Spring Poem

Brent Cotton

Spring Poem



It is spring, my decision, the earth
ferments like rising bread
or refuse, we are burning
last year's weeds, the smoke
flares from the road, the clumped stalks
glow like sluggish phoenixes / it wasn't
only my fault / birdsongs burst from
the feathered pods of their bodies, dandelions
whirl their blades upwards, from beneath
this decaying board a snake
sidewinds, chained hide
smelling of reptile sex / the hens
roll in the dust, squinting with bliss, frogbodies
bloat like bladders, contract, string
the pond with living jelly
eyes, can I be this
ruthless? I plunge
my hands and arms into the dirt,
swim among stones and cutworms,
come up rank as a fox,

restless. Nights, while seedlings
dig near my head

I dream of reconciliations
with those I have hurt
unbearably, we move still
touching over the greening fields, the future
wounds folded like seeds
in our tender fingers, days
I go for vicious walks past the charred
roadbed over the bashed stubble
admiring the view, avoiding
those I have not hurt

yet, apocalypse coiled in my tongue,
it is spring, I am searching
for the word:
finished
finished

so I can begin over
again, some year
I will take this word too far.



Margaret Atwood

“So I can begin over again...” It does mean letting things go. Burning, forgiving. Spring is partly saying goodbye to everything dead. Out of the dead rises a new thing. Can we let it be, so there is no weight with us, so we can move and grow? So we can lift up our heads? See new things, step out into new stories? (How many vicious walks have you been on?!)

We may not be ready for it, but it’s Spring.

A new thing.

Piano Practice

Glenn Gould, Photographer Uknown

Piano Practice

For Frances Dillon Hayward

1

Such splendid icecaps and hard rills, such weights

And counter-weights, I think I scale the heights

When pentatonic Chinese crewmen start

Up in a cold sweat from the bottom of the keyboard

Only to arrive at some snow-stormed valley

To dissolve in steam-holes and vanish out of sight.

2

The left hand's library is dull, the books

All read, though sometimes, going under velvet,

An old upholsterer will spit out tacks,

Turn them into sparks and smartly hurl them

Up and down the loudest bowling alley—

His pressure of effects can last all night.

3

Two bird notes endlessly repeat themselves.

Or are they fish scales—iridescent, hard?

Mica into marble back to mica?

No images in trills. They're formal. Take

Your foot off the pedal. You're in a wood

Near the sea. And every tree and wave is fake.

4

An underwater haircut by Debussy?

Oh, that's too easy. Astringent lotions

Let the swimmer down by easy stages

Down among the flashy soda fountains

Down to the bottom where the light bulbs waver

Down where all the mirrors eat their hearts out.

5

Grammar becoming poetry is what

You're after—say, a rational derangement

Requiring that you forget technique

And concentrate on what is harder like

A fireplace that burns pine needles only,

Before which spills the gore of Persian rugs.

6

A vial of antiseptic meant for Schubert,

One modest, flat meticulous translation

Of Chopin's lightning undercurrent Spanish—

These are the mere necessities of travel.

Someone you must meet is Dr. Czerny.

Then, through him, Domenico Scarlatti.

7

Seizure are occurring. Despite snow-lightning,

The black keys are bent on mountain climbing—

All of it against a doctor's warning.

Soon they're descending like the black dots of

A wirephoto in transmission. An

Erotic black wing hovers up above.

8

Bach is more like opening an ember

And digging hard into the heart of fire.

The heart of fire is another fire.

When it comes to Mozart, just say nothing.

Think of it as milk, and drink it slowly.

Slowly you will taste the cream of angels.

9

This black and white's deceptive. Underneath

The spectrum rages. Did you ever see

The calmest waters quickly come to life

Because a minnow's tinfoil flash in sun

Had rent them suddenly? It came. And went.

We take two thousand takes before we print.

10

Don't try to catch that lion by Rousseau.

Before you wake, he'll eat you up. If you

Should meet the sleeping gypsy, let her sleep.

Tomorrow they'll be gone without a trace,

Half fact and half enigma. Now your hands

Are on the mysteries of the commonplace.

Howard Moss

“Now your hands are on the mysteries of the commonplace.” Music – it takes us places, calls up images, stories, people, scenes – but how? What happens to us when music enters? What is it doing? Will we ever know? And does it matter, just as long as it keeps on?

If I Could Tell You

Michelangelo Pittatore

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play,

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,

Because I love you more than I can say,

If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,

There must be reasons why the leaves decay;

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,

The vision seriously intends to stay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,

And all the brooks and soldiers run away;

Will Time say nothing but I told you so?

If I could tell you I would let you know.

W.H. Auden

If I could tell you what this poem means...

The questions Auden asks are interesting. What is the price we have to pay - for our words and actions? For what? Is something is required of us for being alive? Why do funny things make us sad sometimes? How do you explain contrary reactions like this? Why does it happen that often when we feel most uplifted and euphoric we trip and make fools of ourselves? Why is there no way to predict the outcome of things? And why do we keep thinking there must be a way, in spite of all proof to the contrary? Where does the wind come from? What is the meaning of all these "natural" cycles and seasons? Why on earth do flowers grow? Do they want to? What is the meaning of it? Why do we keep imagining Utopias? Why do they all fail? What if everything as we know it changed? What would be left? And, - will Time give us the answers to these questions? And is Auden saying that Time will say - "I gave you the answer but you didn't grasp it"?

Wouldn't it be a relief to sit with a friend one day and ask questions? Question for question, back and forth - and at the end (or the beginning - where would it ever end?) look at each other and say, "If I could tell you I would let you know."

Praises

Unknown

Praises



The vegetables please us with their modes and virtues.
                                                                                 The demure heart
Of the lettuce inside its circular court, baroque ear
Of quiet under its rustling house of lace, pleases
Us.
       And the bold strength of the celery, its green Hispanic
!Shout! its exclamatory confetti.

                                                      And the analogue that is Onion:
Ptolemaic astronomy and tearful allegory, the Platonic circles
Of His inexhaustible soul!
                                           O and the straightforwardness
In the labyrinth of Cabbage, the infallible rectitude of Homegrown Mushroom
Under its cone of silence like a papal hat -
                                                                       All these
Please us.

                  And the syllabus of the corn,
                                                                  that wampum,
                                                                                            its golden
Roads leading out of the wigwams of its silky and youthful smoke;
The nobility of the dill, cool in its silences and cathedrals;
Tomatoes five-alarm fires in their musky barrios, peas
Asleep in their cartridge clips
                                                  beetsblood,
                                                                      colonies of the imperial
Cauliflower, and the buddha-like seeds of the pepper
Turning their prayerwheels in the green gloom of their caves.
All these we praise: they please us all ways: these smallest virtues.
All these earth-given;
                                    and the heaven-hung fruit also...

                                                                                          As instance
Banana which continually makes angelic ears out of sour
Purses, or the winy abacus of the holy grape on its cross
Of alcohol, or the peach with its fur like a youg girl's -
All these we praise: the winter in the flesh of the apple, and the sun
Domesticated under the orange's rind.

                                                                       We praise
By the skin of our teeth, Persimmon, and Pawpaw's constant
Affair with gravity, and the proletariat of the pomegranate
Inside its leathery city.

                                      And let us praise all these
As they please us: skin, flesh, flower, and the flowering
Bones of their seeds: from which come orchards: bees: honey:
Flowers, love's language, love, heart's ease, poems, praise.



Thomas McGrath
 
 
I can't help but think of Pablo Neruda. Who else would praise a vegetable so? Well McGrath has taken a stab at it. The thought of a lettuce as a circular court, a house of rustling lace, it does please me. Celery like an exclamation, an onion with its Platonic circles, the labyrinth of cabbage – it doesn't even take a poet to recognize that similarity – but I love “the nobility of the dill, cool in its silences and cathedrals” - that is very very like how I have felt standing next to the dill plant in my mother's garden in the days when it still grew taller than me. “The sun domesticated under the orange's rind”, oh but I have the best painting of that to include here, if only I had the room. Yes, the “green gloom” of the pepper's cave, yes! How pleasing are these? Let us praise them – masterpieces that they are. Is it possible that with practice our praise could be as proficient as Pablo's and McGrath's? I'd like to think so.

The Snow-Shower

Tsuchiya Koitsu

The Snow-Shower

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, 

   On the lake below, thy gentle eyes;

The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, 

   And dark and silent the water lies;

And out of that frozen mist the snow 

In wavering flakes begins to flow;

                            Flake after flake 

They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come 

   From the chambers beyond that misty veil;

Some hover awhile in air, and some 

   Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.

All, dropping swiftly or settling slow, 

Meet, and are still in the depths below;

                            Flake after flake 

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud, 

   Come floating downward in airy play,

Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd 

   That whiten by night the milky way;

There broader and burlier masses fall; 

The sullen water buries them all–

                            Flake after flake–

All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide 

   From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray,

Are joined in their fall, and, side by side, 

   Come clinging along their unsteady way;

As friend with friend, or husband with wife, 

Makes hand in hand the passage of life;

                            Each mated flake 

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste 

   Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

As, myriads by myriads madly chased, 

They fling themselves from their shadowy height.

   The fair, frail creatures of middle sky, 

What speed they make, with their grave so nigh;

                            Flake after flake, 

To lie in the dark and silent lake!

I see in thy gentle eyes a tear; 

   They turn to me in sorrowful thought;

Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, 

   Who were for a time, and now are not;

Like these fair children of cloud and frost, 

That glisten a moment and then are lost,

                            Flake after flake–

All lost in the dark and silent lake.

Yet look again, for the clouds divide; 

   A gleam of blue on the water lies;

And far away, on the mountain-side, 

   A sunbeam falls from the opening skies,

But the hurrying host that flew between 

The cloud and the water, no more is seen;

                            Flake after flake, 

At rest in the dark and silent lake.

William Cullen Bryant

 

To pause and notice all the various qualities of a thing, its appearance, its effect, the way it calls to mind other beings and ideas - how often do we slow down enough to do this? And how much of life do we miss because we skim over and through it? A poem like this one shows me how little practice I have in savoring life. The way Bryant takes his time, turns his rhyme so thoughtfully, moves so mesmerically through them, makes me want to do the same. Appreciation and poetry take time. I need to re-learn how to take my time.

The Instinct of Hope

Unknown

The Instinct of Hope

Is there another world for this frail dust

To warm with life and be itself again?

Something about me daily speaks there must,

And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?

'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,

And everything seems struggling to explain

The close sealed volume of its mystery.

Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace

As seeming anxious of eternity,

To meet that calm and find a resting place.

E'en the small violet feels a future power

And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,

And surely man is no inferior flower

To die unworthy of a second spring?

John Clare

 "Why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?" Now that's a good question.
(John Clare! The more of his poems I read, the more I like them.) This line - "everything seems struggling to explain/the close sealed volume of its mystery."  A hidden-in-plain-sight secret? If all of nature dies, or lies dormant, hibernates, but "feels a future power", should we not trust to this also? I like that "surely man is no inferior flower". We have dormant seasons too; times of holding back, of waiting, of saying goodbye, of letting go. And all these are a kind of preparation, a storing up - of strength? of hope? of "future power"? Nature shows us faithfully, year after year, a new season is coming.

Winter Storm

Aleksey Zuev

winter storm:

the peering cat

squints and blinks

Yaso

from Snow Falling From a Bamboo Leaf: The Art of Haiku

by Hiag Akmakjian

There’s something about a cat. A cat sitting in a window, watching the world, observing each detail. The stillness of a cat, alert but relaxed.  Like in the poem "Pax" ,by D.H. Lawrence, where the cat embodies a sense of belonging. It slips into place, and rests. How I admire that! To watch and rest until the time for action? To not be anxious or tense? To be one's self and trust. How beautiful.