Category: Poetic Essays

Beauty, In Its Season

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays1 Comment 
how do you learn the seasons? 
is it just what you see, 
or is taught and demonstrated 
illustratively? 

can you still smell the wood-smoke, 
can you feel the fire again?  
does autumn live large in your heart 
from what you learned back then?

It is good to express gratitude. It’s even better when the people you are grateful to are still around to hear it.

Sadly, much of the gratitude I feel towards the teachers I had growing up went unexpressed while I was actually in school. Although it is possible that the spontaneous excitement we as kids felt towards things could have been taken as gratitude by teachers, even if not verbalized as such.

I sure hope so.

One of the things I am grateful for in regards to my own elementary school teachers was class decorations. These tended to change with the seasons, and were designed to teach us about spring, summer, fall, and winter. I still associate red, orange and yellow colors with fall, even though I grew up in Florida where very few trees had leaves that changed with the seasons. This was largely from class decor and pictures in books, like this one:

Part of growing up is pretending not to enjoy things, because those things are associated with being younger. People throw over hobbies they love, music they love, and even people they love for what might be called “social pressure” reasons. I am not saying this is right or wrong, I am just observing that it “is”. Much of the process of growing up is mysterious and I’m not really sure I know how I feel about it.

What I DO know, however, is that I am now at the age where I have nothing to prove about maturity, so I feel comfortable just liking what I like regardless of what anyone else thinks, whether that be in music, or books, or other forms of entertainment, or even classroom decorations. I have a Lego set in this room I am in now that I used to build things with when my grandkids are here — or when they’re not. I use a coloring app on my phone to relax.

I often joke with my wife that the same characteristics about me changed in value over time:

(Me in my twenties) Her: he’s so immature!

(Me in my sixties) A different her: he’s so good with kids!

I basically am a kid in many ways, I understand this. And for that reasons, I’ve decided to use today to give a shout out to all those teachers still out there decorating their classrooms. Everything beautiful is its own reason for existence.

a given world

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays1 Comment 
the world was given to us, we were young, 
and standing there upon the shore of future greatness 
(just our due) as waves took shape 
and all the seas applauded us; our names 
where whispered on the wind of highest hope 

the world was given to us, yet we fell, 
in secret rooms, and offices, and homes 
where johnny walker red was our cologne 
and we could not remember why we stood 
that morning on the shore or why we thought 
that we'd be any different

I am not quite the oldest person where I work, but I’m pretty close. I love working with younger people. They are frequently idealistic, and idealism is a wonderful thing, although I have to say, it often makes a better fuel than a compass.

I have a group of friends that I grew up with. We don’t get together as often as we used to. I still see us as being young, but those days passed long ago. I don’t remember us as being particularly hopeful or idealistic when we were younger, although I’m sure we had our share of that. I remember us as mostly being more concerned with mundane things: getting jobs, seeing the world, trying new things, finding love.

I was thinking about idealism after the recent conclusion of the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, who was at one time the world’s richest idealist. It turns out that you can rearrange the letters of “effective altruism” and spell “the ends justifies the means”. I mean, you have to add a few letters, but a few lines of computer code allow you to transfer those over with no one being the wiser.

Listen: idealism is important, and should be nourished and encouraged. However, we should be careful not to deify it.

through hazy

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays3 Comments 
through hazy eyes she dreams of when 
they drove for miles in the mist 
and sitting on her daddy's lap 
outside some service station where 
she tried a milky way first time 
and yet its all a dream for now 
the mist is only in her sight 
and weeds are growing where 
her daddy sleeps

I’m not naturally a pessimistic person. I’m not really a particularly optimistic person, either. In fact, debates rage as to whether or not I am a person at all. I stubbornly insist that I am, although my reasons are largely personal.

I know I am not A.I., since it would involve having some “I”.

I come from a family who were very matter of fact about the basic outline of life, including the “death” part. This enabled them to genuinely enjoy getting older, since they didn’t see loss-of-youth or vigor as any kind of surprise or evil force to be fought. They believed, rather than dwelling on lost capability, that it was better to just figure out what they still could do that they enjoyed, and then go and do it.

Because change is inevitable, and tends in one direction, it’s better to learn to float on its current than to try and swim against it.

…a friend back then the lake…

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays4 Comments 
i had a friend back then the lake 
who used to call me of a morn 
which just is not my name but still 
it's good when someone calls you 
even if that someone's just a puddle 
living in a slightly bigger hole 
at any rate 

my friend and i hung out with trees 
who now are kind of balding much like 
me but i digress i think or maybe 
its transgress congress it is 
some gress perhaps gres-gris 
i really don't recall i've gotten old 
i think

do you when you are thinking back 
think back on how you thought back then 
or do you think back on how backward 
all your thinking was or maybe 
you're a forward thinker i am not
i'm more a sideways stumbler 

still i had a friend the lake and we were 
once the best of fluids druids maybe 
i don't know i had ancestors once they mostly died 
and now i've sunk to hanging out with 
ponds and all their pondsy schemes

I spent a lot of time alone in my twenties, and I got pretty good at it. It was the kind of “good at it” where you question your reasons for going on living, but still. We all make sacrifices for our art: my art was loneliness, and I gave everything I had to it.

When I first started this blog, I wrote extensively about that part of my life. Most of the issues discussed at that time were long in my past, but I found it helpful to place it all in perspective.

People say that you should always remember who you are and where you came from. That can be harder to do than it sounds. Sometimes age or circumstance gift us with an aura of wisdom that our actual lives scarcely merit. It’s good to remember — or, at least, it’s good for me to remember — that I had no idea what I was doing and was just kind of wandering from place to place and thing to thing until I lucked upon a job I love, a woman I love even more, and a wonderful and blessed existence.

But it is good to remember that I am still, inside, the kid who, for a time, had a lake as his only friend.

earnest evening

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays3 Comments 
in the earnest evening 
we sang a sacred song 
of golden twilight gleaming 
for those who're laden long. 

we harmonized, and sympathized, 
ancestral lives and lions -- 
for in the earnest evening comes 
our forbears in 

the silence

I grew up in a family of instrumental musicians and singers and became one myself at a very young age. At the rather advanced age I am now, that has pretty much devolved into weekly playing the piano and organ and occasionally writing or arranging music. I can only barely sing, but like most people who can’t really sing, I love doing it… so long as no one can see or hear me.

Recently, I have found myself remembering a lot of obscure songs I heard in my youth and this being age of YouTube, I have been able to find most of them. Sometimes I remember songs almost perfectly, but most of the time, I only really remember bits and pieces.

Old music always reminds me of my parents, who met singing, loved singing, and had us singing together as a family from my earliest memories. I hated singing in public, which they could not comprehend. People who love to perform have a hard time understanding those of us who would just rather not.

There’s something about music that I find to be… ancestral. I’ve always loved ancient music, and maybe that’s why. The poem above is an effort to get at that feeling.

How does music most move you?

Not-My-Neighborhood

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays5 Comments 
Here, in this not-my-neighborhood,
My new not-neighbors live; 
I'd bring them a fresh-baked pumpkin pie 
If I had one to give -- 

They're rather uninteresting, these folks; 
In fact, they rather bore me; 
For just because we live far away 
They've chosen to ignore me! 

But, I'll show them: I'm going to leave, 
And wave "bye" with this poem --  
For here in this not-my-neighborhood 
I just don't feel 

At home

I haven’t been writing much this year, and it’s left me feeling rather off-kilter. Between my wife’s three surgeries and the new job at work, life has been pretty much just work-family-sleep-work-family-sleep, for days on end… with a fair amount of eating thrown in. And a lot of caffeine.

I’m looking forward to reading and writing again for Nano Poblano, and I’m hoping to feel a little less off-balance by the time the month winds down. Or maybe just a more familiar and comfortable form of off-balanced.

in the nightmare world

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Poetic Essays1 Comment

Alea iacta est.

"it should not have come to this," 
they say, as though great oracles: 
he settles in his damp hotel, 
and hears the sounds of distant shouts 
that seem to find him guilty still -- 
the sudden flash, the sweep of light -- 
and once again, the world is nil 
and he has no, and can't be 

right

In my dream, I’m traveling above the clouds, but on foot.

I realize it’s a strange juxtaposition, but, you know, dreams. At any rate, the pathway is rickety, and slippery, and even though none of it makes any sense, the general sense of terror seems real.

Is real.

I suppose, upon waking, that this is my mind’s way of symbolizing where I am in life; yet I find myself wishing fervently that my brain was a little less creative as regards symbolism, because it is a long way down.

But then, it usually is, isn’t it? From almost any place you are, there is still a long way down. Some of us deliberately explore those depths; these can be years lost to haze or sharp with the pains of going where you know the pains are.

The dream wasn’t content to be a one-night thing; it comes over, and over again, like episodes of “Bluey” when you live with an infant or toddler.

I will almost certainly have the same dream later tonight.

I don’t, though, I have a dream — or rather a memory — of a woman I saw in a hospital waiting room about five years ago. There was something about the phony, antiseptic surroundings and the shattering reality of her grief and fear that struck me forcefully at the time. “This is your, and everyone’s fate — this is where we all end up. But her grief is the only one in the world right now, and it’s right here, and there is nowhere for her to escape to.” 

a loss so real 
that it was having that seems empty: 
a weight so pressing 
that there's no movement in any direction.

As I child, I dreamed of being Superman; being in the sky then was a matter of freedom, and power — the power to do good. I still love the character of Superman: the ultimate outsider, determined to give everything he has to helping others, and being decent.

The thing about being Superman, however, is that you never really get to be happy. It isn’t quite as bad as being Spider-Man (who is typically miserable), but it isn’t great, either. One of the reasons why there are people who identify with the villains rather than the heroes in superhero stories is that the villains appear to be having more fun.

I’m not a good villain, though; I’m more like a disappointing superhero. One who can walk in the clouds, but falls a lot.

So I dreamed I was back in Florida as a kid, walking around a nearby lake on an Autumn morning:

In my dream, even though I am maybe eight years old, I realize that both of my parents are dead, as they are now. My brother and sister have moved out, and I am to head back to our old house, where I now live alone. 

Do I believe, or do I not? 
In what is good and true and right 
And that the day combats the night 
Or am I locked in webs of fate 
That keep me here: 
Too lost, 
Too late

I cannot fly, nor walk in clouds: I can try to help the grieving, and ease the pains of the sorrowful.

Maybe I can manage the responsibilities I’ve been given; maybe not. But, as my father was wont to say, those two phrases are actually the same thing — it just depends on which we choose to focus.

Memento vivere.

A Painted Memory

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays1 Comment 
Mornings in the lonely field, and I 
Would love the way you taught me to: 
Matching up my wobbly strength against 
What clime and time and space can do -- 

Gathering a bit of air inside 
The lungs that knew the breath of you -- 
Traveling the lonely field, and lost 
In what you didn't make it 

Through

I am six years old, and we are entering a restaurant that looks like an unpainted barn. It is even newer than I am.

The ceiling is high and sloped, and all along the walls are gigantic paintings, all beautifully painted, of horses, cowboys, and buffalo. One of them is a painting of a cowboy lighting a cigarette next to a horse in a stable on a winter night. Light from the the match is shining on their faces.

We lived in Florida, so, I had never seen snow. It was another six years before my first glimpse of it for real. I had seen horses, but never very closely; my older sister took lessons. I could immediately “feel” that painting: I felt the cold, smelled the match, smelled the horse. I still remember.

The restaurant itself had a line we moved through: we picked up drinks and salads on trays, and ordered the rest of the food that was later to be brought out to us. The place was called the “Ponderosa Steak Barn”, and was unrelated to the restaurant chain that came out a few years later with a similar name.

We ate at the restaurant countless times when I was growing up; it eventually closed. Years later, as an adult, I was back in that town working, and the building had been converted to a Chinese Palace theme. Several of us from work went to eat there for lunch. I went back to use the restroom, and in the back hall were all the old paintings — including that one.

Leaned up against a wall, in a poorly lit hallway, were paintings almost as tall as I was — twelve of them. And there was that cowboy, and that horse, and that match lighting his cigarette. And for that brief second, I felt the cold, and remembered what it was like to step into a new restaurant with my family at six years old.

It was kind of like stepping back into a different world, and even more like stepping back into a different me. Six year old me appreciated art — and food — like I never quite have, since.

My mom used to say, “you never feel things as keenly as you did when you were young.” As a kid I head this, and thought nothing. As a teen and twenty-something, I interpreted it to mean she was now numb from life. Over time, it came more and more to be an observation about the nature of things: neither sad, nor hopeful, just… factual.

There was a second winter painting of the twelve in total (the rest were warm weather paintings) that I saw all those years later in that hallway: it was of a deer standing by a tree in the snow. The photo, above, was the closest thing I could find to it online; the original painting had mountains in the background, and the edge of a nearby forest. It was, my dad remarked, one of only two of the paintings to not have a human being in it.

I thought my dad was wrong, because, clearly, WE were in it, or we couldn’t have seen it, right?

Isn’t that how empathy works?

(Nano Poblano. It stretches us to the very limits of our limit-hood, but has been worth it nonetheless.)

parade

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems, Poetic Essays1 Comment 
today we celebrate en masse 
and gather in array; 
today in gratitude we march 
or sing, or shout, or play -- 

or gather in more quiet homes 
a meal or less to share; 
today's the annual parade -- 
maybe I'll see you there

Gratitude is healthy, but only when sincerely felt. Feigned gratitude tastes terrible, one of those foods we ingest because manners dictate that we do so. It is no coincidence, then, that we attempt to celebrate the expression of gratitude by eating things we (presumably) love. It makes any residue of fake gratitude go down easier.

Before the meal, usually, is the parade. Parades are busy, and colorful, and loud, and musical, and exciting — some of us like all of these things, and most of us like at least one of these things. Colors would be the one I like the most. I could do without most of the other parts. I love bright colors, though.

When my parents would take me to a parade as a child, or watch one on television, I could tell that parades had meant more to them than they did to me. They had grown up in a radio age, and only saw what they directly experienced. I grew up in a television age, where images were far more plentiful. People in the Internet age experience connectedness in different ways still, and in greater visual and auditory abundance.

It’s a common-yet-strange disconnect when things that mean a lot to people don’t mean much to their children. Thanksgiving itself, as celebrated here, seems to still mean lot to the young ones, although observably differently depending on the child. Some love the crowd, the excitement, the noise, and others don’t. We are all very different from day one, even before circumstance begins to shape us like weather.

If you happen to watch a parade today, or anytime, remember this: nothing says “celebration” like getting dressed up and going for a long walk, while people cheer. Except maybe watching it.

(More from the other Cheer Peppers here.)