April 20: "Quatrain," Music, "Tacet"

Billy Collins sees music everywhere . . . 

Quatrain

by:  Billy Collins

When a woman

in a low-cut blouse

walked by,

the grocer in the doorway

raised his eyebrows

revealing the four lines in his forehead.

Music has always been a big part of my life.  I remember my mom playing Doris Day as she cooked in the kitchen.  Falling asleep to soundtracks of South Pacific and Oklahoma.  Cruising with my brother in his van, listening to "Bungle in the Jungle."  Church music.  Disco.  Country.  Broadway.  Classical.  Punk.  Pop.  Acid.  I listened to them all.  Perhaps that's why poetry seems like breath to me.

It has been a quiet day.  The most excitement I had was walking to church to play the pipe organ for Mass.  I took my puppy for a few walks, too.  And, for some reason, I thought about my sister, Rose, a lot.

Most of my faithful disciples know Rose had Down syndrome.  And she loved music, too.  She couldn't really carry a tune, but she could move and dance like Chita Rivera.  All day long, I've been hearing Rose's voice and laugh.  This morning, when I took my dog for her first spin around the backyard, the lilac bushes along the property line were full of birds singing in the bright sunshine.  That made me think of Rose, as well.

She's been gone for a couple years now, but she's still present somehow, like an old tune that reminds me the world can be really beautiful.

Saint Marty misses his sister's offkey voice.

Tacet

by:  Martin Achatz

Birds in the lilac bushes

this morning reminded me

of my sister's eyes right

before she died:  

               

               as if she

was surprised by her silent

heart and lungs, her spirit

still perched for a few seconds

in the branches of her body

before taking flight.

July 31: "Stones," Everyday Miracles, Mary Moment

Mary Oliver is a fan of the stones . . .

Stones

by:  Mary Oliver

The white stones were mountains, then they went traveling.

The pink stones also were part of a mountain before

the glacier's tongue gathered them up.

Now they lie resting under the waves.

The green stones are lovelier than the blue stones, I thought

     for a little while,

then I changed my mind.

Stones born of the sediments tell what ooze floated down

     the outwash once.

Stones born of the fire have red stars inside their bodies,

     and seams of white quartz.

Also I admire the heft, and the circularities 

as they lie without wrists or ankles just under the water.

Also I imagine how they lie quietly all night

under the moon and whatever passes overhead--say, the floating

      lily of the night-heron.

It is apparent also how they lie relaxed under the sun's 

      golden ladders.

Each one is a slow-wheeler.

Each one is a tiny church, locked up tight.

Each one is perfect--but none of them is ready quite yet

to come to the garden, to raise corn

or the bulb of the iris.

If I lived inland I would want to take one or two home with me

just to look at in that long life of dust and grass,

but I hope I wouldn't.

I hope I wouldn't take even one like a seed from the sunflower's face,

like an ant's white egg from the warm nursery under the hill.

I hope I would leave them, in the perfect balance of things,

in the clear body of the sea.

My favorite image in this poem:  "Each one is a tiny church, locked up tight."

Most of us don't give a whole lot of thought to the stones beneath our feet.  I know I don't.  Yet, stones have stories and histories.  Ice ages.  Meteor ages.  Volcanic ages.  Moon ages.  Sun ages.  Somehow that pebble got from the top of a mountain or the bottom of sea into your shoe.  When you pick up a beach rock and skip it across the surface of a lake or ocean, you are probably undoing hundreds, if not thousands, of years of stone migration.

Stones are these everyday miracles that nobody takes the time to notice.  

Spend enough time with Mary Oliver, however, and your miracle antennae become a little more finetuned and sensitive.  I now go through my days on the lookout for wonder.  A finger of sunrise scratching the belly of a lake.  A rabbit sipping dew off grass.  Loon laughter in moonless cattails.  I call them Mary Moments.

Today's Mary Moment happened early this morning for me.  I was taking my puppy out for her morning backyard ablutions when I looked up into the branches of my lilac bushes.  There was the sun, trapped in its leaves.  I stood there, dazzled to stone for several seconds before the gravity of the day pulled me back into action.

A small miracle.  A tiny church, unlocked for a fraction of a heartbeat for Saint Marty. 

April 29: Unicorn, Tyehimba Jess, "Blind Boone's Pianola Blues"

Last day for the week of Tyehimba Jess.

I'm always excited to become familiar with a poet that I haven't read.  It's like opening up my eyes, looking out the window, and seeing a unicorn grazing in my backyard.  It makes the trees and grass and dirt look different.  The world a little clearer, brighter.

Saint Marty saw a unicorn in his backyard this morning.  The bastard was eating his lilac bushes.

Blind Boone's Pianola Blues

by:  Tyehimba Jess

They said I wasn’t smooth enough
to beat their sharp machine.
That my style was obsolete,
that old rags had lost their gleam
and lunge. That all I had
left was a sucker punch
that couldn’t touch
their invisible piano man
with his wind up gut-
less guts of paper rolls.
And so, I went and told them
that before the night was through
I’d prove what the son of an ex-
slave could do: I dared them
to put on their most twisty
tune. To play it double-time
while I listened from another
room past the traffic sounds
of the avenue below.
To play it only once,
then to let me show
note for note how that scroll
made its roll through Chopin
or Bach or Beethoven’s best.
And if I failed to match my fingers
and ears with the spinning gears
of their invisible pneumatic piano
scholar, I’d pay them the price
of a thousand dollars.


And what was in it for Boone?
you might ask…

Might be the same thing that drives men
through mountains at heart attack pace.
Might be just to prove some tasks
ain’t meant to be neatly played
out on paper and into air,
but rather should tear
out from lung, heart and brain
with a flair of flicked wrists
and sly smile above the 88s…
and, of course, that ever-human
weight of pride that swallows us
when a thing’s done just right…
But they were eager to prove me wrong.
They chose their fastest machine
with their trickiest song and stuck it
in a room far down the hall from me.
They didn’t know how sharp
I can see with these ears of mine—
I caught every note even though
they played it in triple time.
And when I played it back to them
even faster, I could feel the violent
stares… heard one mutter
    Lucky black bastard…
and that was my cue to rise,
to take a bow in their smoldering
silence and say, Not luck,
my friend, but the science
of touch and sweat and
stubborn old toil. I’d bet
these ten fingers against any coil
of wire and parchment and pump.
And I left them there to ponder
the wonders of blindness
as I walked out the door
into the heat of the sun.

May 20: Calmly Sipping Tea, Edward Herman, Lilac Bushes

Tulips had cast their leaves on my path, flat and bright as doubloons.  I passed under a sugar maple that stunned me by its elegant unself-consciousness:  it was as if a man on fire were to continue calmly sipping tea.

It is October.  Dillard is wandering through the woods where birds are rioting in the colored leaves.  She moves and watches, finds herself under this sugar maple.  Stopped in her tracks.  The maple can't call attention to itself.  It's simply on fire with beauty.

It is warm tonight.  Summer warm.  When I left work, I took off the coat I was wearing, threw it in the back seat of my car.  I rolled down the windows, turned on my CD player.  I'm listening to an audio recording of the book The Boys on the Boat.  I'm on disk 10, and the boys are on an ocean liner, headed to the Berlin Olympics.  It's a good book, and it was a good evening to be cruising down the highway, wind whistling through the car, listening to Edward Herman's baritone voice describing the art of crew rowing.

For me this weekend is blessedly clear of obligations.  There is no daughter's boyfriend spending the weekend on the couch.  No Saturday morning church retreats.  No reason to rush for anything these next two days.  I plan to avoid any kind of stress.  (My two Constant Readers know that I will probably fail miserably with this plan.)

So, it's Friday evening.  The verge of summer.  My lilac bushes are starting to green up, finally.  Soon, I'll be able to look out my back window and see them blazing purple.  A man on fire.  Purple fire.  (I know, I know.  I'm really stretching for a connection.  It's the best I got tonight.)

Saint Marty now has to go to see The Angry Birds Movie with his son.  Can't avoid all stress.

I never like playing Angry Birds