TUESDAY POEM | Pond by T. Clear

Cup of Water, Cup of Sky  |  CB 2014

                     POND

                          We roamed beyond subdivisions

                          to this rain-brimming vacancy in some

                          city planner’s scheme. Not lovely,

                          but a version of heaven wet enough

                          to lure amorous toads whose eggs

                          we scooped into Folger’s cans.

                          Sloshed home, the rank goo

                          dripping a slithery trail.

                          We set them hatching in a fishbowl,

                          floated bits of boiled romaine.

                                     This is a common story:

                                     a patch of forest slashed in an afternoon,

                                     a clearcut of nettles, salal, bracken.

                                     Tiger lilies in their forgotten glade wrenched, ripped.

                                     Lots flagged, foundations poured.

                          And then into the worm barrel

                          out back, growing less finny each day.

                          Finally springing high enough

                          they leapt beyond borders

                          into what remained of murmuring woods,

                          the decrescendo of frogsong

                          becoming the planet’s

                          inexorable hum.

                          T. Clear

Pond was first published in Cascadia Review in their June 2013 issue, the first of five of T. Clear's poems to appear in the journal over the course of a week - each one finely, tautly-wrought; each one differently atmospheric, graceful and gritty. These are poems in which noise is hushed and the earth's subtler music is allowed to come through.

  

In Holy Week, T writes

                      All was new or new to me

this one line a distillation or container for her ever-alert poet's eye, ear and heart. She writes into and out of our always-in-motion, oft chaotic, ever-renewing world.  

Friend and fellow poet, Melissa Green, posted a comment on the Cascadia site that reiterates these qualities of T's sensibility and voice  - "How wonderful to have a week’s worth of your poems available all at once. Congratulations! So many of your themes are familiar–apple picking, fishing with your father (so moving! the gifts of that day!), a Catholic Easter– but the details of your language color them as yours and no one else’s, and beautifully poignant."  

In her Statement of Place on the Cascadia site, T writes, "I was born in Seattle and have lived joyfully in the Pacific Northwest for fifty-six years. In my travels to other landscapes across the planet, there is always the ache to return to this topography of foothills and craggy peaks, of saltwater and freshwater always in easy reach." 

Please visit the Cascadia Review website to enjoy more of T's poems and click on the quill below for this week's Tuesday Poems

Michelle Elvy is this week's Tuesday Poem editor - and hub-sub editor for the coming three months. She has chosen this year's Takahe prize winning poem Uncoupling by Jac Jenkins -

                                 "Ice clasps its thorny cloak with filigreed

                                  brittle lace against my breast

                                  bone. The pin sticks my skin when I inhale. . . "

TUESDAY POEM | Ithaca by Constantine P. Cavafy

Es Vedras, Ibiza - home, legend suggests, to the sirens who tried to lure Odysseus from his ship. . .  

                       ITHACA

                       When you set out for Ithaka
                       ask that your way be long,
                       full of adventure, full of instruction.
                       The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
                       angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
                       such as these you will never find
                       as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
                       emotion touch your spirit and your body.
                       The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
                       angry Poseidon - you will not meet them
                       unless you carry them in your soul,
                       unless your soul raise them up before you.

                       Ask that your way be long.
                       At many a Summer dawn to enter
                       with what gratitude, what joy -
                       ports seen for the first time;
                       to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
                       and to buy good merchandise,
                       mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
                       and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
                       sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
                       to visit many Egyptian cities,
                       to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

                       Have Ithaka always in your mind.
                       Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
                       But don't in the least hurry the journey.
                       Better it last for years,
                       so that when you reach the island you are old,
                       rich with all you have gained on the way,
                       not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
                       Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
                       Without her you would not have set out.
                       She hasn't anything else to give you.

                       And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
                       So wise you have become, of such experience,
                       that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean. 

                       Constantine P. Cavafy

We decided to keep last week's poem Bogong Moth by Joe Dolce up for another week over on our Tuesday Poem hub. Do visit the TP blog to read Joe's poem and explore the sidebar on the left-handside of the page for a rich repertoire of international poets and consistently fine poetry. 

TUESDAY POEM | The Soldier & The Poet by CB and Elizabeth Brooke-Carr

High on the peninsula hills directly opposite my house stands a lone soldier. A welcome part of my everyday landscape, I have wondered often about him and his - as far as I know - untold story. In early 2009, a poem arrived, landing on the page as if the soldier had called it forth, as if he had turned his face to my window and was listening. 

A month or two ago, my friend Elizabeth sent me a letter. "I'm not sure how to tell you this," she said, "but the soldier has written a reply to his poet. . . "

"Every love poem is also a peace poem."

Kevin Clements | National Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, University of Otago  

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub - with our second post of the new year - is Jennifer Compton. 

Jen has chosen Bogong Moth by Joe Dolce. The second stanza of this heart-stopping poem reads. . . 

                                                            I look up from my book

                                                            accepting the immortal,
                                                            fatal dance
                                                            of life and light,
                                                            like Icarus’s father
                                                            resigned to watch
                                                            his flying boy
                                                            hurl against brilliance.

To read Joe's poem and Jen's zippy commentary, please click on the quill.

A belated HAPPY NEW YEAR to us all. 

(I've been a distracted blog writer and reader this past month and more; immersed in various projects prompting the building and rebuilding of a website or two - exciting things are in the wings, the details of which will follow. . . ) 

TUESDAY POEM | I Who Love Mountains and All They Signify by Heidi Rose Robbins

Heidi Rose Robbins's new collection of poems - This Beckoning Ceaseless Beauty - will be launched in Los Angeles today, 10 December 2013

&

the launch will be a live-streamed event (from around 7.30PM PST). To join the celebration, click on this link and follow Heidi's directions - http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=b5071a96458f93f510487294e&id=e4cbc89719

                    I WHO LOVE MOUNTAINS AND ALL THEY SIGNIFY

                    I who love mountains and all they signify 
                    find sanctuary in valleys,
                    where quiet truths are
                    echoed back
                    from mountain sides.
                    
                    I ask a question
                    and reflection
                    careens off
                    sides of earth
                    allowing my breath to steady 
                    and body to calm.

                    Here in the valley 
                    closer to the beat 
                    of the heart
                    of the earth,
                    I hear the essential.

                    I who love mountains and all they signify 
                    choose here
                    to lay the earth of my body
                    on the body of the earth
                    in this sanctuary of silence.
                    
                    And only
                    only
                    only
                    in this deep surrender 
                    is the scent
                    of a great ascent 
                    yet to come. 

                    Heidi Rose Robbins

I had the pleasure of meeting Heidi Rose Robbins at a conference in Mesa, Phoenix a couple of years ago. Poet, esoteric astrologer, mother, group facilitator and actress-by-training, Heidi's beautifully-paced, full-hearted conference presentation* revealed a no-nonsense woman of huge heart and considerable intellect. I found her passion and openness inspiring - not only was she stimulating to listen to and talk with, she was also fascinating to observe at work. 

Words for Heidi are not small, bite-sized shapes that emanate from the mouth alone; rather, they are elements for creative expression that may - or may not - involve her whole body. She is one of those rare individuals capable of being still and in motion at one and the same time - poised and poised to spring.  

I posted Heidi's poem Let Me Say It Straight on All Finite Things in May 2011. In a letter, she explained, 'This poem was written one morning in Ojai, California. I'd just attempted to read a poem in an unnamed publication that was about as impossible to understand as they come. And I felt frustrated. Poetry has the capacity to blast the heart wide open and I felt like I was trying to solve a riddle whose ultimate answer wasn't going to be very satisfying anyway. 

I was simply ready to cut through everything and sing of the power of poetry. I was ready to speak to everyone who had given up on poetry because it felt elitist or removed. I wanted to sing my love of poetry from the rooftops and invite everyone to bring their whole selves to steep in the beauty of the language of the heart. And - as I write in this poem - it doesn't matter how broken we feel or how crinkled our heart is. All we need do is arrive and allow our hearts to unfurl.'

Heidi has a thriving astrology practice in Los Angeles, California. She was one of the founding members of the Hello Love Experiment and offers regular Radiant Life Retreats for women in which she combines her love of astrology and poetry with dynamic group work and movement. Her first poetry collection Sanctuary (2011) comprises a soft-covered, hand-bound book with a CD of Heidi reading her poems and articulating her creative process. 

*

Heidi's poems are a sturdy and capacious container - an invitation through innocence into eros; a place of whispers and exclamations, of fire and breath, grit and courageous exploration; of heart and listening, expansion and balm. We meet her and we meet ourselves. Turning ourselves and the world around, we remember, lament, marvel and see anew. 

I'd love to come across Heidi and Mary Oliver walking and talking together in a garden or forest somewhere. I hope they get to meet each other some day. 

                           
                           NAMELESS

                           We are not who we say we are. 
                           There are no words for that name, 
                           none full enough. 
                           Our name is a symphony, 
                           a sunrise. 
                           It is a name that holds all the
                           sounds of silence.

                           We are not who we say we are
                           though we insist it is so. 

                           Maybe we should listen for the name 
                           the sky has to offer,
                           or the redwood. 
                           It would be loving and infinitely simple. 

                           Let's lay each name
                           we've spoken 
                           into a greater flame. 

                           Let's soften the grasp
                           on what is only ours
                           and breathe the terror,
                           the flush of freedom.

                           Let's be nameless
                           for a time
                           and listen. 

                           Heidi Rose Robbins

We wish This Beckoning Ceaseless Beauty well on its way, Heidi!

*

And this week on the Tuesday Poem hub, editor Andrew M. Bell has chosen The Biography of Mr. Carrot (Daucus Carota) by fellow Christchurch poet Frankie McMillan 

                                                   Our family was large; when we met

                                                   we embraced six hundred times. . .  

Please click on the quill.

Tuesday Poem | Variation on a Theme by Rilke

Oil sketch  |  CB  2013

                     Variation on a Theme by Rilke
                     (The Book of Hours, Book 1, Poem 1, Stanza 1)

                     A certain day became a presence to me;
                     there it was, confronting me - a sky, air, light:
                     a being. And before it started to descend
                     from the height of noon, it leaned over
                     and struck my shoulder as if with
                     the flat of a sword, granting me
                     honor and a task. The day's blow
                     rang out, metallic or it was I, a bell awakened,
                     and what I heard was my whole self
                     saying and singing what it knew; I can. 

                     Denise Levertov


I love the music and measure of this fine woman's fine writing. She's a pleasure to listen to, too. . .

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is the inimitable and fiercely eloquent Zireaux (his the title of this blog is Immortal Muse) with Pigs by Australian poet Les Murray.

Please click on the quill.

Dig down, the earth is moist

        ". . . In the pre-dawn hours I watch the sky, the small distant suns, as winter comes on, of Orion and Canis Major shining above the southern horizon. I can easily imagine a planet among them on the surface of which someone is standing alone in a clearing trying to teach himself to whistle, and is being watched by large birds that look like herons. (I reach out and begin to dig in the sand, feeling for substance, for stones in the earth to hold onto: I might suddenly lose my own weight, be blown away like a duck's breast feather in the slight breeze that now tunnels in my hair.)

        I stand up, resume the watch. I know what I'm looking for. I wait. 

        I do not know what to do with the weariness, with the exhaustion. I confess to self-delusion. I've imagined myself walking away at times, as though bored or defeated, but contriving to leave enough of myself behind to observe any sign, the slightest change. I would seem to an observer to be absorbed in a game of string figures between my fingers, inattentive, when in fact I would be alert to the heartbeats of fish moving beyond the surf. But these ruses only added to the weariness and seemed, in the end, irreverent. 

        I have been here, I think, for years. I have spent nights with my palms flat on the sand, tracing the grains for hours like braille until I had the pattern precisely, could go anywhere - the coast of Africa - and recreate the same strip of beach, down to the very sound of the water on sea pebbles out of the sounds of my gut that has been empty for years; to the welling of the wind by vibrating the muscles of my thighs. Replications. I could make you believe you heard sandpipers walking in the darkness at the edge of a spent wave, or a sound that would make you cry at the thought of what had slipped through your fingers. When tides and the wind and the scurrying of creatures rearrange these interminable grains of sand so that I must learn this surface all over again through the palms of my hands, I do. This is one of my confidences. . . 

        I have spent much of my time simply walking. 

        Once I concentrated very hard on moving soundlessly down the beach. I anticipated individual grains of sand losing their grip and tumbling into depressions, and I moved at that moment so my footfalls were masked. I imagined myself in between these steps as silent as stone stairs, but poised, like the heron hunting. In this way I eventually became unknown even to myself (looking somewhere out to sea for a flight of terns to pass). I could then examine myself as though I were an empty abalone shell, held up in my own hands, held up to the wind to see what sort of noise I would make. I know the sound - the sound of fish dreaming, twilight in a still pool downstream. . . "


from River Notes - Barry Lopez (pages 63 & 64)

Don Binney - Kotuku, Puketotara III (2006) Acrylic & graphite on board, 430 x 645MM

I discovered Barry Lopez - his library of tenderly observed, exquisitely paced books - whilst traveling in New Mexico in May last year (2012 feels likes a decade ago) and referenced Desert Notes in my post The land does not give easily. Since then I've been on a search for his writing. A couple of days ago, Desert Notes - Reflections In The Eye Of A Raven and River Notes - The dance of Herons arrived in my mailbox. I'm immersed in both; an incongruous pairing some might think, but no. To the contrary, the experience of one heightens the other, provides relief, dimension, illumination. Reading them together feels like carving a route out of some inarticulable barrenness towards succor, softness, comfort and understanding ('. . . I know what they tell you about the desert but you mustn't believe them. This is no deathbed. Dig down, the earth is moist. . ') or of being plucked from dark water a moment before drowning, delivered to a shore with substance, stability, infinite promise and purchase. ('. . . When you are suddenly overwhelmed with a compassion that staggers you and you begin to run along the bank, at the moment when your fingers brush the soft skin of a deer-head orchid and you see sun-drenched bears stretching in an open field like young men, you will know a loss of guile and that the journey has begun. . .' pg 67)

We all experience desert times - in life, work, the vortices of inner/outer conversation - and times when the river flows. Today, I'm grateful for the encouragement that arrived on the backs of these six words - 'Dig down, the earth is moist.' 

Perhaps what we consider to be desert is in fact river?