Cast adrift on a lonely anonymous sea
This blog is dedicated to all of my friends (you know who you are you are like the flowers I grow and love) but especially to a friend for 50 years who shamed me into re-entering the world of ideas. Have you read Gary Snyder's new book? (I should maybe I will could you loan me a copy that's really cool he is still alive and does he still love the trees and all of the things we loved and rapped about when we were young and I know you still do and I am married to those ideas like I am married to M)--I am so far out--(remember that saying "far out") of typing words in virtual reality; that using my fingers to do anything but play in the dirt like a simple child seems foreign. But here we go.
I wonder if old Gary (had to google his age 86) is still creating, talking of love of his conifer forests and wanting us all to care for our mother earth that sustains us all--I bet he doesn't whine I bet he still sings the glory of mountains of pristine white not red snow. What a lesson for us youngsters to stay young and continue to work at what we believe and love.
Before I go on, I would like you to know that henceforth I will not use parentheses if I don't want to or use many of the structures of writing that I learned as a student of such discipline as I have forgot them it could be the Gabapentin I might explain later what this miracle drug does for me though I'm not certain it helps all the time except to erase memory or it could be I am saying I rebel to the rules and confines of proper English structure I still have a sophomore streak in me as in my poetry I do not use any standards of punctuation because without a comma or an exclamation point lines can often have more than one meaning and I thought I was so cool and original but found out this was vogue with some poets years past; there are no new ideas, they are all in the shared consciousness of man's gene pool. So we go on seeking new ideas is that antonymous--cool show off scrabble word--to me saying there are no new ideas.
More than anything besides being of the earth, I am of the seasons. This is the winter but not of my discontent. It is the winter this moment the polar vortex December 14th 2016 of howling east winds down our east fork of the Lewis river that are making our fir trees see how close they can limbo low and the wind is chilling the temperature to 25 degrees and we have a healthy stack of wood in the living room to keep our wood stove cherry red so we don't have to go out to the wood shed and watch our breath and feel my butt freeze. This same weather brought me in from the relatively warm 40 degree temperature of the greenhouse where I was propagating and potting to write this blog. You see, you cannot use excuses like the greenhouse or the garden or splitting winter wood or making time to see a friend or painting a picture or throwing a pot or writing a blog or trying a new home-cooked recipe or exercising or or or. I hate that saying but just doing it is what must be done. While were at truism sayings that I hate is going through the day without hearing : It is what it is. Quit saying that: is what it is. Now Life is good is a helpful saying. I never get tired of hearing it. It is a helpful reminder even when I am low to remember to count our blessings and then repeat the mantra: Life is good.
Blogedy blogedy blaw blaw blaw. For the future I will try to make some commitment to think and share my thoughts and poems; rather than just to be/exist--like being snowed in with your best friend--you still have time to share ideas and walk in the snow to visit neighbors. I am not good at keeping resolutions but I will try to sit down at the key board and stay in touch with you. For so many of us this is Autumn. We have had the Spring and the Summer and they have been good and some not so good; the good old days that were not always that good; but we have lived them hopefully to the fullest. M says that these poems are gloomy and pessimistic--they are not. These songs are facing our Autumn and how we need to continue to live, love, and accept what Autumn brings--good or bad-- how we can embrace future life gracefully.
Autumnal Life
What the Heaven what the hell
If this season is rehearsal
For laying down a carpet of muddy brown macrophyllum leaves
So be it... But
Let me keep practicing
The art of leafing
not yet wanting green gone on my arterial branches
Wondering if every seed and tender bulb
Will be saved survive and bloom in pregnant deliverance
Dress rehearsal a play with ever changing actors
Leaves fall like the curtain
Before who is behind only the roadies know
Perhaps Sartre blackness and no one
I do not care to know just yet
Steps in a spiral to Nirvanas circles
Once in a while a glimpse
behind the curtain
Good seats at our grey season may soon be open
Continuing to rake and clean your always something
Still have not got it right
Keep plodding you are inevitably a ticket holder
Do not be waiting for something to happen
Just flow like the sky in October
The fall streams that start again racing to the sea
It's funny how we are amalgamations of our past. The above poem echoes Shakespeare though I did not intend it or was even conscious: "All the world's a stage" and all our philosophic anhie. This next poem is about one of my teachers, don't we all have them, and how I want to be and am like Rufus.
Ruffie and Me
Blinded by butterfly flashing rainbows
Begonia flowers each a shiny copper penny
Not dull heavy yellow gold weighing down
Some yellows but more picotee everything
White pinks oranges reds with rims of gold
Bold bold bold solid flying frilly splashes
Daily fires to put out always the many chores
Imagine to never hear see
Singing out chorus lines of corn basil beans and cleome
Intoxications poor fools endure
The spine is being strangled
Broken c5 c6 begs for advil
Old Arthur creeping into every skeletal bone
Still like old Red Beards gone to snow
Deep down it is our souls need
To till and try to pull every weed
Throngs of Attila wait outside the gate
Always the uprooted interlopers
Hopelessly fighting them on rickety knees
Crawl on it is our only choice
Hoe hoe hoers of the dirt
