David's Portrait

Here, in another one of my mother Olga's scanned slides, 

beloved family friend Burns Hansen takes a portrait of my brother, David. 

(This is a link to the my poem with my love for Burns in it.)

Burns and Evelynn have already moved back West, but sometimes 

he comes back to GE in Schenectady on business and visits us. 

This picture was taken at the white corner of the house on The Farm.

If the yellow is forsythia, it is springtime. David was born in 1944, so

this would date about the mid-fifties. I remember well

those all-purpose, adjustable military style belts the boys wore.

Answer the Phone

Before telephones the dead sent letters

sheets of tissue so thin

a hand passed through them like smoke.

They dried the tongue like warm red wine,

glittered our dreams into fragments.

Now the dead use the phone like everyone else;

they ring once and wait. We press the receiver

to our ears, hear the long static hum,

faint clicks and breaths,

explanations and descriptions. They want one

thing only, to tell us what they saw

when one light went out

and another turned on. We want to

show them the pictures we've taken

since they left us: that cathedral in central Europe;

the jellyfish at a California aquarium.

We forget what we need to tell the dead

as we rush too quickly from sleep.

Their letters stopped coming years ago.

We wait by the phone.

Erica Goss

Wild Place; poems by Erica Goss 

Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky, 2012, page 4.

Looking at these slides to find those I want to share on this blog has made me think of the dead more often. Burns has been gone for quite some time. I would phone him if I could! His wife, Evelynn, told me that he saved the copy of my poem I had sent him (see link above) in a small box of his treasured things. I just talked to David yesterday!

Erica Goss is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, near my home in California. I think this is her first book, but she has won many awards and published poems in many different places. I have been wondering: If I had written this poem, would I have tried to have it all, or mostly, in couplets? What do you think??

Earthbound Farm$ $urpri$e!

 It started out as a pretty ordinarily dull day with a visit to the excellent Dr. Williams 

to take out the single tiny stitch from S's cataract operation one week ago. 

Then it got better with a visit to Baja Fresh for a cheese quesadilla  

and a Grilled Shrimp Chile Lime Salad. And some Guacamole, of course.

Just before we got home, S suggested we make an unscheduled stop 

at Albertson's for some sourdough bread.

The huge display of hanging flower baskets on the way in was irresistible, 

but I did resist. Inside the store, I passed the rows of luxury items and selected 

cheese balls, avocados, big ripe tomatoes, raspberries in a tiny plastic box, corn on the cob, 

vegetable sushi, cashews. I didn't buy everything I noticed; I did curb myself some. 

Then I asked the price ($24.95) and went back outside and selected a huge hanging basket.

Meanwhile, S was on one of those riding carts getting orange juice and soy milk 

and his favorite sliced havarti cheese. Back inside, when I still couldn't find him 

I noticed a pot of red and yellow tulips in bloom. While I was fitting them into my basket,

another shopper asked me what this white-flowered plant was. 

The tag read Starburst Hydrangea. 

I had never seen one and bought it. Very pretty.

Just as we got to the checkstand, a young woman and a smiling fellow intercepted us

and told us that we had been selected for an Earthbound Farms promotion:

What would we think, they asked, if we said we would like to pay for your groceries?

We would be slightly embarrassed, but we would let them. 

They added their Earthbound Farms Spring Mix  and Baby Spinach, 

and the nice reusable shopping bag that appears in the photo above 

with the Starburst Hydrangea and the Spring Mix.

The bill was a little over $165. Some sourdough bread stop!

I am still a little embarrassed, but smiling.

I promised I'd put them on Facebook!

EarthBound Farms is an organic outfit; I wish we had 

more of these. And, they have made a friend for life

And here is the Starburst Hydrangea. looking from above.

Tomorrow I'll probably show you the tulips.

Haying

I have absolutely no memory of driving this tractor! But there I am in my favorite plaid shirt. 

Mom is taking the picture; that's her shadow in the lower left. Dad is in front of the car. 

Susan stands tall on top of the bales and Richard is there, too. Marjory is walking toward Mom 

in a little red sweater. Robert, Richard and John are on the trailer of hay behind the car. 

We are all together in the golden past.

GETTING CLOSE TO HAYING

On an early summer's day the clover blossoms
silently received the bumblebee on a farewell party.
It is done with dignity
and the bumblebee says thank you for everything that has passed.

Across fields waiting for their moment
the melodious voices of children follow the wind
as when a psalm is sung.

The cuckoo is now silent,
It was heard further and further away each day.
Towards the end it sounded like a church bell.

Harry Martinson
Translated by Lars Nordstrom

The Procession of Memories; selected poems 1929-1945,
Wordcraft of Oregon, 2009, page 111.

In my quest for more Swedish poetry because I love Transtromer so much, I found Harry Martinson.
He is recommended by Robert Bly and was the recipient of a shared Nobel Prize (with Eyvind Johnson)  in 1974. This volume contains previously untranslated poems. You will be delighted to learn that the Swedish for "church bell" is kyrkklocka!"

Last night the Internet was broken; this is a makeup post.

The Footsteps of Morning

Thinking about dawn tonight; I have many more photos of sunsets because I usually sleep late.

This was years ago as the sun come up over Lake Michigan at the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

I need to check out the dawn here at the Little Union Canal.

I have been looking again into Poet's Choice; poems for everyday life, 

selected and annotated by Robert Hass, Ecco, 1998.

Which led me to the transcriptions by Frances Densmore of Chippewa songs.

This one on page 100 is a current favorite.

MAGPIE SONG

The magpie! The magpie! Here underneath

in the white of his wings are the footsteps of morning.

It dawns! It dawns!

Frances Densmore also made notations of the music of these Native American songs. 

I wish I could hear them.

April Sun on Young Fig Leaves

I have been wondering about my garden in the drought, since I am not there to see

the new leaves of the fig in springtime. This is how they were last April in bright sunlight.

Spring

The year's first poem done,
with smug self confidence
a haikai poet.

Longer has become the daytime;
a pheasant is fluttering
down onto the bridge.

Buson
The haiku post Buson also wrote longer poems. I don't know the source of this one or the translator.
But tonight it pleases me. Instead of a pheasant, I had a quail on the porch railing today. The grasses and the birds are waking up and the iris are budding beside the Little Union Canal.

In another autumn

My brother Robert and my sister, Marjory gather autumn leaves in the mid-1950s 

at The Farm, on one of my mother's slides. We always enjoyed the bright autumn leaves. 

When we lived in Scotia, I remember my mother melting blocks of paraffin 

in a skillet and dipping in the brightest leaves to coat them with wax. 

Then Mom made arrangements with the orange bittersweet berries 

that grew beside the porch. How well I remember these striped T-shirts

that passed down from one brother to another. 

And how difficult it was to cut little blonde bangs as straight as this.

drawing near them

a sudden loneliness...

autumn leaves

Issa

translated by David Lanoue

at haikuguy.com/issa

Each Minute

                                                  photo by Olga Butler Hopper

We are at The Farm in Rexford. I am packing to leave New York State 

and attend the University of Arizona, a two-day train-ride away. 

In the heat of an August afternoon in 1953, my littlest sister is trying to figure things out. 

The striped suitcase in the foreground was my mother's and has her initials O.B. on it; 

I will never give it back, My outfit is a "squaw skirt," 

 (Note:apparently, one can still get squaw skirts on Etsy!)

 three tiers of gathers on a waistband,

 and a blouse I made to wear with it of black fabric 

and some of the dark-pink-flowered skirt fabric with a black ground.

I am wearing the first prescription sunglasses I ever owned;

my mother knew I would need them in Arizona.

I think we have just been outside for Mom to photograph me in this outfit;

she shot three rolls of film, because, she said, "You will never be the same." 

Living

The fire in leaf and grass

so green it seems

each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves

shivering in the sun,

each day the last day.

A red salamander

so cold and so

easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet

and long tail. I hold 

my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

Denise Levertov  (1923-1997)

A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, 

Harcourt, 1996, page 24.

This is a wonderful anthology; I cannot recommend it too highly!