You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
As I reacted somewhere recently, Endless Prairie, broken into what? Ghosts?
Most of my journals along these lines simply broke off.
Maybe I’ll revisit what I had and issue it later as a chapbook at Thistle Finch. There are limits to everything, after all.
Please stay tuned to see what else I turn up in this review of my past.
Prairie as a symbol of America [make that U.S. and Canada], the middle or bread basket or heartland. I kept trying to envision the openness, wonder, even terror when white pioneers found her, back before she was ripped apart for farming. Even the Interstate highways coast-to-coast. The middle land of Protestants without heritage, too blind to see clearly the potential of balance and healing before them.
Somehow, that poetry project never found root.
The Four Noble Plants [and a quest for American equivalents]
Too bad those book collections are still in storage.
As for “noble,” in America? Even that needs an equivalent.
The odd syllable counts of my poetry lines: quite female! And quite flexible. Contrast to “maleness” of iambic pentameter or other club-feet.
The luxury of wasting a whole notebook, an entire sketchbook. [Oh? Did I pitch that out already?]
Good poetry takes leave of tight meaning … pointing to “lunatics” as “originals” … the way flames do.
I am surprised how much the seemingly disjointed distillations of the prose-poem experiments I’ve been publishing here still capture my experience of my first years in New Hampshire some 35 or so years ago. All the hope, confusion, redirection that accompanied the upheaval.
And so much that evaporated, for the better, after meeting the woman I adore.
The weekly series continues, all the same. As I say, thanks for the memories, to all those who have been companions and positive influences in my zig-zag journey through life.
What are you thinking and feeling, looking back and looking ahead?
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.
~*~
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.
~*~
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.
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:
~*~
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.
Jnana's Red Barn 