Springtime... and new beginnings...

Having just arrived in New York City I feel a sense of re-birth. Leaving my father's recent death behind me, though he is always on my mind, I have come here to jump start my life. The little writing I set down today is a tribute to my daughter's birth some fourteen years ago. She was only eleven weeks old, like a new-born, springtime flower, when I wrote this with her in mind;


Lena Poem (1)
December, 1995

You...
Unfurled...uncurled, squeezed out
from mommy's belly
on an early October morning.
Furrowed, so tiny-- quivering--
we inspect..., dissect
you;

(life's little interrogations beginning).
And now, this but a little more than eleven weeks,
we have watched the smiles,
sustained the barbaric 'yawps' of youngness;
trying to soothe the growing pains in
you.

This your first Christmas,
with all its unmeaning.
Our gift, a simple one-- a quilt of cloth
made by hands unknown, in a place unknown
passed down from hands unknown.
It has come to be in our hands
and we wrap its warmth-- the plain sense of its design--
around...
which is the self-same sense of our love for
you...

A road leading to the imagination...

This will be my last posting from my location in West Palm Beach, Florida. After 82 little writings, I am heading to the Big Apple to try my turn in that big town. I look forward to the challenges that await me. This little writing below talks about a road filled with challenges, detours, bends and turns;

An Old, Long-Winding Road

There’s an old, long-winding road
behind my house, seldom used anymore
except for the occasional walk
or the contadino who herds his sheep
or the hunters off to hunt.
The road, like the young poet’s unpaved imagination
is congested, is cluttered
with overgrowth from under-use.
Nature, herself, has become the re-creator;
slowly, with unfathomable patience, she has distorted
the road, she has determined the scene– the manner in which the snow impedes,
the way in which the moss proceeds
to grow on the stone embankments.

As I walk, ducking and bending through the brush,
a slap of branch at cheek,
a trip of weeds at foot,
attempting to keep balance and thought intact– pense me–
Has the original purpose of the road altered?
Were the first builders solely interested
to quicken distances between podere to podere? Or indeed,
did they too seek the detoured tranquility, the serenity,
of a meditative walk where their imagination
tangled with the Supreme Imaginator?
For sure, if shortening distance was their prime concern
the road should be straighter–
(for reason tells us the shortest distance between two point is...).

So each curve in this road,
each bend, each turn,
represents the imagination in the act of imagining.
And these first builders saw in this road
a form, simple and utilitarian as it be,
that required shaping and molding
so as to reflect its truer purpose;
that of the mind in its curious,
circuitous course to understand
itself and potential.

Ain't nothing we can do about the heat...

This little writing goes back to a summer that I remember in New York City that was just exceptional in its sweltering heat and humidity. I would remember having a suit on and by the time that I got to and from different appointments I was just soaked through with perspiration. My little tribute to New York's heat;


HEAT

Slow,
slow summer’s
heat hangs...
hangs,
like the tired, orphaned child
lumped,
slumped
on the woman’s slouching back.

She lingers, ...
lingers long,
long
into the day; draws–
draws pores of sweat.

New York’s humid, August character
claws,
claws like the lean, hungry, black
back-alley cat
hunting for its prey.

Through the swelter
the cries,
the cries,
fly,
fly through the deep thick of night–
no rest in sight...

A harlot’s baby, sleepless plight,
sleepless,
in this asphalt jungle’s slow,
slow summer’s
slow,
seething heat...

The beauty of resilience and fortitude...

I return to provide this little writing below after several days from being out of commission. It seems my body just gave out on me and I needed some refeuling. As I regain my strength, I hope the muse continues to visit me and encourages me to write. The writing below is in response to the need for resilience no matter the climate or circumstances;

Love, Like the Resilience of a Tuscan Weed

You can see them everywhere
prospering in this arid land
where rainfall is sacrosanct.
A neophyte to this farming life
learns almost overnight
the plant suited to survive
in such environment.

Varied in form
establishing its dominion;
germinating, multiplying and proliferating.
The ever-present wind– gusting
seeds to sow in some other
part of the garden.

The soil rips, buckles and bursts
like sore, parched lips– in need of water.
But the tenacious weed, scoffs
almost laughs, brazens, as its produces a flower
in defiance to the climate
and its natural persecutors.

This weed will not relent.
It does not know such sentiment.
With manacle roots deep
it anchors itself, bonds itself to the soil;
ready to be pulled at by a naive gardener–
who thinks he’s cleared his plot so clean–
snaps midway so as to grow again
stronger from this most recent assault.

Were I to have one wish for us,
it would be that our love
could in such climate
display the resilience
of these damn Tuscan weeds...

He would say, "you cannot kill a mountain..."

My father, my Papa Jean passed away this morning at 5:ooam eastern time. He went gently, and with dignity-- just as he had led his life. There are not words that I can string together to convey the love and respect that I have for him. He was from such a different time and place both generationally and geographically. He taught me humility and perserverance and the deep respect for my cultural roots. The writing below is the one request he asked of me;


In My Time of Dyin’
(for Papa Jean)
(b. November 29th, 1921– d. April 22nd, 2010)

In my time of dyin’
don’t want nobody to mourn.
All I want for you to do
Is take my body home.
So I can die easy, yeah...yeah...yeah...
so I can die easy, yeah...yeah...yeah...
(African-American Spiritual)

Papa said that when he died
he wanted to be cremated.
He was adamant about this request.
Entrusting me, to carry this out
he asked that his ashes
be spread over his parents’ grave
in Rives, Isere, France –
the hamlet where he was born.
I told him plain– I would.
Papa also said he would prefer
if we did not mourn his death;
for he had, had an abundant life.
In his provincial humility
he asked only that we enjoy
"a good bistro", and savour
a memorable meal in his honour;
(great French chefs think this way)...

...Jesus gonna make it
to my dyin’ bed.
And if these wings should fail me Lord
won’t you meet me with another pair.
So I can die easy, yeah... yeah... yeah...
so I can die easy, yeah...yeah...yeah...

What's in a name?...

I have always held an interest in the origins of words and their meanings.In the bible one gets a sense of these great charaters in the Old Testament. So I have chosen a little writing about the biblical name of Catherine;


Musings

Of Beauty– like poetry– the old, old
pragmatic Biblical scribes
understood its position.
In the simple, clean lines of their language;
magnitudes conveyed.
The millennia cannot change you
C a t h e r i n e.
Roots of your namesake deep, well dug.
Orientation cannot alter
implication, impartation of the name
(infinitely...contained).
The envy of Helen and Hera to remain.
You have been a fourth-century Christian martyr of Alexandria;
an Empress of Russia (twice);
and a Queen of England.
From the myth of you
modern civilization took ground.
You are the stone foundation–
the allegorical anchor–
that Jason, on a bobbing, wind-beaten Argo,
sailed and sailed to secure
his frail ship
to the shore of you.

Tradition and the individual talent...

As a student of literature I leaned towards the modernists; T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Marianne Moore. It was in their poetry that I immersed myself. I have often walked through the subway station at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. It is a maze of underground tunnels used by commuters to get to work. So this little writing below touchs on these two aspects;

The Modernists
(for Eliot, Pound & Moore)

Hair combed neat, still damp.
Clothes pressed– she with stockings,
he with cravat.
We are the routine ones;

moving through these steamy,
‘wet, blackish boughs’...
made to ease our arrivals
and departures.

"Like the crowd on London Bridge
heads bent towards their feet."
Movement a slow, silent
procession towards separate
destinations.

There is little laughter in such faces;
but the myriad of frowns palpable
from excessiveness. "I too, dislike it..."

Yet, we are no different
from classicist’s passed,
nor avant-gardist’s to come.
Perhaps, this is the collective denouement
the wise men foretold;
just more subtle.

Wasted ones in a hollow land.