Drake Mallard leads her,
But she ducks into the woods.
Are they house shopping,
Checking out the neighborhood,
Looking for the fox’s den?
Two Ducks – a tanka
Category Archives: Poetry
How the Sun Rose to the Heavens (#7)
In the Before Time
the animals lived in peace
among themselves.
The forest was their home.
But the Sun lived outside the forest
and threatened to turn the forest into desert,
to singe the trees and dry the ponds and rivers.
The Animal Council decided that one of them
must deliver the sun high into the sky,
to hang it there so that all would be safe.
Turtle was selected
because of the armor on her back
and her ability to march all day.
It would be a long trip to the apex of the sky.
In the days before the Two-Legs Turtle had a lovely voice,
one that nearly purred as she thanked the Animal Council
for the opportunity to serve the greater good.
She took the Sun on her back
and sprang immediately to carry it aloft.
But before she could get even a quarter of the way to the heavens
she shrugged off the sun.
Her back was burned deeply.
She fell, screaming all the way down from the sky
and landed hard on all four of her legs.
She tried to run to the river to cool her burns
but her legs were so damaged from the impact
she could barely crawl.
To this day the outside of the turtle’s back is black and melted,
Her legs are mere stumps with claws.
The only voice she has left is a hideous hiss.
The long midnight conversations
of her kind are lost forever.
The frogs pitied her loss of voice.
The fishes swam under her as she rested on a log in still-too-hot sunshine.
But all was not lost.
Opossum was blessed with a great bushy tail in those days.
Her tail was the envy of Fox
and boastful, chattering Squirrel.
She could wrap the sun in her tail
and finish carrying it to the top of the sky.
She embarked, in the dark, the Sun completely shrouded
in her tail. The stars were her only guide
as she set off to the Heavens.
But only half-way there,
the sun began to burn out of her tail and
to spill light and heat throughout the firmament.
Opossum tumbled back to earth,
falling around her burning tail, screaming
until her voice too was gone,
reduced to a vicious, hissing snarl.
Opossum’s tail is a pink, hairless, burned worm to this day.
The Animal Council did not know what to do.
Things were only a little better, but it was Spring.
In Summer, the temperatures would rise.
Surely the forest would not survive.
Of her own volition,
the most regal of all the birds,
the Turkey Vulture, set off to right the world.
Her long, powerful wings lifted her slowly skyward
to where the sun hung half-way between Earth and Sky.
Turkey Vulture was the most beautiful of all birds
in those days.
A great crown of a thousand colored feathers
adorned her head
and a ruff of the same wrapped her neck.
When she reached the sun
she placed her head against the burning orb
and pushed with powerful strokes of her long wings.
She carried the sun to its safest height.
Here the sun could warm the earth
and the waters but the great scar of desert
would grow no larger.
All Turkey Vultures since have lived with
bare scarred skin on their heads and necks
instead of their birthright of the glorious crown of feathers
she had been given by the Mother.
She too, no longer speaks.
An angry, snuffing hiss through her nostrils is the best she can muster.
She still flies with no effort
riding the sun’s thermals and
the uplifts it sets in motion.
She no longer associates with the other animals
or the Animal Council. Some say it is her lost pride.
But the forest abides.
Spring Conversations (#6)
In the back pond,
while I am burning leaves
and winter-downed limbs,
two Red-wing Blackbirds
chatter “chuck” in the reeds.
I tried to join their conversation
and they went silent–
two black-eyed parts,
invisible in the wider sytax.
In the next door front yard,
the neighbor’s daughter
is standing in early sun with her new beau.
They also chatter.
Their eyes shine for each other.
I did not try to join their conversation,
although I know the language.
To My Wife the Witness
I must apologize to the vines this year.
I was much too late in the pruning.
Instead of my cuts coming in the middle of winter,
when cold and ice have anesthetized
their limbs on cordons of frozen steel,
I was in my own darkness,
wrapped in a blanket that hindered action.
I merely bore out the short gray days and
stared impotently into the black nights.
Winter shook me like a dog shakes a snake in summer.
Instead, I come to them in a time
more comfortable for me–
A warming day,
knowing
that the necessary cuts come in Spring–
that living sap will leak
because of my tardiness,
that I risk the health,
of buds,
of growth,
of flowers,
of fruit,
the wine.
I am sorry.
I will do better now.
Our chemistry is better applied this Spring.
I vow to better protect against living rabbits and deer,
against a thousand kinds of scuttling bugs,
against the single minded mania of birds
and greedy ground squirrels.
The end-of-the-season Autumn battle
will be fierce.
I cannot be certain of next November
or her cruelest shorter sister February,
But I can offer the summer, still with hope.
After Knowing
Before knowing
There is not knowing.
We bumble along
In our ignorance
Like a bee bypassing a flower
And we care not–
Because we know not.
Then suddenly we know.
Ignorance is torn,
Like a worn garment
discarded.
We bumble on
With the new known.
But for some few of us,
There is the new not known.
That which was known
Is known no more.
We no longer know the flower.
The scent is foreign.
Genus and Species slide back
Into unknowing.
This nectar is not known,
And then nectar is not known.
A Piece About Collections
My sister reminded me that
As a nearly teen
I accumulated my toenail and fingernail
Clippings in a small blue medicine bottle.
Someday, this will be valuable,
I no doubt thought.
Genuine DNA from
Steve Daniel Marsh,
In a form readily accessible
And immeasurably identifiable
By the average fan or devote´.
Perhaps I thought this was an investment.
I could sell them later
When I was Elvis
Or Picasso
Or Hemingway.
Or I could give them to friends
And lovers as tokens–
Keepsakes of fidelity
In a world so empty and ephemeral.
What would you give for an original
Certified Elvis toenail?
I’ll bet they are worth thousands.
The market begged for expansion:
Hair, spit, later razor stubble.
A variety of solids and liquids,
Discarded clothing.
Collections work that way
For those with forethought.
Underwear Goes On First – A Poem-Play in One Scene
Me at the dresser: Socks, underwear, tee shirt
Always put your underwear on first
To keep your butt juice off the bedspread.
Then socks,
Then tee shirt.
You: Why do you have to be so gross?
Me: What? Butt juice?
You: Well, no poem ever contained the image of “butt juice” before.
Me: unique, innovative.
You: Ugly, disgusting.
Me: True.
You: Isn’t there enough ugly in the world? Why fill up your poems with “butt juice?”
Me: Art isn’t always pretty.
You: But “butt juice?” That’s just gross sick factor.
Me: Should I say “anal leakage” instead? Would that calm it down for you?
You: No, why have it in there at all? Why a poem about putting on your underthings? Why that disgusting stuff?
Me. Some things about life are a little disgusting. Some are very disgusting.
You: But art should serve the beautiful.
Me: Yup, that’s why underwear goes on first: serves to preserve the bedspread.
You: I don’t like your art.
Me: Do you put your butt juice on the bedspread?
You: NO!
Me: I think you like my poems just fine.
Evolving Symmetry–A series of Short Poems about Aging
I love smoked meats.
It takes a little extra prep
And slow heat for a long time.
It’s harder than blasting a piece of protein with high flame
Then gnawing through it,
Poking it down with microwaved green beans.
But I have adjusted. Maybe I have more time.
Or I’m willing to spend it more slowly.
Who invented the 2 minute hug?
And how did we muddle through without it?
The old hugs saved us 117 seconds a day,
About 58 minutes a month
Almost twelve hours a year,
But we missed too much.
My heart doesn’t know what it is doing for at least 15 seconds.
It’s all brain and intention at first (and awkwardly self-conscious)
Until I open. It takes more than one try sometimes.
Holding hands in front of the television?
Is anything quite as much of a cliché?
My shows, your shows, our shows.
Your hand, with that active thumbnail,
Wiggling and jiggling on my cuticle?
My fingertip pad, running over the ridges in your fingernail.
The dog practices hand-hold interruptus,
Rubbing the web between your thumb and forefinger,
Making my finger multitask, scratching a dog ear to keep the peace.
There are no instructions for retirement.
So much of my day is spent waiting.
Tamoxifen insists on your daily naps
When we can make them happen.
I spend considerable time waiting to be with you.
And then we play Jeopardy.
We aren’t quite as good as we used to be.
Our inappropriate behavior.
Laughing at our own aphasia.
Ridiculing the loss of the keys, my glasses, a toothbrush.
Calling it “getting lucky” when I catch you naked from the shower.
Talking you down from an insult hurled at you at work.
You telling me to stop watching Fox News.
Carving out a life after all.
No one warned I’d have trouble swinging a hammer
Or climbing ladders.
That your thumb would refuse to open a canning jar,
That I would have to wait for a good day to trim my toenails,
That a good night’s sleep is nine consecutive forty-five minute naps
Interrupted by the urgent need to pee.
The Fibonacci dance.
After these decades
We finally know, a little,
About co-navigating our space and time.
You with me
Me with you
You with yourself
And me with me.
As we play for time,
We are finding the exquisite rhythms.
Haiku
The older I get,
The slower each day passes,
But years seem to rush.
I’m No Angel
God didn’t expect us to be this smart. He had gone down the intelligence path for hundreds of thousands of years already and the best he had done was Neanderthal—Modern Man 1.0 They had feelings and language and aesthetics and tools and fire. They even had tools to make tools. And they had art. But when God spent time on homo sapiens, spinning the genes that supported these big forebrains, he just had no way to understand how far he had gone. He thought he was making Free Will. Turns out that Reason is so much more.
When it was our turn, homo sapiens, being simian and excellent mimics, sought immediately to seek behavior that seemed to be evidence of reason or intent in others. With our own children we begin immediately to seek the connection of intellect. We primordially need to spark curiosity, intrigue, interest into our offspring. For what seems to be turning out to be 300,000 years or so, homo sapiens have made stupid faces at their children to make them smile and laugh. We turned to other species and tamed/domesticated/taught them behavior to demonstrate choices. And our lore began to collect stories of secret knowledge and sudden illumination of the mind. Tales of Atlantis, a scientifically advanced civilization that sank into the sea. Stories of prophets and oracles who could see outside of this realm. By the time we got to the ancient Greeks, language had many words for different kinds of intelligence. Literature and history are rife with stories proclaiming the accolades of human brilliance in every endeavor.
Machinery earned human’s first efforts at artificial intelligence. And often, those early machines made possible what, until then, had been disablingly dull or physically impossible for humans. The first notable invention was the Jacquard Loom which used a series of wooden punch cards to replicate weaving patterns. The system allowed designers to program very complex patterns and to never make a mistake. They were tools to extend a person’s will. The Jacquard loom, is the earliest example of the most rudimentary of a machine built for the express purpose of decoding and operationalizing a set of instructions written in a language a machine could comprehend. The wooden punch cards had holes drilled in specific patterns to permit only certain heddle harnesses in the loom to rise upon command. It physically blocked certain harnesses from rising, thus creating a pattern in the weave. The pattern was subject to certain structural considerations, but that was what the master weaver was for. The master, understanding the structure of the weave, created punch cards for any individual treadle combination one could imagine. Once the coding was done, any number of copies of a pattern could be made using either the labor of children or, eventually, levers, cogs and gears.
To make the argument that the Jacquard Loom was the first computer, it would need to meet some obvious standards. Is there hardware? Yes, the loom itself and the devices that fed the data punch cards into it are task-specific instructions. It is the “device.” It would also need software. In this case there were technically three different pieces of software: the operating system was the concept that punchcards could determine which heddle harness rose and which did not. It was a binary decision; either yes, it could rise or no, it could not. The programming software included the cards and the knowledge of which punched hole allowed which heddle harness to rise. The application software was embodied in the order of the punchcards and the ability to repeat the order exactly. In this case there was an IRL visual display in the pattern as it emerged. And there was ample storage on the cloth beam. All the pieces were there.
Sometime in the 1830s, one pretty intelligent homo sapiens named Charles Babbage conceived of “the Analytical Engine.” It was cogs and gears powered by steam, inspired by the Jacquard Loom, and it could calculate up to 31 digits. It was a wonder of thought and engineering but it was not yet intelligent. It also wasn’t properly fashioned for decades after the detailed drawings had been made.
Haiku?
These come in from a cull of some old notebooks. I’m posting them here for an archive, if nothing else. Feel free to peek in this archive if you want. If, when you leave, you are still counting, I have failed.
I am unsure of the date for these three. Maybe March of 2017
Is alt-medicine
newspeak for Flint tap water?
Or do you smoke it?
My father enrolled
in watchmakers’ school. He lived
His perfect metaphor.
The rheumatism
has my left leg in its jaws,
Motherfucker!
On November 1, 2017
The old, fat man sees
his penis in a mirror.
“There you are, young Toad.”
On August 4, 2018
Refrigerator
On the fritz. Warm beer’s better
Than no beer at all.
On Ash Wednesday of 2016, I wrote:
No ashes for me.
Why the annual proof of faith?
Faith isn’t on skin.
I also wrote a note that I was glad I got to live in a country and a culture where I can write this idea. Today…eh.
A February 2017 offering a memory of a thing of beauty.
Thicker than bacon
Spanish cheese made of sheep milk
Medium oven.
It seems very odd to post the next two in May. They spoke of a much different experience than now.
At last, it is winter.
I have missed you like mania
Misses depression.
and
Today is too cold
For Valentine’s Day, my love.
My blood fails to heat.
And the marginal note said, “Deb’s 200 miles away anyway.”