Tag / Poetry

by John

Love Sonnet for a daughter

Lake Ontario shore, 2007

When summer joy has been in short supply
and cloudy days outnumber all the rest,
is it some lingering loss, a love denied,
or sun’s sad absence puts us to the test?
Perhaps no longer have we a claim on bliss,
our once new loves since lost with passing time
and youth’s achievements hidden in the mist
of long-forgotten days like last year’s wine.
But something sadder still is cause of pain
if joy of those we love is our joy’s measure:
It’s love itself our loved one cannot find
that makes us settle for more modest pleasure:
A cup of tea, some melody, a gentle frame of mind,
a prayer our love by love one day is found.

Ten years later, an answer to prayer. And the sun still shines.

by John

Mahler Revisited

Left: Mango Tree & Music Right: Lilian, South Africa, 1972

Resurrection

My girlfriend liked Mahler,
his second symphony:
She listened to it often, so I did too.
It made her think of the child she lost.
It made me think of her,
so I bought the record for myself
and played it looking out of my
apartment window at a mango tree.
I thought, ‘this is the only place in the
universe where Mahler’s music floats
among the branches of a mango tree.’
The Resurrection
is what they call the Second.
These long years later,
I listen to it, and every time
I feel her pain,
and watch the mangos
as they slowly ripen.

Fifty-two years later:

Left: Severance Hall, Cleveland. Right: Lilian viewing Mahler score

The Cleveland Orchestra owns the only complete, original, handwritten score of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 2. Mahler wrote it between 1888 and 1894 in his characteristically bold musical script, mainly in intense black ink, with some parts in brown or violet. It is a working manuscript with inserted leaves, corrections, deletions, and revisions. It was purchased by Herbert Kloiber, a trustee of the Cleveland Orchestra, for about $6 million in 2016 and donated to the orchestra.

by John

Among the Trees

In the style of Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees
especially the acacia and mesquite,
the cottonwood and willow,
in the bosque beside the desert wash,
silently welcomed home –
a family member after a long absence,
shedding the fictions of my other self,
the painfully sustained deceit…
It has been so long, though only yesterday:
Home again with these old friends,
sharing their breathing space,
standing in the intensity of the moment
beside the softly bending winter grass
under the welcoming arms
of gnarled old branches that reach out
in a gesture of embrace.
Words take flight like the startled hawk
flycatcher, finch, or sparrow,
alarmed at my footfall,
who flutter away leaving a silence
where the giant granite boulder lies,
unmoved for a hundred years or more
since tumbling down the mountainside
to settle in among the agave and saguaro
for me to lean on, rooted as we are
in this place.

by John

Confucian Poets Never Knew

 

 

Confucian poets

never knew the

gentle jacaranda

never basked

in the amethyst shade

of its springtime

branches

never sang of its

fragrant blossoms

soft as mulberry silk

floating in the breeze

never tried to capture

its illusive hue                                    

purple gently poised               

somewhere between               

violet and magenta                             

not quite blue.

by John

You Should Sit Under A Jacaranda

You should sit
under a jacaranda tree
in late spring
when dappled light
dances on bare arms
and the violet mantilla
draped loosely overhead
ripples softly in the breeze
shaking off spent blossoms
that float down
covering the earth
in a miracle sprinkling 
like spring-time snow             
indigo-tinged flakes
bathed in hues of twilight blue
flowers even as they die
holding us in their clasp
pungent as damp moss
and sweetly fragrant
sweet as honey from the bees
that in the lattice lace overhead
still buzz vibrato
their universal hum.
In this place where you sit
suspended between effulgence and decay
patiently between birth and death
there is for this moment
no space for fear regret or pain

by John

A Meeting

I once asked our nine-year-old granddaughter what she most liked about her visits to Tucson. She replied unhesitatingly that it was the night she, Lil and I sat cuddled together under a blanket on the back patio and watched the moon rise over the Catalina mountains. It was dark and cold. We sat looking into the blackness until a faint profile of the mountains slowly started to appear, and then a silvery glow began to emerge behind Mount Lemon. It grew brighter and brighter until the silver flash of the upmost curve of the moon exploded over the peak of the mountains. We watched in silent awe as the moon rose into the sky in its full splendor.

And I remember the poem written by my Aunt, Katherine Woodman

IS THIS WHERE WE MEET

Is this where we meet, John Moon
In a frozen night when old snows
Thinly cover the brown land?
Our glances flit through fir trees,
Tall bare trunks; you brush my cheek
Reaching lightly over my shoulder,
Then swing around in the sky
Till we meet face flooding face.
So we ride through the night, John Moon,
Finding no particular reason
For such unexpected mating
In this cold season.