Pandora's Jar

 

only that residue

of hope left in the jar,

shimmer of cinnamon

rumor of cobalt blue

sheen of annointing oil

answering her

unquenchable asking

 

 

 

image:  Odilon Redon, Pandora

In the Abstract

 

In the Abstract

And now,

the Sumatran tiger.

Care

in the sanctity 

of your own home.

The clarity 

of natural waters,

unblemished stone.

Not too much,

really,

to ask for.

The slightest

corner of my heart.

Things going, gone,

so in the abstract

taking up no space

at all.

image:  Tony Kershaw, via SWNS (South West News Service/Media Group, UK)

Birthdays

 

Celebrating this lifetime/lifeline of birthdays—

 

I perfectly remember still the June I turned twenty

between Corinth and Ephesus, 

my grandmother’s pearls running off me when 

the string broke on the ferry between land and land; 

sitting disconsolate when landed back in Athens

in the temple dedicated to the crippled god—

wanting not only all of Greece, but love. 

 

At twenty-five you wake early, thinking.

You make a pot of strong black coffee,

open wide the back door and look out:

it has been raining, but for now it's clear.

 

Though it will rain again, maybe 

this afternoon, for now the drops

like a fine bracelet of diamonds circle

the slender white arm of the birch.

 

At twenty-five the world doesn’t confuse you

anymore, its many-faceted array of promises

as bright and false as the rhinestones

you gave your mother when you were just six.

 

The world no longer frightens you—

that dark glare of water you couldn't cross.

You drive into it now headlong, throwing

bright wings of water up to either side.

 

Now you have plumbed its depths, and

calculated its circumference; and to the inch

you know the worst the world can do.

 

The coffee's bitter.  Close the door, can’t you,

somebody says—don’t let all of that cold air in.

But you are twenty-five,

and it won’t rain again now for a day or two.

 

As you hold a finger up to test the wind,

a rusty tigermoth lights on it, in passing.

 

And, being twenty-five, it is enough for now.

                           ___

 

Crippled, the god was slow.  Love wasn't to be had until the turning of another year:  fifty.  Lunch in a rustic taverna in Crete at the foot of a Turkish aqueduct, its arched face full of nesting ravens.  Just a few miles from Knossos through the sunburnt hills, sumac grown thick along the country road.  Discovering not Theseus this time, the labyrinth, the minotaur, the liberating thread of Ariadne—yet that too, all of the ancient world, everything we shared, miraculously, from those continents away.

                           ___

 

And in between, at forty-five, the birthday picnic with coworkers, friends. 

 

Sitting out one lingering evening under the cork oaks 

in the garden of Rodin sculptures, 

with the small children and black lab playing 

around Orpheus and the fallen caryatids. 

When it got dark, lighting candles in oyster shells

and opening a bottle of apple brandy from Normandy.

A parting too from good friends leaving the Bay Area—

one off to live in Mexico City, working with 

a famous old writer and watching a camera obscura

being built somewhere close to the Zócolo,

grinding spices for curries, he'll write (and later too,

another time, across the Pacific in Maui while I 

am visiting the Temple on the Hill of the Whale

on the island across the Alenuihaha Channel— 

translated as great billows smashing);

the other to Pittsburgh, whose farmers’ market 

has two farmers, both of them named Pete.

                           ___

 

At sixty-nine you wake at first light

or are lying wakeful already, dreams scattered 

long since.

 

The dark roast coffee

in the mug found in a shop window 

in Vieux-Montréal during a trip one August 

to sell books to sociologists 

(staying by chance in the hotel where 

John and Yoko sang "Give Peace a Chance" 

while famously in bed) is a commute of sorts, 

 

a mildly sloping bridge to wakefulness from sleep, 

an arbitration with the day to come; birds readying 

also in the gnarly old shelter of the near 

Monterey pine for their excited morning augury, 

a kerfuffle of song.

 

The sun is out, or not, imperfectly; the gray 

might clear this afternoon, or when June gloom 

is gone.  But it is day again, and all the days 

plaited together like a laurel wreath, 

evergreen leaves prized by the ancient Greeks, circle 

my head in lieu of dreams, declaring a small triumph—

once again!—over the primal dark.

 

Dark, though, has started crowding in betimes, 

the jagged shards of everything you've loved 

catching the light, the rough beast foretold by the poet 

now already born, howling into the sterile corridors.  

Not St. Vincent where you were born, not there—

that hospital was in another place and time—

 

close to the cathedral, only a little ways from the river

where seven wooden archangels stand watch.

Carved from old salvaged cottonwoods, painted with 

red and yellow ochres, walnut shells.  In spite of their 

vigilance, though, dangers crowd in from every side.  

 

Hatred so pure you could never have reckoned on 

its putting down taproots, those brambles quickly 

overrunning the bright world.  Invasive and malign as

Himalayan blackberry (both name and origin 

confused).  Sharper than glass shards, and impervious 

to light, except the wildfires it fuels.

 

You find a recipe for chicken with lemon, 

roasted potatoes, peas.  Vesuvio, it's called—

appropriate, for the volcanos 

all erupting now.  Etna and Kilauea and the one 

in Guatemala you hadn't heard of before.  

Oregano, unsalted butter—add those to 

the roasting pan, and kosher salt.  Ingredients

like counsel out of dreams.  

A lifetime of such dreaming, of defying this 

 

unwelcome wakefulness.  And yet it comes, 

mornings' eye-opening unrest, despite coffee and 

memories and birds.  You see the monasteries 

of Mt. Athos have been shaken 

by earthquakes, one of the domes cracked like the bell 

which it's said light gets in.  That's how it goes.  

One thing, and then another, on and on.  The knell.

 

(The contemplative archangel, Sachiel, fallen 

and broken in a storm, waiting for the santero

to revive him, to somehow make things right.

 

For you are sixty-nine,

and the collared Eurasian doves call endlessly to you

from tangled branches or the roof, message not clear

and maybe not peaceful, really, as doves are meant 

to be, but something more prophetic.  Peace 

having no chance

 

despite the peace-bearing songwriters in that 

Montreal hotel—not anymore.  But you study 

the news, the starcharts and nautical charts, 

fixing with kintsugi and little kindnesses 

those cracks (intensifying), 

fixing any way you can another day, and another.

 

And, being sixty-nine, not twenty-five ever again, 

let alone born today beside the river there, 

the humble river with its waterbirch and bridge 

to the print shop or cider press, when apples 

and pears still grew between river and  acequia—

fixing quietly is all that you can do.  

 

Take what's left in both hands, coaxing 

the glass shards out and taking pains to gather 

all the light you can 

from them.  Make of the leavings, somehow, 

something altogether fine.  

 

The mug's lip chipped over the years, maybe, 

but not where your lips touch.  

Bearing witness to the remaining light.

                                    ___

 

At seventy,

you're all these things—and more.

You are the haiku and the epic poetry, 

the Shakespeare sonnets beautifully decrying time.

 

The dark-hearted water 

scares you again—

it's gone so still.

It's so terribly deep.

But listen closely:  

frogs make quiet music 

with the water,

as they did for Basho too.

 

And see how the moon 

slips into it, silvery, 

besides. Aqueous, luminous,

adaptive as the luna moth—

that dull gray lunar crust

transformed in a heartbeat

into arpeggios of light.

 

At seventy, let me be light. 

Let me be a fleet flight of notes, 

rising, opening out and out.

 

Calm as the last awakening

in Donne's sermon,

"where there shall be 

no cloud nor sun, 

no darkness nor dazzling, 

but one equal light, 

no noise nor silence, 

but one equal music, 

no fears nor hopes, 

but one equal possession . . ."

 

This world.  

This convoluted poetry.

image:  pexels-beytlik-6515979.jpg

Wanting the Sky to Be the Limit

 

Wanting the Sky to Be the Limit

 

I'm troubled today

walking through the redwoods after rain,

finding them secretive and deep,

keeping the horizon from view

as if there isn't one at all, or anything beyond.

Instead I'm wanting

a graceful short flight of sunlit stairs 

on some English or European street,

a bookshop halfway down the block,

and outside the museum a café for sitting 

over an array of bright-colored postcards,

where I can linger, take the possibilities all in 

slowly, with limitless contemplation.

To drink deeply, rapturously,

of what I know I love.

Trees, yes, always—but I'm so greedy 

for the world out there in the painters' sunlight.

 

image:  Lucy Willis

 

Eagle Hunters

 

Eagle Hunters

 

The photos of the Mongolian eagle hunters

for a dizzy moment throw me for a loop—

that somebody a year or two behind me back in school 

who I scarcely noticed should be living there now

under the sacred mountain ranges and eternal snows,

in spring filming the Apricot Blossom Festival

in ancient orchards, in the Himalayan valley villages

out of time and the world—traditional music and 

storytelling by elders, mask dances, blessings by 

     the monks 

from ancient monasteries in a zephyr of prayer flags. 

 

In contrast, I meditate on the single apricot tree

outside my childhood bedroom window—

guardian, shade-giver, wellspring of jam,

and photograph a pair of goldfinches in our feeder,

close-ups, the background blurred.

I think I might reread The Snow Leopard, 

or find the copy of Death in Kashmir somewhere

on my bookshelves, among the many other

travels I don't take, safe in my well-mapped world.

My favorite teacher in high school admonished

on a quarterly report:  

     she's already decided how she's going to be.

 

Mountains too close, too high and stern, unsettle me.  

And being on them, above the tree line, exposed,

without that kindly childhood apricot to shade 

and shelter me, back in the Santa Fe garden confines.

So why envy the lives others make for themselves

up high?  Why am I tempted, as I was one late winter

by Roman archaeology in the high Alps—beyond 

my reach, or desires, I'd thought, until I was there 

standing in those new unwieldy hiking boots 

looking down like a doubtful god at the slight, tangled 

thread of road leading to a far village far below.

 

The world I love best is much quieter, closer to earth.

Hawks come here to me from time to time, if not 

Golden Eagles, their hawk feathers crosshatched 

with ancient heiroglyphs, messages from 

that other world assuring me I'm just where I belong,

my chosen realm no lesser than that exalted other.

Peripheral longing aside, gauzy pipe dreams, 

     I'd after all 

decided long ago already what I meant always to be.

images:  Selena Travel,

               Set My Trip

 

Haiku: Bullfrogs

 

Tonight, with headlamps,

neighbors out counting bullfrogs.

Joyful spring chorus!

Frogs are good haiku material, of course, hearkening back to Bashō's famous creation!

(my favorite translation, I think, is the simplest—

The old pond

A frog leaps in.

Sound of the water.

image:  American Bullfrog, In Defense of Animals

             (Shutterstock)

 

Haiku Day

 

fragilities and 

incongruities of Spring!

prudence overturned,

 

Turkish rose, blush pink

undoing the resolve of

even this stone saint

 

images:  Christie Cochrell, Cycladic Figurine, St. Jerome, flowers

 

Writing Spaces: Days Written in Flowers

 

Days written in flowers—

optimism, fragility,

constancy, consolation,

bashfulness,

wisdom and even hope—

fingers stained 

with the bright-colored ink

of all they want to say

before it is too late,

the urgent messages

hands cup, consult, 

the oracles 

of filament, stamen, petal

flaring like Pythia's flame

in far Delphi.  Visited 

once, and ever held within.

 

 

(I liked to learn that those seeking the counsel of Apollo would offer laurel branches, money, and a black ram.)

 

 

 

image:  Old-fashioned Ladies and Gentlemen Too

Translations

 

I'm reading blackberries, translating them to clafoutis.

It is the day after the day of translations, the letters 

and their combinations played like chesspieces 

across the indeterminable board, vast and extraordinary

as the famous piazza where life itself has often been

played out, between the great Basilica and the timeless cafés,

where erstwhile spies, or lovers lost or not yet happened on,

or in the old days Mozart, Byron, Casanova, men with 

one of those "ways with words," and in that sea of chairs

and little tables too contessas, students of art history, sopranos

all sit whiling away hours, watching others wait and watch, 

sip cioccolata in tazza, caffè del Doge, un calice di Champagne

—or a bottle in its entirety, translated in a sorcerous instant

to frosted silver, moonrise, glass.  One of the nocturnes 

of the magician of tones famous for eking light from night. 

 

 

 

image:  James Whistler, Nocturne:  Blue and Gold, St. Mark's, Venice

September Picnic at DeLaveaga

 

September Picnic at DeLaveaga

 

Observing our unendingly exhausted souls,

I'm grateful all the same to have our sink unclogged

(the plumber like a Scotsman we have come to know

who plants a kindergarten of baby redwoods, 

builds things, voice like a dram of finest single malt, 

Laphroig once shared beside the river 

all awash with city lights).  Grateful to have one more 

(if only one—an ache of absence at the other end) 

incredible rendition of that metamorphic play, after 

another evening's consultation with the trees

and cloths narrating light on the table of sturdy, 

reassuring wood.  Lustrous cotton woven in France, 

underlying our summer salads, generously layered cake.  

And maybe as I write owls are gathering there,

above the stilling town, the stone blue ocean 

a marginal note with maybe a little sailboat or two, 

guileless as children's drawings (a few peaky pencil lines, 

a daub of white), as nothing else is anymore.  

Making a grocery list before we go:  "something like

twenty shrimp," fresh mint (which I somehow forget), 

feta, tomatoes still holding summer in them—

tasting of Greece, of the island we visited

where a long ago favorite book was set, about 

a kind of Prospero manipulating love and loss.  

Things we're all facing now, so I have my heart set

on that shrimp with summer tomatoes and oregano, 

another hour or two there among the watching trees, 

before the summer and the rest of it comes to an end.

image:  Christie Cochrell

 

A Nurturing Poem: Selecting Flowers

 

Selecting a single rose, 

soft apricot flushed pink, 

and then another, 

pink as pink can be,

as complement, soulmate.

And then a stem or two

of golden freesia, streaked 

as if with tawny tigers

or Marrakesh sun 

(wholly Berber at heart) 

complete with minarets,

the mellow growling of 

an august tenor saxophone.

 

Meditating, my heart 

comes to be set on that— 

a mound of Berbere on my palm,

that mixture of sultry spices

including chile powder, dusty red 

(like sun-baked earth, terracotta

weathered by time), coriander, 

nigella seeds, rue, ginger, fenugreek.

 

And I am brought back to myself

in being so entirely carried away.

 

 

 

image:  Christie Cochrell, Freesia

April Fools

 

This Month of Poetry and Fools

 

The Old French fol follows

as words do, dragging their metric feet,

from Latin’s follis, “bellows, windbag”—

becoming by extension (following

the logarithmic outward spiral

   of nautilus shells)

an empty-headed person, windbag—

so eventually the sort of fool I am.

 

Carrying with me,

everywhere I go, my bag of winds—

 

the eight winds I have learned

from dictionaries,

in the windmill where I sleep:

mestral, xalac, migjorn, and then 

the wind across the mountains,

coming from the north.

 

The winds found on that other island

years ago, while looking for temples, 

fish traps, the old sugar cane shipping port.

 

A sign along the road, lettered by hand, 

welcomed the winds of Kona to Kohala, 

across boundary crossings

kapu (quite forbidden) in ancient times.

 

And here?  The kitesurfers

carried by wind and waves,

by curls of eyebright silk.

That sure, that light!

 

Why not a bag of woodwinds, too?

 

Then I will be a holy fool,

wholly a fool, a fool of holes

if they can be

 

the holes in flutes, holes in

those lovely basset horns

akin by chance (the bas

of low-slung sheep, perhaps,

perhaps the Ouessant)

to amiable long-eared hounds.

 

 

The holes in

holy wooden cellos

through which

the light comes, curling, 

slow sea salt caramel.

 

The holes

breath enters 

and grace

courses from.

 

I am a fool indeed

for Mozart’s

sort of foolery.

 

And for the music

of the bells, i bronzi sacri

ringing changes, sounding 

stroke by stroke by stroke

the inspiriting call.

 

Back in the 15th century the meaning of windbag  

was “bellows for an organ,” and I follow on

into the church, up to the organ in the loft 

played by Puccini, who composed so many

divine operas about so many fools for love—

until his brothers stole the organ pipes

to sell to ironmongers for some cigarette money.  

 

Better an empty head, I say, to fill with daydreams

and the motley wares of spice-traders, word-tinkers, 

peddlers of extracts (vanilla, eucalyptus, bitter orange), 

elixers, pigments.  Cardamom tea, in a bone china cup.

Fragrances.  Tulip oil.  A small tube of crimson lake.

 

No book learning, no wisdom of the head.

Instead, these other miracles.  (From the Old French:  

objects of wonder.)  My object, to go on wondering.  

Wandering off, feet painted with henna.

 

And what do I remember of it all?

 

The color yellow symbolized joy for medieval Arabs.

Both frankincense and myrrh are aromatic resins,

derived from tree sap.  (Sap³:  a foolish person 

with an empty head, smelling of pine, smiling wonderingly.)

Fools rush in, we are told, where angels fear to tread.

 

And so sometimes I drag my feet, sometimes I rush,

fool speed ahead, often I fool around, fool to the gills

with this silly delight that comes of having no great purpose 

but to go on as I do—most happily in April, month of fools.

image:  Italian Old World Exploration Angel & Cherub Map by Paolo Forlani circa 1565