Category: American Affairs

WISHING TO BE SEVENTEEN ONCE AGAIN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

the waitress popped up with the usual
“how are you today?”
but rather than trying
to cover up with a phony “fine”
I said instead, “rotten”
and she did a double-take and came back

by the end of the meal, we were both laughing

~*~

arguing we needed music that reflected the Machine Age?
discomfort, bottled up until exploding

and when buzzed by a sailplane
I was all skull, brain, thought, memory

tried sunbathing just now: too restless
wishing to be seventeen again

SHOOT, IT’S A KILLER

the underlying reason for these orthodontics?)

~*~

“well, if you do find a way
to become seventeen, they can’t
throw you in jail!”)

two calls in a day, one wanting
the bank’s certificate of deposit department

and another an alleged beverage survey
calling long-distance from Philadelphia
for the youngest female in my household
(a likely story, probably an obscene phone call

that got hung up on) . old wounds have reopened

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Copyright 2015

ALSO FLOWING TOWARD THE MERRIMACK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

just a warning, of Concord, revolution or dancing
the bridge or the barn, different eras
come, swim across the pond, watching
a commuter train race along the wooded hilltop
a shot, yes, by the river a bronze Minuteman regards now
with its great writers buried in its bosom
maybe you expect a great calm while packing
or overlook the state prison and traffic rotary
pressed together, “a port of entry and departure”
all of these pages, yes, being “bubbles in our wake”

~*~

the temple wall folds
to the green river
of migrating salmon

its unbroken factory façade
springs from gravel
not here or there

with the neon lights, if you would
export calico
or denim
from a carp pool

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Copyright 2015

MONUMENTAL ERRORS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As I would have said at the time: Note to folks living below the Mason-Dixon Line: It’s time to remove the Confederate monuments. They look too much like a sore loser.

Let’s remember, those shafts (at least the ones I’ve seen) have to be offensive to every descendant of every slave in America.

Think of all the German-Americans who never erected Kaiser monuments in honor of their dead kin. Japanese-Americans who could have placed Hiroshima/Nagasaki reminders. Italian-Americans, with Mussolini railroad efficiency. Vietnamese, Native-Americans, French?

It’s one thing to respect the dead, but this has felt defiant. From my view of history, it was a rich man’s war fought by the poor who continued to suffer poverty long after. Including many of my ancestors.

Now, what do I make of the statues of Civil War soldiers found on every town green in New England?

The wounds linger, don’t they.

HOT TUB ORACLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I never intended to live there as long as I did, in the rented townhouse in what I sometimes called Yuppieville on the Mountain. But it must have suited me during that decade of waiting and searching, my anticipating true love and a long-desired relocation into permanence. Besides, it was convenient to the office. Admittedly, I enjoyed using the whirlpool in the clubhouse, soaking in the hot water while watching snowflakes drift down on the other side of the display windows; besides, at that time, the complex was still surrounded by woodlands. Lest it sound too idyllic, let me also acknowledge the dumpster parked beside my unit was frequently overflowing.

The poems in the resulting collection arise in that experience of transient proximity, which has become so much a part of the American landscape. The poems themselves are a kind of side street from other works I was drafting and revising during this time. Still, they make me examine what was right in front of me, all the same.

The series closes my collection, Rust and the Wound. To read the free ebook, click here.

LOST YEARS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

these damned mill towns exhaust
another mystery in the night
of Indian and Barbados descent
as much a sphinx as medical

for a change, salmon, at the hydroelectric dam

(along with the fish ladders they’re installing
two blocks from my home) the only evidence of life
is where beaver has gnashed a foot up the trees

~*~

the decade and a half
between the collapse of first
marriage and origins

that second                spiritual redirection
and career retrenchment
not harried                but

resignation
collisions
oh, all these devils

~*~

like the other stuff I was going to do tonight
my intellectual existence, it seemed
if she knows any alternatives

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Copyright 2015

NOW, TO LOOK MORE CLOSELY AT A TWO-EDGED SWORD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

If you want to see out-and-out prejudice by people who think themselves to be open-minded, here’s a good litmus test. Raise a matter of Christianity. Or, as a woman, wear a cross necklace. Then ask if it’s the same response you’d get had you presented something from another religion.

Put another way, I’d long ago been appalled by an assumption many of us liberals took in regard to Christians – and to be candid, I was once one who was self-righteously disparaging. Quite frankly, it’s out-and-out judgmentalism that hurts our progressive causes. It’s ignorant of the important support radical faith gave to many movements through the centuries and can still give to the future. It’s a point for dialogue with our opponents, if we’re willing to engage it.

Two common assumptions spring to mind here.

The first involves intelligence. There’s more to life, let me point out, than materiality. Think of love, music, morality, for starters – people with knowledge of ways of empathy, too. Extend that, then, to a recognition that to be a person of faith does not automatically mean stupidity, even if we do see way too many examples in the public arena – not just those of the Christian label, either. Nor do Christian do not come in a one-size-defines-all homogeneity – some denominations, for instance, refuse to bear arms or participate in war as a consequence of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, while other churches rally around the troops. The ways of thinking and the emphases vary widely, from Fundamentalists to Evangelicals (yes, there are differences there) to Pentecostals to various strands of Calvinists or Lutherans (yes, again some key differences) to various Wesleyan (Methodist) and Baptist and Anabaptist (Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, Quaker) and on to the Unitarians. And that’s just among the Protestants. Add to that the Anglicans (Episcopalians), Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox and you have a very rich mix, indeed.

Within those are some very intelligent and sensitive people, along with circles of personal growth and ethical accountability.

The reality is that religion is capable of engaging our innermost motions – our hopes and fears, especially. It’s a power that can run many ways, challenging the status quo as well as establishing community. The state and the establishment have many reasons to desire to curb it, as history attests. Even at a personal level, it can be scary stuff.

Pointedly, progressive movements have sprung from this source. For centuries, up through America’s civil rights revolution, social change has grown from radical Christianity. A central thread of the Bible has been the evolution of justice and then radical peace and equality. Read it closely, and what emerges remains a challenge to the status quo. Let’s not lose it now!

As the prayer goes, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth …”

Many of us see that as a more loving, just, and peaceful society. Mock it if you wish, but think of the alternatives. Are they really progress?

All of that, of course, leads to my second point: the so-called Christian right, of the political sort, hardly owns the mantel of Jesus. And since any religion has the potential of engaging those most soulful endeavors of human existence, we see across the spectrum instances of appealing to fear and oppression, on one side, as well as forgiveness and oneness, on the other. Religion in this dimension presents an opportunity for conversation and growth, if we allow it.

~*~

For more on radical faith, see my book, Religion Turned Upside Down.

ROLLING WITH WHALES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

on the way out, a fifty-year-old shrimper from Louisiana –
originally from Gloucester, where he’s visiting his sister –
tells of the Gulf’s particular brutality

how crews typically go out twelve days
till the hull is full . his boat with three Rolls-Royce
engines so loud harborside residents complained
he hesitated to open full throttle
unless the water’s churning was especially rough

rocking at the jetty-mouth sandbar
like Canobie Lake’s pirate ship ride
three delighted school groups shriek

when we top twenty-one knots – his boat, twenty-three
yet his went down / couldn’t salvage any gear
lost two crewmen with him five years
he himself now limps
wounded in the knee by a barracuda,
and it’s not healing right . he hobbles along
with a cane, wondering if it’s time to quit
the shrimping in his blood
run an excursion boat instead

“and you, sir?”

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR OF BIAS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Those of us on the liberal side of the social and political spectrum like to think of ourselves as open-minded, which means the times we exhibit flashes of bigotry can be especially painful.

First off, we’re blind to it. Not us, right? But we do.

And sometimes we do it to each other.

An example comes in the gold cross a young woman decided to wear. She’s nothing along the lines of a Fundamentalist or even a committed believer, but she liked her grandmother’s jewelry and this particular piece. Difficult, though, was her experience of the reactions from her fellow college students and faculty, starting with their physical motion a step backward. Literally.

There were words that would not dare be said to Jews or Muslims or ethnic groups of any stripe – and assumptions that simply did not fit. In fact, there’s a presumption of right-wing positions accompanying an ignorance of the social-justice dimensions of other Christian communities and their actions. And there’s nothing of the nuanced theology that moves beyond the cartoonish criticisms we often hear.

For the record, Quaker tradition long frowned on any jewelry whatsoever as superfluous and vain. But I’m not wearing the distinctive Plain clothing of Quaker history, either. Now how would they react to that?

ANOTHER OF THOSE OLD WATERTOWN FAMILIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been running into references to Saltonstalls. It’s an old prominent New England family, admittedly, but I had never really connected the dots.

One is an imposing Colonial saltbox house in Haverhill, Massachusetts, with 1712 emblazed on the central chimney. It sits at One Saltonstall Square.

Another dot to the family came in a reference to two (Robert and Sir Richard) as purchasers in the charter for provincial New Hampshire, perhaps buying out the first settlers of Dover. “Probably in 1633,” as the account goes.

Then there’s the principled judge (Nathaniel) who resigned in 1692 in disgust from the direction the Salem witch trials were taking.

That stirred memories of hearing of a U.S. senator from Massachusetts (Leverett II) or a family that owned a small daily newspaper north of Boston.

Now I see I’d taken photos of the statue of Sir Richard Saltonstall, a founder of Watertown in 1630. (Since Watertown is where my choir rehearses weekly, it’s on my radar.)

While Sir Richard returned to London two years later, two of his sons remained and established what became a Boston Brahmin family, one that produced at least one graduate of Harvard in every generation, plus governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Before leaving the New World, Sir Richard was among those granted a patent of Connecticut – and back in Europe he had his portrait painted by Rembrandt.

I suppose that’s enough for now. The full story could run on for volumes.

But it’s not the kind of world I grew up in, not out in the Midwest.

I’m left wondering if old establishment families like this functioned as close-knit networks or even as tribes and how much individual deviation was permitted. Who were the chiefs and elders, especially? What was the role of religion or political affiliation?

Maybe that would be an entirely different kind of history than we’re accustomed to seeing. What are your thoughts?