My father dead now for interminable years. Won’t leave me in peace, doesn’t want to go. I see him every day. My old man hides in trees, in water, in clouds of smoke escaping from secretary cigarettes, or he enters like a thief through my windows and he steals my food.
He’s a live wire. He’s capable of hiding himself on the moon and he tells me, son, nothing remains. Nothing remains.
My father planted in his Mexican soil, laying roots into the dark meadow of forget, shines. When I turn off the lamp, his face throws sparks in the corner. When I make love, he comes running. When I step out to the street, he pursues me through the eyes of homeless children. He wears heels of gold. He smells my coffee. I see him without seeing him and he says, son, nothing remains. Nothing remains.
My father dead already and turned to dust, cries tears of clay. With the voice of stones, he shouts, he sings, his final advice.
Son, your life is one coin. Spend yourself well for nothing remains. Nothing remains of me.
Despairing of God, I came to the desert seeking saints.
The tongue of the tribe sleeping in my family
whispers spiny songs: chumpaco / place where they killed
the dogs: huirives / bird: bacochibampo / the water of the
serpents: bajeribampo / water of the lizards: cuirimpo /
the place of the drummers.
American poet Wallace Stevens constantly spoke in his poetry about the creation of art. This sort of “art looking at itself” move has a danger of being too self-referential and one might fear that it would sit with the reader as unresolved as being between two mirrors. I think today’s subtle poem works, despite those risks, and we’ll see if my performance of it brings out something that you may not have noticed in it.
Stevens, though wordier than Emily Dickinson*, often has his poetry seem like a riddle or puzzle, and though his poems have a surface beauty one can see right off, they also sometimes work like a lawyerly contract with the reader, full of obscure words and fine-print sub-clauses that you may not fully understand.
Let’s listen to Stevens read his poem himself.
One can hear background noises outside the room in this recording, so Stevens’ voice…
Once the process of bringing forth new life passes, leaves fall, vines become brittle to the touch, and seeds are transported to new lands where life can begin anew when the rains return.
There is reason to believe that the rains will not return, or at least with so little only the hardiest of the hardy will survive when the heat of the new normal bakes the already dry land.
What will come of this wasteland? A land where the winds carry a deadly virus bringing death to weakest of the weak, where many feel they are not accomplices to what caused the suffering.
Mountain Wildflowers of Southern Arizona — A Field Guide to the Santa Catalina Mountains and Other Nearby Ranges by Frank S. Rose
When I began hiking the mountains of southern Arizona, I always had my camera with me. If you follower of this blog, you know there are many photos of beautiful mountain wildflowers, most of which I could not identify. However, Frank S. Rose made it easy for me to put names with the photos with the publication of his field guide in 2011.
For years before the guide’s publication, Frank spent summers painting watercolor images of the wildflowers. But, much like myself, he experienced difficulty identifying the wildflowers. It wasn’t until Frank got to know Joan Tedford, Bob Porter and other Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists spending time with them on their weekly nature walks, that he began to work on his photographic field guide.
Thank you, Frank, for your many hours and miles of walking, searching, photographing and learning about flowers from which so many of us have benefited.
— kenne
Joan Tedford, Debbie Bird, Edi Moore, Heather Murphy, and Frank Rose (May 2, 2016) — Images by kenne
In this video, Frank Rose tells the story of how he met Joan Tedford.
“Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times
the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the
odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would
be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff.
Don’t be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and
worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking
the gift horse in the mouth—remember that you are a
Black Swan.”
― from The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
Overnight I posted “Celebrating Walt Whitman,” which includes a poem on Whitman by Allen Ginsberg. This morning I received a comment from Jnana Hodson — “Oh, thanks for sharing Allen’s poem! It’s one I wasn’t familiar with, though it certainly reinforces the inspiration of Whitman on the Beat. Do we dare wonder what either of them would make of Covid?”
I replied — “Interesting thought — anybody’s guess. However, Whitman dealt with a lot of death.
I love Ginsberg’s reference to García Lorca by the watermelons. Shows global respect by artists for Whitman.
“Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies . . .” –from Ode to Walt Whitman
Whitman’s poetry has a way of connecting the world around us. Here’s a link to Robert Pinsky reading Whitman’s “Election Day, November, 1884.” https://robertpinsky.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/four-poems-a-post-election-anthology/
— kenne
Poetry lovers at a Walt Whitman Reading, the Corner Pub, Conroe, Texas — Image by kenne
That which eludes this verse and any verse, Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind, Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly, Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss, Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion, Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner, Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose, Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted, Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d, 10 Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.
— from “A Riddle Song” by Walt Whitman
If you are one of those who think poetry is boring and you can’t relate to…
Lowell Mick White Reading at the 2008 Walt Whitman Birthday Celebration in Conroe, Texas — Image by kenne
A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self- conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Sonoran Desert Sunrise — Image by kenne
Black Swan — Source: Pinterest 
Poetry lovers at a Walt Whitman Reading, the Corner Pub, Conroe, Texas — Image by kenne
Under the Golden Leaves (Mt. Lemmon in Southern Arizona) — Image by kenne
