SHELBY STEPHENSON

 

“Two together!”

 

Two together!  You come south − or I go north,

day comes dark − or dark comes night,

we live by yearning for blue days new,

all days, common marvels, miraculous as drizzle becoming snow.

 

In the beginning you seemed far away, my love,

leaning out the second-story window at 12 Clarendon,

and I had come from the farm, a working one,

and you stuck your head out and said, “I’ll be right down.”

 

Hypomania?

 

Was it summer ’61?

I worked at a French camp for children of the French Railroad Employees.

After a month Em and I went to Paris for a week.

We had a sandwich at a café, decided to go to the museum.

I asked two Frenchmen at the counter − in French − for directions:

“Do you speak English?  We’ll give you a ride!”

“Sammy” drove us to the museum and they stayed with us!

Then Sammy drove us to a place for something to drink.

Sammy’s friend wanted out.

Sammy drove us to the ballet:  he slid right up against me. 

We got scared − my coat was locked in his car.

He said, “You’ll have to give me cab-fare.”

He drove us to our “hotel,” really a brothel.

We had a double bed.

At breakfast next day Sammy mugged us through the glass out front.

 

Across the road lies Greatgreatgrandpap George.

I’ve traced the path that brought him there.

And you cut out research you would not believe,

the detail of one who “owned” slaves.

I should put “grave” in quotes too.

Truth is − you can’t own anything.

 

The Law and I fail each other (my story)

and I have a “blind” date with Suzy Winter in D. C.

and meet her dad who works for Long Lines, A.T. & T.

And I get a job in White Plains, working all up and down Route 17,

that southern tier in New York State

and I call Chip Davis, a friend from Buffalo (in school with me at Carolina)

and I need a date, as they say,

and I drive up from Olean to see Chip,

meet his friend, Marn, Nin’s sister, at a debutante party.

I dance with Marnie and ask if she has any sisters.

Marnie mentions Linda.

It’s midnight and Chip calls Linda (Nin)

and tells her about “Shelby Stephenson who wants a date for tomorrow night.”

Nin hesitates; then he tells her that Shelby is from out-of-town −

and something about “law school.”

Nin thinks he might be interesting, says, Yes.

When Chip and I arrive at 12 Clarendon Place

we see Linda hanging out a third floor window.

 

She shouts − “Be careful of wet paint.”

 

For now, you, the one of my dreams, the shine in your voice,

call to the terrier, “Want to go for a walk with Mummy?”

And you two are off.

You are full of wellness and strong as can be.

 

“Ever since I started walking I’m able to clean − this Fantastic Orange!

I mention it − and no one’s ever heard of it.”

 

“If I do crash I’ll have a clean, organized place.

Put the colander there; put the bread bowl here.

Never know if I’ll use the square pans or not.”

 

“Can’t we have a few good days?

When you begin to feel well − it’s like a wedding.”

                                                                                               

Say I got lost in the clatter of pots.

Teach me to wait.

 

“It’s been two years since we’ve had a vacation.

We don’t go anywhere.

We have no social life because I have to drag you wherever we go.

You don’t want to go any place because you don’t feel comfortable around people.”

 

I thought you were angry or sad or sarcastic.

I was completely helpless!

Once, I paged you at the grocery store.

I couldn’t see you and thought you had left me.

 

The laughter you fill in slips and thongs

dancing with buttons and bows

binding light through the windows.

 

For decades we’d drive from Southern Pines to Beckley,

spend the night at Mountain Top Campground

and wheel the snow in drifts at the Farm in Boston, near Springville.

You fluff your hair sideways and stride straight out of the terrace-door,

cutting a swath the air cannot chill, the snowmobilers shaking their boots and beards

and whooping and wallowing in their hollers.

 

Your breasts stick out like robed firs lining the path to the Fairy Glen.

 

I can hardly warm a dish; if I were in a cafeteria line I wouldn’t know what food to take. 

 

Panic sits up and yawns.

 

There were times in the night when you

would wake up and feel panic,

unable to catch your breath.

 

Little baby steps up the hill and two back down.

 

I have seen the martins fledge and the bluebirds, too;

all of a sudden, they are off for a flight as definite as the Blue Moon

 

we saw last night sailing full through wisps, steady and high,

coming and going, unafraid, no worry or care,

 

the old house dancing,

the cabaret’s band playing a Spanish two-step soft and low.

 

Cold Buffalo winters:  February, 1940,

your father (old Buffalo), Hamilton, Yale, U. B,

 

your mother − Massachusetts, Newton Center, Vassar −

your middle-name adorning the Letchworth relation on your father’s side,

 

your mother’s holding the sorrowful joy of the House of Collens, for Charles,

the architect (designed the Riverside Church, Cloisters, Union Theological).

 

Your family lived on Ashland Avenue, Gates Circle, shaped like a train,

a long and narrow hallway, little rooms like cabooses, a deck to lie out on,

 

sunshine in breakthroughs the light of your life,

the darkness lit in recall,

 

comparing your early years with mine: your live-in maid,

the image of the war splashing the papers

 

(I remember FDR’s photo in The N & O)

and history’s gesture sledding in on ice-shale,

 

bringing T in March to you two years and one month after you were born,

then Marnie, three years later:

 

Hope was born when I was eleven in ’51.

The Ashland house was too small, though pretty, you said,

 

its yellow-framed two-stories,

a prospect dwelling in my mind for Christmases,

 

the kids’ shouts in war-time,

the snow-covered streets of the neighborhood,

 

snow-ball fights,

and the high, cool, free events without clutter:

 

Mary Lou bit your finger and you rang her doorbell to tell her mother

and then her mother bit Mary Lou’s finger and said, “Now you know how it feels.”

 

The organ-grinder waltzed down the street in summertime: 

he had a monkey on a string:

 

the ice-cream man would come, his bells ringing sound, light, smells:

 

I started Elmwood Franklin Nursery at five;

when I was seven Dad said

 

You can go to Campus School at Buffalo State Teacher’s (third through eighth grades)

and I loved it: it was public, not like Buffalo Seminary,

my private school from the ninth through the twelfth:

 

I think of the horse I loved − Sunshine:  that was ’51:

he was covered with mud:  cost $40.00, died on Valentine’s day, 1952:

Dad “rented” two horses for summer,

Prince, a chestnut bay, and King, a palomino:

the man said he could “take” the horses for the summer

if he would care for a large wound in King’s stomach from a fall, trying to jump a fence:  

 

when I was twelve in ’52, we got tv: neighbors: the Rumseys, Chyrecks:

one day we were playing baseball and I got too hot:

Mum said, “Neenie, darling, take off your shirt” − I had breasts:

the mirror gave something back:

 

in the fifth I think I was the only one in class to learn

there were no napkins anywhere to help me

and Girl Scout Camp’s cot gave back what I did not want to hear or see,

 

the snickering and pointing from my cabin-mates, the flood of embarrassment:

the confused crushes on Boys, the Barn at the Farm inviting as the mirrors I primped:

 

Romance looked good as Lynn who got braces:

the spruce by the window quivered for picnics in March

 

off Emerling Road, where our dream of a place with a beautiful view came true: 

“Who owns this farm?”  “I do,” Mr. Spore said.

 

Soon calves on wobbly knees and crisp-footed horses romped in a new-mown meadow.

Children sang songs on a wagon loaded with hay.

 

Vee and I picked blackberries edging The Farm. 

Dad had the pond dug and tied a duck-decoy to the bottom −

you and I have caught many a sunfish there and fried them −

when we’d change our suits and press our bodies in the bubbles our skin kissed

we would wonder if someone would catch us before we could get back up the hill:

“Hellooooooooooooo.”

 

Dad got in the Christmas-tree Planting Business to help Boston (N. Y.) Conservation.

He was always planting trees.

 

Your farm originally had no running water, just one of those old-time waterpumps?

A tin tub rumbled in the shed not far from your home in the city

 

at 12 Clarendon Place:

your grandpa Collens (Bapa) appeared and said Your beams are rotten?

 

This was after a two-story addition had been finished without stairs.

Upstairs the Dormitory went up:  Bapa designed a little study?

 

Mum hired a blacksmith to forge special hardware −

she wanted an authentic colonial home.

 

Uncle Harold Olmsted designed a chimney with the wave of his hand:

it smoked every time you struck a match,

 

but it WAS beautiful

when we married 30 July 1966

he drew a sketch of our outdoor wedding and called it

an “Elizabethan Setting for an Elizabethan Wedding,

Love to Linda and Shelby from Grandpa O:

Lintemarho, Emerling Lane, Bostonshire, America.”

 

When you turned fifteen, stable and self-conscious, you began the network of moods, your depression already set,

though you did not know to know what invitations to football games would do to you:

 

I was lying back on the couch and I asked Johnny if he had ever felt down

and he said, Yes: What do you do, I said,

and he:  “Figure out what’s wrong and get rid of it”:

 

when one falls to pieces − far, far away, glands rage in places suspended in time;

gestures sweep positions for forgetting what happens when there is no line

and good and bad love you the same, as depression walks in,

follows understanding, as snow falls in the ryefield, memory’s score:

the heavens keep a symphony for the spirit left in temporal silences:

a little mania’s a good thing, don’t you think:

 

to roam in cool beginnings

the way, say, boys brag about their conquests

as if the first bed does not educate

but understands the door should be locked in case someone might come,

maybe the cook − relieving himself by the cabin-door:

just a summer job, the aftermath of one rubber slung across a room for denial,

 

in the streams, heaving their wings, the bloodsucking flies

toward the cowboy on the make,

 

the flutter of romance all summer long reality’s sputter:

I had my knapsack and my fluffy blue pajamas

 

when I worked at A-Bar-A, that dude ranch in Wyoming,

my parents proud of me for working;

 

other times I  headed the glee club at Buff Sem and arranged 

for the Harvard choir to come to Sem − I did all that:  and when they came, 

two of the choir slept upstairs:

 

I sold tickets to the concert to pay the way for the singers to come from Boston: 

I planned a dance, too, my math teacher at Sem was surprised,

since earlier that year in her class I was depressed:

 

my big achievements came when I was up: 

then I went to Bradford Junior College and could not get into the chorus:                           

neither could I get into the small singing group because I could not read music:

just as I was “up” at A-Bar-A, I went off with my cowboy and stayed overnight −

I was told I would be fired as Salad Girl if I strayed from the ranch again.

 

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, where seldom is heard

encouraging words

and the sky’s unclouded all day:

when I was up I could do anything. 

 

My roommate at Bradford, Carol went to Europe the summer I went to A-Bar-A:

she married an art director: he had children, very wealthy, owned a gallery:

 

she has a good life; was my one friend at Bradford:

I learned to make myself come:  one night she heard me: 

 

she did not know what I was doing:

Carol’s friend had a big boat:

my cowboy went on the boat too:

 

I was depressed.

And she knew.

She told me she thought I should see a psychiatrist:

Carol and I were very close, even when I was depressed:

 

she introduced me to Doogy, a student at Brown:

he invited me for a ski weekend:  hands rub the body:  it’s like dining out:

Cabdriver, come on down to Greenleaf Hall!

Times take wrong turns:

necking becomes a carriage, a drive-in, a sway of gods and goddesses:

the last cold snowflake feels like a winter of snow:

 

I understood the “black” situation when I was at Columbia School of Social Work:

the girls in my group were black:

 

I was depressed: Mum and Dad came:  we went to see one of my teachers:

half, at least were black:  I remember that Mum and Dad were really surprised:

 

that was the time JFK was killed:  all this deepens frustration.

You were trying to study for statistics at Columbia?

 

I came out of the depression and sailed through my exams:  

when I was down I could not decide on craft-titles for my group-work:  

 

my supervisor told me not to use plaster: I did:

the children’s hands in plaster got all over the house:

 

he recommended that I leave school and get some help:

I was crushed, yet relieved:

 

the dean told me after two years, after I got help,

I could reapply and hopefully finish my degree:  

 

after that I got a job in Pittsburgh at the Jewish Home for the Aged: 

I was head of admissions:

 

I was feeling very well:

part of my job was to go through the unclaimed clothing of the deceased:

I found a bottle of whiskey and a belt:

we drank the whiskey and you wore the belt for years:

 

I came out of a down in June, ’66,

applied for a job at Vocational Rehabilitation, City of Pittsburgh:

 

Mr. Calson told me after my  interview,

“Oh, Miss Wilson, you do not hang your coat in the director’s office!”

 

There were no positions available

and I had to wait about three months before I was hired:

 

I was depressed when we married, 30 July 1966:

I had been calling to check on a client

who had been electrocuted and had brain-damage:

I was so depressed: his wife said,

“I don’t know why you are calling; I don’t appreciate it.”

 

Dr. Russell:  “Your ability to conceptualize is gone, isn’t it?”

When I would go see him I would see patients who were my clients: 

 

all gets jumbled up:  at Columbia, I stayed at Johnson Hall:

my classes were in the Andrew Carnegie House down in the city:

 

I had to take the subway and bus to get to my field-work at night:

roller coaster world: 

 

euphoria, heaviness, my spine tingling, legs running in a downpour,

back up, knees bent up under my chin until the pain would stop:

 

depression’s like an alarm that does not go off;

memory aches in rumpled underclothes and a flow of mental pain:

 

I heard the phrase, “physiological cyclical illness”

for the first time at the Lahey Clinic, 1964:

 

Fall, ’68, we left Pittsburgh for Madison, Wisconsin:

September 11, 1970, Jacob was born:  three months later I got depressed:

I stayed low until June, 1971,

 

when I had Electro Shock Therapy − three times −

Dr. Winston:  started lithium:  I came out of my depression for eight years:

I wonder if the shock therapy helped me last that long:

 

and somewhere in there I went to the Mayo Clinic, I think, searching for answers,

evaluations −

and meds, meds, meds:

 

the stumbling and falling:

Holly Hill Hospital, early January, 1983:

 

my meds were stopped for a week and I came out without having EST:

had nine years without a depression:

 

I went down, down, down in the early ’90s, lowest, I think, I’ve ever been:

worried about insurance payments, the price of pork-n-beans, every little thing:

 

broke my ankle in ’95, when I was “up,” hypomanic, and  on crutches for six months:  Dr. Andrews became my psychiatrist:

 

when we left Southern Pines in spring, ’96,

she referred me to Dr. B

 

who doctors me as you write this memoir-poem-prose-remembrance:

and oh the symptoms always become the same:

 

wound up and can’t relax, no energy;

waking at 5 o’clock a.m. −

 

scattered feelings, no concentration, can’t remember, can’t converse or conceptualize:

I feel retarded, staring at post-its, grocery lists:

 

across from where I am sitting and writing, I hear the rasp of a file in the darkness:

the sound drifts back and forth in that Valley of Despair

 

I am trying to find words for − the nothingness of conversations and the pounding heart −

I fell apart in front of one of my supervisors:

 

he said:  “You can’t even make up your mind whether to stay or go, can you?”

I left, wondering if I could even drive home.

I was a long way from the jet-stream feeling when I was up: 

                       

the hollow curvature of your spine swings a high way to climb,

until there is no string to hold on to, no string at all.

 

Shelby Stephenson’s Family Matters:  Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge.

“Here at Exxon, we hate your children.”

The campaign in support of climate change reform recently took a dramatic turn with the latest attack ad on the fossil fuel industry from the grassroots organization The Other 98%. “Making a fortune destroying your kids’ future? At Exxon, that’s what we would call good business!” the ad proclaims, in one of the most searing indictments against the fossil fuel industry to date. Using satire to expose the colossal waste of taxpayer dollars used to prop up an industry with no regard for public welfare or personal liberty, the ad went viral almost immediately, having been perfectly timed for release at the height of 2012’s widely publicized “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of views and considerable attention from progressive media outlets successfully managed to ruffle the feathers of Exxon’s higher-ups, compelling them to release the following statement: “Energy use and climate change are critically important challenges facing society that won’t be resolved with media campaigns that rely on provocative language and false allegations.”

It appears The Other 98% struck a nerve. Good.

As you might have figured out by now, speaking truth to power is considered rude. It’s not nice. “Manners are of more importance than laws,” wrote philosopher Edmund Burke, quoted by sycophantic conservative mouthpiece David Brooks in a recent New York Times article regarding President Obama’s sharper tone against House Republicans in recent months. Legitimately challenging the status quo has become something to be patronized by our mainstream media, a place where indignation is met with outrage and appeals to civility are the first defense against appeals to reason. Those who choose not to toe the line with the rest of the political paparazzi are chided as impertinent children or castigated as rebellious upstarts, and it would seem that what’s expected of liberals and progressives in “legitimate” political discourse is to say please, shut the fuck up, and wait until the grownups are done talking, on any subject from the “fiscal cliff” to what some are now referring to as the “climate cliff”.

The time for playing nice is over when it comes to climate change. It’s happening, whether we like it or not. In a recent feature in Rolling Stone called “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”, leading environmental activist and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben states that the fossil fuel industry has “five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn.” He goes on to state that we’d “have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate,” and we’ve got ten years at best to get started shutting down this aberrant vision of “progress” before we begin to be subjected to the full weight of its folly. Simply put, time is running out.

But if you’re reading this, you probably already knew that. The question is: how do we get the world on board?

It’s become abundantly clear that appealing to people’s reason in the discussion about climate change is a lost cause. Companies like Exxon-Mobil, Shell, and BP have done a phenomenal job of sowing enough doubt regarding mankind’s influence on climate change that the subject has become a dead issue in American politics, causing a jaded public to collectively shrug their shoulders and assume it’ll sort itself out. The mainstream media’s not covering it whatsoever; it was almost completely off the table in the 2012 presidential elections. Even when the argument is occasionally rolled out for public display, those that speak on our behalf are derided and disregarded by so-called “climate skeptics”, snake-oil salesmen peddling bogus facts, figures, and empty promises designed to misguide an ambivalent public towards a path of inevitable destruction, both immediate and long-term. All this for the sake of lining the pockets of greedy shareholders so insulated from the consequences of their actions that they literally cannot and will not see not only the destruction they have wrought, but the impending doom that lies ahead for all mankind, including themselves. The tight-knit web of corruptive collusion between government officials, fossil fuel lobby groups, and mainstream media outlets has yanked the soapbox out from under the scientific community, and shoved them into the back of the bus. How’s that for “nice”? How’s that for “politeness”?

But widespread media suppression, corruption and pseudoscience are not the only problems with getting anything done in this arena. One of the biggest problems reformers face is that the issue of climate change itself is an abstraction. It’s not that interesting, because it’s not happening right in front of us at a rate that we can easily perceive. Given mankind’s relatively short attention span and inclination towards high drama over high-brow science, charts and graphs and mild-mannered scientists aren’t exactly “wowing” people. Most of those who have come forward to speak on civilization’s behalf seem either unwilling or unable to capitalize on this behavior, and find new and innovative ways to appeal to people’s outrage as well as their reason. Climate change advocacy needs fire and brimstone; it needs pulpit-pounding stump speeches. We need to make people understand that they have been betrayed by those who they have charged with stewardship over this planet’s resources. We need to start talking about who we’re fighting, not what.

The fossil fuel industry is a hive mind gone completely rogue, a bloated, cancerous growth upon our planet that places the welfare of its shareholders over that of life itself. Unmoored from governmental oversight through rampant corruption, fossil fuel companies and their ilk have tightened their web around the globe, breaking and bending laws with reckless abandon nearly every single day and bribing their way through the advancement of their exploitative agenda, leaving a path of environmental and economic ruin in their wake. They beg, borrow, and steal their way across our lands, into our communities, spewing black filth into our rivers, into our skies, into our soil. It fills our lungs and our bellies, and our bodies grow ripe with decay over every successive generation. And worst of all, they have learned to exploit almost every environmental tragedy, whether man made or not, as an economic opportunity. Not just in the fossil fuel business, but in every business, from education to banking to defense. They are all connected. Our institutions have failed to protect us; they are hamstrung by greed. We must stand up for ourselves and fight.

In the war for the future of mankind, climate change reformers are losing.

A war needs armies. A war needs generals. Most importantly, a war needs tactics; ruthless ones. We have to hit them where it hurts: their reputation, and the machine that supports it. So if we can’t win with the facts people won’t believe, then we have no choice but to fight with the ones they will. We have to tell a new story, one that attaches fossil fuel companies’ crimes against humanity to people’s core values. We need to talk about saving the world of today rather than the world of tomorrow, focusing on almost everything but the science in order to do this, using it only to support our righteous indignation towards willful ignorance and criminal neglect. We need to tell the truth: these people are criminals. They do not care about us. And they must be stopped.

The future is not the only thing at stake. Justice herself is in danger. She must no longer remain blind.

 

 

Gordon’s Airplane
for Gordon Jones (and Dante Cassius)

Empty gas tank
Rusting fuselage
Waiting at the airport

Man without a job
Sleeping in his van
yet wearing aviator glasses

In this era
of unbalanced budgets
cascading markets
and rampant foreclosure

it is good to feel
a bit of fancy
the last of whimsy
extra space for a dream

to know Gordon’s private plane
still rests in the hangar.

Harmony with Nature

My father walks in from the yard
old jeans stained with mud
sees me playing Farmville

clicking water into the tomato patch
digging up pixels
and typing in fertilizer

he asks me to come pull Bermuda grass
out of the broccoli

‘Gardens come in 3-D, you know.’

Wise Construction

after failure
I asked the inmost me
why do I act so unlike myself?

How could I have hurt those I loved
and placed others in danger?

How to unlink the chains
and reposition the pathway stones
that looked right at the start
but veered off course?

How to start again now?

clean my hands by building with them
new structures on fresh ground
better a solid house than a flimsy castle

let myself be challenged
pick apart and purify motivations

Stay under budget, allot enough time
for my inner work crew

to choose healthy materials
and functional tools
not paint over wood rotten from the inside

and follow the guidebook
for original, but safe, construction.

 

Cristina Deptula is a writer from San Leandro, California. She can be reached at cedeptula@sbcglobal.net.

 

POEMS FROM INDIA BY JANINE CANAN

 

Crucifixion of a Woman

 

I. To the Fake Guru Who Blames Her

It is not she who should have fallen

at the feet of her rapists—

but you who should fall

at her disembodied martyred feet

 

and beg forgiveness.

 

 

II. To the Martyr

It’s the pole the men shoved

into your vagina through your intestines

to your diaphragm—

that I cannot  get out of my heart.

 

When you return, in your next life,

may every cell incandesce with Joy

at what your sacrifice achieved

for half of humankind.

 

 

III. To the Ancient Banyan that Receives Her

At your feet, how many urns of ash

of bodies battered, burned and raped

have been poured

 

feeding your ever deeper roots,

many expanding trunks,

long imploring arms?

 

And how many more vital young women

reduced to ash will be yours

in the centuries to come?

 

In memory of Braveheart Singh, Asia, 2013

 

 

O Star

My mother used to say

about me as a child:

Don’t worry, she was born

under a Lucky Star.

 

How did I feel about being

pawned off on some distant star?

Not good. But now

I realize she was right.

 

Thank you, O Star!

For your relentless, protective, urgent

beam that has shown me

my path in the dark.

 

 

Body and Soul

The body is flowing

downwards, downwards

to rejoin the earth.

 

How it must long,

the body, for that clay

and ash and worms.

 

When it arrives there,

the soul will be free

to rise and float away.

 

The soul that no one knows,

that cannot be seen

except by Seers who say

 

it is a vapor,

it is light, it is God’s

very essence.

 

Where will it go

without its cloak? Its shrine?

Its root? Its reason?

 

It came for some purpose,

assignment, or duty—

a role in creation.

 

Will it be satisfied once free?

Will it like the next stop?

Be happy? Lonely? Or sorry?

 

And those who do not believe

in what they cannot see

with their small soft brief eyes—

 

they will kneel on the gravestone

and cry, with fear

they will shake.

 

As their bodies keep flowing

downwards, back down

into the earth.

 

 

Meditation

My body was taken

and then my mind

 

and my heart was filled

with a deep vibration.

 

I knew nothing

for I had disappeared.

 

And then I heard the music—

in all directions, it was coming from me!

 

Path

It is one thing to hear about a spiritual master

and another to decide

to go and meet her.

 

It is one thing to accept her blessings again

and again, another to take her

as your teacher.

 

One thing to try to follow her teachings,

another to renounce attachment

to this world ever pleading.

 

One, to wear the pure white of renunciation,

another to put on the blazing orange

that burns your ego to a crisp.

 

And quite another to surrender

altogether, and become truly

one with God.

 

 

Knowledge

 

I Long Ago

Long, long ago,

you didn’t go to a church or an ashram

to be spiritual

 

every step you took

was spiritual.

 

II The Treasure

It is not found in books.

They are merely maps.

 

It is buried deep

in experience.

 

III To Know

In the long unfolding of humanity,

the constant search for our source,

much confusion

has arisen.

 

Now we need a purification

of confusion, if we are to know

the essence inherent

in all things.

 

IV To Feel

We know the teachings.

Now we to need to live them.

 

To sand away negativities

and egotisms, so we can open

our pores to what is

 

so we can feel

the light.

To Justine Shapiro, 2013

 

the 29th

The seasons seemed to shift
in the opposite
direction

missing was the equinox

present was a leap year
drawing out in decades
and a rare birthday
such as that
was only a moment
on your flesh

like a flower you were
blossoming under red leaves
the spring would have
to wait
with the reaper

in summer you can still
wither, and I could
freeze to death
under pedals of sun-beams

it matters little
the opinions of the clock
when time unveils a linear insanity
we will be living and dying
in the beginning and the end

 

too quick the sunset

I watched the colors
of the sunset
freeze;
an abnormal chill
spread through the fiery shades
dictating a glow across
a labyrinth
of dusty windows

I felt alive,
but suspended

dangling as if from
an abstract shape
in the sky
I saw everything
stop–
all time and the
flow of headlights
balanced in the last
seconds of the day–
the finale of eternity
holding strong in my gaze

alive for a moment
and when the moment
is over and the pinkish-orange
light fades into a cold violet
I could still be
suspended
in a shadow somewhere
still holding the glow
in my gaze

 

tomorrow

This morning I just had
to stand
in the window
without coffee
or stretch
or yawn
or even a cigarette

I saw the translucent
vapor crowning the hills
to the west,
and the far away peaks
to the south
under a thin sheet
of snow

it’s winter now,
another season passed,
another season born,
and still the same old
sleepy eyes
wandering down the valley
with a million names

my home; my people;
my constant change
of heart
still lingering
in the breeze,
in the songs
of birds,
in the puddles left
on the ground
from yesterday’s rain

the old still
new, and the new
holds still
in the swaying
fabric of this
particular reality

I just had to walk
outside, barefoot,
tank-topped, torn long-johns
barely protecting
the legs
that would carry me
forward
into the rest
of forever

and sure, it was
cold, the going
was difficult,
but I
just had to laugh
for all that I
didn’t realize
I had,
I guess I’m just
thankful
to have made it
this far

Morning Glory

Morning glory breathe
your sunlight unto me
as I step between
barren rows
of grape vine
under a chilly field
of unobstructed blue

let your organic rays
blind my eyes
for a moment
and dew shimmering diamonds
soak me
to the soul

rich is the man
who wakes to crisp echoes
of frost melting over
the wild meadow
to the songs of birds
who stuck around
for the season
away from highways
and airstrips
flooding ears until
the spell has been broken

morning glory catch
the skipped beats
in the sunshine,
the breaths held
in the cold breeze,
warm these frozen bones
with your love, you have found me
again, eyes widened with thanks

wandering behind
old wooden fences
draped with moss,
through naked trees
and slippery stone,
you found me
yet again, holding your
love against corruption,
facing the day with
the boldness
of my riches

 

your body is the missing season

Yes, I admit
I miss your skin
grafting to mine

I miss the summer
between your legs
where I raised
an army of snowmen
in little lines

in winter I would throw back
the blankets
to find the next season
tattooed on your naval

I admit
that the memory stops
here

but I miss
the humid weather–
warm autumn days like this
remind me of the skin

 

her ocean

The curve of her spine
is the horizon,
like the ocean, pure,
uncharted, a shroud
hiding wonder
and quite possibly
demise for those
who seek
without understanding

I’ve never walked
this beach before.
I let the universe
wrap itself
around my ankles
first, then my knees
fell under
and I sat
in her wake,
hands full of sand,
to me those grains
made up the soft flesh

and I could feel
the breathing
through my fingers
as my palms came
to embrace the endless curve,
her body, an ocean
her heart, the vibrating
contrast between water and sky,
her eyes, the life
that transcends those layers,
and I, a part
of it all,
suspended in awe
at the vastness
in and around
our bodies

 

Sam Burks is from the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, and can be reached at srburks@gmail.com

Hearing Beyond Sound

New & collected poems by Elaine Starkman

(dvs publishing, October 2012)

This is not a book that shouts at you. Rather, it starts as a pleasant low hum, almost in the background, as the poet puts down her pen to savor a quiet moment. Gradually, as one strolls through the poems, it becomes a soft song: a song of leaving with no regret, gratitude for the present moment, wistful curiosity about what still lies ahead.

Starkman is an older poet, and this is not a book easily accessible for the young; it speaks of the careful appreciation of the latter half of life as one meanders toward its finish. There are moments of dread: in “Traveling Toward Dawn” Starkman writes that she must pick up my broken pencil/and ride a dark omnibus/until dawn. There are moments of wry acceptance, the author saying, Go right ahead–/Pain makes/the poem (“Outside, August 2006”). I am especially enamored of “A Cousin Called Simone,” in which the author encounters a seamstress with the same last name and fantasizes hopefully on how they might be related. This is especially poignant since the effects of the Holocaust have apparently left Starkman with not as much family as she would like.

But most of the poems reflect a growing understanding of life and one’s place in it. As she says in “Apricots for Isaac,” Only now do I know/what I’ve mistaken for wisdom. She speaks of weeping not for Mother Death/whom I agreed to meet/but for Sister Life/whose face I’d/forgotten (“Spirit Rock, 1999”).

Ms. Starkman has taught writing for 30 years at Diablo Valley College, UC Berkeley Extension, St. Mary’s College, and currently for Osher Life Long Learning Institute. She was the recipient of a Pen West award in 1999. Previous poetry books include a collection with 5 other poets, My Dreaming Waking Life (2009). Her short stories are represented in two Seal Press offerings: Things That Divide Us and Family: Views from the Interior, the Use of Personal Narratives in the Helping Professions. Her prose also appears in Learning to Sit in Silence: A Journal of Caretaking (1993).

If you believe in supporting poetry and indie publishing, Hearing Beyond Sound (available at Amazon) is a good book for quiet, contemplative moments.

The Secret of the Portals:

The Adventures of Bruten and Tommy: A Review

As a boy, I loved adventure books. The Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, White Fang, The Call of the Wild—all could keep me awake nights with a flashlight, hating to put the book down.  Later I loved swashbucklers, such as Scaramouche, Captain Blood, Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers, Homer’s Odyssey.  Defeating villains and monsters thrilled me. Like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, if I’d had a bb gun, I’d have heroically shot my eye out.

The Secret of the Portals, by Brant Waldeck, is a kids’ adventure book in much the same vein. Bruten and Tommy are best friends, and love to take off on their own. At the urging of Tommy’s Uncle Ron, reputedly a great explorer himself, they set off into the nearby national forest. What they find there has all the right stuff to keep kids turning those pages.

How could a young reader resist secret and magic portals that open into alien worlds?  A world of squirrels, of mini-people, of a world made entirely of stone—people, trees, everything. And in all these worlds, vast wealth is taken for granted. Emeralds, diamonds, gold galore—and ignored!  Through one portal, diamonds are even eaten—for food!

All stories need conflict, of course, and this one is no exception.  Marauding Coyote gangs, ninja chipmunks, confusing cave passages, a monster beast, huge and hostile stone warriors, a beautiful stone girl with evil intent—the right ingredients to keep a young reader’s imagination well-fed.  And rising above all these, emerging as the chief villain of all, an antagonist that no one suspected—until the end.

Is this a great book? No. The writing, the plot, the characters—all need work. The writing is not horrible, but not masterful either. It carries the plot, but deserves no notice for its quality. The plot is convoluted and seems awkward. The author tries to develop the characters, but they wind up shallowly done. Readers barely even know what they look like.

However, Bruten and Tommy are eleven year olds– sixth graders, in other words. And none of the problems mentioned above would be noticed by a sixth grader who needs to read, read, read. In its own clumsy way, this book holds together well enough to keep a sixth grader turning pages. And since I—an aging reviewer—am not the target audience here, and sixth grade kids are, no teacher should have any qualms about including it in the classroom library. For the right audience, it is well-done.

Bruce Roberts

January, 2013

Bruce Roberts, who may be reached at brobe60491@sbcglobal.net, is an accomplished sculptor and schoolteacher from Hayward, California.