I am an American

 

A group of poems offered by the poets to be a part of the "I Am An American" show at Cove St. Arts, Portland, Maine. 

What is the face of America

granite, limestone, rock face

upthrust delta rich

soil and deep forest

swift rivers flowing

deep ice and first peoples

where are the borders

mountain, river, glacier's edge

everything moving

wind water night sky stars

great flocks flying

great schools swimming

great herds moving

crossing, crossing

touching the edge of ice

seeds on the breeze

put your roots down and

you are welcome here

Gary Lawless

*****************************

Ten Haiku

1

The Earth-wide waste dump

is half full

half empty

2

The chain saw

to the giant trunk of the tree

nothing lasts

3

If there is smoke

there is a gun

or a barbecue

4

I am alone in the basement

panting on the treadmill

how vast this country

5

Driving on I-95

I think how the Mississippi River

flows only in one direction

6

Spring 2019

all the cherry trees blossomed

even those around the White House

7

From the top of the Washington Monument

I see the capital city from all directions

my hand touches the air

8

Silk Road Silk Road

everybody is talking about the Silk Road

caterpillar go in your cocoon

9

It may take a deluge

for my house to float

toward your house

10

There is light

at the end of the tunnel

of hope

Sharif Elmusa

*****************************

I Am An Arab American

Because I tend the fig tree as earnestly as the dogwood and the pine

Because nutmeg and anise, cumin and cardamom inhabit my shelves and senses

Because I make both baklava and blueberry pie for my family

Because melodies of the oud and guitar dwell in my ears

Because poems by Mahmoud Darwish and Lucille Clifton are my daily bread

Because I am awed by the blueness of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea

Because I see Gaza when a protester raises a fist in Ferguson

Because I've touched the splendor of a brown child in my womb

Because I write in languages that flow in opposite directions

Because Arabic and English are both my touchstones

Because my name is unfamiliar to some and a comforting word to others

Because I grow jasmine to conjure the fragrance of my first home

Because to me, the olive tree is an ancestor, a food source, a healer

Because my Palestinian parents were refugees and I am an immigrant

Because my children see more than one world, inherit stories that astonish

Because I want to protect the purple mountains and shining seas everywhere

Because I know that everything we decide now affects the next seven generations

Zeina Azzam

**********************************

I am an American. 

Today, not someday.

Inserting my authentic African self in every city, every state, and every history book that

has been written.

I am an American.

Not because I was born here.

But because my heart, my soul, my sorrows, and my future promises are buried deep

down into the soil and concrete of this nation.

Yes, I am an American.

Not because I speak English.

But because my tongue knows how to roar in many languages,

knows how to comprehend, read, and rewrite the stories that haven't been written.

I am an American.

Not because I drink my morning coffee with a little cream but because I drink it dark,

just like how I was taught in the motherland.

With every sip I take tasting the bitterness of my experiences.

I am an American.

Not because I take the subway to my place of work, but because I have walked miles on

stones to find my final destination that I call home.

I am an American.

Not because I wear a T-shirt and pants but because I wear my Abaya and hijab proudly

with no fear.

Not sitting at the dining room table or eating from one plate, it's the floor in the center

of our living room that has become our threshold.

Our Thanksgiving meal does not include turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, but expect

Fufu and plantains to be at the center of our meal.

I am an American not because my father fought in the Civil War that eventually ended

slavery,

but because he, I, and many others still have cut open wounds with no medication or a

plan for a renewal healing.

My eyes cry for my America while my feet dance to my African beats.

Holding on to home on the tip of my tongue.

Sewing this diverse piece of fabric of my many identities,

leaving each needle to write its own story.

I am an American.

Ekhlas Ahmed

***********************************

DOLMA

Whole Food dolma, I explain, is simply

grapeleaves rolled with rice, a paradox

oilysmooth, lemontart, crisp stone

mountains wrapped in viridescent fields

breeze leavened, the hot summer days.

I cannot make them see

my great-grandmother's hands,

roadside gathering, mason jars filling

browngreen leaves like pondlilies

underwater strata, layers of lost growth.

How once, even my grandmother canned

acorn squash, rich earth of her own garden

tomato vine, hidden arbor. How once,

there were blueberries wild on Federal Hill

my father picked them as a child, his favorite

memory, how morning tasted on the backporch

brightknit like a rainbow afghan and I

leave all these things on my tongue

unspoken, taste the dolma somewoman,

somewhere, has made.

Katherine Hagopian Berry

*********************************

10/30/18

For Adrienne Rich

You tell us that we have

the drive/to connect. The dream of a common language.

That  No one sleeps in this room without/the dream of a common language

But how do you dream

of a common language

when you are surrounded 

by faces that do not know you?

There are those who

have been in this room for a lifetime.

Who dream stories in languages

that aren't written down

in this place.

I once heard a story about a man with dementia who walked into an industrial bread mixer.

No grand metaphor here, just a man

dazed/ and/ confused.

Lost his way.

Walked through a door and a door and a door and off a ledge.

Found himself trapped - in a concave well - mixed in with remnants

yeast/ and/ flour.

Can you imagine?

The smoothness of the walls.

The futility of motion.

The fear giving way to surrender.

And so, as the story goes, he tired and lay still

at the bottom of the basin

in the fetal position.

This is how they found him - covered in white

fetal/ and/ flour.

How could he explain his journey?

What led him to leave his home

to walk, through a door and a door and a door?

What language to describe what compelled him?

How does he respond to the why? To the how?

     How can we name a common language that makes him intelligible to these faces that

     surround him?

     How do I wrap my tongue around that, Adrienne?

You tell us that     Language cannot do everything.

You tell us that     No one lives in this room/ without confronting the whiteness of the wall

/ behind the poems.

For a moment

think of whiteness

and think of

walls.

For a moment

think of other journeys.

think of other migrations.

of collective movement.

of diaspora.

Know that migration is beautiful.

Migration is human.

Migration is animal.

Hold in your mind a tapestry.

Know that behind the poetry of promise

is something ominous

barbs/ and/ teeth

that will shred the tapestry

reconfigure it into a new likeness

translate it beyond recognition

that will scoff at dreams

will deny common language

will bark out

how/ and/ why

will

bruise/

and/

break.

I cannot conjure a common language that will save us.

I don't know what to tell you, Adrienne.

Samaa Abdurraqib

******************************************************

guantanamo

american flags from red wounds

blue bruises   shredded pulp

of human flesh

people torn from ancestral lands

for brown skin   blankets

of blood   bouquets

of ripped muscle

stomped light

crushed back...broken bones

blown up

balloon hands

heads drowned   chained to cold

concrete   starved & suffocated   forced

to take drugs   american citizens safe

comfortable   from the agony

& murder

of brown people

Lisa Panepinto

**********************************

I AM AN AMERICAN (VETERAN OF THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIET NAM)

1.

Low Intensity Warfare (1985)

Up here

we're working up

this winter's wood

Down there

below the Rio

below the Durangoes

in the fruit section

of our global IGA

deep in the sweet underbelly 

of America

Down there

we're stacking up

the bodies

Up here

fall is in the air

the mornings are crisp and clear

the leaves die beautifully

in earth browns

translucent yellows

blood reds

Down there

young peasants

are slipping into puddles

of mangled skin

Down there

Willie Peter*

is hard at work

Down there

the morning air

smells of burning flesh

Up here

business

is as usual

* "Willie Peter" is army slang for white phosphorous

2.

Prometheus Again  (1976)

When the infantry ran into trouble, they'd call on the artillery to "bring fire down on such-and-such coordinates"

He once brought fire down

on some village children

in that latest crazy forgotten war

of ours

Now he's come home

to spend his days asleep

beneath newspapers of inconsequence

to spend his nights chained

against our trash cans

drunk on

Ripple

Muscatel

Thunderbird

Retching our guts up

into the relentless dawn

3.

Unexploded Ordnance: A Ballad (2007)

for Chuck Searcy and the thousands of Vietnamese who have labored off and on since 1975, working to undo what we have done

So I was maybe all of twenty-one

when they whipped me

into some kind of soul-less shape

Yet another one of America's

weeping mother's sons

sent forth into this world

to raze, pillage, and rape

And now it's coming on

to another Christmas Eve

and the songs of joy and peace

fill up our little town

How I ask myself

could I possibly believe

I could do what I did

and not reap what I had sown

In that land far away

from what I call home

a grandfather leads

his granddaughter by the hand

into a field where we did

what had to be done

They trip into a searing heat

brighter than a thousand suns.

Doug Rawlings

7/15th Artillery

Vietnam 1969-1970

**************************************

I embrace colder than a witch's tit.

New Year's Eve 2017

The predator-elect stated, after comments were made that his 14 cabinet appointees are collectively worth as much as the "bottom" one third of the US population,

"What's wrong with Rich, isn't that what we want?"

I am here to say I embrace

colder than a witch's tit

hoar frost, bitch, dyke,

the entire list of Samantha Bee's vagina monologue.

I embrace squaw mountain, Nasty woman, man hater

I embrace every pejorative name for women,

from mother in law to Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher,

I embrace them in every language for the 3.5 billion women on the planet

I am here to say

We are not backing down,

you can call us whatever, we aren't biting that bait

if you think calling us names will make us think we aren't woman enough,

good enough, smart enough, tough enough sweet enough sexy enough

man enough to play the game and join the club, you're wrong.

Hillary did that, and if she can't break the misogyny wall

if she can't win with 3,000,000 more votes

none of us can.

I am here to say

we are going back to our radical roots,

the ones we never left

we don't want to join the club,

the pistol, the rifle, the drone, the bomb.

We don't want the weapons glorified in the shape of your penis

wreaking havoc and destruction over and over again ad nauseum

We don't want to be rich-queen,

we want none of us to be poor,

and clean water.

I am here to say I am done with

the glorification of the father

the adoration of the son, whatever you call them

I am so over the male narrative, the hero and the golden fleece,

I am so done with boys will be boys.

I am here to say

I totally embrace the mother

and celebrate the daughters

the people who make life happen every sunrise every sunset,

all that unpaid labor

who give birth, get food on the table, laundry done,

who nurse, teach languages, manners,

the women who do all the work at churches, nursing homes hospitals schools

while a few men at the top push papers and a few men off to the side at the

bottom push brooms and fix the washing machines

I embrace the mother goddess,

who has no name in patriarchy

I embrace the 101 names of the mother

the billions of nameless daughters.

And for any men squirming in the audience

I am over White supremacy too,

I reap the benefits of institutionalized racism,

absolutely have access to more resources easier,

cause I'm white.

Being, oh gee, uncomfortable cause we get called out on privilege,

Buck up, become men against patriarchy, white people against racism

I am here to say I am totally over

not acknowledging, recognizing,

this country's wealth was built on

the labor and legacy of black people

being enslaved by white people,

there is no poetry in that

or that our glorious first black president

wasn't obstructed at every point because he was black.

and even he...can and did last week address the nation, saying

"we didn't take the territory of our enemies after the wars, we helped

rebuild."

Completely

leaving out that we took a continent

and nearly annihilated its first people

ain't no poetry in that.

I am here to embrace Nasty woman, Code Pink, One Billion Rising,

Veterans for Peace, Black Lives Matter, Seed Savers, Greenpeace -

I am here to embrace disarmament, Standing Rock.

I am here being

embraced by the Mother,

The Earth, our planet,

that force of nature who gives us the whole kit and kaboodle

every sunrise, every sunset

I don't want a gold throne, to be Queen,

I want no one to be poor and

clean water, clean water...clean air

for the great and glorious diversity

of all living beings

who make my world

So so Rich.

Karin Spitfire

*************************

WORD FOR THE DAY:

hubris.

Greek hu- (in compound hubris) violence, outrage, insolence

+

Latin brutus- (suffix) heavy, unwieldy, dull, stupid, brutish

"pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall"

(Book of Proverbs, 16:18)

pride that blinds/ a committer of hubris acts in foolish ways that belie common sense

often associated w/lack of humility; also ignorance

as for pleasure in hubris, its cause is this:

naive men think by ill-treating others

they make superiority their own.

in ancient Greece, hubris was outrage, actions that violated

the natural order,

sometimes for gratification of the abuser

a crime at least from the time of Solon

it indicates overestimation of one's own accomplishments,

lost contact w/normal reality

When the rich or young men think they are better than others they are

hubristic.

hubris lusts for victory not reconciliation

General George Armstrong Custer's decisions in the Battle of the Little Big Horn illustrate

hubris as history:

"Where did all those damned Indians come from?"

asked Custer

or,

as the incumbent president cruises along in his motorcade surrounded by throngs of

adoring supporters, he rasps to the Cabinet Secretary seated beside him,

"Incredible isn't it? After this I could never return to ordering windows.

It would be so boring."

Eero Ruuttila

*******************************************

Sir Thomas's Baptismal Rite on the 5th of July (he was born on the 4th):

Soliloquy from a homeless encampment on the Kennebec River

" Oh and how the dark forces celebrated with

bombs offending the sweet night air, and frightening

the fauna, whose tender steps hurried

to dens to hide from the sulfurous wind. The lights

of war as if boasting that death can assume

yonder rainbow's gentle arc, and the epicurean

crowds in a bacchanalian feast of short haggis, small

bread and mead looked with glee upon this

colored display of fallen innocent ones.

Are we to gaze upon this hour

of our discontent idly whilst the

hounds of hell's dominion smiled

upon by Mars himself decimate

the innocent blush of young lovers

on this plane?

Having not known a kiss from their

beloved, so saddened the crushed

rose upon the hand of darkness where

even Odin is bruised and dug

in the rib as to not allow an unkindness

of ravens to fly the night sky.

Is it the condiment that resembles blood that

makes them thirst for hardship against not their own.

Bloodlust inspired by what they eat, making it possible

for genocidal tendencies towards Native Americans and

putting Africans to slavery, and closing borders to

immigrants, and spending as Midas bringing some

fool's gold to the dark tendencies of their consciousness.

Or perhaps the pickled condiment is the fiend spread

upon their short haggis; does it intimate a

sweet relish for suffering, giving feasts whilst our defeated

army lay in this forest with tattered tents and clothes ill fit.

Methinks it is the mead, however. The sweet elixir of

Falstaff that creates from blank canvas masterpieces

of life's mundane moments, that shows no talent beyond

what a fond moment can be in unrivaled beauty when

articulated with unencumbered mind.

Oh what a day this is, good sir!

What day breaks across the hills, sweet Silas?"

"It is July 5th, sir."

"Come, dear friend, we have only moments before the day

steals our good nature and we become again a huddled mass

of tormented memories unfit for angels, children of

humanity's brutality and apathy."

Thomas leads the community of the homeless and baptizes

in the river. Next week a caseworker will show up and try

to convince Thomas to take medication and to come away

from the forest to live in relative comfort.

His answer is always the same:

"Who shall guard the ramparts of palatine dreams of

righteousness, before innocence is stolen yet again

and the very night air lay heavy with sulfuric wind..."

Jason Grundstrom-Whitney

Marble, Breathing

 

the green marble of Tinos

the creamy white of Paros the

Venus de Milo, Virgil's "loveliest marble"

soft white Naxos, rich with crystals -

Pentelic marble, rising to the sun above Athens -

black Varenna marble

Murano's grey marble from Marmara

the red African marble at

San Angelo Raffaele with

the Archangel and his dog -

Gesuiti marble becomes

Fortuny fabric

(altare, marmorino, navata)

and Carrara, Michelangelo's marble -

heat and pressure turn limestone

into marble

limestone is organisms made stone

marble was once alive and

maybe, just maybe,

we can hear it, 

breathing.

In Cuba

Jim, Paul, and Gary, after a night of music in Trinidad, Cuba.

 I am waiting for a boat

just offshore, stalled

in the fog -

a boat of revolution,

a boat of hope and joy.

I am waiting for the men, for the women,

long hair and beards, smoking

big cigars, who will

ride down from the mountains

on donkeys and mules.

I am waiting for  whole

towns to rise up,

calling for justice, for liberty -

I am waiting for the courage

to step into my own life,

move toward the sound of

people, singing, join them in

our walk to freedom.

Gary Lawless

Trinidad, Cuba

2004

obsidian

Rainbow Obsidian, Lassen Region, California


Obsidian


I am dreaming of
Armenian obsidian -
Satan's Nails, on the
road to Mount Arteni.
Of Yerevan, and that view,
Ararat, across borders -
stone cut thin almost
transparent, like water -

We come singing from the river
we come singing from the sky

I am dreaming of
Modoc obsidian
Mount Lassen - they say
obsidian spirits speak just once
they say
obsidian came walking,
out of the river, singing -

We come singing from the river
we come singing from the sky


Gary Lawless

Fortuny: marble to cloth

(short velvet cape, printed in silver and gold - Mariano Fortuny)

Woven into the fabric
of islands
beads for stars
dark water dark sky

deep in
Fortuny blue
night lagoon

In Venice, the Gesuiti Church of Santa Maria Assunta has a wall of detailed marble work designed to resemble draped fabric. The Fortuny designers have created a new line of fabric patterns based on the Church's marbles, called "Sectile 1729". (the Church was completed in 1729). The three patterns are called Altare, Marmorino, and Navata. Here are links to the designs:
Altare
Marmorino
Navata

stone vibration

Faraglioni these
sea stacks, off Capri three
rocks rising, out of the
sea

On the island of Capri, the Bay of Naples. We were walking a coastline path, to see the Faraglioni, the sea stacks rising from the sea. For Homer, they were boulders thrown by Polyphemus. For Virgil, they were the meeting place of the Sirens, from which their songs would enchant the sailors of passing ships. Looking at this lovely rock, I have a thought, a feeling, an intuition, that if I could somehow reach the same vibrational level as the Faraglioni, I could experience the world as they do - outside of human time, outside of human history - a longer, slower story, connected to everything.

A few years later, again in Italy, in Ravenna, I am looking at a very old painting of the Virgin, remembered now as painted directly onto the wall, simple colors, faded, but she calls to me - again the feeling that if I could reach the vibrational level of the painting, the world could change.

These two moments stay with me, live inside me. Recently , while reading "Sacred Instructions", a new book by Penobscot author/activist/attorney Sherri Mitchell, I came to this passage: "Our challenge is to remember all of who we are. We begin this process by expanding our awareness to include the entire creation...(to) alter my awareness by shifting my vibrational level to match the vibrational level of the world around me. This awareness created a kinship between me, the ant, the grass, the field, the birds, and the trees. I was able to experience a glimpse of the fullness of our inter-relatedness. These simple moments in time changed the way that I saw the world, completely. A full layer of illusion faded away and a new view of reality appeared before my eyes. This did not happen because I am special or unique. Everyone possesses the same ability to shed their illusion and see the world as a unified whole, simply by expanding their awareness and shifting their vibration. Once we have mastered these vibrational shifts, we begin to shift the reality that we live in to one that is more harmonious and balanced with our divine source."

Sometimes the stones speak to us. Sometimes they are the best teachers.

marble, granite, and anarchy

Carrara, Italy

"In Carrara", the Italian anarchist Galileo Palla said, "even the stones are anarchist." "A Carrara anche le pietre sono anarchiche."
Carrara - the white mountain - Michelangelo's mountain - Carrara has produced more marble than any other place on earth.
By the late 1800s Carrara had become a "cradle of anarchy", especially among the quarry workers. The first organized anarchist group in Italy was founded there - with the New York Times remarking, in January of 1894, that Carrara was "the original hotbed of anarchism in Italy".

Barre, Vermont

In Barre, the local granite was dreaming - "Let's bring over some Italian anarchists and stir things up" - and they came.

Italian stoneworkers came to America to work the quarries in Barre and a number of other towns. In Barre, by 1899, 90 % of the quarry workers were union members. By 1914, one quarter of Barre's population was Italian. One of these Italians was Luigi Galleani - at the time called " the most dangerous man in America" or the most important anarchist in early 20th century America. Galleani had previously been deported from both France and Switzerland, and had escaped from internal exile on the Italian island of Pantelleria, off the coast of Sicily.
Coming to the United States, Galleani was arrested for inciting a riot (one fellow anarchist said "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw." Galleani fled to Canada, but was expelled back into the United States, arriving in Barre.
Galleani was befriended in Barre by anarchist and artist Carlo Abate. The two of them created what would become the leading Italian language anarchist periodical in America -Cronaca Sovversiva (Chronicle of Subversion). The first issue was published in Barre on June 6, 1903.The periodical continued for 15 years (its first office in Barre mysteriously burned to the ground) at its highest point claiming over 5000 subscribers. It was closed down by the US government under the Sedition Act of 1918. Galleani was deported back to Italy, eventually dying there.
Galleani and others brought a number of speakers to Barre, including Mother Jones, Eugene V. Debs, and Big Bill Haywood. Emma Goldman came to town, speaking to a crowd of over 900, and was later arrested and run out of town.
Galleani also published a widely circulated pamphlet called "La Salute e in voi" - roughly "The health is within you". This pamphlet was actually a manual for the manufacture of explosives and weapons.
Carlo Abate established a drawing school in Barre to enable young men to earn a living without working in the dust of the quarries ( because of silicosis, explosives, and rough conditions, the average lifespan of a quarry worker at the time was 42 years -)
One worker, Innocent Belli, has one word on his tombstone - "Anarchist" - He was arrested in 1900 after a "nearly successful" assassination attempt on Barre's chief of police. Another worker, a leading anarchist stone sculptor Elia Corti, was shot and killed when a fight broke out between anarchists and socialists at Barre's Socialist Hall. Corti's brother carved Elia's tombstone from a single piece of granite.

Due to the skills of the Italian stonecarvers, Barre's Hope Cemetery has become a sculpture garden, with the workers carving stones for their families and themselves.
We rest in the rock. Stone tells our stories, carries us into the future. What would the stories of these places be, without the stone...

Granite: Ekphrastic poem

An ekphrastic poem in collaboration with two sculptures by Andreas von Huene at the Centre Street Art Gallery, Bath, Maine


Granite

I
Echo
(Jay white granite)

Before language, there was granite.
In granite, the echo of all things -
rock wraps around, re-sounds,
echo of sunlight
echo of starlight
echoes of all
the rock has heard -
a larger sound than we can know,
found below -
granite wraps around me I
rest in the rock my
grandfather worked in the quarries -
Mosquito Mountain, Mount Waldo -
granite time is slow, slow time -
in granite time, my grandfather
is just leaving.
I can almost hear his voice
echoing.

II
Wave
(Freeport stone)

Granite was once liquid, and moving.
You can see the flowlines, currents
in the moving rock.
wave and flow, the
grain within,
interstitial.
Everything rises from rock,
granite in waves, flowing -
I find myself touching
granite, asking who are you,
where are you from -
Frankfort, Prospect,
Stonington, Vinalhaven,
Freeport, Jay -
I'm saying hello to
whole mountains moving -
I'm waving back
into the rock.

Poem by Gary Lawless
Sculpture by Andreas von Huene

origin stories

postcard from Gary Snyder to Gary Lawless

in 1973 I hitch-hiked from Maine to California to live with Gary Snyder at Kitkitdizze. My home was a red tent under a large madrone tree with tatami and books. It didn't rain for six months.

Birds Fly Through

Tintoretto - The Creation - Accademia - Venice

Birds in a line what
language do they
speak - lagoon talk -
who flew through and
who are you
(your song, like smoke,
on wind over water)
the saints heard you singing -
birds fly through the sacred,
every day

Tell Me Your Name

I asked the fox to
speak to you,
in your dreams.
He said there are
universes and universes,
stars move stars
move, everything
has another name.
I asked the fox to
tell me your name.

Nanao and Bikki

Last night I had a dream that Nanao asked me to tell people about his friend Bikki. When I published poet Nanao Sakaki's book of poems "Let's Eat Stars", the cover art was by Ainu artist Bikki Sunazawa (enhanced by Beth Leonard,it is an image I now have tattooed on my right arm). Nanao was a great admirer of Bikki's work, and "Let's Eat Stars" contains two poems specifically speaking to Bikki. I have included them below.You can learn more about Bikki in the excellent book "From The Playground of the Gods - The Life & Art of Bikky Sunazawa" by Chisato O. Dubreuil.




Bikki Salmon

Bikki salmon swimming
Nanao salmon swimming
Allen salmon swimming
Gary salmon swimming
Black Elk salmon swimming
Issa salmon swimming
Lao Tsu salmon swimming
Ezo wolf salmon swimming
Ainu Koroppocl salmon swimming
Yamanba witch salmon swimming
Maitreya Buddha salmon swimming
Northern Cross salmon swimming

Fair-weather cumulus floating
in October morning sky
rosy fruits of mountain ash trembling.
I stand on the cemented bank
of the River Teshio, Hokkaido, Japan.
A river straightened and strangled by man,
and on the bank, scattered eggs of salmon
left by a poacher.

Orion high in the evening sky
geese and swans head southward
maple leaves burning red
deer cry for love in fir forest
boletus edulis and wild grape
invite you into the mountains.

Just before the Sea of Okhotsk
begins to shine with drifting ice
North Pacific salmon return to mother rivers
where woods and waters nursed them years before.

Salmon means
blood and meat to grizzly
Fish of God to Ainu
Fish of festival to Japanese.

In the pebbly river
against quick running water
holding their energy
they wait and wait
and suddenly, thrusting their fins
they leap up the stream
-Hurry to the spot of their birth and death.

Bikki Sunazawa, legendary Ainu artist
for him too the time has come.
While cutting a woodblock print of the Fish of God
he becomes a salmon.
Having fish eyes, nose, scales, tattoos,
spirals and soul
He's now a seventy-centimeter-long fish, Bikki salmon.

Pectoral fin, dorsal fin,
ventral fin,
adipose fin, anal fin.

Under the river banks, heaps of trash
...TV sets, refrigerators,
...chemical flotsam in the river
...acid rain and radiation in the air

Against the flow of poison
Against the flow of decay
Mumbling Heart Sutra
Bikki salmon swimming.

In this crooked generation
salmon moves straight forward.

Now the ripples ripple in unison:
"Sing, dance as the river flows!"
"Sing, dance as life flows!"
"Sing, dance with your friends!"

Bikki salmon swimming
Nanao salmon swimming
Allen salmon swimming
Gary salmon swimming
Black Elk salmon swimming
Issa salmon swimming
Lao Tsu salmon swimming
Ezo wolf salmon swimming
Ainu Koroppocl salmon swimming
Yamanba witch salmon swimming
Maitreya Buddha salmon swimming
Northern Cross salmon swimming
Bikki, Bikki
Bikki salmon swimming
in River Teshio.

********************************

Star Bikki

A myth - a new star is born!
There are teeny, tiny six thousand stars
in the solar system, the minor planets or asteroids
which turn around the sun, day & night.

Somebody discovered a new one
& named it Bikki after my friend's name.

Bikki Sunazawa -
born in Hokkaido as Ainu
all his life he was carving
something in the empty sky with his chisel
something in wood with his soul
like his grandfathers.

Oct. 1988, his health was not good -
on one beautiful afternoon
I took my canoe & visited his studio.

Looking into my eyes, he asked
"Nanao, is the twenty-first century really coming?"

Tired out, Jan. 1989 he said
"Bye-bye" to this world.

And one day he metamorphosed into a tree,
his favorite one, an Ezo spruce in his garden.
The tree grows higher & higher above the clouds.
Today you find him in the solar system
as one of the minor planets.

Hi Star Bikki. Congratulations!

Do you know about your new identity card?
1. Registered number: 5372
2. Star Name: Bikki
3. Temporary number: 1987 WS
4. Discoverer: Kin Marudate, Kazuo Watanabe
5. Discovery spot: Kitami, Hokkaido, Japan

Hi Star Bikki! Nowadays
what are you carving?
What songs are you singing?
What kind of sake are you drinking?

Hi Star Bikki! Sometime
send me a postcard
decorated full of stars!

poems by Nanao Sakaki
photo of Bikki Sunazawa from "From the Playground of the Gods"

In Lille

Archangels raising their horns
facing the dawn
facing the river, St. John
singing the light
one hundred years of sunrise

On Saturday, September 8, 2018, I read poems at the Musee Culturel du Mont-Carmel, in Lille, Maine. For more information on this incredible building and project, please go here!
Gary Lawless

Birds fly through the sacred

photo by Sean Hawkey/WCC

His All-Holiness, Patriarch Bartholomew, releases a kestrel into the wild sky on the Greek island of Spetses. The two kestrels released that day had been rescued and rehabilitated by the Greek organization Animas link here . One flew north, the other flew south.

Zeus released two eagles at opposite ends of the Earth. They met at Delphi, the omphalos, the navel of the earth.

"When will we learn that to commit a crime against the natural world is also a sin...for human beings to destroy the biological diversity in God's creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by contributing to climate change, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth's waters, land and air - all of these are sins."
His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew

Herodotus:
two dark birds flew from Thebes.
One established the Siwa Oasis oracle in Libya.
One established the oracle at Dodona, Greece.
At Dodona, the bird flew to an oak.
The wind would stir the leaves, the sound
recognized by the birds as the voices of the gods.

"We have lost the spirit of worship. We are no longer respectful pilgrims on this earth; we have been reduced to careless consumers or passing travelers."
His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew

after the rain stopped, Noah released a raven. The raven did not return.
Next he released a dove, which returned, finding no other place to land.
He waited seven days, and released the dove again.
The dove returned, with a freshly plucked olive branch in its mouth.
Seven days later, he again released the dove.
This time the dove did not return, having set foot on land.


"A merciful heart...It is a heart on fire for the whole of Creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons and for all that exists."
St. Isaac the Syrian

and the birds,
flying through the Sacred
every day.


In June of 2018 Gary Lawless and Beth Leonard traveled to Greece to attend the "Toward a Greener Attica - Preserving the Planet and Protecting its People" conference, called by His Al-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew, and held in Athens and the islands of Spetses and Hydra.

Venice Wood

Posts. Hundreds of posts. Thousands of posts. Millions of posts.A whole city built on posts. Posts driven into the mud, below the surface. More than ten million trees. Posts for buildings. Wood for houses, storage, churches, bridges. Wood for shipbuilding. Wood for docks and levee systems. Wood for heating and cooking. Wood for the glass furnaces on Murano. Wood harvested and brought to Venice: wood from the Lagoon's littoral forests - larch, pine, alder ; wood brought downriver -oak and beech forests; wood from the mountains,from Slovenia,from Istria. Brought to the Zattere, named for the barges carrying the logs, now that long, flat walkway along the Giudecca, next to the water, Fondamente, where Pound loved to walk.
All of those ghosts.

venice waters

Everything is Holy.
Bless the Lagoon, sweet Saint Lucy.
Bless the birds, the fish,
Bless the trees on the outer islands,
Bless the waves and the wind.
Send the cruise ships to Hell.
There is room there,
for one more boat.

Prospect, Maine

My Grandfather Lester Dow's store, Prospect, Maine
photo undated, early 1900s


Prospect

My grandfather Lester
walked down, down
to his store
at the crossroads of town,
now buried with Hannah,
across the road low
on the hillside, there
my mother's first school.
My uncle walked down,
down to the marsh and
Bucksport beyond,
to the mill, making paper,
the mill now
closed down,
soon to be gone -
From Prospect the land
falls down to the river,
Verona, to Bucksport, beyond
and the whole world,
somewhere, below us now.



(For Lester, Hannah, Earl, and Ruth Dow)

Gary Lawless

originally published in "Still Mill - poems, stories and songs of Making Paper in Bucksport, Maine, 1930-2014"

In Ireland

Gary and Beth, with the Blasket Islands behind us -


Where every cove has a name
where every field has a name
we walk the "god-trodden"mountains
who are the dark birds
what is the yellow shrub
where every river has a spirit and
all wells are holy
from Tralee into the clouds
older than rock our
first day on earth


some other wet-weather
sung-over place
near a river
"It was long ago
if time means anything
long long ago" (Padraic Fallon)
limestone karst leads us
into clouds, into wind the
church of the ruined light
we are older than stone

fields rising into cloud, sheep
coming down the hill
coming down to
land where we
meet the rain of the day

circle fort in the field
leave flowers, leave flowers
Beltaine fires and a clear sky
leave flowers, touch stone

sink now into the peat
sink now, and sleep,
let the stones sing
over me

Gary Lawless

Beth Leonard photo - on the Burren


"low lie the fields of Athenry
where once we watched
the small free birds fly
our love was on the wing
we had dreams and songs to sing
it's so lonely round
the fields of Athenry"

Beth Leonard photo with Siobhan Lawless at the Lawless Family's Foods of Athenry"

"He was Lawless by name, Lawless by nature.
He was trouble right from the start"
Christy Moore

While in Ireland I gave a poetry reading in Dingle, at Dick Mack's Pub, as a part of the Feile na Bealtaine, on April 30, 2016. To view the short reading, in two parts, go here and here

Following in the footsteps of friends:

Here is Nanao Sakaki in Ireland:
Magic Pouch

On pilgrimage
to holy mountain Croagh Patrick
on Ireland's west coast
I found my magic pouch missing.

from Guatemala, some years ago
a black, white and purple cotton pouch
arrived and attached itself to my waist.

inside the pouch -
an Irish five pound note
an army knife
a fountain pen
a magnifying glass
a pair of sunglasses

to buy fish & chips for two persons
Irish money came yesterday.

poet Allen Ginsberg gave me the army knife
in New York City 1988.
It stayed with me as a good friend like Allen.

agile and sharp as an old star
the fountain pen, my soul, wrote many poems.

boundless chain of life -
with magnifying glass I inspected insect eggs,
flower seeds and the future of our galaxy.

the sunglasses were great for looking
into a rainbow, a sundog
& above the sundog... another rainbow.

Now the time is ripe.
I dedicate you all to Mt. Croagh Patrick.
you are gone...good luck!

Nanao Sakaki, Autumnal Equinox, 1993


and here is Gary Snyder, in Ireland:

Icy Mountains Constantly Walking
(for Seamus Heaney)

Work took me to Ireland
a twelve-hour flight.
The river Liffy
ale in a bar,
so many stories
of passions and wars -
a hilltop stone tomb
with the wind across the door.
Peat swamps go by:
people of the ice age.
Endless fields and farms
the last two thousand years.

I read my poems in Galway
just the chirp of a bug
and flew home thinking
of literature and time.

The serried rows of books
in the Long Hall at Trinity
the ranks of stony ranges
above the ice of Greenland.

Gary Snyder 1999

Poetry Walks

For several years I taught a course called "Poetry and Walking", both at Bates College and at MidCoast Senior College. We walked with Gilgamesh, walked around Japan with Basho, sauntered with Thoreau, walked the Lake District with Wordsworth, walked the Inferno with Dante and Virgil, followed Aboriginal songlines with Bruce Chatwin,read the poems of Miklos Radnoti as he walked to his death, listened to Ophelia Zepeda as she walked to water. Our text for the course, besides the work of these poets, was Rebecca Solnit's "Wanderlust - A History of Walking". As we traveled with the poets, I asked the students to take walks of their own, and then to write about them in the styles of the poets they were reading.
This summer, 2015, I spent six weeks as "artist-in-residence" at the Beech Hill Preserve in Rockport (Maine) and began to invite people to come and take "poetry walks". First I took a blank notebook to the top of Beech Hill and began a poem in it, then left it with a note encouraging people to add lines, verses, poems, drawings - to collaborate in creating a poem of place. I knew what I was seeing and feeling, but I wanted to know what other people were experiencing in the same place, and how they would choose to express it in language or visual art. In six weeks the journal gathered over 100 pages of writing, most of which can be read here.
I then began to schedule "poetry walks" - walking with other people, trying to think of the place in terms of a poem, or a poem in terms of a place - wondering how the place speaks to you, or through you, wondering which words or images each person would choose to express their relationship with the place. I also was interested in making a word/image map of the preserve - what is happening here, in this particular place - - what did you see/hear/smell/feel - and how you would choose to express that.
As we walk, there are poems all around us - plant poems, bird poems, rock poems, cloud poems light poems - I suggested that the walkers be open to the opportunities around us, to listen with both your head and heart. On one walk we had someone who birded by ear and what to me was a cacophony of sound began to be heard as differing voices - that is the vireo, that is the towhee, so i began to hear more of the conversation and its individual parts. Another walk found a plant person with us - and what was a wall of green became a community of individual lives, all worth exploring. Each person's experience of the place taught me something, gave me new ways of experiencing, enjoying, and learning from this particular place.And the poems began to happen. We could leave them behind in the notebook, or put them on line, and other people could learn from, and share, the experiences of this place.
I am interested in the words, phrases, images each person chooses to talk about a particular place, and of their experiences of it. We don't necessarily choose the same words or images, and we don't necessarily pick up on the same cues, happenings or conversations within the community of that place. Sometimes our language does not have the words to express it directly.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Phd moss biologist, member of the Potawatomi tribe, and author of two wonderful books (Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass) begins her essay "Learning the grammar of animacy" saying "To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language" "Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own." Learning to hear and understand, and to speak, these languages "could well be a restraint on our mindless exploitation of land." as we "walk through a richly inhabited world of Birch people, Bear people, Rock people, beings we think of and therefore speak of as persons worthy of our respect, of inclusion in a peopled world."
There are languages, languages of the aboriginal peoples who have lived in specific places, and have created words rising up out of their direct experiences of particular places. She gives the example of the verb wiikwegamaa, which means "to be a bay", and talks about her first encounter with that word:"In that moment i could smell the water of the bay, watch it rock against the shore and hear it sift onto the sand. A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa - to be a bay - releases the water from its bondage and lets it live. "To be a bay" holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers."
These words, these languages, these ways of being in the world are being lost, as languages and cultures and species and habitats disappear from the planet. Here is the poet W S Merwin:


Losing A Language

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back
yet the old still remember something that they could say

but they know now that such things are no longer believed
and the young have fewer words

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I

the children will not repeat
the phrases their parents speak

somebody has persuaded them
that it is better to say everything differently

so that they can be admired somewhere
farther and farther away

where nothing that is here is known
we have little to say to each other

we are wrong and dark
in the eyes of the new owners

the radio is incomprehensible
the day is glass

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign
everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

nobody has seen it happening
nobody remembers

this is what the words were made
to prophesy

here are the extinct feathers
here is the rain we saw

(W S Merwin)

and here is a poem from the native people of Greenland, collected by Knud Rasmussen and turned into a poem by Edward Field:

Magic Words

In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived on earth
a person could become an animal if you wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes we were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
We all spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance might have
strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen.
All you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this,
that's the way it was.

As poets, as writers, as creative beings engaged with the world, we can walk in the world and speak these magic words, and we can listen as these magic words are spoken around us. All we have to do is to "step out onto the planet" and say it. The magic words poem ends in the past tense. Our work on these "poetry walks" is to try and find language to bring it back into the present, and on into the future.
For the next year, photographer/writer Jim McCarthy and I will be wandering around the trails of the Cathance River Nature Preserve, sponsored by the Cathance River Education Alliance. We will lead monthly "creative walks", we will leave out a journal to create an ongoing poetry and image conversation at the Preserve, and have created a blog site where we will be posting writing and images (see that here )
So we invite you to come take a walk, share your words, speak them aloud, make it happen -

Call To Prayer

Call To Prayer

I
where
every stone in the wilderness
contains a prayer we
hold our prayers in our hands -
they tell their stories
slowly, slowly

(for Terry and Alisha
Halki Island/Istanbul)




ii
the river is full to
overflowing, we are
worshipping, inside the rock, our
prayers, to the heart
of the earth -
the desert has
emptied us out,
this stone, our hearts,
waiting
to be filled.

Goreme/Anatolia


Gary Lawless