to inanimate objects - this time written by a man. Mary Oliver has been my favorite poet for this, but I'm on the lookout everywhere. I like how Sobiloff speaks of giving each shell a name - and feelings too. Who doesn't have a little collection of shells or rocks or feathers or treasured objects - plants even - to gloat over and hold and admire, to remind one of moments or places? The fact that the poet here names each shell intrigues me. How do objects become personal like this? Why is it that some people naturally do this with the things around them, and some would never think of it? And then I think of God, for him every little thing, and I mean even the microscopic, the invisible, and the completely unknown to us - is personal. It has a history, a meaning, a place in the scheme of things. He made it, his hand rests on it, he knows when it begins, it's lifespan, it's end. It's incredible. Nothing is lost or disregarded or forgotten. I come back to this thought over and over. 

 

Morning on the Beach

Shari Erickson

Morning on the Beach

Some brighter thing than sunlight touched the sea
And out of dawn arose a wind of joy;
They woke and chirped - my girl and then my boy - 
Like birds that have not learned what fears there be.

"And now", I thought, "there dawns a day to me:
One day, at least, defies moon-prophecies;
One day shall call the old world sorrows lies,
So let us now be happy utterly!"

Then we had playmates in the grains of sand -
I heard them, many-laughing by the water;
The sweet air thrilled to speech without a tongue.
They met my boy and took him by the hand
To venturous depths; they showed my little daughter
How children built on sand when time was young.

Georgia Wood Pangborn

A bit old-fashioned, yes, but the thing that gets me about this poem is that idea of taking a day, one day at least, to leave all fears and forebodings behind, and be completely happy. I'm on board with that all the way.

 

Spanish Dancer

John Singer Sargent,"El Jaleo"

Spanish Dancer

As a lit match flickers in the hands

Before it flames, and darts out from all sides

Bright, twitching tongues, so, ringed by growing bands

Of spectators - she, quivering, glowing stands

Poised tensely for the dance - then forward glides

And suddenly becomes a flaming torch.

Her bright hair flames, her burning glances scorch,

And with a daring art at her command

Her whole robe blazes like a fire-brand 

From which is stretched each naked arm, awake,

Gleaming and rattling like a frightened snake.

And then, as though the fire fainter grows,

She gathers up the flame - again it glows,

As with a proud gesture and imperious air

She flings it to the earth; and it lies there

Furiously flickering and crackling still -

Then haughtily victorious, but with sweet

Swift smile of greeting, she puts forth her will

And stamps the fire out with her small firm feet.

Rainer Maria Rilke

She's on fire! You only need to watch a flamenco dancer once to know how accurate this poem is. I recommend you do just that. See if I'm not right.