What’s in My Journal

(Toleware document box, Pennsylvania, nineteenth-century)

“Time past and time future / What might have been and what has been . . .” ~ T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), American-born English poet, playwright, and editor, from Burnt Norton

WHAT’S IN MY JOURNAL

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space of knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in our character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can’t find them. Someone’s terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

~ William Stafford (1914-1992), American poet

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When I Met My Muse

Each Friday we provide the link to the blog that is hosting a celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. At that site you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books.

Enjoy the festivities!

The host this week is Elaine Magliaro. You can visit her here at Wild Rose Reader.



(The Head of a Woman, 1508, unfinished painting
by Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, a true Renaissance
Man)

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” ~ Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), Spanish artist

WHEN I MET MY MUSE

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off — they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. “I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.

~ William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet

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Listening

(A Letter from His Father by Joseph Bail,
1862-1921, French painter)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran minister and theologian in Nazi Germany. He was a pacifist but after a long and serious examination of his conscience, he decided the regime was so evil that he would join a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.

Arrested in 1943 by the Gestapo, Bonhoeffer spent months in solitary confinement. He was hanged in 1945, only weeks before the end of the War in Europe. He was 39 years old.

Dietrich had a great teacher in his father. Karl Bonhoeffer was a noted psychiatrist who possessed a “great tolerance that left no room for narrow-mindedness and broadened the horizons of our home,” wrote Sabine, Dietrich’s twin sister. “He took it for granted that we would try to do what was right and expected much from us, but we could always count on his kindness and the fairness of his judgment.” ~ Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

LISTENING

My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.

~ William Stafford (1914-1993), appointed U.S. poet laureate 1970-1971

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Ask Me

(William Stafford, poet laureate, 1970-1971)

ASK ME

Some time when the river is ice ask me
what mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

~ William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet

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Why I Am Happy

(The Angler, woodcut block by Walter
J. Phillips, 1884-1962, Canadian artist)

The memories of summer stay with us. The poet does not go into detail, but we know exactly what he is talking about.

WHY I AM HAPPY

Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

~ William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet

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At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border

(Garden and fountain at the International Peace Garden)

July marks its first days with the sights and sounds of fireworks and parades celebrating America. This will be our theme this month.

We begin with a verse that takes note of the friendship between America and its neighbor to the north. It is Canada’s national day today, celebrating the founding of the nation.

On July 1, 1867, the British colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined the Province of Canada (Quebec and Ontario) to create "one Dominion under the name of Canada." The term "dominion" came from Psalm 72:8, "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." This Biblical verse also inspired Canada's Latin motto, A Mari usque ad Mare, or "From Sea to Sea."

It was not until 1871, with the entry of British Columbia on the Pacific Ocean, that the motto reflected reality. Some fussy people would put that date even later, to 1949, when Newfoundland, on the Atlantic Ocean, became the tenth province of Canada.

Canada now comprises ten provinces and three territories in the north, including the Yukon. The name of this national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day in 1982.

In 1932, the United States and Canada established a garden on a piece of land between the province of Manitoba and the state of North Dakota. This garden straddles the 49th parallel, which marks the longest undefended border in the world.

AT THE UN-NATIONAL MONUMENT ALONG THE CANADIAN BORDER

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed — or were killed — on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

~ William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet

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