Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘poetry’ Category

Wanting to Be a Forest

Posted in family, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2024| 6 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by Frank X Walker]
 . 
Grove
 . 
This was the first time
we really look at each other
and not be able to tell
who master the cruelest
who sorrow the deepest
who ground been the hardest to hoe.
 . 
We was lined up like oaks in the yard
standing with our chins up,
proud chests out, shoulders back,
and already nervous stomachs in.
 . 
We was a grove wanting to be a forest,
ready to see what kind of wood we made from.
 . 
The only thing taller or straighter
than us be the boards
holding up the barracks at our backs,
 . 
though most our feets feel pigeon-toed
and powerful sore
from marching back and forth, every day,
for what seem like more miles
than we walked to get here.
 . 
It take more than pride to stand still
‘neath these lil’ hats not made for shade.
 . 
Soldiering ain’t easy, but it sure beats
the bloody leaves off a bondage.
 . 
Frank X Walker
from Load in Nine Times, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W.Norton), New York, NY; © 2024
[based on a photo taken at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, of troops standing at attention outside the Colored Soldiers Barrack]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
1861      One month after Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Kentucky’s Governor issues a formal proclamation of neutrality, but he retreats from any denunciation of slavery, which he believes is not a “moral, social, or political evil.” Four months later Kentucky decides to end neutrality and enters the Civil War on the side of the Union; 200 delegates vote to secede from the rest of the state and form a separate Confederate Kentucky with Bowling Green as capital.
 . 
1862      Abraham Lincoln’s EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION declares freedom for all enslaved persons in states which are in rebellion against the United States. This leaves slaves in Union-aligned Kentucky still the property of their masters, however.
 . 
1864      The U.S. government’s progress towards making universal emancipation a war aim has caused support for the war and the government among White Kentuckians to dwindle. Military recruitment ebbs. On June 13, U.S. SPECIAL ORDER NO. 20 allows enslaved persons to enlist in the U.S. Army without their owner’s consent and be granted their freedom, the first pathway to legal emancipation in Kentucky. That summer and fall, 14,000 Black men enlist.
 . 
Only Black men who are fit for military duty are emancipated, however. If they are ineligible, they are returned to enslavement, and there is no offer of freedom for their families. Camp Nelson, Kentucky’s largest recruitment and training base, becomes a haven for refugees from slavery, whether escaping from Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina or arriving with their newly enlisted Kentucky husbands or fathers. Freedom seekers from the South are considered “contraband of war” and granted freedom, but slaves of White Kentuckians remain legal property of their masters with no formal protections.
 . 
On November 22, 1864, in the midst of a winter storm, Brigadier General Speed S. Frye orders all refugees surrounding Camp Nelson expelled and their shacks destroyed. Of 400 people immediately displaced without shelter or recourse, at least 102 die of exposure and starvation. Frye’s order is quickly rescinded by his superiors in Kentucky but headlines cause an outcry across the States. On December 15, Adjutant General L. Thomas issues ORDERS NO. 29 to require that “all camps enlisting Negroes provide suitable housing and provisions for their families.”
 . 
Within months, the War Department creates the Home for Refugees at Camp Nelson. On March 3, 1865, the US Congress passes laws to emancipate the wives and children of United States Colored Troops soldiers.
 . 
Camp Nelson, Kentucky, is now a National Monument, and includes a memorial obelisk to honor the 102 African Americans who perished in The Expulsion.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
We Will Prove Ourselves Men
++ Sewn on the regimental flag
++ of the 127th U.S. Colored Troops
 . 
I don’t look the stars and stripes
nor the eagle for mustard
 . 
like the white officers
and some of my free brothers do.
 . 
I think on the slender fingers
that stitched our proud colors
 . 
snapping in the wind,
the same steady hands
 . 
that last held me close,
and pray they hold me again.
 . 
That’s why I’m willing
to trade bullets in a cloud.
 . 
Some confuse our bravery and courage
with our love for our women,
 . 
but many of us just eyeing that flag
and trying our best to get back home.
 . 
Frank X Walker
from Load in Nine Times, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W.Norton), New York, NY; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
My Grandpop died when he was 67 and I was 5. Our families lived hundreds of miles apart – we in New York, then Tennessee, he and Nana in North Carolina – so we visited only two or three times a year. I can’t recall the sound of his voice, I’m not sure if he ever hugged me, but I know a story about him and me that I have retold myself so many times that it is tangibly real. Totally, unquestioningly, personally real:
 . 
We are in the dining room of his house that overlooks Bogue Sound. He, a surgeon, is holding my fingers in his. In the pressure of his fingers I am aware of the bones beneath my skin, and he is teaching me: Carpals, Metacarpals, Phalanges.
 . 
I have many photos of Grandpop, his enigmatic smile. I have copies of articles he published, things he crafted with his hands, an oil painting. I have photos he took of me, even an old 35 mm. silent movie. But the most real, the most present, is this story I keep and hold. Perhaps the artifacts helped me create the story. Perhaps hearing the story as it was told to me by Nana and Mom. However the story comes into being, into life, it brings reality with it.
 . 
So it is with Frank X Walker and his poems in Load in Nine Times. Frank was already deeply involved in resurrecting and creating the stories of Black Civil War soldiers in Kentucky and their families, using scant artifacts to create short biographies and allow these men and women to live (for a project at Reckoning.com). Then he thought to ask the archivist to research a possible relative of his own. And the sky opened.
 . 
Frank’s dedication for the collection of some 100 poems reads thus: For my ancestors, Mary and Randal Edelen, 125th U.S. Colored Infantry and Elvira and Henry Clay Walker, 12th U.S. Colored Troops Heavy Artillery. These folks speak and are joined by dozens of others who lived and suffered and sometimes triumphed. Through poetry they have all come to life, along with the middle decades of 19th century Kentucky. Slave and slave owner, soldier and widow, parent of despair and parent of hope – Frank has honored them and exposed them, judged them and sometimes forgiven them, given them sharp tongues and sharp features and brought their years into sharp, sharp focus.
 . 
And our years as well. What did I know about Civil War Kentucky, USA? As soon as I laid down the book I had to know more. More! Frank educates with timelines and resources but his greatest gift is to enlighten me, in the sense of casting light into dark corners where I had never thought to look. When I discover online some of the photographs he must have used for his own inspiration, those slightly blurred faces now suddenly stand out to me – real men, real women. We each owe it to ourselves to continue to tell our stories and to listen to new ones. Somehow, in this harsh and enervating world, perhaps this is the way we will become more real to each other.
 . 
❦
 . 
Read the excellent interview with Frank X Walker by Jacqueline Allen Trimble as she explores with him the creation of Load in Nine Times, in the Oct 19, 2024 edition of Salvation South.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
A Black Father Dreams a Son
++ Brig. Gen. Charles Young,
++ 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment
 . 
It was twelve miles to Maysville and the Ohio River and another
ten to Ripley. A runaway could escape from Mays Lick,
at night, head north, follow the smell of the river and make
the entire distance and crossing by sunrise. A determine one,
on horseback, like Gabriel Young, could make it in half the time.
 . 
Ignoring racism at West Point was easier knowing
my father survived slavery. He joined the 5th and risked his life
so our people would know freedom. I risk mine to protect it.
 . 
If his sacrifice and commitment freed my body, my mother’s books
free my mind. Her skirt was my first classroom.
Every big and small thing I’ve done began at their feet.
 . 
Though born into slavery in Kentucky, I learned to play piano
and violin, speak French and german, before becoming a teacher,
before graduating from West Point, before a career in the military,
and public service.
 . 
Growing up in Ripley showed me what this country could be.
What my parents instilled in me, and Wilberforce proved it.
 . 
I am America’s promise, my mother’s song,
and the reason my father had every right to dream.
 . 
Frank X Walker
from Load in Nine Times, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W.Norton), New York, NY; © 2024
[Charles young, born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Armenta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucy, was the first Black man to achieve the rank of colonel in the Unites States Army, and the highest ranking Black officer in the regular army until his death in 1922. In 2022, in recognition of his exemplary service and barriers he faced due to racism, he was posthumously promoted to brigadier general.]
[these addenda are taken from the Author’s notes]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 

Read Full Post »

Yellow

Posted in Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , on November 8, 2024| 14 Comments »

Wingstem, Verbesina alternifolia
 . 
[with 3 poems by Li-Young Lee]
 . 
The Unfound Room
 . 
She is humming in the other room.
 . 
Leaves are falling in one window
of the room in which I sit
listening to her.
 . 
Her voice comes to me
from another part of the house,
and with it
the image of her face.
Throughout our years together, that look of
 . 
absence from her body
and the melody it bears forth
 . 
and total presence to what she’s at
the time inclined to, her neck bent
toward the task or the thing her hands
are disposed to, possessed of, all of her
 . 
given, giving, all of her receiving the shape,
weight, texture, and grade of that particular
and momentary instant of her passing day.
 . 
O almost
all of her, since
part of her goes on humming
over and over that one slow phrase
of a song I can’t now place,
humming in a different part of our house,
 . 
While in the window before me
leaves are falling
from out of a gone part of our year.
 . 
She’s humming a wordless phrase, the song missing,
her voice bearing aloft a familiar bridge
broken off from the before and the after,
a fragment I know, scrap of music
 . 
arriving from some unfound room inside her
where the song entire sings,
the song replete
is singing, even as the dead I still love
have gone ahead, as promised,
to make the unknown nearly habitable.
 . 
Even while they, remembered, are left behind
in a past I can’t find anymore.
 . 
Li-Young Lee
from The Invention of the Darling, W.W.Norton, New York, NY; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Autumn is the season of Yellow. Yellow is becoming and going. Yellow is arriving and leaving. Yellow is living again and dying again. As Yellow swells, it fills the ditches, the meadows, forest edges and waste lots. As Yellow fades it leaves feather tufts and seed heads – we wonder, will they sprout again? As Yellow drinks all the blue and green it grows to fill the canopy and the horizon. As Yellow fades, it reveals curvatures and twists and impossible angles – we wonder, is this what death looks like?
 . 
I am fickle. I am so easily tempted by pink and lavender, red and bright orange. And of course purple. Yellow, are you worth anything to me at all? You are so common it would seem to be no effort at all to find you, not worth the effort to see you. Easy to ignore you. But then I pause and shiver and if I’m blessed the shackles of time and distance fall away for a moment. Yellow, you have so many bodies and forms! You are so related and so disparate! Yellow, I will write a new song about you and the refrain will sound like this – wingstem, crownbeard, tickseed / sow-thistle, ragwort, coltsfoot / sunflower, coneflower, goldenrod / yellow, Yellow, YELLOW!
 . 
Autumn is born, Autumn lives, Autumn begins to die and Yellow flies from the ditches and the meadows into the songs of leaves – tuliptree, redbud, sugar maple. Yellow flies higher and curls to umber, ochre, brown butter. Delicious Yellow, raising the color of earth high and holding it for a day before it falls to become earth again. The season of dying again and living again. This season of leaving and arriving. Yellow, long may you reign.
 . 
Native Wild Yam, Dioscorea villosa

Native Wild Yam, Dioscorea villosa

 . 
Poison Ivy, Toxicodendron radicans

Poison Ivy, Toxicodendron radicans

 . 
Native Hog Peanut, Amphicarpaea bracteata

Native Hog Peanut, Amphicarpaea bracteata

 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Invention of the Darling
 . 
6.
 . 
The woman you love is singing.
Quick, tell her what you love.
 . 
Don’t tell her what you believe.
Don’t tell her if God is dead or alive.
Don’t tell her what’s wrong with the world
and how to fix everyone in it.
 . 
The woman you love is singing.
Her voice is laying a table in the presence of death.
The service shines, irradiating
the cardinal points,
dividing above from below.
 . 
Now is not the time to quote scriptures.
Now is not the time to repeat manifestoes.
The woman you love is alive
and singing, making a new world
out of all she loves.
 . 
Don’t remain outside of her song.
Whatever enters her singing lives again, twice-born.
And there’s only one way in.
Speak your love clearly.
 . 
So what if no one else can hear her.
So what if no one else witnesses her making
and re-making the world in the image of love.
 . 
Soon, her singing will stop,
and all you’ll hear is the confusion
and violence of a world untouched by her song.
 . 
Remaining outside of her singing has cost you so much.
Quick tell her what you love.
 . 
Li-Young Lee
from The Invention of the Darling, W.W.Norton, New York, NY; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Is it I myself who blocks the doorway between me and love? Is death my adversary or my friend? Stop, you Poem, and explain yourself before you go any further! Oh, my poor analytical mind. Oh no, simultaneous equations and stoichiometry and metabolic pathways. Oh the one thing always corresponding exactly to the one other thing. Oh no, desire to make everything fit together.
 . 
And yet doesn’t it? Fit? Perhaps not with my graph paper right angular AB=XY. Not Isaac Newton and William Harvey (and only almost Schrödinger’s Cat). More like a star best seen when I look to its left. The smell of flowers in the woods when nothing is blooming. Or, in The Invention of the Darling, sense is falling petals, wings, the sky within and the sky without, The One and The Many and all of it fit together, all one, all many.
 . 
O Poem Reader, stop! Open your eyes and see the lines inviting you to follow them where there is no path. Close your eyes and see the lines circling and touching and kissing. They explain nothing and they explain everything. And when you have been kissed, you will surely know.
 . 
❦
 . 
Li-Young Lee lives in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Among the many honors awarded his verse are a Paterson Poetry Prize, an American Book Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. The Invention of the Darling, his seventh book, is available from W. W. Norton.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Going Along
 . 
Rocks.
Streams.
And falls.
 . 
You were making ready to go.
And then you were going.
And then you were gone.
 . 
The bud.
The flower.
The fruit.
 . 
You were leaving.
And then you’d just left.
And then I saw the sky
was a very big question,
and earth no answer.
 . 
And even the birds, the trees,
even the sun, moon, and stars looked like passengers
boarding at their numbered gates.
 . 
Your leaving was on both of our minds
while it lay ahead of you. But we
fast caught up to it, and you
occupied leaving completely,
with no room for another.
 . 
And soon it lay behind me, who was left alone
to fold your clothes and give them away,
even as you left leaving behind, as though leaving
were one more disguise.
 . 
And the whole world seems a moment
from your forgotten childhood,
or an old house someone abandoned in haste, leaving
the back door open wide.
 . 
Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall.
The years follow a very old song
my evry disappearing gesture accompanies,
my each step inflects,
one foot lifting me off the ground,
one foot setting me down on earth.
 . 
Walking, danging, running.
Late. On time. Out of breath.
 . 
Li-Young Lee
from The Invention of the Darling, W.W.Norton, New York, NY; © 2024
 . 
❦
 . 
Thank you to my friend Anne G. for the gift of Li-Young Lee’s book in the midst of all these leavings, Mom gone and Dad going, the sky a very big question and earth . . . an answer?
 . 
fungus
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22

Read Full Post »

Panta rhei

Posted in poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2024| 7 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by Melinda Thomsen]
 . 
11. Colorado Springs
 . 
In a breath, the sun emerges unfurled
behind the hangar, and the sky turns gold.
It burns like an ore, as nearby grasses roll
in a breeze, and rows of sunflowers twirl
 . 
and flex. The Queen Anne’s lace slowly maps
the sun’s route west. A magpie somewhere
near the playing field squawks. Dawn appears
in shades of granite wearing a mica cap.
 . 
Let me put on the sky’s sapphire chains
and earth’s necklace of headlights from the cars
winding to Denver in their jeweled train.
 . 
When headlamps dim, sunshine shoots like stars
off the cargo bays of arriving planes,
and daybreak shows its wealth by reaching far.
 . 
Melinda Thomsen
from Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2024
[this poem is one segment of the poet’s sonnet redoublé]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The sentinel sugar maple stationed above us on the roadway is first. Each day we park at the track and look up to its expansive globe outstretched in meditation. Preceding all other trees, it affirms change. In the swelling conflict of its upper limbus butterscotch and sulfur, sweet and harsh become the beginning of leaving behind the green of summer. Green we might have convinced ourselves to be eternal and foundational. But all things flow. You can never stand twice beneath the same tree.
 . 
❦
 . 
Last night a brief gusty squall; this morning the lone sugar maple has relinquished all but a few scattered flags and tatters. As we enter the woods, however, all the other trees in this progressive congregation are industrious in their competition. Who can display the brightest color? Who the most varied, the most novel? The southern slant of sun penetrates as if through stained glass; streaming light proclaims its gospel of chlorophyll, abscission, anthocyanins, carotenoids. Linda and I drop our worries along the trail like a trail of breadcrumbs – we can at least hope that the birds and chipmunks will devour them all in the hour before we return this way.
 . 
And now we’ve reached the last straight segment before the walking trail offers to climb the ridge and lead back down to the river. We can see the turning where it beckons. Before we reach it we will cross the high bridge over Crooked Creek and look down to see if our fat water snake is sunning herself among the south-facing rocks as usual. Just beyond the bridge we will enter the final high vaulted cathedral. Overleaning trunks and branches, pointed arches familiar in the minds of trees long before Sumeria or Samarra, clad with brass and jade, they invite us now to share this space in reverence.
 . 
❦
 . 
This cathedral of flux. The never-changing God this world worships is the God of Changes. The crimson Michaux lilies that celebrated here in August today merely nod a few dry, creased, tri-partite pods, but what do they hold? A celebration of seeds. And beneath the springy duff the roots gone dormant have not forgotten their desire to rise again next April.
 . 
Linda and I stand here for a moment, in the moment. The memory of red blossoms is not what we worship. The anticipation of future blooming is not what we worship. Right here right now is the only real thing – the only real thing is all things that have come before and all that may yet become. We hold a single thought, we hold all thought. For one brief moment approaching joy we are engulfed, we merge with the flux.
 . 
Panta rhei. All things flow.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Dropping Sunrises in a Jar
 . 
When daybreak edged the earth,
++++ I would roll over – unlike the birds.
It was as if we lived in separate jars.
++++ Wrens whistle and chirp about flames
blooming into a ball at sunrise
++++ then hush with the sun’s full burning.
 . 
I used to sleep through the daily burning
++++ for I didn’t care much how the earth
rotated itself into another sunrise.
++++ But years later, I wondered why birds
got so excited about a horizon in flames.
++++ So much time, I’ve spent within a jar.
 . 
The birds, too, live in a sort of jar,
++++ but they focus outward and seem to burn
with a gratitude that fans their inner flame.
++++ See pelicans fly about the earth?
They dip and lift until the idea of bird
++++ becomes a winged embrace at sunrise.
 . 
When I traveled, I watched every sunrise
++++ to see night leave its door to morning ajar,
and in its wake, I heard the calls from birds.
++++ Each place began with its horizon burning,
though, and I worry our Goldilocks earth
++++ is ending. We choose to go in flames,
 . 
or up in smoke like a moth drawn to flame
++++ when just right gets too hot, but each sunrise
still unleashes warbling tenors upon the earth.
++++ For we don’t see birds flying into bell jars
or coal mines, do we? While forests burn
++++ in the west, in the east, squirrels and birds
 . 
gear up for hurricanes. Notice how birds
++++ of a feather fly from floods and flames?
Instead, I wake to the sky’s daily burning
++++ in these – my sunset – years to collect sunrises.
One by one, I drop then in a jar
++++ like candies gathered from my forgiving earth.
 . 
But this burning keeps flushing out the birds,
++++ who welcome the earth as if an old flame
and add their sunrise songs to its tip jar.
 . 
Melinda Thomsen
from Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Melinda Thomsen lets no sunrise escape her. While the eye notices light returning to the world and the ear may welcome the first emphatic burst of wrensong, the soul delves deeper to discover that the light has never left. Some place where I can untangle myself through flashes of beauty – this is Melinda’s journey and her destination. And as we travel with her across the world and through the universe of Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, this might be the promise we hope to fulfill – One day you’ll shape yourself into the bird your soul holds.
 . 
❦
 . 
These poems are woven with recurring images of sunrise and sky, birdsong and sunflowers, but in addition to these enticements Melinda’s use of formality has ensnared me. I am a sucker for a good sestina; this collection’s title poem is a great one. I had pretty much assumed it’s impossible to actually write a Heroic Crown of Sonnets (sonnet redoublé) but here Melinda has mastered it. In just 31 pages, this sequence elevates us and carries us into new worlds.
 . 
Purchase Dropping Sunrises in a Jar at Finishing Line Press.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Zoetrope Sunrise of the Taihang Mountains
 . 
Waking in a sleeper car, bunked
with three strangers, I raise the shade
 . 
to watch the sunrise, a pale peach glow,
among the snoring. Cornfields stretch
 . 
beneath gauzy clouds as our train enters
a tunnel and metal sounds reflect
 . 
off its stone interior. As we exit,
the ochre sky lightens, then another
 . 
tunnel and again a waterfall of noise.
Now, the sun glows behind mountain
 . 
peaks, and mist rests in the Taihang
valley of lush shrubbery when a tunnel
 . 
eclipses that view. The train
travels through tunnel after tunnel,
 . 
but between glimpses, the sun rises
and we emerge into a village
 . 
with streams edging the foothills
framed with cornfields and box houses.
 . 
A man feeds his donkey.
The child in our cabin coughs.
 . 
For the Chinese, the road over
Taihang means the frustrations of life.
 . 
Where the sun rises through slits,
this zoetrope carries me home,
 . 
or some place where I can untangle
myself through flashes of beauty.
 . 
I had to get out through stillness;
until bit by bit, the womb opened.
 . 
Melinda Thomsen
from Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2024
 . 
[zoetrope: An optical toy, in which figures made to revolve on the inside of a cylinder, and viewed through slits in its circumference, appear like a single figure passing through a series of natural motions as if animated or mechanically moved. – – – bg]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Three aphorisms attributed to Heraclitus (Greek, ca. 500 BC) declare change and conflict as the fundamental characteristics of reality:
On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
We both step and do not step into the same river, we both are and are not.
It is not possible to step into the same river twice.
The central tenets of Heraclitus’s philosophy are the unity of opposites and the centrality of flux (change) as encapsulated in the phrase Panta rhei, all things flow.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
 . 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »