On kindness (to the staff of Bethel University Library)

i have heard it said someday
in heaven the people next to you
will shine
so fiercely beautiful
it would stop you
stone still

sometimes
you don't have to wait
that long

Economics, July 4 (an old poem i found)

breath in and bellow your song
low rumbling down in your dark chest
the heart of the land beats strong as
there are living fingers of green shooting
up from the soil to reach my hands running down
along the tassel-headed rows

each corn plant plants a flag
for its own plot, the lot
is taxed and tricked from the common hand
the rich will hire out the common man
from earth to plant to corn to cash
from plows to shares from boom to crash
from derivatives back to common math

all good things

I go out
with spade and tine
to attack the
earth
and as I dig in
and give it a twist
i say under my breath
all good things...

the deep rooted
dandelions
are defiant:
how will i say
what good things are
good things

and the elm
across the street
catching at the last sun
with its lower limbs
bent in a curve
the
neck of a young doe
going down in the dusk
to water
why is she
so beautiful
and finicky?

the elm
with her finger to her lips
the intermittent shush
of the evening air
and the earth
i have ripped open
pulls on my feet
and up my knees
till i come down to lie a moment
in the dampening grass

feel the gentle hands
of the beetles and crawling things
inquiring, polite but thorough,
whether i am dead

there's nothing at all
i think
sentimental or consoling about that
as i jump up
and give myself a shake.

nother song

Reach out and face the sun

Rather be biking

the way the faces
behind car windows
look at me
biking

as if
it were still
some worlds fair
sort of victorian
contraption

a horseless
horse! man
powered motion
machine

ah
all the lovely
clashing sounds
of the city
and the sky
in its skyscraper window
funhouse

that's it:
the thing is
they'd rather be
biking

and all the tired people
pour out of these
office buildings
and reach for their cigarettes
and i want to give them each a hug
as i pass
ding my little bell
and say
hop on
the handlebars
you can come to!

the drake and the hen

on my bike
this morning
i come upon an unmoving mallard

as i pass
i understand,
this feathery mound
on the road's shoulder
his crushed mate

i wish
i could stop a moment
and tuck her into
the earth
but this
would be no consolation
to the drake

the beautiful
wild morning
continues

the sound
of passing engines

all the straining pistons
pushing

keep biking, narcissus!

crossing over the stone arch bridge i stopped for a moment
to watch the water in its eternal passing the water-
sprites are long gone but the trace of
a voice calls me to climb down
to the river's edge

myth, this echo
she wakes me
she says
look
in

an evening in april, 2010

last night
i was bringing
the garbage
and recycling out
to the curb

and the neighbor
was lighting some sweet
scented cigar
his face framed glowing
for a moment in the dark
and the few city stars
framed by the night

you came out
to the back screen door
said what a beautiful
night and the air
was so still and the world
balanced
between waiting
and furiously growing

when i stepped inside
we held each other a moment
and i swear
the earth is the strength
in our arms
and how the softness of the night
catches in your single little sigh

why should we wonder
about love and all the people
who have died
and all the stars

balancing
like fine weights
oh
this moment there is nothing
we need
more

starting with the daredevil christopher wright and dribbling away into some kind of vague sophistry

Recently a friend introduced me to the music of a local band, the Daredevil Christopher Wright. I have only listed to a disk of theirs a handful of times over the last few days, but for some reason I want to write this now anyway.

first, the attempt at a review. and here we make comparisons to danielson/famile, half-handed cloud, sufjen stevens perhaps (i am forgetting what this sub-genre is supposed to be called). saying things like how the lush landscape of harmony combines with the best of pop melodic sensibilities and alternately ironically detached and sweetly sincere lyricism to create an experience sort of like getting a flat near a private college and being taken aback when a group of twee fellows goes about changing your tire for you and then drives you to church where you all eat casserole with some dear elderly ladies and are reminded that there are so many things you had forgotten, or maybe you never really knew, but thinking back a bit you see all the places where they fit. and that would be toned down quite a bit because it would be written more carefully, and would include some lines from songs here and there.

and then, i think, i wouldn't commit myself entirely. even despite the casserole and things, this group could possibly go further. there are places in the lyrics where you feel the ideas could be developed a bit more or they are going down a bit of a wrong trail, perhaps one or two songs where it seems like a different group in terms of the confidence of the melody and the gait of the song as a whole. however, the musicality is impressive and winsome and is, one might say, the basic driving force behind the album, at least from this listener's point of view.

and second, i am asking myself what it is that makes me say these things. by what criteria could i, knowing nothing about bands and very little about maturity, possibly say a band could or should mature? what is it that drives the impulse to say, on the one hand, when i hear these songs, it seems like something familiar and that i can shake hands with and just start chatting, and on the other that i feel like there is somewhere beyond this point, not just to which one could go, but that these people, whom i don't know, could go?

and i could answer this by saying that clearly, since i feel free to write sloppy poetry and songs whenever i have the time, i will want to suggest that everyone, even those who are not amateurs, could and should mature, since i have this sort of guilty feeling myself, and since i want to feel like this sort of situation levels us all out.

and on the other hand, i could spin this back around to the idea of poetic knowing, and how we have some internal criteria for understanding each other through these forms, that the relationship between fiction and fact, subject and external world, is one of mutual benefit built on the causeway of some jacob's ladder of, shall we say, the "sense of things" that lies behind language and it's interpretation. what is this "sense of things"? when you try to answer that, i guess, you get art, poetry, song. or perhaps it is best to leave this by saying we are at a point beyond which we are tempted to believe we can go.

planting

saturday
morning light plays
across the
grass, already shaggy-headed
with a million
tiny suns
dew-strewn
as you and i go out
to work

a tap-rooted
weed resists
the tug of my fingers
and releases its
expendable leaves
biding its time

why is it
that the powerful
things are this way
and beautiful things
need caring for
i ask myself
and
beside me
you reach up
to tuck in a strand of escaping
hair and leave a smudge
of dirt on your flushing skin
so that when you smile
just a little bit of the earth
gets caught
in a grin

and i get caught too
as i carefully pull aside
the soil and put
this new flower in

beneath the roots
i am adding something
a resolution.

looking up

the way
you take
these breaths

as if
the evening were
a diving bell

if i could
i would build for you
instead
a cupula of love

or
i would turn things
around
cupped in my palm
and
lay you down
gentle
as the flowers
nodding in
the sun
garnishing this bel-
vedere

not quite andrew bird

and recycling a bit of poetry...

actually like a million miles from andrew bird, obviously.

Here am I

Please send me

Carter family special

Wildwood flower

Caution: contains quite a bit of mediocre harmonica work not found in original.

It isn't really spring without some Robert Burns

Banks of Doon

sunset behind portland ave. boulevard

the sun's last light
draped delicate
luminous in little leaves
budding upon these
maple trees

is like a woman
slipping into
an evening
gown

come
she says
let's dance

while
the evening
breathes cool and
that cloud
catches the moon
nestling against its chest.

porch swing

front porch swing
guitar strings sing through the screen
door night comes thick
like a cat cooly stepping
down the block sidewalk, house
to front house light laying
shadow-work down bend
these notes for me
reach into
guitar throat
ah
bend
bending these notes
around the sounds of the city night
black cat in the shadow low
where'd you
go now?

Magpie's Nest

Magpie's Nest
Folk song? from the British Isles that I like to sing for Amelia and Ellie.

Not sure it's a folk song--I heard it from an Alisdair Roberts recording of Scottish folk tunes (The Crook of My Arm, which I highly recommend--he does much better with the song, naturally).

Narrativity (to Jeremy, loosely)

A.
i am pulling down
the on-ramp behind a
grand am
and i am thinking of you
and a discussion
on narrativity

how i would build
this story from
the way this guy in the
next lane
bends his head to fluff
his hair by the square of
his rear-view mirror

and a woman
in an old tan chevy
blazer
bearing down
swerving
around my car
ultimately caught fifty
feet on where all the
traffic lanes are clogged

B.
she pulls closer
to a toyota, too close and it
bugs me so i think about reasons
she might have
this morning
for being late
and, i guess, for staying within
the lane lines

what would it take for us
to cut loose, drive up the shoulder
etc.?

she weaves
with her equipage of
primary
and secondary
conflict

(the four-lane montage
flows now around a
bend eastbound
into the slap
of the morning
sun)

C.
you
our old discussion
the woman with her
unknown rationale
cell-phone conversations
going by unheard
all these like points
along a rising
action
this traffic
crisis jam up easing to

resolution
the open road.
but still it is
a driving
upon this same road.

Easter Song

I can feel
in the air and on
the earth
a vibrant tonic
note

yes I wonder
about belief

still there is some way now
to know how to begin
this hymn
to join
hallelujahs a hundred
hundred strong

I hear this tone
birds, the sun,
light, air
the gospel, warmth
of our gathered
bodies,
infant's honest
crying
between this note
and the first breath of song
is that where
faith
is stored?

Easter Vigil

and i guess for me the night
came to this:

a point at which i stood
at the edge of my soul looking down
thinking

what if the Christ
were buried down there?

what would that
rising be
like?