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Posts Tagged ‘nature’

Water Dreams

Posted in Ecopoetry, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on September 1, 2023| 10 Comments »

 . 
[ with 3 poems by Jack Coulehan]
 . 
Darwin’s Prayer
++++ He saw Darwin on his knees, and there
++++ was no difference between prayer and
++++ pulling a worm from the grass.
++++++++ Roger McDonald, Mr. Darwin’s Shooter
 . 
Bright bunches
of gardenias
bloom in November,
 . 
the loam at their feet
moistened by dew
and spongy with debris.
 . 
As I fill my container
with handfuls of earth
alive with these
 . 
marvelous worms,
perfected in being
by the wisdom
 . 
of randomness,
I’m astonished
by gratitude.
 . 
from The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems. Plain View Press, Austin TX, © 2020
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Last night the storm whispered its secrets into my dreams. A long dryness, a vain hoping. This morning the drought has ended and flood warnings will as well in an hour or so. Linda and I head to the E&A rail trail beside Elkin Creek to laugh and point at the heights reached by frothy current. To breathe in the hot seethe and funk of saturated forest. To celebrate.
 . 
The sadness of the creek slams us, stops us, stills us. Its churning water is the color of pumpkin soup; Spike the Heron does not stalk here; the rattle of Kingfisher is silent, fled. Oh yes, we generally get muddy after a downpour, but never this bad. Miles from here, north of Carter Falls, the dry weeks have parched and cracked 500 acres of tobacco field. No riparian buffer, no catchment pond, not one single fuck does the tobacco farmer give for all of us downstream: when rain eventually returns it can’t slow itself, can’t soak the earth. It has no choice but to sluice foaming into the creek carrying inch-acres of red clay with it.
 . 
❦
 . 
The poems in Jack Coulehan’s The Talking Cure are expansive; they span the human experience and human influence. Many of his poems have arisen from his decades as teacher, physician, healer; the lines are populated by his patients and their struggles. So often these lines also reflect his own struggle, both to heal and be healed. Other poems explore his family through the generations. Others reflect his deep relationship with literary figures that formed him and with teachers who informed him.
 . 
In all of these poems I sense a web of connection. As humans we must all struggle to discover our purpose in being. In this struggle each of us is touched by the people we allow to approach us, to close in, to climb over the wall. And each of us touches others and touches the earth: the human experience and the human influence.
 . 
I selected these three poems in particular for their focused peering into that influence, and also for their universality. Jack Coulehan is a humanist, a person who believes that human beings have it within their power to improve the lives of other people whom they are willing to touch. So often, so easily and thoughtlessly, so many of us focus only on our power to dominate, to harm. We easily destroy the earth itself without even noticing. Let us stop and think. Let us feel. Let us touch and allow ourselves to be touched. Perhaps each of our individual lives can enlarge its span. The power of many begins with the power of one.
 . 
We are all downstream from someone, and all upstream.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Cherry Orchard
++++ If a great many remedies
++++ are suggested for some disease,
++++ it means the disease is incurable.
++++++++ Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
 . 
The end of the century
has come upon us
without a sign of release
or the beginning of justice.
We’re selling the orchard
to pay our debts
and reminiscing about
love’s excitements,
life’s mistakes. I suspect
a century ago the hearts
of the people sitting here
were just as generous,
intense, and cruel as ours.
 . 
A miniature flower
thrives in the moisture
and dust of a broken
pavement – this is the gist
of the matter. We want
so strongly to believe
the flower will spread
everywhere. How quickly
it dies! If the disease
had a cure, we would not need
so many remedies.
 . 
Jack Coulehan
from The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems. Plain View Press, Austin TX, © 2020
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Garden of Endurance
++++ Cassia grandis, Costa Rica
 . 
Cassia fruit covers the forest floor,
a blanket of black sausage stinking
in the heat as it decomposes,
a mote in the eye of permanence.
 . 
Built for grinding by gigantic teeth,
Cassia’s fibrous case condemns its seeds
to suffering, with neither mastodon
nor megatherium alive to free them
 . 
and distribute their undigested life
in mounds of shit. Its glory left behind
by climate, tooth, and claw, Cassia
endures by the grace of rodents
 . 
that gnaw its weakest fibers
and let a few fertile seeds escape
before they rot. Anachronistic
fruit, your survival – sweet tickle
 . 
of a breeze, illusion of peace,
diminishment that overcomes
extinction – is an inheritance
for my kind, too. A hopeful omen.
 . 
Jack Coulehan
from The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems. Plain View Press, Austin TX, © 2020
 . 
For additional poems by Jack Coulehan, see last week’s post, Plow Straight, from August 25, 2023.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Join me in celebrating the release of my newest poetry collection, How We All Fly, from The Orchard Street Press.
 . 
Poet Patricia Hooper comments: “Through close observations of the physical world, these clear, direct poems yield insights into the corresponding life of the spirit.” And Rebecca Baggett says this: “Throughout these poems, but particularly toward the collection’s end, How We All Fly leads the reader up and onward, infusing even inevitable losses with tenderness, trust, and hope.”
. 
You may sample the opening poem from the collection here:
Thank you for your support, both of the writing you discover here and of the literary arts!
 . 
You may purchase a copy of How We All Fly directly from me by mailing a check for $15 (postage included) to this address:
++++++ 131 Bon Aire Rd.
++++++ Elkin, NC 28621
Please make your check payable to Bill Griffin.
 . 
If you would prefer to pay via PayPal, please contact me for transaction details at:
++++++ comments@griffinpoetry.com
 . 
 . 
[Patricia Hooper is author of Wild Persistence, University of Tampa Press. Rebecca Baggett’s most recent book is The Woman Who Lives Without Money, Regal House Publishing.]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
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IMG_0880, tree
 . 

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How We All Fly

Posted in Ecopoetry, family, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 29, 2023| 14 Comments »

 . 
[2023 chapbook by Bill Griffin]
 . 
We Never Give Up Hoping
 . 
Morning frozen hard. Pour
++++ boiling water
into the birdbath;
++++ they will come
to drink when I have gone.
 . 
++++ God of holy ice, holy
++++ ++++ steam,
++++ give my children
++++ ++++ water
++++ that all my hoping
++++ ++++ can’t.
 . 
Sound of wings, splash
++++ diminishing;
find the world again
++++ iced over.
Fill the kettle. Holy water.
 . 
Bill Griffin
from How We All Fly, The Orchard Street Press. Gates Mills, OH, © 2023
originally published in Quiet Diamonds
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Join me in celebrating the release this month of my newest chapbook, How We All Fly, from The Orchard Street Press.
 . 
Poet Patricia Hooper describes the collection: “Through close observations of the physical world, these clear, direct poems yield insights into the corresponding life of the spirit.” And Rebecca Baggett says this: “Throughout these poems, but particularly toward the collection’s end, How We All Fly leads the reader up and onward, infusing even inevitable losses with tenderness, trust, and hope.”
 . 
Patricia Hooper is author of Wild Persistence, University of Tampa Press.
Rebecca Baggett’s most recent book is The Woman Who Lives Without Money, Regal House Publishing.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Thank you for your support, both of the writing you discover here and of the literary arts!
 . 
You may purchase a copy of How We All Fly directly from me by mailing a check for $15 (postage included) to this address:
++++++ 131 Bon Aire Rd.
++++++ Elkin, NC 28621
Please make your check payable to Bill Griffin.
 . 
If you would prefer to pay via PayPal, please contact me for transaction details at: comments@griffinpoetry.com
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
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Magic?

Posted in family, music, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on July 14, 2023| 18 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by Michael Hettich]
 . 
Abide with Me (excerpt)
 . 
That first year together, we lived in the shadow
of a fishing line factory, next to a super
highway, under a railroad bridge,
 . 
behind a field of junked cars – mountains
of tires, hub caps, and smashed glass – and we
 . 
prayed fervently for our love to return
this world to the poised grace we could imagine
when we touched each other just right, or when we saw sunlight
glint on the stream full of chemicals and junk
that ran by the factory walls.
 . 
We prayed with our yearning. That year we could float things
in midair on the hymns
we sang in perfect harmony.
 . 
We practiced one hymn – “Abide With Me” –
until we could lift cancered minnows from that stream,
until we could lift stray cats and junkyard dogs,
until we could lift each other as high
as our voices carried. We harmonized versions
 . 
of our families and secrets, until we could float
each other in unison, knowing if we fell silent
for even on moment, we’d fall . . .
 . 
Michael Hettich
from The Halo of Bees
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
When did I lose my knack for magic? Oh, I can still work what from a distance appears to be magic. I can wiggle my nose and make a seven-year old girl laugh. I can pull from my tall black hat the Latin binomial for obscure little flowers that most people don’t even consider flowers. I can perform any number of spells that compel my wee ancient mother to say , “You’re such a good boy.”
 . 
I don’t mean I can’t work magic; I mean I’m afraid I’ve lost the knack of magic working me. This morning the home health aide arrived to ride herd on Mom and Dad so I could spend the morning on the beach with grandson Bert and friends. The kid dads had planned some long postponed surf fishing; while Anthony dug for mole crabs, Josh whirled the casting net into the waves and hoped for minnows. On the third throw he brought up two tiny pompano the size of silver dollars and slipped them into a blue plastic bucket of sea water.
 . 
Bert, Wyatt, and Mari were more than rapt. The magic of flipping silvery fishes totally captured them and transported them into a new realm. Who would have thought four- and five-year olds could stare into a bucket for a solid hour? The magic of touching those velvet smooth wriggles, the magical bigness of becoming the ones responsible for bringing fresh water from the waves and moving the bucket with the shifting shade, the shocking magic of closeness, even intimacy, with something up until now just so many pictures in books – the magic worked those children. I witnessed their magic and regret to confess that I until I did I had only seen those little fish as bait.
 . 
That same evening I drove Mom and Dad over to Bogue Sound – Josh and Bert were going to catch a crab. The tide was right; the dead fish on a string was acceptably fragrant; the blue crab crept closer through the reeds. On his second try, Josh scooped up the dangerous decapod with a dip net and untangled his swimmerets and claws until he plopped into the blue bucket of sound water. A feisty one! Every time Bert moved his hand, the crab snapped claws up out of the water with undaunted ferocity. Bert was magic-smacked. “I never thought I would get this close to a real crab!” This from the boy with a hundred plastic sea creatures of every class, order, and family.
 . 
Perhaps I’ve lost the knack to be worked by magic because I read too much about and spend too little time staring into the blue depths of this unrelentingly odd and utterly magical universe. Perhaps the only hope for me is to catch a little magic as it streams off the children who are still so joyously connected to it. Or perhaps there are others also willing to share their magic. Those persons around me who are inching ever nearer to the magic as the long years of their living come ever nearer to their ending. Driving home from Bert and the Sound at dusk, Mom riding shotgun, I mention, “This is a good time of evening to see bunnies, Mom. Keep your eyes peeled.”
 . 
We turn the corner and Mom spots her at once, a fat cottontail smack in the middle of the neighbor’s lawn. And then we see her two smaller companions, the three of them considering us and chewing thoughtfully as we pass. Mom laughs and claps. “Oh Billy, how did you know we’d see bunnies? It’s just like magic!”
 . 
❦
 . 
One magic that poetry works is to occupy a different life. In Michael Hettich’s poems, he often seems to occupy several lives, each one exceedingly strange and each entirely commonplace. Through the thirty some years that the poems in this collection occupy, the writer walks around trying on other people’s lives. The surprise of his body may be rivers, trees, dry grass, a child sprouting wings. Bodies may be seedpods or they may burst into flame, they might be figures that dissolve into night or into water. These strange and wonderful transpositions and transformations are not fearful or repulsive – we as readers simply step into these bodies with Michael and become part of the magic.
 . 
This is the magic of wildness. Repeatedly, the poems remind us and display for us how wildness is at the heart of each of us. And this is the magic of music, not that the poem uses music to achieve its end but that the noise the world makes is music — poem discovers it and it reveals magic. So many of Michael’s characters sing. Or become song. Those not known for music as well as those whose music we have shut out of our busy non-wild lives. Michael sings, his wife sings, his father and family sing, and the songs weave magic that levitates and elevates and brings joy. When the ringing of my ears and of my machines has deafened me to the everything that makes up this universe of ours – the only known residence, after all, of magic – I know I can return to these poems and be restored.
 . 
The Halo of Bees, New & Selected Poems 1990-2022, Michael Hettich. Press 53, Winston-Salem NC, © 2023
Today’s post features “Selected” poems from the collection. Also see last week’s post, Catch Fire, which features “New” poems.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Frogs
 . 
He loved frogs, so he spent his afternoons
wading in the tall grass, or standing in the leafy water
where the stream turned. Charmed by their stories
of woods and muck, he practiced singing with them
at dusk at pond’s edge, while his mother and father
sat talking, with their cocktails, on the porch. As dark fell
his parent called him, most evenings, for dinner,
but sometimes they let him stay down there until the frogs
were hushed by the cicadas, whose conversations
startled him back to himself. He wandered
up to the house through the tall grass, through the dark,
still singing in his own language. Don’t think of him now,
drinking in a city bar, talking to strangers
who ignore him. Don’t think of him walking out into
the empty street, slightly drunk. He’ll be fine.
Think instead of that walk through the dark wet grass,
the sound of a child’s body moving through the grass;
think instead of those frogs falling silent, of that forest,
of mushrooms that push up overnight like elbows
in the moon-drenched mind of the woods.
 . 
Michael Hettich
from The Halo of Bees
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
House of Light
 . 
Someone breaks open like a seedpod or a flower
to spill out across the street, and we all keep walking by
because it is too beautiful to notice, or too frightening,
as the river just moves on, the clothed and dreaming river,
the speaking river feeling just the way it needs to, nothing more.
There are feathers in the sky. Say birds, generic things,
or simply ignore them. But what about those other people
bursting into flame? will the singe you? Step away
from those other fires, as though you weren’t wild yourself
in all the parts that matter: in your blood and vivid thinking, seeing
colors for their secrets: how to move and be and feel
until you burst aflame. Some buildings built of stone are made
to echo now and then, forever – no one can escape –
but others made of wood are filled with window after window,
so many windows you could ever open all of them
in a single lifetime. No one lives that long. But you could open some.
 . 
Michael Hettich
from The Halo of Bees
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
2020-06-11a Doughton Park Tree

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