Dancing on Forgotten Plains

Tantric Image
Enhanced photo by D.R. Wagner

FAMINE POETRY
—Jesse Collins, Pleasant Hill

(after America’s Heartland, episode #120)

A job well done, ourselves,
there between life and death,

with our goal of the unselfish,
to have arose from a hunger,

or some acute insufficiency,
more or less grievous as famine.

For the enormity of this:
our humanitarian relief,

as we combat hunger everyday,
for those not knowing

from where their meals come,
custom designed products,

a dried meal blend,
essential nutrition,

for the helpless and the hungry,
no scarcity of humanity,

more food, more people,
and it makes all the difference,

maximum impact, potatoes,
widely accepted,

with sensitivity to cultural tastes,
local ingredients;

Russian cabbage,
Mexican chilies,

Korean kimchi,
water.

It’s a Herculean effort,
triggered by thousands of dead.

_________________

OVERNIGHT IN HERO CITY, 1979
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

now to Smolensk
arrived by train from Moscow
at the “camping” woods
summertime trees
drooped over our heads
broken-down cottages
attached like aging friends
about to die
in a surround of moss and mold

could I sleep in this?

powerful enemy the mold
waged flaming war
in the sinus cavity
all night my dreams of fire-power
I a citizen/soldier of Smolensk
fighting the Germans 1941
I take a stand, shot down
stand up, shot down
stand…my city smolders
burnt-out nubs
smoking sinuses—

in the morning
a plate of yogurt covered in coarse sugar
pure snow under ice crystals
not the same old caviar
we’d had at the other camps
our teeth popping
golden baby beads piled on
infant rounds of bread

so it was yogurt and sugar
and back to the train station
then on to Minsk
in a straight line west

___________________

ON FINDING AN OLD DREAM ON HANDEL’S BIRTHDAY
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

The paper was a brilliant blue,
Though ragged, torn and pushed through
With holes that let the words unfold
Themselves, full of summer and enclosing
Scene upon scene, each described and beamed,
Like coffered ceilings, nooks full of such
Affairs that, when undone, set reeling
Long gazes of longer yet; such feeling
That, when splayed out upon neglected pages
Of blue like this, have songs, bound to each
Word and sung on and on as to some fictive muse,
Until it has consumed itself—mere ashes of a dream
That once breathed names and real dragons,
Dancing on forgotten plains, and steam;
Valley after valley dressed to half-conceal, all in steam.

Tusker

—D.R. Wagner

___________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE PAST'S LIPS ARE NOT DECEASED
—Kabir

Why not look at the beauty your
memory holds,

so nourishing that light can be.

The past's lips are not
deceased.

Let them comfort you
if they
can.

(From Medusa, for those who mourn)

__________________

—Medusa