On Looking at the Blue Ridge These mountains blue against the sky when I grew up beside them meant warmth, adventure, home these mountains . . . old, tradition-laden and blue against the sky, Well, other mountains beckon now from half a world, so far away crowning an island green and lush ringed with palms and laced with surf, And when I look at these mountains nearby and cannot sea the oak and maple trees I see those ten thousand miles from here when dusk has turned them blue, like these. |
Frost
The frost lays a crisp sheet white yet sheer through which the soil is revealed perhaps more clear Contrasted now, dark cracked earth seen through the white each reveals its meaning like the day against the night The melting frost, like twilight and dawn, alters and reveals a change when it has gone Poetry Note: The best gift a parent can give is a hug, and after that the parenting that so many never receive. Specific references here are to historical phenomenon such as the killing fields of Cambodia and the early World War II grave fields before the ovens were adopted. The latter are described in Herman Wouk's iconic novel's: WINDS OF WAR and WAR & REMEMBRANCE. We actually have a female friend who has been on a recent trip to Cambodia searching for relatives who are alive or records of the deaths of others. This poem, published here for the first time (though written years ago) is dedicated to LOVE146 and the other charitable organizations both Christian and otherwise that work for children. |
A Parent's Embrace ( . . . and unsaid thoughts ) When I hold you I hold them all because I cannot hold each one I hold you close because of love but also because of love undone for those so young who faced their trials and even death so all alone embracing you with the love their tiny hearts have never known for the children found among the dead multiplied on the frozen ground and tiny bones in a jungle ditch a field of skulls scattered all around and those whose soft hair none caressed whose tears no one kissed away those who died too hard, too young and those who will today those sweet children no one loved and no one ever cared to hold when their short years only proved that life was hard and love was cold whose terror no one ever shared longing at night to be held somehow in a world gone wrong in the pitch of night for all of them I hold you now. |
Immigrants
A hundred thousand men heading West with traditions and sisters mothers and grandmothers dream-laden and in groups grandfathers with bushy mustaches and heavy curved pipes women wrapped in cloth so that only eyes and cheeks show with babes and toddlers and strapping young boys and blossoming young girls supple youth hidden also under cloth whites off galleons, those that made it blacks off slavers, those who survived it small brown people counter flowing East those willing, those not And down from steamers after cold wet nights on hard iron decks Jews, Poles, Irishmen to endure those names to work up to respect someday and flowing down gangways from throbbing, buzzing silver birds children of the Holocaust of holocausts children of all ages all of them old slim youths with almond eyes once again from their rag tag fleet bobbing in the China Sea after their hell and ours to silver birds that roar across the sky and then those tortured little islands and lands South just off our shore from in fact a tortured world . . . Notes: Immigrants Influence here from many including Walt Whitman and perhaps a bit of Wallace Stevens. The reference is to legal immigration though of course down through our history many a stowaway found there way here before modern jet travel made it very difficult. Shipboard illegals still arrive today. I am a supporter of legal immigration; however, in more recent times we have done a poor job of integrating newcomers into our national, constitutional philosophy. As we try to stop the illegal entry (and we should) you might stop and wonder if any of your own ancestors just might have been a stowaway on a clipper or galleon, or even a fishing boat. Ages back, just after the time of discovery, European fishing fleets would fish off the Grand Banks. Twas kinda funny, the great explorers struggled across the Atlantic while these ordinary fishermen routinely sailed across and back without landing in America. They dropped their nets in the sea a hop skip and a jump from New England shores, how easy to just sail over and ... |
Opening Night How do I tell you that we have lied? There is no one who cares to act like you were taught, How do we explain that there is no script? The play just stumbles on, Who'll stride in to save the day? No one, And who's going to say that to children on the verge of their time upon the stage? That all the rules we taught of how to work, and help and count some how just don't apply, That when you take your turn and until you take your final bow there is no goal except the roaring applause of success no theme save greed no plot to speak of and no direction except from your own selfish soul. Folded Paper Folded paper, like wrinkled skin has character like soft gray lead and coal black pen reflects emotion and time as the pencil simplicity the pen boldness of line. Paper is folded because it was saved held dear the skin because it too survived the years. The common lead will last though sometimes smeared. The ink line shows through the wash of tears. |
All My Dreams
Mrs. Naadáá ‘Natty’ Jones * Austin, Texas, May 1876 (to her former cavalry officer husband) All my dreams are just of you, all across the days and miles I never thought I could look at you and ever cast a smile Whence came you to my land ? In the night when brave men sleep, only then to rise and die In the glow of the Comanche moon, women lay and cry Whence came this terror nigh ? Families weep for broken homes all along these border lines Native against native and yours against us all In darkness lonely mothers cry Whence came you . . . and why ? In my red desert, on their high plains, and all across this frontier sky Even in your hogans large, peace is just a fleeting sigh None is forever safe out here Least of all you and I * fictional Navajo character [ from the novel, All the Scattered Pieces ] |
Steaming, breezy, sweet Visayas Mountains rising bare and dry From wood and nipa slums palms so freely brush the sky, Leather brown- armed fishermen carry cyanide in plastic bags as history rides in two-wheeled carts drawn by spirit-broken nags, And Beauty walks on small, brown feet bearing high, exotic cheeks looking through herself to find the beauty that she seeks, Once she bared her small, brown breasts laced in ashy-black tattoos by the Spaniard craved, yet covered freely left by the bold datus, Beauty raised those tawny glands Culture drew the tawdry lines And on these shores the two wrestle in the sands of time. |
Poetry Note: Islas de los Pintados [The Islands of the Painted People, Spanish name given the Visayas] Although the poem at right is about the clash of cultures in the Visayas of the central Philippine Archipelago, as with many poems, it can have other meaning. It can even relate to our own present troubles as the clash is between man and the cultural mores placed upon him or her, as well as his or her reaction to them. We of course are in a struggle between libertarian freedom and a controlling government. But the poem is also about the negatives of modernity, the downside of development. Thus we struggle a bit with, or more than a bit, with Nature and our use of it. The mountains on the island of Cebu were harvested so much for timber that by the mid 1970s the watertable could not be replenished due to runoff. The table lacked fresh water and began soaking up the sea. More and more businesses in Cebu City began getting salt water from their faucets and had to haul fresh water. For a time, there was fear Cebu would become a "dead island," unable to sustain life. |
Miner of the Ages
He bends down sitting on his heels. Probing gently a searching hand feels. Raising the sieve sifting the sand through delicate fingers of a knowing hand For all the world looking like a native of old or a grizzled prospector panning for gold. Seeking like jewels fragments of bone steeped by the ages and now turned to stone from the earth beneath the color of rust like some ancient ape grubbing precious life from the dust. |
How it Was Meant to Be Mrs. Naadáá Natty Jones * The Double H Ranch, on the Brazos, December, 1900 As I look around and see the junk and pain pollutants of all types of body, heart and soul and mind, As I watch and the Earth turns ways crumble dreams fade I fear for life and safety grope for security Then I close my eyes and see upon a plain by a stream far back in the mists of ages but up close each minute detail focused in the mind a family crowded around a cozy cottage of leather over bent wood against the wind Fire at the door flap meat smoking robes place for the frigid night of the steppes Cooking, cleaning, preparing living as now and real, A man stacks dried manure for the fire A woman of stringy-haired beauty stirs a pot of clay They boy makes arrows chips stone as his father taught A small girl walks past frozen for an instant against the fire And there another tent or two Over there an elderly couple from whom the whole clan sprang The life that was meant to be in the beginning Then off in the haze of the horizon across the chilling steppes dust that grows with he sounds of hooves and yelling and the clank of metal in leather straps And I wonder how it was ever meant to be. * fictional Navajo character wife of a former U.S. Cavalry officer |
The poem below concerns itself with stewardship of the earth and its wild places and does not refer to divisive political issues such as climate change. This Child, Earth The Earth is a child they cannot see They look at the soil and see the ages They look at the ages and see strength the stability of time They watch the turmoil that is man but the Earth is always there the rocks and caves and mountains But the Earth is a child And even out of the confusion that is man they see direction slowly to go with the slow turn of the Earth the ages But the Earth is a child dependent helpless delicate unknowing The Earth is an old woman and in the dusty, mud-cracked skin they see the ages It's always been there the fields and forests its bloodstream rivers No matter what transpired with man through the ages the soil and rocks, woods and streams have been there and seen Look at your feet It seems so normal since you were a child Mother Earth was there with lap to bounce and play on But the Earth is a child to hold in cupped hands to till to groom the long tresses of grain and grass a child to feed and clean and with love possess with sensitive blood flowing through valleys and plains playing with the creatures in its midst like any child They look at the patch of dust and grass at their feet that they played marbles and soldiers in and see the ages and perhaps they're nostalgically sad But the Earth is a child they cannot see neglected, abused by uncaring guardians And they are sad for the wrong reasons. |