John Cooper Clarke - Beasley Street

Good heavens.  DD and I were just talking about Klaus Nomi, which got me thinking about a) Urgh! A Music War, and b) John Cooper Clarke. Slam poet/punk rocker.  What a riot!

Monday Poem

From Poets.org:


Spell for Encanto Creek
by Mark Jarman

Tall blades of tufted grasses, keep on flowing.
Towhees like good ideas, keep on flowing.   

Pooled water, black in shadow, green in sunshine,   
With wild olives bending down to drink,

Those figures coming daily to the bridge
To look at their two shadows on your surface,

Keep them returning, keep them coming back.

My Apple Tree

is the point of entry, rendezvous spot for bear, deer, and countless birds.

Today it was a doe, and our cat Minnie stood guard on the front porch, puffed up to scare the deer away.  Or at least keep it at bay.

 

Poetry Daily's Featured Poet: Kelli Russell Agodon

Poetry Daily's Featured Poet: Kelli Russell Agodon

And here is a poem from Kelli's book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, entitled:

If I Ever Mistake You For a Poem~

When Emily Dickinson has a party. . .

My friend and wonderful poet, Kelli Russell Agodon, just had her book, Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room, published by White Pine Press.  It just came out, and is a very beautiful production.

To celebration this occasion, Kelli threw a party, inviting us to come as our own interpretation of Emily, which was great in itself.  Spending the week wondering how I would pull this off. . . I had no idea!

On the day of the party, I was quite busy.  My daughter was here from college for the weekend, and I had booked a haircut appt. for her in Seattle at Vain.  And while that was happening, my son and his friend were at the Seattle Center for Brick Con - the Lego convention.  Having time on our hands before the hair appt., DD and I browsed the Doc Martin store, to get my first (finally, after all these years) pair of Docs.  And, I was able to get a spur-of-the-moment haircut at Vain, as well.  Bash was my hair stylist, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  Just our conversation about his travels was treat enough.

So, now armed with new hair and new boots, I knew what *my* Emily was all about.

The party was wonderful.  After a tasty dinner buffet, we were all given images of Emily to cut out and decorate to our liking, and here are some of our ways of saying "Emily."

Thank you, Kelli, for a wonderful evening.  And, check out her book, too!

Tuesday Poem

From Poets.org:

After Apple-Picking
by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and disappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear. My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep.

Psalm 91

This version of Psalm 91 was sent to me in the morning of the day the bear arrived at our house.

 *   *   *

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
        

                  Psalm 91
        

If you totally trust God,
          you're already in heaven.
You're inside God,
         and nobody can take you out.

God stands between you and what scares you,
         between you and all the dangers.
Like a mother bear,
         she's got your back,
something serious.
         Don't worry.
Spend no fear on the terrorist from afar
         or the cancer from within,
the fretting that wakes you in the night,
         or the bridge you know will collapse.

Yes, suffering closes in around you at times,
         and tragedy walks your neighborhood.
But this is not the title of your story,
         not your end.
Learn to see with clear eyes
         how love never loses.
When you live inside the Beloved,
         and the world is a house that is God,
evil can't define you, can't change you,
         can't find you at all.

The Creator of the world fills it
         with those who bear her love to you.
They hold you in their invisible arms,
         they secretly catch you when you fall.

So stand up to what overpowers,
         don't flinch from what scares you.
You will meet monsters, learn their names
         and tame them with love.

Love says, “Here. Come settle in my heart.
         Nothing can take you from me.
When your soul cries out, don't worry—
         I'm already holding you.
In your worst trouble, I'm with you.
         I set you free. I honor you.
I give you the joy of life lived deeply.
         You will shine in me forever.”


        
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net


        
        
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Word Association

1. Return ::  to a state of normalcy; to a child for a day
2. Alarms :: bread in the toaster, still in the toaster
3. State ::  Anxious
4. Picture frame ::  Shell waiting
5. Wreath ::  Blanket
6. Arrest ::  Those who run bear farms
7. Sincere ::    Well-wishers
8. Nathan ::  a friend of my son
9. Bag :: ball and chain; a necessity
10. Arched ::  A spine out of imprint

Word Association, from : Unconscious Mutterings

So, the words are provided weekly from the above site, and the reactions are mine.  Each week 10 words are given for you to "answer."

My Visitor, the Bear

Last Friday, as I was reaching for a cookbook to make a cake for a birthday, three days late, this visitor came to eat my apples.

Bear Thoughts

So, my themes for right now coincide, themes of grief and the Bear.  These next few posts will simply share different views of bears, and maybe of grief, too.

The first is a powerful poem by poet Galway Kinnell.  This was shared with me several years ago, and it sticks with me to this day.

The Bear

1
In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.

2
I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of the bears.

And when it has vanished
I move out on the bear tracks,
roaming in circles
until I come to the first, tentative, dark
splash on the earth.

And I set out
running, following the splashes
of blood wandering over the world.
At the cut, gashed resting places
I stop and rest,
at the crawl-marks
where he lay out on his belly
to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice
I lie out
dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.

3
On the third day I begin to starve,
at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would
at a turd sopped in blood,
and hesitate, and pick it up,
and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down,
and rise
and go on running.

4
On the seventh day,
living by now on bear blood alone,
I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled,
steamy hulk,
the heavy fur riffling in the wind.

I come up to him
and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes,
the dismayed
face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils
flared, catching
perhaps the first taint of me as he
died.

I hack
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep.

5
And dream
of lumbering flatfooted
over the tundra,
stabbed twice from within,
splattering a trail behind me,
splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,
no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,
which dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched leap,
which trudge, which groan.

6
Until one day I totter and fall --
fall on this
stomach that has tried so hard to keep up,
to digest the blood as it leaked in,
to break up
and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze
blows over me, blows off
the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood
and rotted stomach
and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear,

blows across
my sore, lolled tongue a song
or screech, until I think I must rise up
and dance. And I lie still.

7
I awaken I think. Marshlights
reappear, geese
come trailing again up the flyway.
In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear
lies, licking
lumps of smeared fur
and drizzly eyes into shapes
with her tongue. And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that
poetry, by which I lived?
from Body Rags, Galway Kinnell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).