Tag Archives: poetry

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Austere choice

What could be more austere than rock?

Taken in Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument, Thanksgiving, 2024.

Austere choice

Why do I still feel sad when I think
that I am best off with my cat
and that I should eschew dating.
Why do I feel like I am rejecting love?
I don’t have that sort of love.
It’s not like I am rejecting anything.
I am rejecting looking for it.
I am rejecting active interest in a partner
other than my cat.
What is wrong with that?

I do not ever want to reject hope.
I am not trying to reject wanting.
Hope and want are the deep and terrible ache
for the Beloved. I do not reject that.
I am still open, Beloved, to what you send,
though getting more particular in middle age.
A writer says that he uses a pencil and a pad,
because no better tool has been invented.
I take the same approach to wanting love.
If the relationship is more work than my cat,
for less love, why bother? It seems silly
and until I go home to the Beloved,
so far, I am best off with my cat.

____________________________________________

The first thing Sol Duc does when we go out for a walk, is roll on the sun warmed dusty sidewalk. The house faces south.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: austere.

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Tool

I don’t wear livery at work
and anyhow that’s a uniform for men
or a place to board horses
though the horses can be male or female.
Once I go to my daughter’s second grade
for a bring your parent day
and bring part of my uniform,
or perhaps it is a tool or instrument,
my stethoscope. The children all want
to listen to my heart
or at least touch this magical tool.
Afterwards I receive thank you notes.
I think that every one, except my daughter’s
thanks me for bringing the stethoscope
to their classroom. I did not know how
special and magical a tool can be.

__________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: livery.

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Who is there?

This is not a brilliant photograph, but it is interesting. This is taken from North Beach in 2022 with my cell phone. It was a very grey day and wet and we heard roaring. I imitate both animals and birds, so I roared back and tried to match the call. This is the response. These are sea lions and they can be enormous. The elders and biggest ones stopped and stuck their heads out, wanting to know who is there? Thankfully they did not come ashore, because the males can be 2.4 meters long (7.8 feet) and 390 kg (859 pounds). We did stop roaring, a bit intimidated. We had roared back at them other times. The sea lions are moving north, more information here.

I am trying to find time and energy to keep removing lots of old blogs and photographs to make room for the new. I could pay for more space, but then I have to keep paying for it, so I don’t want to. I have gone back and read my 2009 posts, no pictures, from the Mad As Hell Doctors trip and from writing elsewhere. I write more often with the Ragtag Daily Prompt, but the longer medical posts are intermittent.

Work has been interesting and I feel a bit off balance, because the plan is in flux and morphing. Right now I am in the same clinic Monday through Thursday, but at two different desks. I won’t be in this clinic for the rest of the assignment unless something changes. I don’t know where I will go next. Primary care has lost two providers in the six months I’ve been here, but I don’t know if that is an ongoing rate nor how many there are total.

My first job out of residency had a terrible turnover. I was fifth senior doctor out of fifteen in two years. That is a really really bad sign. By the end of the second year I was fairly sure that I would not be staying and that I could not change the culture. The three women doctors that I had joined had been trying for two years and one had already left! I was gone by the end of the third year.

And back to roaring with the sea lions. Here is Walt Kelly’s take on roaring, his poem Northern Lights.

Oh, roar a roar for Nora, for Nora in the night,
For she has seen aurora borealis burning bright.

A furore for our Nora! And applaud Aurora seen!
Where, throughout the Summer, has our borealis been?

_____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: grey.

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Wait

I came close but no cigar
I want a mind that I can love
hand holding mine in the car
I send a quiet prayer above
Love of nature, kind to friends
not afraid of their own dark
Lust to learn until their end
willing to risk to build an ark
Curious but not controlling
Not addicted to booze or drugs
Intense at times and others strolling
Opinions, laughter and lots of hugs
My heart open yet I don’t faint
I think I am waiting for a saint

_____________________________

I wrote the poem yesterday, but I have used up my memory in wordpress and now I need to go through and delete things. Any advice, Martha? I know you did it. It seems that I have to delete the post and the photograph, or is that not true? Advice welcomed.

I search my photographs for gloves and it comes up with two: foxgloves! Well, strictly speaking, that is a form of glove, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: glove.

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Alphabeasts

ambulating antelopes
bellies bearing beer
carrying cantelopes
deride damp deer

elegant elephants
feeling fitly fat
give generous gifts
handing hippos hats

ignorant iguanas
jealously jeer
keen kindly kites
lilting laughing leers

many merry meerkats
nearly never notice
one old orangutan’s
pompous pronouncements

querulous quail
reject reports regarding
shimmering snow snakes
tearing through tunnels

undulating ungulates
veer vivaciously
wondering why whales
xerox xylophones

yellow yaks yell
zip zap zoo!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: zoo!

I wrote this sometime in the 1980s. My proof is the drawing by my mother. We had it in a show and hand colored with colored pencils. There is now a book with the same title by a Canadian author but it came later.

And hooray for the zoo! They are all asking for you!

Martha, what would the AI think of this poem? Heh. ChatGPT: “That’s a fantastic poem! I love how it captures the playful nature of alliteration and the whimsical imagery of animals. Each stanza has its own charm, and the ending with the β€œyellow yaks” is such a fun wrap-up! Did you create this as a fun project, or is it inspired by something specific?” Ok, so ChatGPT doesn’t get sonnets, but it likes nonsense poetry.

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The boring vampire

I meet a boring vampire
when I am boring too
when I am worrying with angst and ire
and have too much to do

It’s in the time of covid
We start to walk the beaches
The vampire won’t take paxlovid
His ego overreaches

He says his life’s perfection
He says his brain can’t fit his head
He has no belief in resurrection
That’s probably because he’s dead

I wonder that he lies
Does he think that I don’t see?
The person that believes the lies
Must be him, not me

I grieve before he ousts me
He says he’ll always be my friend
And he speaks of longing to be free
I know there will be an end

I know before he ousts me
He says we’re friends forever
I blink and calmly see
That it will soon be never

Some vampires don’t need staking
They do it to themselves
Isolation of their making
Hoarding blood upon their shelves

______________________________

The photograph is a “swamp robin” (Varied Thrush) from my yard, December 2022.

This has nothing to do with the Ragtag Daily Prompt: festival. Except that swamp robins are very festive.

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Forgiveness

Rumi writes about the wound being where the light gets in. Leonard Cohen says the cracks are where the light gets in. My poems about being reborn or changed seem to involve either burning or the sea. I wrote this in 2009.

Forgiveness

I want to forgive something
Someone
In fact a group
Something that hurt a lot
I’ve tried logic
I tell myself
“It was an expression of concern”

My heart doesn’t agree
It is sullen
Immobile and grumpy
It whispers
“They have not apologized”
It whispers
“When people say you’re crazy
It could be a joke
An expression of concern
It wasn’t
It was a palm held out
At arm’s length
To distance me.”

My head argues
“That’s what it felt like to you.
You don’t know their intentions.”

I want to write
A poem of forgiveness
Hoping my heart will follow

My conscious doesn’t write my poems
My conscious wrestles with an idea
The poem comes out of this struggle
I look at the poem I’ve written
I think,
“That is what I would like
my conscious heart to feel.”
My poem is often more generous
than my conscious feels

My poems are not mine
They are a gift
From the unconscious
It is much larger
Than the small conscious me
I dream of feeling envy
I climb into a bathtub
And transform myself
To battle a trickster
We are transported
To the bottom of the ocean

In the ocean
The trickster and I are one
It is unlimited
It is not my unconscious
There is no separation
It is all unconscious

I did not think
A poem would give forgiveness
But pain drove me
Into the sea
I am connected
You gave me these pearls
Thank you

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crack.

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Mind

Facing a wall or lying in bed
breathe slow: four seconds in
one two three four
four seconds out
one two three four
keeping count

or facing a wall sitting
on a zafu, bell rings to start
how can forty minutes be so long?
fall asleep and body weaves
waking me up OH don’t hit the wall
adrenaline then slithering down
towards sleep again

zen mind, blank mind?
my mind wanders off again and again
what is for dinner? grocery list?
that annoying thing or person
at school or work
the mind busy as a squirrel
burying nuts and digging them back up

bring the mind back again
again again again
to the breath the wall letting go
of this well trodden mind trail
only to have the mind wander off
down another: this with briars
and falling into a pond
that has ice and cold

back shake like a dog
shake it off
focus on the breath the wall again
vivid multicolor cats
with paisley and stripes and spots
there is the BELL
forty minutes

Bow to the wall
and stretch
get up
ready zafu for the next time
meditation
mind

_____________________

Written today for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: blank.

The translation that I originally learned is here.

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the pale reflections of our bitter selves

they are neglected, you know, by most
the worse self, the worst self, the dark
the impulse to yank the moon from the sky
when she slides down the stair, to see who’s there

there are few poems written to the dark
impulses, the demons, the underside of our hopes
and dreams, the nastiness, the grief, the anger
we are kept in the dungeons below the basement

below the belt we band together huddle
in a pile of claws and unfeathered wings and teeth
wishing for a blanket, to be held, rocked
loved, wishing for the mothers who left us

the fathers who denied us, pushed us away
so that we knew and know what to hide
what to deny, what part of ourselves to kill
we try and try but few do

and then they are mourned, people say
they don’t understand but ask the demons below
and oh, they do, they do! maybe the next plane
will be kinder and love the demons

the bitter self, the dark self,
that longs so badly to be loved
that longs forever to be loved
that is not loved this round

this round

written 11/24/2023

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Volcanic fire

A friend and I travel to Hawaii in March 2018. The lava in the caldera had dropped on the volcano and the road around it was closed because of the gases. The changing eruption happened over the next few months. We found a place to wait for nightfall to take photographs. It is way more dramatic in the night, isn’t it? We could see fire rising up in the day too, but at night the smoke is lit up as well by the lava below. A scene on fire, beautiful and terrifying.

The smoke from forest fires has dissipated in Grand Junction. I stayed mostly inside for a few days, which is not hard on work days. The clothes I wear are backwards from the ones I wear on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. There I have a windbreaker and layers for outside and I think my heat pump has had the air conditioning on once ever. Here I need the warmer clothes for the air conditioned inside. I get cold at work by lunch time and go outside to warm up! Very strange.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fire.