Transmissions from the Northern Outpost

Tag: Poetry

  • Transfiguration

    As mentioned Thursday, in July of 1995, before I got married, I spent six weeks on a  retreat at Mt. Saviour Monastery above Elmira, N.Y. where a handful of other young men and I lived with the Benedictine monks there. While there, I ended up writing a couple of poems. This is another one of them, on the great philosopher monk Thomas Merton. 

    Transfiguration

    	-- at Mount Saviour Monastery, July 1995

    The clouds of unknowing roll over me,
    nuclear in their design,
    probably like those that carried him,
    his spirit out to the Pacific and beyond

    the vapor trail I view on the horizon
    now. An airliner lifts off, brushes
    the cross on the steeple,
    the silence into sonic resonances.

    Like the SAC bomber that buzzed
    across his hermitage's roof
    (its bay doors, the jaws of Apocalypse,
    if opened could swallow the countryside).

    The same type of bomber that took him
    stateside. On Sunday after Mass,
    I listen to the blues in the common room,
    ponder the irony of lyrics, saints' fates.

    As always, this poem is best read in desktop and landscape on your browser of choice.

    Since this poem is about Thomas Merton, I am going to give you a link to two of his poems in the February 1949 issue of Poetry.

    Today’s post is also part of The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz. For those visiting from Deb’s link-up, I encourage you to look back at the poems I’ve shared earlier this month.

    —

    ,

  • Ash Wednesday, 2004

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Today’s poem from me is one I wrote for my poetry reading in 2004. At the time, I worked for a weekly newspaper and this poem touched on my job, which normally I didn’t talk about.

    Ash Wednesday, 2004

    What must it like to be born
    with a hole in your heart,
    to live for 39 years,
    then die, I will never know,
    but it is on this, I meditate
    this morning as I receive ashes,
    think of the funerals I’m missing:
    of a friend’s girlfriend
    who died with just such a condition,
    the other funerals of family members
    of people I have met through work,
    of the councilman in the nearby borough
    who died, and I didn’t even know it.
    I’m so sorry to hear of your loss
    seems so hollow. If there’s anything I can do,
    as if we could resurrect their loved ones from
    the cold, dark ground with empty words.

    As usual, the above poem is best read in desktop and landscape on your browser of choice to preserve the line breaks the way I intended them.

    Today’s poem from one of three websites that share a poem each day is “Ode to a Yellow Onion” by C. Dale Young on the Poetry Foundation website.

    —

  • Poetry, a weekend off, and a day off

    Every Thursday I share three good things from today, in the past week, and/or in the week or weeks to come, to focus on what is good. I encourage you to share in the comments your three good things too, if you want. I was introduced to thinking on three good things for the week by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz who lists hers every Sunday on her blog.

    A poem a day

    For National Poetry Month, I’ve been posting a poem a day that I’ve written. I’ve also been sharing a poem from one of three websites that share a poem each day. If you would like to check them out, go here. I had most of the poems chosen at the end of March, which has helped.

    Three days off for my wife…

    …and two days off for me this coming weekend, which comes at a much needed time for her. She has cellulitis again in one of her legs, which unfortunately is one of the things that people with lymphedema are susceptible to. At least, the first couple of times she has had this year, including this time, have been caught early – unlike last year, which ended with her being in the hospital for a month. It doesn’t make it any less painful or annoying for her, but she is on an antibiotic that will help get rid of the infection. Unfortunately, because of medications she is on for her heart, there is not much she can take for the pain: Tylenol, which does almost nothing for the pain. All this said, at least she has a few days that hopefully will help with the healing. UPDATE @ 2:40 p.m., also on Thursday: She called for an appointment at the wound care center in Williamsport and was able to get in Monday afternoon before she goes to work at 6 p.m. So there is a fourth good thing.

    Because of the cellulitis, we aren’t going anywhere for Easter, but we have, as usual, silly TV planned and we also will be peeking in on a few artists at Coachella for its second weekend this (most we don’t know and, to be honest, don’t want to know).

    A day off today

    I also a off today and while I often do laundry at the laundromat when I have a spare day, today I decided to postpone the chore until later in the weekend or early next week. This morning, I read some of Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don’t Manage You by Ethan Kross and might read a bit more after putting this up. I probably will unwind with my ongoing alternating of watching Bones and Castle. I’m in Season 5 for both, so no spoilers, please, if you have seen either or both of them.

    —

  • Discernment

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    In July of 1995, before I got married, I spent six weeks on a  retreat at Mt. Saviour Monastery above Elmira, N.Y. where a handful of other young men and I lived with the Benedictine monks there. While there, I ended up writing a couple of poems. This is one of them when I went on a solo retreat in a hermitage in the woods on the property. 

    Discernment

    	--- at Mount Saviour Monastery, July 1995

    Squawk from the laurel breaks my psalm-chant.
    Expecting a raven, I cross the threshold
    of contemplation only to find the unexpected
    staring me down just off the four-wheel path.
    He paces around the hermitage like the hunter
    that he is, telling me to leave him to his prey,
    probably the wild turkey clan that hobbled by
    earlier. So a fellow brother later tells me.
    I do not know that now, think this creature
    some manifestation of evil come to interrupt
    my prayer. I rebuke him, rattling my beads
    at him, warding off his wiles, his deceitful
    beauty. Yet he remains, crying, circling me,
    vigilant in his torment, testing my motives
    for invading his territory, my will to stay.
    Later that night I imagine his den underneath
    my cot, him scratching at my floorboards.
    For now I return to my lectio, his forlorn cry
    just a hue of the creation, the eternal now
    like temptation, suffering, death. Inescapable.

    The above poem is best read in desktop or landscape on your browser of choice.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “If My Body Is Dying, Tell Me You Love Me” by Jacqueline Chang on The Academy of American Poets website. Also they have links to each poem being read, usually by the poet if still alive.

    —

  • Epilogue II

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Epilogue II

    I myself am hell, Robert. Like the painter
    in Dali's "Impressions d'Afrique" at the easel,
    right hand extended out to his audience,
    eyes tracing it onto canvas with his left,
    I have been fascinated by the blisters
    on my middle finger, where the brush rests
    and by the bottoms of my fingernails
    turning lavender, the color of an illness.
    But I am tired of it. Everyone's tired of it.
    The cuticular colloquies. Climacteric
    epiphanies like "the painter's vision is
    not a lens, it trembles to caress the light,"
    and "my mind's not right." Isn't the subject
    of the painting what lies beyond this frame?

    Today instead of sharing a poem from one of the poem-a-day websites, I thought I’d share a link to the poem I’m referencing above. That poem is “Skunk Hour” by Robert Lowell, whom I learned about in a poetry course in college. Lowell was the Father of Confessional Poetry, which focused on personal experiences and veered from traditional meter and form. My poem was an attempt at responding to his poem and the concept of confessional poetry too.

    Addendum:

    —

  • The Fountainhead

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Today’s poem from me is about my lifelong love of books. This poem is best read in desktop or landscape on mobile on your browser of choice to preserve the line breaks as I intended them. 

    The Fountainhead

    --- after smelling a dusty copy of a John McPhee book I picked up at the library for 50 cents

    1.

    I was biking down
    the Marsh Creek Road
    that day when I spied it,
    lying there, cover ripped off,
    inviting me to stop
    and pick it up.
    Inside its pages was 
    a story of
    the architectural superiority
    of man, how he had built
    skyscrapers to show
    his greatness.
    I stooped down and 
    learned to what heights
    men could climb.
    Later reading Jon Krakauer,
    I learned of men
    who failed to attain such 
    heights alive,
    but for now, 
    with one bare knee in the dirt,
    as I read her philosophical objectivism,
    I chose not think of how
    from dust I had come,
    to dust I would return.
    I let my thoughts soar higher.

    2. 

    Or inside its pages was 
    a song not of myself, but of America
    free,  
    	        of Texas gaining its independence,
    of Alaska and Hawaii, 
    and even farther out
    				   	            space, the final frontier
         of California 
    and its Valley of the Dolls.
         We thumb through the lurid details of the lives 
    of others, celebrities like
    they were going out of fashion, lurid details
         that is, but they're not,
    they are so chic, so in
    the moment, so...so....
    ("a man breathes deep into his saxophone")
    American.

    3. 

    From a satellite, I see that boy kneeling
    beside the back road, wish
    I could be like him.
    I need to be like him, 
    in love with the printed word,
    (like my neighbor John,
    who has to print out
    articles from the Internet he wants to read
    -- he has to touch them, feel their weight, 
    their heft 
    to make it a corporeal
    presence 
    like ink smudging on your fingers
    after reading a newspaper)
    not the digitized code
    a poem like this breaks down into eons later.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Papyrus Pantoum” by Arthur Size from Poetry Daily.

    —

  • Poetry

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Yet here again I reference Wallace Stevens’ “mouse in the wall” and also another poem of his “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” This was the last poem of the poetry reading I did back in 2004.

    Poetry
     
    It all starts with an ocean of words
    cascading,
          wind chimes carrying across 
    suburban streets stray thoughts,
    counterintuitive.

    I want my Sundays back,
    no baby back ribs
          to stir my dreams,
    and the will power to organize
    this life into some semblance of
    simple.  

    It's not that he minds the clutter
    as much as 
           the appearance of clutter,
    it's what it appears his life is,
    what can be viewed by
    a passerby like that glance, half-
    glare, caught from a passing car.

    Or the kids in the back of the bus 
    giggling, snickering 
    at those who follow too close
    what they say to each other
    about the middle-aged
    man in car, beat-
    up car. It's all
    self-referential.

    **

    Except for the man
    with the blue guitar
    who strums beside
    the white lake 
    in winter,
    his fingers 
    flow over 
    the frets 
    intuitively.
    (It all comes back
    to Wallace
    and the mouse
    in the wall,
    doesn't it?)
    This mystery
    for a moment
    becomes clear
    or not.

    ***

    It was like one day in sixth grade
    when you looked up
    and the world became
    blue,
    tinted your 
    perspective on
    everything.
     
    The reds
    disappeared
    for a while
    but are back
    now
    in crimson,
    maroon,
    vermilion.

    Now you become a chameleon
    rising out of
    the dust
    until the colors
    diffuse
    out across your horizons
    into your dreams.

    Listen, the wind chimes.

    The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape to preserve the integrity of the line breaks as I intended, especially in the first part of the poem.

    Instead of leaving you with a poem from one of the three sites as I have been doing, I will refer you to Stevens’ poem aforementioned.

    —

  • The Poet

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    The Poet

    is reporting
    the world's wrinkles
    one whorl at a time,
    bouncing between
    worlds, this ring
    this love is
    real, this pen
    not so much.

    His mind tilts.
    He thinks this is
    how kids lose
    their sense of 
    reality, the belief
    this is not real,
    this is dream.

    What is real
    is the minutiae
    visible on a hand,
    the intricate
    designs
    hieroglyphic
    in nature.

    This is why
    they locked
    the Boston poet
    up, the
    Cambridge poet
    who saw
    the Apocalypse.

    What mirror
    did such men
    hold up
    to themselves?
    Not a TV
    screen.

    Nature's poles 
    collide,
    only God can
    stop
    the poem.
    Man continues
    in a confessional
    mode,
    it peeks
    out from its lair:

    work clouds
    the mind.

    Who'll stop
    and hear the
    roses,
    Mary?

    Dawn awaits
    creation to be 
    birthed
    out of the skull.

    The modern
    Russian novelist
    would understand,

    the postmodern
    American pale-
    ontologist
    who says
    touching artifacts
    is like waking
    a stranger
    in one's own bed

    he knows 
    what it's like
    to wake
    that stranger
    every night

    it's a dream
    the poet cannot 
    identify,
    shake loose
    from.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Invocation” by Hans VanderHart on Poetry Daily.

    —

  • Waking A Stranger

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Waking A Stranger 

    Touching something like that is like waking a stranger 
    says the archaeologist this morning on the radio 
    when asked what it's like excavating 
    Native American remains in a nearby county.
    Driving to work, I think I know what she means:
    it's like catching the fleeting glance in the rearview
    of the person behind you that you don't know,
    but that you think you do for a moment.
    Or like when a painter is applying the brush 
    to the canvas and something begins to take shape,
    but he doesn't know what yet. Or like the circles
    a pen makes when a writer is doodling, a knot 
    of lines overlapping lines that form 
    a hurricane whose eye he cannot see out of.

    The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape modes on your browser of choice.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “The Stranger in Her Feminine Sign” by Dunya Mikhail on The Poetry Foundation website.

    Today’s post is also part of The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz. If visiting from The Sunday Salon or otherwise, please scroll back on the blog for more poetry each day this month.

    —

    ,

  • 3 Good Things Thursday on a Friday

    Every Thursday (this week Friday) I share three good things from today, in the past week, and/or in the week or weeks to come, to focus on what is good. I encourage you to share in the comments your three good things too, if you want. I was introduced to thinking on three good things for the week by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz who lists hers every Sunday on her blog.

    Like last week, I debated whether or not to post this week, but then thought why not? Just because I’m putting up poems each day for National Poetry Month doesn’t mean that I can’t share three good things too.

    Poetry

    No. 1 this week is poetry with today being the 10th straight day I’ve shared a poem I wrote plus a poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day. At the end of March, I selected 30 poems that I wrote, in the 1990s and 2000s. It’s been interesting to revisit these poems, most of which I read during a poetry reading at a now-defunct cultural society in suburban Philadelphia in 2004.

    I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage you to go read them. Maybe a poem will speak to you, either mine or one by one of the other poets.

    Two days off from work

    Today and yesterday, I’m off from work. Kim was off yesterday too and we spent much of the day binge-watching silly TV, including finishing up the second season of an Australian comedy on Netflix called Fisk.

    It’s the only Season 1 trailer I could find on YouTube.

    Today I’m going to try to read Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So They Don’t Manage You by Ethan Kross. I read his first book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, which I found helpful so thought I’d try this.

    Therapy

    After skipping therapy last month, I went to my teletherapy session on Wednesday. Even though my therapist was late and it was short, the session was good and much needed with everything going on in the world.

    —