Jackpine Sonnet

Narrow Straits

Narrow Straits
A Jackpine Sonnet

Who threw the frog
that blocked the word stream
flowing through my throat?

The full moon whispered her secret
as she drifted past my window.

I tried to repeat her words
but I couldn’t move my lips
and my dry mouth tied
my tongue into little knots.

No sounds rose through
the airways of my lungs,
even though I am able to speak
in several different tongues.

The languages I love
were all backed up
in the narrow straits
of my throbbing throat,
never to be untied
by this sad season’s tide.

Comment:

So many allusions, so many illusions, so many elusions – where should I begin? Possibly with the loss of speech and then of language. How does one lose one’s speech? So many ways. A cough, a cold, laryngitis, a frog in the throat, a cake crumb caught half way down that makes one choke and splutter and rendered speechless. Stage fright can do it too. Standing there, in the spotlight, mouth open, no sound emerging.

Fear can act the same way – the word once said, can never be recalled – and so, one day, suddenly, we are afraid to open our mouths, afraid to share our thoughts aloud, afraid to speak out, afraid to stand out from the crowd. Hush. Keep quiet. Don’t say it aloud. Disobedience and doubt are no longer allowed.

Oh look, there’s Moo, peering over my shoulder. “Sky Blues,” he says. “My paintings speak for themselves. They don’t need words and they know no fear. That’s why I am here. To let color and line (and the proper spelling of colour) disperse your fear. ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ And one day I will paint you a rose, and you can see that it is a rose and you can call it what you want, but it will still be a rose and smell as sweet.” “You mean you put perfumes in your paints,” I asked him, “so that a painted rose smells like a real rose?” “Do you mean you stick frogs in other people’s throats,” he replied, “and create word dams so that language doesn’t flow?” “I don’t do that,” I replied. “Other people do it to me.”

“Now, now,” said Moo. “Remember Juan Ramón Jiménez – “No la toques más. Así es la rosa.” “Don’t retouch it any more. Roses are just like that.” “And word dams,” I asked him. “You can always remove them with a paint brush, and a little touch of the imagination,” Moo replied. “Well,” I said. “Can you now? Imagine that!”

Thumper

Thumper
A Jackpine Sonnet

How quietly she moves,
the old one, scarcely
disturbing the floorboards
way above my head.

Such a light touch
as she tip-toes from
room to room,
her floor my ceiling.

Not at all like the young one
with her two left feet,
both flat, and her elephantine
shaking the floor overhead.

We often wondered if
the earth was quaking,
the house shaking,
with the ceiling about
to come tumbling down
upon our waiting heads.

Comment:

How silent, the house, with the visitors gone and me and my beloved back together, alone, as we have been for so many years. The silence is broken only by the tick-tock of the grandfather clock, an occasional creak from a floorboard expanding in the sun, or creaking in the shade, the hiss of the kettle … a silence so deep that sometimes we gesture to each other or whisper low.

Don Ryan came over to visit and joy and noise returned. I made him coffee and he brought us a fudge delight. My beloved took refuge in the silence of the front porch and Don Ryan and Don Roger planned their future adventures. We will be working again together soon. Our first task – to finish reading Don Quixote and to complete our notes on our readings, suspended, alas, during the summer work season, but soon to return when university goes through its September Rebirth.

After Don Quixote, we will probably explore two picaresque novels, Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler. That will be great fun for both of us, and I look forward to preparing the readings and their annotations.

When Don Ryan left, our table top noise melted away, silence returned, and Clare with it. Other friends will be visiting soon. They will break the silence with a soft tap on the door and a gentle voice calling “Hello!” We look forward to that. Meanwhile all is quiet and silence is golden.

Until the arrival of Moo. “Hello,” he bellows. “Writing again? Have I got a painting for you. You thought the little ones were noisy… well, speak for your self. Here’s your painting, Et Tu, Mu. It comes from Julius Caesar, the play. And remember, when you and Don Ryan get together you’re just as noisy as the little ones. And I am too, when I’m with you. That’s why the painting’s called Et tu, Mu. Time to go.”

Out he went, thumping and clumping, and left me to the tap of the computer keys and the ticking of the grandfather clock.

Departures

Departures
A Jackpine Sonnet

For Yolande
whose children left
the same day as mine

the house’s silence speaks
a dream language
full of touch and tone
and shared emotions
that still reach out

floorboards creaking
mimic the tip-toe dance
of visitors now departed

the chair beside me
at the breakfast table
stands empty this morning

the armchair cushions
in the tv room where they sat
now sink beneath the weight
of my hollow heart

Comment:

When Moo read this poem, he thought very carefully and, brow puckered, said “It’s not all bad. It’s not the dark night of the soul and I see Glimpses of blue sky. Here – this is the painting for that poem.” He gave me the one you see above, unsigned and unnamed. “I call it Glimpses of Blue Sky,” he told me.

Sometimes Moo can be very nice and sometimes he can be a pain in the you-know-what. I guess you’ve got one or two of those in your family too. Moody Blues, they are, who turn into Moody Moos, and act like sea-cows up at Skinner’s Pond, or else where on the Island. And no, that’s not the Island in Island View, not my Island View anyway, because here there are no Islands to be seen. We live on the far side from the river. The river – if this drought continues much longer, we end up with no river at all.

We used to get nine feet (three meters) of snow every winter. Two winters ago, I used my magic snow blower on three occasions. Last winter, I didn’t use it once. Jackie, my jovial black lab loved water. In the spring she could dive in the ditch and swim all the way around the block. Now the ditches run dry, the grass is gray rather than green, and the crab apples are about the size of raisins.

Global warming > climate change > climate crisis > climate disaster ….. you choose your own terminology, I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but don’t tell me that everything is business as usual and that there’s nothing to worry about.

A couple of our neighbors are worried about the aquifer we all share. They get dirty tap water. Wells are of varying depths. Several of the less deep drillings are showing sign of strain. And yes, the St. John River, the river that the local indigenous call the River of Plenty, is plenty empty right now and flowing very slow. The salmon disappeared a long time ago and now the waters are following them into oblivion.

Well, I suppose that is also a departure of sorts, a very worrying one for some of us. Moo can paint Glimpses of Blue Sky, but hard as I try, when I look at storm clouds building and the rain never falling, I find it difficult to see them.

Limp-Along-Cassidy

Limp Along Cassidy
A Jackpine Sonnet

My creativity lay crippled.
I picked up two fountain pens,
held one in each hand, a pair
of walking sticks or crutches,
but nothing happened.

My mind did not pick up its bed
and walk. My tongue tripped
between my teeth and refused
to move, let alone to talk the talk.

Reason and rhyme fled
from my head, and walked
a cross between a plank and
a frost crossed midnight road
of petty, lisping syllables that
struggled and limped and lost
themselves as they wandered
the labyrinth that wrapped
and mapped my empty head.

Comment:

Moo and I have both been on walkabout, absent without leave, wandering a deserted desert road filled with rocks and sand and not a glimpse of grass or a flower. Hour after hour, day after day, not a singe inspiring thought or brush stroke coming our way. We sat at the table, looking at an empty page of snow, with not a footprint upon it.

Why do these things happen? I don’t know. I have never worried about writer’s block, and Moo has never worried, to my knowledge, about painter’s block. The shock of the shadow of nothingness lay upon us both and even the coffee tasted differently.

Then, suddenly the dam broke. Moo painted five paintings in two days. I wrote four poems in that same time period. Suddenly, the silence lay broken, the plank had been walked, and we found ourselves safe on the other side of whatever it was that had come between us and our respective joys.

A dark night of the creative soul, perhaps. Luckily it was followed by a creative dawn. Light broke where no sun shone and suddenly those minds of our sparkled with creative gems once again. I reached out to Moo and we hugged each other. “It’s over,” we said. Then we changed ends and life and the grass was so much greener on the other side.

May it never happen again, we sighed. But I am sure it will. And I hope it never happens to one of you. If it does, just breathe deep, believe, examine the joys of that silent midnight, and wait for the dawn.

Detour

Detour
A Jackpine Sonnet

My way or the high way –
but by which route,
the four-leaf clover,
the new roundabout,
or the old flyover?

Who cares when there’s
only one bridge open
to cross the river
and that one with
two lanes closed
and the traffic flow
now reduced to single
file and an endless
nose to tail.

Amazing how often
our modern roads
need repairing
and how seldom
local motorists are open
to sharing and caring.

Comment:

Summer, holiday season, tourists in from all parts – add them together, and what do you get? Road works, of course. Construction. Old roads being newly tarmacked. Detours. And not a clue as to how to get from a – z without following a million arrows, none of which fly straight to your target.

As the crow flies. But no crow I know flies like this. Unless he’s discovered a supply of Newfoundland Super Screech with the power to lift an aircraft off the ground, not to mention to loop-the-loop with all the passengers safely wearing their seat-belts. Australia – here we come. The Antipodes, remember!

Earlier, of course, it was pothole season. And we all remember that. Now it is summer caravan and trailer time. This morning, as I was driving past the RV park, three half-tons pulling caravans pulled out ahead of me and three more tucked in behind. Now I know what it’s like being a thin slice of ham or cheese between six crusty loaves of bread.

Ah well, one-stop shopping. Get out – one stop – pick it all up – and get back home safe. That’s the way to do it, as we have done before!

Earworms

Earworms

A meaningless collection of notes
swarms into my empty head
swimming round and round
like clustering tadpoles.

The ebb and flow of that mysterious
music clumps on and on, tight in
 my mind and will not let me go.

Earwigs, some call them,
those senseless repetitions,
day after day, night after night,
awake and asleep,
old tv adverts, short clips
of classical music or popular songs.

They are wheelbarrow songs,
hedge clippings, dead flowers,
crass grass, broken branches, weeds,
repetitive memes of meaning,
a syndrome of stuck songs destined
for the garbage dump and ritual burning
in the hell of an eternal turntable turning.

Comment:

Word magic from the Mikado – “My object all sublime I shall achieve in time, to make the punishment fit the crime” … And in this case I would tie the criminals who invented these ‘ballads, songs, and snatches’ to the stake, with earphones that endlessly repeated all the nonsense we hear day and night, so much of which sticks in the turntables of our brains turning round and round as we toss and turn in our beds at night. Just a case, I suppose, of hearing music while there’s no one there.

And how many earworms did you pluck out of that first paragraph? I can count six, maybe seven. Then, my mind may be very different from yours. Perhaps your mind isn’t in the outrageous Wilfred that mine is. Don’t get that joke, do you? And why should you? I guess you don’t remember Ray’s a Laugh, Round the Horne, Mr. Dimwitty, or Wilfred Pickles – and why should you.

Passent les jours et passent les semaines / ni temps passés ni les amours reviennent / sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine – click on the link for the English version (my translation) and click on this link for a slightly improved revised version.

Yes, as Apollinaire says time flows on and by – or, after Heraclitus – you can never step in the same river twice. More important, perhaps, for those who worry about their past thoughts, words, and deeds – you can throw the stone into the pond, but you can’t control the ripples.

Light

Light
A Jackpine Sonnet

I love the way the light
rises in the morning,
stands still and stately at noon,
and fades as day slips into night.

Each day I watch the berries
on the mountain ash
changing color as daylight
strides strong across the sky
then slopes away to the west.

A long time ago, in Paris,
I saw Monet’s paintings
of the Cathedral at Rouen –
morning, noon, afternoon.

Seurat, Monet, and Sisley taught me
to appreciate the multiple ways
in which light fragments
and scatters into many colors
the cloak of berries on my tree.

Comment:

Moo thought this would be a lovely painting to accompany today’s poem. “Red berries,” he said, “and faces amongst the glowing foliage to match the low fires of the westering sun.” Sometimes Moo has a trick with words that is even better than his tricks with paint. Not that he would ever claim to be a poet, as I would never claim to be a painter. That said, by chance or fate, we sometimes luck out.

I saw those Monet paintings at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris, 1963 I believe it was. A long time ago. I remember standing in a circular room surrounded by water lilies – and I stood there, amazed, floating like a cloud in a floral paradise. Funny how those moments can linger, stamped on the retina, and recalled in the strangest of ways. I like the works of all three painters, but I must admit that Seurat, the founder of chromo-luminarism, also known as pointillism, can drive you dotty until you work out how all those little berries join together to make a perfect image.

Sisley, to my mind, is more akin to Monet – except for the actual choice of subjects, but that might just be my misinterpretation of their combined talents. No matter – what I see when the light hits the berries on my tree is a combination of creative memories that gift me with an insight into the multiple meanings of the structure of the evening light – the magic hour – as my friend Tony Bear calls it – that brings joy and delight to my garden each sunny evening, as it fades into night.



Not Enough

Not Enough
A Jackpine Sonnet

Is it enough to treat people
as if they were equals,
when some need much more
attention than others?

Think colds, flu, bronchitis,
pneumonia, covid. Equal
treatment no longer works.

We need to see each person
as an individual needing
exclusive care, a unique style.

We must let them know
that they are not lost and alone,
that they will be approached
individually, each and every one.

Treated equally, yes, but each
in his or her particular case
and cultural situation.

A dream? Perhaps.
But the alternative
is a nightmare.

Comment:

An interesting chat over the dinner table – de sobremesa – led us to the meaning of equality and treating people equally. The kernel of the discussion – I said I believed in treating all people equally, Moo’s guest for the evening, his Plus One, said that treating people equally was no longer right. It was necessary to treat each person as an individual, with different needs, and we must therefore go beyond equal treatment to individual treatment. A word to the wise from the wiser.

Treat other people as you would have them treat you. The phrase goes back a long, long way to Socrates, Seneca, and maybe beyond. It ties in with the ideals of Buddhism and also of early Chinese philosophers.

It centers on the meaning of ‘equally’ and is a wonderful topic for discourse analysis. If by ‘equally’ we mean one size fits all, then we merely drop the grid down upon the targeted individual and tick the boxes where the pieces fit. However, if we agree that such ‘equal treatment’ is in fact potentially discriminatory, then we must break ‘equally’ down and give it the extended meaning of ‘with equal care and attention‘ according to their individual needs and cultural, social, medical, educational, or religious beliefs.

So, here am I, sitting over the dinner table, musing with my family and friends on the meaning of meaning and learning that old ideas can be renewed and that yes, even an old dog like me, eighty plus years old and still counting, can learn a new trick or two [or several], from those who are brought up in a different, younger, more diverse world, and whom are consequently more habituated to this world than I am. It’s a good lesson – and I hope, well-learned.

“And that,” said Moo, “is why I painted Who’s Who Zoo. Look carefully before you label who is who and where they stand in the Who’s Who Zoo.”

FIFA

FIFA
A Jackpine Sonnet

elbows on the table
my hands clasped around
this soccer ball
I call my skull

its global reach
the totality of all
I hold and know
and understand

past games
long forgotten
gone the skills
of which I was so proud

my life the circumference
of this paneled circle
wrinkled and peeling

the ancient onion skins
of old corruptions
newly found

Comment:

Moo calls this painting, which he forgot to sign, Crater with Creatures. He thought it would be a good painting for this circular poem that also goes round and around like the creatures in the crater. Wild thoughts, they are, gnawing at each other as they circle. I had to tell Moo what FIFA meant. At first, he thought I had written FIFI, the name of his cat. No, I told him, it’s FIFA, not FIFI, and that’s why I call my skull a soccer ball. “But FIFA isn’t corrupt,” Moo said. Well, that made me laugh. “I wasn’t referring to FIFA as being corrupt,” I explained. “The corruptions are all my own.” “But you aren’t corrupt,” Moo exclaimed. “Think of them not as corruptions, but of little errors, little sins, the little mistakes we all make in life.” “Oh, those,” said Moo. “Nobody cares about those things. They are all little nothings, best forgotten.” “I usually do forget them,” I said, “but once in while I pick at them like I pick at a scab, and then they all start bleeding again, or flaking away like thin layers of onion rings.”

Moo looked at me, long and hard. “You are just like a world cup soccer team manager,” he told me. “First you pick your nose, then you pick yourself, then you pick your best friends and put them on the team. But that’s not corruption. That’s the way of the world. Everybody does it.” “Not everybody,” I said. “That’s because not everybody is a soccer coach,” he replied.

Good old Moo. Such a world wise philosopher. I remember when he had his index finger in plaster. “What wrong with your finger,” I asked him. “It broke,” he replied. “How on earth did that happen?” “Someone punched me in the nose.” “Well that shouldn’t have broken your finger,” I said, amazed and rather doubtful. “It was in my nose at the time,” he sighed. Que lo creas tú.

Questions

Questions

Jackpine Sonnet

each time you see a shooting star
a child is born or an angel falls
swarms of them in certain seasons
when our planet sails through
the meteor belt and rocks burn up
as they fall to earth through air and fire

written in the stars they say
and everyday I read my horoscope
to see what lies in stall
or rather what fate will me befall

warmth and love perhaps yet what
do cold unconscious planets know
about this life that people lead below

Eros Agape Philia
Jupiter Mercury Venus Mars
who knows what ancient
Greek and Roman gods
still play at being gods
among so many drifting
shifting shooting stars

Comment:

So, Moo is back to painting, at long last. Last night he painted two paintings to celebrate his return to a lovely clean, neat, washed, rearranged workshop desk that a certain KTJ tidied up for him. He was so happy. I could see him bouncing up and down on tip-toe, trying not to fall over with excitement. He even got to wash his brushes and ensure that all the remaining ones were solid and good.

“Back again,” he sighed. And that’s exactly what he painted. Of course, in the course of time some of his paints have dried up and a brush or two needed careful separation, fine squirrel hairs from dried paint. But with a little elbow grease and a lot of luck everything came together.

This time, I had poem that fitted Moo’s painting. It explores the idea that everything can be found in the heavens. Fray Luis de León phrases it this way –

Es más que un breve punto
este bajo y torpe suelo comparado
con aquel gran transunto
donde vive mejorado
todo lo que es, lo que será, lo que ha pasado?

Is it more than a brief speck
this low and clumsy earth compared
with that huge universe
where lives in betterment
everything that is, will be, and was?

Well, what a load of questions and all based on 16th Century Spanish Neo-Platonism. Yet old as the system of star reading is, people still read their daily horoscopes. Well, some people do. I guess they think that in the same way that the moon rules the tides and pulls them this way and that way, then the moon and stars rule our bodies – we are, after all, 95% water – and pull us this way and that way.

But hold on a moment. Nature or nurture. And what about free will – libre albedrío? Are we ruled by the stars? Or do we have free will to do as we want in this little world of ours? Good questions. What we do know is that certain people think they can do whatever they want, with no repercussions or consequences whatsoever, while others understand that certain societal norms and rules are there for a purpose. Oh dear – the eternal question. If the stars and planets know what we will do and when we will do it, can we speak of free will or are our lives pre-determined!

I guess Moo’s painting is more than a Who’s Who Zoo and more a who did what and with which and to whom zoo combined with when and why did they do it. “Alas, if thy mother knew it, sadly, sadly would she rue it.” And now’s the time to De La Rue it – so get out those playing cards, shuffle them carefully, read your fortune, and let’s see what is going to happen, and how, and when. Or you could read tea leaves, Viking Runes, or the lines on the palm of your hand. Speaking of which – question – what is the first sign of madness? – answer – hairs on the palm of your hand. Question – what is the second sign of madness? – answer – looking for them. – and you did, go on, admit it, you took a little peek, didn’t you. I know you did – it was written in the stars, and in the Tarot pack, and … and … and …. did you find one?