The current that carries us

 

The sheer impact

of what we have done

cannot be undone.

 

We cannot take it apart.

We can bend it, maybe,

but not break it.

 

We can fix a piece,

or try to fix a part

that we can reach.

 

But separately,

and together,

we will travel with it

wherever it flows.

 

We cannot get out.

Nor off. There are no stops

ahead.

 

But this ebb and flow,

this sometimes power,

and sometimes no,

these rich and transient joys,

these assaults and frequent terrors,

travel with us.

 

We own it all.

Waiting for Isabel

Waiting for Izzy to wake,

my baby grand,

my Izzy Bizzy Bell.

I should head to Chicago,

move on to next things.

There’s stuff to do,

and I, my reputation

as dithering guy who never,

never gets to the end,

notwithstanding,

am still the only guy to get it done.

 

But I’m waiting for Isabel to wake—

me, Isabel’s Jeff,

here,

waiting for Isabel,

who, just before she slept,

spent a long, full, bunch

of uncountable minutes

in loud, overwrought,

and well-acted screaming;

in epic distress,

mommy-mommying her way

between long, sobbing, hiccups,

until she decided that mommy-mommying

wasn’t working,

and switched to daddy-daddying,

which also did not work,

falling finally asleep, exhausted,

when Mommy did show herself.

 

That’s the person,

Isabell Lozen,

my grand baby,

for whose next waking moment

I wait.

 

Because love,

I guess.

And knowing that

what I might otherwise

do is no longer the point. 

The Edge of Silence

The edge of silence

haunts me,

listening here,

where there is still

song and rhythm

and echoes and noise,

sounding and resounding.

 

It would do

no good

to put my ear

to the edge of silence.

There would be no news,

no hints, no vibes, no clues,

coming here from there,

from beyond the edge,

from no place.

 

I cannot speak

across the edge,

but neither have I crossed to there,

and I still have this voice.

And so much left to say

about who I loved

and how I loved

and what I did decent

and did well and what I did

that did not help

and what I should have left undone.

 

But all songs have accent points,

pianissimo, harmony, crescendo,

and debatable notes,

and so shall mine.

The best that I have done

was arguably the work of others

with whom I played, and loved,

and labored, and chased after

gossamer-winged fancies.

 

Can you hear

the smile in my voice,

when I say, here,

at the edge of silence,

that we were sometimes great

together,

and sometimes awed

at what we discovered

in and out of each other.

To have simply lived as we have,

and as we do,

and as we went and go,

was and is, perhaps,

too careless or, maybe,

too careful, but was and is

courage all the while.

 

And so,

I am moved here

at the edge of silence

to say that I am certain

that you will step forward

and forward again,

and be just as brave

as you can be,

and full of song,

and full of look and listen,

and full of touch and love,

and building dreams

that will last and last

as long as you are willing.

 

All of you.

My dear ones, my babies,

my comrades, my heroes.

Hidden away from the whole

The voice,

her voice, repeating,

I have to hang up.

We’re about to take off.

They want me to hang up.

We’ll talk tomorrow.

Okay?

 

I imagined she was speaking

to her mother that way,

or to the parts of her mother

dementia has left untouched for now,

not the parts

that have been buried away

from the whole of the world.

 

But another voice,

speaking more forcefully,

cited the pilot, saying,

you must stop now

and end your call,

and said it again,

end your call.

 

The oil and water chorus

continued, and the voice

said goodbye before,

one voice to another,

explaining,

that was my brother.

He’s in prison.

 

And my next thought was

that must be worse than dementia.

 

March 1: From Caracol to La Ronda Parakata

In an epoch of nightmares,

the walk to the lake,

transformed by mood and by moment,

planned as a journey with Jetta,

to proceed from Caracol

to La Ronda Parakata,

from Black Lives Matter,

the name and the point

of resistance and vision,

this time around,

to the fresh flow

of Ukrainian blood,

and the tears for democracies,

forever imperfect.

 

The redwing blackbirds are back

and begun to build their numbers,

though not yet reached

the this-is-ours claim

that will soon fully invest

blackbird central

in advance warning

of dive-bombing birds

headed this way.

 

On the way, the gray planter totems—

massive, ornamental contraptions,

bizarrely conceived as artful décor

for the concrete expanses

of breakwaters and piers—

have somehow been heaved,

grinding and fractured,

by the great lake in winter.

The pulverized fragments lay on the path,

like bits of Kyiv littering the world.

 

The caracol, Spanish for snail,

an escalera de caracol,

a spiral staircase pressed flat,

its broad painted surface,

splashed with color of cultures

and feelings gathered on borders

of habits badly in need of fresh vigor.

 

The phoenix of hope

for a future at risk,

depends largely on those

who can juggle their fear

and plan radical ways

for healing all wounds.

 

A barge makes its way

through ice jamming boat slips.

The watermen whisper to water

with words not meant for my ears,

but I do hear their murmurs

and do have the tools

to shape meanings that drive me

to where I and all this

are harnessed to go.

 

In the tufted tall grass

of the cold weather prairie

Jetta digs from the ice

the shredded remains

left behind by a hawk,

and swallows rotted morsels

before just a mile further on,

vomiting a bit back

to the field to share

with whomever will next eat

off this ground.

 

Over the rise

in the trail ahead

comes the form of La Ronda 

where the butterflies pray

to slow our ill-fated rush.

The view this day is still water,

and the weather

waits to be called

to deliver trouble in surges

resembling the way

the dark ages looked

to those who could see

the future unfolding.

 

And justice continues denied.

And the blood keeps on spilling.

And pooling and drying and staining the world.

Isabel Increscent

Isabel,

hey, Isabel,

I am Jeff.

 

Been that way

for the longest time,

but now,

of a sudden,

I am Isabel’s Jeff.

 

Not brand new, at all,

but remade, somehow,

by your becoming,

in a similar,

but less suddenly sudden

appearance in the doorway

of a future that I

will never see,

but into which I will be carried,

in my bits and in my pieces,

in the swirling current

that is you flowing forward.

 

Think now of all the other

everybodys and everythings

lifted and carried

in the flood of you,

in the cresting wave of you,

in the torrent of you,

cutting a new channel.

 

I am Isabel’s Jeff

and you, Isabel,

will carry on without me,

neatly deposited in your wake,

my good-bye smile at you flowing forward,

the last and best of me.

 

You are Isabel

and I am Isabel’s Jeff,

a man of your invention,

who knew you,

and loved you.

Memory ... and longing

The reality

of what once was

competes

with what now is

at least

in terms of how memory

can be experienced

by those

who long for that

with great intensity.

Longing is not

a backwards thing

but is sometimes

a way back.

Newer words, newer dreams

A covid poem

Waking the days

of the months

lining our lives,

counting rhythms

of lungs and of heart,

suddenly glimpsing

the count gone awry,

the code gone astray,

the message amuck.

 

In the beginning of all this

Perry had died,

and his dying

meant changes

to the meaning of living

and the practice of mourning

in part of this world.

I attributed hot feelings

to you, I had said,

before one of us

suddenly flamed and unloosed

from the margins

that were formerly home

and always before 

to where we returned.

 

But it was me, alone,

walking face first

into challenging sleet wind,

overhearing the words

of lovers making light

for folks whom they love.

Some stranger above

throwing stones in our way,

he observed in comic lament,

adding a theatrical shrug,

and she laughed,

a sweet sound

fading to echoes

overtaken by oracular

proclamations

of the stinging wild wind,

sardonically offering

to set us all free

in a world of neglect

that mocks

the speakers of dreams,

and puts us to work

pounding on rocks.

 

Yes, confronting the winds

that do not forgive

requires moving ahead,

because going can get

to the peace we will build

with new song

and new dance.

 

Accepting the threats

that plague all the paths

revealed ahead,

I take the longish stride

and stride again,

and stride again,

toward the route

on which peace

is path and peace

is way

and not the goal I cannot reach.

 

***

If we were still

talk to ear to lips to talk,

then you would share,

maps and mantras—

the ones that moved you so far—

but you, arrived so long ago,

are gone away again,

leaving only remnants

and clues to joint discoveries

about the pain

that spots all paths,

and all the peace

that grows from pain

and grows from prayer

and grows from

never giving in.

 

So, yes, a reverent thanks

before a sweet whisper rises

above the bellowing wind

asking, in the brief and quiet,

on which iteration

of all our plans

are we working now?

And what in between

might we find there?

Inventing the many answers 

we will need

falls to each of us.

 

The outcome

may be better,

but maybe not,

said still another voice,

escaping the wind into which

we have been walking

all this while.

The voice came not

to tell a joke,

not to leave a laugh

or two behind, it said,

confidentially adding,

up to you, entirely,

to rise again

or fall at last

when and as you will.

 

And in that brief

and in that quiet

I did briefly, barely cry

for all the everyones

counting all the losses,

and all the everyones

not bothering to count,

and all the losses

left to lose.

And in that grief

and in that quiet,

it was resolved

to spread the news

of songs and glories

anyway,

and when the store of all

is lost and empty,

and entropy threatens

a joyless reign,

it remains forever resolved

to reach beyond

the end of now.

 

***

Courage is not

the word to use to say

that you did what you had

no choice about the doing.

And though I do not say

or write what that word

might be, it spells itself

obstinance-rebellion-

distraction-trembling-

grace-accidental-

if-at-all.

 

But whatever that loaded word

or words may be,

it takes great gangs

of fevered poets

grinding at the front

and grinding at the rear,

reloading words

to fire anew,

to set our hearts

our lungs our upraised fists

to rhythm

roaring fast and fresh.

 

So, summon all poets

with shouting and welcome.

Call them to council.

Write urgent letters

to gather the pack,

speaking the sharps

and speaking the blunts,

singing the streets,

soaring the skies,

scratching for pennies,

escaping the jails,

emphatically signifying

here on the way,

sketching and spelling

time after time,

always forever,

upright and hopeful,

here at the ready.

 

The hall of poets full,

the graveyard fuller still,

we linger to read the stone

marking William A. Thigpen Jr.

born 1948

died Detroit streets 1971,

upright and ready

and full of unspent hope.

Further along,

a restorative visit

to write-it-well John,

urging the poets

to wing on the breath,

to roll off the tongue

to land here,

in the ear.

 

So, yeah, the breaktime

namechecking done,

there is sometimes

giving of ground

that belongs to the earth,

sometimes ground

firming up

under feet

launching for stars,

claiming, reclaiming, declaiming

the dreams of forever

and all the beloved.

 

Send me only replies

conceding no ground,

but affirming the prayer

that floats in the air

and remains to be written.

Hear every voice,

every sobbing and wild,

every cringing and proud,

every full in the mouth,

rich on the tongue,

roaring and grieving,

weaving and soaring,

pleading and cursing,

voice after voice

landing here in the ear.

Count all the lives

we ought to have loved;

make infinitely more

of the lives

we have wasted.

Open doorways

for leaders 

grown tired of waiting;

expect and applaud

new words,

and new dreams,

ahead of the launch

of the last of our poems

shouting blessings and praises

to you, to sky,

and beyond.

A Universe Is Gone

 I originally posted this poem, in July 2009 on my blog, In and Out with Jeff. At the time, I hadn’t yet set up Outdoor Poetry Season, my poetry blog. But a recent traffic report on In and Out shared the news that “A Universe Is Gone” had been visited by a viewer. I couldn’t remember what the poem was about, so I became its second viewer over some long, lonely, unseen, unread, unheard isolation.

 

It became immediately obvious after visiting the poem that I had not invested any energy in explaining why I had chosen “A Universe Is Gone” as the title. But the “why” of that choice is part of the message of the poem.

 

A Palestinian boy is caught in a crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian guerillas. He dies, the poem says. If it had pursued that fact further, the poem might have added, more crudely, his life is snuffed out. He is collateral damage.

 

And his father, Abu? He has lost everything. He holds his son’s limp body, but everything the boy was is gone. Every version of the older boy, the young man, the father, the old grey head that he might have become is also gone.

 

Two thousand years ago, during the heyday of rabbinical Judaism, some rabbi from yeshiva nestled in the hills around Jerusalem, interpreted a biblical passage to mean, in plain English (or plain Aramaic, anyhow) that whoever saved the life of an individual saved an entire universe. 

 

How’s that for an ethical principle? It means that to the Jews of the Rabbinical period the range of what any given person might achieve during a lifetime was pretty near infinite.

 

And so, when a Palestinian child is gunned down…

 

 

A Universe Is Gone

 

Remember the Palestinian child

caught in a crossfire, in a lethality of rage?

Crouching behind his father?

Crying with desperate faith

 

in his abu, his shield?

Moments later, the caption said,

the boy was dead,

his father forlorn

 

with wounds that will never heal.

Each day dawn comes with new grief.

Neither the garrison state

nor the tender virgins console Abu.

Selfie Portrait Recently

This is the Jeff

I am now.

Not the Jeff I was

at thirteen,

nor the Jeff I was

at thirty.

They are the Jeff

I am in the memory

of the Jeff I am now,

but they are not

the Jeff in the picture.

The Jeff in the picture

is the Jeff I am now,

or is, at least,

the way I look

in a selfie sometimes.

Brute Strength

Naomi Shihab Nye chose to highlight this poem, Brute Strength, by Emily Skaja, in her weekly column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on August 25. Nye also noted that U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo selected Brute, Skaja's first poetry collection, to win the Walt Whitman Award for the first-time poets.

In Brute Strength, "Skaja conjures the searing history of a jagged relationship, then mixes a tonic for it: images, elegies and invocations that let the speaker reinvent her human power," Nye wrote. And that, "reinvent[ing] her human power is exactly what Skaja does here.

Silenced, reduced by her experience, denied (or robbed) of agency, Skaja blasts her way out, lifting off from the memories of who she once was, a "witch girl, unafraid of anything, flea-spangled little yard rat...girl who wouldn't let a boy hit her"--that girl resurrected in her adulthood, promising to bust out or die trying. But, really, already busted out, no longer mute, writing her own story.

Brute Strength

Soldier for a lost cause, brute, mute woman

written out of my own story, I’ve been trying

to cast a searchlight over swamp-woods & parasitic ash

back to my beginning, that girlhood—

kite-wisp clouded by gun salutes & blackbirds

tearing out from under the hickories

all those fine August mornings so temporary

so gold-ringed by heat-haze & where is that witch girl

unafraid of anything, flea-spangled little yard rat, runt

of no litter, queen, girl who wouldn’t let a boy hit her,

girl refusing to be It in tag, pulling that fox hide

heavy around her like a flag? Let me look at her.

Tell her on my honor, I will set the wedding dress on fire

when I’m good & ready or she can bury me in it.

--Emily Skaja

So, a further thought. What's with all the ampersands? Skaja has done away with every "and" that might have occurred here, and why not? Ands don't do much and ampersands look so much more muscular. Do they change the meaning &/or impact of the things they conjoin?

Let's see: There's "swamp-woods & parasitic ash," there's "gun salutes & blackbirds," there's "heat-haze & where is that witch girl," & there is also "good & ready." It's not hard to imagine Emily Skaja, finally good & ready, thinking, "I don't need no stinking' and.

And while we're at scattered postscripts, I have to say that I have a poem of my own that includes respect for witch -girls, notably "Julie Anna, you were a witch baby, wise with foreknowledge."

Here is that poem:

Love to Babies
Nathan Night Rain,

you were an infant with

apple cheeks and patience.

Julie Anna,

you were a witch baby,

wise with foreknowledge.

And Brendan Isaac,

you were king baby

with windmill arms and bicycle legs,

wailing your loud strong music.

As Isaac brought joy

to Abraham and Sarah,

with a handful of weight,

with the heat of new beginning,

with the scent of everything to come,

so have you brought

gift after gift after gift

of Nate asleep on my heart,

warm weight waxing,

innocent of his fierce protector;

of Julie at midnight recalled,

fresh weight needing nothing

but that which was freely given;

of yourself,

urgent and new;

all of you, gift after gift after gift

to a father stirred and grateful

that the elements combined as you.

Neverending Story

You know the story,

the one that ends with the hero

face down in the mud.

Or, maybe, the story that ends

at the by-no-means guaranteed discovery

of the protagonist dead on the bed,

her eyes shut tight against

light and dark,

out of range of the magic that forever

lurks and lingers in the rare and intangible air.

They are, I tell you,

the self-same story but for the details,

which I do not mean to demean.

After all, if the stories are the same

wherever they end,

and at all of their ends,

then the details

—the way the life came

and the way the life went—

twisting and turning,

falling down and getting up,

are all that really matters.

And,

we so stipulate,

the details, the twisting and the turning,

the magic before

and the magic that lingers,

the falling up and the getting down,

are the major symptoms,

the proof we can infer,

of the grinding wheel,

the great grinding wheel,

the irresistible force

constantly confronting

the human (objects) on their way,

and always in the way

of the grinding, travelling wheel

that somehow contrives

to always be rolling down

our very path, our whatever path,

to wherever we meant to be,

to where we would be,

in whole or in part,

but for the wheel that rolls

always against us,

always failing to know

that we are exactly there

where we are.

All of which means

that at the very least,

it makes no sense to blame the wheel

that has no ethics, no passion, no fun and no life.

Entirely unlike our uncelebrated selves,

with our vast potential

for ethics and passion and fun

and life before death.

So tell the stories, all,

of Jack, say, and Jill

and the great fun they had

on the twisting way uphill,

and the tumble down,

and the get back up to go back up,

where there remained more fun to be had,

or still a world to spy from the top,

until one broke a body part

or broke the spirit that gets back up 

and left the other to solo the rest of the way.

All we know is that they set out one day,

one ordinary, even familiar, day,

to work at their endless tote

and on the way they ran afoul

of warlords, maybe, or amphibians

—the rare bloodthirsty kind—

or calendars stuffed full of deadlines.

They labored, dripped sweat, danced and dodged

and laughed aloud and fled in terror.

It wasn’t much,

but it was life

and it would do.

Sometimes they shared their load

and sometimes traded it for a different load,

or passed it on and sat to rest.

One day very like the day before

and the day to come.

It isn’t much,

but it is life

and it will do.