I Believe.... (Click it! You'll Be Glad You Did!)

Big Tent 7-23 LITTLE ELEGY

My all-time favorite poem will have to remain Dylan Thomas's FERN HILL.

But I want to share another: XJ Kennedy's LITTLE ELEGY (For a child who skipped rope).

I love this poem for its fantastic imagery. Every word means more than the word itself, and every image means something much deeper.

Remember how it felt, as a child, jumping rope until you were so tired you couldn't breathe? So, Elizabeth, this child, now lies resting, out of breath, out of turns. But this poem is an ELEGY. She is truly out of turns, and she will rest forever. Her quicksilver feet (and, really, aren't ALL of our feet quicksilver, our footing on this earth unsure, slippery?) didn't quite clear (and yes, we've ALL "missed," caught our foot on the edge of the rope as it whirred under us?) the whirring edge of night. Elizabeth was tripped by death.

And yes, earth, too, spins circles around us all. Like a jump rope. Time passes. The children grow, and mature, and age, and finally die. And eventually we will ALL "trip up." We are Elizabeth. Elizabeth is us. NO matter how lightly we skip, this turning earth will catch us!

Finally, when death himself becomes the "skipper," we pray: Lord, for Elizabeth's sake, for our sake, trip up death.

The poem is music. Imagery like this is rare. I cannot read this poem without feeling a catch in my throat,(the bell tolls for all of us). Maybe it's because I have attended the funerals of two dear friends this week and I am feeling very mortal. Orson Scott Card writes in his weekly column in today's issue of the Deseret News about poetry in general, about a specific poem he loves by Clinton Larsen, called Black Swans. I'm not going to discuss this poem, but want to note some of Card's feelings about it: "The mastery of it is also astonishing. It is like a complete course in lyric poetry contained in 13 lines. He speaks of "using words with multiple meanings in such a way as to use all the meanings at once." Most poets", he writes, "labor all their lives to be a part of the life and heart of everyone who hears or reads it."

XJ Kennedy does this, in 10 lines. Please look it up!

My poem, an old one this time. But I hoped to use words and images with multiple meanings, and like every poet, I want the poem to resonate in the heart and life of those who read it. 24 lines.


OCTOPUS

Your see-through faces have
run together like watercolor
on oatmeal pages
all my lovers buried alive

I never said goodbye
never knew how
I stored you up instead
in this cluttered attic

inside my head, in a
brown box rough with dust
and tied with barbed wire
for ribbons

one bound creature
of several shadowed hearts
and many limbs
all your vanished words

your brown eyes or blue eyes
all of you locked
together
like a bunch

of mad or hunchbacked uncles
hidden away
who grind their teeth
in my sleep

Kashawing (Big Tent: Love's Old Tweet Song)

Kashawing

And so,
this pale son of Scottish kings and
ice-white English princes,
a guest among these island terraces and palms
ringed by Sumatra, West Java, Singapore...
has touched the brown daughter
of Silang and Rizel, of
Filipino sampaguita peddlers and tuba traders.
He, on this side, is the jewelled blue Pacific.
She, on the other side, the dark
rolling dunes of the Philippine Sea.

And, having made
a true and everlasting Kashawing,
he has loosened his knotted tie.
She has taken the gold pins
from her long hair.
In the heat-waves of fiesta at noon-day,
there, in the music of bandurrias,
their feet are off-balance from
the sudden shock of the collision
of east and west. Her island-black eyes
reflected in his English-blue eyes
are wider and deeper now,
glowing with light, like all
the houses on Bagumbayan Pequeno Street.

And everything is moving there
on the horizon,
blue on blue,
both of them transformed,
she by his cool European ice, and he,
by her bright island birds.


* Kashawing: a promise to the Gods


(Happy Tenth Anniversary, Marc and Grace!)

Big Tent:: Wild Things

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

Memorial Day. All is well.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

-- Kahlil Gibran


I have only slipped into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me...

Let my name be ever the household word it always was; Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near; Just around the corner. All is well.

-- Henry Scott Holland


Daddy, Mama, Brother: thinking of you, missing you, loving you!

The Golden Record -- What Turns Me On!

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

When NASA sent out Voyager 1 in 1977, and Voyager 2 a little later, they sent with them this "Golden Record," just in case someone out there should happen upon it, sometime, somewhere. It contains greetings from us in 55 languages, pictures of us, people, animals, flowers. It shares Earthsounds, thunder, wind, rain, crickets, trains, birds, whales...and it contains upon its golden skin the music of Bach, his Brandenburg Concerto #2, Queen of the Night from Mozart's Magic Flute, drums from Senegal, Australian Aborigine songs, Chuck Berry, among others from China, Japan, and elsewhere....

Just the thought of this piece of us, traveling yet outward and further every second, through the extravagance of the universe, gives me goosebumps.

If you want to see everything that's on it, check out the link above! My Big Tent Poem (below) is part of a piece written years ago.

What Turns Me On?

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?
...


This Astronomy Picture of the Day Photograph is described: "Long before Stonehenge was built, well before the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, ancient artists painted life-sized figures on canyon walls" in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA. This section of wall is called (because of the larger, dimmer figure in the middle) the HOLY GHOST panel. The sight of this, with the Milky Way stars of our own galaxy showing through a gap in the rocks, also turns me on, gives me goosebumps.

(photo and copyright: Bret Webster)

Big Tent Wordle

GOD'S PURSE

Look in God's purse
for hidden candies.
This is no delicate Evening bag.
She carries something simple, black,
crumpled. She will open it for you.
You may peek inside
where there are hidden treasures: zippers
and mysterious pockets. It's lining is
a caparison, a wild extravagance
across the back of an Indian Elephant
on the back of a mouse.
Ganash, on a lotus flower,
candies falling from his trunk into your hands--
a tincture of prod and noose.

Suspend your disbelief.
Feel the patterned lining of the purse
with your fingers for proof.
Fondle the straps
that lock the moon in its place
inside the black bag.
Capitulate to the futile terror of Her fecund
nursery of stars across the high,
steep walls that rise up
toward the clasp.

This is God's purse. Sapient, She will
soon fasten the zippers without a glitch,
doff the splendor, and open
a small tin of lemon drops
for our pleasure,
assessing Her role as Mother,
soothing us with linty candies from Her
simple handbag, wearing Her simple
hairnet, fooling us
with Her simple shoes.


(There. I think I used every one: purse, crumpled, caparison, tincture, pattern, proof, capitulate, futile, fondle, sapient, glitch, and doff. Did I miss any?)

Words for a Fairy Godmother

Listen, I have a confession:
my words think they are
the only beautiful things I have.
They are my lapis lazuli eyes,
my teeth-pearls,
my French damask tongue,
my Speed-E-Namel diamond nails,
my October-opal nipples,
my jade-green navel.
My husband cannot eat them.
My lover's deaf.
Listen, I have sinned.
For penance what shall I do
to bring money home
for milk and bread?
I have a confession: There are worms
in my dreams.
My words are all pigs-in-a-poke
believing that they're treasures.

Must I recant?



(Big Tent Poetry prompt #2 Words)

The Official Tattooed Lady

I thought it would hurt more
this needling and inking of pictures
coming to life on my skin

this black and blue here
across my heart
looks like an eye

could have been anything maybe
a bullseye for any sighting weapon
ah, hell, didn't I ask for this

sign up for it
didn't I pay
this here across my back

these flowers and snakes
look real, don't they
blood coils and green coils

if you look close you can see
something caught and dying
on those thorns, those fangs

that bifurcated tongue
this is how I make my living, see
I show the world what eats me alive

the little acorns and dollar signs
at the small of my back
they're for love and luck

and the little ladybug here
on my lip
they haven't worked yet

but who knows
why did I do it you ask
I want people to see

what I look like.


(This is what the world's most tattooed lady said when asked why she did it.}

Carter Family one of Wealthiest in Colonial America

By HENRY BURKE
eagleman@theriver.com



Perhaps there never was an official royal class in North America, but the Carter Family who had huge land holdings in Tide Water Virginia were very close. The fortunes of the Carters in England began when William, Duke of Normandy crossed the English Channel in 1066 to fight for the crown of England. Naturally William brought his most loyal Norman knights with him, and among them was a clan of knights known as Cartiers.

According to the Tapestry, which recorded the Battle of Hastings, William found himself in danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed by English soldiers. The Cartiers rushed to defend their Duke, and saved his life. With out their action, William would surely have been killed, so when he won the battle and became King of England, the Conquer showed his gratitude by giving large estates and other privileges in England and Ireland to the Cartier Knights. The Cartiers became part of the privileged class of England.

The Cartiers were progressive and after a few generations many of the Cartier descendants became wealthy manor owners and businessmen. By the time England founded Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, Cartier had been changed to Carter, and the Carters were among the most educated elite of their time. Around 1612, members of the Carter business cartel began looking at the potential of the emerging tobacco trade in Virginia.

John Carter was born in 1613 at Edmonton, Middlesex, England. He was sent to the Virginia Colony in 1635 and settled along Corotoman River, which flows into the Rappahanock River near Chesapeake bay in Lancaster County, Virginia where he founded 'Corotoman' Plantation. He managed to become a colonel in the militia, and was instrumental in driving out the remaining Indians from the region by 1640.

With the support of wealthy relatives and associates back in England, John Carter had the resources to outfit ships to go to Africa and bring back slaves. He soon discovered that Africans from the Ibo culture were excellent subsistence farmers in a semi-tropical environment, and he chose people from the Ibo culture to become slaves on Corotoman Plantation.

While he eventually had children by his five successive wives, it was his son Robert "King" Carter (1663-1736), by his second wife Sarah Ludlow, whose descendants are associated with the history of the Burke family of Washington County, Ohio.

Carter died 10 June 1669 at Corotoman Plantation, and is buried in Christ Church Cemetery, Lancaster County, Virginia. The descendants of the Ibo people, enslaved and brought to 'Corotoman' Plantation by John Carter were the slaves for future generations of John Carter's descendants.

Robert "King" Carter was born at 'Corotoman' Plantation. The name "King" was not used in jest. By 1700 Robert "King” Carter was the richest man in the English Colonies of North America. In other words “King” Carter was America’s first millionaire! He owned nearly 300,000 acres scattered across the Northern neck of Virginia and he had about 1500 African people enslaved on his many tobacco plantations which were managed by resident managers.

Not only did “King” Carter cultivate tobacco, he owned warehouses where he stored tobacco purchased from other planters, and he owned ships which carried the product to Europe where other Carter family members operated businesses linked to the tobacco trade. His ships were also stocked with trading goods, and sailed down to Africa, where the goods were traded for African captives, who in turn were brought back to Virginia as slaves.

Robert “King” Carter had a son he named Robert Carter Jr., born in 1704. Robert Jr. died in 1732, leaving a son named Robert Carter III, who was born in 1728. “King” Carter raised his grandson Robert Carter III, who became a wealthy planter in his own right, known as Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. In 1791, Robert Carter III emancipated 500 slaves, including the ancestors of the Burkes of Washington County, Ohio!

Henry Burke is an historian specializing in Afro-American history and the Underground Railroad.



(** Just storing this here until I can figure out how to put it somewhere else....)

Pam Antonivich 1942 -- 2010

"My heart is heavy as I mourn the loss of a dear friend Pam aka Batman, from ALS. She was an amazing artist and friend who never gave up. I love you Pam, fly with the angels." -- Tammy Brierly (Warrior Woman aka Robin)


Me, too.
.

Smoke from the Central Fire

Early this afternoon I was saddened to hear of the death of Wilma Pearl Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

In her book "Everyday is a Good Day," Wilma wrote of attending a "Stomp Dance."

"In the past there was a ceremony in which the medicine man prepared a central fire" around which the people danced all night. "In the morning, every person in the village took a new fire home from this specially prepared central fire. Putting out home fires, then relighting them from the central fire was an important symbol of community and shared relationships." She spoke then of the people "attending Sunday morning church services smelling of smoke from the central fire."

Wouldn't it be a great thing if we all, regardless of our various faiths and genealogies took home a new fire and came away smelling of smoke from the central fire?

(Photo by Yodit Gidey/Durango Herald)
.

Illusions of Arrogance

My old friend Jerry Johnston writes wonderful columns for the Deseret News. Not long ago he wrote one that I especially liked (Saturday, March 27, 2010) and thought I would share. He titled it "Nothing on Earth is under our control," and began by relating how TIME in Yuba City, Arizona, is reckoned. Half the city is on the Navajo reservation. The other is on the Hopi reservation. Because one half subscribes to Daylight Savings Time and the other doesn't, you can time travel from one side of the street to the other. "And here," Jerry writes, "is the funny part. Nobody seems to mind."

Most Native Americans "don't put much stock in man-made constraints -- things like minutes and seconds, private property, mineral rights, and air space. Jerry says these things were invented by haughty human beings to give them an illusion of control.

"They're fantasies," he writes. "And the idea that people can actually own a piece of the earth -- all the way to the center of the planet" is only a little less silly than thinking "you own the air above your property. It's like claiming to own the sun itself, or the breeze in the sycamore trees or the sound of wild foxes as they bark on the hills...I've heard white Americans complain that Native Americans don't show more pride of ownership.

But I have seen puzzled looks on their faces when a town nails a city limits sign on the top of a mountain -- miles away from the community -- because the city fathers want to control all the zoning. And I've seen them listen extra carefully, trying to understand why farmers and industrialists say they own so many cubic feet of a river.

We'd "go nuts," he says, "living in Tuba City. We'd want to beautify the place, when the truth is the desert landscape is about as beautiful as it gets. We'd want to make the place more efficient. We'd want to know exactly what time it was, every second of every day in every part of town. We'd want to feel we were in control of our environment.

The truth is, nothing is under our control. We are at the mercy of the elements and the Creator every moment of every day. Control is an illusion. It's a delusion of arrogance -- like thinking we actually own the air above the swaths of Earth we think we can buy."

.

Tales Well Worth Telling

Undoubtedly, there will always be storytellers in our midst with tales well worth telling.

Art by Deviant Art
Storyteller by ~sw33tdreamm
.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

THE FORCE

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower...
--Dylan Thomas


This is how the story goes:


There is a light that only leaves can see,
green cells whose sugar-yellow receptors, like retinas
down the length of their veins, recognize day breaking.

The light is sovereign
as the Father's rituals, as the Son's relics.
The field is white with flowers:
the force is in the flower, and in the field, and in the rain.
The Holy Spirit is light disguised as water.
Will you recognize the glory as it falls before your face,
and on your right hand, and on your left?
Cleanse your feet with water, pure water.

O, sister, lets go down, come on, brother, come on down
O sinner lets go down, Good Lord show me the way

Kick off your shoes! For as long as there is light,
the light becomes a cool river in the heat of day;
fill your arms, fill your skirts with flowers growing down
to the water's edge. We are saved

for such a time as this! For verily, thus saith.



(Down To The River To Pray, Robert Allen Zipkin & Douglas Metgar)
.

RWP Volta

Volta

Sixty miles per hour
along the Pacific Coast Highway
beside you, and you say, I wish
that you would lay your hand upon my thigh,
and so I do. The sea is gray with rain,
and no perceptible horizon reveals
saltwater to sky.

Now that I am old, ad patres, as it were,
and you are older still, I regret to say
that yours was not the first
my hand had touched.


(ad patres, Latin, to be dead, to be gathered to ones forefathers.) :)

RWP -- The Doppler Effect

The Doppler Effect


"Uber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne"

("Concerning the colored light of double stars and other stars of the heavens.")
--Christian Doppler


Centered in the doorway, you stand where a window
Looks two ways: one way the hours swarm into blue,
Colliding like dominoes, piling up like old newspapers
On the porch. The other way the minutes retreat
Like beads on a broken string. Even the seconds
Are strangers speeding away, shifting toward red.

As you wait, entire universes are conceived and destroyed.
There, on the blue side, your mother's body
Has swallowed a seed, and shaped you from air.
A girl with freckles on her lips.
There, on the red side, your eight grandchildren
Hustle toward a future you cannot begin to imagine.

And you. You touch with care wherever the pain is worst:
Your eyes, your neck, your heart. You notice only now
That the window has become a mirror, and the doorway
Is shelter. Shifting now into red,
Your mother walks up behind you, slips you a chocolate
As she passes by. Your grandchildren's soft,
Unfinished baby skeletons tumble faster and farther
Away. And this moment, the Present melting in your mouth,
Is all you need.


(art by H. Koppdelaney)

Cautionary Tales

I watched the season premier of V last night--I liked it. But I kinda thought I was being hit on from the Right side, because the script could have dripped directly from the pens of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. What with the Visitors from space sending out messages of Peace and Hope, and *gasp* Free Medical Care for everybody. "You mean, like, Universal Health Care?" shouts one of the actors.

And, yes, Virginia, the attractive, tall Visitors outwardly beautiful appearance belies the slimy lizards beneath their skins. It all kinda left me wondering if I had just been assaulted by a rather thinly-veiled Cautionary Tale directed at the Obama Administration.

Or am I just being paranoid in the aftermath of Republican victories in yesterday's elections? But I liked it. I'll watch it again.

AND. I am reading COSMIC CONVERSATIONS--Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality, by Stephan Martin,
featuring interviews with Brian Swimme, Fred Alan Wolf, and several others. The book begins, "On a clear night, step outside beneath the star-flecked sky and listen,"...and continues, "If you let the immensity of the silence speak to you, questions may spontaneously appear."

Well, yeah. Stephan Martin suggests:"What is the universe?" And I add "Where is the universe?" And, "Why?" To Where I would answer Everywhere and Nowhere. The Why seems easier, although there are so many answers offered by various philosophies and religions...the Hindu version probably comes closest to my Mormon Christianity, with its Tantric view of the universe as "thread, flow, and continuity," in that scripture tells me "worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose...The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end...."

Stephan Martin asks questions concerning our relationship to the universe, and concludes, "We are Universe!" He quotes Clifford Matthews, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, saying that we can sum up everything we've learned through science about the universe in, just four words: "We are recycled stardust," that every atom of us, and of everything we know and see around us was created in the exploding bodies of stars. "WE are deeply interconnected with everything." We are them. They are us.

Maybe when it come right down to it, we really all do see things basically the same--whether our culture tells us the universe rides on the back of a giant turtle or is a thing created of Mind. As to what happened before, or outside the event point we've all heard about--that mysterious spark that began space, time, life--it's speculation. I'm with Bernard Haisch, who says that "Aristotle was basically on the right track when he said we need a prime cause...we might call it God." Why not?

WHatever you call it, when it comes to contemplating life, space/time, and the universe, I like what Albert Einstein said: we have to believe that everything is a miracle, or that nothing is. "We are process, not reality," says anthropologist/archeologist/poet Loren Eiseley (whose books I adore).

"Like a wave continually cresting from its origin," says Barbara Marx Hubbard, in Cosmic Conversations, "the universe has been engaged in an uninterrupted process of change that has surged from its beginning through atoms, molecules, stars, planets, cells, and now lately, humans. Of course, evolution does not end with humans, starfish, pine trees, or any of the life that surrounds us,...accelerating...with changes taking place all around us every day. After all, we ourselves change many time throughout the course of a lifetime, if not each day. WHere is it all going? you may ask."

Then why, I ask, is it so blasphemous to believe the old Mormon proverb, "As man now is, God once was. And as God now is, man may become." (?)

Anyway, whatever your philosophic persuasions may be, Cosmic Conversations is as its back cover describes it, "an eloquent but tough-minded" journey through "searching and heartfelt questions put to many of the world's leading scientists and spiritual wisdom keepers." A good read!

Up next: John Muir's Nature Writings.

Photo: The Crab Nebula from Hubble. Click it!!!
.

God

Pickles, Brian Crane