ALSO FLOWING TOWARD THE MERRIMACK

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

To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015

VENTURING INTO NEW GROUND

As I related at the time:

Our Meeting has been undergoing some fascinating growth, both spiritually and in numbers. At the moment, the meetinghouse (1768) is about ten feet in the air, jacked up for another two or three weeks while a new foundation is excavated and poured, to make room for religious education classes and to permit us to use both sides of upstairs for worship. (It’s been getting crowded.)

The resistance I originally encountered to Biblically-based messages has vanished, and these days it’s not uncommon to find two or three members reading quietly from their Bibles at some point during the Meeting, while references to Christ or to Scripture are now heard in a third to half of the vocal messages. That’s encouraging. And now a committee has been appointed to arrange for regular Bible study; though I would prefer we simply work our way through a book at a time (starting with Jonah, then the Gospel of John, one of Paul’s epistles, and the opening chapters of Genesis), there’s some interest in using Mary Morrison’s Pendle Hill pamphlet as the base, while others are leaning toward Sondra Cronk’s Tract Assn. peace booklet. Will be interesting to see what emerges.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

ROLLING IN CLOVER, AS IT WERE

Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.

~*~

  1. Time to start checking on the ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, courtesy of the NOAA buoys reported on the website. I no longer bother to venture into real surf until the readings hit 60 Fahrenheit. Below that it’s blue-toe water.
  2. There’s an irony in performing sun-salutation postures but none, say, for the new moon or full moon. Om, my. Inhale and exhale, with incense.
  3. On our apron by the back door, a small snake, whip motion, ever so slowly.
  4. Here I’d been intending to write leaner, tighter, shorter, clearer – a lacework of Light. Wind up with dense blocks of prose-poems instead.
  5. It’s hard to imagine my native Buckeye State was created, in essence, by eleven Connecticut veterans of the American Revolution who met at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston on March 1, 1786, to form the Ohio Company. The tavern was a gathering place for wealthy merchants sympathetic to the patriot cause. At least it wasn’t Manhattan. Who knows what we would have wound up with.
  6. Sometimes you feel a new beginning – not just renewal but turning a corner.
  7. My own pathway unfolds as its own guide.
  8. Sometimes I read this place as CLOVER NH. Better, of course, than the unintentionally comic EFFINGHAM.
  9. I’ve resolved to spend more time in the mountains to our north this summer. In recent years, even getting to the beaches nearby has been elusive.
  10. So that’s it! Blah-blah-blah.

~*~

Preserving a touch of history in downtown Boston, while the rest of the building's been razed. Something similar just happened to the oldest residence in Maine.
Preserving a touch of history in downtown Boston, while the rest of the building’s been razed. Something similar just happened to the oldest residence in Maine.

 

 

BRIDGE FROM MAY TO JUNE

clapping dragon – prayer banner
blessing the northern wind:
Indra, Vayu, and Varuna
conspiring
with brooding swirls
to drum our roofs and nurse
our earth.
gather us
in logs
beneath
thundering rain
– with Handel and Bach
we speak of broad leaves
and our friends:
opposites
within jagged walls
brushed white –
this reassembled skin,
its rice paper sphere
and we take tea. minor elegance
rough wood improves –
the drenching opens
unnamed doors
in Monday’s clover
and Tuesday’s spruce –
drowns the shrew-mouse
on Wednesday’s trail –
awakens sleeping polychromes.
makes pokeberry tall
beyond our yard.
shakes tulips from twigs
and fattens swamps.
urges telegrams of morning birds
to break our sleep –
rumbles within our karst –

as current
entering swallow holes
will rise where mills
once twirled
soft wheat.

Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full Green Repose collection,
click here.

 

 

HOT TUB ORACLE

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.

LOOKING FOR WIDER CONNECTIONS

My wife, meanwhile, has her own perspective. “Many people think this valley can prosper in isolation, but let me tell you, the local museum indicates otherwise. It’s filled with Pennsylvania long rifles, Ohio flint, a New Hampshire stagecoach, antique cars from Michigan, pianos made in Indiana, Connecticut pistols, even Illinois farm implements. Everybody came from somewhere.” In her case, South Carolina.

Taking her up on the invitation to tour the exhibits, my wife paid special attention to local Indian basketry and beadwork. “Over time, their artistry was pathetically stripped down to resemble coloring books,” she told me afterward. “The gift shop sells greeting cards from Iowa and crafts from what the sales clerk said was ‘Berea, Virginia.’

“Virginia? I replied.”

“The college there.”

“Oh, you mean Kentucky!”

“‘Kentucky, then,’ she said, as if it’s all the same.”

I understand the scowl. “I notice, around here ‘Easterners’ seem to come from such ‘seaboard’ states as landlocked Nebraska, Kansas, and Illinois.”

“That’ll be news to them,” she grins. “Bet they never thought of themselves as Easterners, either!”

Infinite misunderstandings continue, tit for tat.

“Even so,” I say, “this is big sky and cowboy spreads. Even these treeless foothills ignite something in my airy nature. I hope this elation never ends.”

An elation, at least, when I’m out of the office.

I look forward to tonight’s gig with Kokopelli.

For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.

LOOKING FOR VITAL MUTUALITY

We, who consider ourselves free spirits, despite any penchant for obligations, still yearn for a steady circle where attendance at worship is less of an option within many alternatives. Let the worship itself have an urgency and regularity, may it be a priority in the weekly schedule, free it to be focused on the One and empowering.

To be one!

Don’t ask me if prayer works. Anymore than singing, birds answer on a May morning.

Our struggle is magnified by our degree of selfless service.

We turn, instead, to free-spirits, where we give fairly selflessly of ourselves.

Only problem is, unlike the Old Order or monastic setting, we’re not surrounded by and bathed in the selfless gifting of everyone else.

They just aren’t reliable, no matter how fine their intentions. Ergo, burnout! (You and I always wind up holding the bag when they default or go off to boogie.)

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

GEMINI, BY JIMMINY

Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

~*~

  1. This matter of scale – and balance – in a life that has an appearance of randomness. All these items collected throughout the house and barn. Somehow, order reasserts itself, if you look.
  2. Remembering the volcano 37 years ago. Just look at the skulls I collected in that country.
  3. Four years later, the move to Baltimore for the one I thought embodied that moment full of promise to take my life upward into a fairy-tale existence of class and repose, a much different direction from where I’ve landed. Alas, she’d already bolted. And mine has become much more organic.
  4. Common Meter, 8.6.8.6, as in “Amazing Grace,” is simply the syllable count. A great way to swap words and music.
  5. Am not having profound or imaginative dreams. But at least the flow’s beginning again, like looking at a secret movie or computer screen.
  6. When taking portraits outdoors, how often the eyeglasses turn into sunglasses in the bright light – and how often people in party mode turn wooden.
  7. Looking at a book of glass houses reminds me how deeply that Bauhaus aesthetic is embedded in my sensibility. Not that I’d aspire to live in one now. Who washes all those windows, anyway? And what about fingerprints or noses? These days I’ve chosen a different style, one based in Yankee houses that just keep growing, as needed. As for curtains, she and I will argue.
  8. To ease back into Hatha – Ha-ha!
  9. “The things that are not seen are eternal” – II Corinthians 4:18.
  10. Still feeling so tentative rather than forceful.

~*~

Why's he honored on the street?
Why’s he honored on the street?

I chanced upon this scultpture at 15 Beach Place while wandering from Chinatown to Faneuil Hall. It’s about a block from the old Boston Music Hall, where Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto got its world premiere. Maybe this site is where he stayed while visiting? Anyone got a clue?

The sculpture resides just left of the doorway.
The sculpture resides just left of the doorway.

AS A VERB, PERHAPS

now I lay me down to weep

 why, we always see the squirrel as playful
rather than tragic

or desperately terrified

a kite in the sky

*   *   *

if getting anywhere were only that easy
or direct

*   *   *

Survival is the first law.
But which Self?

To be hungry
and clever
are a dangerous combination.

Especially when cornered.

*   *   *

layered in trees           wires   roofs and decks
the predominant wild mammal of the city
mocks dogs, mauls cats
stands more visible than rats

bolts a zig-zag route at ground level
where pigeons walk in circles

*   *   *

some creatures are more monogamous

and some fear their young

some, helpless and afraid
have no way of knowing

*   *   *

To find yourself on the other end
of a hungry
and clever
creature

even if it’s only trying to get in

is the basis of law two.

*   *   *

zoology and physics, a most interesting combination

Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems,
click here.