POETRY ARRIVED LATE

POETRY ARRIVED LATE

     —after Neruda

Poetry arrived late 

and all out of breath, 

in search of me. 

But I didn't listen,

I had no idea that 

I was lost, or that 

I was bereft—without words. 

Images glimmered

on the far horizon 

like clouds thick 

with the promise of rain, 

and distant thunder pounding 

its own drum in dark canyons,

spoke of other things.

I was not yet schooled, 

words were not friends, 

they were elusive as hungry deer

in a land ravaged by drought,

and they carelessly abandoned me

much in the same way 

my parents did so long ago. 

But my grandmother 

took me firmly by the hand 

and she led me up the hill, 

pointing out the plants, 

naming the spring wildflowers

while the pines whispered old

secrets waiting for new words.

So I suppose poetry got a hold of me 

when I was young, almost a toddler, 

certainly before I was lettered. 

But then it lay dormant for decades 

like a manzanita, or a fire poppy seed 

waiting for the right wildfires to germinate,

and combust into the abyss 

of the mind. I was an imposter

dressed in other words and ideas

made of cheap velvet and cactus,

but poetry was patient. It waited 

for me to arrive—for decades 

before declaring itself an ally,

a lodestone. It became

a pathfinder with arrows 

made of leaves pointing 

the way back home

or was it the way forward—

a doppelgänger rebounding 

through distant canyons.

Poetry finding me here, now.

1/26/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class

Cleveland Elementary School Day 7 teaching notes: Neruda’s Odes, journal

When I joined the class, the fourth grade students were talking of difficult math and how they were having trouble getting it, how they felt so rushed. They have not learned how to ask for help. I said that I really sucked at math but my math teacher was extraordinary man. We talked about favorite teachers. I have worked with many teachers, I said that Mr. Sugarman, who is teaching you math, is a really great teacher, like Ms. Loeser. These are the people that will stick with you all your life. Then I told them the story of my math teacher, Archie Williams, a long distance runner who didn’t succeed in turning me into a math whiz— which is ironic because so many people in my family are math wizards. But not me. But I remember his stories. And that’s equation enough.

Archie was an athlete from Oakland who broke many barriers, not only did he break racial barriers, he broke a track record with Jesse Owen in the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. He also broke records in the sky, he was a Tuskeegee pilot and he taught pilots how to fly fighter jets. In those days, African-American men could not be pilots but Archie came along and he changed things, so I asked this, what is important to you? What juices you? Asking them if they understood what the term juicing means and they said yes. I asked, where does time stand still for you? Or disappear completely? 

One student said that when he plays video games, he completely forgets about time. Many similar electronic devices were rabbit holes, or wormholes of time. I asked them to identify a place where they lost time and to do a freewrite on it. I said it doesn’t have to be a poem. I asked them what are some other things they did during the course of a day, where they lose track of time? Another said that she loved to watch the timer ticking away, knowing when something would end. Boundaries, a different approach to time.

We got into a lively discussion about sports. Ms. Loeser mentioned a story about baseball. We talked about baseball, how time stands still. I asked Ms. Loeser what does it mean when I say it’s the top of the ninth and the bases are loaded? We add more data, the teams are tied, it’s ball two, strike two. Like poetry, baseball is a specialized language, and it’s really about suspended time. When Archie told us about winning the 440 m race, he said the time stood still. It was as if he was in suspended animation.

One thing that’s amazing about this distance-learning teaching process is that you can bring extraneous things in, like this old poem which I would totally never be prepared to share. O Brave New World. We are Caliban lurking in the cave, we are Miranda discovering the treasure. 

We read a bit from Casey at the Bat and I asked about what do we know of this culture, through this poem written in 1888? Team spirit, identity, mud. I tell them, as poets, we are archaeologists mining the past. As poets, we are anthropologists examining culture. We are observers examining everything. We are sleuths looking for clues. We put on our poetry eyes. They notice that the poem is written in paragraphs, I tell them the word for it is a stanza in poetry. We also note how it rhymes. I say that poems don’t have to rhyme, but that was the style in the 1880s.

I talked about what I’m working on right now—the short biographies that I’m writing on Irish American women for Women’s Herstory month. And how in the morning, whenever I read or write—even something boring or banal, like correcting typos, I lose all track of time where 20 minutes becomes 45 minutes—just like that. Sometimes I look down and read for five minutes and the next thing I know, I am late for class, I’m late for appointments, I am late for everything. 

Creativity juices us, it makes us forget about time. That’s the happy place where we want to be. Someone talked about his piano, how he loses time playing it. I say music is like that, it makes us lose track of time. I also tell them that today we will be talking about odes which are a kind of song but in poetic format. Next time I think I will bring in the Salvador Dalí painting with all the melting clocks, The Persistence of Memory.

Personification poems with Blake More Tomatoes, Carrots & a collage

WHAT THE TOMATOES SAID

We arrived in black bags filled with loam
and waited for them to come.
We had no idea of our destiny,
or what was to become of us.
We waited along the fence
in haphazard formation.
The sun rose to its zenith, and we wilted,
uprooted from the coolness of the garden,
we were awaiting adoption,
not knowing who would claim us,
or where we were going.

She found deep pots for us and gave us water.
After we recovered from the shock,
we began to grow, reaching for the sun.
She gave us gilded cages
where we could rest our heavy arms.
And we leaned in conversationally,
we blossomed, and then we fruited with gravitas.
At first, we were shy green orbs that swelled,
and then we doubled in size

with each new watering
until we were constellations,

or perhaps even planets.

And then we reached for the sun
and we became the fire of sunset.
We waiting for the cool green depths 

of salad bowls rubbed with garlic 

and dressed with olive oil. We glowed 

like the glistening blood of rubies.
Summer's gift to those huddled 

around their meager tables
waiting out the siege.

8/5/20

THE CARROT SPEAKS

The carrot speaks of the night,
it speaks of the stars
glistening in the gloaming.
Once it was the color of darkness
but then it saw the sun for the first time
and the shape of its dreams
began to change to include the light.
And then it glowed with the tendrils
of the summer sun.

8/5/20

Digging Deep: Revealing Nature Through Poetry & Art

ARMED CHICKENS

What if you were to arm your chicken
would you need a permit for it to bear arms?
Would it need a a bulletproof vest? Or an alibi?
Perhaps some barbecue sauce for the extra wings?
What if it crossed the road while bare armed?
Would it be a wingman? Would it get a leg up?
Would the now rather cross road roll up and leave town?
What if it was a leghorn? Then what? Would it have an arm up?
Would it be a Rambochicken or a T-rex throwback?
Would it wear wingtips? Would you shoot the little clucker
if the cockerel percheth too long in thy ladie’s chamber?
(Medieval reference explained in the comments)
Would you read your chicken Miranda rights?
No chickens were armed in this process. Really.
But they sure were insulted. What about the bears?
Do they want to bear arms too?

2 Odes, BOOKSHELF, ODE TO A MIRROR

BOOKSHELF

There he sits

at the edge of the bookshelf

all these years, alone,

a hand-carved wooden cat

waiting for someone to read to him,

guarding all those unopened books

with so many stories to tell

He’s waiting for someone

to admire the gilded spines and covers.

He’s waiting with hands clasped

waiting patiently

for the story to begin.

But the story is waiting to be born

so it can travel the world.

4/17

ODE TO A MIRROR

Ode to an tarnished Victorian mirror

chipped and beveled,

radiating prisms of sunlight

Your silver slip, peeling with age

fogged by a sea of memory.

Ornate pewter roses covered your back.

Once you slept on her oak bureau, dazzled

amidst a sea of perfume bottles and doilies

in an upstairs bedroom, perhaps facing south,

where dust motes danced on lace curtains.

Whole lives, trapped behind the mirror.

I found you sleeping alone

in the old sea captain’s house

by the shore            .

4/17

Chilean Miners

When Copiapó Valley miner, Florencio Ávalos broke surface from the penance of his underground dungeon, the collapsed San José copper-gold mine, ten minutes after midnight, Chilean time, everyone cheered and applauded. I couldn't help myself. From another hemisphere, another time zone, I too clapped and cried for The 33.

Los treinta y tres—a fortuitous number in Latin American history—the equivalent of freedom—the 33 liberators of Uruguay, Jesus's age, and his 33 miracles. But this is indeed a story of miracles. Though I suspect Roger Ebert would take umbrage over my fast and loose use of the word miracle or milagro. Mea culpea. And he's right. But I love the sound of miracle in Spanish. Let's just say it was a miracle of technology and tenacious know-how.

I don't have TV & it blows my mind that I can watch in real time this Chilean rescue mission. Amidst a covey of balloons against a backdrop of inkdark lapis Chilean sky, a tinabulation of church bells and the braying of  zuzuzuelas, or Genesis alarms, on CNN, they're saying their minds are blown… All our minds are blown. And it's a full-blown media circus—imagine 2-3000 media hounds at full bay. Though the media is literally being held at bay some 300 feet from the emerging miners, I can hear fragments of nasal American English twang rising over the din. Izzat Larry King?

The first miner to be rescued, "Florencio Ávalos came back to us on the 13th day of the 10th month of the 10th year of the decade —which adds up to 33," President
Sebastián Piñera said. It's also the numerical equivalent of AMEN: 1+13+5+14=33.

UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS

AFTER NERUDA’S UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS 

If the sky bent over to paint robins’ eggs and breathed 

cerulean madness into the breasts of bluebirds, 

did it shun the fatted bluejays asleep in the laurels? 

When the wind blew through the Wife of Bath‘s teeth, 

and Malvolio cross gartered his stockings for his lady love, 

what dark secret love was offered to the moon? 

When the rhinoceri returned where did they all run to? 

Where did he hang his wrinkled skin 

when the sand in the hourglass ran out of time, 

and the door wouldn’t lock? 

Who took the measurements indicated in figure #1, 

when trilateral symmetry, like fish in a mirror, 

breathes fog on the slopes of Haleakala? 

Giraffes harbor entire continents on their backs. 

Trees once stretched in a continuous line from coast to coast. 

Now squirrels have nowhere left to leap, 

they are flattened casualties of the road, 

and PG&E continues to construct Diablo Canyon, 

Livermore, San Onofre, while the wildflowers sway 

like laborious guilt on the salt breeze. 

Where am I going, getting there by the wind 

filling my head with the secrets of trees? 

The door of my heart isn’t marked with a neon exit sign 

darkened by shadows of bounced checks and kites. 

If the moon were full of holes and made of green cheese, 

and money became obsolete, 

how will the chicken Cordon Bleu? 

Freud already tried to analyze the dark side 

of the moon and failed. Miserably. 

Look where that got him.

spring 1984