WI: The Journey

Pelicans


Imagine
60 miles above Midway
The silica tiles glowing
At 2300 degrees Fahrenheit
With a red light, or white
Or blue like any other early
Star, and somewhere
Off the coast of Florida
The sun rises and a flight
Of pelicans waits inland
For splashdown
36 sunrises after ignition
The blue-flame engines burn
Meteorlike, it falls

The birds fall and rise
Above the blue-green glitter
Of the tide
Imagine
6-tenths of a second after
The last bird dives into a wave
The slight deceleration
The last roll reversal at Mach 2.6
A tail of flame and a double
Sonic boom
Followed by a whir
Of wings


(Photo: Brown Pelicans in the Sunrise, by Shuttershrink)


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This one's for Rethabile

Rethabile Masilo, @ Poefrika, an awesome poet from Lesotho, in a recent post of his that asks "who's your hero?" lists (among others) Steven Biko, as a person who "faces injustice and speaks out against it." This is for you, Rethabile. And for Steven.

AFRIC MAPS

Geographers, in Afric maps,
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

--Jonathan Swift


Biko,
Naked and manacled
In the back of a Land-Rover
Cannot be convinced of
Mankind's essential goodness.

Biko,
The men who have done this
Go out to kill
Believing in the mercy of God,

Biko,
In the music of love.

Biko,
Humankind moves in a celluloid dream,
Subscribes to pain. When we wake,
Your bruised black limbs
Will have pushed out roots
Watered from your blood.
Black women will prepare them
Like gari,
Black men will eat of them,

Biko,

And be strong.

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wi: The Key

Diaries

I keep diaries in my head
at night I write on sealed pages
in dream codes, a sort
of dot-dot-dash Morse himself
couldn't read, keeps them private
old loves recur, taller than they were
twice as bold
dressed in dimestore suits and ties
I never saw them wear.

And my father
who never heard of Neruda
Gu Cheng or the Cultural Revolution
rocks calmly on the porch
and speaks to me
of bread and milk
I'm sick he says
and wants to say goodbye
as if he were not already dead.

This is a book
my grandchildren will never read
the key is not in my hand
not even in my pocket
never will my children say
Mama tell us of Olden Times
and turn these pages that open upon
old houses, old rooms that suck me in

like Alice through the glass.
This world is mine alone
where the voices and the windows
the old mingling of bodies
and the landscapes are buried
what's here is one raw nerve, exposed
and aching to go where I never can
to grasp the fleeting things
that would disappear.


(This is an old one. Sorry if you have seen it before)

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Rejoice!

We took a spin up into the mountaintops to see the fall colors. It rained a little, and snowed a little, and shined a little. Grandpa and Simon took a hike, and went rock climbing. Jacob and I were freezing, so we went back to the museum and looked at some furry/boney owl poop, a bear's skull, and a cross-cut tree-rings journey through time. On the trail, Simon's loose tooth came out, and he LOST it, and they had to retrace their steps back a ways, and they FOUND it! I am sure the Tooth Fairy rejoiced!

Yesterday was also the first day of autumn. Rejoice!

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Racing for the Cure

Philanthropy is tiring!

A Book! A Book!

"This is a place of mystery ... a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.

Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds a way into his heart."

--Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind.


This is Baby R reading in the sunshine of his back yard. The first book I remember was Epamanondas and His Auntie, by Sara Cone Bryant. Epamanondas, who carried the butter home as he had carried the cake, "wrapped up in leaves and put in his hat as he came along home... But soon the sun began to shine brightly. It shone down on the trees and down on the bushes and down on Epamanondas hat... and the drops trickled down his neck, inside his collar, and under his shirt.

"Epamanondas, what do you have in your hat?"

"Butter, Mama. Grandpa gave it to me."

"Epamanondas, sometimes you haven't got the sense you were born with. That's not the way to carry butter. The way to carry butter is to wrap it up in leaves, then take it down to the brook to cool it and cool it in the water. Now, will you remember that?"

"Yes, Mama. I'll remember. I'll remember."


I was about three when my Mama read this to me, and I still love it. Next week my neighborhood book club is reviewing Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine," another book that (several years later) I lived with and dreamed with, that's still in my heart. What's the first book you remember? What book is still in your heart?

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WI: My Imaginary LIfe

THE BURNING
"In Dreams you are never eighty"
--Anne Sexton

At last, Love,
the girl sighs, melting
into the embrace of the blueberry-
eyed sailor she'll never again
lie down with in this life
except in dreams of
sixty years past, where
her skin on his skin is rosy
and warm with life.

I have waited for you,
she whispers, for so long, so long,
and the sweat beads like silver
on her upper lip.
Her laughter is mild, yet
under her bare feet the stairs
burn, consuming the kitchen
with its frills of daisies and jam,
the study with its tiresome
globes and catalogs,
the bedrooms with their odor
of babies being born,
semen and blood.

All the doors are open
to the burning stairs. She would say
O my God, my Love, at last,
but there are no words because
his lips are on her lips
and the blaze licks at her sleeves,
her skirt curling like a paper doll's.

When she wakes, between her thighs
is a wrinkle rough as woolens,
deep as a pit. Her tongue's a knot.
Her face is gray as a potato
and full of eyes.

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Orphan Voyager

Just like the message my Uncle Pepek wrote, put in a green glass bottle and threw into the Atlantic, to give to the Gulf Stream to give to the Baltic Sea to send it home, Voyager 1 was cast out into the black sea of interstellar space 30 years ago. This 12-inch gold plated disk is a message from us, containing some Bach, a little Mozart, DaVinci's "Vitruvian Man," some people saying "Hello" in several languages, songs of birds and whales, and some pictures of ourselves and our various cultures, and our location in the Milky Way galaxy. There are instructions for playing and interpreting this record-- for whatever ears, a million years out-- may listen.

This carries such a powerful message of optimism in the face of incredible odds, and the idea that travels with it moves me to tears.

MINDSCAPE

(an excerpt)

...
And if the sun
should cool enough to freeze us
or explode to supernova
and thus incinerate us all
what alien ears,
on hearing a concerto of whales
a cry of birds
sent out in orphan Voyager
may celebrate our fragile hope
our itching curiosity
with what in alien delight
may pass for sacramental bread
and wine?
...

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PT: One for the Show

CARNIVOROUS FELIDAE


Fear follows
me like hungry cats
at my heels
crying

Feed me
their small teeth sharp
I have put out both
meat and milk

peace offerings
but they do not eat
nor drink
they are not pacified

I have nothing left
to share with them
they remain
hissing and wanting

more


(Picture,Silanee Fear: Elben Wald, Lebe Deine Fantasy)

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SEVEN DAYS TO WRITERS ISLAND!

WHAT IS WRITERS ISLAND? WHO IS WRITERS ISLAND?


Be sure to check out the new Tuesday poetry/prose site at http://writersisland.wordpress.com

Writers Island's inaugural prompt is "My Imaginary Life"--(poem, short story, essay, or prose comment) to begin on Tuesday, September 11, at 12:01 EST. Pass the word along!

Thanks, Rob!

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Labor Day!!!

Have a good one.

PT: Farewell

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region to all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

-- William Stafford

(William Stafford (1914-1993) taught English at Lewis & Clark for three decades, and was, in 1975, appointed Oregon Poet Laureate.)


Not mine, but a better one, to leave with you all...first posted on February 26, 2006.

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PT: Windows

THE MIST ON THE MOUNTAIN


Through the night mist on the mountain
I see far away a light in a farmhouse window on the plain,
the mist mellowing it until it grows yellow
as the kerosene lamp of my boyhood
by which I first studied, the lamp of a home far away in the mist.
I travel down the rays like a homing insect
beating the moth wings of thought until
I stand by a drab house at the edge of town.
Peering in, as though through time, at a little window
at the oilcloth table,
at my mother, my father, at myself
a child of five, reading a primer,
mouthing the letters.

...

Time, why did you run? Where is the polished brass lamp
the oilcloth,
where is the warm stove with the isinglass windows
by which we dressed in the cold mornings,
where is the old frame bed in which I huddled
with warm bricks at my feet?
Where are even the words of that time, some lost,
no longer spoken by living men?
Father, mother, take me back even though life was harsh
in the small kitchen.
Who would have dreamed
the universe so large?

...

Can there not be a miniature time? Some place where one stays
forever at the kitchen table,
on the same page of one's book,
with one's parents looking on,
an old photograph perhaps,
but that would have faded.
We would not truly be there.
Through the night mist on the mountain I put out my hands
but the light is gone, a fog is descending.
I do not recognize this alien grown-up body.
I will not recognize it ever.
I am there, there, in the yellow light in the kitchen,
reading on the stained oilcloth.
We are all there. I did not grow up.

...

I have rushed like a moth through time
toward the light in the kitchen.
I am safe now. I never grew up.
I am no longer lost here in the mist on the mountain.


--Loren C. Eiseley

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Adam

Another interesting thing I learned from Michael Ballam last week: You are familiar with this painting Michelangelo made called The Creation of Adam, and you probably know he was rather famous for digging up dead bodies and making detailed drawings of muscles and organs and etc....but, have you ever noticed that in this painting, behind God, there is a heart? Or maybe, God and these angels are inside this human heart!

Is this not Cool?

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A Long "Cool" Story

I have been to the mountain again! This wonderful week has ended (BYU Education Week) and I can't begin to tell you how amazing it was. The mountains were gorgeous, the flowers were in full bloom, and the teachers were superb. While they offered a variety of classes in Communication and Finance, History, Religion, Government and Political Science, Law, Literature, Psychology, and the Arts --this year I spent all my time in Music classes.

Marvin Goldstein is a concert pianist and comedian (in that order): "Two fellows, a Jew and a Chinaman, walk into a bar...The Jew punches the Chinaman in the nose and knocks him to the floor. He gets up and brushes himself off. "What was THAT for?" he asks. "That," says the Jew, "was for Pearl Harbor!" The Chinaman replies, "But WE didn't have anything to do with Pearl Harbor. That was the Japanese!" "Japanese, Chinese, they're all the same," says the Jew. The next day the same two fellows are in the bar and the Chinaman punches the Jew. He gets up off the floor and brushes himself off. "What was THAT for?" The Chinaman says, "For the Titanic!" The Jew says, "The TItanic! WE didn't have anything to do with the Titanic! That was an iceberg!" "Iceberg, Goldberg, they're all the same!" LOL (And no, I am not a racist, nor is Marvin Goldstein, but he was born in Israel, where he practiced and practiced the piano until he got really really good! His friend Marvin Payne, who does fantastic R & B, joined him. "You're Marvin and I'm Marvin," said Goldstein. "Who would do that to a little child? But your father is Marvin, too, isn't he? My father is SAM!" he boasts. Later, picking up Paynes guitar (which he cannot play), he strummed a spontaneously atonal little chord. "I used to be a Jew," he sang. "And I still am!" Even though he converted to Mormonism several years ago....

Jenny Oaks Baker is a concert violinist with many CD's to her credit. She used to be first violinist in the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. She graduated from Julliard and Curtis Institute of Music, but is now raising 4 children under the age of 6. One of the phenomenal pieces she performed was Paganini's piece for unaccompanied violin, which she did flawlessly 10 years ago. "I'm going to try it again," she said, "but it's really,really HARD!" Her fingers flew across the strings. At one point she made a mistake, and started again. Then stopped, and started again, apologising. "Oh, my gosh!" she said. "I did it better than this in the bathroom this morning!" But she got a standing ovation anyway!

Michael Ballam (the guy with white hair) can't be compared to anyone else. He is the main reason I keep going back He's sung all over the world, and in New York, has made a ton of CD's. Now he is the founder and general director of the Utah Festival Opera Company. He is The Most Impressive of All. I'd follow him anywhere. He spoke on Music and the Brain. "In the arts there should be no wrong answer," he says. "The arts should be a safe environment, where you have permission to be unique." He also began the Utah Children's Opera in the public schools, where kids between the 2nd and 5th grades write, direct, perform, paint sets, publicize and finance their own operas with no adult input. They have 3 rules. Nobody Gets Hurt. Everybody Participates. It's Entirely the Children's Own Work. He went to the Utah school with the lowest grade averages, in the worst part of town, and gave every child a violin. They all learned to play. They performed. They practised the first 15 minutes of every class. (The math teachers were angry, at first, telling him they had little enough time to teach math as it was). Surprisingly, the academic scores began to rise, and now they're among the top in the state. The math teachers now have their own violins and they all play together for the first 15 minutes of class. "Not very well," admits Ballam. "But that's not what matters." He says, "The most important things a child can gain from education are a sense of community, the ability to communicate beyond words, and creative thinking. THese are much more important to know than that the capitol of Vermont is Montpelier."

James Oneil Miner played a lot of Golden Oldies: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Autumn Leaves, Misty, that sort of thing....

Btw, I kept hearing myself describing things as "Cool." Isn't it just the most asinine thing to hear a woman old enough to be your grandma saying "Cool?" All I needed were some bongos and a headband.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I took scads of notes. The turkey and cranberry and cream cheese sandwiches were out of this world, as was the burnt almond fudge ice cream cone I had. The weather was nice. And I am tired.


Lost in Translation: The legendary stone marker that announces the motto of BYU should read "The World is our Campus." The photo is not mine, and was probably meant as a joke, but it works for me either way. The campus is a world unto itself, as well as being a part of the world at large. BYU has a couple of other mottos: "The glory of God is intelligence," and "Enter to learn, go forth to serve." Next time I'll be more careful (or use my own camera). Thanks, slick.

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Some Things Are Not What They Seem...

Are square A and square B the same color? Trust me. They are! This illusion (called,
appropriately, the Same Color Illusion) shows that some scientific observations, even seemingly direct visual observation, may be inaccurate.

So there! (Well, we are only human....)


*Wikipedia, Edward H. Adelson

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Tarantula

I woke up this morning having dreamed of a tarantula on a rock. He was the same color as the rock, sort of a disguise (what is that called?), and when I poked him, he climbed off and crawled away....

This is one of the most detailed photos of the Tarantula Nebula, in our own local group of galaxies, taken by the ESO Observatory's Wide Field Imager. If the Tarantula was as close to us as the Orion Nebula, it would take up fully half the sky. Imagine that!

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One More for the Road

One year old, and counting....

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When The Family Gets Together

...and we learn to love each other popping corn and having fun....as the song goes. We didn't pop corn this time, but we all had a lot of fun during our week together. We visited Kennecott Copper Mine, a mini-Grand Canyon, went to a water party in the park, and ate hot dogs and potato chips and ice cream. We went swimming. We set off alka-seltzer rockets in the front yard, and flew styrofoam birds in the air. We "went to Mexico," as Simon says (actually, a Mexican restaurant) and stuffed ourselves full, had a terrific bar-b-que with sushi and watermelon, celebrated Bookworm and Starfsh's birthdays with cake and ice cream and lots of presents, found a mouse in the backyard, had a mouse funeral with flowers and a mouse elegy. Issac made a wonderful dinosaur with sticks and tape --see, it has a long tail, two big back legs and two small front legs, even tusks! Ate again at a cowboy buffet (we ate a lot), talked a lot, laughed a lot, and loved our week together. Good times like crazy!

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PT: Better Late?

FROM THE CORRIDOR

wanting to be hidden,
I wait for the old woman in the bed
half-dead already, though not yet through
with dying, to quiet.
All along the window ledge
dead brown leaves blown across
the yard by a cold wet wind
grip against the glass with clarity
and precision of vein and broken edges.

She used to cry all the time
now she only whimpers and asks
with a voice that grasps like hands,
Are the holidays here?
Not yet, I say. That seems to satisfy
I do not know
and a voice in me wishes her away
or myself gone from this place
I am afraid
seeing myself in this white-lacquered bed
grasping toward strangers.

On Christmas Day the sky clears
and the splash of wind against water
sprawls ice and sighs on sidewalks and doorsteps
the boy brings the paper
which has, beside a picture of African
and American travelers getting out of their
vehicle at Nkongsambe, West Cameroon
a picture of the Branchini Madonna
in a gown of acorns and oak leaves
in punched gold, an altarpiece in gold
brocade most perfectly preserved
and rare
She holds the standing Christ Child
in her arms, the two of them
upheld by seraphim
white doves, cornflowers and marigolds.

The glass glitters with frost
and the air is filled with smoke
Meanwhile, not enticed by such glories
as frost on glass, fragrance of smoke
nor Madonnas
she stirs, waits for the light to go
for the thudding of her heart to stop
for the frock-coated whispered gathering
and I am afraid
seeing myself in the white-lacquered bed
grasping toward strangers


(A true story)

The Branchini Madonna, painted in 1427 by Italian artist Giovanni di Paolo. -- It's clickable!

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