pound poem

Child of the grass

The years pass Above us

Shadows of air All these shall Love us

Winds for our fellows

The browns and the yellows

      Of autumn our colors

Now at our life's morn. Be we well sworn

Ne'er to grow older

Our spirits be bolder At meeting

Than e'er before All the old lore

Of the forests & woodways

Shall aid us: Keep we the bond & seal

Ne'er shall we feel

      Aught of sorrow
 
      Let light flow about thee

      As  a cloak of air




                       Ezra Pound










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wooly bully

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves.






                                Henry David Thoreau












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love like a hurricane

The Idea of Order at Key West            






                                            

                                                

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.   

The water never formed to mind or voice,   

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion   

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,   

That was not ours although we understood,   

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.   

The song and water were not medleyed sound   

Even if what she sang was what she heard,   

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred   

The grinding water and the gasping wind;   

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.   

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.   

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew   

It was the spirit that we sought and knew   

That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea   

That rose, or even colored by many waves;   

If it was only the outer voice of sky

And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,   

However clear, it would have been deep air,   

The heaving speech of air, a summer sound   

Repeated in a summer without end

And sound alone. But it was more than that,   

More even than her voice, and ours, among

The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,   

Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped   

On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres   

Of sky and sea.

                           It was her voice that made   

The sky acutest at its vanishing.   

She measured to the hour its solitude.   

She was the single artificer of the world

In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,   

Whatever self it had, became the self

That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,   

As we beheld her striding there alone,

Knew that there never was a world for her   

Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,   

Why, when the singing ended and we turned   

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,   

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,   

As the night descended, tilting in the air,   

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,   

Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,   

Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,   

The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,   

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,   

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

                                         Wallace Stevens

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a certain happenstance in fate

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN                                            

We will be what we could be. Do not say,
    "It might have been, had not or that, or this."
No fate can keep us from the chosen way;
    He only might who is.

 We will do what we could do. Do not dream
    Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve.
I hold, all men are greatly what they seem;
    He does who could achieve. 

 We will climb where we could climb. Tell me not
    Of adverse storms that kept thee from the height.
What eagle ever missed the peak he sought?
    He always climbs who might. 

 I do not like the phrase, "It might have been!"
    It lacks all force, and life's best truths perverts:
For I believe we have, and reach, and win,
    Whatever our deserts.








                     Ella Wheeler Wilcox
















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FOUR LAKES

                     

We run around four lakes. 
Tired legs connect them
with the meager help of muscles thrashed on granite faces
not a few hours earlier.
We’ve been
busy bees collecting pollen
for the honey of ascension,
or the hum of truth in still moments,
somewhere between a delayed lunch, and a morning coffee that hits the belly deep
enough to get us up and out, and up again. 
 
Legs which shimmied fear now ebb into the rhythm
of a safe request:
roll along, dodge the roots
wrapped in the pores of tree-trunks.
This is why I run.
To ease into the up and get carried up in the down.
To forgive myself for how I couldn’t
I just couldn’t.
Like a lost swimmer, who undulates with a rhythm
she didn't anticipate, and now depends on
to buoy her up,
as her last breath approaches the precipice
hung between how much she must to relax
before letting go of too much.
So too do I move, so too do I try on trust,
and thrust it off.
 
But my relief comes sooner since
the only tide that tugs
is the light waving through the branches
while dusk comes late, and I’m late again
always late,
hiccuped up and out, ever-desperate to catch up
to the specter I’ve collaged with memories of myself.
Since what we once were always remains
the potential of what we could become
and can never become
muddled in hope and I know.
 
And time once again billows, shoves me forward
buoys me up,
drops me at the end
just as I realize I will never be done
and as hard as it once was, as I swore it would get
there’s never a real memory beyond a timid touch
of the winded that eradicates all outside
the bottom of the last hill, and the top of this one.
Only glimpses, and a fondness for the knife come up
until it’s back in my throat.
Like a lump of a bite I can’t swallow
it needs the heavier pressure of another
 to carry it through.
 
Our body knows what’s best for us and what’s not, after all.
But
my exhaustion does not always have the pillow of trusting one’s self
to rest its head on.
It’s always been impossible
to swallow things whole,
or remember what whole felt like,
after all’s done and run.
I’m still left with that promise
I gave myself for the future
which I’m up against now
always up against
that lump.


                              Ranae  Scott




















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