CARMEL POINT
—Robinson Jeffers
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean clliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite.
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
________________________
This week's events; let me know if there are more:
•••Tonight (3/13) at Sacramento Poetry Center: !X (no, I'm not cussing) appears at 7:30 pm, Headquarters for the Arts (HQ), 25th & R Sts., Sacramento.
•••Wednesday (3/15), Jim Cardwell and Crawdad Nelson will read at the South Natomas Library's Urban Voices series, 6:30 pm, 2901 Truxel Rd., Sacramento.
•••Thursday (3/16), Keely Sidira Dorran and Bri Pruett read at Poetry Unplugged, Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, 8 pm. Free. Info: 916-441-3931. Or...
•••Also Thursday (3/16), La-Rue, Rob Anthony and Flo-Real read at Gwen's Caribbean Cuisine, 2355 Arden Way, Sac., 8 pm. $5; open mic. Info: 916-922-3468. Or...
•••Also Thursday (3/16), Nevada County Poetry Series presents Drew Dellinger, Jack and Billie Shields and Judith Hurley Prosser at The Center for the Arts, 314 W. Main St., Grass Valley, 7:30 pm., $5. Info: 530-271-7000.
•••Friday (3/17): Wear the Green to the Our House Defines Art poetry reading at 7 p.m. Featured readers are Irene Lipshin, Homer Christensen and Wendy Patrice Williams, followed by an open mic. Our House Defines Art Gallery & Framing is located at 4510 Post St. in El Dorado Hills Town Center (next to Ralph's). Or...
•••Also Friday: All are invited to come hear this tribute reading of the works of the great romantic & rebellious Mexican poet, Antonio Plaza, the ‘poet of the people.’ The evening’s poems will be read in Spanish by Graciela B. Ramírez and Jesús Moreno, who will also present their own poems. Music accompaniment by Arturo Balderama. Antonio Plaza (1833-1882), Romantic poet, was born in Guanajuato, México. His work was posthumously published in Barcelona, Spain in a book titled Album del Corazón. La Raza Galleria Posada, 1421 R St., Sac., 7:30 pm, $5 (or as you can afford). Info: 916-456-5323.
•••Saturday (3/18), Bob Stanley and Larry Uklai Johnson-Redd read at Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sac., 7 pm. Info: 916-737-3333. Or...
•••Also Saturday (3/18), travel to Modesto for a poetry reading featuring Licensed Fools at Mistlin Gallery on J St. (between 10th and 11th) in Modesto, 4 pm. Licensed Fools is an affiliation of local poets who have been meeting to share their ideas and words since spring of 1997. Their collective name comes from Shakespeare’s time, when the “licensed fool” was the person who could “speak the truth to power”, even to the king, without penalty. Their goal is to speak the truth with power through wordplay, however “foolish,” and to support each other’s individual efforts to seek whatever truths they discover. They meet, on average, twice a month, to share their latest drafts, seek advice, and start another poem by the meeting’s end. The Fools include rattlechapper Karen Baker (Vocal Exercises in Stone), plus Stella Beratlis, Tina Arnopole Driskill, Sheila D. Landre, Angela Morales Salinas, Linda Scheller, Gary Thomas, Linda Toren, Gillian Wegener, Ann Williams-Bailey, and other poets who join the group from time to time.
•••Also Saturday (3/18), 7-9 pm, Barbara Hiken presents The Straight Out Scribes Experience: poetry, spoken word and conscious rap, featuring V.S. Chochezi and Staajabu, 910 Moreno Avenue, Palo Alto. Donations will be gratefully accepted to support the legal case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Info: 916-452-1290.
Let me know if you have an event this week that isn't posted here.
________________________
FAWN'S FOSTER MOTHER
—Robinson Jeffers
The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels
With her meager pale demoralized daughter.
Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun
And saying that when she was first married
She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.
(It is empty now, the roof has fallen
But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods
Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;
The place is now more solitary than ever before.)
"When I was nursing my second baby
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake
And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast
Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey, how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."
Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road
With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.
She is grown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin
Soon to be shed from the earth's old eyebrows,
I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,
The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.
____________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)