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Posts Tagged ‘NC Poets’

Finish Your Milk, Billy!

Posted in family, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Diana Pinckney, Hummingbirds & Wine, imagery, Main Street Rag Publishing, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on November 11, 2022| 8 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Diana Pinkney]

Oh, I couldn’t possibly eat all that. Thank Heavens I haven’t heard Mom utter those words for quite a while now. For the fifty years prior I believe we heard that phrase with each plate set before her. Some impulse ingrained in the 30’s in the genteel South? A mantra for all the new college girls in the 40’s? How, we would ask ourselves behind her back, could someone forever twig slender so fear gaining a pound?

This week at the doctor’s office I watch the nurse enter Mom’s vitals in the computer to make sure she hasn’t lost a pound. Dad admits he hates to nag her to eat her breakfast – too engaged with the paper or too forgetful to take a bite? Yesterday I cooked them both lunch – calm down, it was just 10 minutes in the skillet from Trader Joe’s – and served the plates. It’s no trick, really, just sit across the table from Mom for long enough and she will finally finish what you’ve given her. Don’t forget the milk! The doctor says you need more fluids.

Grandmother, Dad’s Mom, had her own mantra for us grandkids in the 50’s and 60’s: Children are starving in Europe. Yes, swear to God, she actually said that more than once. Chubby me was more than happy to clean his plate, but one breakfast I recall her disapproval. I had scooped up the last Cheerio but there was still milk in the bowl overlying its substratum of teaspoons of sugar. That evening I washed down my cornbread with a big gulp of sudden sickening sweetness Grandmother had rescued from that bowl.

Now I’m clearing the table while Mom stares at the last of her milk, a layer of ice melt above the 2%. In a few minutes, though, as I stand at the sink rinsing, she walks in carrying the empty. I have to say it. Good job, Mom!

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Super Cuts, Six Months after My Daughter’s Death

The stylist snips, snips my hair, shorter
and shorter. As she works, we talk.

You have children, she asks. Yes,
I answer. Do you? Oh, I have two girls.

How about you? Three, I say, my voice
tight, clipped as the gray strands covering

the floor. My daughter’s hair was long
and red, until it was blonde. She loved

the sun. A little less on the sides, please.
Why didn’t I say I have two children, sons,

and that would have been that. Except that
will never be that. I will always have three

children. Do they live here, she asks?
The sons do. My daughter lives nowhere

and everywhere. It’s good, she says, you
have a girl, too. Yes, I answer, it is good.

Diana Pinckney
from Hummingbirds & Wine, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte, NC, © 2022

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How impossible to bear, losing a child to death. How much more impossible to write about it. Diana Pinckney in Hummingbirds and Wine overcomes the paralysis of grief, but not as chronicle or biography or personal therapy. Although she confesses I live / behind a veil, these poems are the bridge that leads her and us beyond the Valei of Teeris. These lines are twisting tracks that connect past and present, parent and child, and that connect poet and reader.

On the tree of suffering there is a twig of joy that grows up from dark earth. The root of happiness is the same / as perhaps, both descendants / / of hap – hazard or chance. Diana’s poetry is not rationalization, not sentimentality, not desperate. These are poems that share one moment, then another and another, along the path she has had to walk and which we can now walk together.

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Sea Turtles

Loggerhead, Leatherback, Ridley or Green, they all drag
themselves onto a beach. Alone under the same moon
on different shores, in their struggle to lay eggs.
Volunteers like Elizabeth spent hours at dawn

searching for the side, clawed tracks, uncovering
and moving the eggs to sand dunes, staking orange
mesh over the nest. Protection, maybe, she said,
from dogs, crabs, lots of things. Oh, my girl, I couldn’t

protect you, holed up in your house in the company
of bottles. Still, in your best years, you waited weeks
for dozens of thin-shelled eggs to split as the tiny feet
tore an opening, and under nodding sea oats, started

their spill up and out. Each one, no bigger than a silver dollar,
struggling to climb into moonlight, and down to the sea’s white foam.

Diana Pinckney
from Hummingbirds & Wine, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte, NC, © 2022

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Beach Walker

I can still see her stretching in the hazy sun
each morning, strolling the surf, breathing salt

and the musky scent of creatures curled inside
shells – whelks, clams, conchs – once alive.

She so many miles from y city home.
So many Hey Mom’s when I’d lift the phone.

How is it that a heart so loved could weaken
through the days and weeks, and I never knew.

A heart that beat with the rhythm of the sea
and one bright morning would fail her and me.

Diana Pinckney
from Hummingbirds & Wine, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte, NC, © 2022

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Decorations

Posted in family, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Chronic Observer, Dementia, Doug Stuber, family, Halloween, imagery, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on October 28, 2022| 14 Comments »

[with 4 poems by Doug Stuber]

“Look at that one, Mom, a Rainbow Unicorn Skeleton.”

“Oh my, and all the spiders!”

We’re driving through residential Ardmore in Winston-Salem, just the two of us. An outing! On our way to the pharmacy and yes, we’ll pick up a prescription for Dad, but this is one time we made him stay home. Dad’s 96th birthday is Thursday and this is Mom’s chance to pick out a card, maybe a few goodies. And see all the Halloween decorations.

It’s rare that I have Mom all to myself. At her doctor’s appointments Dad tags along, and well he should since Mom’s memory is failing and he needs to tattle on her. The grocery store, the dry cleaners, Trader Joe’s, those are all on Dad’s agenda; usually Mom stays home with the CNA. As Mom ages she’s become more withdrawn, much more passive, but get her one on one and she’ll tell you what she thinks. So here she is riding shotgun, laughing at the yard art, game to grab her cane when we arrive at the store.

While I head to the pharmacist window I leave Mom in the Birthday Card aisle – we have five family birthdays in the next four weeks. When I return, maybe 15 minutes later, she hasn’t picked anything out. I point to a couple that seem likely. She can’t quite decide. That’s OK. I find one with dogs on it that seems right for Dad, get her approval, find some for Allison, Margaret, the Josh’s, subtly nudge her to pick one each. When we finally have our five it’s on to snack selection. I tell her if she’s not sure what Dad would like just get stuff she likes (see how that works?). When we’ve finally paid and returned to the car, I have her put Dad’s chocolates & nuts etc. into the gift bag we bought. Once she’s looked each item over she finally says, “I can’t believe you could pick all that out.” Shoot, Mom, I was wanting you to think YOU picked everything out.

Sadness is just one story we can tell ourselves. I could hold onto Mom’s bewilderment and indecision, nothing like the Mom that raised me. Or I could buckle her in as we laugh, thinking about Dad’s face when he sees his pile of loot. And I could prepare a big build up for the drive home, remind her to look out her window at the Rainbow Unicorn Skeleton, both of us enjoying it again for the first time.

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Hikaru

One cherry blossom detaches, falls, a single unit
allowing fruit its space, starting its new journey: island
to reflecting pond, orchard to cottage yard, daughter to
love, enhanced by the wind, if even for only six seconds.
Transformed to long-boned genius, long-yearning adult,
considerate friend, purple-green plaid from soft pink,
tan suede boots from five-petalled bloom. Hikaru, as they
say in Japan, hits the town running, arms crossed, cradling
herself like the war-torn victims of Vietnam, but not
worn or torn, she flings enthusiastic youth toward
outstretched limbs. She captures her beginning and future
simultaneously, shedding one form, embracing another,
sweating humid Spring, still awkward in this skin.
Descending unannounced, she moves among mere mortals
spreading joy, quietly demanding obedience, offering all
in exchange for all. Most cannot accept, choose an
easier, less complicated path; but those brave strong souls
born from deep roots, blessed metamorphosed
being who join Miss Cherry soon realize, if for one day,
week, or lifetime, their lives will never be the same

Doug Stuber
from Chronic Observer, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY, © 2019

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Doug Stuber is a crabby pessimistic lyrical idealist. Doug is a sharp-eyed sharp-tongued teary-eyed lover. Humankind, Doug Stuber as chronic observer constantly notices, has royally fucked up and Doug is more than ready to rub our noses in it. Human individuals, Doug reveals over and over in his poetry, are beautiful in their brokenness and he must open his heart. Poetry is silk on the breeze: at first we flinch and claw but with each turn we draw closer together, are drawn, maybe to cocoon or maybe to struggle forth with spread wings and open eyes.

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I side with Clark Holtzman in his comment about Doug Stuber’s book: All the poems of Chronic Observer engage the world we are given, natural or political, fair or foul, as the given it is. Buy this book, read it. You’ll see what it means.

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The Mangrove Blues

The sun sinks.
A pumping heron
Chases dreams into the night,
Resting momentarily
In a life of constant motion.

The wind shakes.
Trees stretch out,
Anticipating winter.
Orange floods
Mangrove and the pines.

The cold turns.
Clouds gather
Over murky surroundings,
Drifting slowly inland
To dump a fresh-new load.

The tears run.
A skipping child
Delivers momentary reprieve.
Gloom infests
The evening of a lonely-hearted man.

Doug Stuber
from Chronic Observer, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY, © 2019

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Rules

It took this long to hide my penchant: Rhymes.
Another reading forces inner looks.
Where is Ed and his heroic Elegy for us?
What happened when we traded love of lines
For time cards, bosses, corporate crooks?

Here’s what happened: life became a chore,
There is not time left to rage creating.
Competitive suburban gardening ins a bust.
What there is left is not elating
Except the love of soul-mates through this door.

The Eagle’s Nest is now a restaurant:
You get a 15-dollar turkey plate up there.
But is a fourth Reich rising from the rust,
Or are we evil, just nonchalant?
Oklahoma City fades like sunset air:

The only lasting image is your own.
One veto and the fascists will shut us down.
One thousand points of veto from the upper crust
Without a batted eyelash from this clown.
What further outrage can we condone?

As long as TV says it is OK
Our lives submit to the worst human rages.
Just when we’ve farmed this place to dust
Some half-assed savior might come our way
Passing manna to those left: food of the ages.

Doug Stuber
from Chronic Observer, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY, © 2019

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[Given the approaching season, I just have to include this final poem of Doug’s.]

KC and the Thanksgiving Prayer

I gave a thanksgiving prayer to a new family I met near Asheville. I got twigs and built a triangle (the three goddesses: corn, squash, and beans) and a square (the four directions: North – Winter and cleansing, East: Spring and beginnings, South: Summer and warmth, West: Fall and remembrances). the triangle sits above the square, because it is the goddesses who feed us: corn, squash, and beans.

You start in the square facing West and, while turning right for each new direction, say:

We salute you for your wind and fresh new sky
We salute your wonderful people and cleansing snow
We greet the day with dreams to labor by
We salute your sun and love and fun and go

To green mountains, cold river by the leaves
Of Rhododendron bushes, tall black trees.
A new friend of mine now believes,
Captured by spirits she feels and doesn’t have to see.

Doug Stuber
from Chronic Observer, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY, © 2019

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Swamp Monster

Posted in Imagery, poetry, tagged Alan Michael Parker, Bill Griffin, imagery, nature, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing, The Age of Discovery on October 21, 2022| 16 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Alan Michael Parker]

When grandson Bert walks the lakeside trail at Yates Mill in Raleigh with his Dad & Mom, they are ever alert for evidence of the Swamp Monster. Those unexplained bubbles in the pond? Could be Swamp Monster breathing. The sudden galoomp that startles us, abrupt pivot, but all we see are receding ripples? Yep, SM. A patch of pond lily that speckles and ripples the surface? Bert explains to me, instructor to pupil – that’s Swamp Monster’s ridged, scaley back.

At age five Bert teeters on the delicious cusp between credulity and manly savvy. He knows there’s not really a Swamp Monster, but he still craves more of those tingly shivers that rise like dark forms from dark water, birthed by lingering maybe’s. And who’s to say that Swamp Monster is not the wisest of teachers? Step One and Step Two along the Naturalist Way are Pay Attention; Ask Questions. No question is ever too silly; all questions are worthy. Like this one – Does Swamp Monster have pets?

Maybe those two turtles jostling among the pickerel weed. Maybe the northern watersnake camouflaged beside the minnow-filled mill pond. And what in the world is this thing? Glommed around a root in the water, a gelatinous hive, a lurking snotball! And there’s another, and another. Yuck, Swamp Monster!

We have made a discovery, life forms creepy enough to serve as pet to any self-respecting Swamp Monster: fresh water bryozoans. That mucusy ball, almost as big as a Jack-o-Lantern, is a clonal colony of tiny filter-feeding invertebrates. Occupying their own Phylum, for goodness sake! Each tiny individual everts a ring of tiny tentacles with cilia that waft food particles down toward its tiny mouth. If there’s danger, it pulls them back in and down pops the lid. In some colonies there are specialized individuals that can sting. Some species are able to creep around (although at only a couple of centimeters a day, they’re not about to engulf us)! Nice Bryo . . . Sit! . . . Stay!

All of this is just to say – whenever you’re hiking through prime Swamp Monster habitat, it is always important to pay attention.

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Breakfast
++++ It’s not just sentimental, no, no, no…

Once there was a blueberry
in a bowl of granola.
The bowl was Melamine, the table was pine,
the kitchen was linoleum and metal and oak,
and the house was brick and cedar and aluminum,
and the roofing material in the shingles
was fire-rated Class A, don’t worry.
There were trees: hawthorns and one river birch.
There were azaleas and a Lindlley’s Butterfly Bush.
The sky was 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen,
with a trace of argon gas, and ice in crystals.
Space was an almost perfect vacuum,
with a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter.

Maybe the blueberry and one hydrogen atom
were cousins, cosmically and/or metaphysically.
The spoon that held up the blueberry
was aluminum, the shine a little worn,
and the blueberry was violet in a gradient,
a tad puckered, still with a bit of stem.

Today, class, let’s all be astronauts.
We’ll begin with breakfast, and then
we’ll search the universe for tenderness,
which I suspect – so long,
my blueberry, adieu –
may be the last perfect thing.

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These poems by Alan Michael Parker dance on the knife-edge of joy. Oh yes, my warm Companion, we may slip and often we may bleed, but just for a minute let’s join that puffy red cloud drunk on sunset. Let’s confess our secret angry names (“asshole,” you say?). Let’s discover the microeconomics of love, the birth of the cool, the future of love. Isn’t this, after all, the Age of Discovery?

Who’s to say that the highest life form is not a colony of clonal bryozoans? Can you or I wave our little ciliated arms over our heads and expect sustenance to waft into what might pass for a mouth? On the other hand, you and I are blessed with cheeks able to detect the tender kiss of the cosmos, and hearts with the capacity of affection for tender bryozoans. Let’s join Alan Michael Parker on the journey: Dear Reader, I know you’re dying / That’s sad. Me too. // How about we wait here together?

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The epigraph to Breakfast is from “Try a Little Tenderness,” covered by Otis Redding in 1966, backed by Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Psalm is after Yehuda Amichai’s “Jewish Travel: Change is God and Death is His Prophet.”

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Ornithology

When a bird flew into my window
and made a hard and soft death sound,

I found her in the dirt below
and I fixed a cardboard nest for her
and fed her from an eyedropper
what the Internet suggested,
and I named her Young Self,

and when a bird flew into my living room
and frantically bumped at every corner above,
I named her Old self,

and because height and light are
humankind’s spiritual aspiration,
I wished my hands were birds.

Luckily, it was evening,
the outside version of my sorrow:

the swallows flocked and flew
to sleep somewhere, presumably,
and every swallow was like a minute,

so I watched and tried to count, which is what I do,
despite so much of each day
happening to me,

and I fed my Young Self more sugar water
while my Old Self
beat in a corner to get out.

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Psalm

If there are grave stones, may there be
shy stones, kind stone, mad stones,
scared stones, thoughtful stones,
and may we have a choice;

and if there are hummingbirds, may there be
humming walks and humming naps,
humming minutes between
the minutes that hum in anger,
a humming table and chair by the fire,
and a warm and humming towel to wrap us in.

If there are thunder clouds, may there be
whisper clouds and echo clouds,
clouds the rustling of linens,
giggling clouds scampering,
and clouds to call a child home;

if there are heavy sighs, may there be
sighs that float or sink or rise,
and sighs that drift away,
and sighs to take from us our sighs;

and may the weeping willow,
the weeping redbud,
and the weeping cherry
weave of their weeping an evening gown;

and when we come to the end of days,
may we come to a beginning;
and if there is a time keeper,
may there be a time giver,
and if there is a guard house,
may the house be safe unguarded,

and if there is an ocean view, may we see
what the ocean sees,
the little boats of our bodies
nudged into the tide.

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