This month I turned away from a novel, a book of short stories and turned to a few poets and their poems found on my bookshelves. Why? I just finished a four month audio-book session of listening to two narratives that seriously will take another four years to unfold before there is a chance to understand this political tale of a whale!
I needed a break. I grew up on a farm. As a young boy, I learned that I not only had to walk carefully around the bull-shit but I had to watch for the ever present cow-shit too. This election audio-book had its fair share of shit from both sides of the page!
A poem invites me into the poet’s inner feelings about the focus of his ….focus! Usually it is expressed in a rhythm and meter that can easily morph into song, for me, the language of the soul.
The aforementioned audio-book of the election had chapters about Afro-American young men who camped in the red camp. They were joined by Latinos who were attuned to the beat from billionaires who camped with them at the Y.M.C.A. Oh how they felt their economic pain! The blue camp, afraid of their left hand, woke up late to share a story of a country without borders and their understanding that the eggs cost too much! So empathetic as she shed a fake tear wearing her Tiffany necklace! Like I said, watch where you step!
I first turned to an African American poet, Langston Hughes. From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Ruessel and published by Vintage Books New York in 1995, I share the following poem; Helen Keller.
She,/In the Dark/ Found Light/ Brighter than many see/.
She, /Within herself,/ Found loveliness/Through the soul’s own mastery
And now the world receives/ From her dower:/ The message of the
of the strength/ of inner power.
After reading Hughe’s empathetic verse, I turned to Martin Espada’s collection of poetry titled Imagine The Angels of Bread, published in 1996 by the W.W.Norton Company, Inc. On page 60 & 61, I found this Latino poet’s story about economic stress, still too common today.
Offerings to An Ulcerate God
Chelsea, Massachusetts
“Mrs. Lopez refuses to pay rent, and we want her out,”” the landlord’s lawyer said, tugging at his law school ring. The judge called for an interpreter, but all interpreters were gone, trafficking in Spanish at the criminal session on the second floor.
A volunteer stood up in the gallery. Mrs Lopez showed the interpreter a poker hand of snapshots, the rat curled in a glue trap next to the refrigerator, the water frozen in the toilet, a door without a doorknob, (No rent for this. I know the law and I want to speak, she whispered to the interpreter).
“Tell her she has to pay and she has ten days to get out,” the judge commanded, rose so the rest of the court room rose and left the bench. Suddenly the courtroom clattered with the end of business: The clerk of the court gathered her files and the bailiff went to lunch. Mrs. Lopez stood before the bench, still holding up her fan of snapshots like an offering this ulcerated god refused to taste, while the interpreter felt the burning bubble in his throat as he slowly turned to face her.
After Espada, I turned the pages and pages of poems Emily Dickinson had penned, mostly in solitude and scrapped in her room, waiting to be found by family members after her death, as I understand her life story. I found her poem # 168 as catalogued in Bolts of Melody, published in 1945.
Mama never forgets her birds/ Though in another tree;/ She looks down just as often/ and just as tenderly/ As when her little mortal nest/ With cunning care she wove./ If either of her “sparrows fall”/ She notices above.
It is noted after #168, This poem was sent to Emily’s young cousins, Louise and Fanny Norcross on the death of their mother, April 17, 1860. A wonderful intimate gift of compassion and empathy for two young daughters at a grievous moment of loss in their young lives.
Some poets express their hurt and anger in such a way that I can not ignore their pain. I found just such a poet, Jill Alexander Essbaum and her poem titled Sonnet, published in POETRY, in August 2004. With apologies to Ms.Essbaum, I only reprint the last few lines of Sonnet as they capture her hurt, anger and malaise so poetically;
I could lean forward/ to kiss you. Or I could reminisce you/ recalling only the happiest bits/ the shattered heart’s shards. I could be safe or still./ Oh I could kill. I could strangle the blue/ from your eyes, and survive. Could I/ forget, I would thrill. I can’t. I wont. So I will.
Next I picked up an anthology of poems titled Serenade,published by Octopus Books in 2017. The author of the poems in Serenade is Brooke Ellsworth. Full disclosure, Brooke is my daughter. The work that I share here she titled, The Sky’s Dark Blue Charity.
Echo smokes a lot and saves the butts. She writes a lot of poems and posts them on her Myspace accounts (2003). She has the deleterious pattern of creating profiles, uploading content to then deactivate them after a few weeks. This anti-archival proclivity maybe comes out of a childhood anxiety. In this way, written seriously, pleasure is a thought on a cold beach. We have to back each other up.
Laughing down the dirt roads behind the school, Echo and Narcissus collect used smokes in the front pocket of her backpack for later. They hide when boys walk by, waiting for the hollering to fade. “We will never die,” Narcissus whispers to Echo’s stomach as they lie on their backs in the tall grass, watching Venus rise from the horizon. Later Echo wakes up in the darkness covered in dew. She stands up then finds her way home.
The Lighthouse as usual has my back. After putting these five books of poetry back on my shelf, I began to revisit my poems and short stories I had conjured up in many a reflective mood over the past many decades. I came across one that I share here.
Thread
Boston’s party was a harbor of tea linking a radical few protesting the King’s own tax. Whig(ed) out, the many were silent, thinking self righteous judgements, potent aphrodisiacs. Often times the few have led many as Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom“ unlocked the shed giving light too long in shackles. Master once no longer, yet change I “Dred”.
Ballots were only to touch the men. Suffer the lady too young in age. Off with the apron armed with the pen. Votes cast; still glass ceilings were no mirage. Connected by memory full of emotion, the cloud of one storm whispered cirrus to the next. Rosie riveted our attention and staid at work. Two garaged, this was serious.
I laid on the beach catching a ray, the look of brown my goal that day when the radio static cleared and I heard another King in Selma was marching on a red necked so and so! Over and over the question was separate but equal. My Constitution‘s strong yet I sat on the throne and pondered the marriage of two ideas. No morsel, no crumb was left while I chewed on the bone.
Now they’re flush with debate over this. My two ideas are wrong as they both come from my female side. I wish I had known that thread is connected to this day. The thread is judgement and it knows no end. Let it go, I say, for all there is in life just is and it is my life not to bend but stay on course and just discern what is……is!
I wrote this poem twenty years ago in 2004. The occasion was the thread of patriotism that fills me ( shallowly) with pride. I love courage and this was the year Massachusetts led the nation in codifying same sex marriage. Colleagues, friends, and family members have the courage to follow their hearts and I have to show the empathy to rise above negative judgements that may have polluted my being in my younger years. ( In 2014 the rest of our nation followed suit.)
As I finish this post the tide’s going out. We can easily see the economic, narcissistic, judgemental, anger sprinkled with empathy, forgiveness, and love in these poems. I pray that as the tide comes back in, it covers the judgemental anger and narcissism leaving only islands of forgiving love and empathy we all can swim to. Cliche I know; history never repeats but it most certainly does rhyme!
Thank you for reading.
Be in peace and joy!
Mark