GOOD NIGHT BROTHER ~

Brother

Empty yourself in the foamflower, 

calla, the crushed chicory.

Greenflies nest in the blasted

bird, some blue-wing roadside

rots in the scrub beardtongue,

the hot air upon us to bear as is.

Some lay on warm ryegrass in

the last residue of cloud.

The geese go on being geese

silken in slashes of weather

whether we hammer them

to our wooden homes or not.

Tell us how this ends. In the throat,

the cloves, or in the dove coming

out of herself in the wayside seeds?

I Struggle With Your Breath

I see it only when horses are

in motion, the blur canter

and lupine, muscle and prairie rock,

running the weeds in a condition of

quiet that is thunder tender

on dirt and thistle, on the bird-weeks

of April like a rain-born weeping

for the lost and cooling places I

roam just before moon.

Christ, the lambs are yellow

and the goats are rag paper. When I

watched you breathe on the virgin teen,

herons tried to feed their way

back to someone's normal soul.

And No Thief Approacheth And No Moth Corrupteth

The earth is through the lamb-farm

where sun bloods the apples,

where ticks in silence rest in the soak of backwater.

In the dream of your execution, I do

my violence with a green handkerchief,

bird shit on lavender, and the moon rises bald

and clean into the ditch. I hear the mental process

of silos simmer and the Pentecostal winds.

This house marked with snowberries and dust.

The great price of bringing forth wheat.

Thou Art Lightning And Love

To the feast of errors

I give larch

that never bloom,

silk fishes of milkweed,

confusion of the divided seasons,

thorns in a pale nest blown

into pinecones.

Out of haying comes

the living light

as thistles, all who hate

you joined to you,

walking upright with

the strength of clean pine.

________________________

KIMBERLY BURWICK

Good Night Brother

Burnside Review Books, 2014

 

ATTICA ~

Pantheon 2016

Long before "9-11" this was an earlier 9-11, the Attica Prison Uprising in upstate New York told with the clear-eyed scope of a storyteller's eye by historian Heather Ann Thompson — and this may be the strong thread of the book, amongst the revealing horrors long hidden — is Thompson's straight-edge sturdy report.

Don't delay.

In Attica they killed black, brown and white all the same, even the guards, officials, anyone in the way. The State Police had issued shotguns and very few had ever used a shotgun in riot formation. Buckshot did the most damage. Plus toxic gas and powder dropped from a helicopter Vietnam style. It was the year of post Cambodia, Laos, Parrot’s Beak, the war coming to a halt and the US losing. They’re still angry. Still losing. Americans have the lousiest teacher in world history next to various other fascists. In all our cities, their governments, now in small towns' corrosive politics and, I know, ingrained in rural routes.

Democracy Now! (watch)

Tom Robbins on Attica


The New York Times Book Review

ADRIENNE RICH ~

What Kind of Times are These


There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled,
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light —
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

(1991)


_____________________________

ADRIENNE RICH
Collected Poems
1950-2012
Norton, 2016

In 1951 Adrienne Rich published A Change of World and came right out of the poetry tree completely formed —

and remarkably she continued to form and re-form and grow for the next half-century. 

One of the major American poets of

the 20th and 21st centuries.

[ BA ]

THE CUCKOO SHE'S A FINE BIRD ~

Not a mountain fiddle

but a sawing violin

not a real cuckoo bird

but a cuckoo clock

all from this canny

Virginia singer

(Document 1926-1929)

RISING ~

Ghosts

March comes and water moves,

The river, ponds, brooks open.

On snowshoes this is the last week

You’ll hike down these banks of

Rotten snow, the last week bridges

Of ice will be there to criss-cross

Down stream, the last week a

Deer carcass will be pinned between

Rocks and white water spray through

The white of her skull — the runoff

Will let her go, or break her to pieces —

You’re aware of this where you step.

Pools of water swirl 5 feet deep,

Maybe her bones will lay down in the

Sand and white pebbles here, it is

The last week to think of any of this.

Beneath your feet of oblong ash wood

And softened leather you sense the newness

Of life — hide has slipped all winter off

The body, it is time to go places.

Barred Owl

        

                             for Janine Pommy Vega

Without a sound

I made myself walk

A day in the sun

The thin pale grass breeze

An axe along to trim dead limbs

Moving beneath pines

I stopped when I saw its wings

Spread straight for me and

Grips itself 10 yards away

With no idea we were face to face

Black water of the eyes opening and seeing

Spotting easily what wasn’t right

In a skiff of wind

She dropped and floated

Low to the ground

Lost my  eye in blending flight

With feathers like the woodland

Rising

Some sound outside has raised our heads

Made us look into the eyes of one another.

You by the kerosene lamp glowing into your

Face and hair, knitting needles down in your lap.

I pull on high boots and wool shirt

Walk out to the dogs on their chains

Muzzles sniffing to the hillside.

We wait, beneath a clear wash of moonlight,

For sure we’re heard something and we’ll freeze

To hear it again — there, low bark, speaking from

A darkness left in the woods, excites the malamute

To circle his hut, piss on the pine he’s tied under.

No stir or movement up there, though these barks are

Moving across the face of the night, striking out

From some loss or pain, wearing down a trail.

I leave the dogs whining to go to the river

Rushing deep and flashing white light of the sky.

This is the clearest night yet for October

Frost webs open ground

Deer everywhere must be fattening on mushed apples.

A howl, now straight across from me —

I can’t see the bear but know it’s a bear,

The call it makes fills that body.

In a moment it will be farther away

Gone back into the hairs of darkness.

I hear nothing more, as if I’ve heard enough —

Now the middle of the night.

Soon that white light will rise out of the river.

____________________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
(Mad River Press)

SAM COOKE FOR AN ANNIVERSARY ~

we both always carry sam cooke. . .

and ~

ANNIVERSARY ~

I played this last night and could see in her eyes what it brought. . .

VAN GOGH ~

last year we visited an exhibit 10 times, never enough. . .

ANNIVERSARY III ~

my lily. . .

ANNIVERSARY II ~

Loving SEA
(anniversary 42)


28 aug

ANNIVERSARY ~

Seasons

All my life

Lived under the stars,

Walked with them night after

Night, and I’m still

Learning how they move

Through the seasons.

And you help — point your

Gloved hand this winter

Evening almost over our heads

To Cassiopeia and then arc

To the North Star in the

Little of the dippers. It’s

Easy once you know, once you

Are shown, once you have

Someone to see with.

for Susan forever

_______________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

(Mad River Press)