poem

Sometimes a poem you've read before, like a person you may have briefly met at some crowded party, shows up alone and suddenly the conversation becomes more intimate and, with a little serendipity, a friendship is born. So it was with me and this poem. Peter has graciously allowed me to share it with you:

A Chance Encounter
-Peter Ludwin

Because she had once married a Greek
because I'd traveled to Greece in the '60s
because we were visiting a mutual friend
on the Upper West Side,
we had this conversation.
And though I protested when she sat down
that I had to get some sleep
she insisted on just one small glass of wine.
Which became two and then three
as we agreed that where Kazantzakis was transcendent,
Sartre was empty and Hemingway merely small.
Her hands spoke passion,
as if releasing flocks of doves into her voice,
a soft liquer blend of European Texas
that drew me into that old yearning
for the expatriate life,
for garnet angels
and mandolins raining down

on Russia

and I thought yes,
there's that chorus in the blood,
the one that's attended all our births:
to track the minotaur,
the iron tyranny of THINGS,
to find it and destroy it with the dance,
with epiphanies of water,
swinging up onto its head
like a naked acrobat
as the light pours in from the sea.

© Peter Ludwin

A Chance Encounter is reprinted here with the permission of its author. The poem originally appeared in 1996 in Lullwater Review, the literary journal of Emory University in Atlanta.

Peter’s new book of poems, A Guest in All Your Houses, is now available from Word Walker Press and, shortly, from Amazon.com.

poem

A History of Horses

She was once
horses across sand dunes,
sack lunches in the hills above Isleta:
brown as Indian bread,
lively as a new moon,
she was not twenty.

They counted stars,
stirred the warming sands,
awoke with Spring wind. Cocoa and cream:
swirling night into noon.
Only the horses knew
the way they had come.

Now,
she is twice a wife,
three times a mother. Her rosary beads
are worn smooth. The nights
parade without horses:
she does not remember how long.

T.L. Lachlan

A History of Horses is reprinted here with the permission of its author. The poem originally appeared in 1985 in The Sandstorm, the literary journal of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

beatb0x

I'm here for the long haul , , , and so is Texas

Here is a link to the lyrics of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless The USA as posted at a Boy Scouts songbook web page.

Thanks to Texas Liberal:

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.

I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

That’s right!

Below is a picture of the President of the United States. We were told so often after September 11 how we should rally around our President during a time of crisis. We are now in an economic crisis as bad as any we have faced since the Great Depression.

Happy Easter

Cherry Blossom Under the Moon
a painting by Soojung Cho

© Soojung Cho

Used by permission of the artist - more later.

Cross-posted from patter pensée.

national poetry month

A reminder that April is National Poetry Month!!!!!

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Robert Frost

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Robert Frost

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. Paul Valery

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. E. M. Forster

A poet can survive everything but a misprint. Oscar Wilde

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. W. H. Auden

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. Wallace Stevens

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof. Rene Char

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote. Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. Salman Rushdie

And more from La Bloga.

chalice spark: Slicing Potatoes

chalice spark: Slicing Potatoes


Not much is known about Rabia al Basri

I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason:
What is inside me, I don't let out:
What is outside me, I don't let in.
If someone comes in, he goes right out again.
He has nothing to do with me at all.
I am a Doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay.

a USASA mentor

One of my mentors:
Voorheis does Dylan:

Monkey Mind: Marking the Buddha's Birth

Monkey Mind: Marking the Buddha's Birth

poem

Wind Worder

Sweet Sir,
master of the minimal,
to meet upon a leaf,
make tea from dew,

talk for days -- you talking,
me listening finally --
not as though you were still teaching,
but mere

ly life
upon a leaf
beneath a stone:
a moldy earth that holds it all,

heals it all --
I, as pilgrim,
prepared for little --
circling that pale stone,

you, a part of the white air,
the wormy earth,
giving,
explaining over tea

the humdrum
necessary existence -- the sufficiency --
the becoming --
life

upon a yellow leaf
beneath a white stone.

© Bill Boydstun

april is the coolest month . . .

From poets.org:

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

Update: What world do I inhabit? A good question, perhaps, but beside the point: I had thought my little pun on cruelest month was original . . . Ha! . . . double Ha! . . . it's all over the Internet . . . perhaps my favorite (of the sites visited) is this: larrylivermore.com from a year ago.