I went to hear him read yesterday in Decatur, Georgia, at the Decatur Book Festival. A fine poet with a timely, strong voice. This is from his book of poetry For the Confederate Dead. I bought it and got it signed. I wish now I'd also gotten the other two books for sale at the reading, Dear Darkness and Jelly Roll. 

Americana

America, you won't obey.
You won't hunt
or heel or stay.

America, you won't do
anything I want you to.
(To tell the truth,
I like that about you.)

You're too much.

What mountains you are
America! What minefields
and mysteries, symptoms
and cinemas and symphonies
and cemeteries!

Bully, albino, my
         lopsided love---

America, I can't leave you
well enough alone.

America, you've lost
your way home---

I have saluted
your dying woods, called to
         your flags trimmed on tin.

America, I am letting you in.
America, where you been?

I have seen your tiny twilit eyes
          your mouth still
          stuffed with straw.
I have driven your bent unbroken
          back and fallen
          to my knees like a nun

         in her black habit
praying you would change.

Today the road runs straight

Today the grey
is yours! the fog
and the burning leaves
.

Today the crows refuse
to get out the way

Today I drive the rains
of your rough face
         your citified plains---

America, won't you take
         your hands of hurt away?
         tuck them drawer-deep
         like the good
         silver of grandmothers?

(I have inherited, America, only
        rusty knees, a voice
hoarse from hollering.)

America I have counted
          all the china and none
          is missing.

America, I love most your rust,
          the signs that misspell doom--

And why not your yards
           of bottle trees and cars?

And why not the heart
           transplants we want?

America, tell the maples
           to quit all this leaving.

Warranty up, trial basis,
           thirty days free--

America I have seen
       men whose faces are flags
       bloodied and blue with talk

seen the churches keep
       like crosses burning

seen the lady who lines
       your huddled shore, her hand
       rifle-raised,
       her back turned away.

--Kevin Young

I believed that everything was sentient: the sky, the stars, the earth, the puffballs I found in the woods under dry leaves, crickets in corners with their creaky hinged legs, fallen leaves I found and kept between the pages of big books, and especially trees. I was always a bit of a tree worshipper and still am. My best friend Leigh and I would put together what we called "science huts" with little arrangements and configurations and cairns of rock, twig, leaf, moss, and scarab shell. I would go and sit in the crook of a favorite old oak and have silent conversations with the wind that moved over the little dry swamp. I gave trees names and they changed over time. Not scientific names---I tended to know those from reading books--but names that fit them, like Silverchin or Wormfellow or Mosstoes. Usually compound words. I felt them toss around in storms and imagined their anxiety or their joy in the coming of a cool big wind. I watched them lose their leaves in fall, if they were deciduous, and decided they felt a paradoxical mix of relief and sadness as their shapes shifted. the dormancy of winter brought their branches and sharpnesses closer to me and I liked the way all their shapes stood stronger in the sky then. in spring I felt their delight as greenness came back. when a tree I knew died I would watch in sorrow and consternation and tell my parents that it was going. I don't remember what they said but it was probably something reassuring, kind, and practical. I have a small pine in my front yard that is browning now and I don't know why. the drought of recent summers perhaps. it still hurts my heart to see that. and when we gathered firewood I always said thank you. My connection to the trees felt like a collective relationship based on grace and awareness and I miss the childlike depth and intensity of it, though it still hangs out with me from time to time when I let it in.

I heard him play about nine years ago in Atlanta. amazing show.

"Would You Bow?"

If the Friend rose inside you, would you
bow? Would you wonder where that one

came from and how? If you say, "I will
bow," that's important. If you answer,

"But can I be sure?" it will keep the
meeting from happening, as busy people

rush there and back here murmuring, Now
I know; no, I don't know now. Have you

seen a camel with its eyes covered turn
and walk one way, then turn another?

Be silent and revolve with no will.
Don't raise your hand to ask anything.

Holy one, sitting in the body's well
like Joseph, a rope is there in front

of you. Lift your hand to that! A
blind man has bought you for eighteen

counterfeit coins. Empty metal cups
bang together, and the full moon slides

out of hiding. Make one sound, please!
You are the precious hyacinth that the

sickle will spare, not the wheat plant
Adam ate. I remind you with these poems

to dress in the flower of God's qualities,
not your torn robe of self-accusation.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 2938
Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin
"The Glance"

Relying on solitude is easy;
giving up things to do is hard.

--Adept Godrakpa, from Hermit of Go Cliffs

A section where people contributed photographs, poems, stories, and essays about nature. even in a big city you would have people writing about birds and small crawling creatures and the occasional errant raccoon. I'd send in a photograph of the tussock caterpillar I noticed hunched next to a hunk of marble on a Ballground picnic table last weekend. or I would write a short poem about the pair of hummingbirds--an adult and a youngster---that chase each other around my feeder. Maybe some newspapers already present such opportunities consistently but I don't know about them.

By practicing mindfulness and nurturing self-awareness.
By sitting quietly with a candle and noticing feelings as they arise.
By writing something to those I love and cultivating the connections that are important to me.
By going to the Open House tonight at the Goshen Boys Ranch, out in Waleska, Georgia, where several of my students live, to see what it's like there for them.
By drinking my hot tea slowly and noticing the flavors of cantaloupe and rice and barley soup rather than rushing through my meal.
By trying to let go of my political anger for today.
By saying a prayer for those I sometimes resent--Sarah Palin and George W. Bush, for starters.

I have a little book called Instant Karma: 8,879 Ways to Give Yourself and Others Good Fortune Right Now, written by Barbara Ann Kipfer, one of my favorite list-making writers. (If you've seen the book 14,000 Things to Be Happy About, you know what I'm talking about.)This little book doesn't put anything terribly new out there but it's a good way for me to reconnect to the kind of positive intentionality I need. I can drift away from it pretty easily, especially during the school year. Here are some of the suggestions I've noticed over the past couple of weeks:

*encourage people to share their excitement about life
*let go of territoriality
*keep quiet until you find out what you're thinking
*get up and talk to someone---don't yell across rooms or from other rooms
*don't answer the phone just because it's ringing
*use a lake image in your meditation: the calm below the surface, any defilements or sediment sinking to the bottom
*talk about happiness
*write outdoors
*don't watch the news immediately before bedtime
*resolve not to eat when standing or walking (especially oatmeal!)
*think less about the people and things that bother you
*keep yourself from getting too hungry, too angry, too lonely, or too tired, if at all possible
*say the sentimental grateful things that we all feel but may be too shy or scared to speak aloud
*be easily pleased
*watch public television
*do not attempt to be a particular type of person
*pursue old-fashioned games, hobbies, and activities
*try to eat one meal a day in silence
*live beneath your means
*don't be too serious
*eat lower on the food chain
*avoid mindless attention to presumed duty
*ask, what did I once love to do that I am not doing now? and then take it up again
*avoid repetition
*simply stop talking
*do not communicate dissatisfaction with what you are doing at any given moment
*love the part of you that is growing in attentiveness and the part that does not want to be attentive
*schedule exercise in red pen
*keep a journal of ridiculous things that happen to you
*remember how much more important people are to you than the issue that's bothering you
*choose to value things that are within your grasp
*believe people tell the truth
*strengthen your immune system by lauging
*ask yourself, "Is this task or behavior really necessary or helpful, or is it just a way to be busy?"
*sweat
*garden--indoors if you have to, but garden
*get rid of anger and resentment by acknowledging them
*begin your day with conscious acceptance and gratitude

Peace, y'all.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute power.

- Adrienne Rich

Excerpted from "Natural Resources" in The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001.

 

History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.

- Seamus Heaney
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles's Philocetes

I recently bought a used copy of Natalie Goldberg's book Top of My Lungs, a selection of her poems and visual art. The poems are heartful and luminous and the paintings are vivd and alive with color. There's also an essay in the book called "How Poetry Saved My Life." In the essay she writes, "Before poetry, I was lost. Now loss had a smell, a color, a texture. A fast train could split its side. I held lost childhood, lost shoe, lost moment. They belonged to me and I was found....I dedicated myself to something bigger than myself and was handed over to beings seen and unseen, mountains and space, dead ghosts, grocery stores, night owls, snow, whistles, the divine in the center of the dumb. I came to love my life, its ragged edges, big hours, and lonesome paths. I learned that one equals two, three, then four blue apples, seven pears, until it comes back to itself again. All one intimate, aching poem. All of us. That's what poetry taught me and how it saved my life."

Here's a poem from the book:

For Good

I only know that the Messiah will ride a wild ass
and she'll come down the path
through the Mount of Olives
that oldest Jewish cemetery in the world
and in some high yellow clovered grass outside of Tiberius
next to the Hotel Gat and a small orthodox synagogue
there will be a white horse
who will turn and look at you
and in that moment
the dead will be so tired from their wait
they'll decide not to rise
not today
not this Shabbat
though the steaming soup and browned chicken
in its sacred bones will be waiting on platters
next to the thin Israeli napkins

Still I know when the Messiah comes
she'll want to be here
and not go to Paris
or St. Paul, Minnesota
or Glasgow or Heidelberg
She'll stay in Jerusalem
with her Jews
and everyone at tables in Beersheba and Haifa and New York
will sigh a sad sigh, "We've waited so long"
and we'll eat the dinner of peace
and taste each mouthful slowly
and drink water which will last all night
and the salads and beets and potatoes
will last all night

This violin will play no more mournful songs on the guts of cats
and the Jews will lose their blue souls
and even the number 9 bus will wear daffodils as it shoots
its way up to Mount Scopus
and the clouds will separate
and St. Peter's fish will grow fat and live forever
in the Kinneret, in the Galilee, in the harp lake.

--Natalie Goldberg

Goldberg, Natalie. Top of My Lungs. 2002. Woodstock: The Overlook Press.

I've been thinking lately about why I don't want Sarah Palin to be Vice President. Of course there are a host of political reasons, but I'm thinking more about what seems to me to be true about the way she lives. I'm not really talking here about the church she attends or the fact that she hunts caribou. I'm thinking about the frenetic pace at which she seems to operate. These aren't terribly original thoughts, and I know that, but there's a nuance to my perspective here that I haven't run across yet in my reading. Tangentially: for me life is often about trying to find more solitude, more time for mindfulness while working at a demanding job (eighth grade English teacher) and trying to take care of other responsiblities, like maintaining my relationships with family, with my partner Ron, and with my friends, nurturing my photography and writing, taking care of my house and land, maintaining my sobriety through 12 step work, and working slowly towards a master's degree in education. I'm essentially an introvert, though, and I know that for more extroverted personality types, this balancing act probably isn't as challenging. Still, my sister in law, who's one of the most capable, generous, talented, intelligent people I know, admits that the demands of working a full time job, raising two small children, maintaining a household and marriage, and keeping up with other friends and interests is exhausting her. I think of Sarah Palin and her five children (two of whom are grown, I know), her job as governor, her son going off to war, her Down's syndrome baby, the support her daughter Bristol will need from her mom during Bristol's pregnancy, and I wonder about the efficacy of the paradigm of ceaseless busy-ness and activity that Palin's life looks like to me. I'm sure she loves her family and is glad they're all in her life, but what about the need to nurture one's own spirituality, one's sense of self, one's own center? Maybe Palin has a magic formula that my sister in law and I aren't aware of. Clearly she's made choices to fill up her life in ways that are meaningful to her. But it still feels to me like the spiritual/emotional model she's offering is somehow akin to the malady that's affecting this country and that's helped lead to the financial breakdown we're experiencing. I'm talking about the need for more. The need to cram in as much stuff, activity, commitment, information, fun, and experience as possible. The notion that more is always, always better. I know that not everyone falls victim to this way of thinking but even those of us who try so hard to be mindful and create time for just being can fall prey to it. I know that for me knowledge and intellectual stimulation can be a kind of high, a kind of addiction. And I have to work against that to benefit from the empty spaces. Those spaces, though, are what help me grow. They're where discipline and emotional maturity come more fully into being for me. I'm always reluctant to issue blanket statements about how life should be for other people, too, so I don't want to make too broad of a generalization about what Palin's putting out there.
Still. I don't think this have-more, do-more, be-more mindset is healthy. It's attached to greed and fear. It's connected to an unwillingness to look at the spots where stuff isn't happening. And the more stuff you have to slam into those spots, the less you have to look at them. And I truly think that this is all part of what's wrong with this country. We try to do, be, and have as much as we can, simply because we can. We live on Red Bull and Blackberry batteries. And it's wrecking us.
Do we really want another role model to show us how to do that better?