Diogenes' Lanterns

 Argyle, Scotland

—Poetry and Photos by Maureen (Mo) Hurley
(1952-2024)

HAND TOOLS

There was an old pruning saw
I favored that folded in two
with a wingnut hinge
curved handle and blade
two crescent moons
that hung from a rusty nail
on the wall of the back porch
of my grandmother's house.

The saw curved like a comma
and I could pull down hard
on it with my 12-year-old arms
and cut the slender branches
that threatened to pull me
from the back of my horse.

No one else to do it for me
I made do as best I could.
Like the time the Toby's Feedstore
driver delivered a ton of hay but
dumped it at the bottom of the hill
because he couldn't be bothered stacking it
assuming there was a man about the house
to take care of such ordinary things.

I was faced with hefting hay bales
a tenth of a mile up to the old barn
and the sky spitting, rain was coming.
No matter that it took me most of the summer
babysitting to earn enough money
to buy that ton of shining oat hay
for my old glue factory rescue horse.

I wailed, wiped my nose on my sleeve,
jabbed rusty hayhooks into a bale
and frogmarched it to the barn.
Then another, and another.
It was hard work for a child.
It was the only way I knew how
and I was never going to make it
before the rains came.

 

 

 

 

 

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

My grandmother’s hands
were torn and speckled with pigment:
fair northern flesh burned by the fierce California
sun.
A rebellious knotted vein rose up like a stone.
Souvenir from a strand of barbed wire
strung to keep the deer out of the garden.

Her freckles were an archipelago of islands
adrift on a moon-milk sea.
They were Brendan voyagers in curraghs
headed for the New World
with a warrior phalanx of shields
raised up against a common enemy, the sun.
But they failed to protect her children—
when the melanoma set sail for that country
from which nothing ever returns.

I remember her wide spatulate fingers
that rubbed floursack sheets against the washboard,
that mended jeans, made dresses for first day of
school,
and how I was ashamed they were not store-bought.
I remember the way she weeded the gardens,
dug up the praties, stacked wood for coming winter.

From her, I learned the survival of hands.
No caresses were needed because her love
was as fierce as the sun that burned her skin
as she labored in the garden or at the clothesline.
She kept us safe, and provided when no one else
would.
As she knelt to pray in the Sunday pew,
the sun shone on that knotted vein
and it was so beautiful—the scarring and the freckles,
a skin painting of faith and tenderness.

 

 

 

 

DUN I, IONA
    (after a translation from the Ohlone)

I dreamed you were a sliver
of light glinting on the curve of the sea.
On the machair, the rabbits
cleansed their scalloped sand porches
while amid the lambs, the hares stood sentinel.
I dreamed of you dreaming me
on the granite dome of Dun I,
... at the center of the island
between a rowan and an oak
in a crevice at the well of age,
the falcon's eye, a distant sun
dancing on the edge of the world.

 

 

 

 El Dorado Del Mar, San Felipe, Mexico

 

13TH WAVE

When I was a child at Venice Beach,
floating in the calm sea beyond the surf,
out of nowhere, rogue waves rose up
like translucent jade knives, formed crests
against the throat of the deep summer sky.

Out of my depth, I swam to greet them.
That was the drill if an Outsider appeared—
Swim to meet the wave before it broke you.
Dive through the crest to avoid its force.
Swim and dive, swim and dive. Deflect the blow.

Rise and fall, rise and fall. Far from land,
I watched the blond shore grow ever distant.
The waves played me—like the father I never had—
tossing me up to the roof of the sky. In terror,
I waited for the right wave to bring me in.

But I grew numb, the sea sapped my strength,
I was too far from shore for lifeguards to see.
When would my crazy mother—sleeping it off—
stone-deaf to my brother's wails, realize I was gone?
I was a child alone in a vast sea. Breathe. Breathe.

Out of nowhere I heard my grandmother's voice:
"Always count the waves," she said. "Find the set."
9, 11, 12—I counted, but couldn't find the pattern.
Then, on the horizon of a wave, the fin of a dolphin.
A break in the set. He looked me in the eye. "Now!"

We caught the 13th wave toward the safety of shore.
I lay facedown in the sand, too tired to be amazed,
or say "Bye." Who'd believe a child's tale, anyway?
I said nothing about the waves and the sea that day.
It was my secret—a matter of survival, at best.

 

 

 

  El Dorado Del Mar, San Felipe, Mexico

A FIFTH OF BEETHOVEN

Yesterday I told my students a story
about Gustavo's crazy cockatiel,
how Kirk the musicman tried to teach it
the opening to Beethoven's Fifth
& how it couldn't get that last chord right,
no matter how much they both practiced,
how the note always fell flat, but the bird
would say entonces, or coño, and include
all the tape recorder clicks & whirrs.

Every time I went: DA-DA-DAA Dum,
the class bird catcalled and wolf whistled,
dirty danced on his perch, bopped his
head,
puffed out his orange cheek patches,
and crested like a Mohican. I was
explaining how some words fall flat,
the poet's job to seek the music of words,
was a matter of practice, like doing scales.
Unfortunately, the bird got so worked up
he catcalled the entire poetry hour.

I was hoping he'd just take the Fifth
(or maybe down a fifth) and shut up
before I threatened to squeeze
his sorry yellow ass into a tequila sunrise.

 

 

 

 
TO MY POETRY STUDENTS

            —The foundation of every state
                  is the education of its youth.

First, do not be offended if I don't remember your
names.
My children are as varied as the voices of the wind.
Do not assume that because I don't call you by name,
that I do not know you. For I remember all of you,
the poems you write & all your faces shining
with the first faltering words of hope.
Do not rage against the wind or lack of memory
as if the sun had risen prematurely at daybreak
painted with rosy yearning, only to find the clouds
had forgotten how to properly mourn the tragedies
of a world drowning in the vagaries of the heart.
For once I stood alone with the voices of the wind,
my own song hanging at the end of its chord,
like Edvard Munch's silent scream echoing off the
canvas,
a nocturne of loneliness, an etude seeking rebirth
before I called it poetry, before it called for me.
Sleep returns lost memory in minute increments
of time swaddled in the supplication of blue solace
unburdened by prayer or the length of the road
set adrift in the traceless grasses' slow current.
To love words requires only the longevity of a mind
that is part redwood, & part bristlecone pine
& a threshold for a mouth that is part estuary,
& part river to address the worded islands of the
world.
Remember to write of what is visible and seen;
pay homage to the slender names rooted in oak,
lichen & moss, reed & bracken fern, lupine wolf &
moon.
Treat your poems like long lost kith and kin.
Then, someday when you can forgive their way-

wardness
they will be Diogenes' lanterns on dark, restless 

nights.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

______________________

Today’s Kitchen is devoted to Maureen (Mo) Hurley, who passed away this summer. Mo visited the Kitchen for a while back in 2010-2012 with her photos and poems, and I thought it would be an appropriate tribute to bring some of those back, fine as they are. Rest well, Mo—we all miss you.

For more about Mo, go to https://www.adobecreekfuneralhome.com/obituary/maureen-hurley/.

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 Mo Hurley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that the final
ForestSong will take place in
Lotus, CA today from 1-5pm.
For info about this and other

future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

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

Find previous four-or-so posts by scrolling down
under today; or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column; or find previous poets
by typing the name of the poet or poem
 into the little beige box at the top
left-hand side of today’s post; or go to
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom of
the blue column at the right
 to find the date you want.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!