Moleskin 5.2

My first home was Owatonna, Minnesota, a town built on the banks of the Straight River, Straight, or Owatonna, being the name of a Dakota princess who was first healed by mineral springs on a tributary, Maple Creek. I lived there as an infant and remember nothing of it. My second home was in Billings, Montana, however many blocks away from the Yellowstone River: I was a toddler here, and I do not recall anything about my toddler years. Third was Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the mighty Mississippi courses through; we lived in a trailer park just east of the Miss, but my memories are only third party suggestions: I am told I first learned my address here, and being told this enough afterwards I still remember it. Fourth was Maddock, North Dakota, with no rivers of its own but the Big Coulee two miles west and the Sheyenne five miles south. I remember Maddock —our house anyway —but not the rivers. Fifth was New Hope, Minnesota, four miles west again of the Mississippi, still in the days before I had ever heard of Huck Finn.

V. The Celebration!

The son, just as he planned, began
to say, Father, I have sinned against
The heavens, and in your sight I am
no longer worthy to be your son,
But before he reached the begging part
to work as a servant in the fields
The father wiped his words away 
and turned toward the servants he
  had hired.

Bring out my finest robe, he said,
and give it to my son to wear,
Let him have rings for his fingers
and put new shoes upon his feet,
And then bring out the fatted calf,
have it quartered, chopped and cut
Into the finest veal for our table
that we may eat and celebrate
  the day,

And then as they prepared the feast
and as the plates of veal were passed
The father rose and raised his glass
and gave a toast to all the house:
My son was dead, he said, but now
he is alive!  My son was lost
But here again, you see, my son
is found!  My little one is home
  at last!

from Stillwater Symposia

IV. The Road Home

But when no one gave him anything,
he started talking to himself,
Questioning, remembering
how servants working for his father
Always had enough to eat,
and bread to spare, he said, and here
Am I, so far away from where
I was, with less than I need to stay
  alive.

I will stand, he said, and go back to
my father. Father, I will say,
I have sinned against the heavens, and you
have seen me.  I have turned away,
But now I fall before you, one
no longer worthy to be called your son.
Instead, I beg you, let me be
one of the hired servants in
  your fields.

And the son arose and started walking
back towards his father’s place,
But when he was still a long way off
the father saw the suffering of
His child and he was greatly moved.
He ran to him with open arms,
He fell on him with a strong embrace,
he held him to his heart and kissed
  his face.

from Stillwater Symposia

III. The Prodigal Son

There was a man who had two sons
and the one who was the younger stood
Up to his father.  Father, he said,
give me the part of your estate
I would inherit now, as I
can’t wait around for you to die.
And so the father, still alive,
took what he had and gave it to
  his sons.

Then, with his share, the younger son,
who could have been a blessed one
And always had a place to stay,
within a week was out the door,
Taking a different road and looking for
a distant land, somewhere to waste
The substance of his portion, and
the road took him where he meant
  to go,

And there he lived in riotous
abandon, spending all he had,
But then a mighty famine came
and he became a beggar of the land,
An immigrant among the citizens,
consigned to work their fields
And feed their pigs, willing to line
his belly with the husks left for
  the swine.

from Stillwater Symposia

On The Road To Emmaus

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 360-368 





361  Eliot: The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.  See Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage (1919): “When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-strewn sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.’” Shackleton’s experience alludes to the biblical passage of The Road to Emmaus (see note 366).  

365  Bhadantácariya Buddhaghosa, Visuddhimagga ("The Path of Purification," 430 AD, tr. Henry Clarke Warren, 1896): “...A certain woman had married into a family of rank, but had quarreled with her husband, and, decked and ornamented, until she looked like a goddess, had issued forth from Anuradhapura, early in the morning, and was returning home to her family. On her way she met the elder, as he was on his way from Mt. Cetiya to go on his begging-rounds in Anuradhapura.  And no sooner had she seen him, than the perversity of her nature caused her to laugh loudly. The elder looked up inquiringly, and observing her teeth, realized the impurity of the body, and attained to saintship. ...Then came her husband, following in her footsteps, and seeing the elder, he said: ‘Reverend sir, have you seen a woman pass this way?’And the elder said: ‘Was it a woman, or a man, that passed this way? I cannot tell. But this I know, a set of bones is traveling on upon this road.’”

366  See Luke 24:13-31: “And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk , and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:  And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.” 

✭  This reference to THE ROAD TO EMMAUS and the corresponding allusions (see notes321.5 and 361) finally moves the April poem from the pains of Good Friday to a late recognition on the morning of Easter.

367 Eliot: Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen. Herman Hesse, A Glimpse of Chaos: The Brothers Karamazov, or The Downfall of Europe (1920; tr. Sydney Schiff, 1922): (“Already half Europe, at all events half Eastern Europe, is on the road to Chaos. In a state of drunken illusion she is reeling into the abyss and, as she reels, she sings a drunken hymn such as Dmitri Karamazov sang. The insulted citizen laughs that song to scorn, the saint and seer hear it with tears”).  Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov is also alluded to at line 247. Eliot met Hesse in Switzerland in 1922 (see Letters**) and published this translation of Hesse’s essay in the first issue of his magazine The Criterion (October 1922), the same issue that offered his debut of The Waste Land. From the same essay: “Those who cling definitely to the past, those who venerate time-honoured cultural forms, the Knights of a treasured morality, must seek to delay this Downfall and will mourn it inconsolably when it passes. For them the Downfall is the End; for the others, it is the Beginning.” 

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

II. The Housekeeper

So will the angels cheer in heaven, and
how much more their cheering for
The one returning soul than for
the ninety nine who never wandered?”
And even as the Pharisees
continued with their murmuring, he
Kept talking to them, questioning
and challenging them with parables.

“Imagine you are a woman now
with only ten coins to your name,
And then suppose you find one day
that you had lost one of your coins:
Which of you would not turn up the lights
and sweep out your entire house,
Looking everywhere until you
found that one lost piece of silver,

And in that coin would you not find
the grounds to dance, a cause to call
Your friends and neighbors, all of them,
to share the joy with you?  I tell you,
So do heaven’s angels sing and dance,
God’s very name pronounced
With celebration every time
a single sinner simply turns
  around.


from Stillwater Symposia

I: The Shepherd

“What one of you who murmur,
disapproving of the company I keep,
Who grumble at these sinners
drawing near that they may hear,
Who complain about the publicans
so hungry for my words and
Would not have me receive them
at my table —which of you,

If you were a hired shepherd, and
you lost one of your hundred sheep,
Would not leave the ninety nine
in the ambles of your wilderness
To go after the one who strayed
into the mountains?  Wouldn’t you
Be relieved to find your little one,
to lift him up, to carry him on
  your shoulders?

And who among you, coming home
with news to share with everyone,
Would hesitate to call your friends
and neighbors round to celebrate
The simple fact that you had found
that little one that you had sought
And could restore him to the good
folds of your pasture?  Tell me,
  would you not?


from Stillwater Symposia

Moleskin 5.1: Studio

Studio

As I write this, I am sitting on the edge of a river: yes, I am still here. But it is not the same river. My place is the same, for the most part, and my position has barely shifted over time, other than to keep balance and circulation, but the river: maybe this is what my story is really about: the water of seasons, the gravity of upstream, the quiet velocity of now; the accumulation of purpose, the weight of every moment and the immensity of destiny. For the moment, the river seems peaceful enough, but history cuts the river bed and current moves every drop. The course changes without consultation and proceeds past more bends than one can ever see from a random perch. And I, sitting here Siddharta-like, or Huck Finn-like, am constantly thinking of venturing downstream, crossing to the other side or immersing myself and trying not to be seen.

Remembering Marvin

Everything is a gift, from rising sun
to evening set: we are given heaven’s light
even as we journey into night,
and come to find another day is done;
the fires in the sky keep burning on
like memories, refusing to forget
how much we have been given, from evening set
to breaking dawn, and how much we carry on.

Some gifts will not be easy to accept
and I don’t know yet what tomorrow brings,
but every nightfall is a gift: believe
that heaven’s grace endures most in the things
we fail to see and struggle to accept
but slowly find the presence to receive.


from Calendrums ("Eulogies")

Equinox

September.  I once stayed with you because
I thought I could distinguish right from wrong:
The kids were growing up, you had just lost
Your job and all your confidence was down;
     Yet you hated me and took it out on me
     For all that was and all that couldn’t be,
And as I watched the shades of summer turn
I knew I couldn’t leave you on your own.

A dozen seasons later, your new job
Is thriving and your confidence is strong,
The kids are grown up more and anymore
You’ll be all right.  You don’t need me around.
     I turn to watch the sunlight slip away
     And see the time diminish every day  
And still I stay with you, but now because
I dread the thought of being left alone.

The equinox is fleeting, but I try
To hold on to its balance for as long
As tilting worlds allow; we lean away
From warmth and I can feel the harder ground
     Of colder days to come, and even now
     I know I should move on, or move somehow,
But as the autumn winds blow through the leaves
Of September my cold feet turn into stone.

I hope that there may never be an end
To anything, from dawn to dusk to dawn;
That fall is just a stop along the way
To winter; that beyond this we are bound
     Eventually to see another spring
     And then wherever time and fate will bring
Us, traveling together or apart
But never, through these autumn woods, alone.


from Calendrums

Snapshot 9

9

indent.  empty space.  leftover poetry, endless stories, 
Yahweh (simple self pronoun, present tense being)
variations.  free association.  blank verse.  filler.  everything
matters, articles, prepositions, objects, conjunctions,
interjections, river bed metaphors, parched desert similes...
consciousness streams, trickles, floods, sates, holds. final 
judgment awaits. stillwater, someday. we’re halfway there.


from Turning The Metaphor

Thirty Good Lines

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 331-359 

331 Eliot wrote to Ford Madox Ford in 1923 that there were “about thirty good lines in The Waste Land, can you find them?” Ford declined to take the bait, so Eliot answered himself in a subsequent letter: “As for the lines I mention, you need not scratch your head over them. They are the 29 lines of the water-dripping song in the last part.” See Letters II**. A few years earlier, Eliot had called Ford’s poem Antwerp (1917) “the only good poem I have met with on the subject of the war.” See Eliot, Reflections on Contemporary Poetry, Egoist (November 1917).  Ford’s poem graphically describes “the trench of gray mud ...turned to a brown purple drain...” See note 62 for references to the war within this poem.

343 See Brooks**, comparing the descriptions of no silence, no solitude, but dry sterile thunder and red sullen faces in lines 341-344 to the different sounds and presences to come, when a third will begin to walk beside the travelers (lines 360-366) and the thunder will bring rain and words with meaning (lines 400-423). 

357 Eliot: This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.... Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its  “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.  Frank M. Chapman, Handbook (1896).  Lines331-359 present the longest stretch of the poem in Eliot’s own voice without apparent allusions or the need for translation, but the hermit thrush's call at the end of this passage represents the hint of, or the longing for, a third voice. This itself alludes to Whitman, Memories 13 (Appendix A): “Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird / ...Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines / ...O liquid and free and tender!”

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Sometimes and Always

Ideas, sparks abound; sometimes it seems like I could write all day long. I’m sure I’ve picked the proper direction at such sometimes; I’m positive then that I am a writer. But these sparks and ideas are all very much in their infant stages. I’m learning that I’ve got a lot to learn. Things don’t just flow from head to lead. The sparks fizzle more than they catch, and even when they seem to catch there are countless steps to the blazing success I dream of, countless steps past the few combusted embers I’ve managed to produce. I do like the ideas, though, while they sparkle and catch and smoke; even at these minor stages of combustion, I like what can be done with words, and I have to stop and appreciate what God allows me.

I’ve finished a rough draft of a story. It’s not great, and really it’s not very good, but I have a certain pride, a certain good feeling that I will never apologize for, because the spark has caught and filled five pages, 1,200 words. If it’s kind of an ambiguous fire, or a somewhat lifeless fire (and my story is all of these, I will be told), I will still have my good feeling and I will still thank God, because there is a flame where once was only a spark, and there was a spark where once was nothing at all.

That “certain pride,” by the way, is not just pride about what I have personally done. Maybe I don’t even have to say this, but I used the word... maybe the better word is fascination, about what I can do.  Yes.  God, thank you.

I will still work to improve the current story, because there is ambiguity and lifelessness and pointlessness and a lack of depth. Maybe I’ll work at it and never get it right, but that’s all right, because I’ve got other ideas after this one.... 

Sometimes it seems like I could write all day long —but thank you God, sometimes and always.

---

And then some days I don’t feel like writing at all.

---

School has started. This summer looks like it is going to be a relatively light load. We have two stories to write and I’ve already submitted the first, something I’d written three months ago. For the second story, I’m kicking at a dozen embers, but so far nothing has combusted.

from March to December

Poetry 1000

Poetry is trying to find
a thousand words without a camera,

to compose an image, more, to capture a
chance alignment; poetry

will serve you better than your cell phone’s
visual “can you hear me now?”

Poetry is taking the time,
waiting for lighting, adjusting the speed

and exposure.  I, on a rainy day,
once found the perfect picture

when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give raindrops their color.  Now

and then looking for reason
you discover the art of a thousand words.


from Turning The Metaphor

Moleskin 4.9

The bus rides were round trip tangents, though, that always seemed to bring me back to my summer of unwanted change. But pardon these flash-forwards and circling back again: I am getting ahead of myself and forgetting my lines. And now, my dear other, the point. These shoes you are being asked to try, just to get their feel and fit, will never be your own footwear; maybe they pinch too much or don’t look like anything you’d ever wear. Maybe they’re too old and boring, or maybe they smell with age. So take them off now, and put your own shoes back on: slip into what you know, the life I do not know, and be on your way. Continue with your own summer of twelve, or thirteen or fourteen or forty: but please, continue. There is still more to the story.

Snapshots, 3 through 8

3

precipitation’s plain dull pallette shivers endlessly, above 
below around: today we wait, anticipating better fronts, left 
listening for conclusive punctuation, getting only ellipses, 
gradual premonitions hinting what’s coming: distant booms 
first telegraphed in whiplashed flashes; later followed by 
smells, electricity’s ominous odor, dampened dust, stirred up 
dirt, awakened earth; finally touch, feel: rainfall taking over.

4

rain: cold colorless falling wet hard relentless dominating, 
weather offputting, setting aside coatless hatless daylight 
hours, nature’s nowcast, never mind forecast, upsetting social 
structures, cancelling performances played, attended, 
offering lightning’s unsubscribed sizzle instead, deceptively 
dry; thunder, decidedly loud exclamations without explana-
tion; patter, splatter, drizzle, less music than noise then pour.

5

suddenly walking ruins shoes, driving turns weary chore, it’s 
all souls/machines can do keeping rubber feet/wheels moving 
simply getting home, housed, parked, finding anywhere dry, 
accepting anything, settling, seeking temporary cover like 
poor tired refugees, huddled under square box umbrellas 
with fogged windows, streaked panes: our world’s eyes, 
distorted from unwanted tears, saltlessly wondering why 

6

yet, everpresent, effervescent reason shows itself now, hinted 
within renegade rays of subtlest sunlight revealing rain-
water’s constant beauty: sparkling, living, even as it falls:  
you will see green grass again, these angels say, speaking, 
singing hard working droplets they: we’ll roll those heavy 
clouds away, restore your great forgiven sky, clean slated, 
blue, more breathable, renewed.  holy, fresh, clear water!

7

cleansing, cleaning, washing, rinsing.  (repeating,  
remembering how mother/daughter, taught, still teaches me) 
necessary, yes, she says this was, shall always be,
evermore her favorite time, season, place:  praying amen,
hearing “heavenagain,” feeling particulate waves, 
letting herself become immobilized, moved, emotional,
willingly becoming elementary, simplified, soothed.   

8

reflection...premise...perception...truth, fundamentally faith 
alone explains God’s nature; thus, man’s (woman’s, child’s) 
ritual immersion, each gender, age, every creed’s splash 
therapy, aqua conscience, awakening, rejuvenation; believe:  
reincarnation, return, rebirth, baptism; sprinkling; accept:  
drowning, spiritual surrender inwards, outwards, upwards:  
replacement...promise...permission...life, sacramentally. 


from Turning The Metaphor

Snapshots, 1 & 2

...I, on a rainy day, once found the perfect picture
when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give raindrops their color.  Now

1

cameras are useless brushes, should some sudden need occur 
, forever missing pixels, looking past contrast, losing focus; 
paint (oil, acrylic, maybe watercolor?) too cannot capture our 
climate’s spectral shades, frameless moments, shifting facts;
language isn’t any better, not very, but if you’ll pardon
contractions and count them anyhow (allow poetic cheats,
permit imperfections), my pen is drawn.  I’m ready.  I’ll try.  

2

subtitle: 1,000 imperfect words; thesis: an impossible sudoku.
opening paragraph, initial sentencing: possessive noun,
adjectives, subjective action verb, adverbs, et cetera...  already
elliptical critics would criticize, deconstruct, misconstrue &
decompose what I’ve proposed / begun composing: 
meanwhile, earth’s atmosphere weeps / continues weeping;  
another imitative artist cries, his ink unerasably flowing. 


from Turning The Metaphor

Beyond Speech and Silence

How can one describe God?

What wins the argument?

Speech is limited to comparison,

Silence is sworn to dereliction,

Reason travels far to reach amazement,

Zeal arrives at self-enrichment,

Imagination cannot find the truth, and

Understanding turns to vanity.

The prophets are confused by God,

the saints are stupefied.

God is the mind’s desire

and master of the soul,

the devotee’s commitment,

the disciple’s goal,

but all of this is beyond where reason goes,

exists above existence, acts

without regard to the usual bounds:

There is no “in” or “out”, “how” or “why”.


from Walled Gardens

After...

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 322-330 





322 I.e., after the fire of Section III, with its river sweat (line 266), red sails (line 270) and incessant burning (line 308). 

✭  Lines 322-330 reflect the HOLY WEEK narrative; see also notes 71, 366 and 393, and see Luke 22: 39-45: “And he [Jesus] came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him. And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweatwas as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow.” See alsoMatthew 26:36, placing this prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane; and John 18:3, adding soldiers’ torches to the scene; compare these to the torches in Whitman, Memories 6 (see note 202 and Appendix A).

323 I.e., after the water of Section IV and its association with the drowned girl in the hyacinth garden (lines 37 and 38). 

324 I.e., after the earth of Section I, with its stony rubbish (line 20). See also Matthew 13:5: “Some [seeds] fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth”

325 I.e., after the air and talk of Section II (see note 76.5).  

329 See Brooks**, noting the limbo of those “living ...now dying” in split levels of life and death.

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)