Anxiety and the Possible Responses

The anxious guitar string just snaps.

The care-laden fingertip taps.

When one's feeling stressed,

Being put to the test,

Better by far to take naps.

Letting Go Is Hard

The small grey mouse was a thinking type,
A philosopher of a modern stripe.
He pondered problems every day
And how to make them go away.

Alas, this burden grew quite heavy
(A right big altruism levee!)
He grew so tense with anxious thought
It seemed so clear that he was caught.

"I really must, for my own well-being,
Doubtless my shrink would be agreeing,
Ask the question, "How to let go?"
Though how... it's hard to know.

The snake, in whom the mouse was swallowed,
Chuckled softly and then followed,
"Mouse, it's harder than it seems.
But go ahead, follow your dreams."

Apart

A bowl of egg drop soup
And a sharp knife
Are great and useful things.
But not together.

And fresh paint
And a brand new dress
As well.
But not together.

Sometimes apart
Is how it is best.

"Issue Definition as Incessant and Unnecessary Commentary on Existence"...or..."The Moth"

The moth I saw had patterned wings

With colored scallops, two-tone rings,

And varnished highlights here and there.

But it didn't care.

Of its ornament on display

Unchanged e'er since the moth's first day

Not one was chosen for its meaning

Nor to reveal a political leaning.

But Facebook pages 'cross the land

Are full of righteous reprimand

And earnest truths are there tattooed -

Quite often rude.

We seek, it seems, to justify

Ourselves, (or have an alibi!)

To prove we know the wrong from right -

And choose to choose the light.

But all we do is pound our chests.

Or with the wisdom we possess,

However shallow, howe'er mean,

We show, then vent our spleen.

Well... bollocks, fiddlesticks and fie.

There's but one thing to catch the eye:

Lives of beauty, quiet, free.

Would that will be me.  

A Poem's Necessity

A poem requires something concrete
Or even a skeleton if it's discrete.
This one is made of a simple idea
And the image of somebody's feet.

A fellow named Robert walked out in the wood
Walked with more clumsiness than he should.
He was a man with only no feet
And he didn't actually walk to the wood.

Let's try it again for the fun of the play
And ponder abstractions the length of the day.
Think of a potter with wet, dirty hands
But no wheel.  And also no clay.

He mainly just sits with his hands in the air
Fondling emptiness, the nothing that's there.
When he has finished there's nothing to see.
Of his pot?  Not a soul who could care.

Noodling

Oh my, how the days pass and shift
Not solid like something of earth,
But gauze and sound and mist.
Abstractions and attempts.
Of great importance, yes, but not
Solid enough to know they've not been missed.
To parent, to pastor, to husband
Is to have projects always unfinished.
There can be no drinking from those wells,
But only from the one marked,
    Child of God
    A Sheep of his pasture
    A Sinner of his redeeming.

The Way Spring Works

The breeze is cool
Only because the window is open.
The window is open
Only because it's getting warm outside!

Temperature

The temperature 

   Dove,

      Dove,

         Dove,

             Down.

                 Deeply

                     Discouraging.

Going Soft

I saw hope tonight and last:
In a possum on my doorstep
He was nibbling on the cat food
And I didn't seem to mind.
Last autumn when he did that
I went to fetch a broomstick
To curse him and to poke him
But now that seems unkind.

The Fall of the Republic

What could be sweeter than suckers for supper?
What more delicious than warm rotting meat?
What could be faster than cars without pistons?
And warmer in winter than thin cotton sheets?

What is more just than a fool being lauded?
What is more fitting than joy in a hearse?
Foolishness happily dances its victory.
And we're all lined up for a spin with this curse.

Stand on your head for a walk on the sky.
Go to the pasture to purchase a pie.
Or if you are conscious and have some heart left...
Then ponder the damage and cry.
Sit yourself down and just cry.

On Time!

My dear wife was pregnant for months upon end.
She prayed to the Lord a sweet baby to send.
Her others were late and her patience wore thin,
"Dear Jesus, please stop him from lingering in."

With joy then, on Saturday, she had contractions
A war in her tummy like fighting 'tween factions
And finally coming the wee hours next morn.
A big baby boy finished up and got born....
On time!

The Waiter

She lays there uncomfortable, phone in her hand
A pillow for knees and one on each end,
Searching on Pinterest, hoping to see,
The birth of her darn baby.

Alas, baby's comfortable right where he is
Or she? We don't know if it's Mr. or Ms.
And so my dear lady is lying in wait.
Praying the babe won't be late!

Gangland Birds

Raucous, unsettled birds those blue jays.
They moved into a nearby tree like a gang,
All swagger and coarse slang.
Then moved on to make sure some sparrow pays.

Perversity

Battered tin trumpets are lovely to hear.

Pouring sweet melody into your ear.

Holding you captive to each awful note

With beauty like songs from a goat.

Rotten bananas are subtly charming

With pungent bouquets 'neath their odors alarming.

Just the cuisine for discerning elites

To bring forth their media bleats.

Whatever is lousy is tastefully chic.

Whatever is awful is tres magnifique.

Whatever destroys is really sublime.

Whatever is true is a crime. 

Big, Fat Cat's Feet

An obese little kitty
Walked into the room,
Plopped down his bottom
And started to groom.
He sat there, a blob,
For what seemed like all day.
Then sauntered his bottom away.

The fog on my hilltop
Is much like that cat:
A lazy, unflappable
Layer of fat
Perched on the highland,
Heedless of all,
A cozy and comfortable pall.

An "Ode" to my Mother in Law

There once was a lady named "M"

Whose pipes were all plugged up with phlegm.

She scorned pretty verses,

But loved tradesmen curses.

And gleefully rooted the system.

John Banister Tabb - Poem Repertoire vol. 5

The Sisters 

The waves forever move;
The hills forever rest:
Yet each the heavens approve,
And Love alike hath blessed
A Martha's household care,
A Mary's cloistered prayer.

Perhaps this poem struck me because the times are so vituperative.  If one be on the one side, the other side is surely terrible.  Unless the vice be versa?  That's not to take a position on any position but this: God seems to have it in mind that people can be different, even opposed, yet faithful.  I should note that Jesus tells Martha that her sister was doing what was right.  But I'm not inclined to think that he was condemning her concern for hospitality so much as her anxiety.

Structure-wise, the poem is chiastic, I think.  The two first lines set up a contrast, which the third line resolves.  The fourth line likewise resolves the contrast which comes in lines five and six.

It's really just a sweet poem that might be tucked away as a reminder for acceptable difference in quotidian life.

Emily Dickinson - Poem Repertoire vol. 4

Emily Dickinson 

They say that "Time assuages" -
Time never did assuage -
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age - 

Time is a Test of Trouble -
But not a Remedy -
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady -

"Time heals all wounds," say amateur therapists who lack enough silver in their coinage to buy some better sense.  Or if they don't go in for aphorisms they might say something more along the lines of, "In the wake of this murderous rampage that left scores of children dead, we need a time of healing" as if a certain collection of weeks or months, maybe salted with some preferred legislation or a nice speech, would remove the holes from the bodies and undo the harm that was done.

Nonsense, says Dickinson.  A real hurt does not heal from time.  Time is no physician, and certainly not the Great Physician.  Instead, time is a test.  If its ministrations work, it isn't by virtue of actual efficacy, but proof that the wound was no wound at all.  Further, "an actual suffering" will get worse over time.

All of this leads to the thought that over time we become bearers of suffering.  It's not a pretty thought.  I've seen it elsewhere in literature, in Trollope's Lily Dale.  And in her case, the suffering seemed as much the result of her determination to admit no possible remedy.  "It is my wound and nothing can be done!"  What of love that nurtured after a true love has passed away?  Can love heal the wounds left by love?  And if so, does that invalidate the love that came first?

And what of Christ?  I wholeheartedly agree with Dickinson that Time is no healer - being deaf and mute. But cannot Christ make all things new?  "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

Don't trust time to do much good, but trust that within time the Christ who was raised from the dead can also heal a real wound.  And him doing so in no way implies that it wasn't a wound to begin with.

Edwin Arlington Robinson - Poem Repertoire vol. 3

Souvenir by Edwin Arlington Robinson 

A vanished house that for an hour I knew
By some forgotten chance when I was young
Had once a glimmering window overhung
With honeysuckle wet with evening dew,
Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung
Ferociously; and over me, among
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew. 

Somewhere within there were dim presences,
Of days that hovered and of years gone by.
I waited, and between their silences
There was an evanescent faded noise;
And though a child, I knew it was the voice
Of one whose occupation was to die.

As a boy I often went with my mother when she visited the elderly.  There was a window of time when my older siblings were in school and my younger sister had yet to be born.  I suppose this period of time was quite short, a couple of years at most, but in my memories it seems like a whole era of my life.  This poem resonates with that time.  I remember the faint smell of urine, the old furniture (was it a yellowed couch on the southern wall, not plush, but more like an extended chair?  As I sat, the kitchen was off to the left, but I didn't go there.  I remember the narrow staircase up to the bathroom; I remember the treats that were laid out that were well-intended, but somehow off the mark.  I didn't really understand it.  I didn't really like it.

Here we have an adult who looks back at a memory.  There is much to the memory that is blurred: the house is vanished, the chance is forgotten, the presences were dim, and the voice was evanescent.  At the same time, the memory is concrete: in the glimmering window there is wet honeysuckle, and it is wet from evening dew.  There are tall dusky dahlias along the pathway.  The hydrangeas were aggressive and ferocious.  And there was a particular bat who flew overhead.  Granted, the bat was blurry, but perhaps from motion, not memory.

Outside, there is much that captures the child's interest.  The description in the first section suggests that his imagination was running as he accompanied his parents (?) to this house.  The child knew nothing of death and wasn't concerned with it.  What mattered was the garden, the plants.  He wasn't brought in, but left outside to occupy himself.  It was already late, late enough for dew to be forming, for a bat to be flying.  Perhaps it's a little strange that a child would be left outside past twilight.

The visit inside with the adults goes on.  The child ceases to play and imagine and begins to wait.  There is silence inside, punctuated by a voice.  And this voice, the child understands, is not like other voices.  It is evanescent - weak, vanishing, frail.  It is not the voice of one who will go on living, but the voice of one whose concern it is to die.

The life of this other, whether grandparent or some other, signifies so very little in the experience of the child. How can the child know that this voice belongs to one who was once young?  That this voice belonged to one who had had other occupations - even wandering in twilight gardens perhaps.

It is a wistful poem, about a child from the eyes of an adult whose view has expanded.  No doubt the voice that was only peripheral is now understood as the point of the whole experience.  The child had been brought there not to take in the garden, but because the person, whose frail voice was heard through the window, was important.  This person had dignity.  And this child, now an adult, recognizes this dignity in remembering.

The Folly of a Young Man's Tongue

My father said,
When I was young,
To mind my manners,
Hold my tongue.
But I was proud
And talked a yard
For every foot
Of sense I had.