Unsettled

Monday Morning Musings:

 

I am unsettled, unmoored

between light and shadow

 

but the shadows grow

the winds blow

I ponder as the pressure drops

watch the sky’s darkling mood

watch it brood

upon the future,

and darken more

(blacker than before)

it weeps,

perhaps remembering light

the song of birds

the hum of bees

thundering its sorrow,

growling like an angry drunk,

sunk in sorrow and pain

throwing punches in the rain

lightning flashes

charged particles, clashes

of hot air

in sound and fury

power displayed

but going nowhere

 

Far away,

on another world

a storm of swirling crimson, unfurls

sending out a song

in crashing waves

volatile and unpredictable

dazzling

ancient

larger than our earth

a spot forever turning

churning

over a world of gas

without firm ground

with nothing to stand upon

unsettled

NASA: This enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

 

But here I stand

feet firmly planted

(head in the clouds)

as I look up at the sky

catching a melody in the wind

storms may rage

night may fall

on firm ground,

I wait for the light

The sun rises, my spirits do, too,

I hear the mockingbird sing in a sky of blue.

 

We go out to hear about wine

Waiting for the barrel tasting.

to learn from a man passionate about the science

and his craft

educated in universities in California and France

but there is art, skill, perhaps a bit of magic involved,

a master craftsman, a master craft

In the barrel room with Larry Sharrott of Sharrott Winery.

 

We taste wine from barrels

(settling)

sitting there for ten months or a bit more

not ready yet to go to tanks,

raised above the floor

kept cool by solar power

(to keep the wine from going bad and sour)

I think of the skill and craft of making barrels,

here, some are made from American oak

some from French or Hungarian oak

I learn the wine in American oak tastes different from that in the European

I like the symmetry of fruit of the vine kept in barrels from trees

my mind goes to the economy of colonial America

built with the help of barrels

though not of wine

barrel makers—coopers—found in every town

large barrels, hogsheads, terms of measurement

but we talk of wine here,

admire its color

swirl it to let in air,

smell it and taste it,

the barrel wine drier, more astringent,

the bottled wine, rounder and fuller,

I’m fascinated–

the knowledge, the skill, the passion

wonder how people first picked grapes

and learned to make wine

centuries ago

refining the process over time

though the science remains the same.

 

We drink Chambourcin

a glass at the winery, overlooking acres of grapes,

and birds in flight,

 

then more at our daughter’s house

we missed the Bastille Day celebration this year

but we have French-named wine

French cheese, a baguette

and chocolate cake

(yes, let us eat cake).

It is a beautiful evening

their dog plays

their cat watches

the shadows grow

but the summer light lingers

as do we

the storms but a memory in the blue sky

and I’m feeling moored, settled

my family and love,

the port in stormy and fair weather,

I hear the songs of the universe surround me.

 

We visited Sharrott Winery in Hammonton, NJ.

 

 

 

 

 

Footprints in the Sand

 

Casting off her sleek brown pelt (but holding it close), she rises from the surf. No goddess, though men will be drawn to her, despite–or perhaps because of–her otherworldliness. Through the waves, she walks, clumsily at first, as she adjusts to two legs and to being upright. The world looks different to her now. It feels different, too. The air is cool against her skin; the breeze dances across the new womanly curves of her body. She steps onto the beach, eager to embrace this life, if only temporarily, leaving footprints in the sand. The sea covers and takes them, keeping a trace of her to hold in its depths till she returns to it. And she will.

 

I’m late, but this is for Frank’s Footprints in the Sand challenge.    

Another selkie story–because, well, selkies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Footbridge: Tanka

glimmer-green dancers

flow in Sarabande rhythm

beneath the footbridge

music travels through space, time

captured by the artist’s brush

 

Claude Monet, The Japanese Footbridge and the Water Lily Pool, Giverny, 1899
The Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson, Jr., Collection, 1963
Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

Claude Debussy, Sarabande pour le Piano, L95 

This is a tanka for Colleen Chesebro’s Weekly Poetry Challenge.

The prompt words were music and art.

 

For Those Who Came Before, To Those Who Come After

She remembers–

flying,

rising above land and sea,

adrift in the misting clouds,

feeling the wind through her hair,

laughing,

looking below,

resisting gravity,

(the pull to bring her down).

It was all forbidden,

(girls were not meant to rise)

but she knew it was never wrong

to soar as high as she could,

And so,

this is what she taught her daughters–

and her sons–

and when she could no longer fly

or remember

they did so for her,

laughing in the misting clouds,

resisting the forces that sought to bring them down.

 

Caspar David Friedrich, “Drifting Clouds” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is for Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Prompt.  

The prompt words were:

| SOAR | WRONG | LAND | RESIST | BELOW

 

 

 

 

Time Bends and Echoes

Monday Morning Musings:

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past. . .

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory,

down the passage we did not take,

towards the door we never opened,

into the rose garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.”

T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Echo”, No. 1 of “Four Quartets”

 

“So much of history is mystery. We don’t know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.”

–Amy Tan, The Bonesetter’s Daughter

 

This week–

a photo,

hidden within a mislabeled envelope, appears

challenging history

what is known and what may be,

tangible, frangible,

certainly mysterious

does it show what we think it shows?

Can it?

Will we ever know more of lives that soared and crashed?

The photo,

a door opened into the past,

within it the people still live

a passage, a channel

leading this way or that

perhaps many such secret passages exist

burrow along well-traveled pathways

winding passages that bend and shape the straight roads of time

time past, time present, time future

 

We go to a play,

three men enter a room, one at a time,

Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Count Leo Tolstoy

(Barefooted and dressed as a peasant, he says

don’t call me Count, throughout the play.)

The room is furnished with a drawered table and three chairs,

in the drawer, the men will discover notebooks and pens.

(Jefferson is amazed at a pen with ink–amazed he did not think of it himself.)

Though they lived in different times,

each man has just died and entered this room,

At this discovery, Jefferson remarks,

“Evidently time bends.”

Bulletin board in the lobby of the Lantern Theater.

The door lock after each enters the room,

they cannot exit until—what?

Each man is a writer,

and it turns out each wrote his own version of the gospels,

each man was a visionary of sorts

who wrote about reforming society,

each failed within his own life to uphold the standards he envisioned

and in this amusing and entertaining play,

the men write and argue,

debate their ideas,

and write some more,

facing the mirror—us–

we, the audience, the fourth wall

hear their words,

hear them confess their deeds and weaknesses.

And what if they did meet,

and what if they did debate and discuss,

and what if we could hear them,

bending time

 

On a beautiful summer day,

after the play

we walk the streets that bear traces of Jefferson everywhere

a medical school and university named for him.

Centuries ago, he walked these streets

sat in a room, penned (with quill) his elegant words*

of sacred rights, of equality and independence,

even while he continued to enslave others,

words that led to a revolution,

words that still resonate today,

I imagine him,

his long-legged stroll across the cobble-stoned streets,

conversing with his unlikely friend John Adams,

perhaps opening a door into a rose garden

there

the scent lingers in the air

the words echo

time bends

Charles Dickens visited Philadelphia, too.

in March 1842, he stayed at the United States Hotel

on Chestnut Street near Fourth,

the part of the city

now called Old City

where Jefferson and other delegates declared our independence

I imagine their ghosts meeting on these city streets

that Dickens found much too regular

longing for a crooked street–

perhaps seeking a place where time bent

and echoes lingered in the air

 

Dickens met with Edgar Allen Poe,

they discussed poetry.

Dickens had a pet raven, Grip,

his stuffed body rests in a glass case

at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Dickens wrote about Grip in his book

Barnaby Rudge,

which was serialized in the Philadelphia Inquirer,

and Poe reviewed the book for a Philadelphia publication in 1842,

mentioning the raven,

and Poe later writes a poem about a raven

whose word “nevermore” echoes in the air

and through time

 

And on this beautiful summer day

we sit outside at a café,

drink wine

(and beer)

 

eat cheese

(luscious)

I wonder to my husband

how it would have been—

what if a woman had been in that room?

He says, was there one who wrote gospels?

I don’t know,

though I think there must have been

perhaps, lost to history,

or yet to be found,

a mystery,

perhaps to be revealed

in a mislabeled envelope,

or amidst remnants unearthed from a secret passage

in the locus of past, present, and future.

We sit at the table

(a window becomes a mirror

old buildings blend with new)

watch the people,

listening to words echo

lingering in the breeze

 

We saw The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens & County Leo Tolstoy: Discord by Scott Carter at the Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia.

We went to Tria Café Washington West

A photo said to be of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan was in the news this week.

*Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence 

Dreams Beyond the Moon

In the darkness and the gloom,

spirits loom,

speaking, seeking

those with natures bright

who dance and sing,

embrace the light

and watch the birds in morning flight

I watch them, too–

wings soaring, sweeping through the blue

beyond the clouds like sailing ships

until they vanish from my view

in flowing streams

on trips of dreams,

far beyond the moon

 

Jan Brueghel the Elder, “Air,” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m feeling the need for a bit of magic.

 

Falling Stars

The child presses her face against the window glass

watching as the sun sinks into the sea

and the first stars appear in the sky.

She makes a wish as one streaks, burns, and falls

vanishing like her neighbors.

(“Poor things,” her mother had said

seeing their yellow stars.)

She wonders if they will send her a postcard

from wherever they are,

and if she can change her wish–

to see them again,

the doctor with the kind eyes

and his daughters with their long, silver hair

who had played with her.

 

The child, older now, presses her face against the window glass

and watches the stars in the sky

the bombs silenced,

she hears a song murmured by the wind

singing to her of hope and dreams,

bittersweet, like chocolate she remembers,

she sees streams of starlight

sowing dreams in sparkling silver waves,

thinks of her long-ago wish

and knows—somehow– it will come true.

Star Sower by Hai Knafo, Wikipedia Commons

 

This is for Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Prompt.  The prompt words were:

| APPEAR | PRESS | POOR | CARD | FALL |

 

Work, Wine, and Wonder

Monday Morning Musings:

“Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.”

–Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game (1963)

 

“Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That’s all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth

I look at you, and I sigh.”

William Butler Yeats, “A Drinking Song”

 

I spend days writing,

then sighting and fighting

others’ dreadful prose,

I dream then,

want again,

wonder and poetry–

a moonship sleeps through time

dreaming of a glowing goddess

cool, with diamond eyes,

from her starry throne,

she lets a storm moan

and I,

seeing lights from the sky.

watch as mist sprays

plays melodies on garden stones

dances in the light,

a thousand fairies

diamond-eyed.

 

I spend days writing,

then sighting and fighting

more dreadful prose,

I watch a morning sparkle and gleam

and dream of conversing with the birds,

how it would be to sing their songs,

flowing thoughts and soaring words?

I wonder of what my slumbering cats dream

(perhaps nothing is what it seems).

Do cats and dogs, do cows

as they graze under the boughs

understand the birds’ songs

moo in harmony, sing along?

Conversing with birds

Conversing with me

 

I spend days writing,

then sighting and fighting–

again, that dreadful prose!

And I wonder

why is there such hate

that negates

joy, hope, and reason

that seasons

life with tears and fears?

Why men would rape out of boredom

(Boredom!)

and why a woman,

or a man,

need to be taught a lesson

stressing

what?

What lesson has been taught?

That someone has been caught or bought?

that life is fraught,

so do not dream of what you could be, or brought

about with books and words and second thoughts?

I wonder who could hurt a child,

can their minds ever be reconciled—

the dreadful deeds and daily doings,

the demons in their souls?

no controls, no goals

lives brutal and bleak

do, die, never speak.

Do they never dream of a goddess glowing

her tresses silver and flowing,

or wonder how to converse with a bird?

heard their songs in morning air

happy to be alive, aware?

Where does the wonder go?

Does anybody know?

 

I spend days writing,

then sighting and fighting–

yes, more of that dreadful prose,

correct the errors, insert a phrase

(my eyes glaze)

then I wonder—

isn’t it time for some wine?

so we go, sit near grapes in the sunshine,

enjoy the beauty of the day

stay

as chatter and music play

in waves around us.

We drink wine,

red and luscious

(no, don’t rush this)

loving it,

loving you

I lift the glass to my mouth

I look at you, and I sigh.

wonder how and why we found each other

created two astonishing daughters

enjoyed days of blues skies and laughing waters,

realize I have found the music and the poetry

in life, in you, in birds, and trees

And though I cannot sing with birds,

I can wonder, dream, and write these words.

 

 

Safe Harbor: Haibun

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

–from Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

 

Our ship is stalled in the harbor–the weather, customs duties, bribes to officials—who knows why? We live in suspended time in a liminal space—on a ship, but not at sea; people who have left their homes, but who have not found a new one, refugees. I worry about leaving—perhaps it would not be so bad to stay? But it is too late, we are sailing. Weeks seem like months, as my stomach rolls and heaves with the ship, till at last we arrive. We are weary, but grateful for our new home, a small room in the house of distant kin. At night, we walk to the beach to escape the heat of the day. My sister’s face mirrors my own—relief that the journey is over, sadness that we may never see our parents again, and joy that we are safe. We dance on the sand under a moonlit sky.

 

Faults in men, not stars

lighting a sea-crossed journey

freedom has a price–

beckoning with torch raised high,

the beacon separates, too

 

 

This is for Colleen Chesebro’s Weekly Poetry Challenge.  The prompt words were mirror and harbor. I remember my grandfather telling me about when he was a boy, after he, his mother, and his sister left Kiev, their ship was stuck in Trieste. I don’t know why or how they got there. Trieste was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I mentioned him in a previous post called Feast of the Immigrant. 

And here’s the Hamilton mix tape based on the line from the show, “Immigrants, we get the job done.”

 

 

In Harmony

About my blue earth

moon in cycles shining

murmurs sweet harmony,

soft poetry,

(listen)

it wanders peacefully here and there,

beneath

between

a quiet secret breeze of ancient souls

and pure light blossom in color

 

 

It’s been a busy week. I needed this message from the Oracle.