THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

April 15, 2021

 

All beings rejoice! A new book of Kim’s poems has just been published by Red Hen Press! Sing! Dance! Make Merry! Get your copy today! Act now! Easy monthly payments! No money down! Makes a great gift for all occasions! With Kim’s permission, here’s a small sampling from the Treasure Trove:

 

Poetry in Prison

 

You’re in, but the question is:

what’s in you? What story

aching to be told do you hold

in solitary, shackled, denied

its rights to visitors?

 

The hard things that happened are gold

you hammer into shape, the pain

you twist, the grief you make shimmer,

the lost good thing you restore

by telling it back into being.

 

Everyone is in prison, one way

or another. And everyone is

free, one way or another. The trick

is to find your way to bear the story

forth, so it shines in the listener’s eyes.

*

 

Blue Brick from the Midwest

 

After my father collapsed like a bolt of light, toppled without a word,

I was the one to enter his study, find the jagged note to our mother he

scratched as he reeled, the freight train of his departure hurtling

through his heart—

 

 

—a sentiment he did not speak in seventy-nine years, as a tough customer,

affable but stern, inert when grief came, reserved as granite

when my brother died, cracking plaintive jokes when we trembled

in the hospital, mother going under the knife.

 

His way was trenchant, oblique. He distrusted those who

talk about God, preferring to honor the holy with a glance,

a nod, or silence. Delving deeper, the day he died, we found

in his sock drawer, under that scant set of flimsy raiment, the fetching

photo of the flirt; our mother, coy at the sink, looking back

over her shoulder, dressed only in an apron with a big bow.

No fool like an old fool.

 

And delving deeper, at the back of the bottom file (the niche

where one would hide the stuff of blackmail) I touched the blue

brick of love letters our mother had sent him when they

courted in the war—brittle leaves kissed snug together

and bound with string, the trouble he had carried

in secret through every move since 1943. She knew

them not, nor had his. “Oh Billy,” she said.

 

Father, early years taught your way with the heart’s contraband

when the dirty thirties blunted your bravado, tornado snatched

your friends, the war your tenderness, and left you with these secrets

hoarded for us to find when you were gone.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

At last Sunday’s Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom gathering (April 11th) we shared “Mystic Poems and Prose.” I read William Stafford’s poem “Ask Me.” Kim has a story about this poem (my paraphrase):

 

There was a big event at the Oregon Historical Society for the 100th Anniversary of William Stafford’s birth. OPB was there. Very Important People from the historical society and literary societies, et cetera. A homeless man wandered in, and headed for the table with the cookies. The cookies were being guarded by Someone of Importance. The homeless guy asked, “What’s going on?” “We’re honoring a poet.” “Is he any good?” “Yes, we think so: William Stafford.” The homeless man says, “Ask me.” “Ask you what?” “Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made…” After the Uninvited Guest had finished reciting the poem, the Guardian of the Refreshment Table asked, “Would you like some cookies?”

 

Ask Me

 

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

 

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

 

–William Stafford  (1914-1993)

*

 

At the Zoom gathering Todd Oleson read his favorite Emily Dickinson poem:

 

God made a little Gentian –

It tried – to be a Rose –

And failed – and all the Summer laughed –

But just before the Snows

 

There rose a Purple Creature –

That ravished all the Hill –

And Summer hid her Forehead –

And Mockery – was still –

 

The Frosts were her condition –

The Tyrian would not come

Until the North – invoke it –

Creator – Shall I – bloom?

 

–Emily Dickinson  (1830-1886)

*

 

Jude read this poem by William Blake:

 

The Divine Image

 

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

 

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

 

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

 

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

 

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, turk, or jew;

Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

 

–William Blake  (1757-1857)

*

 

Last Fall, I walked out the back door and found the deck and the entire back yard covered with little orange polka dots. It was mysterious! Where had they come from? I looked up and discovered that a flock of cedar waxwings was flying back and forth from our maple tree to some neighbor’s bush or tree, bringing hundreds (maybe thousands!) of orange berries. They ate the berries in the maple tree and spit out the skins. Mystery solved. This has absolutely nothing to do with the following poem, which I have always loved:

 

Waxwings  

 

Four tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush

in sun, and I am one.

 

Such merriment and such sobriety–

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk–

was this not always my true style?

 

Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

 

To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together–for this I have abandoned all my other lives.

 

–Robert Francis  (1901-1987)

*

 

We bibliophiles didn’t get around to mystic prose last Sunday, but as a special “peace, love, happiness & understanding” bonus, here’s something loving and lovely from Thomas Traherne:

 

47 

What life can be more pleasant, than that which is delighted in itself, and in all objects; in which also all objects infinitely delight? What life can be more pleasant, than that which is blessed in all, and glorious before all? Now this life is the life of Love. For this end therefore did He desire to Love, that He might be Love. Infinitely delightful to all objects, infinitely delighted in all, and infinitely pleased in Himself, for being infinitely delightful to all, and delighted in all. All this He attaineth by Love. For Love is the most delightful of all employments. All the objects of Love are delightful to it, and Love is delightful to all its objects. Well then may Love be the end of loving, which is so complete. It being a thing so delightful, that God infinitely rejoiceth in Himself for being Love. And thus you see how God is the end of Himself. He doth what He doth, that He may be what He is: Wise and glorious and bountiful and blessed in being Perfect Love. 

 

48 

Love is so divine and perfect a thing, that it is worthy to be the very end and being of the Deity. It is His goodness, and it is His glory. We therefore so vastly delight in Love, because all these excellencies and all other whatsoever lie within it. By Loving a Soul does propagate and beget itself. By Loving it does dilate and magnify itself. By Loving it does enlarge and delight itself. By Loving also it delighteth others, as by Loving it doth honor and enrich itself. But above all by Loving it does attain itself. Love also being the end of Souls, which are never perfect till they are in act what they are in power. They were made to love, and are dark and vain and comfortless till they do it. Till they love they are idle, or mis-employed. Till they love they are desolate; without their objects, and narrow and little, and dishonorable: but when they shine by Love upon all objects, they are accompanied with them and enlightened by them. Till we become therefore all Act as God is, we can never rest, nor ever be satisfied. 

 

–Thomas Traherne  (1636-1674)

*

 

In Centuries of Meditations, Thomas Traherne has just over four hundred meditations. In the “Second Century,” he goes on an extended meditation of love, from numbers 39-67. I have included two typical ones. 

 

May all people be happy.

May we live in love. 

 

—Johnny