It is hard to attract our reading attention

from this week in March, 2008  (I was 63)

It is hard to attract our reading attention

What’s the subject in what form

What does the block of print look like 

How long is it 

Is the language ponderous or just difficult

Will our eyes focus  Will we be captured

or will we feel we’ve read it before why read it again

You can walk the stacks of a library

feel like you’re being attacked

outnumbered by everything you don’t know

take refuge in a few familiar shelves

where even the light seems better

and all the good ideas are not from foreign countries

Travel is always an adventure

It’s where we create the resolve to work at home

if we can overcome the presumption

that we know something worth doing

Sunrise Litany

March 30, 1976  (I was 31)

            Sunrise Litany

At dawn someone always comes

to the church on the corner

the only one coming this morning

to climb each small step up to the heavy door

which holds the odor of prayer inside

the first to echo down the long aisle

the first to see which candles expired in the night

the first to dent the kneeler

the first to ask forgiveness

the first of the congregation to dampen a veiled forehead 

breaking into a sweat for the Lord

I’m going to pound my feet on the hill.

from this week in March, 1979  (I was 34)

I’m going to pound my feet on the hill.

I laugh when I hear Dylan sing,

“I’ve paid the price of solitude,

but at least I’m out of debt.”

I’m going to hit the deer trails,

look for a blue deer.

The trees laugh when I think of tomorrow.

(They lived all those years

so they could live today.)

I understand their laughter

I’m going to trot myself under their jocular leaves,

find myself running alongside a blue deer

who finds itself running alongside of me.

Even with brittle cracks

from this week in March, 2011  (I was 66)

Even with brittle cracks

childhood has a coherence

a comfortable unknowing

a willingness to resort to faith

and submission to authoritarian presence

because it is so comfortable to do so

An inability to achieve that comfort

is called adulthood

for WCW

March 27, 1971  (I was 26)

     for WCW

I was arrested

in the woods

smoking a joint

and reading poetry

I do not think

I’d have been arrested

had I not been reading poetry

This is the Drug Abuse Workshop

March 26, 1974  (I was 29)

This is the Drug Abuse Workshop

After school the bells are still ringing,

the teachers will not come to order.

“This is the drug abuse workshop:

on your 3x5 card write

5 causes (person or societal) of drug abuse-

that is, list 5 factors leading to drug abuse.

If your 3x5 is white go to room 7

yellow go to 8

green to 10 blue 11

and goldenrod stays here for discussion.”

I go out to the car and smoke a joint.

Out in the canyon

the green road curves around the swollen creek

and the railroad has secret tunnels.

A lone bicyclist braces the wind around the bend

then buys it, like a hawk falling out of a stall

downwind.  Tight muscles are stretched loose.

Miniature steamboats could steam through the spring chutes.

I pass the cyclist in the silence of a passing train

rushing into an abrupt tunnel

away from the roaring birds.

Cartesian Humor

March 25, 2009  (I was 64)

            Cartesian Humor

Rene Descartes went into his favorite bistro

“Will Monsieur have a croissant with his coffee?”

“I think not,” he said and disappeared.

Two student friends were on the way to an exam on Cartesian theory. 

One stopped instead at a brothel.  He missed the examination. 

The professor inquired about the student’s absence.

His friend replied, “He would not put Descartes before the whores.”

Google any thought you have to find

from this week in March, 2014  (I was 69)

Google any thought you have to find

who thought it better long ago

in better words of better mind

I took a ladder up the tree

into the realm of orange blossoms

where branching thicket obscured

and fragrant scent annulled the ground

upon which my reality now imposed

It was ethereal scent and lost design

that made me think the world was mine

The scratch and switch of a new broom

that swept the air with my perfume

Do you suppose

March 23, 1971  (I was 26)

Do you suppose

everyone prowls around like this-

clandestine chemist

discovering ingredients at every encounter

Each time testing circumstance

with a taste or a swallow

and a lot of waiting eagerly

for the metamorphosis to follow

And do you suppose

we all worship within-

kneeling in our sepulchers

to the one true god of self

and chewing our nails the while

with a taste or a swallow

and a lot of waiting eagerly

for some real Messiah to follow

Air Play

from this week in March, 1976  (I was 31)

Air Play

sitting in the studio longing

egg cartons stapled to the ceiling

listening to the tapes again

damning the fidelity

praying for air play

everybody’s gotta have air play

all we really need is air play

Diving from planes like bombs

We had to have a note from our moms

saying it was alright

she gave her permission

for us to have air play

air play air play

How can you open your chute

if you don’t have air play

Maybe the mikes are weak

but the voice is cutting

even on the tapes

through all this smoke

you can hear it it’s there

Programmer give us air play

air play air play

We deserve and demand air play

Who gives you the air play

Good Friday Night

March 21, 2008  (I was 63)

            Good Friday Night

Late in the vigil the votive candles flicker

wicks float in liquid tallow

contained in cups of crimson glass

pulsing the sanguine light

like a hundred flaming sacred hearts

emanating at once the scent of the tomb

and the waxy cool of the white lily at sunrise

The empty tabernacle waits to consume

each dry wafer of flesh

offered by the absent congregation

A flame is a first magic

March 20, 2012  (I was 67)

  

A flame is a first magic

a life active but not animal

Its birth an ignition

upon something it can consume

Its extinction a darkness

a burial in air

a visible spirit

dissipates to an odor of memory

The instrument intones

from this week in March, 2014  (I was 69)

The instrument intones

the life of the player

Notes are conscious breath

the breathing your song

Play your flute for me

No sound vibrates wrong

Energy occupies matter

in compatible manner

Like a flight of doves

we love in the morning

that airy existence floating through us

Yosemite Another solitary walk

from this week, 2014  (I was 69)

Yosemite

Another solitary walk from Happy Isles

above the back road on the horse trail through the trees

following the Merced whose flow is the predominant sound

and the only traffic is the half-hourly valley shuttle bus

The occasional meeting with bobcat or coyote

introduces a cautious trepidation and rapid assessment

of escape routes acknowledging possible danger

even from minor beast or minor man

I imagine ventures of Miwok children playing

among these boulders two hundred years ago

where now a family of four deer cross my path

with the presumption of protection a National Park provides

Yosemite -Under the bridge

March 17, 2007  (I was 62)

   Yosemite  -Under the bridge

water sounds wash away the years

rivulets into streams into river

waterfall falls falls down sheer rock

creasing at last the stony face

the rising spires rising rising

the domes snow capped and encapsulating

the valley below the meadow the forest

the thick trunked trees trees trees

whose needles whistle then whisper

Wind plays above and behind sounds of children

Dad Dad Dad look Dad look calls

the voice of my own son twenty years ago

and I look to see him poised on a rock

in the stream about to jump to another

but waiting for another dad to look and calling

Look Dad and I look for Dad to look

thinking he’s going to make the leap anyway

and you’re going to wish you had watched

in Yosemite

from this week in 2013  (I was 68)

in Yosemite

when you see the tallest pines

swaying in the serious wind

and think their shrill whistle to be

the final call of their impending fall

do not fear  It is no Siren sound

but the exclamatory squeal of limbs

exploring the boundaries for which they are built

Eye instead the rooted ground

from which emerges the sturdy trunk

It is there you want to perceive a stillness

as stationary and steadfast answer

to querulous notions blowing above

           

Life ran away from me

From this week in 2017  (I was 72)

Life ran away from me

can’t honestly say

I tried to keep up

couldn’t do what it asked

to get what I wanted

not even sure what that was

I never got a good look

I’ve been out distanced

It’s not that I did nothing

but I didn’t do something

someone would know about

The generosity of the poor

generally goes unnoticed

even by the recipient of the gift

notes for The 8th Grade Poetry Class, day 29

March 14, 1976  (I was 31)

notes for The 8^th Grade Poetry Class, day 29

            We wrote composite poetry.  I asked eight students to participate

in the demonstration.  I showed the class an art print.  The volunteers

wrote a single line of an observed detail, subject matter or mood.  I

asked that the lines be read randomly, one at a time.  I transcribed them

entirely or in part to the chalk board.  With each new line there is the

challenge to form a parallel, a counterpoint, or provide workable transitions

between images and ideas.  I talked about the poem taking shape as I

erased, repositioned, shortened, elongated or otherwise worked the lines

into cohesive form.  Not all that difficult given the common inspiration and

the students’ desire to be concise and perceptive in their offerings.  I

displayed the art print again and read the assembled piece.  They were

impressed and enthused with the end result of their collective genius. 

            Groups of eight students were given individual art prints, and each

student wrote out their one-line impression eight times on separate strips

of paper.  After lines were exchanged they worked individually to arrange

revise and supplement the lines into their unique poetic version of the

material, transcribing the result into their notebooks.

Themes of a Life

March 13, 1987  (I was 42)

            Themes of a Life

   (Escape of the thrilled soul)

The themes of a life fall upon me this morning;

begun as hard phrases for ideas found in youth,

they glare through blue windshield off wet pavement

momentarily blinding me once more in the spring.

Cheap Thrills, excursions of extremism,

a few footfalls beyond the bounds of convention,

taken as regularly as medicine

to reveal the arbitrary values upon which judgments lie

until pedestrian habit becomes cynical addiction.

Battling the Demons, little evils allowed to inhabit us

because we proudly remember Hemingway had them,

and their stings were so innocuous.

Age begins to understand persistence

and respect has made the little devils grow.

Dreams of Flying, any dreams really

that linger into the morning and take possession,

extending their insistent reality upon the dreamer’s conscious actions.

Dreams are the art of the soul, and to dream of flying

is undeniably to fly for the space of the dream, perhaps beyond.

Spring Training in the Bush

March 12, 1974  (I was 29)

   Spring Training in the Bush

That man in Canada did not die

With the bayonet at his throat

He turned and ran weaponless

Sliding across the border like stealing second

We’ve been hitless ever since

Still we blame the stranded runner

Most of our hitters got drafted

Some signed heavy contracts

How many outs we got?

Still no score

Maybe we could’ve won with more like him

Bunt and run men

Give him the sign

In the end it don’t matter whether you struck out

Or whether you were thrown out at home