The god who taught you to romanticize misery *

This poem from World Literature Today, by Federico Villegas, has been rattling around with me the past few days, I'm copying it from their website which I have also linked above. That's it. Be safe, be kind.

When Blood Boils
by Federico Villegas 
translated by 
George Franklin and Ximena Gómez

What is the reason for your visit, Embera Wera?1
You’ve walked fourteen hours through the muddy night, 
you’ve crossed an entire mountain range to see me, 
even knowing the demon moana lay in wait for you in
      the darkness;2
when your legs failed you, Embera Wera, 
your War, your son, carried you strapped to his back.
Did you tumble?
Is that why mud stains your dress and your wounds are
     mapped in blood?

What brings you to the hospital, Embera Wera?
Malaria that has your blood boiling, 
poverty that’s handing you its bill—
I don’t understand your language, and you don’t
      understand my dialect.

Are you in pain . . . Boro pirabu, tani pirabu, bi pirabu?3
It’s your seventy-three years of neglect that’s hurting you,
war that’s taken away the land and the fruit of your
     womb, 
your rivers that were poisoned by mercury—
you feel you can’t take anymore.

What are you holding on to, Embera Wera?
The god who taught you to romanticize misery *
who with whipping and witch-burning taught you to love
and who is waiting for you to “bless” your suffering?

But don’t let me die—your eyes say—
clinging to life is not a sin.
—Administer fluids, blood sugar, an EKG, chloroquine—
    and justice?
Have her fill out the SIVIGILA form for malaria!4
But, why not also report violence by the State?
Why not denounce the indolence of history?

Translation from the Spanish

1 “Embera” refers to an indigenous people who live in Colombia and Panama and is the patient’s tribal name. “Wera” is the patient’s given name.

2 “Moana” is a demon who attacks travelers.

3 “Boro pirabu” means headache, “tani pirabu” means stomach pain, and “bi pirabu” means pain in the womb.

4 The Sistema de Vigilancia en Salud Pública (sivigila) refers to a Colombian national health system.

Federico Villegas resides in the Colombian Andes where, as a physician, he works to bridge the gaps of social inequality while dreaming of being a writer. He has published two articles in medical journals.

George Franklin is the author of four poetry collections, Noise of the World, Traveling for No Good Reason, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas (trans. Ximena Gómez), and Travels of the Angel of Sorrow. 

Ximena Gómez has published “Habitación con moscas” (Ediciones Torremozas) and Último día / Last Day, a bilingual poetry book (Katakana Editores), co-translated with George Franklin. 

We'll always have Paris

In January, (or was it December?) we updated our wills. Just one of those things that needs to be restructured as you move and acquire cats that may one day need a caretaker. That’s not the important thing, cat assets, but while we were at the law office, we met a man who had lived in Europe, had married a woman from Belgium, who missed travel and especially their apartment in Malaysia. And of course, we had a good time chatting with him as we miss travel a great deal too.  Jerry often asks, Will we see Paris again? and I always answer Yes, just not soon. Not this year I am certain. But we will eventually get back. The Louvre has been renovating since the pandemic shut them down and I’m anxious to see what has happened there. I think my last trip to Paris was when my sisters visited and we did a whirlwind tour around Belgium, zipped over to London, they went to Germany for a few days and then we ended up in Paris. It was a really, really good time. They flew out of Paris early that final day and I spent the rest of the morning strolling about on my way back to the Louvre for a few hours before I had to get myself to Gare du Nord to catch my train home. Sigh.

We’ve been watching a lot of travel shows to compensate. Some are just YouTube videos, of course Rick Steves, very random offerings, places we’ve been, places we’d like to go. Travel Man with Richard Ayoade is a favorite, when you really need a laugh or to see something most people won’t. So today I will leave some travel pictures and hope that 2022 will be a time the world will be ready to receive visitors again. If you’re looking for normalcy, I suggest following the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, on Instagram as she goes around her country.

 Just that.

  

"like ten tiny ostriches in the sand" *

After lunch today I listened in on a reading from Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio) for Poetry Ireland, A Celebration of Women Poets marking Brigid’s Day & Black History Month. Four poets I did not know, two American and two Irish. The readings were very good, fresh poems, a discussion midway through followed by more poems. A perfect dessert. Ursula curled up beside me and listened, the voices were soft and even so she didn’t mind the unknown women speaking. Just an hour, just a perfect hour.
 
Then I read a little news, a couple of opinion pieces about the new congresswoman from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene. While I was reading, I was thinking how despicable I used to find Ronald Reagan, Bush Sr., then the Axis of Evil: George W., Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, the hard-hearted who would withhold truth to move their ideas forward and the little worm, Newt Gringrich. He is one of the true architects of what has happened in GOP politics. We had the Moral Majority bullshit, the Tea Party weirdness, 45’s various cults and violence laden policies that fed and bred this whole Qanon/MAGA incoherency.
 
So, with those items floating in my head, Ursula purring softly and sleeping in her tuxedo PJs, I went back to poetry and reached for a book and read feet by Ross Gay. Here’s a quick shot from the first page of the poem. This poem is in catalog of unabashed gratitude, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series, 2015 and today’s title is from this poem as well.

 

"Wolf nightmares" *

Morning, after a snow, is a wonderful opportunity to see what creatures come through the yard. Yesterday I could see where deer had come in from the back (behind my neighbor’s house is a little draw) heading toward the front yard; they did a bit of birdseed cleanup under the lonely pine before crossing the street. Of course, a number of cats go through these yards, hugging the walls behind shrubbery. At least one set of tracks went under the deck and then came out the other side and continued skirting the house. Lots of birds made their maddening hieroglyphics, a few squirrels had a raced from tree to tree in places no branches meet. Today I watched a squirrel run across my neighbor’s roof, a dangerous passage as the hawks have been very active in the neighborhood this week. About a third of the snow melted today as it was another sunny day and five degrees warmer. Tomorrow most of it will probably disappear as it gets warmer still and rain is forecast.

With the melting snow and the absence of tracks one could believe that those other creatures aren’t out there, that they don’t share the world with us or wish we’d share the world with them in a more humane way. That they aren’t using these weird green areas and cul-de-sacs to move along trails that they’ve used for a millennium or more (except for, maybe, these domesticated cats, Caticus Kittleeatus Maximus). It’s sort of like those that stayed in shadow and secret groups for a so many years, on the radar of groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Hate Watch, but mainly ignored and pooh-poohed by others. Everyone had that racist neighbor or grandma or uncle or father or friend. But they “didn’t really mean it” they’d never “act on it”. And we forgot what tracks to watch for, forgot how they hunted and fed, forgot how to bring them in from being feral; they use to hide because the rest of us told them no, not here. Now they’re all savage, they’ve invaded our towns and cities and safe little cul-de-sacs. They’ve been elected to office, they aren’t just that small town sheriff or county commissioner, they’re mayors and governors and in Congress. One was President. They’re out in the open. And snow or none, we need to learn how to track them, see what it will take to turn them human.

Here’s a bit of a poem from Margaret Atwood’s new book, Dearly, called Short Takes On Wolves* (2020, Ecco) and a picture of the Wolf Moon caught up in a tree this morning.

Little frozen icey thngs

The promised snow has come. Snow muted the morning, except for the starlings that arrived to mangle the suet feeders, the day was quiet. The cardinals buffed their beaks and readied their feathers, they know how fantastic they look in this background. It isn’t a lot of snow that we got today, but it changes the world. After lunch I was watching my neighbor and her son, this is his first snowfall he can walk in and he was not having any of it. I don’t know what the problem was but he was not happy. Later I saw him out with his father and it was the same thing, his stayed where the snow wasn’t. What I wanted to see was his dad fall over into the snow and make a snow angel, get the weirdness all over him, and really indulge in it.

When I was growing up in Eastern Oregon, we had some wicked winters, below zero for weeks, six, seven-foot drifts around the house and barns. School closed for an entire week one winter. But my Aunt drove from their place to ours (8 or 9 miles) so she could get out of the house and my cousins could run off some of their energy. It was a busy day of snow cave building, sliding on the frozen irrigation ditch, snow ball fights and sledding. The old mare, Patty, pulled a sled a bit too. We were sustained by gallons of cocoa and hot soup.

      

We had one really good, or really bad (depending on your views), winter while we were in Klamath Falls. A lot of snow days for the schools and closures for roof damage around town. We had clean to our roof too. We lived 13 miles out of Klamath Falls, down in a little valley between two ridges and we got more snow typically than in town. The snow was so deep we had to make paths and potty areas for the dogs. The best workout in the world is cutting through four feet of snow to make trails and clearing a pretty long driveway, a lot of leg and arm work. Ooh rah! 

Vegan pizza fiasco

Let’s talk about tofu. Up until about twelve years ago I had eaten tofu about twice in my life. I had encountered it, I had tried it, I did not seek it out again. And then in 2008 or 2009, for a new year resolution we decided to go vegan for the month of January. One would think this was a bold thing to do in Klamath Falls Oregon, January brought the Bull and Horse Show where tri-tip was a required food item; where the Cattlemen and Cattlewomen’s Association was one of “the” clubs to join, it was farm country; though one of my favorite bumper stickers was “I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals, I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants.”

So, we did our research and looked at the available items we could veg out on. Bean patties, veggie stews, tofu, we tried some soy cheeses…generally any plant-based thing we tried. Careful reading of product ingredients and new recipes really made the month easier. The really wonderful part of this was that our local (locally owned) market, Sherm’s Thunderbird, had a great assortment of vegetarian and vegan foodstuffs and we tried most of them. From this though I came to appreciate tofu a lot. It’s a staple now, I have about six or seven blocks in my fridge right now. But here is a confession, it’s not really a new thing, but during the month of veganism, when my son (who was a tall, lean high schooler) would come to my office after school, I would give him money so he could go down to Wendy’s and get a burger and fries. Just a couple of times. I think he hadn’t signed off on the whole bean patty and oven baked fries and after the vegan pizza fiasco, we were all waiting for February.
 
Anyway, that’s the day’s meander. And here is a link to my favorite tofu skit: Veganville from Saturday Night Live and NBC. Oh, and a random picture taken in Belgium near Chateau Veves.

"a little to one side it is there"*

Thursday afternoon I was looking for a poem or two to read for an open mic following a reading for First Draft Writers' Series, from Pendleton, Oregon. I was going to just read love poems because I thought that’s just easier and mine are those “seen from the corner of your eye”** and not overly sentimental. I’m opposed to overly sentimental in poetry and in life. Keep it in commercials and made for TV movies. I want emotions that are earned. Don’t give me cheap theatrics or sick kittens just to soften a heart. Jerry says for a poet you are devoid of a soul, my reply to that is I don’t believe is souls.

So I was shuffling through some older folders and found a poem of mine called Mythology, I had forgotten about it. What I find curious about it is the opening thesis, what is that about? I’m wondering if I wrote this before or after I wrote a poem called Considering my father’s heart. (quick note, I see I wrote them both around the same time about nine years ago) So here are two poems about hearts, gritty and scarred and curious. (And after the poems, a snoring cat!) Be safe, be kind!

Mythology

The heart breaks and ruptures, heals
itself, weakens and hardens with tough
new scars. No doubt it skips
speeds and causes reckless words.
It peers into the past, worships the future,
lays claim to whatever the brain says avoid.
And so I wait for whatever the world holds
knowing my heart, and its minor gods, can
wait for new stories, different outcomes.

These are the myths I grew up with:
China Gold, Sasquatch, D.B. Cooper,
the Northern Lights, a father’s unshakeable love.

One summer a hundred head of elk
crossed the just graded road
outside of Granite Oregon. Their meadow
caught in the gloom, as sun 
made its way over the mountain
and lit the top of the highest pine.

A quarter mile up, my father stopped
the road grader, as the tan
animals moved like a wave of honey
into the timber. The machine shuddered,
a reverberation that echoed
through the dawn with the distant
elk voices, and opened the day

to this last myth I thought I understood.
My father drove out of sight
into deep and unknowable shadow.

 

Considering my father’s heart

Which I haven’t, for years, really, since we stopped talking,
or he stopped talking, to me. But today, with news
that he is in the hospital with heart trouble, I think
about it, and him. His father died over fifty years ago
from a bad heart. And I wonder if he thinks about
that. If he weighs the heart ache and the heart break
the way I weigh mine. If he smiled wryly, like I did,
when my sister told me that he has heart blockage
but that his body had already created a bypass,
and it was working so well that doctor said there
was no need for surgery. Of course, I thought,
even in life and death he’s too stubborn.
And then I think about calling him for his birthday,
wondering if our hearts have found other ways
to survive, how mine has healed in miraculous
ways as well.
 

 “Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye**. You can be too well prepared for poetry. A conscientious interest in it is worse than no interest at all, as I believe Frost used to say. It's like a very faint star. If you look straight at it you can't see it, but if you look a little to one side it is there*.” William Stafford from What It Is Like, Writing the Australian Crawl Views on the Writer’s Vocation, The University of Michigan Press, 1978