Fort Bunker Hill Park

Up wildflower way,
weedy and rotted,
echoes of bands and cannon,
and rioting green,

nature eating her own,
caged gut-twisted sick,
Warrior John
carves a flag

and the date 9/11,
signing his name
POW-MIA where
no one will see.

Swamp Thing

There is much to forgive.
We are ornate
and gothic and damp
with sin and fertile

with loves
and with lies.
Swimming
swooning

our sorrow
our joy
kissing

onward.

Israel's existential problem and my poetry

Israel has been on the cusp of an existential problem since its creation. The Arab revolts against repressive regimes have resulted in even deeper isolation for Israel. Worse, from an Israeli point of view is the probability that Palestinians will become even more resistant to Israeli rule.

The hostility of the Arab street toward Israel makes perfect sense, but most Israelis believe that Palestinians and other Arabs hate them because they are Jews and because Islam cannot reconcile itself to the Jewish presence in the Middle East. Israel's self-deception about this makes sense only because most Arabs perceive Jews as illegitimate occupiers of Palestinian territory and nothing more. In this perception, Jews are the embodiment of more than 100 years of Western occupation and exploitation. In that the creation of the theocratic state of Israel created a mechanism for continuing this occupation and exploitation, Arabs have no reason to perceive Jews any other way.

The long-term threat to the survival of the Jewish theocratic state and of Jews in the Middle East will remain, and, with time, grow more extreme. For Jews there is only one alternative: to embrace democratic self-determination for all of Israel and Palestine. Jewish survival in the Middle East will be a tenuous thing under a true democracy, but under those circumstances the entire world would act to create security for the Jews who remain. The alternative is the end of the garrison state of Israel, the end of the Occupation and catastrophe for the Jewish people.


Always Jewish, Lately Palestinian
I am Jewish because the love of others made me so.
I am Jewish because I grew up on the south side of Chicago; there even my public school was Jewish.
I am Jewish because my grandfather was oh, so Jewish, and I felt it then and feel it now.
I am Jewish because angry Irish boys felt my Jewish nose at the end of their Catholic fist.
I am Jewish because we are commanded to remember when we were slaves in Egypt and I do.
I am Jewish because dissent is my faith and my chosen fate.
I am Jewish because in my grandmother's kitchen nothing would rise, but of everything there was plenty.
I am Jewish because the South Shore Country Club was founded by people who would not let us in.
I am Jewish because my Dad once slugged a guy at Comiskey Park who cussed a Jewish pitcher for the White Sox.
I am Jewish because the Jewish god is not diminished by my disbelief.
I am Jewish because Emma Goldman was Jewish, and so was Karl Marx and so was Groucho Marx and Jesus, too, for that matter.
I am Jewish because of the Maccabees and Masada and crusader violence and Spanish inquisitors and Cossack pogroms and the ghetto and the death camps and because I also planted trees in Israel.
I am Jewish because Jewish workers fight in labor struggles and because Jewish people resist racism and because, like all the world’s poor, poor Jews endure.
I am Jewish because being Jewish means never using violence against another except when life, itself, is directly threatened, and that principle must never be compromised.

With these declarations I begin a path to other truths:
I am Palestinian because we are all children of Abraham.
I am Palestinian because I, too, have been homeless.
I am Palestinian because we have a future together or none, at all.
I am Palestinian because Palestinian yearning is so like Jewish yearning.
I am Palestinian because I have been uplifted by the love of Palestinians.
I am Palestinian because peace in Arabic and in Hebrew bestows the same gift.
Although Sarah and Hagar are our separate birth mothers, I am Palestinian because we all live in the embrace of one mother, and will return to her.

If you summon one of us for cruel judgment, there will be no telling us apart.

November 13, 2009



Jezebel
You know when we met
I was a girl who loved
Baal for his rain and sweet water
and might love you for your youth and sweet breath.

I was the lure brought you unknowing
to Siddon where the sun skied mornings
above cedar hills, making jewels
on the crest of harbor swells.

Jezebel, chief’s daughter,
dreaming of many things,
but most often of the boy
to make my thighs quiver,

and none of the queen who later
would make my eyes run wet and salty.
You, pale desert boy, came,
hooked by my dreams,

with hair like raven’s wings
and prophet’s dreams of glory
and torturer’s dreams of pain
and a core of discontent

that you were born a shepherd.
I would have left my father’s hearth
to be your shepherdess, but for
your claim to something greater.

Our joyful dance pleased Baal, I know,
while you pretended grim shame before your god
who punished you like an angry father,
whom you yet embraced.

Were we to approach the other now,
would you wet your lips for this sweet Phoenician,
or would I be target for your rage
and angry accusations?

Do your loins remember
my dewy hills at dawn,
the little rivers of our wet fertility
dampening chest and thigh and mysteries?

Or would you pretend to a purity
that never pricked a gentile?
I am reconciled that I did not defy my father,
fight Ethbaal to love my Israelite shepherd boy.

But I tried and tried
to come to you and cried,
Eli, your Jessie has come,
when I arrived, but there was no answer.

Had you waited for me? And misunderstood
my absence? Cursed me for rejecting you,
as you curse me now for turning
from the worship of your god

who demands more than other gods?
Now, Ethbaal is king in Tyre
and I am queen in Samaria
and spread my legs for Ahab,

the Israelite king, whom you daily damn.
I am thus, Queen Jezebel,
the living bond between Israel and Phoenicia,
which you condemn,

somehow forgetting the beauty
of Eli and Jessie,
as your one god does dismiss
the beauties of the many.

Your own voice,
which once whispered
sweetness in the courtyard
of the temple of Baal and laughed

in the sight of the sky goddess, Lady Nut,
your voice thunders and threatens,
slanders innocence, proclaims
dominion for one god above all gods,

dismissing dancing and worship before many.
My Eli, sweet tormented shepherd,
it is not our gods who invent unkindness,
but ourselves. This your lord god must know,

though you shrill otherwise,
and speak of a god blind to
the pools of kindness and courage
in foreign worshippers. How like the way

you deny knowing the pool of love in which
we bathed and sung praise.
Do you remember the hart at sunrise
leaping our prostrate bodies?

I crept the shadows before that dawn
and startled when you arrived beside me.
And when you opened your robe,
I stepped inside your arms and

warm wrap of cotton while we sank
to earth, your lips sweet on mine,
your tongue a spring of wild water
plunging to my thirsty roots. We moved

slowly to the late calls of night birds,
quickening even as the owls hooted
slow caution, finishing to the sound
of hooves pounding, the hart

robust and wild above us and gone.
In the peace we found, I swear I heard
the great heart beating and felt the
throbbing pulse below,

just as it might have been
on the glorious first day.
I said the gods are smiling and you looked
at me and I said you are

smiling, too, and you said, this time, yes.
Do you remember this just as your god
of many promises remembers only
those he wishes to keep?

Do you remember only that
which serves you now, a perfect
acolyte of your god?
In your zeal you are become

a destroyer, first of earthly desire,
your youthful wish to sip the wines
of a hundred kingdoms forgotten,
your wish to sample the women

of every prince of every port
of the wide Phoenician sea, lost,
perhaps gone as though never dreamed.
These are shriven within your heart,

consumed in the desert heat
of a different passion, your
service to your one god, who
requires devotion not in me to give.

You denounce Ahab, whom you call
the willing tool
of the prostitute of Tyre.
But Ahab leads as leaders do,

has kingly duties I do not hinder,
ministers to the myriads,
who worship whomever they will,
ministers to the myriads

who toil each day and wear down
like rocks in the stream,
who suffer hardship of drought,
and locust plagues, and children born still

and children died young
and lovers claimed too soon. It is Ahab
who must guarantee them fed and succored, Ahab
who cares for the widow and

soothes the orphan, Ahab
who keeps the granaries full against famine
and decrees no favorite among the gods
of the people of Israel, among the gods


of Israelites, Ammonites, Edomites and
Moabites. And his people praise Ahab’s
forbearance, thank Ahab for kindness,
while you call Ahab sinner.

In the King’s court, I have stood for
sandalmakers from Ammom, stood for potters
from Moab, saying to the King that these, also,
are his people, saying that there should be

no special privilege for the Jews
and the King has ruled as he would
after careful listening. Ahab is no tool of
Jezebel.

But Elijah Hanavi tells the story,
Jezebel the prostitute from Phoenicia
twists Ahab’s judgment and sins against
the one god.

And who listens?
The Hebrew zealots listen, and
the hopeless, aching for legends of more and
better, listen, and those who already bear hatred,

they listen. These have never seen the sea,
or the natural beauty of Phoenicia’s hills
or the works of other men in Tyre. You
have made allies of these men whose

hard lives will change as Ahab succeeds,
but the gifts of milk and honey they are
to inherit are merely empty promises
from an intolerant god. Who will protect Israel

from Assyria? This lord, your god, has no chariots.
Ahab’s soldiers, Ammomites, Edomites,
Israelites, Moabites, these are Israel’s shield.
The soldiers of a kingdom of many customs

and many faiths, these will protect Israel,
as will Ahab, the King, whom you damn.
You have raised the Hebrews, enough
riot through Samaria and all of Israel, to kill

450 priests of Baal. And now you flee to the hills,
claiming that Jezebel sends vengeance racing after.
But it is I who remain behind.
I who calm Ahab, who

wishes to decree your death.
Seek no vengeance, Ahab, I say.
Only bring Elijah to explain this deed
in your court. But, yes, Eli, I also urged

Ahab on, saying hunt Elijah,
he must answer to the families
of the lovers of other gods.
And as I speak

I am split in pieces
I am Ahab’s queen
I am the princess who was
Eli’s love and the tears

that Jessie cried
to the sun that rose in Eli’s
face as he wandered east
spring fresh from Jezebel’s eyes.

Does Elijah triumph here?
Will the story of Jezebel and Ahab be told
according to Elijah? And what in turn
will be the fruit that grows from such stories?

But Shepherd boy, know this,
Jessie will not flee the lies and sordid tales.
I am a chief’s daughter, Queen of Israel.
What you have sown,

I will be here to reap. What you decree,
may come, but Jezebel does not flee.
I remember you once had such a will
when we loved a lifetime ago.

When a poem comes,
it comes on the crest
of a tall wave,
for which there are
two or three, sometimes
four, no more,
precise words.

If your words are
the right words,
the poem is yours
to make your own,
but if your words
are not precisely right,

the poem is gone
on the crest of the wave
it rode in on.

As Einstein and I Perceive

On my way to wherever,
I bring a pencil with
that I might
immortalize

my thoughts.
So,
here’s what
I’m thinking:

My turtle’s name
is Einstein and we do
quite well together,
but I retain all naming rights

over creation as
Einstein and I
perceive creation
to be.

The Smell of Eternity

On the heels of Irene,
recently stormed through,
comes aromatherapy for dogs.

The middle-sized black one
sniffs out the remains of life
leaking from torn branches.

At the pure small pool
formed in the hollow below
the fallen tree’s root ball

is mudbath magic and
where the sun strikes home
rises
the smell of eternity.

Get Me to God*

Now,
I’m sixty-four,
and slower,
so slow.

I can feel the shaking
on its way,
even before the lovely
orange orangutan.

It starts in the soles of my feet
planted on the good earth
and follows
my toes,

calves, thighs, every muscle,
like a good massage and
commences to shaking,
yelling

freight train epithets
and I am glad,
plain glad,
to have met such a quake.

It is, therefore,
and altogether a shame,
to have to announce the news
that said earthquake

happened
two days ago under
an altogether different
set of circumstances. Give praise.



*Title honors Lucinda Williams

Birds Command the Dawn

In the full light
of a summer’s day
is where I never go.
I miss that way

the summer glow,
what the still winds say,
what the mighty sun demands.

And, as the birds believe
they command the dawn,
I tend to my deception
that what I miss is no way there.

Rocket Science

It was the different leaves
of a different tree
rustling in the wind
a millennium ago.

Or a millennium ahead, as if
now and then mattered.
I was the first woman
to say no, or the next,

as if refusing to be property
set some kind of record.
But this is my story of yes,
of laying myself down

on my cushion of gathered moss.
Of laying myself
between earth and sky
while a swell of crickets

kissed the breeze around us.
Our hearts fluttered with the rise
of a second swell and soared
with the music of different birds

in the different bushes nearby.
To this man I did say yes,
yes, as his breath feathered my thighs.
Hunting by scent, arriving at the

crack of my dawning,
of his awakening
into a different time
of manhood and glory.

Coming together at a bonfire
of young memory,
the fluid crescendo
of our rocket works,

briefly forgetting she who I alone will deliver
(though she will one day launch
poems to the stars).
We sang to each other.

Shaking My Head

You know the lines.
A long time ago,
when both people and animals
lived on the earth,

a person could become an animal,
if she wanted to
and, the poet wrote,
that was the time when words were like magic?

Those lines?
Remember?
We were all shaman, then,
channeling vibrations and empathy.

When we stood,
booted toes in slush, faces to the shining heaven, eyes closed,
winged hearts rising on the heat radiating inside out,
your seven-year-old toes thawed and snow drifts puddled out.

I had that moment once more
this morning walking to the sun,
feeling the hot surge,
toes to fingertips.

We don’t have those moments
so much anymore
because we are so rarely shaman,
though we need to be.

If I were wizard now,
prisoners would be free,
comrades resurrected where they fell,
our wounded would be swift once more.

These might be things are not,
and my diluted magic is less than what
it takes to clean the breakfast wrappers
scattered near the traffic light ahead.

The Unfolding

I set out
line by line
to steal a poem from others
and piece by piece to build my own.

Sampled the sun,
the English glow,
the player of players who taught me
in my trusting youth,

passed from me now in much the way
the poet’s fire
burns too hot and,
finally, out.

As from a mountaintop,
he looked upon me,
called me to account,
but I stepped beyond the shouting

with a fresh scheme for thieving
and a dream of myself retrieving
the fantastic honors
we imagined for ourselves.

Blaming others for their loss,
though they were never more
than opium smoke or
the distant drums of nightmares

in the tumbling homes of hermits,
themselves returned from bathtub voyages,
aground like always, suffering
and staggering for the door.

Seeking foes whose courage
the cannibal in me
might make a meal and, after,
flower, fresh and brave,

to hug and stroke and love
with wide embrace and tender focus
the lives of others to whom
I meant to give so much.

And in the giving
get myself a place
to root in a world of rhythms,
daytime, nighttime,

heart on fire, singing battle songs
and hymns along our lusty way,
consuming obstacles like prey,
sipping at all the waterholes.

Bold, careless as the unscarred,
we were fountains of endless beauty,
showering gifts on a fortunate few,
never wishing to be wise

because what would be the point?
Never wishing to be wise
because what would be
the point?

Inside My Fingertips

Sometimes,
I feel like a poet.
Sometimes I feel it like an itch
inside my fingertips,
like a longing
to be over there with you,
like a leaping at my core
to the heart
of pulse and silence.

Dreaming of Piccolos

On the march, my poems--
parade of fat men,
shirts untucked and shoes untied,
and I want to make some fun.

Witless, I say, and louder
slovenly.
Tubs and tubas, too, I call.
Heads turn,

focus briefly limpid eyes
and of a sudden
dripping tears,
and the jeers catch in my throat.

Stepping forward, pause and speak.
You are not so fat as that.
And what tubas do not dream of piccolos?
March on as you are, march on.

Shades of Eben Flood

You know what they say,
about fish in hand
worth a whole lot more
than learning to play

with others in ways
that do not distinguish
us from the herd.
If I were Eben Flood,

or he me and somehow here,
he/we would dodder past
this blasted scape,
like none near Tilbury Town.

And if ol’ Eben
were to raise our jug,
standing in the shrouded lane,
“Like Roland’s ghost

winding a silent horn,”
he would be tested
in the search for worthy comrades
lest he were worthier than I.

But, I cried, like Eben did,
of whom are you speaking, and why?
I’ll tell you, I said, I’m the one
creeping,

hiding from juggernauts
crouching in shadows,
longing for hilltops,

wishing for friends
to steal with me
the jug from the juggernaut
and share it around
until it is empty
and we’re on high ground.

The Last Night

Heart, moon, breath and secrets—
Jackpot of life and
Greater than rubies for a silk-gowned queen—
Invested long ago in goddesses
And mysteries, stories and familiars.
Infrequently, a god on this theory:
If one falls, likely another will rise.

So jewel by jewel dropped or planted like magic beans
In wetlands or pools of courage or an eternity
Of fingertips or tears of fathers
As heart and moon, breath and secrets. Tumbling,
Reflecting, life, joyful and ferocious,
This heart splashes down,
Sinking to the depths of Diana, my fantastic

Huntress across eons and cultures
Light years of difference and no further
Apart than the space between humans;
Which is to say, sometimes no space,
At all, and sometimes like the deaf speaking
In lost tongues. She is elegant in silk, delicate in sheer, fierce and opaque
Like darkness at the end of life trailing the tigress. Oh, my incomparable

Beauty here to love every soul willing to love back.
And moon falls next to mysteries deep
Become this angel, David, who also loves
The young or old, the robust and the waiting.
And gifts them with wild yearning for
His touch and trades one for another and another,
Until yearning becomes us all, and the job is done. Oh, my sweet,

Isn’t this a terrible delight, the way the swamp gasses glow,
The way breath in aerosol gasps
Becomes clouds of trilling vapor? Stutter, speak,
Desperately sing then, relying on voice and sorcery.
Start and stop and start again until, unhalted,
Shout savage melodious joy, defy the bully thunder,
Contest the wild’s winking rumors, confront its sly cunning.

Oh, finally my writhing, ecstatic secrets go further, go firmer,
Go longer, go sunset to sunrise, go
Sunrise to sunset, glow incandescently
As though to banish trailing shadows,
As the dark of which we spoke
Galloped after the huntress.
And next the tomcat rode

Behind the young, infatuated witch.
What a story that one will be,
But this end arrives and leaves
Nothing for now to say and surprise
That glory would last so long. I’d bow but for the stiffness
Overtaking my once moist and fertile self. Still, my thanks.
You’ve been great.
You are great.

Why We Bear Up, Why We Move On

for Dale, for Fred, for Carl, for T.J.,
for Michigan, for all of us

Sometimes we are the lone star,
blinking in the deepening night.
Sometimes we are vanquished,
reeling in defeat.
Sometimes shamed and crouching;
sometimes anonymous,
known only to ourselves.

Hard, hard spaces
badly fit for our eccentric shapes,
but there is
in our tender cores,
our transient glory,
our dreaming wonder,
a lusting to endure.

Never Can Tell

She wakes and feels
the past lurking beside her,
the ghost she cannot leave behind,
pummeling, insistent.

She wakes and prays,
whoever is there to hear,
get me through this day,
I’ll never ask for more.

She wakes and dresses
her bits of scattered self,
hauling scarred pieces to
their proper places, endlessly preparing.

At the door, she checks for menace
in hallways, scanning streets
for fleshy threats and phantoms,
remembering her whom she always meant to be.
.
Out the door,
she strides straight ahead
as if fearless, limitless
and ready.

She arrives full with this
unreckoned power, feeling this day
pregnant with difference, this day
ready, perhaps, to do what yesterday did not.

Mary Oliver's Flare

I've posted poems by other poets on In and Out with Jeff, but this is the first one by another writer that I've posted here. I don't want to kid myself. As a poet, I've got a lot to learn, a lot of work ahead of me. Posting this one by Mary Oliver, which I read for the first time yesterday, is a way of reminding myself both of what I care about most and about how far I have to go.

Yesterday, on first reading, this poem became my favorite ever; for the time being eclipsing even Marge Piercy's Joy Road and Livernois and W.S. Merwin's The Unwritten. Taking the time to type the poem into this space, I find that it is, for today, at least, still my favorite poem.

I've written a commentary on the poem and posted it here on In and Out.

Flare

1.

Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

it is not the sunrise,
which is a red rinse,
which is flaring all over the eastern sky;

it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;

or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;

it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,
will go on sizzling and clapping
from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,
that are billowing and shining,
that are shaking in the wind.


2.

You still recall, sometimes, the old barn on your great-grandfather’s farm, a place you visited once, and went into, all alone, while the grownups sat and talked in the house.

It was empty, or almost. Wisps of hay covered the floor, and some wasps sang at the windows, and maybe there was a strange fluttering bird high above, disturbed, hoo-ing a little and staring down from a messy ledge with wild, binocular eyes.

Mostly, though, it smelled of milk, and the patience of animals; the give-offs of the body were still in the air, a vague ammonia, not unpleasant.

Mostly, though, it was restful and secret, the roof high up and arched, the boards unpainted and plain.

You could have stayed there forever, a small child in a corner, on the last raft of hay, dazzled by so much space that seemed empty, but wasn’t.

Then—you still remember—you felt the rap of hunger—it was noon—and you turned from that twilight dream and hurried back to the house, where the table was set, where an uncle patted you on the shoulder for welcome, and there was your place at the table.


3.

Nothing lasts.
There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,
now.

I stood there once, on the green grass, scattering flowers.


4.

Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wings
of the green moth
against the lantern
against its heat
against the beak of the crow
in the early morning.

Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop
of self-pity.

Not in this world.


5.

My mother
was the blue wisteria,
my mother
was the mossy stream out behind the house,
my mother, alas, alas,
did not always love her life,
heavier than iron it was
as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,
oh, unforgettable!

I bury her
in a box
in the earth and turn away.
My father
was a demon of frustrated dreams,
was a breaker of trust,
was a poor, thin boy with bad luck.
He followed God, there being no one else
he could talk to;
he swaggered before God, there being no one else
who would listen.

Listen,
this was his life.
I bury it in the earth.
I sweep the closets.
I leave the house.


6.

I mention them now,
I will not mention them again.

It is not lack of love,
nor lack of sorrow.
But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them—one, two, three, four—the kiss of courtesy,
of sweet thanks,
of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
May they sleep well. May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
I will not give them the responsibility for my life.


7.

Did you know that the ant has a tongue
with which to gather in all that it can
of sweetness?

Did you know that?


8.

The poem is not the world.
It isn’t even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,
like the door of a little temple,
so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
and less yourself than part of everything.


9.

The voice of the child crying out of the mouth of the
grown woman
is a misery and a disappointment.
The voice of the child howling out of the tall, bearded,
muscular man
is a misery, and a terror.


10.

Therefore, tell me:
what will engage you?
What will open the dark fields of your mind,
like a lover
at first touching?


11.

Anyway,
there was no barn,.
No child in the barn.

No uncle no table no kitchen.

Only a long lovely field full of bobolinks.


12.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.

When Mom died

When Mom died
there was a moment
when I thought
my eyes would run with tears forever.

But though her dying will never stop,
eyes do run dry,
and mind and focus drift.
When the grief slipped away,

I dreamed instead of Mom
the way she dreamed herself;
fleet and sure-footed,
a goddess in full stride.

Living This Way

Living this way,
this life, or any other,
the toxins pile up,
pile higher, leak in

and out, penetrate,
perpetrate, poison
us
faster

and faster.
There is no getting
around it, this dying
of the slow poison

of our lives,
of the relentless, mild hurts,
of the searing pain,
the constant humbling,

the wounds and grief,
the unrewarded snatch and grab,
the soundless scream. No getting by
the empty glory, however long the mourner’s line,

of the lonely grave.
The good times, too,
the joyful heart beating,
the slow and easy grace

of home, the laughter of
children in the unequivocal grip
of happiness, these also
are the nightshade, the deadly spice,

the too-sweet nectar,
the blinding fireworks
that light us on our
stumbling way here.

But where we are now,
bathed in beauty, about to touch,
to linger in this moment,
is where we are now.

We are, each of us, the product of our
re-imagining of our own history.
This is how we drive ourselves forward
into whatever happens next.

Jezebel

[A poem, Jezebel: Prologue, might serve the reader as an introduction to this one]


You know when we met
I was a girl who loved
Baal for his rain and sweet water
and might love you for your youth and sweet breath.

I was the lure brought you unknowing
to Siddon where the sun skied mornings
above cedar hills, making jewels
on the crest of harbor swells.

Jezebel, chief’s daughter,
dreaming of many things,
but most often of the boy
to make my thighs quiver,

and none of the queen who later
would make my eyes run wet and salty.
You, pale desert boy, came,
hooked by my dreams,

with hair like raven’s wings
and prophet’s dreams of glory
and torturer’s dreams of pain
and a core of discontent

that you were born a shepherd.
I would have left my father’s hearth
to be your shepherdess, but for
your claim to something greater.

Our joyful dance pleased Baal, I know,
while you pretended grim shame before your god
who punished you like an angry father,
whom you yet embraced.

Were we to approach the other now,
would you wet your lips for this sweet Phoenician,
or would I be target for your rage
and angry accusations?



Do your loins remember
my dewy hills at dawn,
the little rivers of our wet fertility
dampening chest and thigh and mysteries?

Or would you pretend to a purity
that never pricked a gentile?
I am reconciled that I did not defy my father,
fight Ethbaal to love my Israelite shepherd boy.

But I tried and tried
to come to you and cried,
Eli, your Jessie has come,
when I arrived, but there was no answer.

Had you waited for me? And misunderstood
my absence? Cursed me for rejecting you,
as you curse me now for turning
from the worship of your god

who demands more than other gods?
Now, Ethbaal is king in Tyre
and I am queen in Samaria
and spread my legs for Ahab,

the Israelite king, whom you daily damn.
I am thus, Queen Jezebel,
the living bond between Israel and Phoenicia,
which you condemn,

somehow forgetting the beauty
of Eli and Jessie,
as your one god does dismiss
the beauties of the many.

Your own voice,
which once whispered
sweetness in the courtyard
of the temple of Baal and laughed

in the sight of the sky goddess, Lady Nut,
your voice thunders and threatens,
slanders innocence, proclaims
dominion for one god above all gods,


dismissing dancing and worship before many.
My Eli, sweet tormented shepherd,
it is not our gods who invent unkindness,
but ourselves. This your lord god must know,

though you shrill otherwise,
and speak of a god blind to
the pools of kindness and courage
in foreign worshippers. How like the way

you deny knowing the pool of love in which
we bathed and sung praise.
Do you remember the hart at sunrise
leaping our prostrate bodies?

I crept the shadows before that dawn
and startled when you arrived beside me.
And when you opened your robe,
I stepped inside your arms and

warm wrap of cotton while we sank
to earth, your lips sweet on mine,
your tongue a spring of wild water
plunging to my thirsty roots. We moved

slowly to the late calls of night birds,
quickening even as the owls hooted
slow caution, finishing to the sound
of hooves pounding, the hart

robust and wild above us and gone.
In the peace we found, I swear I heard
the great heart beating and felt the
throbbing pulse below,

just as it might have been
on the glorious first day.
I said the gods are smiling and you looked
at me and I said you are

smiling, too, and you said, this time, yes.
Do you remember this just as your god
of many promises remembers only
those he wishes to keep?


Do you remember only that
which serves you now, a perfect
acolyte of your god?
In your zeal you are become

a destroyer, first of earthly desire,
your youthful wish to sip the wines
of a hundred kingdoms forgotten,
your wish to sample the women

of every prince of every port
of the wide Phoenician sea, lost,
perhaps gone as though never dreamed.
These are shriven within your heart,

consumed in the desert heat
of a different passion, your
service to your one god, who
requires devotion not in me to give.

You denounce Ahab, whom you call
the willing tool
of the prostitute of Tyre.
But Ahab leads as leaders do,

has kingly duties I do not hinder,
ministers to the myriads,
who worship whomever they will,
ministers to the myriads

who toil each day and wear down
like rocks in the stream,
who suffer hardship of drought,
and locust plagues, and children born still

and children died young
and lovers claimed too soon. It is Ahab
who must guarantee them fed and succored, Ahab
who cares for the widow and

soothes the orphan, Ahab
who keeps the granaries full against famine
and decrees no favorite among the gods
of the people of Israel, among the gods


of Israelites, Ammonites, Edomites and
Moabites. And his people praise Ahab’s
forbearance, thank Ahab for kindness,
while you call Ahab sinner.

In the King’s court, I have stood for
sandalmakers from Ammom, stood for potters
from Moab, saying to the King that these, also,
are his people, saying that there should be

no special privilege for the Jews
and the King has ruled as he would
after careful listening. Ahab is no tool of
Jezebel.

But Elijah Hanavi tells the story,
Jezebel the prostitute from Phoenicia
twists Ahab’s judgment and sins against
the one god.

And who listens?
The Hebrew zealots listen, and
the hopeless, aching for legends of more and
better, listen, and those who already bear hatred,

they listen. These have never seen the sea,
or the natural beauty of Phoenicia’s hills
or the works of other men in Tyre. You
have made allies of these men whose

hard lives will change as Ahab succeeds,
but the gifts of milk and honey they are
to inherit are merely empty promises
from an intolerant god. Who will protect Israel

from Assyria? This lord, your god, has no chariots.
Ahab’s soldiers, Ammomites, Edomites,
Israelites, Moabites, these are Israel’s shield.
The soldiers of a kingdom of many customs

and many faiths, these will protect Israel,
as will Ahab, the King, whom you damn.
You have raised the Hebrews, enough
riot through Samaria and all of Israel, to kill


450 priests of Baal. And now you flee to the hills,
claiming that Jezebel sends vengeance racing after.
But it is I who remain behind.
I who calm Ahab, who

wishes to decree your death.
Seek no vengeance, Ahab, I say.
Only bring Elijah to explain this deed
in your court. But, yes, Eli, I also urged

Ahab on, saying hunt Elijah,
he must answer to the families
of the lovers of other gods.
And as I speak

I am split in pieces
I am Ahab’s queen
I am the princess who was
Eli’s love and the tears

that Jessie cried
to the sun that rose in Eli’s
face as he wandered east
spring fresh from Jezebel’s eyes.

Does Elijah triumph here?
Will the story of Jezebel and Ahab be told
according to Elijah? And what in turn
will be the fruit that grows from such stories?

But Shepherd boy, know this,
Jessie will not flee the lies and sordid tales.
I am a chief’s daughter, Queen of Israel.
What you have sown,

I will be here to reap. What you decree,
May come, but Jezebel does not flee.
I remember you once had such a will
when we loved a lifetime ago.


If you're interested in some of the thinking behind this poem, and haven't already read it, I've posted a commentary on In & Out with Jeff.

Peak Dream

I once stood alone,
high in the Rockies,
astride the Continental Divide,
backpacking strong, vision questing.

From that majestic purple place,
I could see the amber waves flowing
to the jungle shores of Asia where green
jungle lit with American flame, screaming and

stripped of human song. I wept and
railed and shook my fists and swore
a permanent oath. By my will and effort
this war will give way to peace and beloved

community. By my will and by my love
and by my effort there will be a great awakening.
Americans moved by a new sense of the promise
of peace will walk the land and tanks,

festooned with flowers, will crawl beside us.
The air up there was clean and cool and thin
and, up there, I was godlike and, as happens,
wrong.

The Work We Do

What we could have
been, what we should
have been, what we
never

rooted
in the black
dirt of our lives,
blossoms in my heart

the way I imagine
god resonates for others. Yet,
where would we be without
the dreaming community,

the drumbeat of stampeding
wishes, the stream course worn
to bedrock, where we flow, lifting
and carrying what once lay before us.

How It Might Look From Here

Exploring canyons of the brain
standing stunned at the top of
Peaceful Valley admiring the beauty
of the little river of thought wending
its way to the mouth of declarations
flooding and fertilizing the delta talk