Monday, June 6, 2005

It's 12:10 p.m. on Monday 6 June 2005, and it's snowing like crazy here at the Old Same Place. We are not crazy. We will not go crazy, just because it's snowing in June. There will be other reasons for it. 12:13:30 PM    comment []

The Sleeper by Robert Bly            He came in and sat by my side, and I did not wake up. I went on dreaming of vast houses with rooms I had not seen, of men suddenly appearing whom I did not know, but who knew me, of thistles whose points shone as if a light were inside.             A man came to me and began to play music. One arm lay outside the covers. He put the dulcimer in my hand but I did not play it. I went on, hearing.             Why didn't I wake up? And why didn't I play? Because I am asleep, and the sleeping man is all withdrawn into himself. He thinks the sound of a shutting door is a tooth falling from his head, or his head rolling on the ground. (from This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood: Prose Poems, 1977) 12:04:01 PM    comment []

Steve / Wren The great clouds return, or reasonable facsimiles thereof. And look!--snowflakes. Can you believe it? The starlings have fledged and flown, and now the house wrens take over the undereaves. Such loud and elaborate songs of territory out the morning throats of these tiny creatures. Something stirs in memory, the gift of a wren--an engraving printed on the face of a very old postage stamp. It came with a poem, for my birthday. Had to do with the feast of St. Stephen, which I believe falls on the day before my birthday. Long ago when I was still in college and the boys were very small. I had rejected a poet's dangerous attentions, saying I felt like a wren protecting her nest. The gifter, a raver who frightened me, cast me as wren, gave me the gift of the stamp, the poem he'd written. A Vietnam vet, former street wanderer sidewalk sleeper ragged drunk trying to pull his life together. Studying literature in my classes. He left college to work in oilfields of Shafter, in the wastelands of the south. Then Seattle; he became a letterpress printer, fine broadsides and chapbooks. Some bad people he owed money to came and took his presses away, and he fled. ... They took his presses. He fled, disappeared. He phoned me years later, from hiding, and asked whether he could set up and run the letterpress I owned and had never got going. He said he would sleep on a cot in the garage and wouldn't bother anyone. I was editing at Videomaker by then, and the boys were adolescents. And the man who became Thistle & Hemlock's Ex-Housemate became grim indeed at the very idea. So--not. And Steve--his name was Steven Chandler--died of heroin that year in a forest service lookout tower. Died of heroin in a forest service lookout tower in Oregon or Washington. I heard. In the wren poem, or another he wrote for me, he used the word "chthonic." First time I'd ever seen it. I thought it was ridiculous. I used to roll my eyes at his poems, but not out loud, because he was so earnest, so from the heart, so desperate for poetry. A Beat-en Ezra Pound just up out of some Jungian subway. Had an alabaster Beatrice on a shelf in his little room. Somewhere in a manila envelope labeled "Steve Chandler" I still have his poems, maybe even the stamp. I'll dig it up and scan it, maybe. [Found his letters. Alas, no stamp.] [Wren image from http://www.hcdickins.co.uk/Images/Wilkinson/Birds/Wren.jpg. 11:55:45 AM    comment []