Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
While I don’t necessarily agree with the old feminist notion that the personal is inescapably political, I do try and write about politics mainly through a personal or literary lens. For the rare exceptions, see Rants.
so what if the labile moon
becomes your emblem
the half-shell upon which
your camino is served up
sew it into the lining of a coat
for use in emergencies
a subway token for the underworld
or an owl’s limitless eye
stirring up the birds
in your bedroom tree
its screen will sell you nothing
in glowing detail
it claims one egg
from every clutch
it brings out your darkest shadow
once a month
a found poem from the WHO
What is to give light must endure burning.
—Viktor Frankl
a white to yellow waxy solid
with a garlic-like odor
ignites spontaneously
until it is deprived of oxygen
used in grenades and artillery shells
to produce illumination
used as a rodenticide
and in fireworks
exposure to white phosphorus
can cause severe burns
affected areas of exposed skin
may appear yellowish
may show necrotic
full-thickness burns
death may occur from shock
hepatic or renal failure
central nervous system or myocardial damage
particles that have penetrated the skin
may start to burn when the wound is opened
white smoke may be seen
emanating from wounds
Our lives are an amnesty given us.
William Stafford
meanwhile the trees
are relaxing their grip
turning toward sleep
in a kind of hypnagogia
vivid and hallucinatory
against the gray
‘HUNTERS WEAR ORANGE
SO SHOULD YOU’
though the sign itself is yellow
as are many red maples
it’s the most primary
that school-bus color
meanwhile children play tag
outside an Amish school
in clothes so plain
it marks them as exotic
one of them rooted to the spot
scrunching up his face
a hole opens in the clouds
but not for any missiles
meanwhile skeletons
are unsettling in front yards
one pushes a lawnmower
towards several bony arms
like barked sticks
sprouting from manicured grass
in the distance some engine
i don’t notice until it stops
and i’m left with the sound
of my footsteps in fallen leaves
walking the empty bed
of a former coal country railroad
past pastures and high hayfields
up into the autumn hills
just below the clouds
a raven gives his voice box a shake
and out tumbles
something like a child’s cry
crossed with a horn
18 October 2023
a great grey worrybird
chirping in my ear
the key to a sugar maple high’s
downward spiral
or white lightning bugs
going on on on off
these are the winged agents
of an implacable cosmos
the scarlet manager
on vacation in the tropics
chickenhawkers online
flipping whispers
engorged hornbills blowing
for a credulous newscanter
shock-jawed death heads
emptying their payloads
till no unfallen
angels remain
and it’s back to the fire
and brimstone age
don’t look
you pillars of assault
What does it mean to look forward to something any more, in a world hurtling toward ecological collapse if not thermonuclear destruction? There was a bestseller back in the 1970s called Future Shock about the social and psychological damage incurred by modern society’s relentless drive toward progress… or so I imagine, having never actually read it. But it’s been on my mind lately despite that minor detail. I’ve also been thinking a lot about ignorance, both in epistemological and sociological terms, and not coming to any firm conclusions because I rarely do. That’s a poet thing, I suppose. Not knowing the future, though, seems essential to mere survival, let along progress, as the Rene Char quote in the sidebar here says: “How can we live without the unknown before us?”
This has been a horrific summer in many parts of North America, but here in central Pennsylvania we went from a severe spring drought to a very wet but relatively cool summer. Trees went from nearly dropping their leaves at the beginning of June to massive growth spurts in July—aided, I’m sure, by all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. And part of what kept things cool for us was the haze from burning forests elsewhere, as I’ve mentioned in various poems. But one of the pleasures of haiku is being liberated from having to explain things. They can just lurk in the background, mostly inaudible to the reader. Distant flashes that can mean whatever you want them to.
The fireflies, who had been scarce early on, had their highest numbers toward the end of the season. I shot this 30-second clip of them on my phone at dusk last week, just as the weather was turning from muggy to cool. Three nights ago the katydids started up; in a week or so, their throb will be all we hear. I look forward to weeks of good sleep.
the way boulders come together
to make a mountaintop trail
like a puzzle with missing pieces
into which a foot might fit
or a yellow birch root
or a plush runner of moss
it becomes a sanctuary
from the sicknesses borne by ticks
the rashes fevers and nausea
fatigue and brain fog
all the gordian knot holes
untied by death
just off-trail where the fallen
collapse into themselves
and an alarm call passes
from red squirrel to red squirrel
among conifers where the wind
can’t stay still
but the trail rejoins the road
there’s no escape
the bumblebee at my feet
has a fling with some wild basil
dance partners in a small hell
of roadside weeds
the ecological consequence
of a war of each against all
hermit thrushes conjure
a melancholy sweetness
in one key after another
a sob catches in my throat
overhead a vulture banks
on heat rising from the gravel
blue stone gouged out
of adjacent valleys
where the pits someday go back
to shallow seas
wave upon wave of blue ridges
vanishing into the haze
millipede under
the lip of my rock
curling into a question mark
as i stand to go
among mountain laurel blossoms
their sticky white cups
falling in the drought-stricken woods
with audible ticks
we’ve had a taste of rain
the moss is soft underfoot
the breeze carries the despairing
rage of a pair of birds
watching their children die
in the sunless tunnel of a snake
who is presumably savoring
her only meal of the week
knowledge of good and evil
extracts a terrible toll
while two trains
meet at a crossing
two broken chords disharmonizing
clear to high heaven
the way my two grandmothers
sometimes meet in me
the strident one
and the contemplative one
on bad air days when everyone
else also sees
this achingly beautiful planet
through a veil of ash
and i don’t know how it seems
to extraterrestrial visitors
but on earth the truth is bitter
it’s an acquired taste
Might it be possible to build a more peaceful world by studying other societies that are already peaceful? It seems logical, right?
I’m grateful to the Global Center for Nonkilling for undertaking the publication of my Dad’s last book, Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War, which we discovered in his papers after he died – even Mom hadn’t known about it! It’s his attempt to distill everything he’d learned from 25 years of deep immersion in the anthropological literature about peaceful societies around the world. It’s available as a free download (PDF) or a $15 paperback.
Is it possible to draw conclusions about the possibilities of building a more peaceful world by studying peaceful societies? In response, this book attempts to demonstrate that peaceful societies are inspiring and that they frequently shed light on difficult aspects of the paths to peacefulness; but there are no good, easy, or obvious answers. These groups of people provide inspiration about possibilities, however. The careful reader should be inspired to look for ways forward on many different issues related to building a more peaceful world by studying societies featured in this book: Lepchas, Ifaluk, Semai, Piaroa, Batek, Buid, Ladakh, Kadar, Chewong, Paliyan and others.
Failing to mention that he’d been working on this was typical of Dad, a deeply private person with an unusually low need for external validation. I’ve also been reflecting lately on his boundless faith in human beings to do the right thing – faith not always repaid, of course, but somehow still undaunted. I don’t think he ever really understood why his work documenting peaceful societies never got a whole lot of traction in activist circles, let alone with policy-makers. He just didn’t understand ethnocentrism and parochialism, and how much even supposedly open-minded people are really not interested in learning from non-Western societies, or even from groups like the Amish or Hutterites. But as I think Dad tries to suggest with his opening story of conversing about peacefulness at a local Audubon Society event, true open-mindedness is often more common among people who are not experts in a field and don’t already have their minds made up. Perhaps over time the message will spread. I’m cautiously optimistic that this publication will reach faith leaders, community organizers, and other grassroots leaders for whom alternatives to violence and competition seem less like an ideological challenge than an urgent, practical need.
For more on the book, here’s the Center’s press release. Please share widely. Thank you.
found in a flower
one beetle’s quota of sleep
longhorned to graze
in pastures of white
Clintonia or Solomon’s plume
and soon the black cohosh
looking up i spot a raccoon’s
wide-eyed mask
returning my gaze from the crotch
of a dying hemlock
every day has its dog
on Thursday for a long moment
i walked with a yearling bear
ahead of me on the trail
whose walk is it then
one can only wander
on the steep slope
above the railroad
i find a patch of jacks-in-the-pulpit
that the deer missed
a train hurtles past with blue
containers of stink
our daily delivery of refuse
from the megalopolis
i climb through century-old quarries
rocks shift underfoot
still settling
where mountain holly blooms
the breeze wafts ambrosia
from some reclusive azalea
i pause for breath
a vireo chirps in alarm
i stop for lunch
a hooded warbler scolds
down-trail a second-generation
mourning cloak butterfly
circles its dappled
patch of sun
territory folks defending
their stake in the sticks
while a distant cuckoo
chants her own name
gorging on tent caterpillars
and spotted lanternfly larvae
letting strangers
foster her offspring
this is the background
i can’t include in my shots
whenever i stop to snap photos
of new or bigger plants
how green is my mountain now
with so much CO2 in the air
my ankles brush against
the Aladdin lamps of pale corydalis
rising through the still-tender
hayscented ferns
and a mosquito sinks her rig
right through my hat
the sun may descend into haze
but the light’s still perfect
the mountain’s shadow stretching
across the farm valley to my east
i watch a manure spreader
ply the rows of a sterile field
growing the dead zone
out of mind in the Chesapeake
until the wind shifts
and i beat a retreat
back from my walk i turn
the garden with a fork
straining out noodley roots
of invasive brome
dry fists of dirt
crumble at the touch
At the rest pit I blogged my life out, one oodle per screen. It worked until it didn’t. Until the cows came home, because of course they do, and you toggle on poetry mode thinking to escape into some timeless present. With a present like this, who needs birthdays, amiright? The nerds have learned how to summon demons, and put them straight to work in the search engines that drive our data-mind economy. The demons will be parsing everything I’ve ever written. I write for them now. Though they possess neither organic life nor the capacity to feel, they are my most attentive readers.
flycatcher
in a snow squall
sitting it out