Bangladesh Busses #4

I’m less terrified of past personas. I grow 

older and my wardrobe grows darker. 

But I still get embarrassed, 

sometimes terribly embarrassed. Confronting 

myself of twenty-five, or fifteen—the child

is father to the man—Oh Lord! Please, no!

But he is. Here I am.

Where else would I be? I can only shed

clothes, I can’t shed the wearer.

Nope. I can’t. 

Once upon a time the callow youth

and friend got on the GO bus 

and went downtown to find

a small recorder. He’d heard himself, was

not taken by his voice, his intonation, his slang.

A recorder, he reasoned, always on,

would show his verbal trouseau. It did.

Oy, it did! Why did he even open his mouth?

Why do I now? Hmm. Well, also remember

you were brave enough to buy the recorder.

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Bangladesh Busses #5

There’s a place like here

in every mark but every mark

has a different meaning there.

The here words are not the there word’s 

opposites, just different—though some are. 

The here letter of condolence sums up

the there theatrical interlude. The here sweeping 

oratory is the there crooning pacifier.

Sacred words here—orthodontics there.

Love poems here—service manuals there.

Our names?—verbs, adjectives, maybe

just nonsense sounds in nurseries.

I know this because everyone I know 

here has been there. We’ve all seen 

them—from there—here, instantly here 

for an instant or a minute,

staring in confusion, then gone.

We, staying, stare in confusion. 

It seems some stay, switching out

their here counterparts lives. Our wives,

our husbands, our neighbors, our children,

our neighbor’s children. Sometimes

whole stores or crowded streets.

Who are you? we ask or they ask.

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Signs #1

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Last year, at the beginning of winter, scientists made a terrifying discovery—the universe, they said, is beige. Perhaps not so terrifying when you consider how they came about their conclusion and the reasons for which they sought the conclusion, but as a sentence—The universe is beige.—is terrifying to me. I dislike beige. Beige is the terrible neutral, which shares the same parent as neuter. 

Last Sunday morning I was walking in a lovely desolation of early streets and I heard the first robin. As a child I learned that the robins sing “Cheer up! Cheer up!”. I wasn’t raised here in Utah, but in the Northeast where robins return from somewhere. They inexplicably appear when winter is sure in it’s ending. That song is absolute. Winter is finished. Here, where winter is a spasmodic sharing of snow and sun and a hopping thermometer, robins don’t bother to disappear. They stay year round, hunting worms between snowstorms. However, they still know when winter is finished and they sing it. First one hopeful bird makes a declaration on an early morning before sunrise. Then, today, I step outside before full light and each block (or however it is that robins make sense of their fences) has it’s robin declaring the happy news. 

Two weeks ago the crocuses got busy and tulips and daffodils and hyacinths caught the mood. The wiry grape hyacinths and starflowers have been stealthily reaching up and out for awhile now. They’re seductive—I know how beautiful they are in bloom, beautiful enough to keep themselves in the yard. The trees by the lake and the trees on the side of the mountains are swelling at their tips. The willows and the cottonwoods by the river are blushing green.

In the marsh between the airport and the lake, hidden in the rich black of decaying stems, are peepers, little insistent frogs. Their cold blood is saturated with so much Spring they brave ice and frost starved herons to throw their tiny glistening necklaces up into the restlessness of last year’s reeds and then around the urgent shoots of this year’s. A few at first, backing up out of the warming muck to sing. In two weeks the winter’s full seizure of mud will relax and the marsh will be filled with a million pulsing and shining and living beads.

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Bangladesh Busses #6

You can always make an assumption.

It’s the closest of low hanging fruit.

Next is the educated guess, then

the researched opinion. On the ground

we find (bruised, but still serviceable)

borrowed conclusion, among maggot’s

homes—no opinion, and, fermenting,

no consideration. Nourishing

enough, apparently. Climb the tree.

First the bark’s roughness will tear at you.

Higher, it smooths, where the will of wood 

—given to wind, usually—is 

giving to you. Is it worth the climb?

You’re asking now? Who are you asking?

Perhaps a breaking branch betrays your

conflict with gravity. Oh, how sad.

Or perhaps not. You climb, carefully,

clinging to instinct, intellect,

providence, luck—in turn and tandem,

intertwined, all evidenced in you

not falling on your head. That last reach,

that stretch of neck into pure light—Well!

Your wedging and worming are finished

but feet and hands must believe bending

twigs you only feel. Here you’ll find fruit

—some perfect, some pecked by birds. Are you

ready to reach across the shaking

leaves and take some and ask your question?

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Kim's Wedding, Part 1. Ever Here

Last July Kim got married at her parents house in Waterford Maine. I audiopested family and guests and wildlife and environs for three days.

Kim commissioned her brother, Jamie, to write a poem for the event. After the wedding Jamie and I sat down for a reading and an interview. I'll post the interview later, but here's the reading—woven together with an impromptu performance by my Aunt Barbara (instigated by my Aunt Jean) just before the wedding guests arrived.

The 'Here' Jamie writes about is the physical and metaphorical Waterford, the family seat since my paternal grandparents moved there after retirement. There are family ties that extend much farther back but for the cousins of my generation it's always about Grandma's House. Which now belongs to Kim's parents, but even Kim can be caught calling it Grandma's. Kim and her siblings, for all practical purposes grew up in Waterford. It's environs are ripening in family conscience the way Ireland ripened in Yeats. I don't know if Jamie will like the reference, but I love Yeats. And Kim. And Jamie, And the rest of them.

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Steve Mike

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Many years ago a man showed up at a yard sale we were having and purchased from us some Pink Floyd stickers, chatting amiably over the other treasures. Or, as another memory has it, our friend Alana introduced us. Whichever way it was, several days later he passed by and on seeing each other we simultaneously questioned 'Mike?'. Nope. He's Steve and I'm Rob, but 'Mike' then became a suffix for any of the friends that frequented our house. One of my favorite Thanksgivings happened in that house and with the Mikes. It was vegetarian, mostly because Steve-Mike was a practicing vegetarian at the time and the rest of us aspired to be so. I don't remember the full spread, but it included stuffed acorn squash and enough food to make us too happy, but thankfully un-tryptophanned. And no football. A most delightful meal.

Steve-Mike graduated with a Master's degree in French Language, moved from Utah and after a few years we lost contact with each other. We believed he was somewhere in Arizona. He was/is, and about two weeks ago Geo received a message from Steve-Mike, and the gladsome news that he would be in Utah for some covenant making and would we attend? Absolutely! And there he was, dressed in white. Then that exquisite metaphor of death and rebirth and it's accompanying gift. Then food, an introduction to the handsome Darian Arjuna—Steve-Mike's son, sweet company and a gift from Steve-Mike of songs.

What a panoply of jewels God has in his children. Steve-Mike was born I don't know where and I'm not sure he actually knew until he was about 27 and his parents had passed away. He, on cleaning the house, found an envelope addressed to his cousin containing his—Steve-Mike's—adoption papers. He was adopted? Many answers came in that envelope, though not a whole lot of healing.
After the revelatory envelope he wandered the deserts, meditated, prayed, focused on light and energy, explored ideas and ideologies, sought light and love, sought healing and home. Maybe this was driven in part by a now explained loneliness that started in his earliest years, Maybe he's just naturally a quester. Probably the first awakened the latter—that seems to be how most of us get anywhere really worthwhile; a crisis awakens our hidden potential. In all this reaching for understanding he began to have visions, the kind that come through a voice and a guitar. He's had the sense to share them and in sharing them he's been blessed with more. Here's one I recorded yesterday and share with you.
Keep sharing, Steve-Mike.

http://gardenofsteven.com/

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Bangladesh Busses #7

Why a ripe field, why not a desert?

Nature makes no busses. 

Nothing compares

save mother opossums

or grubs filled with wasp grubs.

But neither would welcome

—solicit—a stranger.

Someone makes busses,

and then someone 

buys them, then sells again

—and again and again—

to anyone. Someone 

(riders hope) repairs them.

But Nature, with all her might, 

opposes busses. 

Nature would pull them back 

into the ground. You can’t

grow a bus. Well, maybe

ubiquity fools us.

Once a Seattle bus,

here, out front, parked, 

pulled away, traced our block, 

parked again, then circled 

again, parked, then circled

again, then left. Novel,

but not unnatural.

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Bangladesh Busses #8

Last year a bus turned and rode a low cloud 

over the edge of a precipice

leaving about half the passengers

in the cloud. 

I suspect that the rapid flashback comes

to the knowing. Wrapped up in a fog

and falling—confusion must hover 

just enough 

to cover the quickened unquickening

which the aware and escaped have said 

prompts the quick review. But, of course, how

can we know

on this side of the precipice? Still, choose—

how will you fall? Every vehicle

we enter will be abandoned for

another.

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Happy UnBirthday

  
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Happy UnBirthday.mp3 (1216 KB)

A candle, a rice-crispy square, not enough space and too much energy.

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