Varnish, a firefly, and the vanishing dragonflies

Did you ever read a book that left you with the feeling that there was more there below the surface then you could grasp? Ben Lerner's new book, The Hatred of Poetry, did that to me today. Especially the last six or seven pages of what might be termed an essay or maybe not. Twice while reading it this AM the eerie occurred.  He imagines as a child uttering the words vanish or varnish while pointing at an object such as a back hoe or tree or a neighbor. He says, "If you are five and you point to a sycamore or an idle backhoe or a neighbor stooped over his garden or to images of these things on a television set and utter "varnish " or utter "vanish" you will never be only incorrect; if your parent or guardian is curious, she can find a meaning that makes you almost  eerily prescient-the neighbor is dying, losing weight, or the backhoe has helped a structure disappear or is glazed with rainwater or the sheen of spectacle lends to whatever appears onscreen a strange finish.To derive your understanding of a word by watching others adjust to your use of it: Do you remember the feeling that sense was provisional and that two people could build around an utterance a world in which any usage signified? I think that's poetry...."
About four years ago I wrote a poem titled Melancholia and the Age of Varnish. I used those two words varnish and vanish . In my poem they carried for me that same feeling he describes.

I put this book down to watch a young dragonfly hover over a car parked along the street in front of the sidewalk where I sat drinking coffee downtown. He would zip away and suddenly return to a holding pattern over the car roof. I realized it was gazing at its reflection. At that moment another one entered, zig- zagging around the first. Then they tore off together, one tailing the other like Top Gun. They skirted from one end of the street to the other. I thought of where their home might be. Then the reflection and the arrival of another made me think of relationship. When I returned to the book I hadn't read very far before I came to this: "(A few summers ago I attended an aggressively mediocre opera at a gorgeous outdoor theater in Santa Fe, and when my boredom had deepened into something like a trance, I happened to see from our distant seats a single firefly slowly flashing around the orchestra, then floating onto the stage, then drifting back beyond the proscenium: its light appearing here in New Mexico and then three leagues from Seville, here in clock time and there in the continuous present tense of art...)"

Hom

There I am across the street

In my yellow raincoat, 

the hooded rain hat, 

the rubber boots clanking.

 Scuffle, scuffle. 

She will read to us. 

The Black Stallion. 

I am on a cushion

made by my Dad. 

I am dreaming as

She reads. Isn't that

what listening is?

The boy is at the center

of my mind. All day

and into the night. 

In the middle of the

night I wake up. 

There is no room

for anything beside 

the horse. Everything

is the Black. 

In the morning 

I remember Her voice. 

She is reading. 

I am listening...

I am in love. 

Bhavana

I tagged the little ant as he scurried around on my car. I was parked in a city lot.
I realized I had carried the ant far from home.  Instinctively I brushed him to the
asphalt vaguely thinking it would be safer. As he danced about I began to imagine
what he might be up to. A re-orientation of sorts? I imposed an idea of destination,
wondering if the ant's idea of home included a non-local sensibility. What we did share
was an almost incomprehensible sense of each other.  But out of this musing emerged
another: that the ant's situation is mine as well.  The Great Movement is afoot everywhere.
The bigger vehicle carrying me is vast and essentially unknowable. Yet I dance, adjust
the dials, ever attenuating a desire to go home. Later, in my driveway, I daydreamed about
a tiny technology that would allow me to monitor the ant's movements. Would he adapt, resettle, carry a bodily habit that informed his journey?  Or would a mysterious directive carry him toward home. I stood there looking east toward downtown.

Strategic Withdrawal

David James Duncan
Strategic Withdrawal

any movement inward
            -- as into a chair by a window the light of which you use only to stare into a cup of tea
            -- or as into a habit of tea-drinking, as opposed to coffee, because the former behaves so much more quietly within the body, so softly helps open the eyes and the mind
            -- or as in letting the eyes come to a standstill, in some space on the page of a book you’ve been reading, in order to stare at nothing, or at something inside, or at something neither inside nor out – an association-sprung scene, an entire small world, maybe; a place so pungent you leave your body to stand in it for a time
            -- or as turning over a handwritten letter, before or after you’ve read it, to run your hand across a blank side, the written words invisible now, yet palpable in the impressions the pen left in the paper, the strange backward slant you never think of as being there, the earnest weight of the writer’s departed hand, physical track of her thought still traceable, the “handicraft” evident in the paucity of words, the whole page, though we think of paper as “smooth,” as idiosyncratically and subtly bumpy as the skin of your love’s body, in which also dwells a reverse side, unseen side, of breath, blood, inchoate words, nonverbal language
            strategic withdrawal: any movement backward, away from the battle lines of one’s incarnation (as in the phrase “spiritual retreat” but without the once-in-a-blue-moon connotations of those two words, because the backward movement needed, the spiritual retreat required, is moment to moment, day to day)
            strategic withdrawal: any refusal to man our habitual political or psychological trenches or to defend our turf, for though the turf may be holy, our defenses, when they grow automatonic, are not
            any refusal to engage with that testy or irritating or ideologically loud or theologically bloated person in your life – you know the one: the agitatedly racist or religionist, politically powerful or compulsively processing pedant, coworker, parent, friend, or (God help you) spouse whose opinions are too poorly formed, too loudly held, or just too incessantly divulged to allow you to achieve peace in the presence of so much clanging banging editorializing mental machinery
            any retreat (however ignominious it may seem to the will or the mind or the ego) not just from all such exchanges but from the underlying tensions and history that launch the exchanges (your side of the tensions and history, anyway: the side you’ve an inalienable right to retreat from)
            any movement away from one’s “urgencies,” one’s “this-is-who-I-am” nesses, one’s responsibilities, agitations, racial guilt, sworn causes, shames, strengths, weaknesses, memories, workaday, identity, public or secret battlefields
            any movement toward formlessness
            silence
            emptiness
            primordiality
            any movement toward a beginning, as in Genesis 1, John 1, Quran Tao Te Ching Diamond Sutra Mahabharata Kalevala Mumonkan Ramayana Torah Gita 1
            and toward one’s own “in the beginning”
            toward one’s origin (root of originality); toward one’s ignorance (that underrated state the embracing of which precedes every influx of fresh knowledge); toward one’s amorphousness (state of all clay before the potter conceives a form, wedges the clay, centers it, and begins throwing the cup or bowl); toward one’s interior blankness (the state of the paper preceding every new idea, drawing, poem); toward one’s wilderness (wild: the condition of all worlds, inner and outer, before the creation of the man-made bewilderments from which we are endeavoring to withdrawal0
            strategic withdrawal:
            any attempt to step from a why, however worthy, into whylessness
            as in an extemporaneous walk to a destination unknown; a walk during which everything but your movement through God-knows-where becomes the God-knows-what you’re doing
            or as in going fishing without the desire for fish so that desirelessness becomes the prey you’re catching
            or as in a stroll to a neighborhood café or tavern one or more neighborhoods removed from any in which you’re known, which establishment you then enter not to socialize, read the paper, or eat the (probably bad) food, but just to nurse a single slow drink as you soak, without judgment, in the presence and riverine babble of your city and native tongue
            strategic withdrawal: any act you can devise, any psycho-spiritual act at all, that embodies a willingness to wait for the world to disclose itself to you, rather than to disclose yourself, your altruism, your creativity, skills, energy, ideas, and (let’s face it) agenda, myopia, preconceptions, delusions, addictions, and inappropriate trajectories to this world
            willingness to drop trajectories; willingness to boot up with all extensions OFF; willingness not to save the world but simply to wait for it to disclose itself to you, whether anything seems, even after long long waiting, to be disclosing itself or not
            an act of faith then, really; faith that the world is always disclosing itself; faith that lack of disclosure is impossible; faith that what blocks Creation’s ceaseless flow of disclosure is, invariably, our calluses and callousness, our old injuries and injuriousness, our plans, cross-purposes, neuroses, absurd speed of passage, divided minds, ruling manias, lack of trust, lack of faith – overabundance of faith, cf. Thomas Merton: ‘Prayer is possible only when prayer is impossible”
            strategic withdrawal: to step back, now and then, from the possible to take rest in the impossible: to stand without trajectory in the God-given weather till the soul’s identity begins to come with the weathering: to get off my own laboriously cleared and maintained trails and back onto the pristine hence unmarked path by moving, any old how, toward interior nakedness; toward silence; toward what Buddhists call “emptiness,” Christians “poverty of spirit,” Snyder “wild,” and Eckhart “desirelessness: the virgin that eternally gives birth to the Son”
            strategic withdrawal: this prayer: When I am lost, God help me to get more lost.  Help me lose so completely that nothing remains but the primordial peace and originality that keeps creating and sustaining this blood-, tear-, and love-worthy world that’s never lost for an instant save by an insufficiently lost me
            “We’re all in the gutter,” said Oscar Wilde in the throes of just such a withdrawal, “but some of us are looking at the stars”
            strategic withdrawal:
            look at the stars

Shepardstown, West Virginia; cross country
Delta jet; and Lolo, Montana: summer 1999

-David James Duncan
My Story As Told By Water

The Remote Bird

A code, a lens,

for connectedness. 

A switch, the taunt

string between two cans. 

-No! Stringless. 

Just the two. Just 

the ocean in each one. 

-No! Just my hand cupped

like a wing on my ear

and yours the same. 

Why is this happening?

-the failure to regard-

the distant distance

where I carry my heart

like a small tree

turning to the sun. 

I turn then, over and over

until it feels like a dance. 

The light is always on my head,

An earworm, a remainder,

a lesson in no news. 

In that movie

I say stop. 

There again

the pointing to,

the lack of. 

Nothing is crucial,

not the dying

not the grocery aisles. 

But a just inserts itself,

asserting a constant moment,

attenuating a frequency,

a modulation 

of longing for

your presence. 

Near me 

A small bird

fluffed

lands sharply

on a branch. 

Can you hear it

where you are?

Crow takes a turn

curbside crow
lying like 
dark gloves.
white  
market body bag.
trash can.
night clan dream.
exhumed.
buried among
lilies.
overhead-
they count.

Trance/Atlantic

Take it from me  now.

You are standing.
Facing sea.
When you speak
your voice draws a ray.
You call it shoreline.
The moment you demarcate it,
it is yours, not to be shared.
But then the moon and the
pulling, bruised night
take back this possessive.
You look down.
Your blue feet are an inscription.
Under the hood of cloud cover
you ask for more light.
You need more light.
The shine rolls away, leaving
this opaque gender,  loss.
You want to ignore these shapes.
Feet are so familiar, too final.
After endless illuminations
they settle under a shore that sparkles.
Beneath the next moon you
try to explain with gestures,
hands that sign deja vu,
that hold nothing
and release everything.

Google This

All along the mnemonic path
I had left little devices to
Catch those yesterdays'
New things of old.
Snares of a sort, a pinwheel
Or two. Were they spinning
Clockwise or counter?
A cleanly seen associate.
What does that feeling of
Approximation feel like?
The person, the word,
The time of that year?
What I am tempted to do
I fear will destroy that impulse
To natively remember from
Within my own mind.
Once a memory, now,
Just information retrieved.
Much of what is easy is,
Like absorbent cotton, mopping
Up for me. A dumb provider.
Sit down false necessity.
Let me do this myself.
Give me a little time,
Just a little time.

An Appreciation of the Sun

The sun looks for me.

It is undaunted in the

Way it searches. 

Not the naked dirty elm

Nor the highest floor

Will stand in it's way.

It sketches the winter lilac

On the house. 

The dog's doppelgänger 

runs across the wall

Like vanishing Charcoal. 

Inexpensive zircon

sparkles in the snow. 

Glint of tiny prisms. 

Holograms. 

The word welcome

Comes to mind. 

It floats from my mouth. 

A small enough cloud. 

The sun climbs on me

Looking into my eyes. 

dressing me in 

Whatever's available.

Out of the blue,

The mysterious blue,

It buttons each button. 

I celebrate mid-morning. 

Such a wardrobe. 

Such an ever-light necessity.

Spell

The marks were of precision.
They ran from stage left to right.
No one remembered 

the shortness of just hands,
the way they carried water,
the touch of the not visible life
sustained in the same way
we awoke each day and
prayed the sun up.

The televised life is a sleight.
Sparks of electricity, furious voices,
images formed from small fires.
Long lost immediacy and repetition.
Messages carried by a messenger
bringing the final message.
The thing to be extinguished.

"I hear voices," my young son said.
The subvocal is shirtless,
squinting, smoking a cigarette.
Now he wears a raincoat,
now a soft blanket over his shoulder.
Finally a dark hat pulled low.
"Don't believe everything you hear,"

He says. 

The u-turns are flocking.
Through a doorway a long look
grows, breaks the surface,
breathes, then branches down
into the source.

The look is taken in hand.

Finding the Source ?

So we, being Kim, me and kids, set out for Ewing Park yesterday.  Sugar Creek quietly slices through this little bird and butterfly watching park. And after a previous recon  involving Sierra and me we came dressed to wade the mighty creek in search of its source and encounter it's wild life. But even Kim's waders would succumb to the depths of this deceptive stream. First we encountered a  soft shell turtle the size of an eight piece pizza. I picked it up to see how far it would think it was going while practicing "air running". I quickly placed him back in the stream as Jeremiah had warned me this turtle was a snapper and it would eat us. Further upstream we encountered a beautiful butterfly that hitched a ride on Kim's butt. I later identified it as a Question Mark.

Not Kim's butt, the butterfly. . Later the kids saw what they described as a Rat snake further down stream. Jeremiah worried it was poisonous but Sierra quickly said "only if you're a rat!" Since we never reached the source of Sugar Creek we will make another expedition in the future with supplies and chips. 

An explanation

Trouble with explaining about poetry:The words are always carrying on a clandestine affair with each other, and implicating the thought.

                                                         -William Stafford

Free hand

I am running out of ways I can note my hand.

Laying it on a scale is hopeless.

Each assay takes me further away 

from what I am searching for. 

Like a forgetting, the space around it

becomes mapless, without orientation.

I am losing my hand 

or

is my hand lost?

I inquire within over and over.

 I feel like I've just 

entered another room

where I can't recall

why I came into it.

Approaching  Planck

what appears to be form

seems to be dissolving.

Hand appears and disappears,

pouring itself into emptiness.

Repeating...

Until I type this...

Discretion

Where time was on my wrist

I find a small feed.

Less time, more minding.

Wind is blowing through my palm.

I awaken to a wren tapping

on the back of my hand.

All else is so much foam,

its false iridescence sinking

slowly into the warm waters.

I sight down my arm 

feeling the weather 

climb upon my shoulder.

The feed is like a tune that

holds everything growing.

Whether it be dark pressure

or something green unfolding

what is discrete is 

becoming what I know.

Only the faint outline of

a timepiece remains.

Listen.

Samsara

I said, "I'm repeating myself."
"The devil may care," he said.
"I need institutionalized," I said.
"The devil must care," he said.

We were on a junket and
everyone was talking
about the past.
I remember all these people,
the blue turban, the lost pocket watch,
the flying cap, the forecasting.

Once I was at a horse race,
losing my ticket for that horse.

"I fired a weapon," I heard myself say.
"In someone's direction."

"We pick up the path as we go,"
said the little man sitting on the rock.
"Back is gone."
"Choose."

Necessary

                   l

When I talk a block of wood
comes out of my mouth.
Something whittles it down,
something slowly rocking.
It sits now in the square
overlooking a few benches,
a gentle. quiet reminder of
what I said.

                     ll

A few debate what the design says.
It speaks to some
and holds its tongue
for others.

                     lll

I sit on one of the benches,
positioned to the left
of what I said.
The sun reaches down
caressing the texture of it.
Traffic slows.
"It deserves more," I think.

                       lV

What I said has moved on.
Was it my comment, my reaching?
A light rain is falling on the square.
From the coffee shop where I sit
I notice the green impression
is still there.

                         V

I can't seem to remember
if I could have carried it.
I conclude it was enough
that what I said
stood alone for a while,
outside my
somewhat restless,
lighter,  blue,  self.

Nocturnal

                                                            For Kim


I wish I had more time to know you
when we sleep.
The knowing summons me to a tryst
where no one is there.
Not you,  not me,
only the tentative cat pressure,
the deep southern groan of the dog,
the rain quietly wanting in.

As I lay there it feels like you
are the rain,  the dog,  cat.
Suddenly you release a little snore.
Like a sounding.
"Deep six" says the pole dipping deeply.
No grounding tonight,
safe passage below this tangled
supra-structure of legs akimbo,
arms hugging pudgy white flotsam.

My legs make a crossing and
we become a soft,  implicit raft,
turning,  eddying.
Direction is not in the geography
of where we are.
I let my arm slip off the side
into the cool darkness.
Water sings around my hand.
The tune is movement and
movement reaches for me
like a destination,
like home,  like knowing you.

Return to Normal, situation fucked up

Let's look at the expectations: Day one Sunday- nice leisurely train ride to Chicago, art, cultural center, a shoe store the size of Costco, great breakfast at our favorite place, Lou Mitchell's, a wonderful bookstore Unabridged Book Store on North Broadway, check in at our conveniently located hotel. More of the same  to come on Monday with our favorite, Patricia Barber, at the Green Mill that night. And Tuesday too, Only thing, the only thing, was at about 5:30 Sunday upon awakening from a little siesta, Kim asks me for her little blue pouch with her insulin and her post cataract surgery eye drops. Only problem is, The Onliest Problem, I left that pouch at home on the coffee table next to the pullover I took out of my backpack. Well shit. The only train to Normal that night was leaving at 7. Now it is nearing six so we bolt, like Jack and Sandy in the Out of Towners. Only matter is, I have been nursing a fever since the day before. We reach the terminal downtown where I ring out my shirt.  Only deal is there are no seats says the ticket woman. But the supervisor finds three available if we pay the difference. Since I am considered a senior and look like a senior senior at this point,  with temp climbing, we are able to get on with the first batch and sit together. "And sit together" being the highlight of the afternoon. The whole ridiculous thing, loss of hotel room, insulin, Patricia Barber, sleep, etc, was so over the top that Kim and I began to laugh. What else was there? We did buy new running shoes at Galactic World of Feet, left our old ones in the room along with Kim's socks and bras. Chica-go we loved you.

Sake

                 1

I am pinned down by fire,

-pernicious-

that has taken up residence.

It rides with me,

like fungus under a nail.

Somewhere, deeper behind the scene

it can be pulled under,

meadowed by its imagination.

Brown is greening.

                2

Behind the barn a lovely bird

waits to be seen.

I have seen it thrice.

Each time it blurs

as it lifts.

I catch a color,
different each time.
Has it arrived or
is it leaving?
Smalt, mulberry, canary.

                3

More of what I see
is less recognized.
More of what I feel
trumps the unrecognized.
I correct myself:
The movement is not
in my mind,
it is my mind.
Add color for definition.

Lemon jello

                                     

                           I

Everything wants yellow.
The morning sand is undressing.
The blue-green lake forgets its sunscreen.
The sandbar lifts, showing a touch of banana.
Clear glass rests in the sand, a topaz wannabe.
"Show me," I say to the mallard along the shore.
"Here and here," he says without saying anything.
Light.


                   II

The age of yellow is over.
The night mountains are gone.
The sandbar is free to move about.
In this time
there are no designated hitters on Tuesdays.
Television is offered randomly.
You may be the one to see it.
Maybe not...
A church is no longer a place.
It is a sound we make when we sneeze.
And sneeze is a clip of emptiness.
Sacred.


                 III

Then everyone slept. For quite a while.
They say it was an extension of giving up.
It went on. It passed.
The guardians drifted away.
Memory lost its static.
Roll miracle of binocular vision.
Everywhere, a flutter followed
by the earliest idea, then a later one
that connected back to the earlier.
Wings.