When someone speaks of an event while quoting someone else, how accurate is that quotation? How much is a recasting by the teller, perhaps years after the event being related?
In drafting my newest novel, as I turned to a first-person narrative by someone who never even met many of the characters she’s telling about, I realized that her quoting them was actually a filtering through her own voice. In other words, the precision of their voice was in question. Would it be right to put their input in quotations marks? Or eliminate the quotation marks and let the telling float in and out of some recollection?
I’ve opted for the latter. Will it work for the reader, though? We’ll see.
These field notes from religious aspiration and practice spring from a muse of fire. As much as Dr. Bronner’s bottle-label diatribes arose from a splash of water, at least when we read them, usually while showering or bathing.
A brief flash. Something that sparkles or shimmers. A half-seen motion, perhaps recollected later. Illumination. A beacon. A guide. A break in the night. Sometimes, this is something even the blind perceive. A word of truth. Prophecy or healing. A vision of eternal mysteries. A star or hint of coming dawn. And then, as James Nayler instructed: “And as thou followest the light out of the world, thou wilt come to see the seed, which to the world’s wisdom and glory is crucified” (Journal, 349). Everything is transformed and made new. Mind the Light.
~*~
DEVOLUTION AND RESURRECTION
Tat Ekam
that one thing
prakriti, pra = before
or kriti, creation
a sutra is only a note / a stitch / a knot
Wading into holy waters
to sink or be overwhelmed
decades later,
thunder
within
silence
returning to art
“keeps my feet on the ground”
carving wood and marble, “It’s so smooth”
these steps leading down to the water
in the sense water
is always below you
unless, that is, you’re in
up to your neck, as it were
some calm other than drowning
“We’re descended from lower-level gods
who mated with apes.”
Now outraged at other deities
next, we’ll encounter human brains
in tigers prowling along the street
all thanks to science.
Mine owners will be confined to the lands they’ve debauched / despoiled.
The Hidden Way –
Sometimes it’s Tao
Sometimes, passion
Sometimes, only a sunset
Or fog lifting
The saved love letters
become curled, black crumbling leaves
falling from the fire.
to UNBURDEN
AND MAKE NEW
first, burn all of the out-dated financial records,
then all of the old passionate drivel
that is, to MAKE FEW
as the Hidden Way
Is the route that opened
Through Glint’s own sea of reeds
Parting, at the base of mountains
she’s come through
a prayer of the earth, actually, of Seed
clearing, recentering
LIFT JESUS HIGHER
painted at the top
of a barn roof
Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson For more, click here.
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.
~*~
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.
sprawled on the floor, a barefoot bride without makeup
* * *
along with a martial arts master sprawled out
on the floor a barefoot bride without
makeup everyone you knew thought
it only a fragile joke and then
you pulled the trigger: blood runs
toward the tub drain what made you think I had any clue what was afoot? martial arts student
sprawled out on the floor, a barefoot bride
without makeup, everyone thinking it only fragile
joke blood running toward the tub drain what made you think I had any clue what was afoot? a martial arts master sprawled out on the floor
a barefoot bride without makeup everyone you
knew thought it was only a fragile joke
blood runs toward the tub drain? what made you think I had any clue what was afoot?
kick higher, kick higher
from the floor
~*~
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.
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?
~*~
For more of my exploration of the word in its world, click here.
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
~*~
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, 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:
~*~
TO USE TOOLS
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.
cruelty that arises from bitterness spanning a rocky streambed
* * *
the Japanese bow to India
with its dry ferns and maple
with its fronds becoming a cob of ribbon
in the dry fronds of Japanese
ferns and half-devoured cobs
the Indian maples bow and dry
cobs of corn and fronds
in Japan the Indian bows
as the ferns and maple
dry fronds of Japan maple
cobs of Indian corn from
stepping down to the streambed
a staircase cruelly arises
from rocky bitterness, yes, a staircase
cruelty that rocky that bitter
from that staircase cruel, yes,
arises rocky and bitter
~*~
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.
red maple on gray rock against
vertical tan stripes
the pooling and hill
* * *
blue-eyed moth on yellow chopstick folder
star lilies against horizontal green striation
Chinese river scene, the coin inscribed from a tickle-free zone of “Dried Dark Plums”
red maple on gray rock against vertical tan stripes
pooling under a blue-eyed hill of moths
over another yellow river, the Chinese “Dried Dark Plums”
held aloft on scenic chopsticks or inscribed coins
as folded red maple on gray rock against vertical tan
line up between the pooling and hill of star lilies
as horizontal green striation from a tickle-free zone the blue-eyed river inscribed with yellow moths
as “Dried Dark Plums” are maple red on gray rock
against vertical tan striped pooling water buffalo work
in a wet field of chopsticks between star lilies open
against the blue-eyed horizon with its variations
as coins and moths inscribed in yellow Chinese
calligraphy, the tickle-free zones become a river scene
for a “Dried Dark Plums” holder of chopsticks
made from red maple in their tan stripes
as the gray rock against vertical pooling
toward the hill of star lilies and their horizontal
green striation from a tickle-free zone water buffalo patiently work a field
~*~
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 