Covered Porch, Downtown

This poem, "Covered Porch, Downtown," is one that in some ways eludes me. I'm not necessarily sure what I was trying to get at when I wrote it. What I did know was that I liked the details, and I liked the sort of hopefulness of the woman, smiling as she pushes her shopping cart down the sidewalk, despite the odds against her - her age (and the weakness that would probably come with that), the rain, the cracks in the sidewalk. I would imagine that the cart wheels do not roll especially smoothly. Despite all of this she still manages to carry out her quotidian routine. The stoicism of the woman conveys to the narrator a sense of hope. This hopefulness inspires the narrator with a similar hope, even a stoicism towards his own surroundings, and brings him to the James Wright-ish statement, "I am making peace with God." Through this the rain in a way becomes a baptism, the speaker being washed cleaned in this moment of renewal.

COVERED PORCH, DOWNTOWN

Sitting on the covered porch downtown
in the summer, afternoon,
I listen to the husky whisper
of rain padding on the shingles
and aluminum drainpipes,
gathering in puddles on the concrete.

A woman, likely in her eighties,
pushes a cart over the cracks
in the sidewalk, through the enveloping fog.
Her face is withered, sad.
She flashes me a smile as her
left-front wheel catches on the pavement.

I am making peace with God.

Meditation on Calligraphy

This next poem, "Meditation on Calligraphy," is one inspired by a class I took over the summer on Zen Bhuddism and its relation to poetry. One of the things we covered in that class was the art of Zen calligraphy. The beauty of this form is its existential nature. The calligrapher focuses only on the present, planning out his movements with precision, blocking out all else - other thoughts, worries, obligations, etc. It is through this process of meditation that he prepares his action, and then, in one solitary movement he puts the brush to the page. He performs the action on which he has meditated, and then he is finished, left alone to comtemplate his actions. The last line of the poem is borrowed from another poem by a friend of mine. It happened to fit quite well with the poem I was writing, and as T. S. Eliot said, great poets do not borrow, but steal. Thanks, Corey.

MEDITATION ON CALLIGRAPHY

The hand meditates
over canvas,
contemplating the brush,
the page, nothingness -
every flicker of
the horsehair tip,
before setting ink
to paper.

In suddenness,
the moment,
aware,
the hand strikes -
one quick motion -
thoughtless and full
of thought.

Finished - the line,
thick, and black
on the page.
Brush at his side,
he is still, content.
Sitting just to sit.

II.

This is another piece of the larger, narrative work I am putting together. There is, of course, much more work to be done. This piece alone is a work in progress, but I figure I'd post some here and see what people think. Originally, I played around with the structure of words on the page a bit. I don't know how to do that with this blog, so the poem is just flushed left.

II.

By the sea we ran in circles,
two boys in the California sun,
our shoulders browned from the heat
and our eyes stinging at the corners
from wiped away ocean water
and the backs of sand-stuck hands.

In the water I let my body go,
subject to ebb and tide,
constancy of Pacific pull,
before wading back to
the coast.

I wrote his name,
Michael,
Brother,
on the shore –
entry to ephemeral castles,
marking kingdoms
of a world moved west.