Our Untouched Dissatisfactions

Capay Valley Bridge

—Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento

THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH

—William Bronk

Finding ourselves inclined

like an afternoon in winter,

we are disturbed

by the obliquity

not able to catch the sun

as a pool does water falling.

There is a flood of sun

across the land.

All this unvesseled light:

our untouched dissatisfactions

flood from our hands

held cupped to catch them in.

_____________________

A WINTER SHRUB
—William Bronk

Only bones are as bare as sumach

with its leaves gone. Every leaf was a branch.

Remember sumach in summer with its leaves

fern-soft, and its high fruit

Blood-warm in color. Sumach in autumn

was a sustained intensity, purple-red.

Winter defines the frame of color.

Here are the antlered bones.

______________________

THE MIND'S LANDSCAPE ON AN EARLY WINTER DAY

—William Bronk

Seeds and survivals are scattered in all the flaws

of this raw day, even though these are perceived

by being unperceived, until the mind

tugs at the senses to remind them.The mind says see.

What the senses feel is the sharp immediate air

and all this scene half emptied, opened out

to admit the light, the thin, slight light.

What the senses feel is loss, and not less loss

for being neither final nor complete.

The senses and the mind agree it seldom is.

For loss is what we live with all the time.

None knows this better than the mind should know, the mind

that wanders, and cannot tell our name, itself

all seeds and survivals, little else, poor blind.

The mind is always lost and gropes its way,—

lost, even when the senses seize the world

and feed as though there never could be loss.

It is this winter mind, the ne'erdowell

that never finds a plan, that tells us see.

And we open our eyes and feel our way in the dark.

____________________

WEATHERS WE LIVE IN
—William Bronk

One makes a poem as little as one makes

the weather. One goes to the window and looks out

and sees it there, outside. Read!

We go out into it if we dare.

Some weathers are harsher than we can bear

and this is what they say to us: go back

in the house! We hear that, sometimes,

and go back in and move the furniture 

or put another sweater on and go

back out prepared or, sweaterless,

go anyway and speak bleak to the bleak

if bleak seems called-for from us then.

There are always weathers if we go outside

—even the days we aren't aware of them.

I love the gentle days, the summertimes,

their mumbled messages, asking the ear

to bare itself to hear them better.

                                                   Yet,

other poems clothe me again

in their clarities when I stand in them

as in a weather. I try the way they look.

_______________________

THE UNSATISFIED
—William Bronk

Cold late winter and the late light, and now

this sunset. There is as much

color and movement as though the gold west

were peopled, as though that whole sky

were full of warm allegorical figures whose flesh

billowed to represent all viture, and did almost,

almost brought it off. Praise God.

The loveliness. Our cold eyes are comforted.

These bright angels of light fire the sky

and make our joy which is all and always when,

as in the west now, the unattained

is affirmed again to us, the unsatisfied.

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

THOU WINTER WIND

—William Bronk

See the incessant, all-day wind

wearing the frozen water thin

along the eaves,

shifting aside the snow and a few leaves

and searching the empty corners of old barns,

turning, finding nothing, moving on.

______________________

William Bronk (with photos by D.R. Wagner and Jane Blue) helps us say good-bye to summer, and Jane has sent us an "album" of bridge photos which we have posted on Medusa's Facebook page; be sure to check that out.

The information about 100 Thousand Poets for Change this weekend has come to me in bits and pieces; I'm sorry about any confusion that may have caused. The info on the green board is complete, now, I think; in our area, there will be readings in Lodi and Sacramento. Here is the schedule for the Sacramento readings:

Saturday, 1:00 to 2:30pm
The Old Rose Garden in Capitol Park, 15th and Capitol
(hosted by Lawrence Dinkins and Bob Stanley)

1:00 Mario Ellis Hill
1:10 Bob Stanley
1:20 John Allen Cann
1:30 Allegra Silberstein
1:40 Open Mic
1:50 Alexa Mergen
2:00 Sean King
2:10 Open Mic
2:20 Lawrence Dinkins


3:30 to 6:00pm
Fremont Park, 16th and P
(hosted by Rebecca Moos and Bob Stanley)

3:30 Intro and Open Mic
3:40 Mariam Ahmed
3:50 Trina Drotar
4:00 Susan Kelly-DeWitt
4:10 Emily Wright
4:20 Tim Kahl
4:30 Frances Kakugawa
4:40 Sandy Thomas
4:50 Rebecca Moos
5:00 Open Mic
5:10 Bill Gainer
5:20 Abe Sass
5:30 Capoeira Agua de Beber

_____________________

—Medusa

 Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove