Ebola: A Poem

No Stranger to Anyone

 My latest:

 Ebola

Spawned of muddy puddles and ditches

in the shady green gloom and heat of

a savage, peace-starved chunk of continent,

a thin jungle meander that switches anon to

the Mongala and miles ahead, worlds away,

arced steamy Congo, king of rivers.

Another place, another time, fates might

have been more kind. Let you be a candy

bar, well-known snack brand or healthy nut,

or designate some precious gem unearthed

near your bank, glistening pink in palest light.

You might have been a princess’s name or

whole line of royalty: Ebola IV, Castle Builder,

All-Conquering Spear. Or cloak with

glory some natural splendor: Ebolian sunsets

touching the fronds and creepers with fire,

postcards in the gritty shops of Kinshasa.

But here in this place Cain’s curse smears your winding

coils with rancid ordure, puke, and pain. And

so suffuses your soul with venom the Mantra 

of our Age is all you know: 

Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill

 

Up, up, up . . .

Dog's Death

This poem by John Updike always gets me right in the heart.

Dog's Death
 

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.

Hospice

Hospice

by Robin Becker

I wanted to believe in it, the word
softer than hospital but still not home—

like any other frame house on the street,
it had a lawn, a door, a bell—

inside, our friend lay, a view
of the garden from her room but no lift

to raise her from the bed. A sword,
the sun plunged across the cotton blankets.

I wanted dying to be Mediterranean,
curated, a villa, like the Greek sanatoria

where the ancients cared for their sick
on airy porticos and verandas

with stone paths that led to libraries.
A nurse entered her room and closed the door.

For the alleviation of pain, I praise
Morpheus, god of dreams, unlocking

the medicine drawer with a simple key,
narcotic placed beneath the tongue.

In the hall, the volunteer offered us coffee.
How could I think the Mozart in G major

we played to distract her could distract her?
Or marble sculpture in the atrium? 
 
"Hospice" by Robin Becker from Tiger Heron.

What's the poem saying to you? The chastened mood, the language so supple and simple, the mood as quiet as death itself. For me, somehow, poetry gets to the truth of the human experience, and the bedrock truth of human experience is that we must deal with death. It surrounds us, haunts us, defines us.

Tosca

A poem today about family, about routine, about the everyday pain of being a husband, a wife, a child. The time has faded from when this poem is set, but the humans in it are as modern as tomorrow. Good stuff.

Tosca

by George Bilgere

                                                     

My sister held on to our old turntable

and all the old records we listened to

through the long Italian opera

of our childhood. So tonight

we sit in the living room with some wine

and Puccini, as the needle scratches

the black door of the past, the air comes to life

with that lovely, cornball melodrama,

and our father is sitting in his chair,

ice cubes clinking in his scotch,

and our mother is in the kitchen

trying to be quiet, trying not to disturb

Maria Callas as she explains

to Tito Gobbi that she has lived for art

and she has lived for love, but it's hard

to fry pork chops and dice an onion

without making a certain amount of noise,

and pretty soon my father is shouting at her,

he's trying to listen to the music

for God's sake, could she for once

show a little respect,

and our mother says nothing,

it's just the same old argument

between ghosts, after all—the music

won't let them sleep—

though it has my sister in tears,

and even Tosca has begun to weep.

Prayer

When I first started getting serious about poetry (again), it was, as I recall, about 2000. Fully 14 years ago now, which I can hardly believe. Anyway, I and a couple of friends would every three weeks or so go to lunch, and each of us would share a poem we had found that particularly touched us or spoke to us. It was a beautiful spring day in Tampa and, as I recall, we had lunch outside some place. The poet I chose that day was Marie Howe, and the poem--I could probably find it if I looked--was about her taking care of her dying brother. I later wrote a poem about this experience we all had of her. All of which is just a long introduction to this latest poem of hers that I encountered a few months ago, saved, and then just recently rediscovered. She has perfectly described my own prayer life, which, I think, is probably not that much different than a lot of people I know whose brains are always going at 100 miles an hour. Poetry says it so much better.

Prayer

                                       

by Marie Howe

                                           

                                     

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important

calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.

Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside

already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.

Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints

and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning

to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

Defining Define

Here's my latest:

Defining Define

What’s in a name? the Bard once queried,

getting to the heart of the problem, actually.

It’s still a rose if we call it a wagon or weed.

That’s what he meant, and true enough.

But what’s a rose to a bumble bee or Eskimo,

a blushing Valentine or florist in the corner shop?

Or toddler or poet? The Bard didn’t address

these mysteries, content, one supposes,

with first level wonderment, a fair-sized inland sea.

He skirted the larger ocean that laps the shores

of Saggitarius. Who says what’s a rose? Merriam-

Webster? Or his counterparts in Paris, Milan, or

Pago Pago? Or the aging botanist, once an

American beauty, who’s spent her seventy-six years

lost in the Carolinae section of subspecies Rosa?

Perhaps it’s King Kim Jong–un who can say, since

he seems to know everything. Or God, who does

know everything, but doesn’t share.

Who says?

Who knows?

Your rose is not my rose nor hers nor his nor its.

It’s a one-of-a-kind that can’t be cataloged, cultivated,

or grown for showing. And next instant, it’s another altogether, 

a transient blip winking out over a stew

of a billion genomes and tons of stardust. Yet real

as the thorn that pricks blood from the careless.

Questionnaire

Poetry knows how to say it. And Wendell Berry is gentle.

Questionnaire                   

        by Wendell Berry

                                                                                                 

How much poison are you willing

to eat for the success of the free

market and global trade? Please

name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much

evil are you willing to do?

Fill in the following blanks

with the names of your favorite

evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared

to make for culture and civilization?

Please list the monuments, shrines,

and works of art you would

most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and

the flag, how much of our beloved

land are you willing to desecrate?

List in the following spaces

the mountains, rivers, towns, farms

you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,

the energy sources, the kinds of security;

for which you would kill a child.

Name, please, the children whom

you would be willing to kill.

One of the Saddest Poems I've Ever Read

Somehow it seems inappropriate to begin a brand new year like this, but I was so moved by this poem, I cannot help it. And in a way, it does serve as a pertinent New Year's Day reflection. My mom will turn 93 on the last day of this month.

Parents 

by William Meredith

                                                

For Vanessa Meredith and Samuel Wolf Gezari

What it must be like to be an angel

or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,

they are there, lying about darkness.

They dandle us once too often,

these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors

are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better

smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on

loving us, we go on loving them.

The effrontery, barely imaginable,

of having caused us. And of how.

Their lives: surely

we can do better than that.

This goes on for a long time. Everything

they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,

taking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea

or wherever they got us from,

taking the last link

of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,

to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.

Much Madness . . .

Sorry to lay a poem on you for two days in a row, but this one is by a far superior poet. I had never before encountered this poem by the incomparable Emily until today. And I was really thunderclapped by it. I can remember thinking throughout my life: what if all the crazy people are really the ones who are sane? What would that mean?

435 Much Madness is divinest Sense   by Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense —
To a discerning Eye —
Much Sense — the starkest Madness —
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail —
Assent — and you are sane —
Demur — you're straightway dangerous —
And handled with a Chain —

What Is This Weight?

My most recent poem.

What Is This Weight?

Not like being on the bottom of a pile

of sweaty guys at the goal line. Or carrying

a stout box on your back. More annoyance,

but slight, a pressure oozing the oil

out of an olive, slowly, a drop at a time.

What’s this smell, lying like a light fog

over the fields at dawn? A whiff of rot

perfumed in subtle shades of rustic rust,

something swirled from a heap of tarnished

detritus, half shiny in the dampness.

And this disquieting chill snaking

into every crevice, every nook, every bone,

a silent shiver that bores like the point

of a pick between molars that glisten white

and strong, marred only by old crowns?

View Point

The form of this poem is called a villanelle, and if I recollect rightly, it's an old--as in several hundred years old--French form. 19 lines are required, as you will notice, a strictly circumscribed rhyme scheme. I don't particularly like this form of poetry because I think it's pretty hard to get one right, that is, one that doesn't sound forced, that comes across as natural. And that's not to mention how damned hard they are to write.

So here's my latest villanelle, done on assignment from my little three-person poetry group.

View Point

From way out there I am barely a mote

But stand a universe in the eye of a gnat

And how I see is a matter of rote

That we are the world is our usual note

Few would doubt or question that

But from way out there we’re barely a mote

We don self-regard like a comfy coat

In truth it’s ragged, thin, basically flat

And how we see is a matter of rote

But our vision’s cramped, and it’s no joke

Hiding the plain and simple fact

From way out there we’re barely a mote

We’d rather grasp truths that quietly float

Before our eyes like the Cheshire cat

And how we see them is a matter of rote

The alternative view of self-serving bloat

Renders us miniscule, and that is that

From way out there we’re barely a mote

But I stand a universe in the eye of a gnat.