A Gathering of Stones…

…of mortar and affection
warmed by April sun
a drift of fragrance,
cow’s breath and old hay,
ripe cheese, pale grasses
the lightest scent of blossom
and the lingerance of snow,
and breakfast hearth-smoke…

Distant crows are wheeling, cawing,
coarsely calling admiration
of the new-turned turf,
of turning season,
of turning, turning, turning
in the sky above the oaks…
The human touch of talk
and laughter muted–
It clings, this lacy sound,
to walls and roofs,
and ventures not too far afield.

Dark brown,
the depths of barn and cellar;
grey, the shadow-side
of house and wall.
Night is blue,
bluer at the dark of moon
than any ocean
or deep mountain lake.


1983 Mt Spokane

Music of Childhood

I’ve just inherited my father’s record collection, and the slightly archaic device on which to play them–Hurrah!

In fact, I was thinking sadly only a couple of weeks back about how much of the music I grew up with–ethnic and folk–simply isn’t played anymore, and that I could only hear, distantly, the echoes remaining in memory. Then my sister asked if I’d like the collection which has been stored some years now in her garage. That’s some 500 lbs of vinyl lps! And now it is my storage, waiting for me to get speakers hooked up the the player.

Music has always been part of my life. I remember crazy-dancing with my sister, when I was 3, maybe, to Hot Diggity!  There was Catch a Falling Star, later on, and my grandpa sang My Darling Clementine, Red River Valley, and You Are My Sunshine when my sister and I went to bed… and always finished up with Goodnight, Ladies!

Years later, my father taught me to hear rhythm and beat with Ravel’s Bolero. Those were the years of African drums from Olatunji, and Israeli folk music from Geula Gill, and a recording called Port Said that was basically belly-dance music from Egypt. Greek bazouki music, too… And there was Sing Along With Mitch, and Burl Ives. There was quite a lot of classical music, too. 

What music–songs or other–do you remember loving as a child? Did you have your own record player? What music did your parents play in the house? What would you love to listen to again, if you could?

Midnight Musing

In the quiet after midnight,
then my artistry awakes
and in the dark when others sleep,
then the fit of writing takes
my hand and mind, and bids me think…
It skips and tumbles down the page,
leaving in prints of pen-and-ink
images I never thought before
and thoughts never imagined–
They enter through the midnight door
from moon- and star-light fashioned.

Other Lives

I would not live forever
in a single suit of clothes.
I would not care
to memorize
forever
each stain and tear
or keep track of
every button lost.

Thankfully,
I forget
from time to time,
the progress
and the passage
and the passages
through which
I wend my way…

The details of
hard lessons, happily,
escape me
like the pains of giving birth.
It is enough,
the thing I learned,
and moving on.


2000

Tolkien Tribute: Epistle from Gandalf to Galadriel

I have a collection of poems written in tribute to JRR Tolkien over the 50+ years I have considered myself a Middle-earth expat. This one was written for a challenge on a Tolkien-related site

Galadriel,
I greet thee,
a moment stealing
from my Mannish guise,
to speak as one-to-one
to one as old as I
and also wise…

Here I sit, alone
in the darkness of the night
by cracking embers wan,
beneath Varda’s stars so bright,
pale, beside the power I could wield
of Anor’s sacred Flame
and my own native might…

I pause a while from labor
being Steward over lands
so fierce debated, and so long–
Belonging not am I,  but only lent
for the time required
according to the Song
and by the Singers sent…

I do not age, and yet,
lifetimes after lifetimes of  these Men,
years of sitting by the fire, alone,
older, older do I  feel I grow…
I wonder, when will ever I be done?
Is there ever victory to win?
Is Evil ever finally slain and gone?

And will Men take their place
and rule this world
yet be remembering the grace
of those who came before?
And will they gentle be,
and truly echoing the Song,
care for every kind in every land?

In daylight, My Good Lady Fair,
I’ll not think upon these things
nor worry overmuch about
what time and fortune brings.
I’ll don the mask the Singers for me set
and wearing it, again, myself
I will myself forget…

Just the Wizard I will be again
to the Free Folk dwelling here in Middle-earth;
midwifing the dominion of Men…
lighting up the Hobbit’s joy and mirth…
aiding Dwarf lords bent on vengeance sweet…
foiling Evil’s every dark design…
tracking every road with my old feet…

And with the Elves I’ll rest
from time to time, when need permits,
glad of allies fair and ever fast…
The old Wizard I remain,  
who sometimes sits
and thinks of you,
with gratitude,
for knowing what I am, and who…
And for granting me a certain latitude

2005

Problems/Solutions

Some thoughts on problem solving


All problems started as solutions.

When considering new solutions, it’s useful to start with considering the problem to be solved, specifically, what problem was this intended as the solution for?  

As a writing coach, I tell writers, before you go breaking the rules, understand what problem the rules are meant to solve. If you can find a better way to solve that problem, go for it!  Rules are made to be transcended!

“Spider-graph” main problems and secondary and tertiary problems. See the relationships between the problems and how that might change priorties in finding solutions, and how several problems might be addressed by a single solution. 

And you might want to check out this TED Talk from George Monbiot which offers a solution particulary relevant to these troublesome times.

“Under New Management”

Family, clan, tribe, city, state, nation… What comes next? And how soon is it coming? How soon before political entities have become obsolete as the drivers of human organization, and corporate entities take over the management of… well, everything?

In fact, are we now living through the turning of the tide, that terrible, turbulent time of old resisting the inevitable new.

The world right now is ‘blessed’ with an over-abundance of authoritarian heads-of-state, the worst kind of ‘leader’ who governs from personal agenda and impulse, who disregards the needs and wishes of the nation’s citizenry, who inflicts on them his/her own whimsy and caprice, and is in every way incompetent to do the actual job of governing. This kind of leader does not comprehend the differences between governing and controlling; between domination and dominion; between ownership and stewardship.

They rule with the support of those who think to gain personally from such an administration, who enable the tyrant while thinking to keep the tiger on a leash.

But this never ends well for anyone, because there are always The People, the massive base of the power pyramid, who reach their limit of acquiesence, of tolerance, even in societies with free speech that allow for the occasional venting off of building heads of steam. But the steam builds, even there, and people gather, and they look around and they do the basic math: There are more of Us than of Them. Lots more. The young do their own calculations: We will outlive you.

Righteous indignation grows to fury and hysteria. Then comes revolution, the unleashing of all the forces of chaos, panic, and the determination of the individuals, all millions of them, to survive no matter what.

Besides the Earth’s own reactions to the over-reaching of humankind, there are all these untenable regimes, unsustainable habits and assumptions, and the conservative tendency to resent change and cling to obsolete solutions to current problems: the old tide struggling to deny and resist the inexorable flood of the new. Call it catastrophe or course correction, or re-balancing, it is as inevitable as earthquakes in the Ring of Fire.

Vine Deloria Jr proposed the idea in the 1970s that corporations are tribal entities, and now, Kenichi Ohmae is saying that those tribes have grown to world-wide entities that will be taking over management overtly in the not-distant future. Nations will no longer be defined by geographic boundaries, but by economic interest and control.

Being non-human entities, these corporate nations will have no natural empathy or humanity: only that which the humans in positions to influence it may provide. Their basic interest will be their own viability. Hopefully, they will see what authoritarians do not: that the top of the pyramid needs the base of the pyramid to hold its position in the clouds.

www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kenichi-ohmae/the-end-of-the-nation-state/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_Deloria_Jr.

Don’t Touch!

This love’s a testy thing
bristled for defense
against the world
and pain:
we give up ground
for every gain–
we go around, around–
aground again…

My friend,
I see you there crouched
along the spiral’s inner curve;
I wish I could reach in
and touch your heart
but every nerve
you own is raw–
and intercepts
and shies
and strikes away
what seems to you
a grasping hand.


1990