Saying goodbye to Michigan

I always take farewell pictures as we head out of town.

This was October 28, 2014.

I did not write the poem below, but only wish I had written it.


Summer pushes the scent out of the pines and soon, I find 
myself stumbling along the trail. At a creek I veer off the trail 
and uphill until I lie down on a great granite face. I wake up 
to the whooshing of a warm breeze through ferns. Nearby a 
coyote grooms himself, but we haven't seen each other yet.

John Brantingham          (Born circa 1970)

The Green of Sunset. Moon Tide Press, 2014.
Kindle location 442.

This book is presented as
a series of paragraphs like this one.
Brantingham calls them poems
and each one is complete in itself.
Each paragraph begins with a
fancy capital letter on the first word.
They make wonderfully tranquil short sips of reading.

Now your task is to write some of your own, based on your life and the things around you.
Try to keep it short and simple, yet clearly written.

Writing, not writing . . .

Often, when testing a new camera, ot getting out a camera to take it somewhere  

with the intent to take pictures, I take a shot like this to test or begin a newly formatted

storage card.  When working with the photo files, 
it makes it easy when a new sequence is begun.

I could delete them later, but by then they have become part of the record. . . 

This is one such picture, taken last April, when I was trying once again to organize 

the table or desk space so I can write, work on haiku or poetry 

and revisions and sketch or paint little watercolors.

I really have too many hobbies and it is probably not wise

to start to make plans about deep change this late at night,

but I was reminded by this post of the poet Molly Fisk,

(whose writings and Facebook posts are my current favorites)

that reassessments are still necessary, however much

one tries to avoid them. I've already got a lot

of things to do that will keep me from sketching tomorrow. . .

I haven't posted a link to someone else's blog before. 
This is a first for me. If you don't know Molly, it makes
a fine introduction to her thoughtfulness. And now to bed,
after a long day without any sketching and very little writing in it!
Here's to tomorrow! Click the link right below!

http://womensvoicesforchange.org/molly-fisk-2.htm

Keeping things simple

An afternoon photo from the Highway to Eagle, Idaho. I took this from the car

and then ran it through the app called Waterlogue, which, in this case, 

reduced it to essentials. I wold like to make a drawing with

about the same proportion of white to black lines to smudges of blue.

Here is a haiku from the person who first taught us about haiku:

In deepest winter

I only think about it--

a hometown visit

Kiyoko Tokutomi

Floating Dreams, edited by Garry Gay. 

Two Autumns Press, 2001, n.p.

If you haven't tried writing haiku, give yourself permission!

Cordelia Slough

This is another square iPhone photograph I took on the day before Thanksgiving.

When you take pictures with the iPhone, it records your location; 

you can find out later where you were, by looking at the information 

displayed on Google Maps in Picasa. 

It wouldn't be a great idea if one were a spy 

or trying to keep a secret romance secret. 

But I loved finding out later that this is Cordelia Slough 

in Northern California as viewed from Highway 680, looking east. 

Looks like it might be a good place to go birding during migration season. 

I was quite struck with the way the plumes of these grasses 

arranged themselves so gracefully and caught the light so beautifully.

And by the scattered little gray clouds.

FOR THE INAUGURATION 

OF WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, 1997 

Not having been asked to write the inaugural poem, 

even though I am from Arkansas, I will take what’s here, 

the birds at the feeder, not saving the world but only 

being it, each kind of bird taking up its career 

to fill out some this-or-that of creation on a small scale, 

like this poem nobody asked for and few will hear. 

Cold birds, eating extra for warmth, finely detailed 

to catch the sun. Ridged out in friction-gear,

 

they jerk from position to position, as if the eye’s 

first impressions have been caught before the brain 

smooths them out. The chickadee clamps a precise 

seed and tosses its shell, nothing amazing. 

To start up a fanfare would be to see it as specimen, 

to deflect one’s attention from the exact life performing 

its dip, crack, toss. The long beak of the wren 

is extended by a thin white stripe traced full-swing 

down the head, so the wren seems half beak. I need 

to get these lines, delicate as a Chinese painting. 

Any poem would quiver with delight, with the chickadee 

in it, or wren, but wouldn’t want to do anything 

about it. That’s the hard thing about writing a poem 

that’s supposed to inspire the country at a crucial time, 

that’s supposed to hammer like a woodpecker. No one 

could hear, with its hammering red, black, white! 

It doesn’t bode well for the quiet poem, or the insect 

inside the bark, or the old tree crumbling to dust 

inside itself while the public word tree holds it erect. 

Still, I think when the bleachers no longer rise august 

along Pennsylvania Avenue and the meandering ocean 

of confetti has been swept up, it is good to cross a bridge 

in your mind, to something earlier, oblivious to emotion, 

something like wrens going on inside the language.

Fleda Brown

Breathing In, Breathing Out, Anhinga Press, 2002, pages 57-58.

Perhaps this poem appealed to me partly because of all the current noise about a presidential election still more than a year in the future. I'm not saying that the choice of US President isn't important. But there needs to be some limit (like they have in many other places!) on the sheer length of time, energy, emotional energy and money and human resources of all kinds that are expended on this one thing when there are so many things that need careful attention and repair.

Your TASK might be to imagine being invited to deliver a poem for some important event, and interweave your thoughts about that event and its consequences into a poem with the natural happenings in the place where you find yourself living now. Fleda's birds are those same birds that visit my feeder in Emmet County, Michigan, but you may be doing your birding near Cordelia Slough, a tidal slough, where the steelhead swim upstream to spawn. Arranging your poem, like this one, into quatrains will add  to its necessary form and seriousness.

Oh, joy! I have recently discovered that Fleda has a blog, like this one! Here is the link to the post in which she discusses writing on demand as a useful technique to generate something you can work with to make a poem.

An Owl's Voice

Walking in Los Gatos, we pass 

a rack of sports bras 

in the open air.

Really? I say to myself. 

Has the world changed so much?

And I know that it has. . .

Out Back

Once I heard an owl

through a tunnel from the moon,

imagined it huge

in its eyes, floating down

from the woods toward the lake.

All things moved down,

the life of trees clawed

at the hill, roots rolled

downhill in rivulets

beneath the lantern.

Behind my back, the cottage

slid toward the water

like an ice cube melting.

"See the eyes of the owl,"

my grandmother said, holding

the lantern to the trees

where something stirred, but

even the eyes had closed

into the awful dark.

My grandmother stood lean

and erect, her hair already loose

for the night and waved down

her back like the real woman

in the fairy tale. She said

my name, which was also her

name, said it out at the night

to make me appear, and hold.

Fleda Brown Jackson

Fishing with Blood; poems by Fleda Brown Jackson, Purdue University Press, 1988, page 26.

My grandmother's names were later applied to my two sisters, and I was named for my mother's friend as a compromise choice. It seems like it would be nice to carry a slightly unusual name, like Fleda, forward for your grandmother.

When we are in Michigan, we often hear the voice of the Barred Owl, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-hoo-hoo. . . "

Glittering, like a brook

This was two years ago and in an Idaho January, 
and I won't see the like in San Jose this winter.

But we have turned on the heat. . .and perhaps it is time for a little Wordsworth. . .

Written in London, September, 1802

O Friend! I know not which way I must look

For comfort, being as I am, opprest,

To think that now our life is only drest

For show; mean handiwork of craftsman, cook

Or groom!---We must run glittering, like a brook

In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:

The wealthiest man among us is the best:

No grandeur now in nature or in book

Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,

This is idolatry, and these we adore:

Plain living and high thinking are no more:

The homely beauty of the good old cause

Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,

And pure religion breathing household laws.

William Wordsworth

John Brantingham, The Gift of Form; a Pocket Guide to Formal Poetry, 2nd edition, Spouthill Press, San Dimas CA, 2015, page 50.

And yes, it is a sonnet. Have you tried this form??? 
I discovered this book through my enthusiasm 
for the poetry of John Brantingham.

A Road in Winter

Apologies for missed posts. I got distracted by Thanksgiving travel and visiting. 

I notice that if I allow myself to skip even one day here, I find it difficult 

to decide when to return. The daily posting is what works for me--

I wish I could say the same about Daily Haiku or Daily Sketching practices. . .

This picture was taken on the drive, and then messed with on the iPhone. 

CENTRAL LAKE

Cottage

It is like opening the door

on my grandmother's bones.

By this time,

they have grown vulnerable

as a crust of snow,

almost a fiction, almost

easier than the actual

dust fallen from history

along the rocker, the mantle,

smelling like cedar.

This cottage is nothing

but split trees.

I have come to help

hang screens, scrub floors,

lay out on the dock,

pump water, throw

the rowboat into the lake.

Old motions rise out of us

like ghosts, light

enough to go on forever.

Our shadow selves come

dripping up the dock,

track sand across the floor,

play spin-the-bottle 

by the fire, trembling

to think whose mouth

the bottle points to, and

what way is best. No sooner

than I lean against the kiss,

the door cracks open

on those melting bones.

Fleda Brown Jackson        (1944-

Fishing With Blood, Purdue University Press, 1988, page 25.

Fleda Brown has been one of my favorite poets since I discovered her on a visit to Michigan several years ago, when she read in a bookstore in Petoskey. I am astonished to find that I have never featured one of her poems on this blog before. I think I could even remember which poem I used, but no, it seems she has never been here before; I will definitely fix that. 

Naturally, my thoughts turned to my own family when I was thinking about this poem. My parents left Arizona for Schenectady, New York (home of General Electric) when they founded our family in 1934. That means that my Arizona cousins were exposed to places and parts of the deep family history that I never knew about. 
Until I was almost fifteen, my Family of Origin (FOO) lived in the village of Scotia, across the Mohawk River from the GE plant. Then we made a mighty leap nine miles out of town to The Farm in 1950, which is the childhood spot of my younger brothers, and which I have talked about many times on this blog. Three years later, I went away to college and then married. My dad was transferred to Cleveland, Ohio in 1957, where we rejoined the family during my husband's graduate education. My youngest sibling, my sister Marjory Ann, was in the third grade and Shaker Heights is her childhood home. 
We never had a cabin, grandparents close enough to visit, or much visiting of relatives, although we did have three sets of cousins in New York State, although not in easy driving distance. All of this meant that we didn't have deep generations-long roots anywhere, no family cabins or lakes. So I am a little jealous when I read Fleda's poems, which are so excellent!