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Posts Tagged ‘Southern writing’

Rocking the Moment

Posted in Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on October 20, 2023| 7 Comments »

 . 
[with haiku by William Winslow]
 . 
azalea in bloom
seems early this year –
what else have I missed?
 . 
❦
 . 
bent over and lean –
I have become the tree I
climbed in my childhood!
 . 
❦
 . 
Yesterday after church I carried the rocking chair out to the car. Scratches and scars from a thousand children in Mom French’s school library, this chair was just one of her oh so irresistible enticements to read – and she the most enticing of all as Mother Goose, Good Witch, Hobbit, Elementary Librarian. The rocker first retired to our church nursery and now is finally retiring home.
 . 
As I fumbled for keys, Darlene called from across the lot, “Now Bill, you better do some rocking!”
 . 
“Are you kidding?” I hollered as I popped the hatch. “I’ve been retired three years and I haven’t had a chance to rock yet!”
 . 
❦
 . 
an early morning
baptism: bluestem grasses
brush against my legs
 . 
❦
 . 
I’ve been here before
but these flowers are not like
those of my childhood
 . 
❦
 . 
I’m not rocking this morning but the feeder rocks after the chickadee scolds, then grabs a seed and pushes off. My rock-equivalent here on the porch is this: coffee and notebook at hand, a book of verse, feet up, fleece jacket and cap for 50 degrees & autumn. Two young guys down the street are hacking out busted flooring from the house that has squatted empty since last spring’s tornado. The yard crew just pulled their big trailer up next door and here come the weed-eaters & blowers & zero-turn-radius terrafirmanator. Around the corner someone is hammering. For a few minutes the breeze settles and the trees around me and all down the ridge just listen.
 . 
❦
 . 
music for the soul:
dog tags dancing on the rim
of a metal bowl
 . 
❦
 . 
forgotten clothesline
linens pop in the wind – a
restless night ahead!
 . 
❦
 . 
This morning the season rocks and tilts and won’t return to summer. It makes itself known even if I close eyes and plug ears – the keen edge of that scent, crisping leaves and browning forbs. When I open my eyes again I notice the beech tarnished copper, I discover an ornamentation of Virginia creeper indistinguishable green last week now stepping forward into red, and look there’s the one unfractured maple branch dressing up in its indescribable orange while new growth from the trunk still clings to some jade hope. I shove my pale fingers into my armpits between these phrases. The chickadees resume their scolding but the freshening breeze pays me no mind at all.
 . 
❦
 . 
not yellow brick but
wingstem and aster lead me
through this hillside field
 . 
❦
look, a child spattered
mustard along the roadside –
oh, yellow ironweed!
 . 
❦
 . 
Rocking at the tempo of breath, surrendering to the heartpulse rhythm – bustle can’t touch this. I turn another page in William Winslow’s haiku collection. Resistance is futile. My subconscious tries to push back – I don’t want to merge into your momentariness, Mr. Poet, I’ll make my own revelations, thank you! But reading haiku is like breathing. You can only hold out for so long before the pressure to inhale, before the desire to step into that cool shaded invitation. As William reminds us in his afterword, a haiku is written to be spoken in a single breath. As I stroll further down the page, pausing after each poem, often retracing my steps, my anxious breath slows and I enter the moment. Look, Darlene, I’m rocking!
 . 
❦
 . 
look, the centerpiece
of my garden is that tall
weed I did not plant!
 . 
❦
 . 
dead limb your tree no
longer needs you – it seems that
we could be brothers
 . 
❦
 . 
hiking stick my hands
have carved you but my legs may
send you on alone
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
All selections are from 112 HAIKU by William Winslow, Palmetto Publishing, Charleston SC, © 2023. William lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina but spends many days in the Southern Appalachians in western North Carolina, as evident from the flavor and setting of his writing. He lived in Japan for two years and immersed himself in the culture. Of the art of haiku, he says, “Set aside some time, take a deep breath, and write yours!”
 . 
Visit Palmetto Publishing HERE
 . 
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❦
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Next week I will attend the Tremont Writers’ Conference in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, led by poet Frank X Walker. Most likely you won’t find a post here on October 27, but take a moment that morning to silently wish my father, Wilson, a happy day on his 97th birthday. I’ll see you back here on November 3.   — B
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❦
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Language?

Posted in Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2023| 9 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by David Radavich]
 . 
Turtle
 . 
Its stomach brushes ground
as by long acquaintance,
 . 
one foot then another, one leaf,
slow digestion, eyes alert
 . 
like high-beams
in the wind-swept night,
 . 
hard against the air yet telling
stories as a stained-glass
 . 
window, victory
over hastening death,
 . 
comrade of dust and mud
and golden squares like armor
 . 
glinting whenever sun
arcs its sacrifice –
 . 
just so I think of you
unfolding a yellowed piece
 . 
of paper, words
you never meant to say
 . 
crawling their careful
way into my bone-frame,
 . 
softer than
the moon starting
 . 
to curl
into dawn
 . 
David Radavich
from Canonicals – Love’s Hours
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
At 17 she had a boyfriend (briefly) whose language she did not speak. The two would sit at the back of the bus through the turns and hesitations of the clamorous diesel-fumed city and communicate with their lips, although words are not what passed between them. When they came up for breath it was no use to tell him about the menacing gothic facade they were passing or comment on the uniformed school children being led across the bridge. He would stare at her and she back at him until they reached her stop. Come inside? What am I saying, and what do you think I mean? Well,  Tschuβ until tomorrow after school.
 . 
Some would say that no boy and girl at 17 ever speak the same language. Some say man and woman never at any age. Cynics. Nevertheless, when the girl’s best friend, who commanded some phrases the boy could grasp, had to call him one evening to convey a final message from the girl – angry? sad? frustrated? – and cancel any further bus rides, she still could never quite understand how it all had gone so wrong. An inter-language dictionary proved no help at all. Decades later she would still wake at 3 AM and feel the fool, although a few latent hippocampal neurons, hers and no doubt his as well, continued to fire, “What if? What if?” One tattered shred of recollection with lint of vocabulary she could have pieced together if she had tried still labored to remind her of this: when they had turned toward each other and he placed his hand at her neck, fingers in her soft short hair, they had seemed to understand each other well enough.
 . 
❦
 . 
Time is both a bewildering tangle and a firm reassurance in these poems by David Radavich from Canonicals – Love’s Hours. It is a book of hours – matins to vespers – but also a book of days and years. The images can be elusive, like moonlight through restless leaves, yet remain rich in their enticement. And what message does this subtle, earthbound, exalted language, this language both  precise and intangible, what does it desire to convey? The object, the “you,” is it a focus for affection and gratitude or a saving grace always just beyond reach? Each word lovingly selected, placed, ordered: these poems understand you, the reader, and they invite you with all hopefulness and promise to understand them.
 . 
Canonicals  – Love’s Hours by David Radavich, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY. © 2019 [author biography and book purchase HERE]
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 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Argus
 . 
Quietly, quietly
dawn takes its place
 . 
among the world’s
elements –
 . 
There will be rapes today,
and military coups,
 . 
also gay
birthdays, painful
 . 
dyings and forlorn lovers
discovering their first infatuation
 . 
with another body.
 . 
Let me be there for it all,
all seasons, all temperaments
 . 
seeing
the round circus
 . 
black and gold as autumn
spinning into night
 . 
love turning
a corner
 . 
into open doors
that lead to bright air
 . 
blowing
many leaves
 . 
David Radavich
from Canonicals – Love’s Hours
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
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Cyclical
 . 
To rediscover.
 . 
To find again what
has been lost
for more than thirty years.
 . 
A stolen ring
on someone else’s
hand, gold around a gun
 . 
or maybe you
clutching my heart
like a bandit.
 . 
In any case
 . 
it reappears, this missing
self, this jewel tossed
in some closet,
 . 
the world turns
so that China ends up
 . 
and we are land
at the sphere’s bottom
 . 
rediscovering what
 . 
has been lost by many others
and found again like
 . 
sunrise,
like buds breaking.
 . 
David Radavich
from Canonicals – Love’s Hours
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
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Expected and Unexpected

Posted in Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 8, 2023| 4 Comments »

 . 
[with two poems by Katherine Soniat]
 . 
The Right Frequency
 . 
allows the next stillness to occur. Welcome each space
as it appears but confirm slowly –
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ as if an adage drifting
down through centuries of smoke.
 . 
Try a later roll in summer grass with its sundial fingers
holding you on top the seven-veiled mysteries
of green.
 . 
Above that, motionless clouds predict it’s never lickety-split
to the apparent state that counts.
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ Urn, goat, and crimson altar-cloth
are flighty suggestions, hard to pin down despite humans
and their sharpened articles of faith.
 . 
Tie a select few to the calf-bell of dogma, then with due respect
leave the dotted lines.
 . 
Maybe even get off your mount (the high one) and walk beside
those roped or chained, and stumbling.
 . 
Each time you are kind, feel how your breath changes,
the frequency of birds at dusk settling in.
 . 
Be aware. ++++ ++++ ++++ One pivotal moment
++++ does not foreshadow a calmer forever on earth.
 . 
Katherine Soniat
from Starfish Wash-Up
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The fence will squander its energy through juicy longstem grasses, nutsedges, greeny ferns, the unimpeded conduction of their potassium solute intracellular conduit. Grounded, not shocking. And so the cattle farmer may be forgiven for having applied his two-foot swath of herbicide all down the half mile of the fence’s length. Nevertheless, even months later we measure this still brown compacted earth and imagine what’s been lost. We do not expect to find the blossoms of September a year ago.
 . 
Nevertheless, here they are. Oh yes, beyond the fence’s reach where moisture seeps down from the upslope we find exactly what we expected: Ironweed, Cardinal Flower, Crownbeard. And within the fence’s boundary, where grazers have not been re-introduced this summer, we are not at all surprised to discover swath upon swath of Meadow Beauties. But here before us we suddenly come upon precisely what we had not expected to discover: two low herbs with blue thumbnail flowers.
 . 
The hikers walking up behind me are a little rattled when I shout, “Look at this!” I point out the swoop of curving stamens and the spotted lower petals and they say, “How nice,” then move along down the trail possibly hoping I won’t be following them too closely, but as of this moment I am having a very good day.
 . 
❦
 . 
Katherine Soniat’s poems do not enter at the front door and take a companionable seat at the kitchen table. They shift, they transform, they bury their meaning then suddenly burst forth. To read  Starfish Wash-Up, I find I must lay my expectations aside. If I stare at the lines too hard they elude me, but then pages later the unexpected connection emerges and allows itself to be recognized. Soniat describes this as “a dissolving context in which time and space blur – only to reassemble in as part of the vaguely familiar.” The themes I sense, across time and generations, are father / daughter, separation / blame, searching / belonging. The two poems I’ve chosen here display these in their own right without requiring the context of the entire collection to fully convey meaning. To read most of the poems, though, one must read all the poems.
 . 
This is an unusual and unique book, disturbing at times. The entire volume is titled FATES and it actually includes full-length works by three poets: The Medea Notebooks by Ann Pedone, Starfish Wash-Up by Katherine Soniat, and overflow of an unknown self by D. M. Spitzer. The three collections are completely different in style but their themes and tropes intertwine and challenge. I am repeatedly wrenched from my comfortable perch and yanked into these narratives. As Ann Pedone writes in Jason Confronts Medea, We soak our bodies in the oil of words / all our lives and yet now / after the thousands we have / spoken to each other / you are as strange to me / as the dark-eared goats / feeding on the grasses / beneath your feet.
 . 
FATES: The Medea Notebooks / Starfish Wash-Up / overflow of an unknown self. Ann Pedone, Katherine Soniat, D. M. Spitzer. Etruscan Press, Wilkes-Barre, PA, © 2021.
 .
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Kingdom
 . 
There could have been time for another life before the strong March wind
swept us from us from all-fours, and dropped us near water.
Mirrors waiting.
 . 
No denying that the Nth degree of the unknown is upon us, and there’s no hint
of direction for our wasted planet. Our run at flamboyantly hot lifestyles shrunk
the ice (and more) to pieces. Huff ant strut, and we’ve about destroyed
the globe.
 . 
We mark time, belch, and remain on the lookout for chatter, though truth is
we are most awkward within the family circle where the food tastes good
bu the term lineage shows ugly signs of meltdown.
++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ Who sits where
at the last family feast (?) when any mention of disagreement is met
with angular glares of Thou shalt not repeat tales of personal or climate crisis.
And thou shalt instead sip all thy wine then nod at the endlessly grinning?
 . 
My determined place at that annual folly? I doze with my clutch of poems
in the family broom-closet – me, yet another calculated risk to the authenticity
of family history.
++++ ++++ ++++ Cursing in couplets, tweeting of human drift measured in masses:
poor continental wanderers – lost infants, men and women. The elders choking on
water, while in my pine-oiled burrow I grow heavy and sniff broom straw – one
way back to the lost animal kingdom.
 . 
Katherine Soniat
from Starfish Wash-Up
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
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.”
 . 
Thank you for your support, both of the writing you discover here in my weekly posts 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 or Zelle, 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.]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 4/30/2022

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