WHITSUN

You couldn't see

didn't know

how a sliver of ocean

an imposible blue gem

touched the sky

white light at the horizon

at sunrise

this morning

and the birds ~ all the while

singing it in 

OTHER

We come to earth--
this “tavern where drunkards get sober”
to ask questions, cast shadows
cry in the wilderness, sound a call
shed a light

Free will, Fortune, Fate
weave through our comings and goings
until everyone will have been everyone else
other lives, other loves, other loss

Other Other Other

Who will be our other?
our mother, our lover, our children, our friend
our nemesis—our judge and jury

We--All
are others
refugees
no one our savior

Coming into being and dissolving
again and again

Constellations of "anonymous stars"
moving across the heavens

Note: "tavern where drunkards get sober" and "anonymous stars..."

were inspired by Coleman Barks' translations from Rumi in Say I Am You.

IT'S LIKE THIS

 

It's like this

vast
sun streaks across the meadow
cool breeze at the window
morning again

This day
alone against an open sky
a dream of blue
and golden light
stretching to a hidden horizon

It's always like this

METAPSYCHOLOGY ONLINE Book Reviews 2020

Full Title: Animal Wife
Author:     Lara Ehrlich
Publisher: Red Hen Press 2020

Animal Wife’s fifteen stories take place in worlds of fantasy, mystery, chance, contradictions and danger—a world where, “happiness has sharp edges.” Women of various ages and stages, from childhood to adulthood, experience the real and the idyllic inherent in the “feminine mystique,” and in life itself. They navigate through innocence, sexuality, uncertainty, expectations of others, as well as their own fears, memories and desires. Readers are delightfully and inevitably drawn in to their own navigation of the blurred lines between fantasy and its underlying realities.

These captivating tales involve women longing, though not always for a clearly defined “something”; often they have no desire for the things others tell them they should want or have. They strive or drift toward identity, fulfillment, and varied forms of escape with surprising inner and outer transformations, sometimes frightening, sometimes wished for and self-fulfilling.

There is the enigmatic fate of one whose swan sisters warn her that, “no good can come of longing,” yet her longing draws her to a man who, “hides her feathers.” A young girl’s friends tell her, “It doesn’t matter if you like a boy or not; it only matters if he likes you.” One young girl concentrates so hard on appearing pleasant, she forgets to breathe.” A wannabe deer woman, “needs a change she can’t come back from.” One drinks the cotton candy-flavored "Foresight," delivered in an Amazon box, but ultimately rejects all the “possible futures” presented to her, “preferring the unknown.”

In a recent interview with Joel Brown of Bostonia (Boston University’s alumni magazine), author Ehrlich speaks of her interest in, “capturing a sense of fuzziness between reality and fantasy. I want to give the readers room to interpret the reality or unreality of a situation—but there’s a fine line between intentional uncertainty and unintentional confusion …. I’ve intended them to question reality.”

We are reminded of the wide-spread appeal of imaginative works, such as Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and those of more contemporary authors, such as Italo Calvino and Elizabeth Allende. Not only has this genre of literature been read and enjoyed through time, it has forever been retold and drawn upon in art, drama, film and television. It also has long been explored and analyzed by scholars (Joseph Campbell), and psychologists (Jung and Bettelheim) for its dream-like magic with meaning.

There is this kind of appeal for readers in the highly recommended Animal Wife, Red Hen Press’s Fiction Award winner, with its fresh take on the mythopoeic in relation to women’s lives. It is engaging at every turn of the page for its innovative approach. Ehrlich weaves compelling characters and situations, gripping images and language in her deft storytelling.

*********

Full Title:  The Essential Doug Holder: New & Selected Works
Author:     Doug Holder
Publisher: Big Table Publishing 2020Y

Doug Holder, founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA, is a well-known and well-loved figure on the New England literary landscape. His recent publication: The Essential Doug Holder: New & Selected Works begins with a long introduction (not penned by him). Save this commentary for later, and go directly to the poems, which speak for themselves. And they have much to say, having urban appeal, specifically for Somerville, Boston and New York City, as well as broader and deeper universal appeal, expressed in Holder’s journalistic-like exposure of the essential humor, irony and pathos of the human condition.

The range of content is vast, presenting Holder’s new work and selected, previously-published pieces—offering a comprehensive and representative collection. A few examples of Holder’s singular style of stating, without rating, an experience will serve to convey the reader’s feeling of being transported directly into his subject without need for multiple literary devices. It’s as if Holder is not interested in artfulness (not that there’s anything wrong with that), so much as revealing what exists in and of itself, leaving interpretation and a sense of emotional dimension to be found in the tangible, palpable evidence of the five senses—in subways, ballparks, cafes, hospitals, delis, and in human relationships—the humor, compassion and reality of it all.

“Cambridge, MA: Two Old Women”
Two old women walk down my street each morning
A daily ritual of decrepit defiance
the ground that will own them.

“Au Bon Pain at Dusk”
You sit at a table in the courtyard of the cafe
brittle autumnal leaves rest
then tumble off your round shoulders.

They just don’t hold what they used to

“When Father Dies”
When Father dies
let it be on the rush hour train home
his face buried in The Post
his last breath involved with the world

“Dreaming on the Senior Line at Market Basket”
I walk with Ginsberg and Whitman
and we will talk.
I will tell them about the predicament we are in.

It feels like Holder inhabits his work, speaking from a “fly on the wall” perspective, keenly observing people, places and things, but not necessarily commenting on their meaning. Yet the message comes through with clarity and impact. His poet’s eye roams and records his observations of “ordinary” life, which of course, is never ordinary. In the tradition of all true poets, he gives them, “a local habitation and a name.”

If you like poetry served up homestyle, deliciously fresh and familiar, The Essential Doug Holder will satisfy, and resonate a long time after you put it down. If keeping a book of poems at your bedside is not something you see yourself doing, try this collection. As the book’s back cover suggests, “This is a must-keep-on your nightstand.” You might be surprised that you will pick it up, again and again.

SIMPLES

Of myself I write

What else do I know

less and less the further I do go

falling fast away--the past

and fading round on round

save memory of love and loss abound

The dances of my spirit life

in soul light sublime

merge here in this simple rhyme

Devoid of weighty verse

writ to exalted height

no alchemy of words can shed a light

Not in paper

will the gold of life be bound

but in heart’s penetralium will be found 

and

 in thoughts and words and deeds 

passed on to friend along the way

as well as foe, I pray

So here, these simple lines

are witness (and a prayer)

that what I’ve wrought and written

(not for fame) is made of air

When I lie beneath a sycamore--

 its tortuous branches--beauteous 

luminous--bare

against the sky

will speak for me 

the “why”

EARTH'S CLOAK - A Villanelle

Of sun rays golden, moonlight’s silver beam

From airy, fine and fragile threads we weave

On loom of soul a tapestry unseen

 

We, in this vale of tears live by their gleam

A mystery in fabric light and dark

Of sun rays golden, moonlight’s silver beam 

We strive throughout our lives to grasp the theme

Of human history through the march of years

On loom of soul a tapestry unseen

No certainty we braid into the scene  

But flowing, shifting like the changing sea

Of sun rays golden, moonlight’s silver beam 

All beauteous forms and grotesque we must glean

Entwine in warp and weft through space and time

On loom of soul a tapestry unseen

We weave earth’s cloak in threads of lustrous sheen

Of dawn and darkly ebbing shades of dusk 

Of sun rays golden, moonlight’s silver beam

On loom of soul a tapestry unseen

On My Desk

Written from a prompt on "Writers Digest" website: Write a scene that takes place wherever you write. Take an object [or two] that is always present at your desk, and make it a key element of your scene.

Little Princess Anabeth, crown and all, comes into the room where I am working. When she visits, I stop whatever I am doing and attend to her needs and wishes, which means play--living in the present. There is no sense of time when we are with children. They are joy-makers, full of sweetness, grace and curiosity. So, I put aside my laptop and bring her up onto my lap for the big hug. Instead of asking saying, "Let's play," usually the first question after the hug, she looks at a framed picture on my desk from 50 years ago.

“Who’s that?” pointing to the image of my husband.

“That, my dear girl, is your grandfather.”

“It doesn’t look like Juju.”

“No, no, it doesn’t,” I agree. “That picture was taken a long time ago when he was young, and that young woman next to him is Nonna.” 

My granddaughter looks at me and then back at the picture, certainly not recognizing that young woman as her grandmother (me either). Then she turns her gaze to the little wooden box illuminated under the lamp, with a carved image of Buddha on the lid. 

“What’s that?” 

“Oh, that was a gift from your Aunt Helen.” I pick it up and hold it in my palm. I tell her that the carving on the lid is of a teacher who lived a long time ago. I take the lid off, and she looks inside where there is a tiny glass fish. I turn the box upside down, and the fish falls into her little hand. She picks it up, turns it over, holds it to her cheek, then puts it back in the box.  

“He’s orange. Can he swim?” she wonders out loud.

“If he were alive he could swim, yes. I bet he can float though.”

My little princess takes off her gem-studded crown and places it on the desk, and picks up another object on the desk. It is a small black-figure pottery, Greek-style plate on a stand, depicting Achilles binding the wounds of his friend Patroclus, described in The Illiad.

“What’s that, Nonna?” 

“That is a plate I bought many years ago.”

“What are they doing?”

“Oh, well, you see him?" Pointing to, "Achilles is putting a bandage on his friend Patroclus who got hurt."

“Funny names. Will his friend get better?”

“Yes, yes, he will,” I say, though in the epic poem he dies of his war wound.  

Satisfied with my answers to her questions, Anabeth commands, “Let’s play, Nonna,” and we are off to get the play dough, the stickers, the watercolors and tea set for our afternoon visit, always full of chatter, hugs, laughter, stories, snacks and lots of other questions.

In the evening, I return to my desk, remembering my simple answers to Anabeth’s questions about the objects that mean so much to me. I keep them as symbols, there on my desk, where I take care of the ordinary but necessary practicalities of everyday life. Beyond their appearance, which sparked my granddaughter’s questions, is their power to bring to my mind a deeper meaning and message, easily forgotten most days.

A depiction of the two friends, one filled with compassion and sorrow, binding the wounds of another who is suffering. 

A little mahogany box with a carving of a venerable soul who taught the way of right speech, right thought and right action.

A picture of young lovers, with wounds of their own, having kept their promises to love for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.

Today I answered the “what” of Anabeth’s questions, she, of innocence still, would not have been able to grasp the reasons I hold these objects so dear. Maybe on another day hence I will share the “why” of them. For now, I keep them in front of me, as Anabeth does her “golden” crown, unbeknownst to her, also a symbol of inspiration and aspiration.

MYTHS

If you live with the myths in your mind, you will find yourself always in mythological situations. They cover everything that can happen to you. And that enables you to interpret the myth in relation to life, as well as life in relation to myth. ~ Joseph Campbell

I have been inspired by my life-long love of, and learning from literature. I contemplate the widom, like gold, mined from both world literature (including mythology and sacred texts) and from what people tell me of their lives--all sources of inspiration and wisdom.

    Most influential has been the work of Joseph Campbell, and Carl Jung, who speak of the subconcious. Campbell suggests we think of our "being" as the image below: A circle, the dot at the center, is our self or soul. Above the line is our waking consciousness; below it is our subconscious.

   

    Josesph Campbell's twelve-year study of global mythologies, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology confirmed that there is: “...unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony.”

    This unity is expressed are common world-wide themes, such as “fire theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero…appearing everywhere in new combinations….No human society has yet been found in which such mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies; interpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or philosophers; presented in art; magnified in song; and ecstatically experienced in life empowering visions. ” 

    This"deep, deep well of the past” is in our cultural/geographic roots, in our biological, psychological and even prehistoric origins. Wired into our psyche and physiognomy is our ability to both create and respond to images, symbols and stories--which, in essence, are the metaphors and allegories of our experience of being alive.

How do we become more aware of the archetypal, subconscious realm wherein that ancestral memory exists? 

    By living our own story with an open mind and heart. 

    Each life "is a hero's journey," as Campbell has noted, comparable to those in the great epics. We all participate in this heroic "quest" which can move us toward consciousness and conscience, as we are initiated through life's vicissitudes, challenges, trials, loss--ultimately coming to terms with our own mortality. 

    Spirituality and psychology weave together when we realize that archetypal images and ideas exist both in us and apart from us. The more we are aware of that realm and explore it, the more we may awaken and begin to be guided to "translate" what we find and be comforted to know we are interconnected--past, present and future with everything that is.

Is this the goal of life? In great part, yes, I believe so. To the extent we are able to think expansively, imaginatively, without boundaries, we may enter that part of the circle which is both individual and universal in wisdom and mystery. In this way, we refine and define our  individuality—seeing and becoming who we are and wish to be.

I have learned so much through what is revealed in story, through the ages, my own, as well as others' stories, and in the works of Campbell and Jung. I am inspired by and in awe of how we pass back and forth across a thin veil, between waking consciousness and the subconscious to discover that, from time immemorial, we have been, are and will be connected, unified in our humanity and our mythologies, sharing this one precious and fragile planet and infinite cosmos.

  

    I am striving not so much to live by story and myth, but to live with them, allowing them to live in me.

ENDLESS SUMMERS

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

     The night above the dingle starry,

          Time let me hail and climb

     Golden in the heydays of his eyes (1).

The summer of 2023 has flown by in a flash--going, going, almost gone, now at the end of August (die she must). Once summers were endless. I don't have any vivid memories of summers after having moved from the city when I was 12 years old. My memories of the summers of the 1950s are ones of living in the summer "daze," with no anticipation of its ending. And so, my mind drifts back at this time of year, like remembering a beloved book I was sad to see come to an end. 

    All was contentment in the familiar, and delight in the wonder of being a child. Ideally, childhood is a time of awe, carefree--unaware of the chaos and evils of the world, of suffering humanity, not fearful of danger or death. Life then was rife with simple pleasures and discovery waiting just below the surface of everything. Like Thoreau, I go a-fishing in the stream of that time and pull out the stuff of what are now treasured memories.

    Life was lived outdoors from morning until night, no TV during the day, if at all, or any other screens to distract from the work of childhood, which is play, and just "being," lying in the cool grass gazing at the wispy clouds passing around the world and back again, or at the sparkling stars in the night sky. 

    Ours was the only single, detached house on our street. There was a green iron fence around it. Blue hydrangea (we called them snowballs) graced small gardens on either side of the entrance gate, which made our house look rather stately compared to the other narrow row homes with stoops. There was not much greenery in the otherwise little crowded hill town outside of Philadelphia proper, so our backyard was a luxury. It was also a "classroom" for observation of nature, with shrubs, a flower garden and a taller-than-our-house cherry tree. That tree was refuge from sun and rain, and a lesson in the seasons. It was all I knew or needed of the great outdoors. And it was lovely.

      When my sister and I visited the old neighborhood 30 years later, we found the garden and yard were cemented over, and the tree was gone.

    Was our world really that small?  

    No! That house, that street, that tree, and the endless summers of play were a boundless and beautiful world I adored, living in my mind and heart all the years since.  

     In springtime, fragrant white blossoms burst forth on our tree. The petals fell like a snow shower, fluttering in the air, drifting blocks away and scattering on sidewalks like confetti. We proudly brought blooming branches to the May Day celebration at St. Lucy’s church on Green Lane. Our yard was also a theatre in which we enacted house keeping, sailing on pirate ships, flying with Peter Pan and the Darling children. And there were games always: throwing and catching a ball, hide and seek, tag, jacks, or we invented new games on the spot.

        When evening came on, we would listen for the circus-like tune blasted from Rodeo Joe’s orange and white ice cream truck, with a cowboy on a bucking bronco painted on the side. Favorite treats were water ice, fudge pops or orange creamcicles. Neighbors were out on their stoops for the evening. Across the street, Mrs. Pickel, would buy an ice cream cone for her dog, Midnight, and feed it to him while we watched. Next to her house, were the Wheelers. Mr. Wheeler, a former boxer, sat in his undershirt every night on his stoop, chain smoking while watching the world go by.

    Sometimes my father would send my sister and me for ice cream cones for the family to Jack's Pharmacy and Soda Fountain at the corner of Baker and Gay under the El. Walking back the short distance up the hill, carrying a bouquet of cones covered over with wax paper, we licked our own dripping cones, arriving with sticky butter pecan, chocolate and orange sherbet fingers.

    After sundown, it was all street games with neighborhood children. We clapped and cheered when the streetlights came on, the signal for the revels to begin: hide and seek, card games of go fish and rummy on the warm sidewalks, jump rope with accompanying songs to keep the rhythm:  

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around

 Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground

    Truth or Dare was a game of choice: answer a question or carry out a dare. Once, a shy boy who was usually too sick to come out to play, chose a dare, and was lowered into a city culvert by two other boys! Learning to roller skate or  ride a bike on our steep hill was thrilling and dangerous, resulting for some of us in May though August bumps, bruises and scabbed over knees. 

    Where were our parents? 

No one had a swimming pool, but on the sweltering days of summer, an adult would take a wrench and open the nearest fire hydrant. Then, in the flood of gushing cool water, was a riot of children, splashing in the water flowing into the cobblestone street below the curb, where children sent leaves, sticks or paper boats down the stream—our very own creek in the city!

    On occasion, the neighborhood kids became aware of a recurring danger to avoid--being hit by the car of Nick Caruso, my father's cousin. We would scramble to duck on the side of a stoop or into an alleyway to safety. Always inebriated, he would periodically make rounds to people he knew asking for a shot of whiskey. Then he would get into his car (we had already taken cover), and make his reckless way up our street, swerving onto the sidewalk from time to time. It was funny, exciting and frightening, and we nervously laughed at the sight. I think the older kids knew it was sad too, for him, and for us to have seen it.    

    At the glimmer of the first star in the twilight sky, it was:

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,

     I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight.

    I don't remember what I wished for back then (when I still believed wishes came true). My wishes changed over time. In my earlier years, I may have wished for more ice cream. Then later, waiting at our green gate, I wished the boy with the Elvis hair would notice me as he walked down our street each afternoon. He never did.

    We remained outside well into evening until we heard our mothers' call, “Come in now. It’s getting late.” On steamy summer nights, after tub baths (never heard of showers or air conditioners), my sister and I roasted in our second floor bedroom, with just a fan at the window. We talked and giggled, about what I haven’t a clue, until my father would yell up the stairway, “Don’t make me come up there. Be quiet now, and go to sleep.” 

We eventually did settle down--without stuffed animals, without stories read to us, without being tucked in—all of which we've done with our children and grandchildren--no worse for the lack thereof, our having experienced magical moments now lost in the mists of "once below a time" (2). Through our window we could see the moon rising, and the last few fireflies, or hear the crickets' lullaby in late August, “so thin a splinter of singing"(3). We said our prayers “to the close and holy darkness” (4), and drifted off to sleep.

          

                         Time held me green and dying, 

                         though I sang in my chains like the sea.

1/2:  "Fern Hill” - Dylan Thomas 

3 : “Splinter" -  Carl Sandburg 

4:  A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas 

PANDEMIC POEM

Twelve full moons
Twelve new moons
Four seasons 
One orbit around the sun

500,000 souls lost 
to the “undiscovered country”

Solitude found for:
questioning what was
reflection on what will be—
our world, our selves

No going back

And America still waiting 
to be discovered

to be recovered
from a pandemic

in ignorance of Logos