On This Day

Today My Grandfather

There he gave his life
It's Richard's birthday today ( September 28, 1906)
He would be older than the century that held his life

Happy Birthday to a man that lived
A life so very difficult in East Tennessee
That it reminds me now of kids I teach in this world so far away from then.

Lacking the ability to introduce him
To his great grand kids I am
Introducing them to just these memories of mine that are fading.

He used to say to me "Give me some sugar."
Nuzzle your cheek and take your hand
To share the land he worked, you'd go for a happy walk talk in silence

Actually my Grandfather was quiet, but teaching always
Calm, like water in the palm
When we talked it mattered, life distilled

Grandpa survived in ways most don't even vaguely care or
Understand this day.
Growing, factory, butchering, canning, events of doing.

He'd get me real milk.
That's a secret we had, he knew I'd balk at the cow's taste
Suppose I just told him as a kid would it was yucky, truthful

A chick caught my interest when I was five
and a hen sought to kill me for it
Grandpa always penned them after that, remembering his grin.

I reminded him of his mother, he said
Who wed the man that shot his dad
His Dad who tried to stop that man from beating his dog senseless

His was the life of fire on the mountain
He worked at "the plant" in town all week
Had seven children that still survive

I recall us eating blueberries and cream
At an oiled red checkered tablecloth
In a kitchen with a wood burning stove

He didn't take to hand outs or others
Doing for him refusing indoor plumbing
Because it wasn't from his own efforts, but as a gift from his kin

We went up on Bald Mountain once, huge beautiful chunks of marble are on that site
He, uncle and my father, the men, dealt with a flat tire and no spare
Somehow in fury they aimed a great deal of anger womanward.

I saw that, the fierceness of those men
The rawness of the angers in a truly difficult situation
But you saw too the protectiveness, they accepted the job of hunters.

He wore shirts that I loved to put my nose in
My affinity for white shirts goes to this Grandpa
With the stiff starch it was simple inhaling love

Once I opened the big door of our faculty apartment to see a man
He was holding a few clothes on hangers
I yelled to my mom the laundry man was here

Grandpa laughed. He had actually
Boarded a bus to come see me at four
To come to be my playmate and we colored our pictures.

When I was nine he did that again, he seldom left his mountains that envelope and smother you
He came and took me downtown (on the buses I rode with my driver buddies)
We walked and I admired a pile of rings strewn in the window of Yagle's Jewelery

He said "Wait a minute." I really thought
He was going inside to perhaps use the restroom
Coming out he gave me the ring I admired.

He bought me that without a question. I was mortified.
I thought "My father is going to kill me."
He said "It'll be our secret."

It was a ruby ring, it was on my hand until my thirties.
It is still our secret because it was the most
Spontaneously kind thing I ever knew.

My grandpa is turning today to travel the sun again.
But he is many years gone from living it, felled by a stroke and cancer.
I missed the end of his life, my father taking this

The high price of divorce fell on the kids that got
Treated to my father's destructive lies.
It would have been impossible to reconcile my words into his pot there, so we were kept away.

I saw grandpa in his casket after four years of no contact, looking so small, frail and stonelike
Waiting the judgment he talked to me about
The elemental truth he knew was: living is harsh.

Judgment would be harsher still.
He wasn't gilting the lily on that.
He lay there as if in cloud of anger waiting it and I felt so lost to assuage this.

My grandfather was gone away to the rock froze ground he tilled
Harsh wind on a country hill where his men laid him that day in the freezing eternity of stone.
Unakite actually. Which is marbled with color and polished as a jewel, but just rock, rare. Like him.*

His kids went to be teachers, PHD's , be in service all, run factories
Hold positions in Kodak, be artists, nurses, nuclear plant specialists, mathematicians.
He birthed physicists, pharmacists, leaders and lovers. Workers.

In his children and their children and their children
Are the things that he , himself, did not get to do
Go to libraries, drive sedans, fly airplanes, chose upholstery.

He did not walk the golf courses of a luxury or line up his drive.
No, grandfather worked the land, fished, and kept the children
Alive so that all of us could have all that we have.

My grandfather sacrificed for his family
He read the Bible as his book, he looked hard at the lessons
He looked uniquely at the texts and from this extracted things he shared.

He told me that I was to treat others with respect.
He told me to look at actions, told me to be proud of my artistic talents.
He valued that he said.

Gifts. He spoke of gifts.
He considered me a gift. He considered children as our most precious
Treasures and he took time with his butterball my cousin

And all the kin he had owe him our lives,
My grandfather Richard's birthday is today
And I'm celebrating him in a place he did not know.

In the poem and land of a typing ethernet
A price of walless brain wave and emotional dysfunction
Far from his hands that knew well this land.

Happy Birthday Grandfather.



*The granodioritic gneiss unit crops out in a band trending northeast from the Tennessee-North Carolina state line through Sioux to the Nolichucky River. Historically, these rocks have been called the Cranberry Granite, Beech Granite, and unakite. Unakite is known for its bright pink, red, dark green and white to bluish gray colors. Collectors who often polish their specimens into attractive lapidary pieces seek samples of unakite.

Recollections From the Path Taken

Do You Think It's A Falcon?

It's certainly Frightful scouting the wood
For a child that has taken refuge in the mountain.
Looking this day keenly for prey to sustain them
Through the winter, a hunter for a child
That lives on paper and rises in the mind
As a place to go from the dark days of youth.

Mountain to climb up into when the crash of real
Sends you looking for the cupboard under the stairs
Or attic burrow to lose this moment
Digging and hollowing a tree, old oak as new home
Escaping far away from the cacophony of one life.
Into the dense woods of another, more home this
With risks you can act on to solve and climb up.

In those mountain Frightful attends you well
The task of scouting for who is there, hers,
Looking across the pages for something
That the forest will reveal to you both today.




Viewing My Mount Fuji

Here on another shore
a world away
I see the majesty of the mountain

Heard it rise up silently
light revealing
Each breath captured in silent awe filled respect





Boy Wild

Boy in the wildness growing up
Boy caught in his time
Of then and now and to "be"

Boy wild wondering
Of power and punch
Of the things to smash

Seeing the tiny speck of beauty
Embarrassed flower
Risking failing manhood

Boy in the wilds
Trailing and twisting
Lost then running out ahead

Boy in the paths on trails
Falling over rocks
Boy in the wilds

Boy trailing and leading
Holding, helping, defining
Kicking, taunting aggravating.

Boy corrected
Pushing and laughing
Drum solo piercing the pine floor.

Boy in the wood.
Growing up and out
Choked in this woods, punctuated boy.

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Secret Shared

Ah, we look at that one with especial humor
"She's trying to stop us here in time
With that new camera set on ISO,
Special sensitivity now to her plight of having to stay
Behind as we plan our escape to realize dreams
Beyond these walls of trees we are walking today
As favor to her hope to hold us and hug us to her
Earthen bosom. Can you say that in a poem?
Or is it really boobs? Who says that? Your mom's boobs?
Earth mother there with her sheep lined moccasins
And the hat she knitted, I wore one as a peace offering.
Quick capture me now wearing the days of your life,
As I'm going forward Momma out of this frame into mine."

"Smile say "Spaghetti' girls" to peels of giggles.






Yesterday

I had a cactus garden in the window of our bathroom
It grew amazing cacti, blooming every spring from the plastic cups
I got them at the Murphy Mart on the way walking home
From junior and then high school downtown
After a bowl of chili in the Communtzis
It was a pretty long haul home, all uphill, four miles
I got nailed pretty good by thorns over the years.

It was a funny place to put the cactus
Up on a small marble little ledge up over you, as you sat
On the potty, kind of threatening to fall, or falling
Needles bombing down, precarious.
Hit me in the head a bunch of times, let me tell you.
But in the spring they blossomed.
The windowsill looked like another place.
Dad called it a first class pain but he'd see the blossoms first and tell me
"Spring's coming your cactus are budding out."

So when I come upon cactus now
Anywhere in a garden, walking on a pathway
Growing up in the sun far from that bathroom
I still go there. It's a trail of memory.
I grew african violets in that window too.
Dad said it was the morning sun.
For me to grow anything I need a bit of
Morning sun and a good window.
And a bathroom doesn't hurt either, (or some tweezers.)





Blue-Eyed Grass, Red-Orange Flames

When you walked in the back forty, just a jolly nickname for my backyard I had mowing,
I'd avoid butchering the tops off the blue flower grass and leave the buttercups that grew alongside them,
Oh, and watch for Dad's patch of four-leafed clovers out front. (And miss the bunny holes where the nests were keeping babies protected. ) The Blue-eyed grasses were so tiny, my treasures.

As I came upon this orange star hidden in the forest today, on another coast 30 years later
Had to think it might be the west coast grass version. Red, fire blazing, boldly flaring
If you pick it you take away something from the place, it wilts, told my son that.
Dad would put a blossom in my hand out walking, he would if there were lots there.

Blue-eyed babies, orange red stars blaze in this field of my dreaming
Nature gilded,
Mom says looking at the forest images that the blue ones were all along the walk on Richwood at home
"But you couldn't take them, they'd just wilt, and they need to remain there."
A warning, 35 years after we walked by, to let nature stay in her place.

Narrowleaf Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium)

Water

A drink in the well
Gives eternal life
They told the native peoples, Chumash,
That they worked to build
the Mission aqueduct routing the
Mountain water
Through stone channels
in service to the Lord.

It was certainly death
to those in the high mountains
As the graveyard to the left of the Mission
Contains eternally the bones
Of those not immune to the disease
Carried to them
By those with the
Good News.

I'm watching the water run
through the leaves and stones
today carrying away
Yesterdays truths.
Washing the rough edges
Of times and days
We did nor know
Or fully honor here.
walking today.

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Excuse Me I Got er Rock In Me Mouth

"Minding me own business I grew up here on the bank o mud
No easy place for a seedlin to land
and got a lump of rock in my way
And since then its been nary a moment
Without hoisting it right or left in me jaw if I was to say something

Good thing trees is pretty quiet in the main
Because it's a lot of work to tell you this
"When growing on a rocky bank, expanding roots to
Crack the granite bed where you sit remember that
If you get a big rock in your mouth, a mouthful if you will
You need an ironman's jaw."

So said a tree today to me on my walk
In the wood looking for good Mother Willow
But finding Iron Mouthed Jack instead
Holding forth on rocks and the passage of time.
All I could offer was my remedy, "Just spit it out Jack."

My Father

We'd go walking at Cooper's Rock
When I was younger, just a little kid in a state park
where you could cook up pancakes in these huge open wooden roofed fireplaces
Dad would find beech branches walking for me and I'd chew on the bark
This toothbrush of the early americans he tell me
He'd find about everything and know the medicine
Or cure the mountains made of it
I can do that a little too, but as you know poultices
Aren't so much in style
In DG glasses land and on this Lexus coast
I can't find trillium anymore or
Wild roses, willow bark or the columbine.
Mountain laurels were often in bloom when we'd walk together then.
Such a long time ago.

I get a bit tired of being told to forgive my father
For ripping apart all of us to his tempers and fits.
I spent more time knowing him than anyone else, observing, testing, listening
Trying to help him with my presence with the raging
Doubts, rejections and pains, seeing him grab food
as if starved of all nourishment
I watched him lie, shade and twist
And also bend down in joy finding an arrowhead
Spotting a hawk, deer, drinking from a spring he discovered up a hollow.
I took a bit of sassafras bark from his hands and liked the fresh taste too
In our mouths, as we discovered a stand of blackberries
Huckleberries or wild strawberries hidden in the field.
He just has been ill all my life, in a brilliant mind there is rot.

There really isn't a forgiving
we just seem to be falling from grace without a way to stop
Lost footholds on the path as we were walking
And the gorge lies below us with blistering rough thistles burning
the flesh as you crash and flop twisting
Down in a tumble that is breaking the bones
Of your life. Is that a thing for forgiving? Really?
It's an accident, a tragic thing no one can stare away from.
We were walking at Cooper's Rock once and one of the rock climbers fell.
Dad insisted to me things were just fine and took me back to sit
and 'wait awhile', he said he'd go up and get us an ice cream
so I sat alone which was kind of strange, a very long time
(And he went to help this guy that might have died, snapped neck)
Dad was like this. Any number of times in my life we came upon horrible tragedies, wrecks
He'd tell me something like, " I think it'll be fine."
And then offer a distraction.
It was so like my father.

Dad, taking me for ice cream to distract me.
To help me forget that ugly death was just there lurking.








In The Canopy, My Heart

You haunt me even in a forest
Where I walk lightly
And carry no more false hope.
Looking up to spot the mocking bird,
In the branches, there is
The light filtering through
The heart shaped boughs

Framing the love shining into the underbrush.

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Raising the Kids

If a picture speaks the thousand words this one contains the pain
I felt the last few years wrapped in the smile that my silence was worth it.
Dancing merrily away always separate, leaving you behind goes
My spouse off to take the kids down a trail into adventures without a look back
to see if you fell or are ever going to join him and the kids
At best sending back my son to "See what's keeping your mom"
As I grew not into a sarah or partner, but a figurehead, my role now as mother
Which any son knows is someone you look at as trailing behind.






Rings of Spiraling Time

Man sliced and diced
The redwoods in part to build
The Victorian I grew up in and loved
It was a kit that could be ordered
In a Sears magazine at the turn of the century.
(Freda told me that)
The attic smelled of dry rot
Our closets
Were cedar, good to stave off the moths.
Better to line the drawers where we kept our hope.

This is strange to process
Tonight as I look at the
Wedge of a redwood from a walking path
In a forest on a Santa Barbara
Woodland trail. It is cut
Welcoming you into the
Redwoods, that once were all
Along this coast.

You look at the rings.
It was born in 1100, as a tiny seedling
My daughter commented
When I rubbed my finger around and around
Over the rings of pilgrim times
And Dark Ages and looked
At circles of time, left here in the stump.

There was a ring for my year of birth
The rings of fire marking the 60's
The Civil war, Black Death
The burning days of man
when people vanished
And rings were forming.

Lightening took this tree
With decay and then saws,
Leaving this piece.
Now kids, my kids, can see
what once was a mighty redwood
Before man came to chop it down
To make bear Kitchen Pancake Houses
With real cedar beams.



Two Park Guys

Two Park guys were talking and raking the leaves
Down in the woods
Looking rather out of place with the rake.

"Do you rake leaves in a forest?"
They didn't hear my mumble.
I wanted to ask, but I was sort of listening to them

They were talking about something or another
That was exciting to them,
No need to interrupt.

I saw a picture I wanted to take
Acres and acres but it was just behind one of them.
So I said,
"Excuse me but I want to take
a picture of that star in the heart on that tree."

"Ok, sure."

My daughter very shortly came around on the trail.
To her they said,"Oh, hi, how are you doing
this fine day? Just fine I see.."

All of this said as I took my little Star heart photograph.
And watched my daughter look at all
Of us a bit perturbed, whatever.

"Come on Mom,
you can't photograph every square inch
Of this forest."

No I couldn't.

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And Now The Trail Gets More Difficult

As we hiked our few miles there got to be a part of the day when
It just got harder to walk the trail
Steeper and slicker, you needed to stop froliking and talking,
concentrate on your footfalls.
Really at this place you couldn't take in the view
Of the forest in the same way.
The light and the sound closed in and it pulled
around you with a seriousness.
No one wanted to fall and it was possible to
Slip and get hurt.

In that way I thought of somewhere else
I tried to walk this year, another path.
That began in curiosity and joy winding through
Another kind of unknown, forest.
And in those trees that were sublime really
It narrowed to a simple path that was too steep, slick
And potentially a kind of fall.
I was with someone that went back, I think,
When I wanted to go on and see if we could climb over the rocks
We lost each other there at that place
Looking still for a way out of here intact.

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Mother Willow

Mother Willow here you are.
Not even a willow now but an old Live Oak
You look so fit and well
Tell us of the wisdom of the ages
Hold on a second while we catch
Our breath we just crawled over the rocks
And hit the hard patch of trail
So how's Pocahontas fairing?
The Old World treated her
Much harsher than the new
We caught that on the cartoon network
We have a set of hummingbirds too.
Just like you do
They come nest in our front yard
We planted a bunch of ugly
Brushy things for them for the
Nectar...oh it's so good to see you
Momma Oak tree you look, well thinner
Actually and maybe a bit pale.
Not so many acorns here on the trail either
Has Poppa Moon been keeping other
Well, let's not ruin our visit with things like this.

The important thing is you are here now.

Address Unknown

we appear at an impasse
as i remember, your honor,
he said it was love and that it was real
god i hope so
i need to know that
was so sweet
pouring over the screen
liquid rush
sticky creme
thrush
in the bushes
well, it was a nice
moment.
and then when I said really?
he said no
wait
just kidding
gotta go home now
the forest is too dark and deep
for this
said it and did it
twice or thrice
the worst was when I needed to
believe again in the truth
of hearts beating
and love finding
away to
well you know..crush you
then he said perhaps no
for very good reasons
the craftsmanship of that
then said maybe
then said money
time
family
drink
health
highs
lows
you
me
and a thing about being a better man

somehow it just went like that
down the drain
santa anas to fire
and i said
talk to me
explain
but it was
time for a bus
or something
about a ride
and language

now my problem
beside the internal bleeding
god it bleeds everyday without yet
a scar
is the why of all of it
how
being told
to apologize
for my 'tricks'
or fits
or reactions
why
where
this feels like a rip
in the fabric of time
it's not healing
it's rupturing


christ i cant even look
at poptarts
eggs
dish soap
dog books
my fish
the library
walking
grover and the sky
writing on the pages
my blogs
stars
my skin
spirals
magnolias without crying
out about this
coltrane is a way to
try to hold invisible
thoughts
wrapped in herndon truth
and hopes
of changing
trying to do this
for a way to make a truth
longing towards something I must let go...


I kind of am lost
disoriented, confused
in the forest

and i want the address
of a good psychiatrist

just in case.

Random Emo-Poems

Kidney Stones

Aren't brilliant like diamonds
You don't wish or worry with them
Like pocket stones,
They don't blaze a sapphire star
Or reflect the moon's glow.
These stones are unable to
Build a wall.
Or be mined from a quarry
Michelangelo cannot choose one
To look deep inside to find the David.
They are unworthy of a verse.

No, the kidney stone that's tearing me apart
Is a flake, minuscule, cowardly.
Worthless as anything
But an agent of torture.
Dust from a heartless god
That on waking tossed this at you
Reminder of your impertinence
The insignificance of you.
Irritant in a cosmic shoe,
Felled by a speck humorously called
A "stone."


Ode To Joy

I haven't talked to my brother in a year
And it doesn't feel so painful or sad.
Well no more painful or sad than how it was,
Nor does it feel particularly depressing.
Not to hear from someone (who knows you are in a hospital),
Or felled by illness. This seems my normal kind of relationship
This a brother that I tried to silently support for 40 years.
It actually feels like I've been tossed away
Like a used tissue or a peanut shell.

When I set a limit on the funds I could send
And couldn't accept the blame anymore
For the things 40 years old I had no control over,
Couldn't find ways to hold and hear his angers
Or agree with the justifications
For self destruction as revenge in "our case".
He apparently decided that I'm not worth his time
(My father concluding the same in my teens.)

It seems that the movie has ended.
Then you just walk out in the light
Disoriented.


Chelsea Mourning

We had a fight because I didn't care anymore
felled by pain and bloody urine

Because I wanted to be talked to directly
See if I'd be cared for, laughed at, taunted, made fun of for feelings of exclusion, and lesser worth, derided on intellect or not be treated as an equal, simply channeled and managed.
Be put in a compartment. I wanted to know so I tested and it was combative.

If I was in my mind form we'd go arm and arm.
But now we are locked in a wrestling match.


Ice Bath

Ran the shower
Distracted
by my eyebrows talking
Bright lights blaring
In a late night attempt to hush crawling itchy skin.

Stepped on the pain
It reached through the
screaming
Cold I froze
Neck talking about hair's failings again.

Burning ice
Legs woke up first
struggling to fall
Telling my head
The water is cold ice not hot, belly was chastising me about it.

Arms broke off
And my head rolled
on the linoleum.
Every part of myself
A cacophony of irritated nerves conversing.



No One Loves the Fatwoman In the Circus

Not for mind or heart am I admired
Certainly not for walk or stance.
Gaining this was a kind of disappearing.
When very thin the invitation then said bring it on.
And that was another kind of weight.
You couldn't understand that either.
As a woman to be wanted for something I had no part in making
Just those thighs or breasts please
And a rump to get palmed while I writhed
This was how it was, and my thinking was
often requested to be turned off
"Just try not to talk."
I created that person again on paper, the thin
And seductive person that hints at all the lovely thoughts
That are in my mind free to get.
But I put her inside my writing to be picked out of bones
Paper girl was able to walk and talk to people
That would never look twice my way.
She made a paper lover imagine her face.
I think the only time a face was ever required it was so good.

The fatwoman in the room is the deal breaker.
And sick with all the things despised, age, cancer,
Memories, hurts, needs, desires, appetites and willingness.
The repulsion is so very extreme
That everyone is needed elsewhere.
No one loves the fatwoman.

It's a very busy time, for my invisible lard.

60's Wild

Questions

“What’s God like?” my sister asked me,

“Gentle as a baby, strong as a tree.”

“What’s God do?” said my brother to I,

“Loves little children, hangs clouds in the sky.”

“When’s God here?” asked a girl named May,

“Every single minute of every single day.”

“Where’s God live?” asked a little child,

“In the hearts of the people, loving and wild.”

(by my daughter Sylvia when she was 9)

WHEN THE WORLD WAS WILD

Born a 60's woman, was a 60's child
Carved my teeth, when the world was wild
When it came untamed, when the doors were wide
Born a 60's woman, was a 60's child

And the dreams they flew, yes they flew so high
They went soarin thru, a hole in gray sky
And they filled the air, its the air we breathe
Born a 60's woman, and I still believe

And our rights were wronged, and our lefts were right
Cause we stole the juice, from deep blue night
But they grabbed it back, and it made them strong
Born a 60's woman, but I won't be long

Oh it was just
Some 30 years ago
Oh we must we said
Fight to make it so
Oh it was just
A time to fantasize
But now we know
What was truth and lies

Sometimes a balloon, when its filled with air
Will soar aloft, to the atmosphere
But there are times, when it must come raining down
And come to rest, or smash into the ground

So generation X, inherits the wind
For that we left, unless we try again
All our comfort and, all our foolish pride
Is the prison wall, we've wrapped ourselves in

Oh it was just
Some 30 years ago
Oh it was just
The way we said it would be so
Oh it was just
A time for flower's child
A time for our dreams
So many that have died

Some things progress, through the march of time
Still others must be ripped, from sequential lines
And to the chaos, we have only paid
The price of our dreams, in the world we too made

Oh it was just
Some 30 years ago
Oh it was just
The way we said it would be so
Oh it was just
A time for flower's child
A time for our dreams
So many that we left to wither and to die
Oh it was just
A time for flower's child
A time for our dreams
So many that have died