Anybody who thinks a
person writes poetry
so he can get up on a
small stage and read it
might just rethink that
motive. Dylan Thomas
hated it and so did
Bukowski.
It made them both throw
up beforehand.
There are times, however,
that a poet soars.
That’s something to be
sure,
although I’m not sure
what—
wings of a pterodactyl
perhaps.
It’s like sex. It ends, a
wave thins
up the sand to a hiss
slides back, popping,
little holes
appearing in the sand behind
it,
which is like people
clapping.
That’s when it’s good.
But there are little
crabs in those holes
that would delicately
pick out your gelatinous
eyes like sushi
if they had a chance,
once you’re washed up.
Pretty much only your
friends come to poetry readings
at my age they’re
starting to ask,
“Think you could pick me
up?” They don’t drive at night
anymore and many are too
old
to make it out of the
house.
They tell me to “break a
leg”,
blow “them” away
and they mean it. But,
frankly, it’s an obsolete concept.
Poetry was never a race.
So why do I write poetry?
I can’t say exactly. It
starts like this:
I don’t know what to do
with myself
I’m mulling over my
practical concerns
money, dangling
relationships, what I have to do around here
like that huge crack in
the stucco
on the side of the house
where the carpenter ants
are crawling in an out
like miniature North
Korean military vehicles
at the DMZ in Panmunjam.
But I don’t want to go
Hills Flat and get what it’ll take
to fix the crack, break
out tools
deal with that. When I
finally get to it
I know I’ll feel better.
I will have done something
before it rains. But I’d
rather not get into it now.
I’m putting something
essential off, like a teenager.
I decide to stall awhile
by walking down the driveway
with a cup of coffee
down to the little field
I call our meadow
sit on one of the three
oak stumps I staged there
at the edge of the
fire-pit, which is just a circle of river stones
I lugged up from my swims.
It’s fall,
leaves layered everywhere
marvelous shapes,
piercing points, shadows
stretching a fine net for
a stray ego.
If my poems look half so
beautiful when I die
I’d be happy.
Through the branches,
sunlight pools
in odd shapes—miniature
amoebas
on the driveway, leaves
continually weaving
a tapestry of
decay.
I feel very lucky to see
these things
especially given all the
wars
drudgery and illness in
the world.
There’s a core of peace
between me and the world
I feel bound to
celebrate.
But the world is the
world. “It’s the law of the jungle,”
as my mother would say,
without rancor.
I miss our cat, for
example,
killed by a family of
foxes
no doubt torn to pieces
by snapping teeth.
She used to accompany me
on these morning walks.
Young and adventurous,
feisty, eager and ready to go.
She lacked the wisdom of
our previous cat,
who made it to sixteen.
It took cancer to bring her down.
This cat, Habbebe,
(Arabic for belovéd)
was like a head-strong
teenage girl.
The foxes got her before
she was three.
We should have gotten her
in before dark
but we indulged her,
seeing she was so happy to be out.
Our sentimentality may
have cost her her life.
Mornings like this, as I
mentioned, she’d follow me.
It was our time together.
I’d sit down
on the pavement, about
halfway down, in the sun.
She liked that. It took
her a long time to trust me.
She’d been bounced
around—two foster homes.
She was a Norwegian
Forest cat, long and black
splotched orange and
white, with green glaring eyes.
She didn’t take to
incarceration. She smoldered in her cage
in the shelter, and
disturbed the attendants
by glaring at them like
an owl. She was pissed. She hissed.
She liked to climb trees,
as forest cats are known to do.
When we first got her she
didn’t talk, people were beneath her
because of the nutty lady
who had her last. But started
to talk a lot with us,
after awhile.
The woman threw her in
the car and took her back.
She came through the door
shrieking
“Get this damn cat off my
head!” She didn’t understand
the cat was trying to get
her to communicate.
Plus she should’ve put
the cat in a carrier.
What started our
communion was once
I sat down on the
driveway with my coffee
and she disappeared
behind me. Then
sensing I’d spaced
out,
some detail or other,
robins flitting
in the pyracantha,
berries shining,
she leaped up my back,
posed regally
on my shoulders in a
stately manner,
swirled her tail around
my balding head
like a burlesque dancer’s
feather boa.
It became a game. I’d sit
down on purpose.
She used her claws very
deliberately—
skillfully enough to just
catch the weave of my sweatshirt
but not deep enough to
catch my skin. Animals are very aware
and very deliberate. It’s
because they’re never far from death
I think, whereas we’re so
often lost in ourselves.
Then I’d reach up and
scratch her head,
and she’d start to purr,
which made both of us feel good.
Writing poetry may be a
form of purring.
As the sun moved, I’d get
up
make it down to the
stump.
The cat would jump up on
one stump
leaving a third one
between us, keeping
her distance— suddenly
very independent.
The sun made the silvery
wood gleam.
The gray stump was a
Mandala of tree rings
the cracks in it very
interesting, earthquake faults
or black fissures of
lightning.
It was a world in itself.
I enjoyed looking at it,
the seasoned gray sheen
conveyed something
comforting, promising
a kind of justice, it was
so old, even venerable
the hide of an elephant.
I don’t have words to
tell you
how beautiful it was,
left out in the weather
changing in its own time.
I’d like to write a poem about it
but I can’t just now. I
don’t have the energy.
I took a picture of it,
though,
with my i-phone. But
that’s the way
poetry sometimes gets
started.
Trouble is, a piece of
paper is a tombstone.
My voice has little use
for it.
As Celine says, If
you’re not rich
you have to appear
useful.
To get up on a stage and
read something
that might or might not
catch the feeling that stump
caused in me, is to take
a weird chance. It’s certainly
not about “making it”,
career-wise, in any way.
That’s long-gone. And I
can’t say I write to make a living.
But somehow I feel I’ve
been given something
and feel obliged to do
something with it.
What have I been given?
Just a feeling
looking at a weathered
stump. I feel charged
with the responsibility
of conveying the pattern and color
of an old stump. In my
vanity
I imagine it’s a message
from the universe
meant for me but for me
to pass on.
It makes me want to sing.
But I can’t sing
so I did this, a sort of
journal entry.
If I were a cave man, I’d
dip my hand in mud
slap it on the wall of an
underwater cave
to encourage
kindergartners
to take their hands
seriously.
When I think about this
poem
I realize it should just
be a few lines.
Something like:
the stump
left out, changing color
in its own time
a mandala of growth rings
fractured by earthquakes
its soft gleam
soothing, old and
venerable
as the hide of an
elephant
promises the deep comfort
of justice
our deepest sensual
pleasure
that everybody in the
world
is longing for
All that I am say-ing
is give peace a chance
I invite you to help me
make a ring of song
around the world
