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Friday, December 15, 2017

Remembered Treasures

One-Room Schoolhouse in Kansas
—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Anonymous Photos of Forgotten Treasures,
Our Seed of the Week



FOR A PROFESSOR FRIEND

I read today about a regimented
school program meant to turn out “prodigies.”
These chartered darlings, K through 12, must squeeze
out answers, hop when told to hop till bled
of interest, yet they must each instant show
—feign?—interest. All activities are timed
to the minute. Shirttails tucked. Each face must glow:
their world’s all gesture, synchronized and mimed.

You, though, are the human heart that educates,
yours is a lively, mild-if-chiding hand.
You shun what scholar Richard Lanham terms
“housebreaking”; gusto of expression rates
high in your democratic class. This land
we share’s not cranking out young bots for firms.



 Old Noritake, 1918



YOUNG WOMEN’S NAMES

Young women of our day wear formal names:
not Kris, Kristina; Catherine, not Cathy.
Their springtime seems like sheer neuropathy,
yet graces adorn their dancing step, not shames.
They ache the day long with barista duty,
grocery checking, bagging, shelving: labor.
In Renaissance Florence they’d strum the harp, strike tabor,
dance the lavolta, ornament so with beauty

our mortal fate, shell-borne sweet Aphrodite
would blanch in futile spite. They wear tattoos
profuse as would make blush old whaling crews.
Yet uplift slogans etch their soft skins mighty.
Abuse, fear, self-mistrust cannot unsweeten
these dulcet ones who bounce up tough from beaten.   



 Emily Dickinson's Herbarium



STRONG FORT, WEAK SOLDIER

You knew just when to toss me in the pool,
but you were subtle. First you asked if I
had anything that shouldn’t get wet. So dry
(sly) was your allure, and I so gullible,

I handed over to you my valuables,
then up the water rose with splash of me
down in the drink, all clothes on, thoroughly
enabled by your wiles to prove much fool.

This brings up thoughts of conquest. Alexander
attacked the thickest part of every fort,
knew feeblest soldiers work hard to distort,
con us into thinking them five legions grander.

Decades I’ve labored fortifying my mind.
But let your eye glide quickly past the fosse
and probe the barbican for crumbling loss
of mortar or of stone. On what you find

depends your mode, if of attack or love.
Well do I guess which of us plies the arts
more richly, or who wins at play for hearts.
You know who had who at the poolside shove.






Today’s LittleNip:

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

—Mother Teresa

_____________________

Don’t forget that tonight (12/15),  The Other Voice reading in Davis, which was originally cancelled (due to health issues of D.R. Wagner), is on again, this time with Angela James and Laura Rosenthal (plus open mic). That’s at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, 27074 Patwin Dr. Host: James Lee Jobe.

And there will be a reading in Cameron Park tonight, 5:30pm, at the El Dorado County Library (1500 Country Club Drive), featuring Taylor Graham, Loch Henson and Kaitlyn Stahl, plus open mic. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

To read more about lavolta, see www.britannica.com/art/la-volta/. To liven up your morning with some lavolta music, go to “Caliban’s Dream” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Vl8o8f0dQ/.

—Medusa












Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

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