The Dance

Around me
there are light and heat
and many people laughing
people talking, talking, talking…
floods of words unloosed,
flowing
endlessly
not caring what they say
or mean…

There is music of a kind;
and there are many, many games
to play within the pale,
in these gardens wide and formal,
paved and shaved and shaped…

Players moving
through the grounds
in gluts and clusters gathered
’round a single thought
or need or impulse
holding hands aloft
in stately dances,
holy and mundane…
Deciding moral issues
who is crazy, who is sane,
and what the Market bears today
and who can dance and who may play
and what is Art and
whether we can ever say
what is real enough to matter
in the Universal Scheme of Things…

Tears and laughter drift
above the heavy groan of angst,
above the pulse and throb of love,
romantic and profane…

…flavors, textures, touches
to inflame the senses
and dis-integrate the soul
into a million flickering portions,
each one compelled and clinging
to a feeling of the truth
that once it knew…

Where is my place,
my partner for the dance?
What secrets should I whisper,
cast upon the winds of chance?
And what hold close,
and what expose
of  my darkened inner chambers,
of what my mystic knowing knows,
of my own opinions, taste, and style…?

Or shall I stand alone
apart, without,
 within the haven safe
of solitude 
observing, only,
and sadly smile as if
superior.



1983, revised 2019

Tolkien Tribute: Reflection

This is another of my Tolkien-inspired poems, this one reflecting on Frodo after his return from the Ring journey.

I see myself reflected in the mirror every day,
the very one I looked in before the time I went away.
What is this face, this one I see?
It looks to be the same old me.

But there are other things reflected
in the eyes of others, eyes deflected
by what they know and what they think
and what they’ve heard, and what they drink…

In the eyes of friends who know me well,
there’s yet another tale to tell…
But I see sometimes someone small
and sometimes see no one at all…

Facing me from a window’s glaze,
staring with a puzzled gaze,
Is all I am and all I’ve done,
all I have seen–they are all one–

Staring back, reflecting…who?
I don’t know which of me is true.

2005

Glamour

In the United States, in much of the world that has long followed its lead, life is about surfaces: superficials carried to extremes of glamour like a thick and heavy layer of makeup; makeup that highlights, changes, and masks what lies beneath it. Glamour not only hides reality, it denies it. It seduces and lies and makes it seem that it is what matters most. Glamour distracts. 

We have learned not to look deeper. We have forgotten the need. 

But there are calmer cultures, older cultures that live lives more full, more dimensioned. They live with their own depths, knowing that besides the uppermost, there are layers like the ocean: the playful shallows of the shore; the quiet beauties and wonders that inhabit the zone of decreasing light; the profound and total darkness of the deeps that harbor monsters… and still, wonders. 

There are gardens in their cities, there is art and music in their streets, and people stop to take them in, to appreciate, to feed their own souls. Cities are not all about pavement and profit-seeking. Of course those things are there, too, but they are not alone. The superficials are there, shining and flashing in the breeze, but they are grounded in the reality of the wholeness of all the layers. Not everyone thinks about it, but they live with it always in the background, always on some level, aware. 

There are the powerful who wield the mop and broom, who chop the wood, carry the water… 

There are the wealthy who finance support for the weak in body, in mind, in resource…

The strong in the superficials also have inner, deeper strengths that make them more whole human beings. Glamour does what it does, but the blinding seduction, the total distraction fails, because the whole human being knows what things are really worth, and recognizes, distinguishes between the real and the false. 

Comments and conversation are welcome.

Sinking


Fathoms down from day
and light and warmth…
in the haunting intonations
of the singing of a whale;
the chittering of shrimp;
the clatter of a crab
against a rocky reach of ocean floor…

All
pressured into silence
in the deep…
There is no question of a voice,
my voice, arising up
from this dark space,
this deep and heavy drifting space…

I would reach out
to touch a lambent particle
that hovers near…
It flees, that spark,
before my thought,
before my hand can rise
against the dark.

Numb in every limb, in every notion,
feeling-free, I sink… I sink…
accepting all about me,
all this heavy ocean,
as a bed of down, a dream,
a universe of safety so profound
I’d never feel a thing,
would never know
if I should drown–
would never care,
nor miss the day above
nor light, nor warmth,
nor symphonies…
nor love…

1987

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