Poetry

 

THE QUESTION

Something has happened but I don’t know what it is!

 

Was it while I was asleep?

Did the veil between universes thin?

Did fairies leave a changeling with me inside?

Am I in a dream but can’t wake up?

 

Something has happened but I don’t know what it is!

 

I am me, I think like me, I feel like me,

But that person in the mirror that’s not me!

The person in the photograph, that can’t be me!

 

Something has happened but I don’t know what it is!

Did it happen while I was asleep?

Something stole my body and left me in an old man!

 

the Ol’Buzzard

the Ol'Buzzard

POETRY

 

I like poetry that is a narrative.  My first introduction to poetry was my high school English teacher, Miss Long, requiring us to memorize and recite a poem of our choice.   I chose The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service.   I still remember and can recite that poem.    

My favorite poet is Robert Frost.    

I have read portions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and I find much of it hard to get through.  Many of his poems continue for multiple pages and seem to ramble on forever.   However, if you are interested in the history of the Civil War (I am not) you must read “Drum Taps”.  There are many books written by historians that chronicle the carnage of the Civil War, but Whitman, a battlefield nurse, puts you there.     You can not but be moved by A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND DIM or feel the futility of  A WOUND-DRESSER.

  

 A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND

DIM.

A SIGHT in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,

As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,

As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital
tent,

Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended
lying,

Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,

Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

Curious I halt and silent stand,

Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just
lift the blanket;

Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd
hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?

Who are you my dear comrade?

Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and
darling?

Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?

Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;

Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself,

Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

the Ol'Buzzard

BE QUIET AND LISTEN

 

 

There is a point in all of us

Somewhere in our DNA

Where nature overtakes nurture

And we are able to hear the cry

From our long forgotten past.

 

It is the wind that speaks to us

Beyond our cell-phones and I-Pads

Beyond our tv’s and computers

When everything that consumes our daily lives

Is shut down and there is silence.

Then we can hear the wind.

 

I have heard it and felt it before

But each time in a place of silence

and alone.  The wind. More than a whisper:

A cry, a howl, a roar – a voice

That brings back a clouded memory

Something through a glass darkly

Of a time when I am dressed in skins

Huddled in a cave or blow down shelter

And the wind outside is warning me

Don’t come out. I am strong. I am Nature.

I am god.

the Ol'Buzzard

 

NINE DEGREES AND FORTY MILES PER HOUR WIND IN MAINE TONIGHT

WIND

I am obsessed with the wind

Of all natures children

Of all natures gods

It is the wind that awes me most

I can view the sunrise and sunset

And feel the sun's warmth on my skin,

I can appreciate the eerie light of a full moon

reflected on a snowbound world,

I can see and hear the tumbling water of a stream

And experience the pleasant serenity of a lake.

But it is the wind

I can welcome the soft touch of a snowflake

as it kisses my face,

And shiver as the rain soaks my clothes

and chills my frame,

I can hear thunder 

and startle at the streak of lightning ripping the sky.

But it is the wind that speaks to me.

I have bask at the fire that brings contentment

and warmth to my home,

And choked as my lungs fill with smoke 

as the forest burned away,

I have driven on the ice

on the Kuskokwim River.

But it is the wind

I have seen the northern light

blaze in the twenty-four-hour night,

I have felt the penetrating chill

of the cold at fifty below,

But it is the wind

the wind I remember most.

Huddled in my bed in a tiny log cabin

In the darkness of the never ending Arctic night

While the wind outside, unrelenting, warned me

‘You do not belong here.  This is my world.  I rule here.  Hear me and quake.”

It is the wind

The relentless wind that keeps me awake tonight.

WIND

I am obsessed with the wind

Of all natures children

Of all natures gods

It is the wind that awes me most

I can view the sunrise and sunset

And feel the sun's warmth on my skin,

I can appreciate the eerie light of a full moon

reflected by a snowbound world,

I can see and hear the tumbling water of a stream

And experience the pleasant serenity of a lake.

But it is the wind

I can welcome the soft touch of a snowflake

as it kisses my face,

And shiver as the rain soaks my clothes

and chills my frame,

I can hear thunder 

and startle at the streak of lightning ripping the sky.

But it is the wind that speaks to me.

I have bask at the fire that brings contentment

and warmth to my home.

And choked as my lungs fill with smoke 

as the forest burned away.

I have driven on the ice

on the Kuskokwim River,

But it is the wind

I have seen the northern light

blaze in the twenty-four hour night,

I have felt the penetrating chill

of the cold at fifty below,

But it is the wind

the wind I remember most

Huddled in my bed in a tiny log cabin

In the darkness of the never ending Arctic night

While the wind outside, unrelenting, warned me

‘You do not belong here.  This is my world.  I rule here.  Hear me and quake.”

It is the wind

The relentless wind that keeps me awake tonight

IF A TREE FALLS AND NO ONE HEARS IT - DID IT FALL?

If a tree falls and no one hears it – did it fall? This is psychobabble from a discipline that really believes that humans matter.


If you lay out a time line of the earth on a football field (100 yards,) human in some form have existed for only the last five inches and Homo sapiens for only a little over an inch.

Even the concept of a time line is a human construct. The universe doesn’t concern itself with time. The universe just is – perhaps. We have invented time to explain our human existence in some lineal context. And, we invent gods in our own image to convince ourselves that we matter and that we are eternal.

The truth is that if we could back up evolution to the very beginning there is no reason to believe that it would evolve in the same manner with the same results. There are too many variables and happenstances that led to our present results; the odds of it happening exactly the same way again would be infinitesimal.

Our petty paltry lives have no meaning. We are here today and gone tomorrow. Old cemeteries are full of the bones of unknowns – people who have no legacy other than linage that will some day be bones with no legacy other than linage – perhaps – and then perhaps not… All our accomplishments are gauged on a human scale – and we are by definition an accident of chaos.

My great-great grandfather lived in western Kentucky among Southern sympathizers. He broke tradition and joined the Union Army dying in Shiloh, leaving one son and a young wife.



One hundred and fifty years later I am the linage of his existence – big deal – and I soon shall soon be gone.

If the human race had improved and had moved to some utopian plane we might divine some purposeful meaning for the dead gone by – or at least an excuse for our existence in a reference to human good. But, we are the same violent, belligerent, destructive, consumer life form, only now with advanced technology and more powerful weapons.

Look at the world: there is no humanity in our race. Religions, political factions, racial prejudice, geographic identity and personal greed drive our human community to constant odds and contention.

In reality it is all for naught. We can not as a life form survive. As much as we deny it, our existence is temporary – brief in time that doesn’t exist.

Are we remarkable in our technology and our art? Yes – at least by our own values. But does it matter? No.

We are here by chance. Yesterday doesn’t exist – or tomorrow. The now – this moment – is all we have. There is no guarantee of a next…

I spent a lifetime in the military and another lifetime since then. I have had a number of near-death experiences. There is no country and no politics and no religion and no philosophy worth dying for. Death is the end. What a waste it would have been.

Do not carry the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or woes and troubles of the moment on your back. They don’t matter in the long run; for tomorrow there will be new dramas and new outrages. You only have this one brief existence, don’t squander it with unfulfilled desires for an existence that does not and can never exist

Take advantage of the accident of life. Look at the colors around you; smell the smells; be aware of the temperature and wind and weather; marvel in the life forms in your ecosystem. Enjoy sex and food and drink and life. Do no harm.



The meaning of life is
There is no meaning of life

The life or Brian



How marvelous,
How wonderful,
I chop wood,
I carry water.

Zen poem



To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

William Blake



Have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard

A STUDY ON DEATH

Much has been written about death and dying.   Death is no stranger to me; I have seen enough of it.   However, my death has not resonated with me until the last few years.   It always seemed as something in such a far distant future as not to warrant concern. 

Even now, at my age, realizing my future is finite, I don’t worry about my demise – I don’t fear it; I view it as the final tribute that I owe to nature for a full and exciting life.

Yorick, I knew him well.

Aubade

A poem by Phillip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. 
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. 
In time the curtain-edges will grow light. 
Till then I see what's really always there: 
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, 
Making all thought impossible but how 
And where and when I shall myself die. 
Arid interrogation: yet the dread 
Of dying, and being dead, 
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. 
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse 
- The good not done, the love not given, time 
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because 
An only life can take so long to climb 
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; 
But at the total emptiness for ever, 
The sure extinction that we travel to 
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, 
Not to be anywhere, 
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. 

This is a special way of being afraid 
No trick dispels. Religion used to try, 
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade 
Created to pretend we never die, 
And specious stuff that says No rational being 
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing 
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound, 
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, 
Nothing to love or link with, 
The anasthetic from which none come round. 

And so it stays just on the edge of vision, 
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill 
That slows each impulse down to indecision. 
Most things may never happen: this one will, 
And realisation of it rages out 
In furnace-fear when we are caught without 
People or drink. Courage is no good: 
It means not scaring others. Being brave 
Lets no one off the grave. 
Death is no different whined at than withstood. 

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. 
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, 
Have always known, know that we can't escape, 
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go. 
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring 
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring 
Intricate rented world begins to rouse. 
The sky is white as clay, with no sun. 
Work has to be done. 
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

“Faith is simply unjustified belief in matters of ultimate concern – specifically in propositions that promise some mechanism by which human life can be spared the ravages of time and death”

The End of Faith - by Sam Harris

“The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far from being on a cruise ship.   Most of your time is spent lying on your back.   The brain has shut down.   The flesh begins to soften.   Nothing much new is expected of you.”

Stiff - by Mary Roach

“The question is not ‘Why must I die?’ but ‘Why have I lived?’”

Christopher Hitchens

“…to die, to sleep - to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub,

For in this sleep what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”

Hamlet – Act 3, scene 1

William Shakespear

Quando Omni

Flunkus Moritati

(When all else fails – play dead)

The Possum Pledge from the Red Green show.

 CHEERS

the Ol'Buzzard

OLD MAN'S 2 a.m. CALLING

He stands before

Her porcelain throne

Watching liquid

c

a

s

c

a

d

i

n

g

Into the small pond

Below

Clean water turning

a golden hue.

PISSING

A BUZZARD EGG OMELET #8

AN ATTEMPT AT POETRY - OF SORTS

There ain’t no bacon in heaven

Cause God won’t let’ye eat pigs

You can’ eat ham or sausage

So what-d-u have with your eggs?

But wait:

You can’t eat eggs in heaven

Cause that’s a chicken’s abortion you-see

No over-easy eggs or omelets

So that ain’t heaven to me.

I don’t want milk and honey

I don’t want tofu and sprouts

If that’s all you eat in heaven

You’re welcome to leave me out

Just give-me pickled eggs and slim jims

And a bottle of bourbon that free

And a willing girl with big tits

And that’ll be heaven for me. 

 the Ol'Buzzard

HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE

Moving from Cosmology in my last blog to the self-exalted divinity of God’s human clones, we might wonder just what place mankind actually holds in the history of the earth.

When I taught school in Alaska, one of the Science projects (Science deserves to be capitalized) I used was to lay out a time line of the earth that began behind the school and ran 100 yards into the bush (spruce forest.)   A path would take observers to the beginning point farthest from the village, and travelers would work their way along the time line back into the village.

Also see:

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/prehistoric-time-line.html

As a math skill the students found 100 yards to be 3600 inches and divided that into 4.5 billion years (the age of the earth) to determine that each inch represented 1.25 million years.   Each group of students were given an era and they had to determine their position on the time line and decorate it with appropriate art work to demonstrate the evolution of the earth during their time period.    Of course a traveler would advance in time finally ending up in the village at present time.

The point I am trying to make with this blog entry is that Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) and her relatives first appeared about 4 million years ago, or 3.2 inches from the end of the timeline; and homo sapiens (modern man) appeared about 200,000 years ago: at .16 or 1/6th of an inch from the end of the 100 yard time line.   We have been here a minuscule amount of time.

Woman kind (for she came first) and her spawn have been on the earth almost an insignificant time when compared with the history of the earth – and because of our self destructive nature our kind will probably be a short lived species



I get a kick when I hear people talk about the end of the world, or Armageddon; for the earth is not going to end as imagined by human reality: we very likely will destroy ourselves and some of the other life forms, but the earth will heal itself and continue to evolve after we are gone.

Of course, at some point in the distant future our solar system will expire according to cosmic law.

But we the people, in our shallowness, create gods in our own likeness, image and liking; and believe that the earth and the heavens and the cosmos are here as a tribute to immortal us and some immortal supreme entity from which we are cloned.

What a self-deluded, self-important, trivial species we are.

The reality is that we are here with some limited reasoning faculty, for a brief time, due to a chance turn on the evolutionary time line; and as such, we should try to appreciate and live fully each day of our allotted time.





This leaky, tumbledown grass hut

left and opening for the moon

and I gazed at it.

All the while it was mirrored

In a deardrop fallen on my sleeve.

Saigyo

ZEN comes as a reminder that if we do not perceive the mystery and beauty of our present life, our present hour, we shall not perceive the worth of any life, of any hour.

-IS is HOLY-

NORTH TO ALASKA

ARCTIC MEMORIES

 The Arctic in his soul
Like a chill from Arctic cold
Holds memories of Arctic places
And dark hair Arctic faces
That haunt his dreams and memories
Now that he’s grown old


How do you explain a place
That’s lost in time and space
Where the sun begins to set
Though it hasn’t risen yet
And the brief light of merging days
Creates a dreamlike eerie pace


Where snow you know is white
Drabs grey in Arctic light
And spruce that should be green
Define black the Arctic scene
A skeletal world of dark and light
That spawns apparitions in Arctic twilight.


Where the wind on dark nights moan
Driving chills down through you bones
And the northern lights aglow
Reflect unearthly on the snow
The frozen scene where reality bends
And visions haunt you when alone.

And the Arctic in his soul
Like a chill from Arctic cold
Holds memories of Arctic places
And dark hair Arctic faces
That no one wants to hear
Now that he’s grown old.

My wife and I taught school in the remote Indian and Eskimo villages of bush Alaska for eleven years. In the Arctic we would get up in the dark, go to school in the dark, come home in the dark and go to bed in the dark. We lived as invaders in a third world culture and were sometimes looked on with disdain.

Writing Poetry (of sorts) became an outlet for me.
I plan to share some Poems over the lifetime of this Blog.

In 1985 my wife and I graduated from college and immediately headed to Alaska for teaching jobs.  We made the trip of almost 6ooo miles in ten days.  










Shortly after arrival we were hired to teach in an Athabascan Indian village about 130 miles north of Fairbanks. 

The village was on the road system, though the trip was arduous.   The road was kept open most of the year, but especially in the winter the trip could be a dangerous so we only make the trek out three or four times a year.







Haul Road



road to the village



The village was one hundred and thirty miles north of Fairbanks: seventy-five miles up the gravel “Haul Road” to Prudhoe Bay and then fifty-five miles on a one lane dirt road into the village. The trip to Fairbanks took between four and five hours when the roads were passable. We would usually travel to Fairbanks on food or medical runs and occasionally on school holidays to touch base with our own culture.  

WINTER TRAVEL

The road gets long going into Fairbanks,

As November winds swirl and howl and blow up drifts;

And darkness settles in early at the Pass.

The road to the village at fifty below zero.

When we arrived in the village for our first teaching job the village Chief came over to indoctrinate us. Among other things he said that the village had two wells we could draw water from. One was at the generator shed but it was polluted so we should use the one at the lodge (community building.) A few weeks later he came and told us that the well at the lodge was polluted so we should use the one at the generator shed. A few weeks later he came and told us the one at the generator shed was polluted so we should use the one at the lodge – this continued in some form for the rest of the year (We went into Fairbanks and bought a water distiller.)

The next year the state put in a new well at the fuel farm – and guess what… they struck fuel oil in the water.

Snow melt water

The third year the government paid for a new well but it was placed in a low swampy are and in the spring time the swamp flooded and polluted the well.

When we came in for our fifth year a new well had been drilled but half way through the winter the well went dry. We melted snow for bathing and dishes, and on the weekends traveled to the nearest village at the end of the road, fifty miles further down, to do our wash and bring back water.

THE WELL DILEMMA

It’s winter in Alaska

And it’s forty below.

The wind it’s howling

And it is starting to snow

One new well’s polluted

Another’s run dry.

The one drilled this winter

Doesn’t work – don’t ask why.

Five wells in five years

And you’re still afraid to drink.

For the water looks like coffee

And has a god-awful stink.



Winter road to the nearest village
to wash clothes and get drinking water.



So come this weekend

We’ll risk winter slaughter.

Driving a hundred miles

For ten lousy gallons of water

They also had a Road House
we could get a hamburger and beer
Our village was dry.



Death is not an unusual occurrence in the village. People die from old age, from fights over women and from alcohol and drug related incidences.  Many of the villages are only accessible by air and air crashes are fairly common.  

The Stick Dance to communicate with the dead.

In 1990 a young principal in our school district in an arctic village died in a plane crash.  He was married to a native and had three young girls and an infant son.  He was traveling with his girls into Fairbanks when the bush plane crashed on takeoff.  He was thrown clear but went back into the burning plane for his daughters.  His wife and infant son were not traveling with them. 

A good man dies an agonizing death

Only after finding his children dead

The woman who yesterday had a family, laughing, talking, dancing

Today is all alone-

The past wiped out in one unbelievable moment.

There is no god that would allow this.

In 1990 we had been teaching in the same village for five years (most teachers only last two or three years in the bush.) We liked teaching Native children and felt we were good at it. Our gold was to remain bush teachers until we could vest in a retirement and truly retire.

DAY DREAM 1990

I would like to see a time

When I can sit with pen and rhyme
No obligations to a job
No firm commitment time to rob
With days to do as I should please
To walk the woods and smell the breeze
And sit beside a roaring fire
And gloat because I am retired.


We stayed in Alaska for eight years.  When we left we moved around, did some travel and finally returned to Maine.   In 2004 we returned to Alaska for three years where I was principal in two southwestern villages.  More on that at sometime in the future. 


A link to a web page for Alaska teachers and visitors:   Alaska Web Sights