A Street Named Terpsichore

A flat tire introduced me

to the sirens and their mother.

Before I knew Terpsichore

as a muse or the mother of sirens,

I knew her as a street, relatively

residential, nineteenth century

homes, called shotgun houses, 

stringing each room in succession,

front to back, because properties 

were taxed on width, not depth.

Imagine a street of homes,

sometimes duplexes, with

living room-bedroom-bathroom-

bedroom-dining room-kitchen-

back porch, a long house shaped

the like barrel of a shotgun.

 

Terpsichore had sister streets, all

comprising the Faubourg Lafayette

and Lower Garden District of

the Big Easy. You walked streets

named Erato, Calliope, Clio,

Thalia, Melpomene, Euterpe,

Polymnia, and Urania, and 

Terpsichore (of course),collectively

issuing their siren calls to come

home. My personal favorite was 

Erato, named for the poetry muse,

because I had a flat tire in a station

wagon on the interstate right

at the St. Charles Avenue exit,

and I guided our car full of teenagers

bound for the French Quarter down

the exit ramp, carefully, parking 

on a street named Erato. I fixed 

the flat, not knowing that decades 

later, that Erato and her mother

Terpsichore would remind me

of a flat tire.

 

Tweetspeak Poetry has a prompt this week, involving the muses and their siren songs. 

 

Photograph: A shotgun duplex on Terpsichore Street in New Orleans.

Gathering

Another poetry prompt poem, this one from last month at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Gathering

A single plant,

a native, no less,

officially Monarda

 

but usually called

bee balm, for a reason.

It gathers bees.

 

A single plant that

doesn’t stay put;

it seeds and multiplies

 

and spreads treasure,

a sea of purple crowns

turning the garden

 

into a explosion of

buzzing, hovering,

flapping, pollen-

 

covered bees,

a convention

of pollinators,

 

honey bees, bumble

bees, little bees,

and tinier bees

 

who consider 

the garden 

a personal vase.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“I Saw a Peacock,” poem by Anonymous – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Narnia Secret – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

In the Thickest of the Fray: Mississippians at Gettysburg in Their Own Words by Joseph Owen & Douglas Ashton – review by Scott Bumpus at Emerging Civil War.

 

“Austerity,” poem by Janet Loxley Lewis – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

That's entertainment

I ran across this poem from six years ago; it showed up in a Facebook memory and I'd forgotten I'd written it. It was a response to a poetry prompt by Kelly Belmonte at All Nine.

That's entertainment

I’m looking at this fence,
and all the planks and posts,
and I’m looking at this bucket
of whitewash,
and I’m having myself a pondering
of trying to make it look easy,
make it look fun, like
chasing chickens or
pulling pigtails,
so I start whistling,
and I start singing,
and sure enough
if it looks like entertainment
they will come. They all
click “like” and add an emoji,
grab a brush and start slopping
that whitewash on, while I head
down to the quiet creek with Huck
to catch me some fish,
smoke some tobacco,
tell some stories,
and rest my eyes.

 

Photograph by Terence Raper via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The life of Samuel Johnson’s servant – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

On a Train Through Murray Country at Sunset – poem by Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

“The Mower to the Glow-Worms,” poem by Andrew Marvell – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The river runs by me

It takes scant notice of me,

which is part of the pull,

I suppose.

I am the only creature

I can see or hear 

in this place, and one 

might think that makes me

the center oy my universe,

even for a brief moment,

but the river sings a song

that speaks another truth. 

Before you were, it says,

I am.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats. The poetry prompt is to write a poem about the peace you feel when you go into a secret place in our natural surroundings.

Photograph: The Meramec River as it passes the gravel bar at Shaw Nature Reserve, Franklin County, Missouri.

Sunset, briefly reconsidered

Darkness proceeds, gathering

strength, chasing the cotton cloth

of light as it, in turn, diminishes,

a few vestiges still scattered

on the placid surface of water,

when,

right before a final triumph,

a crew of nine sculls its way,

silently slicing the surface.

Growing darkness and fading light

pause momentarily; the fate

of the emerging stars is suddenly

in doubt. 

Light briefly considers mounting

a counterattack before deciding 

a strategic retreat, knowing its time 

is coming again.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is an excerpt from the poem “Trouble in Paradise” by Maureen Doallas, included in her collection Neruda’s Memoirs. The poetry prompt is to write a poem pointing to some kind of loss or joyous arrival of something or someone.

Photograph: Creve Coeur Lake, St. Louis County, Missouri.

Look

Look for your passion, they said.

Look straight ahead, they said.

Look at what you’ve accomplished, they said.

Look for what inspires you, they said.

Look at what inspires others, they said.

Look for the beauty, they said.

Look for the good, they said.

Look within, they said.

Look to how to be happy, they said.

Look to your heart, they said.

Look to the stars, they said.

Look to where your feet are planted, they said.

Look homeward, angel, they said.

Look to progress, they said.

Look to your elders, they said.

Look to your leaders, they said.

Look to your followers, they said.

Look to nature, they said.

Look to your left and your right, they said.

Look here, they said.

Look to wisdom, they said.

Look to truth, they said.

Instead,

I looked upward,

above the darkness.

And discovered light.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Night” by Sara Teasdale. The poetry promptis writing a poem about looking for a lovely thing and finding it, perhaps using the catalog poemform.

Photograph: Sunrise begins at Laity Lodge, Leakey, Texas.

Playground on the levee

We were children, running

upward through foot-high grass,

playing chase and you’re it

and sometimes when we were

ambitious an angled Red Rover.

It was an elongated hill,

designed, we believed, 

for our entertainment because

it had always been there,

in our lifetimes. None of us

asked why.

Slightly older, we could see

the water on one side was

higher than the streets and 

the houses on the other.

We’d watch ships pass, and

look behind us to see cars

and buses pass. 

Older still, I walked to the top

one spring, to see how close

the river and its rising waves

were to the top: a few feet,

a closeness I’d never seen,

at a speed I’d never seen, 

as if the river had determined

to widen itself 

like a woman’s fan

opening at the opera.

I couldn’t find the playground.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Immolation” by Anne Doe Overstreet. The poetry prompt is to write a poem that attempts to either harness or challenge natural forces.

Photograph by Justin Wilkens via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Trail at sunset, or sunrise

It is a trail, flat,

winding its paved way

around a placid lake,

a silent timepiece,

minutes and seconds

sounding with each step,

moving to the sun,

or away from it,

timepieces do that.

Darkness slows as it

approaches sunset,

quickens as it sees

sunrise, the only hints

of which one being

the lessening touch

of God’s breath rustling

the leaves of the trees,

the sound of the child

wanting to go home.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Hawksbill Crag” by Dave Malone. The poetry promptis to write a poem that lends human or godlike aspects to things in our rneivornment.

Photograph: Sunset at Creve Coeur Park, St. Louis County, Missouri.

Six heads of lettuce

I’ve never tried growing them

before, but now I’m tending

six heads of butter lettuce, 

watering and fertilizing and

tearing away dead leaves

(not too many yet) and casting

the evil eye on infernal rabbits

(a redundant phrase). 

My six heads of lettuce, soon

to be joined by six tomato plants,

are my nod in the direction 

of local agriculture; in fact,

this is about as local as you

can get: my backyard patch 

of ground 4 feet x 12 feet.

Each day, except when it rains, 

or when I forget, I fill 

my watering can like

Wendell Berry, and I bathe

my lettuces while reciting

the occasional poem. 

My timbered choir is more

like a timbered soloist, aka

the river birch sitting 

in the corner of the yard

a few feet away, dropping 

twigs and small limbs

instead of arias.

I used to work for one

of those giant behemoths

of agriculture so disdained

by Mr. Berry, but I didn’t

mind; I liked his poems

and his centeredness

in place too much. I often

told colleagues to read

his novels and poems

if they wanted to know

what the criticisms were

all about, but they didn’t

seem to mind either.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Li Po,” and the poetry prompt is to choose a historical or modern-day figure involved with agriculture and compare yourself this figure.

Photograph by Stephanie Moody via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Beneath the grass

People seeing it for the first time

called it, variously, jungle or

desert, the grasses taller than

a man on horseback. Westward

wagon trains passed lightly 

along ruts carved through 

by natives or buffalo or fire

or previous trail cutters,

grasses simultaneous wonder 

and irritation. No one looked,

or realized, what was beneath

the grasses, vast and deep

communities of insects, roots,

soil, reptiles, bacteria, organisms

of the grasses often as deep as

the grasses visible. Not until

the farmers came, paused,

then stopped, did what was

underneath become an object

to consider, a barrier, an obstacle,

something only useful for a roof, 

to expose the soil below, waiting

for the wind.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Do the Shells” by L.L. Barkat, and the poetry promptis to consider the “deep-downness” of things. 

Photograph: Restored prairie at Shaw Nature Reserve, Franklin County, Missouri.

Why the view matters

I never met him, or

even heard of him,

to be honest, until

the day I hiked up

the almost vertical

trail to the bluff.

I could see for miles;

I even heard cows

on the bluff opposite,

across the river.

Not a majestic view

but one embracing

a notion of horizon.

There was a bench

of weathered stone;

this was the bluff

overlook, after all,

so I sat and inhaled.

Drawn to the view

of distance I almost

missed the rock

at my feet, the rock

with an embedded 

plaque, from a family

grateful for a man

who understood why

the view mattered.

Losing the argument

that I should stay,

I walked back 

to where I started,

a part of the silence.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Father’s Day” by David Wheeler, and the poetry prompt is to write a poem about someone who has influenced your stance toward the natural world. 

Photograph: Inscribed rock at the Overlook Bluff, Shaw Nature Reserve, Franklin County, Missouri. And yes, that's my foot against the rock.

After all these years

He stares at the open refrigerator.

Shelves, mostly empty, except

for a block of cheddar, three eggs,

lettuce that’s seen better days,

milk three days past expiration,

leftover Chinese takeout from 

maybe two weeks ago, and 

a tomato collapsing upon itself. 

He’s got two hours before 

the couple from church arrives,

the ones who’ve fed him dinner

three times and now they’re 

stopping by, thank God not

for dinner.

He stares at the supermarket,

shelves stuffed with every thing

of every kind, aisle displays

fighting the shopping cart, 

special promotions in dairy,

buy-one-get-one-free corn flakes,

all these faux oases found while

wandering in the desert

of overabundance.

After all these years of

prison, no one trained him

in the art of munchies and dips,

sweet and savory, what crackers

might be appropriate with edam or 

brie, don’t forget cocktail napkins

and toothpicks and plastic utensils

and worse, still, how to make

small talk over bridge nuts and mints.

No one told him that the food

might be less important than

himself, that maybe they might

just want to talk 

after all these years.

The editors of Tweetspeak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “Awaiting Arrival” by Ann Doe Overstreet, and the poetry prompt is to write a poem describing the foods you, a friend, or a relative keep on hand in case of someone’s arrival. I used a fictitious character from a story I’ve been working on for a long time.

Photograph by Jordan Madrid via Unsplash. Used with permission.

What the tree sees

We crowd each other,

younger jostling older

as we politely fight

for air and sun and

rain and decomposition

of most things that

provide food. Saplings

chatter and chirrup 

with far more bravado

than courage, more fear 

than inherent bravery

underlying the claim,

the bluff, the assertion

of opinion as fact.

Saplings know all

as they slyly eye

each other for prime

position in the sun.

They see me but

pretend I’m not there,

a reminder of what

they become, assuming,

of course, they first

survive.

I see all this, remembering

myself as know-it-all sapling,

knowing that I know less now

than when I was young. Now 

what I see is only

my shadow.

Tweetspeak Poetry is hosting a poetry prompt this weekfor Poetic Earth Month. It’s a simple prompt, based on a dreamy, haunting photograph of trees by Kelly Sauer and asking what the tree sees. Kelly is also the photographer for the cover photo of my second novel, A Light Shining.