Category Archives: inspiration

Blue Heart

2016-05-04-aos-21

“The heart is blue/it aches for its own fuel…” –Jeremy Nathan Marks

 

Blue as the sky on a day when the rain has run

Its course. Blue as the water beneath ice, cold and waiting

For spring to warm and melt. Blue as the jaybird

Perched among the lilacs fooling no one. We think

 

Of fuel as a motive force, a thing for dead machines

To use to rev and stutter to life. We think of fuel

As the gas in the stove, not the blue flame that warms

Our food, turns spices into vehicles of heat. We think

 

Of blue as a thing of ice and need, not the bringer of sun

And day. But the heart itself knows blue in all its shades,

From the jeans at the foot of the bed to the hydrangea

And morning glory out the window, from the dark distant

 

Mountains up to the pale sky framing clouds. Sorrow.

Loneliness. A loss for words. A lost friend. A lost love.

In one direction, purple like thistle in highland heather,

Reminder of battles lost and won. In the other, green

 

Like the spring’s first blades of grass, poking through

Snow, asserting the incipient end of winter, for now.

For now I will cling to blue as to peacock feathers, wild

Elaborate abundance, souvenir of past good fortune,

 

Blue as my eyes searching every other eye for a sign:

Is spring coming? Will the sun return to me? Will there be

Warm breezes, bees, robins, picnics, new love?

Are you the one to bring these things into being?

 

Image from Agents of SHIELD.

Grr. Arrgh.

So yesterday in my last day at MIT for the spring semester, I wrote a fairly brilliant little poem about blue based on two lines from a Jeremy Nathan Marks poem. I thought I had successfully emailed the file to myself, but no such luck. So I am going to have to go in to MIT to get it, because it is very cool and I want you to learn stuff about blue. Because blue is cool.

That is all.

Narratives for Survival #3

hangg_heemskerck

The first line of this poem comes from a poem by Trumbull Stickney. It got stuck in my head the other day, and since I was working on an oratorio or possibly musical about the Hanging Gardens allegedly built by Nebuchadnezzar, I thought I would play around with the ideas some more, and because I am a glutton for punishment, use blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) to do it. If you are going to go classical antiquities, after all, go all the way.

 

“Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream,”

Just as Eden was a paradise

Where animals could frolic, never die,

And trees provided all the fruit for all

The hungry mouths who had not yet learned pain.

Such dreams are necessary for our hearts

To learn the blueprint of a truer world.

 

When Babylon, the center of the world,

Was young and shining in the desert sun,

The emperor, it’s said, once came upon

His consort, Amytis, just lingering

Alone and staring eastward toward her home

In far-off Persia–fair, beloved, and green–

And in that moment knew what pity was.

 

A moment only. (Though that moment was

Enshrined in history. Three thousand years

Have passed and carried with them this one tale,

The birthing of a wonder of the world.

We know such men as emperors do not

Amass empires in order to appease

The heartsick longings of a simple girl,

 

However regal her paternal price

In dowered lands.) A moment later, he

Envisioned legacy, his glorious name

Forever linked to this vast garden, tiered,

Wild, green and flower-blazoned (built by slaves

In exile, sons of Israel of old),

And fountains blossoming to ward off heat.

 

Herodotus recorded measurements–

How high the walls, how tall the topmost tree–

But archaeologists, who deal in truth,

The truth that lies in layers of dirt on dirt,

Tell us Herodotus did not see truth

The way we do, that history back then

Was story first and only afterward

 

A thing of facts. The poet was not wrong:

The Hanging Gardens were a dream. It’s true.

But then, what does it mean that this green dream

Has filled the sleeping minds of women, men,

A thousand generations sharing these

Wild, verdant tendrils of this single dream?

Through this, a need is answered, so be still.

Minuet in D

raccoons-on-a-tree-wallpaper-1

You probably thought I took last week off because I was intimidated by the three forms of dance folks suggested to me: Minuet, Rondelet, and Flailing One’s Arms Wildly to the Beat of Drums. You would not be wholly wrong. Also I spent several days coughing up first one lung and then the other (even days, right; odd days, left).

The minuet is a dance of small steps, which is apparently what the word means (also, menu, as it happens). So we are going to do just that this week, take small steps toward health and that whole Breathing Without Coughing thing. So a haiku pour vous:

Spring robins skitter

Through new grass, look up to see

Raccoon in the tree.

Snow on the Daffodils/Invicta

173-daffodils-in-snow-for-web

After so many years in New England: you would think

I would know by now. Spring begins, flowers bloom,

The sun comes out, then runs away. Snow falls.

 

A flower that has spent its whole life pushing

Up through the soil, toward sun, toward itself,

Toward its own flower-ness: it didn’t do the work

 

Only to be frozen out, wilted. Who wants to stand

In the cold damp, waiting for something warmer?

Who wants icicles drizzled on one’s finery?

 

But the blossoms you can see are only the top

Third of the plant. The bottom third is root,

Deep in the hard, cold soil, holding on, taking in

 

Sustenance, the stuff of life. The middle, compressed

At the soil line, invisible: that is the tough mind and soul

Of the flower: resistance, resilience, hard unyielding patience.

Fisheye Lens

We believe the world is round. We believe that

When a ship sails out of sight, it keeps on sailing

Without falling off the edge of the planet, along

With the ocean waters ever pouring past the edge,

The world’s meniscus. We believe the astronauts

Who saw the Earth from far, far away, a round

Blue marble spinning in space. We believe even

Though we will never see it for ourselves,

 

Not with our ordinary eyes. There are many such

Things in the world. Sometimes it takes a distortion,

A lens like the eye of a fish, born to see through murky

Water, to understand the realness of strange truths.

Stand on a fire tower two hundred feet in the air.

Look out on the world like a bird or a god of poetry:

Pick up your camera and find a way to show us

An orange golden forest curving away at the edges

 

Of our eyes, and in the distance–what is that?

Mountains melting into a sea of navy or teal or

The darkness that beckons dusk to inhale

These curving clouds, pulling them away so that

The golden hour can have a few more minutes

Here, caressing this forest the way fire might

But without destruction, only love. If we blink,

The clouds might pour down over the edges of day.

Spring Promise

black_capped_chickadee_1

Now every breath is a scintillation of birdsong.

This fat little chickadee singing high and loud

Over the mild urban uproar: such a tiny feathered

Body to make such a big sound. Now yellow

Proclaims herself Empress of Grass, with squads

Of daffodils marching in her army. Now, after

A quick rain, the still bare branches hold onto

Raindrops like placeholders for the buds to come.

In the background, the snowbells ring out

A farewell to winter. Now only the dogwood

Will send its petaled snowflakes down on us.

Now, we throw off hibernation like a dark wool

Duffel coat as March clomps away in heavy boots.

Conversation with Classic Bridge, Birds and Fog

  1. Fog

 

The people like to call this bridge golden, though by day

It appears to be red and by night, black. I never see it

The way they do, nor would I want to. I am an artist

Of black and white and all the uncountable shades

Of grey and gray in between. I paint with water and

The air is my medium. Call it hydrography and assume

Viewers who want to feel the pictures I produce

Damply, on their faces, like morning and a new day.

 

  1. Birds

 

A bridge is fine if all you want to do is pause

Between one bit of land and the other, holding on

To the hard, cold, damp steel with your feet, and

Watching the cars go this way and that, watching

Sky blur into bay, and bay into sky: all that grey

And gray. On our feathers, the fog huddles close

Then we cast it off as we burst into the damp air:

Speed! Freedom! Even the light cannot catch us.

 

  1. Bridge

 

No one values stability the way I do, or the way

I reach out to both sides: always. Standing still

Is an unappreciated art. Fog appears and disappears.

Birds land and take off again. I, alone, remain.

Connecting land and land, grey and gray, birds

And fog. I, alone, repeatedly painted red by humans,

Grey and grey by fog and dusk and early morning,

Hold land and water together with my solitude.

The Thing About a Bridge

By day, a bridge is all about departure and destination, a way

Of getting from place to place:

We focus on the ends as if they were the whole point, as if

The middle span was mere

Afterthought and not the central reason for being. We think

Perhaps of the view visible

As we speed our way across, some water usually and perhaps

A boat or two, the kind

Of thing we don’t tend to see so much in the city. Then we focus

Again on our objective,

Where we are headed to, the grand goal of the journey, but not

The journey itself.

But the thing about a bridge is precisely its bridgeness, its span,

Its willingness to stretch

Itself from here to there for our benefit. There is an elaborate

Geometry to a bridge,

Squares, triangles, and at dusk the lights become stars, so there is

Astronomy as well,

And the tiny curved moon hangs as if by a grey-blue thread of sky

Underneath the bridge

And above the setting sun as it blushes the horizon, to remind us

To pause up there

And just be in the in-between space, neither here nor there, but

Content like stars.