parole, my word

 Many acquaintances 

Are murderers

We are alike

We sit together

I must have

Murdered long ago

It’s what we did

It’s what we do

calculus of the undivided

at heart

love

good place 

to start

at worst

sick selfishness

me me

me me me

what is seen is what is quiet glory

 I prefer to think

of Siddhartha walking

town to town

I prefer to think

of Jesus walking 

town to town

talking about weather

children with mothers

stones untripping feet

two men five hundred

years apart -- good men

with good eyes -- looking

at what is there

a benevolence passing by

everyone better for it

Buddha, Christ --

these titles had feet

look under yours

first without a second

 in and out of planet fitness

in tank tops and sweats

next to Spectrum next to

Maine Health quick care 

as dog and I walk behind

building waiting on quick stopee

I read Robert Lowell back in car

this line: “O that morning might

come without the day--“ (from

Ulysses and Circe) and it sounds

right, surmising I’m the only one

reading Lowell in this parking lot.

Test is inconclusive, I’m told as

we drive to ABC bakery for coffee,

cinnamon cruller and bathroom --

the harbor is busy, sail and power

boats coming to dock, marine patrol,

small craft enter and leave --

It is morning that feels holy, day

devolves into purpose and errand

like having to write some other lines

after a particularly good one, knowing

no duplicate will distract those first 

slanting beams of emergence from sleep;

Lowell on Marlborough Street book-worming,

in West Street Jail lower Manhattan, then, later,

mid-town, in back seat of taxi, his writing ends

In time of trouble

 One of the men

Wanted to heal me

This morning

Thank you, I said,

No need. I’ve lived

A long life, long enough.

He was resigned but not

Happy. He’s been in prison

Thirty years. We like him

But if he healed me

I’d have to keep going on

Trying to stand on one foot

If I ever had to take a sobriety

Test. I practiced in the lobby

And wobbled. When another 

Man came in to talk about

Mother Mary and seeing God

It seemed natural. I’d been

Listening to Ramakrishna talk

About the Divine Mother earlier

And his seeing God so it didn’t 

Seem too far-fetched. It is prison,

After all, a place of anomaly and 

stretched imagination to be heard.

So we read two poems about

Grandmothers, dreams, grinding pits

& berries, remembering motion of love

in prison today

 Grandmother

            by Grace Cavalieri

                for Graziela Zoda

What is the purpose of visits to me twice since you’ve

        died?

Downstairs near a woodstove I hear you

in motion, always working,

a long silken dress—

tight sleeves at your wrist, soft above the elbow

wide top at your shoulder for free movement.

When we were young you didn’t visit—

you never baked a cake that I remember

or babysat or held me in your lap.

you were in the men’s part of town running a man’s

        business

calling the world to order,

seven children behind you

raised singlehandedly in your large house. You were

moving, always moving.

When I kept losing things like my parents,

        my children, money

my time and health

why did you appear in my room with gifts painted

red, yellow, blue,

brilliant colored toys. What

essential fact did you want me to know,

that the body is the essence of spirit and so

must be in motion?

Now that I’ve lost my foothold, my direction, my way,

what is your message, strong spirit,

strong Grandmother,

what is the meaning of your dream-present,

a bright clock shaped like a train—

                        simply that it moves?

— Poem by Grace Cavalieri.(1932 -). Grace Cavalieri is an American poet, playwright, and radio host of the Library of Congress program The Poet and the Poem. In 2019, she was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of Maryland.

...   ...   ...

Tawkwaymenahnah

by Denise Lajimodiere

I walk around the small tribal
welfare cabin Kookum
had lived in, searching
for her grinding stones.

On hot August days
we would sit for hours grinding
chokecherries, pits and all.
She would hum or sing
softly in Cree, put the mash
into small patties on cookie sheets,
cover them with screens
to keep the birds out,
set them on the cabin’s low roof
to dry in the hot North Dakota sun.

In the dead of winter, she would soak
the dried patties overnight,
then fry them in bacon grease,
add flour and sugar,
the small shack filling with a tangy
sweet scent, and summer
flooded my every pore.

I take my grandkids berry picking,
they complain of heat, mosquitoes, ticks,
twigs catching their braids.
I wear my apron, make a pouch
to pick the low hanging berries
with one hand and toss them in
like Kookum did.

Kneeling before the flat rock,
braids tied back,
smaller rock clasped in hand,
I pound the fresh berries
pits and all.
Grandkids want to try,
and soon the rock is singing
my grandmother’s songs.

Copyright © 2021 by Denise Lajimodiere. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 24, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poet Laureate of North Dakota, 2023–2025

Denise Lajimodiere is an Ojibwe poet and the author of Stringing Rosaries (North Dakota State University Press, 2019), the recipient of a Gold Medal from the Midwest Book Awards, as well as a Silver and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Lajimodiere lives on Turtle Mountain Reservation, in North Dakota. In 2023, she was appointed poet laureate of North Dakota. 

lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

It is beyond curious that no one, no one, is capable of reining in the current president of the United States from his grift and graft, criminal actions, deceitful attacks against anybody and everybody who disagrees with him, war-mongering, ICE-murders, unlawful destruction of the White House, and general usurpation of the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Unless...

Unless it is meant to happen.

Unless the destruction of the United States government has been the agenda of a cadre of Republican operatives who’ve smothered any dissenters and made lemmings of Republican House Members and Senators, and Supreme Court Justices.

The president owns the Justice Department.

He owns media coverage of his every absurd proclamation and lie.

It is damned brilliant.

(I feel so silly.)

My hat is off to him.

Maybe he is the apocalyptic pale rider unmounting and destroying known civilization.

Until I hear otherwise, I will burn sulphur and creosote in his honor and wait for the end to befall.

There’s a new sign at every entry port to the US: 

        "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”(Dante). Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

shh, not a word

Mostly silence

(Can you hear it)

This dark night 

accompanied

 Buddha

In window

Orange ribbon

Tibetan scroll

In bronze case

Thursday afternoon

sitting on sun porch with grey cat

 I disappeared this summer

the gears inside my head froze

i'd sit, stare out, cough, sip tea

nothing wanted to go on

cars passed on road

dog slept under yew bush

mariner went sailing -- I sat

nothing going on, empty

the way cat sleeps on couch

its not so bad, disappearing

mind goes off on its own

not one dream is true nor real

wir haben post

 I lived until 82

then I disappeared

where I am now

I do not know

everything looks the same

but no one answers mail

I say something, no response

I think of a Franciscan friend

shot dead today 29 years ago

in Colebrook NH, an editor

he tried to wrestle rifle from

killer’s hands, failed, was shot

Dennis Joos wrote odd animal 

stories in Callicoon in winter

As I said, at 82 I am in that

parking lot where he and the woman

he tried to save lay dead in august

lingering about, after the fact

but I don’t know -- it all seems quiet

where two troopers, the woman 

and Dennis lay still and unresponsive--

once we walked around the pond

saying beads on crown before studying

the way they spoke in Ancient Greece 

scanning lines of Aeneid and Odyssey

pattern drills of Mutter, wir haben post

lowing cows up on the hill

callouses on knees, water on foreheads

But that was long ago. Now the dead

go about their day with Thorton Wilder

detachment and curiosity at what

the living are doing, where no guns

or maddened men try to prove some point

and don’t -- where everything waits

and rests in peace, still wondering,

a still gazing cat on red futon cover 

lentil soup and quiche

 if I were a zen monk

I would do the dishes in the sink

place them on wood dryer

walk away thinking -- there

that’s done -- and wait for door

to open, she thinking, ah, they’re done

the only thing that ever saved my life

 Yellowstone sent me to this song:

Turtles all the way Down

I've seen Jesus play with flames in a lake of fire that I was standing in

Met the devil in Seattle and spent 9 months inside the lion's den

Met Buddha yet another time and he showed me a glowing light within

But I swear that God is there every time I glare into the eyes of my best friend

Says my son it's all been done and someday your gonna wake up old and gray

So go and try to have some fun showing warmth to everyone

You meet and greet and cheat along the way

There's a gateway in our mind that leads somewhere out there far beyond this plane

Where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain

Tell me how you make illegal something that we all make in our brain

Some say you might go crazy but then again it might make you go sane

Every time I take a look inside that old and fabled book

I'm blinded and reminded of the pain caused by some old man in the sky

Marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, and DMT

They all changed the way I see

But love's the only thing that ever saved my life

So don't waste your mind on nursery rhymes

Or fairy tales of blood and wine

It's turtles all the way down the line

So to each their own til' we go home

To other realms our souls must roam

To and through the myth that we all call space and time

 

--Turtles all the Way Down - Sturgill Simpson,  2014

Post

"In modern music, there's not a whole lot I connect with, but then someone like Sturgill Simpson will knock me out." - Joan Baez

Turtles all the Way Down, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWx6csgGkg4 

oar leaning against side of barn

 I’m in no rush

morning incense lighted

dog’s food soaking

captain off to harbor

I guess I’m retired

only one more paper to read

from course fourteen years ago

East Asian philosophy 

there’s no ceremony when

you fade off into oblivion

just a vacant space where once

something forgettable went by

ok by me

 Good time of night

to be going to bed --

not going to bump

into anybody --

gobsmacked

 He is a frightening man.

“Our enemies are gobsmacked by what’s happening,” [Miles] Taylor predicts. “Under Donald Trump, we’ve walked out onto thin ice and handed our foes a sledgehammer. They must be fist-pumping in foreign briefing rooms.”

With all this in mind, Taylor arrives at a grim conclusion, writing, “Strategically, I believe we are in the most perilous hour of the modern era, and it is peril of our own president’s making. Donald Trump’s real National Security Strategy has been to get revenge against countries that criticize him, to advance his own self interests, and to build bridges to dictators with whom he can work once he leaves office. The great dealmaker has sold us out to the most dangerous nations on earth.”               -- --Whistleblower reveals how Trump 'sold out' to US adversaries, (AlterNet)                                    

America is a frightening country. 

sola fide, a new view

 In a library in a prison we talked

A conversation --

At end, I am educated by his faith

I am not it

but it moves through me

there’s nothing other to believe in

 I am doing Sunday evening practice.

       What are you doing?

I am listening to Camus and looking out window.

       What do you hear?

Absurdity.

       And what do you see?

What is there and what is not there.

       Are you alone?

Camus is saying that the absurd is sin without God.

       Do you agree?

No. I say that God is absurdity without anything other.

       Is God, then, no other?

If God is no other it’s why we do not believe in God.

reluctantly that which dwells near its origin departs

 Reading scholarly articles from 2003 Buddhist Studies Review I am taken by how I prefer the ordinary, everyday, quotidian factuality of mere occurrence rather than the fantastical, mythologically embellished  supra-extraordinary telling from olden renderings of stories about celestial creatures, beings of incomprehensible deeds, and narratives so out there as to freeze comprehension far short of the ability to say ‘yes, I see!’

The melancholy of worldly things

Can’t match the hills and mountains,

Where green pines hide the sun

And jasper streams flow long.

Mountain clouds are my tent,

The night moon is my fishing hook;

I sleep beneath wisteria,

My pillow a block of stone.

I don’t look up to the Son of Heaven;

Why should I envy lords and kings?

Life and death with no worries;

What sadness could there be?

--Wang Fanzhi (7th c) 

Wang Fanzhi (Chinese: 王梵志; pinyin: Wáng Fànzhì; Wade–Giles: Wang Fan-chih, fl. 7th century) or Brahmacarin Wang^[1] was a Chinese Buddhist poet born in Hebi, Henan during the Tang dynasty. He is the putative author of two collections of early Tang vernacular poetry. The language can be dated to the 8th century. Very few of the poems were known until the Dunhuang manuscripts were discovered in the early 20th century. --wikipedia

Give me a dog slowly wagging its brown tail walking into room ready to go outside. Or the crows yapping before 6AM out over the barn. Or the cranky cats trying to scratch each other's noses for the crime of walking past the other too slowly.

There is no peignoir here to be complacent. Only the early drivers and bicyclists navigating the road between mountains settled in breezeless stillness.

The gods, (who said it?), who have disappeared behind the clouds will reappear from the center of the earth.

Those of us who do not walk up the stairs of a public church, temple, or zendo have only the distant barking of a dog, the circling of carrion, and the light exhalation of leaf-passing breeze to speak to us of the holy.

There is a sense of nearing. We are no longer far from things. There are whispers. Those who covet rituals practice with sincerity the rituals they choose. Some of us sit in dooryard facing, front and back, holy mountains. God, or the gods, if such are to be named, grow berries on drooping branches over rusted dinghy trailer by property fence.

There's a price to be paid for going deeper into the commotion of the world. There's an equal consideration to be made when sinking into the facticity of the holy.

Schwer verlässt

was nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort.

Reluctantly

that which dwells near its origin departs.

            (--"The Journey," Freidrich Hölderlin, verses 18-19)

There is a language of words as well as a language of silence. Which we cultivate has implications we've yet to consider. 

"Man speaks only as he responds to language.

 Language speaks.

 Its speaking speaks for us in what has been spoken:"

(--Martin Heidegger, in Poetry, Language, Thought)

Sunday morning is a good time to contemplate each of the languages around which we are surrounded.

Here is what I think:

Hör gut zu. Werde zu dem Klang, der deine Seele – dein Wesen – nährt.

(Listen closely. Become the sound that nourishes your soul—your being.) 

off by myself

 Not having friends is not as worrying as you might think.

I am so happy that so many people have so many friends.

All my friends are ghosts in the night. 

Yearning for friends in my rocky cave,

I am captivated by the singing of small birds;

The wind entering deep into the grotto

Mingles with the voice of the stream.

Awakening from a dream,

This hermit exists beyond the world.

A quiet life, off by myself,

Fulfills my spirit.

        --Fugai Ekun (1568-1654)

 Don’t get me wrong, I recommend friendship.

At night, when alone, everything sleeps, the world goes its own way.

It doesn’t surprise that, off by oneself, alone, an unlamenting solitude is navigated. 

it doesn’t pay

Responding to nytimes article on heat-related deaths in Europe: 

Yes, the climate is changing. However, I’m afraid we humans lack the intelligent resolve to collate facts, causes, and conditions of our plight.

When it becomes profitable to change our errant behaviors, we’ll change them. Until then, we are slaves of profitability and self-interests. 

Most corporate and political decision makers would cherish a high quarterly return over some vague 'let’s protect the future' and the lives of our grandchildren, our animals, and the fructifying earth.

quia per te fructum vitæ communicávimus. / because the fruit of the tree of life has been given to us to eat

Something about the Feast of the Assumption of Mary is intriguing: 

Benedícta fília tua Dómino :

O daughter, you have been blessed by the Lord:

quia per te fructum vitæ communicávimus.

because the fruit of the tree of life has been given to us to eat.

(Dan. 3: 57-88 et 56) Benedícite, ómnia ópera Dómini, Dómino:

(Dan 3: 57-88 & 56) Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord:

laudáte et superexaltáte eum in sǽcula.

Praise and exalt him above all forever.

2. Benedícite, Angeli Dómini, Dómino:

2. Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord:

benedícite, cæli, Dómino.

You heavens, bless the Lord.

3. Benedícite, aquæ omnes, quæ super cælos sunt, Dómino:

3. All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord:

benedícite, omnes virtútes Dómini, Dómino.

All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord.

4. Benedícite, sol et luna, Dómino:

4. Sun and moon, bless the Lord:

benedícite, stellæ cæli, Dómino.

Stars of heaven, bless the Lord.

5. Benedícite, omnis imber et ros, Dómino:

5. Every shower and dew, bless the Lord:

benedícite, omnes spíritus Dei, Dómino.

All you winds, bless the Lord.

6. Benedícite, ignis et æstus, Dómino:

6. Fire and heat, bless the Lord:

benedícite, frigus et æstus, Dómino.

Cold and chill, bless the Lord.

7. Benedícite, rores et pruína, Dómino:

7. Dew and rain, bless the Lord:

benedícite, gelu et frigus, Dómino.

Frost and chill, bless the Lord.

8. Benedícite, glácies et nives, Dómino:

8. Ice and snow, bless the Lord:

benedícite, noctes et dies, Dómino.

Nights and days, bless the Lord.

9. Benedícite, lux et ténebræ, Dómino:

9. Light and darkness, bless the Lord:

benedícite, fúlgura et nubes, Dómino.

Lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord.

10. Benedícat terra Dóminum:

10. Let the earth bless the Lord:

laudet et superexáltet eum in sǽcula.

Praise and exalt him above all forever.

11. Benedícite, montes et colles, Dómino:

11. Mountains and hills, bless the Lord:

benedícite, univérsa germinántia in terra, Dómino.

Everything growing from the earth, bless the Lord.

12. Benedícite, fontes, Dómino:

12. You springs, bless the Lord:

benedícite, mária et flúmina, Dómino.

Seas and rivers, bless the Lord.

13. Benedícite, cete, et ómnia, quæ movéntur in aquis, Dómino:

13. You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord:

benedícite, omnes vólucres cæli, Dómino.

All you birds of the air, bless the Lord.

14. Benedícite, omnes béstiæ et pécora, Dómino:

14. All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord:

benedícite, fílii hóminum, Dómino.

You sons of men, bless the Lord.

15. Benedícat Israël Dóminum:

15. O Israel, bless the Lord:

laudet et superexáltet eum in sǽcula.

Praise and exalt him above all forever.

16. Benedícite, sacerdótes Dómini, Dómino:

16. Priests of the Lord, bless the Lord:

benedícite, servi Dómini, Dómino.

Servants of the Lord, bless the Lord.

17. Benedícite, spíritus, et ánimæ justórum, Dómino:

17. Spirits and souls of the just, bless the Lord: Holy men of humble heart, bless the Lord.

benedícite, sancti, et húmiles corde, Dómino.

Holy men of humble heart, bless the Lord.

18. Benedícite, Ananía, Azaría, Mísaël, Dómino:

18. Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, bless the Lord: Praise and exalt him above all forever.

laudáte et superexaltáte eum in sǽcula.

Praise and exalt him above all forever.

19. Benedicámus Patrem et Fílium cum Sancto Spíritu:

19. Let us bless the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit:

laudémus et superexaltémus eum in sǽcula.

Let us praise and exalt him above all forever.

20. Benedíctus es, Dómine, in firmaménto cæli:

20. Blessed are you, Lord, in the firmament of heaven:

et laudábilis, et gloriósus, et superexaltátus in sǽcula.

Praiseworthy and glorious and exalted above all forever.

Benedícta fília tua Dómino :

O daughter, you have been blessed by the Lord:

quia per te fructum vitæ communicávimus.

because the fruit of the tree of life has been given to us to eat.

(--Antiphona, Laudes)