JOSEPH STROUD ~

The Potato



Three days into the journey

I lost the Inca Trail

and scrambled around the Andes

in a growing panic

when on a hillside below snowline

I met a farmer who pointed the way —

Machu Picchu alla, he said.

He knew where I wanted to go.

From my pack I pulled out an orange.

It seemed to catch fire

in that high blue Andean sky.

I gave it to him.

He had been digging in a garden,

turning up clumps of earth,

some odd, misshapen nuggets,

some potatoes.

He handed me one,

a potato the size of the orange

looking as if it had been in the ground

a hundred years,

a potato I carried with me

until at last I stood gazing down

on the Urubamba Valley,

peaks rising out of the jungle into clouds,

and there among the mists

was the Temple of the Sun

and the Lost City of the Incas.

Looking back now, all these years later,

what I remember most,

what matters to me most,

was that farmer, alone on his hillside,

who gave me a potato,

a potato with its peasant face,

its lumps and lunar craters,

a potato that fit perfectly in my hand,

a potato that consoled me as I walked,

told me not to fear,

held me close to the earth,

the potato I put in a pot that night,

the potato I boiled above Machu Picchu,

the patient, gnarled potato

I ate.




________________________


JOSEPH STROUD
Country of Light
Copper Canyon, 2004 


 

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED ~

Please listen to:

R O S A R I O     D A W S O N

Rosario  Dawson

IT AIN'T RIGHT ~

ROTTEN EGGS ~

P E S T I C I D E S     T H A T    K I L L

 

 

THE GREAT CLOD ~

In Burton Watson's analysis of nature imagery in T'ang poems he finds more references
to non-living phenomena than living, and over half of those looking upward to sky, weather,
wind, clouds, and moon. Downward: rivers, waters and mountains predominate. Among
living things willow and pine are the most-mentioned trees, but the specific names of
herbaceous plants and flowers are few — with "flowers" usually meaning the blossoms
of trees like cherry or peach. Wild goose is the most common bird, associated with
being separated from a friend; and monkey the most common mammal — because of its
mournful dry. Cicada and moth are the most common insect. The point is made that many
natural references are used for their symbolic or customary human associations, and not
for intrinsic natural qualities. No doubt the oral poetry of a pre-literate people will have
more acquaintance with the actual living creatures as numerous intelligences in furry or 
scaly bodies. But this does not detract from what the Chinese poems are, highly disciplined
and formal poems that open us to the dilemma of having "regard for the myriad growing things"
while being literate monks or administrators or wives of officials in the world's first
"great society." The reign of the Emperor Hsuan Tsung (712-756) is considered one of
the highest points of Chinese cultural history: the poets Wang Wei, Li Po, and Tu Fu were
at the eight of their powers during those years, and so were the brilliant and influential
Ch'an Masters Shen-hui, Nan-yueh, Ma-tsu, and Po-chang The national population may
have been as high as 60 million.

I first came onto Chinese poems in translation at nineteen, when my ideal of nature was a
45 degree ice slope on a volcano, or an absolutely virgin rain forest. They helped me to "see"
fields, farms, tangles of brush, the azaleas in the back of an old brick apartment. They freed
me from excessive attachments to wild mountains, with their almost subliminal way of
presenting even the wildest hills as a place where people, also, live.

G A R Y     S N Y D E R

Notes and Memoirs on Nature and History in East Asia

T H E     G R E A T     C L O D

 

M E R L E     H A G G A R D

passes away on his birthday

6 April 2016

b. 1937

Oildale, California

photograph by marty stuart 

 

WHY YOU MAY HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR SOUL ~

THE PANAMA PAPERS

 

NEW JAMES KOLLER ~

 

James Koller

Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005

Longhouse 2016

  72 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 6.25 inches

$12.95

order here through Paypal, plus $3.95 (US shipping only)

 

international shipping,  $12.95 plus $15

Check or money order to

Longhouse

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, VT 05303

FOR, IDA VIVIAN ARNOLD ~

born at the tail end of March on a spring day

LAMP ~

Lamp

After supper

No longer summer

A windy night ahead

We sit in the kitchen

One lamp

Read before the fire

Nothing else in our lives

Boots drying

Rain on the windows

Finding Open Water

There are these things

That make lovely creatures

More lovely —

A red-tailed hawk sweeps

From one moment of the hillside

To another

Rising mist will not lose him

  

3 deer wade into the shoulder of a field

They feel safe in the holler of rain

Then you, rolling up your pants

Before a bicycle ride

Your hair just touching the ground

I tell you I will do something with that

Your smile makes the beginning of all this

Loss

Put no trust in nothing, not even yourself

Yesterday was like summer, today snow blows

I’ve walked six miles with an axe and wedge

Actually make my living near a river running bright water

Home to a small hawk found mangled in the woodshed

Eyes opening, I load my rifle but won’t use it

Instead talk with the closest thing to me right now

Heavy gloves moving back short feathers

The break in its neck, claws no use, eyes closing

Rope of Bells

It is the

Rope of bells

You have put behind the door

That let me know

Whenever one of us goes

To the privy

The woodshed

The outdoors

Lovely

 

 
 

 _____________________

Bob Arnold
some of these poems were first published in
Rope of Bells
CHERRY VALLEY EDITIONS

 

AND ONE MORE, SUSAN ~

CHANTAL AKERMAN ~

MORE from THE NEW YORK TIMES

FOR, SUSAN ~

hear 'em a million times

P O P A R T S C H O O L T A O I S T ~

R A Y     J O H N S O N

HARRY CREWS ~

from the documentary 
"Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus"
(Jim White)

FATHER & SON ~

MARILYN CHIN ~

B L A C K     P R E S I D E N T





If a black man could be president

Could a white man be his slave?

Could a sinner enter heaven

By uttering his name?



If the terminator is my governor

Could a cowboy be my king?

When shall the cavalry enter Deadwood

And save my prince?



An exo-cannibal eats her enemies

An indo-cannibal eats his friends

I'd rather starve myself silly

Than to make amends



Blood on the altar       Blood on the lamb

Blood in the chalice

Not symbolic        but fresh






_____________________

Marilyn Chin
Hard Love Province
Norton 2014 

STARLEP SIGNS ~

BOB ARNOLD ~

sweetheart

photo ~ bob arnold

Love and Landscape

Don’t ask us how we crossed the saltwater marsh

Grasses were high and easy under foot

The last stream was spanned by a driftwood plank

Thrown carefully into the muck

I didn’t sink and you didn’t sink

And when we came to ocean

Skittering of sandpipers

You held your dress and walked into the spray

It must have been also the sudden daylight that I loved

What I Hear

This river water is

The warm breath of

Her whisper, what I hear —

The brown and white flurry

Of her thin clothing

The sweat of handwork

That musses the long

Blonde hair — dirt across

The forehead, may I wash

It off? thicken my hands

In that hair, kiss what I love

Away from our work and bathing

Part whisper and part water

Hummingbird

Rarely pausing

Though I have seen

It stop the flutter

Of its amazing

Wings and perch

Nearly invisible

On a wire against

The evening sky —

And be sighted —

And being very

Still, be thought

Of as not there

 

How We Build

It is a day

Of sawing slab wood

Splitting

Then stacking

And be done

Tucking away insulation

Fixing windows

Sharpening every tool

The happy moment

Is there are still

Small grasshoppers

In the slip of meadow

That it is 28 degrees

At 7 this morning

And I wash your hair

In one bucket of

Strong spring water —

There is nothing like it

 
 

 __________________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET