Welcome

I noticed a new face at the table, Stevany, so welcome, sit down, and be at home. It's good to see you. This morning I feel as young as you are.

If I were Orpheus,
humming "Only the Lonely",
walking the nighttime perimeter of the city -
only now and then descending from the tracks
to enter and walk
the cobbled streets
searching for Eurydice among the tangled web
of electric-line-hammocks spinning above;
where street meets sidewalk,
and brick wall the sky........


 I picked up on this on the other blog as " Orpheus Descending ".
My wife says it is a good thing that I amuse myself, being my own best audience, and so on.
Our friends in Cleveland said they read my blog..... couldn't say they got it, though.
Which was OK. Everybody is different.

Fast Day 174 September 29 2010 {On MY Brother's Suicide}

On My Brother's Suicide

Autumn approaches like a maddened hag,
shaking her bony branches like a sing-song curse
against the sky, against the faithless fallen leaves.
She comes loud and keening,
a banshee with a necklace of curcurbits,
dressed in widow's weeds for the mourning of the trees
and the eve of all hallows and the dia de los muertos.
She bids me return north
to the lake to visit the memory of family beasts
and pray at the tolling of loose screen doors that
fan remains of the gunpowder residue dawn,
...and my brother's life.
His vertebrae are asbestos covered bones,
his hepatitis blood laced with PBB,
he offers brandy, cigarettes, beer:
kongo for a tongue-less god.
Quicklike, my brother's life that could-have-been sits,
drinking a bottle filled with smoking herbs - he smiles,
at me with misty legba that has more life than life!
seeking the heroin of Ezili,
and the love that fights for life until the death.

notes:
This promises to be a powerful autumn, and the season itself impels me to speak of it. I saw something odd on September 23... at the river... and we'll see what comes of it. My brother is not well and does nothing but drink now. I saw his life as it could have been, and it had more warm aura than most people... it was more real than being with people one cares little about. He/It was sitting in the chair by me, about 4 feet away.
Ezili has been mentioned, Ezili Danto - the mother who fights for us.
Legba is a metaphor for male beings.

gun-powder residue dawn - left-overs from suicide (sorry - a heavy downer)
kongo - a kongo packet, or paket kongo.

La vieille porte automne qui nous dirige a la maison de Baron Samedi.

Fast Day 173 September 22 2010 {On Her Graduation}

On Her Graduation

Sweet accents mixed with sparkling words;
foods and fruits brought upon cool waters,
the wind's lethargy amid the willow wands
whispers softly and caresses leaves.

Her desires are ten leagues long,
her tongue is fair and bright;
shine forth swift-footed child of maiden dawn-
the journey's inception at first light.

Make us forget our sorrows!
And friends when we do speak...
like gods of olde within your bowers
in the precinct of Olympus' peak!

notes

I have been trying to approximate classic Chinese poetic constructions at times:
"And friends when we do speak" can be read "we are friends when we speak" or "friends, when we speak..."

I am deliberately leaving logical connexions a  bit vague, forcing the reader to do a bit more. It is unclear at times, as if the words were Chinese characters and the interpretation could be various.

Fast Day 172 September 15 2010 {Autumn Leaves}

 Autumn Leaves

My love is like a tree, he said.
Ah, wrinkled bark, she said,
somnolent, morose,
dropping leaves...
unhappy parallel!

No, he said; like this tree here!
Many branches, pointing
to all the stars!

Deep roots, covering the meadows!
Bird-friend tree!
The migrating wing'd gossips
return like clouds
from southern climes!

Fallen leaf ? - a message sent
in the haze and smoke
of autumn:

When All Saints approaches,
scarlet, orange,
rust, pumpkins and Thanksgiving;
trees still stitch
heaven and earth together!


--
notes

early - I have no time next week. I wrote it for a birthday this week.
If I can get my other computers working, I shall have a picture.

Welcome

I welcome a new friend, Eric. He came on board at our last stop,
and he seems well suited to the life of a sailor upon the deep, blue
Hexameter Sea.
I am reading Moby Dick and feel ancient and nautical, yet still
bright coin and Quito gold. Welcome.

Fast Day 171 September 4 2010 (The Waters of Shiloh}

The Waters of Shiloh


Lord, we shall go now, O Lord, we shall go!
to be baptized in the pool of Shiloh!
Mother and father, we gather to them
in our new home in Jerusalem;
where crops do not wither and banks do not fail!
and no one to weep at the sheriff's sale!

Lord, we shall go now, O Lord, we shall go!
to wash our eyes in the pool of Shiloh!
Father worked daily for Mom, house, and me,
and in his age he no longer can see.
His eyes be revived to see your sacred face,
when he arrives at your holy place!

Lord, we shall go now, O Lord, we shall go!
to rest our limbs in the pool of Shiloh!
Her arms which held me, her hands dry my tears,
her enfolding strength to drive away fears!
Now let Mother rest here from all of her chores,
and Your sweet grace her vigor restore!


--

notes

mostly writ on the road to D.C.
like Fanny Crosby....
I have been reading a good deal about John Brown and his times, and I begin to take on the characteristics of the age and time of my focus. I should have been an actor.

stanza three
I used three different constructs of the verb to indicate sort of an eternal sense:  "held" - past, "dry" - present, and "to drive" - infinitive. I don't know if this seems ok and works; just tried it out.

pix:

http://www.claudiadiller.com/TheWork.htm
--

Fast Day 170 August 31 2010 {Litany for Mary}

Litany for Mary

Mary, Miriam, holy Mother...
autumn tanager!
pray for us
passenger of time,
pray for us
owl of foresight,
pray for us
goldfinch teenager,
pray for us
child-sung blue of robin,
pray for us
habitat and grassland,
pray for us
prairie falcon eyes,
pray for us
niche on high places!
pray for us
bluegrass and winterfat,
pray for us
squirrelgrass, wheatgrass,
pray for us
tumbleweed and sage!
pray for us
Lady sachem paint the world
with the autumnal palette!
I want some cloth of this color!
Hey! A cloth to give my sweet one!
She will make a coat of it!


--

Fast Day 170 August 31 2010

 Litany

Mary, Miriam, holy Mother...
autumn tanager!
pray for us
passenger of time,
pray for us
owl of foresight,
goldfinch teenager,
child-sung blue of robin,
habitat and grassland -
prairie falcon eyes,
niche on high places!
bluegrass and winterfat,
squirrelgrass, wheatgrass,
tumbleweed and sage!
Lady sachem paint the world
with the autumnal palette!
I want some cloth of this color!
Hey! A cloth to give my sweet one!
She will make a coat of it!


notes:
early this week... early is good.

To be a precise Litany, each line, such as "owl of foresight" should be followed by a "pray for us", but I'm not sure if that's too unwieldly... so I merely put in the first few.

Fast Day 169 August 28 2010 {Voyageurs}

Voyageurs

I dreamed bees made a hive in our canoe;
came there flying daily, nectar laden;
buzzing heroic hexameters
of epic poetry ultra-marine.
Launch the ship into the wind, bearing north!
with sandwiches and tea.

Oars that deeply drink of argent liquid
of morning, carrier of the hopes of men,
deeply into a cartoon jungle,
to fabled shores chryselephantine.
Cruise among the Atlantean condos-
outspread like Trojan lunch!

We ate upon the Island of Tall Reeds,
drank martinis mixed well with sweet words,
and napped within papyrus' golden house.
Our sorrows drop away like clothes
strewn around the delight place of new lovers:
the light winds gossiping.



notes

argent liquid  :  the morning sun drips like silver from the oars.

chryselephantine : a Greek word referring to an object make of gold (chrysos) and ivory (elephantine). I use it to make me feel the northern Mediterannean - Greece - and the south - Africa, where the elephants live.

papyrus :  commonly paper reed,  image of late summer tawny shafts, sunlit and tall.
goldren house  :  sun on the tawny papyrus and Nero's Domus Aurea.

bees :  there is this business of bees and the hive and honey... and fermented mead , eventually in the ancient, ancient myths of Dionysos, and the notion of resurrection.

Atlantean condos : houses on the water front, and beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the western end of the Mediterranean.

Trojan  : refers to Troy at the eastern end of the Mediterranean

Canoeing on the St. Clair River. In the delta of the river, there is Dickinson Island, Harsen Island and Russel Island, with many small islands scattered. In the northern part of Russel, there is a cut from the South Channel to the Middle Channel with another canal heading to the northernmost  part of the island which has various signs and icons of jungle animals here and there among the reeds.

I like the notion of our sorrows being like lovers' clothes: a hindrance, yet there is the possibility to cast them aside and transcend their limits.

Fast Day 168 August 20 2010 {Miller's Crossing}

 Miller's Crossing

I was born in the green of Silvermines,
I grew in the Knockinroe;
The end of the earth was the Dublin Road,
from Shallee to Kilbo' .
I will never...
ever...
return...
from here;
never to smell my sweetheart's hair !

I worked in the mines of Bellagowan
and never saw the light;
made love to a girl of my own tender age
in a cock, cut and scythe'd.
I will never...
ever...
renew...
that love;
exiled from those lands of desire !

My mother cried when I took ship to sail
to work with pick and hoe;
A lock of her hair to America,
the gowan of my soul.
I will never...
ever...
see her...
again:
yet ne'er again to see her cry.

The streets they were not paved with gold;
I worked down in the mine;
and man fought against man as Goshen old;
my table set with line.
I will never...
ever...
forget...
my dears:
Thou loved my things, as I did thine.


----------
notes

Kilbo' :   license with the name "Kilboy"
Bellagowan:  the old name for Silvermines was Beal Atha Gabhann and Bellagowan.
cock: a place to store hay
gowan: a daisy flower
Goshen: where the Hebrews lived in slavery in Egypt
table: a tombstone
line: linen
things: in the sense of whatever is conceived to exist and as an assembly, a coming together in one person of many aspects.

first draft; I found this exhausting but in a good sense... it fills me with evanescence. 

Tempo
The first 4 lines are to be read normally.
The next two are to be very slow and mournful:
"never......ever......see her.....again "   
with a slight quickening and rise on the last syllable "again" ; 
it goes long-short long-short long-short short-long, the last long syllable rising back up.


The last line is a bit slower than the first 4, and is realization: fulfillment of understanding, yet far from fulfillment of desire. 

Later: I came back and changed the form in the lines 5 through 8 to emphasize the slow and heavy punctuation.

Fast Day 167 August 12 2010 {What'll I Tell the Widow?}

Rain

What'll I Tell The Widow ?

The hay burned in the fields that year, beaten down
by the oven of the wind; I stood stock still
by the Rattle Run which was
hardly a trickle in August.
Danny looked at me like queer,
but I just throw my Johnny Deere cap down,
and said nothing until he drove over
left his motor runnin'
I could not hear him but I saw his lips
movin' , and I said "Enough".
He cup his hand to his head,
like he can't hear, so I make a universal
translate "turn the friggin' engine off" sign.
and when I could hear my heart beatin' in my ears
I said "Enough".
It took a century to walk out of that field,
leavin' Danny with the two tractors,
him gaping at me,
smoke and sun
But he took off at a trot
caught up with me in ten years
sayin' "You know, there's nothing out there.
The worlds end at Palms Road and Chick's Barbeque..."
where the yawning gap between our dreams
came to an end in aught-8, leaving me
a Mad Max with ethanol
a girl friend with 4 kids
widowed twice at 24
the Widow Greer she was
and her breath was hotter'n this wind.
Ah, what a future we had had !
We used to dream of crop circles
I went on walkin'
He yelled "Hey!... ... Hey!
What'll I tell the Widow?"
I ponder, "It's a hard rain falls..."


----
climate change poem

Fast Day 166 6 Agosto 2010 {Noon Prayers}

Noon Prayers

Say,honey,have a margarita,
drink a little pulque,
drive with me a little way
until we reach the sea.

So let us toll the rosary;
five tequila mysteries:
trust the diligence of dunes
and discretion of the trees.

She says she does not drink at all,
she says she does not swim;
she left the molten city
so she will not stop for me.

Tres milagros de ma vida, tres...
deja mucho a desear,
travelers on a desert road
my car, the Virgin, and me.



note:

stanza 3 three miracles of my life, three/ there is still much to desire

odd prayer

Fast Day 165 July 31 2010 {The Uncertainty of Soccer}

The Uncertainty of Soccer

Sun Chopper with long hair runs, streaming like a breeze;
Sandwich Girl collides with him again... and again;
Snail Kid, climb Mount Fuji, but slowly, slowly,
Giacometti Leg, Pablo's Bathers, Demoiselles d'Avignon
and Bearded Miro, Pollack Spit and Arp Nose:
Mayan Ferlinghetti, Popeye, Sheer Pony Ass, surreal;
Max Ernst collage of running boys and girls...  and tattoos.

Run, slicers of the sun! Run, max quanta ! Kick neutrinos !
Run through all the levels and the states of being !
Run to your civil war ! Kick your way into the maze,
labyrinth of woodland god, disguised as bush of ghosts !
I hear the vuvuzela of my faith and parents !
I see the spider-goalie spin and guard his web !
Sun Chopper smiles: surreal panic erotic Magritte !

---

notes:

written after watching a soccer match on Belle Isle, Detroit

on Saturday, the date of record.

we also discussed the destruction of the Constitutional
and Enlightenment view of Man by the recent Supreme Court
decision setting Corporations up as "individuals"
equal to men and women.

More like ideas to be worked on later:

Surrealist paintings,

Amos Tutuola,

films of del Toro...especially Laberinto del Fauno

Spanish Civil War and civil wars in general

The young who will fight the wars...

Fast Day 164 July 24 2010 {Riding the SMART Bus Home}

Riding the SMART Bus Home

Newly painted rainbows spill
through freshly washed windows,
bouncing off her laundered shirt
and rolling in the sheets.

Routine slav'ry of house work
holds her to the window;
waiting for him to return,
riding on the SMART bus.

The windows on the SMART bus
do not allow rainbows
to pass through where he sits in
licorice isolate.

Homeward does he turn his steps,
where the rainbow waits;
while tires slap the macadam
like an overseer's whip.

Tightly packed within the bus
are all his kinsmen's tribes;
sailors of the city asphalt
that flows beneath the heat.

Without the breath of Africa!
O, Lord ! I cannot breathe !
Without her eyes, without her face
or rainbows on her sleeve!


--
notes:
Detroit poem # 1
first draft

Fast Day 163 July 16 2010 {Algebra y Fuego}

US Civil War Wounded

Álgebra y Fuego

When I say I love you,
do you trust me?
When I say I care,
will I be true?
If I come back from far away
do you greet me,
Johnny and his gun come home
to join the prosthetic few?

Will you drive me daily
to my re-hab?
Will you buy me beer,
...  push my wheelchair?
Will you explain the fearful
algebra and fire
that guide our fatal honor
into grief, into despair?

Will I smoke the opium
of Afghanistan?
Or from Ciudad Juarez
will I do cocaine?
Wake up screaming from withdrawal -
or from nightmares;
my mind is nitrous oxide
a seep of jet methane!

When you say you still care,
will you be true?
When you say you love me,
may it inspire?
The algebra of the past
defines fidelity
and honor, but we blacken
like candy in the fire.

Spanish Civil War Poster

-
notes:
Johnny and his gun = Johnny Got His Gun  by Dalton Trumbo. That's about it.

Fast Day 162 July 8 2010 {Future Shock}

dreaming

Future Shock

we eat apples and we spit them out,
we paint our bodies with saliva,
we chew blueberries,
and the haws;
I forget why I'm in this part of town.

we see old friends from the empty past,
and dash to re-ignite our love;
shake hand uncles,
bow to aunts
I think we have never seen before.

we smell the hollow wooden doors
with dark-light sunburn-picked veneer;
I left the car
with top down
and motor running on bright shoulder.

waiting for my daughter - don't know why:
I leave the soundstage filled with friends -
find her crying
by the car,
wondering where her daddy's gone!


pix: Samy Charnine

notes:

The story:
I left the convertible running as I waited for my daughter.
I saw old friends I hadn't seen in 20 years or more., and
ran like a handicap to get their attention. We talked, but
I wanted to get the heck out of there. Maybe that's why we hadn't
seen each other in so long.  When I returned to my car,
she was waiting with her suitcase.

hollow wooden doors

with dark-light sunburn-picked veneer;
Hollow wooden doors are the miserably cheap doors one finds in houses, new and old.
When the wretched things are old, they become dark and grimey, and in some places, the top veneer
wood comes loose; the dark-light is the grime (dark) and the newly exposed veneer base (light)...
it shows up when we pick away the veneer like sunburned skin from the back of someone we do not really
like with a fascination and sense of squeamish disgust.

The meaning?
I and my generation cannot let down my daughter and my daughter's daughters and sons.

Fast Day 161 June 29 2010 {Visit to D.C.}

Visit to D.C.

It was hot in D.C. Some record setting days.
I remember Europe and the heat
when ten thousand died;
the Change comes on apace,
like a broken line within the Gulf.

Memorials abound here:
signposts between the quick and dead.
G20 tightens belts...
and the noose
around our necks,
memorial noose of Saddam who died
amid the jeers and curses recorded
by cell phone photographers.

Kids, don't buy that house yet!
Give it 2 years!
The world  shredded like tea,
read the future from the leaves
left within the broken china cups
from your wedding registry!
Pick-up-pieces generation!
Chips of broken china, like
White Haven's broken mausoleums of desire;
tombstones arrayed like single-
family houses along Old Georgetown Road.

The day before he died, Uncle Leonard
was cookin' up a storm, and he called
everyone he knew to come and eat
johnny-cakes and green bacon 
he learned to make in the lumber camps
up in the Pontiac, Quebec.
Now we eat corn cakes with butter and salt...

Georgetown's Hogwarts tower looms above
the zero mile marker of the C&O canal,
where the water gate still sits unused.
There are too many memorials in D.C.
I feel like a wraith of history,
eating copper and broze,
drinking limestone and steel,
until I vomit weaponry of gold.


--------
notes

on returning from DC and Georgetown and Bethesda.

Welcome

Welcome to Luli, a new friend. I suppose now I shall have to actually work on my Portugese, no longer playing the dilettante of language. And I welcome her in the week of a poem on Fritz Lang's Metropolis - which is a bit much. I really don't know what to make of some of this stuff. It's almost like there's a scull full of crew and coxswain pulling at the metaphorical oars in the simile waters of the rhetorical Isis where the bumps race of Eights Week is always a-running... as it were. But poetry is not really "poetry", your grandmother's poetry, the "poetry" we learned in elementary schools: it is a launching pad to the universe, and Emily Dickinson put on the chains of rhyme and meter... to be free!... whereas some of us speak unfettered, but the only result is our enslavement.

Words are friends and companions. They are not mournful teachers and dons; they are not forbidding priests and stern Savanarolas...  If a word is a mighty tree, we climb it. If a word is a sea, we swim in it. If a word is a soft bed, trail forward lightly and invade a lover's delight-space !

Fast Day 160 June 26 2010 {In the Gardens of Metropolis}

The New Tower of Babel in Metropolis

In The Gardens of Metropolis

Between the hands of labor
and the head of tech a chasm dwelt
awaiting some tree-like paroxysm
of nature: a mediator to intercede -
to plant itself within the yawning gap
left fallow within the gardens:

first the kabbala of Rotwang
gave a fruit - the largest of the family,
colour pale next to wall,
colour red next to sun,
set in clay and sprung to life,
a golem like narcissos,
obedient to a malady of Hel
where an entire branch of
a summer day will die;
the fruit has a bitter kernel.

second the living and dying god
given to excessive growth as is seen
in maiden plants set in new made borders,
saddle-grafted onto old root stock:
October - bane of Freder - the time
to disburden a tree of fruit
and whip him with a light birch broom,
the straight switch, or the sturdy cane
to remove decaying leaves
to encourage wood's ripening
and maturation of blossom-buds
in next year's spring...
if spring does arrive!

third mutation yet unimagined!
a forcing garden to compel
by artificial means a cultivation
of fruits unnative to these climes;
in houses built of metallic mixtures,
as iron cased with copper, which
produce expansive force unequal
which tends to break
the hothouse glass
in consequence of a twisting
and a torsion
and a racking
in the bars wrought-iron...
so do machine men:
iron boys and iron maidens,
try to gather rosebuds,
but all is liable to rust!

----
----
NOTES
Brought on by viewing the most recent and updated version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis on the night of June 19 2010.
Posted early since I'll be traveling to D.C.

Lang and Thea von Harbou, the writer, told a tale of society where there was antagonism between the hands - labor - and the head - technology & administrative science. It was a tale based on the history of the Industrial Revolution and the Technology revolutions leading into the 20th century. They saw that there must be a mediation between the head and hand, which would be the mediator, yet also the heart, even though "heart" and "mediator" were distinct entities in the film.
The possibilities were first: a type of medieval mysticism and Kabbala applied to science, Rotwang, the inventor, who had sacrificed his right arm in order to create a perfect android, a machine man or robot. He now wore a prosthetic arm covered by a dark glove, foreshadowing Dr. Strangelove, and Lionel Atwill as the village chief of police in Son of Frankenstein.
Second: a Christianity which was based totally upon the mediation of the dichotomy, seemingly leaving out all other doctrines. The Mediator would be an real man, Freder in the movie, and he would come forward in the fullness of time - apparently - and the golden age would be reached. Of course, a good deal of the City, particularly the workers' quarters, would have to be destroyed before this occurred.
Third: a surprise ending, which is actually what happened in Germany. The Mediator's followers became the Men at the dock at Nurnberg, and in the glass case in Tel Aviv.

The studio was UFA, by the way, which may or may not explain my sign in my other blog about OK, UFA!

Hel   deceased mother of Freder, beloved of Rotwang. Also name of the Norse goddess Hel, a goddess of some of the dead.

Fast Day 159 June 19 2010 {Catamarans a Voiles-Etoiles...}

Catamarans à Voiles-Étoiles

dans le Golfe du Mexique

Les télescopes de MM. Green & Cook

étaient d'une grandeur considerable;

mais celui du Docteur Hubble était

encore beaucoup plus grand.

La mort d'une planète, deja agée,

d'un rang supérieur, nourricier de Galaxie,

présenta a la Science belle occasion

de connaître les cérémonies funèbres

dans les signes du zodiaque,

tout en disant:

Never, never shall we cease to long

for the Earth, not returning, exiled

upon the Euxine Sea; no delicious

homecoming sweet nostalgia;

prodigal we are in debt to Death.

---------

---------

NOTES:
an experiment.

title:  Sailing Catamarans of Stars in the Gulf of Mexico
meditation on technology and our lives.

translation:

The telescopes of Misters Green and Cook
were of considerable size,
but that of Doctor Hubble was
even larger.
The death of a planet, already quite old,
of a high rank, nourisher of Galaxy,
gave Science a perfect occasion
to observe the funeral customs
in the signs of the zodiac,
all the while saying:
(the rest in English...)

Fast Day 158 June 12 2010 {Lawnmower Meet}

Lawnmower Meet

We crossed the wide Mississippi
riding our John Deere mowers,
like Farnsworth in Straight Story;
malachite green fields doubtful,
dotted with a hiatus of machines,
whirring gestures spinning,
a herd of residential
zero-turn lawnmowers
looming like phantoms in the night air:
we boiled water for coffee
and we baked our bread
and spit the fish we caught
in the waters of the wide Mississippi.


-------
note:
I've been at my parents and there was no computer access; they seem to take a Luddite stance against them, although singing fishes and other such oddities hold no fear for them. It is also hard to get a cell phone signal unless you get in  the car and drive a bit.

pictures won't load this AM... Blogger problem.

Fast Day 157 June 5 2010 {Empty Seats at a Reception}

Empty Seats at a Reception

So ill my brother grew,
he could not attend the wedding feast
and so I sent Hakeem to search
the hungry, thirsty, and the poor.

Hakeem, whom I had met
last night, who'd journeyed from afar,
went into the early rain to search
for poverty to feed in Grosse Pointe.

Tradition says we share
the wealth and blessings on us bestowed,
parceling out in our finer detail
the general bulky benefits of grace.

All the prophets as one
in opinion and in holy writ
could not conceive the modern day:
in Grosse Pointe no poor were found!

We gave it to Solanus,
good father to himself hand out
to all the poor in all Detroit;
we all need loaves and fishes.

----
notes
I couldn't get near my computer to post this until now.
The wedding was history relived:  great pageantry and warfare with weapons of silk and lace, with a great number of distinguished generals and their ladies posing for daguerreotypes. Pomegranate grenades lit the night sky.

Welcome

Welcome to a new friend, Claire. Now there's a fine name, my daughter's middle name and that of mathair mo croidhe  ( "Mother Macree" ); I like to use mathair mo croidhe for "mother-in-law", which is a term that is ungainly and belongs strictly to people with the minds of lawyers. It means "mother of my heart". For me own mother, I just say "mother of my ___ ( whatever organ seems appropriate for our relationship at the time!).
So the name of mathair mo croidhe is Claire, too. She has gone, but her presence is still here, as well as her fine name, which resonates in the choir of her family in Quebec and Ireland.

I welcomed Dana twice, so I'm recalling one of them. Actually, as I look at them, the second one was not much of a welcome or anything: just a mumbling about whether I had done it or not. So it didn't count, I guess. So I'm restoring it. Unless he wants to send it back for a store discount.

It is early this morning, and I have a distinct sense of eternity & art, as well as the propinquity of time; time seems like a rider on a horse who will reach down and pull us up behind them, to ride wildly into the rest of the history that stretches out ahead of us.
I feel good.

Fast Day 156 May 28 2010 {A Wedding}

A Wedding

Enter Prince of Denmark with a flourish,
the procession of the splendid bride,
filling the monkish nave of gothic church
with fairest daughters of our countryside.

The groom comes forth fashioned without flaw,
reason and love tempered in him met;
necklace of steel and beads of awe:
he holds the jewels of ivory and jet.

God rejoins what He had put asunder
while Adam slept in sweetly scented spring;
agate rings of bone draw back together,
crimson-jacket birds of Solomon do sing.

Peony eruption ! Oh, those happy leaves !
The Love that giveth best also best Love receives !



-------
notes

Prince of Denmark   - a march
jet     -   a black jewel
peony   -   the theme flower of the wedding

form: shakesperian sonnet ( sort of )

Welcome

I don't think I welcomed Dana Chabino to the page. Sometimes I can go on for years like that: totally unaware of what's going on about me.
Well, next week is old  # 156 , which will be 3 years  ( 52 x 3 ), and the week after is my daughter's wedding, so I think I'll try to do a prothalamion or wedding type poem. At this moment, I have no idea what it might be. Ideas for poems come right through the windshield at me driving 80 mph.