Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Day 21: Wild in the City

Flowers native to North America
grow inside a fenced backyard;
saplings started from seeds sown
by birds or wind or water seeking
a spot to rest and root in some
unlikely habitat in gutters,
ditches, cracks in pavement by
the sidewalk, alleyways, and vacant lots.

The hawk in the maple tree beside the school;
the wrens outside our kitchen window
humping on their sheet-metal house, and
a brand new nest in the rambling roses
on top of the pergola; Sunday morning
dozens of butterflies swarmed the ajuga;
A family of squirrels lives halfway up
the pine beside the garage, their territory not ours.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Day 20: Wildly inappropriate appropriated wildness

Wilderness mind is dissolving duality
in work of fourteen artists
whose work together
ranges from photography
to nonrepresentational painting,
performance, and installation.

References to water,
suburban irrigation systems,
the arctic ice cap,
Barr owls, sea otters,
golden trout from the Sierras,
locations from San Pedro Harbor to Mozambique.

Within the frame of wilderness,
themes of degradation and emergence,
natural cycles and mystery,
concern for the environment,
connected oneness and hope,
artistic diversity and interrelatedness.

Visitors experience a
collaborative alternative
to more traditional strategies
of agency through domination
and the possibility for everyone
to experience wilderness.

Uninhabited nature or
visual messages communicated
in workshops and programs
offered to the community
to inspire visitors to participate
in effective stewardship.

Wilderness may call to mind
places of intense experience
far from civilization and
reveal itself to be more than a location
of uncultivated, abandoned, inhospitable conditions
inhabited only by wild animals.

Eighteenth and nineteenth century meaning
expanded Romantic transcendental
reflections of longing and desire,
the best antidote to our human selves
mysteriously remain the site
of something profoundly Other.

Places are wastelands or sacred spaces,
not the places of experience
as frightening or divine opposition
apart from the human world
pure, preserved, and protected
from industrial defilements of daily life.

We disagree. We consider
high-minded dualism a dynamic conflict
a local or global, physical or imaginary
state of mind that defies location
in which social structure relaxes,
logic slips away, time and space collapse.

This open state of wonder
inspires fear, disorientation,
foreboding, and sublime landscape
in degraded urban grittiness
in an unexplored corner
of an unremarkable backyard.

Artists from Antarctica,
icebergs, and carcasses of dead birds
seek a complete relationship of
responsibility and respect
both planetary or microscopic
that we unavoidably impact.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Day 19: Memo to Mitt

FYI, I am available.
You will need a running mate
come convention time,
and you need to win Ohio.
I happen to be from Ohio.
It's a swing state. Pick me.

Like you, I have good hair.
I'm not a Mormon
but I've known several Mormons,
and they're very nice people.
How are you polling with the
Unitarian-Pagan-Buddhist-Taoist bloc?

Unlike you, I went to public schools
and a midwestern land-grant university.
My people are salt-of-the-earth
populist small-town working folk.
I drive a Ford and bake my own bread.
People will eat that up.

You and I were practically neighbors
in Michigan growing up in the sixties
when your Dad was governor.
I didn't go to Cranbrook.
I went to Groves down the road.
We go way back.

You want the suburban Mom vote?
My wife teaches yoga in Westerville,
and she's worked all her life, unlike some.
We both have values, just different ones.
We're so different, yet we're alike.
Kind of like America.

Day 18: I read the news today oh boy

eye-catching yet critical reporting
the leed has to get your attention
and try to keep it with a promise
that vaguely works as a premise
in a slightly flattering voice
that's just a bit unsettling
while reassuring readers
because they're so hip
they will know better
than the other crowd
in the vernacular
with just enough
intellectually
pretentious
buzz words
to spice
it up
sold
out
#

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Day 17: Detour

Spring evenings are made for riding
through twelve distinct neighborhoods
past five libraries, through seven parks,
across two creeks, past one lake and
one internationally important wetland.

But the trail ends where they're building
the new Dodridge Street bridge,
so I turned around and came back,
retracing the same path in later light
like Heraclitus stepping in the same river.

Halfway home my phone rang,
and I talked to Greg for a couple of miles,
delighted that he's healed after surgery,
an unexpected pleasure and receptive ear
for my own sudden course correction.

Day 16: Just a little bit lost

While riding my bike to the barbershop,
the bank, the liquor store, and home
on an otherwise ordinary Saturday,
a fellow cyclist but more serious than me,
judging by the shoes, the shorts, and the shirt,
asked me for directions to the bike trail turnoff
up Schrock Road and north through Westerville.
Miles later, a father and son in an SUV,
probably looking for South High School,
asked me for directions to Otterbein Street.
I think you might be mistaking me for
someone who knows his way around.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Day 15: Mom's haiku

Like God, if coffee
didn't exist, someone would
have to invent it.

Poetry month: Say what? (Day 14)

I scream
for people to make better choices about their own health
to scale back in their gross domestic consumption
to eat real food
to go outside and play
to plant a tree for every tank of gas
for bike lanes and libraries in every neighborhood
for one big coop (with a gym).

You scream
for lower taxes and less regulation of businesses
victory in the zero-sum competition for scarce resources
more fast food
bigger toys
more spectacular shows
rules that are clear and punishments severe
for one big going-out-of-business sale.

We all scream
for love
respect
a job well done
a hot meal
a cool beverage
a good night's sleep
someone to talk to who gets it.

It's national poetry month; I'm doing the best I can (Day 13)

Close Encounters of the Bird Kind

Wednesday evening just before sunset
Halfway home from a bike ride to Galena
North against the wind up Old 3C
Then south with the wind at my back,

Big hawk with wingspan greater than mine
Barreling at me low over the bike trail
Swoops up and over my outstretched arm
Raised in salute or wave or high five.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Naporimo day twelve: Greetings from the Cliche Liberation Front!

Thinking outside the box entails
first thinking inside the box,
which requires a box,
which means finding, inheriting, or hunting down,
capturing, domesticating, and ultimately
inhabiting your own special box.
Congratulations on your box!

The great unboxed, however, must cobble
together from scratch, from the streets,
from scraps, that is, from available materials
their own original self-made box.
Call it Independent Study.
The shape of the box might be a bit
irregular, nonstandard, or unaccredited,

So the untrained, unchurched, uninitiated
members of no fraternity, sorority, or order,
no priesthood, profession, or secret society
must create or concoct their own theology,
user guide, loyalty oath, pledge of allegiance,
mission statement, credo, or code of conduct.
Necessity really is the mother of invention.

The educated, by virtue of their access
to the body of knowledge
(hint: it comes in a box)
are thereby anointed, credentialed, degreed,
confirmed, ensconced,and ordained
as members of the club,
as decreed by the gatekeeper.

Then comes the fun part: the lucky few
secure in boxes with benefits attached
have the whole curriculum to overcome.
Whether they join the true believers
or take their box with a grain of salt,
they can learn to play the game,
play hard, play fair, play to win.

Getting better at anything involves,
like chicken and egg,
learning the rules,
respecting the tools,
acquiring the skills, the grammar and usage,
the language of the craft,
if only to know what to throw away.

Naporimo day eleven

We'reallconnected

Momandad keep busy
upgrading theirhouse
offloading possessions
maintaining their health
waiting for an apartment
to be vacant so they can movein.

Scottandawn will try to visit
Momandad soon and help
keepup the yard
sort the things to takealong
perhaps bringback something
they want to give up.

Abeandzoe are doing fine
with workandschool
their manyfriends
and their cats
in their ownapartments
in their owntimeframe.

Annandfred, Jeanandbarney, Peteandcindy, Maryjo
have youngadultchildren too
in schoolandwork
some with kidsoftheirown
with housestomaintain
property to divest

allintransition.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Naporimo day ten

Tsunami alert

Chennai office closed
by Sumatra earthquake
will post pages tomorrow

Monday, April 09, 2012

Napowrimo Day Nine

What is a poem?

Is it the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling
while taking a step to the right or left
to find a place of balance here and now,
to test the ground and have a leg to stand on?

Is it left brain sifting particles of data
and right brain riding the wave of the moment
in a cryptic dialog navigating through shadows
toward safe transport to somewhere else?

Is it a symbiosis of equal and opposites,
part making and part beholding,
both push and pull, gather and spread,
like cooking and eating or traveling and being there?

Is it instrumental, therapeutic, and useful,
a way to live with disappointment and heartache,
or is it autotelic, ecstatic, pointless, and sweet,
neither this nor that? Clearly not this.

NaPoWriMo Day Eight

Potato pancake, lip smack, newsprint's rustle, coffee's rush,
the angle of the sunshine in the Sunday morning kitchen.
Eventually the creeping phlox migrates from west to east
along a narrow bed on the other side of the fence.
Bake bread, cook a pot of black bean soup, have a banana.
One-handing a spade, weed a strawberry bed before it rains.
Shake off boots, stretch out on the floor, the day's too short.
Broiled salmon, roasted sweet potatoes, asparagus, and wine.

Sunday, April 08, 2012

NaPoWriMo Day Seven

Morality Play: Breathe

There are two ways to occupy a space.
Fill it up with as much stuff as possible
Or clean it up, empty it out, strip it down.
These are not mutually exclusive, and
Any sane person would do both, but
Framing the question raises some issues:

How much of your stuff adds to the quality of the space?
How much of the space is used up in containing your stuff?
And how much of the space do you actively inhabit?
Sweep the floor, wipe the counters, nest the bowls,
Open the windows, let the inside air out,
Invite the outside air in, pollen and all.

Friday, April 06, 2012

NaPoWriMo Day Six

(With apologies to Bob Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues)

When you're tossed in the midst of Custom Pub and its file release day,
And the editor leaves and creativity hits a contrarian brick wall.
Don't try to game the system when the buyer's in a spat with Design,
Just get the files to the printer and go out to lunch with your team.

Half the players have already checked out of this holiday hotel,
They're making other plans and strategizing their next big deal.
It's on to greener pastures, look at us now beating all our dates,
And unless it's an emergency, don't copy me on any more emails.

What are my plans? Well, I won't be going south as I thought,
Maybe color some eggs, plant some flowers, or go out to eat.
Mom ask if I was going to church, and I said probably not,
But I'm looking at a couple of candidates to see if they fit.

It's a pantheist season of renewal and it's been a few years
Since I've been to meditation at the Buddhist temple downtown,
And the years before that at the universalist country church,
So maybe a congregation or a sangha would do me some good.

My wife and I were riding our bikes by the river and I asked her if
She would join me in some cultural research among the Presbyterians.
We'd visit and observe, go out to brunch, and study the data,
No eggs, no bunnies, and only two wheels on this cycling dharma.

The small-town congregation gave us an education in their ways,
They couldn't have been more friendly in their pastel sanctuary,
With lilies in the windows, brass sextet, angelic harpists, organ, choir,
Although the sermon was heavy handed and inordinately long.

With a table by the water, brunch was a complete success:
The buffet had lox and bagels, fresh melons, lobster mac and cheese,
My date looked great across the table in the gold and silver light,
Our waiter kept refilling our cups, and I wrote this with his pen.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

NaPoWriMo Day Four

Very Superstitious

Stevie Wonder said if you believe in things you don't understand you suffer.
A drummer friend warns that a full moon is coming.
What kind of wild energy will that release?
Yesterday was Opening Day of baseball season.
The late afternoon sun thrown across the room at the rec center.
Feet stand on earth, head touches sky, think space, think body.
Tomorrow is Good Friday, marking the day Jesus was crucified.
Sunday is Easter, recalling the day he rose from the dead.
Passover begins at sundown, celebrating the liberation of the Jews.
The Masters golf tournament takes place this week in Augusta.
To my knowledge there is no tournament called The Slaves.
That would be in poor taste, but hope springs eternal.

NaPoWriMo Day Five

Does every family have a Golden Child
Whose innate specialness is obvious while
Siblings must step back and admire,
Acknowledge, acquiesce, resent, or revile?

Parents do their best to reconcile,
compensate, rationalize, and deny
that their affection for one is any higher
than for the other without a trace of guile.

The kids will have the last and longest smile,
the firstborn and the second will conspire
over beer and pierogis Ukrainian style
in Manhattan while we toil away in Ohio.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

NaPoWriMo Day Three

Don't confuse the map with the territory,
the credits with the movie,
or the title with the house.

You might know every inch of the map,
memorize the credits, have your name on the title;
that doesn't make it your place, your movie, your house.

But if you walk the property,
suspend disbelief, sit through the movie,
and inhabit the house, you own it with your body.

Don't judge a book by its cover,
a snack by its packaging,
or a suit by its designer label.

But if you're paid to make labels,
manage files, transfer titles,
design covers, make bookmaps,

or package the snack in all its cheesy goodness,
by all means take it seriously, just don't
spend all day in the flat screen two dimensions.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

NaPoWriMo Entry Two

Mary was eighty-eight and set in her ways.
Her stepson, my friend, arrived just in time
to pick out the casket and carry out her wishes
for a simple graveside ceremony, before leaving

on his own anniversary trip to a tropical island.
While he was away, the world at home exploded
in color and pine pollen. No rest for the wicked,
dutiful, conflicted son, but a trust for the living.

Nobody plans the distribution of losses,
the unfortunate timing, the strained generations,
though everybody plots a beautiful holiday
to celebrate some future passage in vain.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

April is NaPoWriMo

That's National Poetry Writing Month, philistines. So I have taken the bait, said I'm game, and fallen behind two days in. Always a slow learner, late bloomer, and cockeyed optimist that I can make up for lost time. Here entry one:

Before enlightenment,
get a haircut,
go to the bank
and the liquor store,
weed the strawberry bed.

After enlightenment,
get a haircut,
go the the bank
and the liquor store,
weed the strawberry bed.
So I'm told.