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Memories of the Kingdom
More legends of the earth
were scooped out today,
more trees trampled
like disposable populations,
and I had nothing to say
about it, but I could
watch, the way we watch
stock footage
of battles.
How many times have I
come here to find
that untouchable something
that roams in the wilds
of nothing human,
here,
where all the ingredients
of deep living
are found:
the stony path I walked
like Saint Francis on his
pilgrimage,
but without the stigmata,
the penitence and shame . . .
And after a rain, the bleary swamp—
one black, pondering eye
for everything blue and green to
slide into, stare for a moment,
then flicker away.
Here my body was the body of air
and sifted dawn, red earth and
bark and leaves—
forests above forests, foaming
like fountains,
throwing down
green light and shadow light,
breathing light and spirit light . . .
so quiet,
as patient as we want God
to be.
And here were the neighborhoods
of my sisters and brothers,
both soft and fierce—
it was all here in the anthology
of what was, for a while,
a complete and ancient story.
The bulldozers, the backhoes,
the chainsaws and chatting men
have left for the day.
Love bleeds out on the clawed dust.
I want to crawl in the emptiness,
shrink in the dripping sun,
ask the sky
to take me like that cloud,
all broken and elsewhere,
the one that once
looked like a dove.
Patricia Joan Jones
Wars Of Words
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No peace during wartime in usa. Vaccine and boys and girls home from war by mid 2021. Citizens sacrifice during war. C-19 Spkes, Colorado burns. Peace hard to find. I liked lots the cloud dove image.
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...a
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So true, that peace is hard
So true, that peace is hard to find during the Great War of 2020. Thank you for your wise insights and supportive comment.
' 'The bulldozers, the
'
'The bulldozers, the backhoes,
the chainsaws and chatting men
have left for the day.
Love bleeds out on the clawed dust.'
100 years it grows.. a few minutes to bulldoze
Such a brilliant and quotable
Such a brilliant and quotable comment . . .so sadly true. Thank you, dear poet.
This poem is soooooo
This poem is soooooo symphonic that it would set Shostakovich to radical spams of envious admiration. In this poem there is a counterpoint of several voices: there is the dissonance of the voices that are destroying sacred ground (which, as I read it, could be anywhere) and this is played by the brasses, especially led by trumpeters; there is the cosmic tone of the Poet's voice, playing by a gentle combination of woodwinds and strings, explaining to us what the value of that sacred site(s) really means; and there is the Poet's personal voice, aghast and nostalgic and sorrowful, registering the sadness of the situation----and this voice is played by a single celesta, and the key is a delicate minor. All of this sound is brought to bear, in this poem of few words, by postpoems' Greatest and Most Profound Poet. I have never in twenty online years offered thanks to the Lord for the internet; but I have done so tonight, for the privilege of seeing Patruciajj's work and this poem in particular. As a young man, starting life, I had the privilege of studying with great scholars who taught me about the greatest poetry in the Western Canon. As an old man, who daily feels the life declining out of me, I am even more privileged to watch, before my own eyes, the cosmic coalescence of a body of work which is UNPRECEDENTED at postpoems, or anywhere else of which I know.
Two further comments:
1) just to make a facetious metaphor to extend my point: if I were a science fiction nut, I would imagine that Patriciajj has a line of communication to the very stars themselves; and that those stars call her and ask,"What colors should we shine tonight, and where should we place them." I could easily imagine the stars themselves taking their irridescent cues from her Poetic talent.
2) I issue this challenge to some reader in the future, perphaps a graduate student doing his, or her, or its (there's that science fiction again, lol) dissertation on her poetry: write your disseration as a fully orchestrated symphony, in a single movement, like the Sibelius seventh, and orchestrare it as I have suggested above (for the blare of tarnished brass, especially the "trump"ets, just have one of your fellow history grads tell you about the miseries of 2017-2020, during the reign of DingDong the Last), and play it in the finest orchestral venue you can find. Her words, set to your music, will sing to the stars. Her words, set to your music, will not only make your dissertation successful, you will surely also get offers to be a composer in residence at some swank school.
*
I want to say two last things. I feel privileged to read any poem Patriciajj posts. And I will glibly steal a remark made by Pound, in 1965, about T. S. Eliot, and I will say it more than once, right here: READ HER READ HER READ HER READ HER READ HER READ HER READ HER READ HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Starward
"DingDong the Last" Laughing.
"DingDong the Last" Laughing. It's interesting that you mentioned his regime because the destruction I witnessed was the direct result of this administration's rewriting of the federal wetlands protection laws which were put in place, not only to protect valuable land and wildlife, but our own water supply. When we build on saturated land, even land that appears dry on the surface most of the time, wastes, chemicals and a wide range of pollutants make their way into the groundwater and eventually the water we drink, clean and cook with. There's a reason for regulations!
So where are all the words when "thank you" is not enough?
Although my understanding of music is limited and I've offended many ears with what I called singing, I was overwhelmed and stunned by your sublime interpretation of my expression using musical references. Like your wondrous poetry, your comments are a gift, but here offering not only literary spellwork and devastating wit, but encouragement that drives me forward to explore new terrains in language.
For this, there are perhaps no words, only the intangible light of heartfelt gratitude that will reach far beyond the page, the computer screen and this fleeting life itself.
Thanks for the reply. Your
Thanks for the reply. Your response reaches out to me and helps me to keep going. I am starting to get very tired, it's time for my afternoon nap, so this is short despite my best intention. My eyes are trying to close even as I type this. Lol. But thanks for the reply.
Starward