Jan 182009
You know it has been a cold week when 20 degrees feels warm. Went out & filled the bird feeders, shoveled last night’s inch of snow off the porch, started the old Subaru to see if it would go (cranked right over on the first try), and generally breathed outdoor air. When Carole gets home from the barn, the dogs are going to get their first walk in several days.
2 Responses to “Balmy”
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INAUGURAL VALENTINE
As every scientist knows
there are only four loves
in the withering
of a leaf
though they seem to come from everywhere
to meet themselves
as strangers airborne
in the ever-widening gorge of the world
the love of falling
the love of someone
the love of a certain pigment
the love of seeds
only what is free itself
can speak for freedom.
i’m thinking of the inauguration on tuesday. i’m so happy for the peoples’ all peoples president.
here are my balmy morning trinity of poems for this (the horse and cart poem was in my firs collection of poems 1973 titled DAMAGE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY)(the mayflower poem began in thinking of the work of economist jean-jacques lafont’s great work on the concept of ‘the commons’) (the red sky/jfkennedy poem comes out of a long life and my first voted-for president, my peace corps experience, and that old couplet the way i recall hearing it as a boy from my great grandmother jane delehant) ed (feeling hopeful and feeling overwhelmed with the orange paper lanterns of memories of what my mom and dad jack and ruth cared about and worked for all their lives) edward mycue :
HORSE AND CART
Contact is crying recognition.
Like match against surface
it is not the fire.
Flint is stone cold.
A little world, selected, limited—
home—you come in
to a house another time:
maybe you’ve stopped
noticing
things.
For life
not for red gold we work
war, hunger
dying forgetting forgotten.
For life not for red gold
our new Jerusalems struggle
for simple dreams
for days to end in.
Not how it came. How did it go?
© EDWARD MYCUE
MAY FLOWER
Mayflower shoots
into the wind hurling
the thorn haw-fruit
windward without aim
careless of obstruction.
In daytimes, people have unsavory reasons
for things of human value, need, want and use.
When night returns aisle 23B location marker
in Long’s in North Berkeley drugstore lights-up
listing cough drops, condoms and sundries.
Mayflower shoots
into the wind hurling
the thorn haw-fruit
windward without aid
careless of obstruction.
People share clean air and love, anger, happiness,
contentment as if all unaware of roses, the apple,
peach, Bing cherry, blackberry as if they are “free
riders” as if mutual gains are not problems of “the
commons” and they not beneficiaries of the commons.
Mayflower shoots
into the wind hurling
the thorn haw-fruit
windward without aid
as if careless of obstruction.
Yearly daily, hourly, every second people are hurling themselves
windward unaware of the dynamics of the most common needs.
No other proof need we like the hawthorn are related.
Mayflower shoots
into the wind hurling
the thorn haw-fruit
windward without aid
as if careless of obstruction.
© EDWARD MYCUE
RED SKY
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Everybody has
a given life.
None get out alive.
Sense, sex, intellect
friends (maybe
w/ benefits).
Some learn or
take instruction.
Caring, Ecstasy,
Sympathy, Insight:
life’s fateful cast:
before endarkening
graying blue skys
greening red nights.
Don’t care now if
you’ve an ill-fitting
wrinkled tan jacket–
less suspect tattoos.
You gave life a nod
let it snake by pissing.
Boston hero, plum lad.
Red sky at night,
Sailors’ delight. JFK:
remember his light.
(MEMENTO MORI 22 NOVEMBER 1963)
© EDWARD MYCUE 22 November 2008