You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Susquehanna remains one of my favorite words in the language. (And to think, it’s an import, from the New World.) I love the way the syllables dance around in the mouth and roll off the tongue.
So what is your favorite word?
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For more of my exploration of the word in its world, click here.
to lovers who were never quite present
* * *
good-bye in the night who never were lovers
repeatedly saying good-bye in the night
who never were lovers repeatedly saying
good-bye in the present night who
never were tubercular contortions or squiggles
good-bye tubercular squiggles to lovers’ night
repeatedly saying never quite contortions
squiggles repeatedly saying good-bye
to lovers never quite tubercular night
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Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.
near the waterline, someone’s hammering
throughout the day, someone’s always
hammering
a staccato telegraph
of winter’s approach or gratitude
so little demands repair
or just some old goat’s survived
though when the hammering ceases
he may be eating a sandwich
or sawing a board to be hammered
yes, two taps secure its position
in the quiet, he’s
gone off to the supply house
for a another box of nails, another size
a door slams from another direction
where new hammering erupts
before the man puts his hammer down
on a leather tool belt
and then orders a beer
you’ll find boxes of hammering
in the tool shed, brown paper bags
of hammering in the mud room
old jars of hammering
on his truck bed
open any one
and his arm and shoulder
begin moving
the whole world as his anvil
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.
How many years ago did I write this? What’s come along since could fill a book!
One of the most exciting developments in New England Yearly Meeting is the Puente de Amigos – the Bridge of Love with Cuba Friends. Agamenticus Quarterly Meeting finally accepted the invitation to affiliate with Holguin Monthly Meeting, a pastoral congregation in the easternmost part of Cuba, a relationship that will force us to reexamine many of our own diversity of notions. The visiting Cubans have been gently reevangelizing New England, and when Wellesley’s teens were asked by their Cuban counterparts to “tell us about your conversion experiences,” a dialogue ensued that would have been difficult if not impossible to instigate otherwise: “our what?” Let us tell you!
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For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.
People typically listen with their heads, attentive to logic and thought, or with their hearts, to feeling and insinuation. But there is also a frequently untapped ability to listen with one’s hands, as I recognized at a Susan Stark concert in Brunswick, Maine. There, two Quaker pastors from Kenya (themselves excellent, forceful singers) sat with arms flexed out before them, as if each held an invisible beach ball squeezed slowly. They were appraising the vibration of the room, the presence of Holy Spirit moving. This time, the current was plentiful and active. Try it, in public – at a governmental hearing, a poetry reading, a concert or play, a sporting event – and you, too, may observe how the sense of each occasion may differ. Watch a master carpenter or a first-rate baker, as well, to see how hands ponder a task, running ahead of mental comprehension. A musician often seems to hear music through the fingers, as if playing, even when no instrument is present. Perhaps a surgeon does the same with medicine.
These poems celebrate the movement of Spirit perceived through a Third Ear, between the hands. The tactile response. Here’s one:
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Connect
four fingers and thumb
sometimes, double
into the fire, and out
a pot, a pan, or a skillet
with or without a lid
and its handle
extending to a blade
or straw, depending:
All the wonder of the work at hand
cooking, keeping house,
gardening, splitting wood –
to say nothing of the factory,
farm, boat, or mine –
hunting or warring –
Even basic parts we touch
with each other
Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.
At least they’re not commandments. Holy Moses! Ten more from my end of the universe.
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richness / depth
discovery and a confession we don’t have it right, yet
as for a prescription, we’ll never have it exactly right
if we wanted surprise, we’d go someplace else
so by narrowing the focus, the unexpected twist appears
the asparagus bed or lilacs
my ferns, finally
eight springs at this dwelling
this repetition for greater completeness
complexity as a responsibility
within myself/yourself, too
a spouse rather than a lover alone
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 