The secrets of living...

 may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living...

 whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

These line are from the poem titled '53', by e.e. cummings.

A seat on the plane

 

B-17G Flying Fortress Sentimental Journey

B-17s were heavy bomber aircraft. Over 8000 G models were built, and some were converted to other uses besides 'bombing'. But most were bombers with 13 'guns'. 

B-17s are HUGE aircraft. Massive. Five gunners 'man' the guns, and five other crew members are aboard. A gunner sits in a little bulb located underneath the aircraft. Another sits in a "bulb" at the tail. One above sits in a bulb above, and two more at the sides/at the 'waist'. 

On one single Thursday during World War II, the aircraft took a beating. 77 B-17s were shot down, destroyed, crashed. 680 airmen aboard those B-17 were killed. 

Randall Jarrell, U.S. Poet Laureate (1956-58), imagined the day all too well. He wrote a poem titled "The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner". 

Jarrell sees the belly gunner/ball turret gunner in ways we can't imagine.

"I hunched in its belly..."

Jarrell envisioned the gunner facing 

"black flak and the nightmare fighters".

And then the most sickening imagery: 

"When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."

NO! I scream. NO. 

And I add one more PLOTUS to my spreadsheet. 

Sometimes I am sorry I do.

A Primer for dove season

 Gambel's Quail

September 1st. 

Dove season opens today in Arizona.

Gambel's quail are not doves.

Nor are sparrows, love birds, finches, hummingbirds or bees.

Some urban hunters seem to think any bird is a dove. Some hunters awake at dawn, dress in camouflage, hit the land just past the freeway, set up their rifle and coffee cup, and spend the next hours shooting.  "Plunk plunk plunk".

During this dove season, the game is mourning dove and white dove. 

Nothing more. 

Please shoot wisely. We hear you at dawn, we see the debris later. A discarded coffee cup. The scrunched up Egg Sandwich wrapper. The abandoned box of donuts from the local grocery store... a few cigarette butts. The empty shotgun shells.. sure, this debris we will pick up.  A shot hummingbird, finch, love bird, or sparrow is not acceptable.

Not a dove. 

Yesterday I came across a poem on 'The day before Opening Day".

Texas, Arizona. It is hot. It is September 1. It is opening day.

"The heat is impossible

Cooling bills are high

Fires are raging..."

The pedigree

I'm still working on my spreadsheet of poet laureates. Each time I read another PLOTUS' poem or biography, I grab my spreadsheet, add another tidbit of information, and then I sit back in awe of these people. 

Sonnets. A few PLsOTUS wrote sonnets. When we think of sonnets, Shakespeare usually comes to mind. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." Sonnet 18. Shakespeare is credited with writing over 150 sonnets, often reflecting on his love for a woman and mostly all in iambic pentameter. 

Iambic pentameter. That means it is written with five (penta) beats to the line. Usually the beat goes like this: 

da/DUM/da/DUM/da/DUM/da/DUM/da/DUM

to/BE/or/NOT/to/BE/that/IS/the/QUESTION. 

Got it? (I had to count to be sure it really had five beats. And yes, some of Shakespeare's finest sonnets were not stand alone poems, but married into his plays). 

OK, not all sonnets are iambic pentameter and not all reflect on a love for a lover. I'm not going to go into Spenserian sonnets or Petrachan sonnets in this post. I'll wait until I add that column to my spreadsheet...

BUT, the point is, some of our PLsOTUS wrote sonnets! 

Louise Brogran, poet laureate 1945-46, often wrote of love and grief. Sonnets suited her style. 

"Since you would claim the sources of my thought
Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed,"

(poem titled SONNET  by Louise Brogran, 1923)

It is not hard to feel the love and anguish in Brogran's poem.

And Billy Collins, poet laureate 2001-2003, wrote a sonnet, too. 

"All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen

to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans..."

(from Sonnet, by Billy Collins)

You get the idea of Collin's sonnet, too. 

The sonnet column on my spreadsheet of PLsOTUS has a few more entries. But sonnets have a pedigree. Sonnets can be pure; maybe they should be. But like dogs, pedigrees don't always mean much. Our dogs?

Their pedigrees aren't apparent. 

But I look at each and I see a sonnet.

A poem of love in perfect rhyme.

The Consultants

U.S. Poet laureates were originally known as 'the Official Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress". It took an act of Congress in 1985 to change their official title to Poet Laureate. Imagine, Congress actually achieved something 'back then'. 

The first Official Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress was appointed in 1937.  Joseph Auslander had no official job description and no official term of office. But he was a poet, known for his poems on war and on the German occupation of Europe. Auslander served as the official consultant until 1941. 

 I immediately started organizing a spread sheet of poet laureates, sortable alphabetically,  by the year of their term in office, by their poetry style and by their noteworthy poems. I find it is good to be organized this way. 

Many of the PLOTUS (Poet Laureate of the United States - but is plural PLOTI?) are familiar names. William Carlos Williams. Robert Frost. James Dicky. Gwendolyn Brooks. Robert Penn Warren. Rita Dove. Many of the PLOTUS are not familiar names... too many to list here. 

But I have them listed on my spreadsheet. 

And I am working my way through the list, adding tidbits of information about each as I come across it. Sometimes I find a hint of the poet, the 'person', when reading a poem s/he wrote. Sometimes I find it in a press release about her/him. And sometimes a hint of it comes across in an interview.

Donald Hall. PLOTUS 2006-2207. The bits and pieces I knew about him could fill a thimble. Now I can fill a coffee mug. 

Donald Hall. At first glimpse of him, I thought he was C. Everett Koop's older cousin.

Donald Hall. His wife, Jane Kenyon (also a poet) was 19 years younger, a former student of his, and she died much too young. Hall himself has 'battled' cancer since 1989. But he keeps his sense of humor, his poetry skills strong. 

PLOTUS (PLOTI?) recently have defined their term with a mission statement. Robert Pinsky's term is known for his 'Favorite Poem Project'.  I was teaching high school at the time Pinsky started the Favorite Poem Project. Our Junior and Senior English classes were all caught up in the excitement of the project - each student searching poetry anthologies for the ONE poem that struck them, stuck to them, one that became their favorite. 

PLOTUS Ted Kooser (2004-2006) chose a poem a week for national newspapers to print. Joseph Brodsky encouraged poetry to be displayed/available in airports and hotel rooms. I note these on my PLOTUS spreadsheet.

Donald Hall hoped to encourage poetry reading on TV. PBS most likely. Hall is quoted as saying "People listen to it a good deal, the poetry reading is popular. I have lived long enough so that I have seen poetry increase enormously in audience. I know that it is not so many people as go to the dog tracks one night in Florida, probably."

Right now, Donald Hall is my favorite PLOTUS. He writes about his wife's death in a way that many of us know. The fear, the knowledge, the overwhelming sadness. I know he knows it. I know it, too. The early morning phone call to tell me my father had died. My hsuband's phone call when he found his own mother dead. The call about Peter's suicide.

"It was reasonable
to expect.”

"...There's nothing to do.”

(from Last Days by Donald Hall) 

 

But my PLOTUS spreadsheet has many blank spaces, many columns to be filled with poets, with new knowledge. 

I hope you take time to know a PLOTUS.  Just pick one and read.

Summer, still

It feels like summer will never end. Here it is, mid-late September, and we are still suffering 105-110 degree weather every day. I am weary. 

I know I have nothing to complain about, but I feel the frustration inside my skin. We are all just tired of hot hot days. The white flies have taken over the grapes, so tomorrow I will cut the vines back to stumps. The tomato plants have all died, taking some of their fruit with them. Anything with flowers has been deflowered; wilted and dehydrated.

The raised flower bed needs to be torn down; all the dirt needs to be removed so the south containing wall can be rebuilt. But it is just too hot to care yet. And it is too soon to plant anything in it, anyway.

But early this morning, we heard lovebirds in the backyard tree.

And a praying mantis had settled on the dogs' tennis ball. 

And E. asked me if we will have fresh tomatoes soon. And any chance we could have pumpkins? Or will we just plant basil, thyme and more rosemary? This question threw me - E. is the guy who's dream house would be a 10,000 square foot garage. He'd have his '70 Cuda, his '69 Roadrunner, his '73 Camaro, and both of his muscle Novas parked in there. He'd be happy with a sleeping cot in the corner. He'd have a TV hanging from a wall - all the better to watch "Destroyed in Seconds" and "Myth Busters". 

But a garden? 

So, I am anxious to rebuild our garden bed. I'm anxious to plant winter crops, to put in the winter grass for the dogs, and to start planning for a living Christmas tree that we can plant in front of the house.

And I think of this poem:

HIS WIFE

by Andrew Hudgins

My wife is not afraid of dirt.
She spends each morning gardening,
stooped over, watering, pulling weeds,
removing insects from her plants
and pinching them until they burst.
She won't grow marigolds or hollyhocks,
just onions, eggplants, peppers, peas –
things we can eat. And while she sweats
I'm working on my poetry and flute.
Then growing tired of all that art,
I've strolled out to the garden plot
and seen her pull a tomato from the vine
and bite into the unwashed fruit
like a soft, hot apple in her hand.
The juice streams down her dirty chin
and tiny seeds stick to her lips.
Her eye is clear, her body full of light,
and when, at night, I hold her close,
she smells of mint and lemon balm.

First day

Remember the first day back to school after a long summer vacation? New kids, new subjects, new routines, new fears. Even when I was 6 years old, I learned to fear the first day of school. 

And every year, I'd bombard my mother with all kinds of 'what ifs???' challenges. 

"What if no one likes me? What if no one knows me? What if I get lost? What if I miss the bus? What if no one will talk to me? What if no one picks me for their team at recess?"

What if, what if, what if...

My mother would go to our bookcase in the living room and pull one book off the shelf.

"Come here, my dear. Come sit with me and let's read this."

We'd sit side by side, hip to hip, and mother would spread the book across both our laps.  She would make a great effort to look at the table of contents, running her finger down each entry listed. She'd sigh, her finger would stop to point to a page number, and then she would shake her head. "No, that's not the one. Turn the page, dear."

I'd turn the shiny page for her, and she would repeat her search - her finger running down the page, her eyes absorbing the table of contents. 

'Come on, mom!' I'd say to myself. 'Come on - I have fears to go count!'

"Ah, hear it is. Page 67. Now, quit your squirming and let's read this together."

I'd grab the whole book and with my fat fingers try to turn to page 67. Mom would keep her finger on the table of contents page, just in case I'd forget 'page 67'.

Page 67

What if

by Shel Silverstein

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?...

...Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow taller?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?... 

The poem addressed so many of my fears. What if they start a war? What if I tear my pants? What if I flunk a test? Whatif whatif whatif...

I loved that someone else knew my worries. I'd be appeased... until bedtime. Then the What Ifs would wait until my room was dark, and they would silently slip into my brain. One at a time they would march across my thoughts, in my dark quiet room.

This morning, I watched our neighborhood kids wait at the corner for the school bus. When I came inside the house, I was pulled to the bookcase, to a book of poetry, to page 67. 

I read the poem allowed, to our empty house. I hope just one child on the bus heard me. Heard me enough to get through today.

...Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!

I'm listening

I came across a new (to me) Billy Collins poem. The poem "Le Chien" (from the book Ballistics: Poems) is about his bored, tireless conversations (in english) with a (french) dog he found in Paris.

"No wonder she kept cocking her head 

as I went on about 'summer movies'..."

 

I'm listening

"She showed such patience for a dog

without breeding while I went on..."

I'm still listening...

"I was standing and she was sitting

on a dim street..."

"...wasting my time and hers

trying to explain 'corn dogs,' 'white walls,' and 'the March of Dimes.'"

"...wishing I only had my camera

so I could carry a picture of her home with me."

"...I kept thinking how I would have loved

to hang her picture over the mantel 

where my maternal grandmother now looks down..."

"Then, before dinner each evening

I could stand before the image of that very dog..."

"...submitting all my troubles and petitions

to the court of her dark-brown, adoring eyes."

Random lines from the poem "Le Chien" in the book Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins
2010 Random House Trade Paperbacks, pgs. 68-69

The gardening wife

 Thoughts from Andrew Hudgins poem

titled 

HIS WIFE

My wife is not afraid of dirt.
She spends each morning gardening,
stooped over, watering, pulling weeds,
removing insects from her plants
and pinching them until they burst...

... I've strolled out to the garden plot
and seen her pull a tomato from the vine
and bite into the unwashed fruit
like a soft, hot apple in her hand.
The juice streams down her dirty chin
and tiny seeds stick to her lips.

... and when, at night, I hold her close,
she smells of mint and lemon balm. 

"His Wife" by Andrew Hudgins 

A dog

"The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration..."

 First verse from Dharma by Billy Collins

"... If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god."

So many ways to answer this problem!

 The Certainty of Numbers

by Bruce Snider

It’s not the numbers you dislike—

the 3s or 5s or 7s—but the way

the answers leave no room for you,

the way 4 plus 2 is always 6

never 9 or 10 or Florida,

the way 3 divided by 1

is never an essay about spelunking

or poached salmon, which is why

you never seemed to get the answer right

when the Algebra teacher asked,

If a man floating down a river in a canoe

has traveled three miles of a twelve mile canyon

in five minutes, how long will it take him

to complete the race? Which of course depends

on if the wind resistance is 13 miles an hour

and he’s traveling upstream

against a 2 mile an hour current

and his arms are tired and he’s thinking

about the first time he ever saw Florida,

which was in seventh grade

right after his parents’ divorce

and he felt overshadowed

by the palm trees, neon sun visors,

and cheap postcards swimming

with alligators. Nothing is ever simple,

except for the way the 3 looks like two shells

washed up on last night’s shore,

but then sometimes it looks like a bird

gently crushed on its side.

And the 1—once so certain

you could lean up against it

like a gray fence post—has grown weary,

fascinated by the perpetual

itch of its own body.

Even the Algebra teacher

waving his formulas like baseball bats,

pauses occasionally when he tells you

that a 9 and a 2 are traveling in a canoe

on a river in a canyon. How long

will it take them to complete their journey?

That is if they don’t lose their oars

and panic and strike the rocks,

shattering the canoe. Nothing is ever certain.

We had no plan, the numbers would tell us,

at the moment of our deaths.

 

Bruce Snider. The Year We Studied Women.

I love this poem. It was one of my favorites when I was a high school algebra teacher. My students were all mono-lingual - they spoke nothing but spanish. I was bilingual.

Somedays I wanted to accept that 6 plus 2 was purple. Or that a dividing two fractions was poached salmon. Everyday I wanted these students to grasp whatever they could - because once they hit the real world, they would lose their oars and panic.  There would be no room to budge.

Sometimes the digit 1 did grow weary of waiting for the right answer. And when I told the students that 9 and 2 were traveling in a canoe - the canoe immediately sunk.

At the moment of our death, we have no plan. And algebra??? Once you solve a binomial, are you any more certain?

A poem for today

The Cast 
-Sharon Olds


When the doctor cut off my son’s cast the
high scream of the saw filled the room
and the boy’s lap was covered with fluff like the
chaff of a new thing emerging, the
down in the hen-yard. Down the seam that
runs along the outside of the arm and
up the seam along the inside — that
line where the colour of a white boy’s arm
changes like a fish from belly-white to prismatic,
the saw ranged freely — the saw that does not cut flesh,
the doctor told us, smiling. Then the
horrible shriek ran down in a moment to nothing
and he took a sharp silver wedge like a
can-opener and jimmied at the cracks
until with a creak the glossy white
false arm cracked and there lay the kid’s
sweet dirty forearm, thin as a darkened twig.
He lifted it in astonishment, like a gift,
It’s so light! he cried, a lot of light coming out of his eyes,
he fingered it and grinned, he picked up the
halves and put them together and gripped it and
carried it out through the waiting room and
everyone smiled the way you smile at a wedding, so
deep in us the desire to be healed and joined.

Amazing how you can almost always find a poem for every occasion. 

Today was my 10 week check on my dumb broken knuckles. For the first 5 weeks, I had a solid (IE, heavy) blue cast, knuckles to elbow. When that cast was sawed off, my arm felt like a feather. I could once again touch my faded skin and I felt as if I had been given a gift.

But I had only graduated to a 1/2 cast, also heavy. I took it off (myself) two weeks ago and I have been going cast-free.

At the 'bone institute' today, I heard the saw cutting off other casts. And I saw children walking out with smiles plastered on their faces. One young man kept his old cast as a trophy and he showed it to us all. Just like in the poem.

His mother trotted behind, complaining it was "too stinky" to keep too long. I didn't read that part in the poem...