Today's the day--one end, and one great big beginning. After four excellent years at Gustavus Adolphus College, I'm graduating for good. Thanks to all of my friends, mentors, and teachers; you've really made a difference in my life! For the occasion, here's a poem of mine. I read it at last night's candle-light service for the other seniors. When I wrote this three years ago, in an attempt to work a difficult french form, I had no idea how appropriate it would be today. (As a side note, an edited version of this poem is the text of a new commissioned piece for Baritone and piano by composer Libby Larson, to be premiered at the Gustavus Sesquicentenial kick-off celebration on September 30.)
Turn, Turn,
we turn and turn and turn around again
to find some light, and in the turning find
that where we are is where we've always been
we reach our arms out, blind, to find a friend
then love and lose and turn, release and bind,
we turn and turn and turn around again
and ache to find our home, a love to tend,
and finding one turn back again to pine—
but where we are is where we've always been
then breach the gap and hold the tear and mend
the burning need and then: another time
we turn and turn and turn around again
and turning hate the ties and tear and rend
for bitter freedom, then we turn the mind—
and where we are is where we've always been
we turn until we come round right, and bend
to loss and grow more wise, more lined,
still turn and turn and turn around again
still where we are is where we've always been.
Showing posts with label my poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Monday, March 22, 2010
Spring
For Everything There Is a Season
It is time!
It is time for turning,
for leaning,
time for dancing,
time for climbing trees
and for spinning
in circles,
for turning your face
to the sky.
The puddles are full
to their brims. The birds
know it is time;
they sing in the
morning to turn
turn turn
the seasons
round to some
new purpose.
Don't you know?
Or are you too buried
in the bookish wool
of winter to
hear them
turning
their songs over
on themselves
like cartwheels?
Close your books,
just now. It is
time to stop
the click-clack
of brain with
words
with
work
and put on
rubber boots
and turn
(turn!)
the time
to now.
-------------------------------------
I dropped a class this spring. Not because it was too hard, or not interesting (it was wonderful) but because I needed soul time. It was one of the best ideas I've had. I'm trying to learn the art of quitting, of giving myself permission to not do everything, to not fill my time and my space with to-dos. Since I dropped that class I've started writing again, and not just because I have more time, but also because I have the spiritual energy to make poetry possible.
It is time!
It is time for turning,
for leaning,
time for dancing,
time for climbing trees
and for spinning
in circles,
for turning your face
to the sky.
The puddles are full
to their brims. The birds
know it is time;
they sing in the
morning to turn
turn turn
the seasons
round to some
new purpose.
Don't you know?
Or are you too buried
in the bookish wool
of winter to
hear them
turning
their songs over
on themselves
like cartwheels?
Close your books,
just now. It is
time to stop
the click-clack
of brain with
words
with
work
and put on
rubber boots
and turn
(turn!)
the time
to now.
-------------------------------------
I dropped a class this spring. Not because it was too hard, or not interesting (it was wonderful) but because I needed soul time. It was one of the best ideas I've had. I'm trying to learn the art of quitting, of giving myself permission to not do everything, to not fill my time and my space with to-dos. Since I dropped that class I've started writing again, and not just because I have more time, but also because I have the spiritual energy to make poetry possible.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
March in the River Valley
It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm in the middle of a very busy semester--three intense writing classes (I dropped a fourth as a sanity measure) rehearsals for a play, choir, and added responsibilities as student assistant to the religion department. I'm having a great time though. My classes, difficult as they are, are worth it. I'm starting research on what may ultimately become my senior thesis next year, on the topic of the language we use for God in communal worship. More on that later... it deserves its own post.
In the meantime, here's some poetry. Since I dropped that class (best idea ever!) I've had the time and spiritual energy to write again. It had been a while.
We here in St. Peter have been waking up to these stunning foggy mornings--and I've been thinking lately about the people who lived here before us. This land, by the Minnesota River on the edge of the prairie, was an important spot for the Sioux. There is a museum down the road a bit on the spot where the Sioux made a treaty (later broken, of course,) with the U.S. Government. And in Mankato, by the public library, is a statue of a buffalo--the only memorial representing the biggest mass execution in U.S. history, ordered by Abraham Lincoln in response to a Native uprising. I've been thinking how these stunning foggy mornings are older than all of us, and about those who, only 200 years ago, woke up to the same wet March beauty.
March Over the River Valley
This kind of morning is not something new—
the roundness of the air an ancient shape
and trees are dripping where they always grew,
the morning wearing wetness like a cape
around her airy shoulders, like she has
since first she learned to toss the dew-drops so
and hang them ‘cross the air to quiver as
a garment for her ritual of growth.
It is breath-catching to behold her thus!
Though I know I am not the first or last,
but rather member of the holy ‘us’
that catches by surprise her morning mass
over the valley filling up with light—
I’ve woken to an ancient holy sight.
I hope you all are well. If I haven't heard from you in a while, I'd love to know how you're doing. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail or a letter.
To quote an Ojibwe blessing we use at camp--
"let all around you be peace!"
In the meantime, here's some poetry. Since I dropped that class (best idea ever!) I've had the time and spiritual energy to write again. It had been a while.
We here in St. Peter have been waking up to these stunning foggy mornings--and I've been thinking lately about the people who lived here before us. This land, by the Minnesota River on the edge of the prairie, was an important spot for the Sioux. There is a museum down the road a bit on the spot where the Sioux made a treaty (later broken, of course,) with the U.S. Government. And in Mankato, by the public library, is a statue of a buffalo--the only memorial representing the biggest mass execution in U.S. history, ordered by Abraham Lincoln in response to a Native uprising. I've been thinking how these stunning foggy mornings are older than all of us, and about those who, only 200 years ago, woke up to the same wet March beauty.
March Over the River Valley
This kind of morning is not something new—
the roundness of the air an ancient shape
and trees are dripping where they always grew,
the morning wearing wetness like a cape
around her airy shoulders, like she has
since first she learned to toss the dew-drops so
and hang them ‘cross the air to quiver as
a garment for her ritual of growth.
It is breath-catching to behold her thus!
Though I know I am not the first or last,
but rather member of the holy ‘us’
that catches by surprise her morning mass
over the valley filling up with light—
I’ve woken to an ancient holy sight.
I hope you all are well. If I haven't heard from you in a while, I'd love to know how you're doing. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail or a letter.
To quote an Ojibwe blessing we use at camp--
"let all around you be peace!"
Monday, January 11, 2010
Love and then Death
What is it like to walk on in
knee-deep snow, in the teeth
of the wind, into the dark
and hungry wilderness?
It is not like being loved, I know,
although it is a
bit like loving.
Where is the arm breath of
the bear? Why sing not the birds?
The rabbit passed before me
and I am compelled to follow.
My boots fill with snow;
I take them off and
lay down. The sky is
soft. I have no fear.
Death is only the smallest thing.
--------------------------------------------------------
I love winter. well, I love all seasons. Winter is my chance to be slow and reflective, to be introverted, even to be sad--which I'm discovering is a very important part of being me. Winter is good for sitting alone inside and reading a book, or for walking alone outside and letting the world be what it is. True, the temperatures--especially when you live on top of a hill--can be a bit prohibitive, but (as my good friend Garrison Keillor would say) that builds character. It gives us something to talk about. I wouldn't want to live in Florida anyways, where you can always walk outside without your eyelashes freezing. I'd get bored.
knee-deep snow, in the teeth
of the wind, into the dark
and hungry wilderness?
It is not like being loved, I know,
although it is a
bit like loving.
Where is the arm breath of
the bear? Why sing not the birds?
The rabbit passed before me
and I am compelled to follow.
My boots fill with snow;
I take them off and
lay down. The sky is
soft. I have no fear.
Death is only the smallest thing.
--------------------------------------------------------
I love winter. well, I love all seasons. Winter is my chance to be slow and reflective, to be introverted, even to be sad--which I'm discovering is a very important part of being me. Winter is good for sitting alone inside and reading a book, or for walking alone outside and letting the world be what it is. True, the temperatures--especially when you live on top of a hill--can be a bit prohibitive, but (as my good friend Garrison Keillor would say) that builds character. It gives us something to talk about. I wouldn't want to live in Florida anyways, where you can always walk outside without your eyelashes freezing. I'd get bored.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Pilgrims
We're back in Bangalore now after a month on the road. We've had two units: Environment and Livelihood and Religion and Culture. If you're following along on a map, we've been to Orissa (Koraput district), Hyderabad, Andrha Pradesh (Zahirabad district), Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi.
Varanasi (also called Banaras) is one of the oldest living cities anywhere. It's situated on the Ganges and is probably the holiest site in Hinduism. Some people go to Varanasi when they know that death is near, hoping that it will speed their way to enlightenment. The river is lined all day with funeral pyres, pilgrims bathing in the holy water, and the poor washing clothes. When we were there on a sunrise boat-ride, the river was covered in a flock of migratory white birds. Like everything in India, this place is a paradox--both beautiful and horrifying.
Over the course of our week in Banaras, we visited about five Buddhist temples, two hindu temples, and a Catholic cathedral. We met with a Buddhist monk, a Hindu monk, a Jain scholar, and a Catholic sister and priest. We heard the bells in the temple of Durga, stood under an offshoot of the tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment, planted where he gave his first sermon, and celebrated an intimate mass for the first Sunday in advent. We bought some sweet t-shirts. We learned a lot of philosophy. We watched many, many episodes of "The Office" on someone's laptop.
I wrote the following poem after seeing the Ganges at sunrise. It incorporates (I realized after I wrote it) elements from almost every philosophy or religion we learned about this week.
Pilgrims
The birds, they say, are migratory.
White handfuls of wing and flight that
fling themselves, baptized,
off the water and against the sun
as it rises like blood to the brain.
They have nothing to lose
in such an action.
They are pilgrims like the rest of us.
They come to the holy water
to drink and to eat, to escape
the cold, to churn their muscles
so that they rise, again and again,
from a watery grave.
They are nothing but bellyfulls of
fish, and feathers pasted on cardboard.
They are caused, created by no one
but themselves and by my eyes.
The birds, they say, are migratory.
We are all pilgrims to the river,
and migrants to the world.
We are traveling in skin that
is not our own. We are clay
squeezed by no one's hand.
Our rudimentary minds,
handfuls of muscle,
see birds and river and
self with boundaries
drawn in chalk.
The water
wipes them away, like sin.
Varanasi (also called Banaras) is one of the oldest living cities anywhere. It's situated on the Ganges and is probably the holiest site in Hinduism. Some people go to Varanasi when they know that death is near, hoping that it will speed their way to enlightenment. The river is lined all day with funeral pyres, pilgrims bathing in the holy water, and the poor washing clothes. When we were there on a sunrise boat-ride, the river was covered in a flock of migratory white birds. Like everything in India, this place is a paradox--both beautiful and horrifying.
Over the course of our week in Banaras, we visited about five Buddhist temples, two hindu temples, and a Catholic cathedral. We met with a Buddhist monk, a Hindu monk, a Jain scholar, and a Catholic sister and priest. We heard the bells in the temple of Durga, stood under an offshoot of the tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment, planted where he gave his first sermon, and celebrated an intimate mass for the first Sunday in advent. We bought some sweet t-shirts. We learned a lot of philosophy. We watched many, many episodes of "The Office" on someone's laptop.
I wrote the following poem after seeing the Ganges at sunrise. It incorporates (I realized after I wrote it) elements from almost every philosophy or religion we learned about this week.
Pilgrims
The birds, they say, are migratory.
White handfuls of wing and flight that
fling themselves, baptized,
off the water and against the sun
as it rises like blood to the brain.
They have nothing to lose
in such an action.
They are pilgrims like the rest of us.
They come to the holy water
to drink and to eat, to escape
the cold, to churn their muscles
so that they rise, again and again,
from a watery grave.
They are nothing but bellyfulls of
fish, and feathers pasted on cardboard.
They are caused, created by no one
but themselves and by my eyes.
The birds, they say, are migratory.
We are all pilgrims to the river,
and migrants to the world.
We are traveling in skin that
is not our own. We are clay
squeezed by no one's hand.
Our rudimentary minds,
handfuls of muscle,
see birds and river and
self with boundaries
drawn in chalk.
The water
wipes them away, like sin.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Nine Months of Rain
This week our group was split into two halves for field visits to different parts of southern India to learn more about 'Globalization and the Ethics of Development', which is the theme of our second unit. I'm representing the half of our group that went to the coastal state of Kerala. We were in it's poorest region, Wyanad, which is situated in the Western Ghat mountains. The week was amazing-- the region is beautiful (green mountains, incredible birds... you get the idea) and we had some awesome experiences getting different perspectives on issues like health, education, and agriculture. We asked the question “What is development? Who does it, for whom, and at what cost?” and found a plethora of interesting new ideas, both about the Indian context and our own.
I (creative soul and hopeless romantic that I am) wrote a poem one early morning, looking out over a hill in Wyanad, listening to the birds and reflecting on our experience. I hope it gives you some idea of what our week was like.
Nine Months of Rain
The language here falls like
water over rocks
skipping and rolling over itself,
a stream from the green mountains.
Words bubble like a spring from
the mouths of people as old as
earth to say 'yes, your gods with
human shape are selfish, so, they
steal the earth they rape the forest.”
coming from mouths that now take rice, take
sugar with their tea when it used
to be wild honey, and now they live
in exile and impotence while the
ancient knowledge leaks away.
They speak in words like bitter
water tainted with poison,
scarce despite nine months of
rain because of the greed of bananas
and the big men who buy them.
And even the neighbors, each with too-too
small land who plant their crops together--
even they sell their coffee their
pepper their tea by prices
decided in New York.
But again the air is full of sounds:
it's birds with long tails, it's birds
who sing like fountains, it's shy-daughters
singing old love-folk-songs after dinner,
and then the drums, and dancing--
wildly! Around and around to music
like water that doesn't stop and
doesn't stop until we can hardly-hardly
breath. It is like this, too, when we
stand on top of a mountain and see:
rice-paddies like patchwork,
mountains behind the mist, forests unrolling
like carpet, and water that glints in the sun.
and here any words that bubble up are whisked
away by the wind, so we are speechless.
And speechless too when we know that
water-that-glints is water-that-rises:
a dam, or the ghost of one,
where water had risen and risen like words,
like a scream so that homes and lives were drowned
in a word from some big man and
none of their words could stop it.
No. the water still rises and rises,
hungry, and when it rains they hide
their children, or the rising water
will be their end.
And now it's a foreign mouth with
words rising and rising like water
to say there is this place where moss
grows like velvet,
and birds sing like fountains,
where there is water;
in streams-resevoirs-floods-rains-wells
or conspicuous by its poison or its absence
or as it is tumbles,
joyous-sad-ancient-rising,
from all of our mouths together.
I (creative soul and hopeless romantic that I am) wrote a poem one early morning, looking out over a hill in Wyanad, listening to the birds and reflecting on our experience. I hope it gives you some idea of what our week was like.
Nine Months of Rain
The language here falls like
water over rocks
skipping and rolling over itself,
a stream from the green mountains.
Words bubble like a spring from
the mouths of people as old as
earth to say 'yes, your gods with
human shape are selfish, so, they
steal the earth they rape the forest.”
coming from mouths that now take rice, take
sugar with their tea when it used
to be wild honey, and now they live
in exile and impotence while the
ancient knowledge leaks away.
They speak in words like bitter
water tainted with poison,
scarce despite nine months of
rain because of the greed of bananas
and the big men who buy them.
And even the neighbors, each with too-too
small land who plant their crops together--
even they sell their coffee their
pepper their tea by prices
decided in New York.
But again the air is full of sounds:
it's birds with long tails, it's birds
who sing like fountains, it's shy-daughters
singing old love-folk-songs after dinner,
and then the drums, and dancing--
wildly! Around and around to music
like water that doesn't stop and
doesn't stop until we can hardly-hardly
breath. It is like this, too, when we
stand on top of a mountain and see:
rice-paddies like patchwork,
mountains behind the mist, forests unrolling
like carpet, and water that glints in the sun.
and here any words that bubble up are whisked
away by the wind, so we are speechless.
And speechless too when we know that
water-that-glints is water-that-rises:
a dam, or the ghost of one,
where water had risen and risen like words,
like a scream so that homes and lives were drowned
in a word from some big man and
none of their words could stop it.
No. the water still rises and rises,
hungry, and when it rains they hide
their children, or the rising water
will be their end.
And now it's a foreign mouth with
words rising and rising like water
to say there is this place where moss
grows like velvet,
and birds sing like fountains,
where there is water;
in streams-resevoirs-floods-rains-wells
or conspicuous by its poison or its absence
or as it is tumbles,
joyous-sad-ancient-rising,
from all of our mouths together.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Living
It is dark still,
as dark as cities get,
when the sounds of metal-
on-metal, the breakfast smells,
the strange music, the
musical words begin. The
rushing-by of traffic
and lives-lived from other
people's windows, and
it is all in
my ear my nose like
India is digging itself a
home in my eyes.
(here is the ancient world
being born as the sun rises,
or as we turn to face it. Across
the globe it has already set.)
Already it is living on my
tongue, behind my teeth,
it is living in my stomach.
Here is India settling too
on my skin. I try
not to brush it off, though
it is strange to me--
gold dust, spicy smell
and dogs in the street.
And here are the people twisted
like trees, here the children
who tug my sleeve, here a bright woman,
heavy with unborn birth, balanced
on the roof, pouring cement -- and
here I strike the heart of it,
this leathery-old place that cries
as it is born, a new thing in an
old skin (or is it the other way?)
Here are the unhappy rich and
the smiling poor, who are,
after all, still alive despite
the failing monsoon, and the rain,
when it comes, comes through the roof.
In Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, in Hindi,
Malyalam, in thick-tongued english they
tell me we are citizens of a thing called
living.
It is all we know how to do.
And then across the skyline--
churchtemplemosque
and the temples, too, of
glittering commerce
where all night the phones
ring off their hooks--
the siren-call to modern
prayer. And the young man
who answers the phone
“HellomynameisBill
How Can I Help You”
tells me that India is moving
up
in the world.
“becoming a part of the Global
market, you know, a so-big power!”
so that I, a citizen of said Globe,
can call mynameisBill to fix my
computer so that I can write this
poem
about being in India,
where my blue eyes make me
strange, where I do not know the
names of various fruits where my
eyes ears tongue bowels say
you do not
belong
here.
But I, too, am a citizen of living.
in the end,
it is all that I (we?) know how to do.
as dark as cities get,
when the sounds of metal-
on-metal, the breakfast smells,
the strange music, the
musical words begin. The
rushing-by of traffic
and lives-lived from other
people's windows, and
it is all in
my ear my nose like
India is digging itself a
home in my eyes.
(here is the ancient world
being born as the sun rises,
or as we turn to face it. Across
the globe it has already set.)
Already it is living on my
tongue, behind my teeth,
it is living in my stomach.
Here is India settling too
on my skin. I try
not to brush it off, though
it is strange to me--
gold dust, spicy smell
and dogs in the street.
And here are the people twisted
like trees, here the children
who tug my sleeve, here a bright woman,
heavy with unborn birth, balanced
on the roof, pouring cement -- and
here I strike the heart of it,
this leathery-old place that cries
as it is born, a new thing in an
old skin (or is it the other way?)
Here are the unhappy rich and
the smiling poor, who are,
after all, still alive despite
the failing monsoon, and the rain,
when it comes, comes through the roof.
In Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, in Hindi,
Malyalam, in thick-tongued english they
tell me we are citizens of a thing called
living.
It is all we know how to do.
And then across the skyline--
churchtemplemosque
and the temples, too, of
glittering commerce
where all night the phones
ring off their hooks--
the siren-call to modern
prayer. And the young man
who answers the phone
“HellomynameisBill
How Can I Help You”
tells me that India is moving
up
in the world.
“becoming a part of the Global
market, you know, a so-big power!”
so that I, a citizen of said Globe,
can call mynameisBill to fix my
computer so that I can write this
poem
about being in India,
where my blue eyes make me
strange, where I do not know the
names of various fruits where my
eyes ears tongue bowels say
you do not
belong
here.
But I, too, am a citizen of living.
in the end,
it is all that I (we?) know how to do.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The World is Round
When I place my hands
on the ground, side-by-side
(here, like so)
and if I sit very quietly
and hush all the music in
my head I begin to feel
the earth in its bulk.
Below this grass is soil.
below that rock, and water,
and magma, tectonic plates,
a giant, shifting world moving
in its own idea of forever.
And below that is china,
or India where there are people
walking and loving and touching
the ground with two hands,
like-so.
And all of us--the
spider crawling on my leg,
the jack pine and its shy seeds,
the Chinese lovers and me
are turning constantly
away from the light and then
towards it, like a dance.
like so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm leaving for India on Saturday. Wow.
on the ground, side-by-side
(here, like so)
and if I sit very quietly
and hush all the music in
my head I begin to feel
the earth in its bulk.
Below this grass is soil.
below that rock, and water,
and magma, tectonic plates,
a giant, shifting world moving
in its own idea of forever.
And below that is china,
or India where there are people
walking and loving and touching
the ground with two hands,
like-so.
And all of us--the
spider crawling on my leg,
the jack pine and its shy seeds,
the Chinese lovers and me
are turning constantly
away from the light and then
towards it, like a dance.
like so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm leaving for India on Saturday. Wow.
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