Ever taken the Port Townsend ferry?
Month: November 2017
WHAT’S IN THE WIND
Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.
~*~
- My wife can’t resist an opportunity to make a holiday feast, and that means planning ahead. (Somehow the menu keeps growing, enough to feed twice as many guests as we have.) I’m impressed by the checklists she makes, too, to keep herself on track. Three days ahead – or more – the work actually begins. And then there’s the last-minute shopping for anything she wants to be fresh.
- Juncos and jays. Rituals and routines. Manners and mores.
- No matter my affinity, I never would have been comfortable in the Society of Friends in any of the earlier eras. I always would have chafed at the limitations and discipline. Nor, for that matter, do I see anywhere I would have fit in neatly. (We could start with my interior “fort” surrounding my emotions, despite my public interactions. Or my Aquarian/contrarian nature.) Well, the Mavericks have roots in Boston Harbor. Look ’em up. Doubt I’d fit in there, either.
- Opening my car door at the Nubble Lighthouse, I’m nearly knocked over by cold wind. Sustained, more than gusting. Barely a mile inland, only a mild breeze. This strange sensation of having my nostrils blown shut (or at least constrained): to breathe, I have to turn my back to the wind, a first in my experience. Make you wonder about sailors at sea?
- In Eastern Orthodox tradition, Mary is a temple of God that surpasses the one in Jerusalem. Within her, the Light or Logos becomes incarnate. The nuances are quite different from what I’ve heard in Western Christian teaching. How much else have I missed? I’m certainly invigorated by the sharp contrast to our austere Quaker aesthetic. I love the extremes.
- Launching this blog, as the horoscope said, came in my year to come out of hiding.
- In contrast to any sense of guilt or some shame or impoverishment: LOOK AT ALL THESE RICHES! Even the matters of what’s unfinished or undone, now turned to opportunity.
- A sense of progress, too.
- What do I really want? To be accepted and loved, without feeling pain? Certainly there’s more.
- What holds your life together?
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DREYS WITHOUT LICHEN
stack neatly three cords of stove wood
for kitchen heating (ache, diddly ache)
with no idea how much they’ll need for winter
learn to use a variable-speed screwdriver,
far from expertly, while hanging drywall and doors
(ache, diddly ache)
the plumbers finally show for a day
installing a new boiler just before
the season’s first hard cold snap
and now, having switched, the price
of natural gas price shoots up
still, his Lady of Yard Sale Bargains cites
environmental advantages before
terrifying Halloween trick-or-treaters
and Big Brush Fire No. 2 reduces
three more huge piles to ash and
His Lady of Princess Pink costumes herself as a hippie
to his glowing relief, after the Britney Spears
she’d been threatening
but first, there’s the push to paint the new rooms
in the barn and then lay vinyl in its bathroom
(ache, diddly ache)
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Home Maintenance poems, click here.
QUINCY MARKET IN LIGHTS
Each year the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, commemorates its gratitude for relief Boston extended in the aftermath of a deadly harbor explosion in 1917. The Canadians deliver a large Christmas tree, which is then erected and decorated in the heart of Boston.
The lighting itself is quite an extravaganza, as I learned the first time my choir participated in the event at historic Quincy Market. Imagine seeing yourself on the Jumbotron while you sing.
Boston is a rich and varied destination – the Hub of New England, or the Universe, as they used to say. Living a little more than an hour to the north, we’re well within its orb.
JUST WONDERING
Ever been in Binghamton?
MATH ISN’T HIS STRONG POINT, EITHER
As Doc would have said:
If he knew even one-tenth
of what he thinks he knows
he’d be ten times smarter
than he is.
(Yes, working with Doc was a hoot.)
OBLIVIOUS AND DISCONNECTED
As Doc would have said:
The funniest words out of that mouth: “I think.”
Meaning a less-than-conscientious way of doing the task at hand while adding to the burden of another.
We know.
SPIRAL SHELL
reading the inscription on your tombstone
an abandoned road soon becomes impassible
except on foot or horseback
dumplings, broiled, steamed, and fried involving pork, chicken,
Chinese cabbage, tofu. more ginger and any amount of
garlic, scallions, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts
a bronze bespattered snake
coils elegantly
through an alligator-skin sandal
nothing funny about us, just practical and direct
“maker dressing toe,” she
she was so bold
a mechanical hand made of maps and a yardstick
SHAKE
Edward Steichen’s portrait of Leopold Stokowski in profile
a human heart just one shade redder
a place to savor and crave
mechanical dancing dolls
shaving pennies
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.
REEL, IF YOU WILL
What opens with a dance tune perchance deflects into the reaction to a blow or injury, to a fly fisherman’s reel, the canisters of a movie, or even a soaring eagle. These poems span experiences of touch and coupling, however chaste at times, and of flight and emerging lightness. To be light on one’s feet, then, and light-hearted in the end, if not a little dizzy.
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EXTENDED FLOURISH
First, the snow a sheet of ice
shiny as cake frosting.
Then the Asian dental hygienist greets me:
“Sorry to make you waiting.”
Maybe it’s all in the skin.
A flourish we extend. A touch or care.
Excellence in a small thing, somewhere,
a note of gratitude or worship
placing everything in the larger context
of conception, especially through its monotonous stretches.
A few hours later, lavender mountains at sunset:
the Monadnocks, viewed from my studio window,
incredibly purple, even more than blue.
That night:
Sing. Dance. Fiddle. Doodle.
And away I go.
Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.
IN THE FINE PRINT
oh, stranger
you seem to expect a believer will forgive anybody
you seem to think a devotee must forgive everybody
you seem to presume a saint can forgive all
but it’s nothing you attempt in return
* * *
oh, stranger, there are conditions
according to Jesus
if you ask
we can begin
and if you express regret
and if you turn course
and do good actions
we can truly begin
if you want any forgiveness between us
we can begin gently working
according to Jesus
* * *
but if you think forgiveness is a license
to come back
the way you were, to continue harming
and hurting others
you’re mistaken
oh, sinner
forgiveness begins by admitting the mirror
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 