The Truck Garden

Here's a cinquain, written quickly around one of my favorite words -- truck. Nothing like a Ford or Chevy.

The Truck Garden

Mature,
The truck garden.
Awaiting the gourmand,
Foraging thyme and fungus. Bon
Vivant.

©Maria Glymph 2010

Pastiche

Here's the latest from the April 1st Project:

Happy Friday.

Taking Down the Walls at Esalen

A handful of years back, we took a songwriting class at Esalen taught by Jimmie Dale Gilmore. It was an intensive experience; one more about storytelling, working together, and seeing possibilities. In fact, it was several days of writing, collaboration, and soul-searching. We met and made friends with an eclectic group of talented people who remain our friends -- Bill, Charlie, Jules, Johnny, and others. It also involved music.

Our first assignment was to write a song, and then we were informed that at the end of the week we would perform for everyone else who was at Esalen. And so it began.

I struggled. I had things to say and wanted to say them. I wanted to be abstract and serious. I didn't want to write about frivolous things. It was hard but good. Thanks to Bill Gessner, our team made it through. In the end, our team of three wrote two songs. One was deep, the other was about the incredible beet. Unfortunately I can't locate the lyrics for the beet song -- it was quite fun -- but I just stumbled across the words to Walls, the more serious of our productions. Along with the lyrics, I have a smattering of photographs from those leisurely songwriting days. I share them here.

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Walls

You came to me with only love to offer

That’s when I was in fear

When I could receive the gifts you gave to me

That’s when it all came clear

Chorus:

When I agreed to have these walls around me

That’s when they fell away

I understood that other life surrounds me

That’s when, that’s when I chose to stay

In early years I went in search of freedom

That’s when I could conceive

That going for the ride would lead me deep inside

That’s when I chose to leave

Chorus

Then over time I slowly found my weakness

That’s when I chose to hide

Contained within my shell, I surrendered then I fell

That’s when my heart was opened-wide

Chorus

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The Closed Eyelids The Closed Wings

This is farewell. You shall be missed. Never to see you straight and tall as you walked with purpose and spoke it too. Never to share sweets and liquor in the morning. Never to sit on the balcony overlooking the street or in the tiny back kitchen dipping cookies into our teacups. Never to hear you laugh. Always to miss you.

Raven

by George Seferis

Years like wings.  What does the motionless raven remember?

What do the dead close to the roots of trees remember?

Your hands had the colour of an apple ready to fall.

and that voice which always returns, that low voice.

Those who travel watch the sail and the stars,

they hear the wind they hear the other sea beyond the wind

near them like a closed shell, they don't hear

anything else, don't look among the cypress shadows

for a lost face, a coin, don't ask,

seeing a raven on a dry branch, what it remembers.

It remains motionless just a little over my hours

like the soul of an eyeless statue;

there’s a whole crowd gathered in that bird

thousands of people forgotten, wrinkles obliterated

broken embraces and uncompleted laughter,

arrested works, silent stations

a deep sleep of golden spangles.

It remains motionless. It gazes at my hours. What does it remember?

There are many wounds inside those invisible people within it

suspended passions waiting for the Second Coming

humble desires cleaving to the ground

children slaughtered and women exhausted at daybreak.

Does it weigh the dry branch down? Does it weigh down

the roots of the yellow tree, the shoulders

of other men, strange figures

sunk in the ground, not daring to touch even a drop of water?

Does it weigh down anywhere?

Your hands had a weight like hands in water

in the sea caves, a light careless weight

pushing the sea away to the horizon to the islands

with that movement we make sometimes when we dismiss an ugly thought.

The plain is heavy after the rain; what does the black

static flame against the grey sky remember

wedged between man and the memory of man

between the wound and the hand that inflicted the wound a black lance,

the plain darkened drinking the rain, the wind dropped

my own impetus can’t shift it; who will shift it?

Within memory, a gulf - a startled breast

between the shadows struggling to become man and woman again

stagnant life between sleep and death.

Your hands moved always towards the sea's slumber

caressing the dream that gently ascended the golden spider-web

bearing into the sun the host of constellations

the closed eyelids the closed wings...

Coritsa. Winter 1937

© George Seferis

We Have Lost Even

For a month or so, I have been journeying on a poetic path. Everything from the Ghazals of Ghalib to the pastoral poems of Virgil. But always, always, I return to Neruda. Lately I cannot shake the beauty of We Have Lost Even. Oh how I wish it had come from my heart.

We Have Lost Even

by Pablo Neruda

We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand

while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window

the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun

burned like a coin between my hands.

I remembered you with my soul clenched

in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?

Who else was there?

Saying what?

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly

when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that is always turned to at twilight

and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings

towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.

Towards the Sun

I was looking through two very old writing journals for some notes and the possibility that some old ideas could be made current. I came across the following. I had forgotten that I wrote it, and while I can’t recall the specific reason or occasion that produced it, the underlying theme is common. I don’t recall if I wrote it quickly and was done with it – something that I’m prone to – or if it was written as a specific exercise. No matter. Here it is, as is.

Towards the Sun

I go towards the sun, I’m in the desert

Barren land, wilderness, a void

From a place of darkness I do travel

Carrying a load of anguish, almost destroyed

Reached the point of ultimate abandon

Disguised myself with nothing to reveal

The cloistered life I left appears before me

An endless road yet I go forth with zeal

Not certain if I’ll find a ranch or castle

A fence to hold me in or keep them at bay

Never know if I’m a passing stranger

Or if it’s a place in which I’ll finally stay

Oh how I long for a blossoming garden

One filled with sage and thyme and bees

Lush life, rich earth, and all the joys of nature

It’s me that life and I can’t seem to please

Take me down the road to a place of sunshine

Bathe me in the warmth of your caress

Let me take in a breath of freedom

Without it, my soul just won’t seem to rest

© Maria Glymph 2010

When in the Course of Human Events

I have a sticky on my computer that says, “You have to choose to choose.”

Today, when we celebrate freedom and the birth of this great nation, my eye wanders to the yellow rectangle saluting from my computer.

Choice.

The Founding Fathers and all the men and women who backed them chose to choose. They chose to disentangle themselves from despotism. They chose to publicly and clearly denounce the ills of an authority that ruled over more people than just them. And they chose to pledge allegiance to each other in support of their Declaration of Independence.

They understood that all men could choose to choose because of “…the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” They didn’t come to this lightly. They had “…petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” In other words, they sought a peaceful and sound resolution but found none.

The Declaration was not the end. It was the beginning.

There are far too many injustices in the world today. Look at Iran. Look at the house arrest of Ang San Suu Kyi. Look at North Korea. Look at the various leftist countries of South America. I could go on.

“…Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Many of the people in these situations have chosen to choose, and sometimes that is not enough. Senseless killings by people in power who are the opposite of brave, so insecure that the curtain will come down and reveal their true intentions. Oppression that treats people like cattle and has no greater vision than a pile of riches. Genocide in various forms to avenge histories that no longer are marked in memory.

I think how lucky we are, here in America. The freedom we have as citizens allows us to choose liberty in our lives. We have pledged allegiance to this great republic, and we are grateful and fortunate to have a strong and dedicated force of men and women who serve in our military, fighting to protect us and our nation, and defending democracy around the globe.

Choosing is active. It requires careful consideration. Each day brings decisions big and small, of great import or of seemingly no value. But each day we are called to select. True independence is not just understanding that you can choose to choose, it is making those choices.

Hancock and company made their declaration with “… a  firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” They stated that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You can never enjoy independence unless you choose to choose.

Note: A very special thank you to our service men and women around the world. May God keep you safe and bring you home soon.

Tell Me Why

I remember sitting in the living room, the book open in my father’s lap. He flipped through the pages and rested his finger on a question.

“What is osmosis?”

And so it would be. We, my brother and I, would by turns answer the questions and share what we had learned. We had already done our homework, but it was a requirement that we come home each day and read to learn the answers to a few of the questions in our set of Tell Me Why books.

I have two of the volumes still, and they sit on a lower shelf along with my copy of Every Child’s Book of Why and When and my mythology book (in Greek). The pages are yellowed and somewhat brittle, a checkmark made in pencil on the left of each title that was learned. The smell of the past slowing rises as I open one of the books.

What is the difference between frogs and toads?

Can a porpoise talk?

What causes our dreams?

How does the blood circulate?

What is the mystery of the sphinx?

I’m surprised that I didn’t care about how libraries began or how prisons originated, but we had four volumes – a lot to get through when you’re a kid.

My father loved to read, and it is a great trait that he passed along to me. It is through books and the desire to know that we created a special bond, swapping books and stories, asking questions out loud, and always providing a rather certain opinion or perspective.

It’s not just about why, but how and who and when. I think I’m far more curious than George. Questions lead to answers that lead to questions, and the great unknown seems to become bigger not smaller. So many questions remain.

I wonder how someone decided that these questions were the ones kids would ask. Experience I’m sure. But what about the questions that adults would ask? What if we could create a volume – or two or more – to house all of the questions that we as adults want to have answered? What would those questions be?

I thought I’d start a random list and see where it leads. There are some obvious and universal questions – Why do we exist? What happens when we die? What’s the recipe for the secret sauce? But we’ll leave those off the list for now.

Here goes:

• How do you get lost if wherever you go there you are?
• Do your feet really get bigger as you age?
• How is it possible to ‘think and get rich?’
• Why have we never encountered other beings like ourselves?
• Or have we?
• Was there really a lost city of Atlantis? (Perhaps this is covered in the Tell Me Why books)
• Why do people have such difficulty merging in traffic?
• To go along with that, why do people in the grocery line wait until a total is presented before whipping out their checkbook or credit card?
• What does the ending mean in Mulholland Drive? Heck, what does the entire movie mean?
• Why can’t I seem to get through The Master and the Margarita?
• What’s so magical about the blue liquid people use as a cleaning agent – on everything?
• When will the turtle eggs hatch?
• What is the point?

Okay, so it’s a brief list for today. Today is the operative word.

How about you?