Grief

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.

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.

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.

Carnival

Carnival:

Bakhtin’s Carnival – the world turned upside down and inside out. And here it is. Moo has painted an upside down world. From the above angle, the world is full of birds and is “as crazy as the birds“. Lovely image. There they go, birds of a feather, flocking together, soaring, sinking, doing what birds do when they are as crazy as bat shit – and Moo told me, he nearly gave his painting that name – Crazy as Bat Shit.

But hang on a moment – if the world is upside down, what happens when you turn Moo’s painting upside down? Let’s try it and see.

Would you believe it – the birds are no longer birds, they have turned into animals. From this point of view, we have Animal Farm. Moo thinks he can sell this painting for double the price now he has discovered it means something different the other way up. Now – what if …. Nope. Let’s leave it there. We are not going to turn it sideways, nor inside out. That’s asking too much of Moo and his painting skills.

But we have a tiny little lesson, and with no poem attached to it. Perspectivism – the same object seen from two different points of view by two different people can elicit different functions and different interpretations.

Think of the Barber’s Basin in Don Quixote. One group of people see it as a barber’s basin. A second group see it as Mambrino’s Helmet, missing a visor. Cervantes resolves the problem by adding yelmo to bacía to give a new word – a baciyelmo. A helmet that serves as a basin and vice-versa. Does such a combination exist in English? Whyever not! We can call it a bassinet, as in a pig-faced bassinet. That is to say, a helmet with a snout that ends in a bassin – well, we can forgive the -ss- if we are generous.

And now we come to the important part of our lesson. Most things can be changed from one meaning to another, if we change our position and our point of view. Birds can become animals. Animals can turn into birds. A good mood can be turned into a bad mood. A bad mood can be turned into a good one.

There is so much depression around us at the current time. “Turn that frown upside down” – and turn the world on its head and inside out. I bet you can do it if you really try. After all, Moo has shown you how and I assure you that Moo – and I know him well – is no genius. However, in spite of that, every so often he stumbles on a tiny truth, just like he has in this painting.

So – don’t get frightened and depressed by the black dog when he leaps out at you from the grandmother clock. Turn him from a dog into a bird and let him fly away into the blue, taking the black dog’s blues along with him. And remember – if Moo can do it, so can you. So “turn that frown upside down” and remake your world in the shape you would like it to be. And remember – if Moo can do it, so can you.

Anywhere

Anywhere
Jackpine Sonnet

I knew you the first day
I saw you. I knew your heart
before you could open it up
and let me in. I knew your soul
before you allowed me
to touch its beauty’s depth.

Did I know you from another
life? I just don’t know. I only
know that I knew who you were
and what you meant to me.

Once I saw you, how could I let
you go? I reached across the bridge
that spans the ages and saw you
as you always were, clad in white,
shining like the Milky Way
across a universe of falling stars
and you the only one I wanted
to catch, put in my pocket,
 and keep safe in my heart.

Comment:

“Know thy self!” So easy to say, but not so easy to do. Sometimes it is easier to know others, to see them clearly, than it is to know ourselves. As Robbie Burns once wrote – “Oh would some power the giftie gie us / to see ourselves as others see us.” The mirror of the self, alas, is a fairground mirror, snatched from the hall of mirrors, and it is a distorting mirror that turns us into different shapes and sizes.

And what about the ways in which people change? Miguel de Cervantes wrote that “the most difficult role in the play is that of the fool, for he who would play the fool must never be one.” How many of us wear a mask, play the fool, and it is only the joker’s bells that are heard, the fool’s mask that is seen?

And we can change in so many ways. Heraclitus – “we can never walk in the same river twice.” Why not? Because we change and the waters of the river change and everything is in fluctuation and nothing stays the same, not even for one day. Nostra vita brevis est … and it is subject to change.

How do we change? Let me count the ways – but, like petals on a daisy or seeds on a dandelion, the changes are almost impossible to count. Guillaume Apollinaire also wrote about change. “Je ne suis plus là moi-mème, je suis le quinze de l’onzième.” / “I am no more myself. I have become the fifth of the twelfth.” How often do people say – “I am a human being. I am not just a number.” Yet numbers are what we turn into. Statistics. Figures in columns. Dates in note books. Telephone numbers. Number plates on cars.

Oh the joys of time. Today’s heroes so soon turn into tomorrow’s forgotten people. Seeds on a dandelion, petals on a daisy, ants beneath the traveler’s feet … change is everywhere. And one day, even you, might look in that mirror and no longer recognize yourself. So – know yourself – yes – but always prepare for change.

Windmill

Windmill
Jackpine Sonnet

When the scales fell from my eyes
I stood on them and wondered
what I weighed on the time’s great scales.

Miniscule. A featherweight.
A dandelion seed blown on the wind
that whirls the world through space.

Spiritus mundi – the great world spirit
inflating my lungs, each breath
a glimpse of the infinite
combining in my body and soul.

The sails of a windmill, my arms,
and the wind turning them,
dashing me down into the dust,
then raising me rejoicing to the skies.

Comment:

Moo said I needed cheering up, so he painted me a happy painting. “I know it’s not a windmill,” he told me, “but you can pretend it is. The leaves of the clover even look like they might be a windmill, and look, it’s got arms as well.”

“Thank you, Moo,” I said. My poem is a happy poem and it proves that the Black Dog of yesterday had been banished today, not by a happy dog, but by a four leafed clover standing beneath a shower of solver and gold.”

Intertextuality – texts speaking to texts. I wonder how many texts you can spot in this poem. I can count five, at least, and there are probably more. Milton Acorn, Miguel de Cervantes, Northop Frye, the Bible (not y Beibl Cymreig, unfortunately), Edmond Rostand. That’s quite the handful. Well, four fingers and a thumb, at least. Now all you have to do is spot the original sources which, blended, give my poem a saucy sauce of sorts. So, grab your AI and play hide and seek and see what you can find drawn from the dark recesses of my mind. Don’t give in too easily, now.

Mood swings – mood changes – Moody Me – Moody Moo – I’ll bet that you are Moody Too. Good mood, bad mood, who’s to say? We’ll leave that for another day!