Open books

I look at people’s faces as if they were open books,

written in the language my Grandmother used to speak to me when I was new.

I answered her in English and I was told that we understood each other completely.

Sometimes I think I can understand what I see in people’s faces,

though I don’t always care for what their faces say.

I wonder if my Grandmother would have understood them better.

But why would I even try to read the faces of strangers?

Except that they are like an open book

and sometimes I have read what I have wanted to believe since I was new.

I answer the faces as I naturally would.

I admit that I do not always know what I am saying

and sometimes I don’t know what I have read.

I don’t even remember talking to my Grandmother.

But I’m fascinated by people’s faces.

I read them as if they were an open book

in a language my Grandmother might have understood.

Night time conversations

 

I feel as if I am drowning in my words. My thoughts and feelings condense to drops. Phrases and lines have trickled down. Observations and experiences become streams and rivers. And so soon I’m flooded out of my mind.

What is a metaphor or a simile good for when so many poets have parted the waters like Moses?

There is nothing new under the sea and on dry land a glass of cold water will quench your thirst when you are thirsty.

From their side of the glass, everything said has already been said. The image makers, the storytellers, the rhymers of rhymes and the teller of tales. Beauty and truth and truth and beauty. Tragedy and ongoing comedy.

And yet from my side of the glass, I wonder if this might be my first time. So swim I must. At least I’ll wade in the water.

The toad on the riverbank has no new song to sing, but he and I might have something to say even if we are the only ones awake underneath the moon.

And then I heard the katydid and I walked over to where she was calling. And when I began to tell her of my woes she just tittered.

“Look over at those lightning bugs flying over the grass,” she chirped. “Not a word do they speak, only a streak in the night - over and over again.  All night long, not a song, but a fleeting, glimmering glow. If you want to write you should join the cacophony - the torrent - whatever you want to call it.

“Talk to the moon and the stars if you want to. They have time. Write words if that’s how you want to express yourself. You’ll never, ever make the sun come up in the morning, you silly little dribble.”

And then, Katydid laughed. “And look over there. That lightning bug just got published.”

Cracked Blue Pitchers Productions presents:

~ 18 min. video: My story and a reading of 'The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' by T. S. Eliot.

Text:

Cracked Blue Pitcher Productions presents “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot:

Read by Bert Haverkate-Ens

I do not wish to make a presumptuous pronouncement, but I’m not sure that can be avoided if I open my mouth. Better for you, perhaps, to see if you can find truth and beauty within yourself, or, perhaps out underneath the stars above at night. When I step outside in the wee hours of the morning, often there is no genuine silence. The world seems to hum. It sounds a lot like my refrigerator. I have thought about trying to find the source of what, to me, seems like dull noise. In the absence of many of the noises of the day – often I still hear a siren moving through the night – this humming intrudes into the sense of clarity that I seek. I suppose if I could find the source of the noise - I would just follow my ears. After all, few people would be willing to get up out of their beds to try and stop me. I would just pull the plug. But something almost surely would go bad.

So I don’t.

I am just imagining that I am telling a story here and reading a poem that reveals truth and beauty to me. YouTube has kindly agreed to store this recording on their servers and make it available to anyone who wants to listen for a click. It seems reasonable. How they make a buck out of it is their business. Time – and not money – is the value at stake hear. But never mind.

Late last summer, I walked into the Social Service League. I was on my way to the river, a walk I take nearly every day. The thrift store was in temporary quarters across the street from the Douglas County Courthouse. I’m not saying that I discovered a miracle in that cluttered and cold, dimly lit, nearly abandoned warehouse space. It’s too soon to tell. But I might have found part of the great mystery of the universe.

On the shelves at the Social Service League, among all of the twiddle and the other odd stuff, was a blue pitcher. The color and the very pleasing round shape appealed to me. I held it in my hands. The ceramic was smooth and cool to my palms. There was a chip or two and some apparently negligible cracking but I wanted the pitcher. It was in a thrift store, anyway.

I then browsed the poetry section of the used books. On the top shelf, I saw a pale green copy of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland and other poems.’ I had that very book at home, the black and white slightly enigmatic photo of Eliot, his chin resting on his hands folded over a cane on the cover. I suppose, it might have been an umbrella. The photo was cut off below his tweedy elbows. Maybe the book could be a gift.

At the counter, they asked for and I paid two dollars. I didn’t get a receipt so I don’t know how much for the cracked blue pitcher and how much for poems I already had on my bookshelves.

I carried the pitcher and the book with me as I walked. I had slipped my digital camera into my pocket before leaving the house and I posed the objects among the petunias in the planter boxes along Mass St, and in other places.

If time is the preeminent value we are talking about here, I had gotten my money’s worth before I even got back home. I cleaned up the pitcher a little and filled it with water. When I came back some time later, the pitcher was empty and the counter was all wet. To me, it was clear why someone had donated the pitcher to the Social Service League. It didn’t hold water. Still, it was a beautiful object. I was happy to have it. I place it around in several different places in my yard. Finally I put it into my little garden pond after the ice from the winter had melted. It seemed suited to its element.

Occasionally, the wind would rock it enough so that water spilled into its mouth and it would fill and sink to the bottom. Easy enough to reach.

Eliot, on the other hand, was confusing me some. I carried the thin little paperback with me now and then. I could hardly make any sense of the Wasteland, though some individual lines would make me laugh. But ‘The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ continues increasingly to bring satisfaction to my soul. I don’t particularly mean anything much by that word, ‘soul,’ I just don’t have a better one handy. I don’t think I’m especially religious anymore, but since things mean something to me – even if only apparently – I suppose I might have some sense of the sacred in me somewhere. I had a philosophy professor once tell me that it was difficult to tell the difference between the voice of God and indigestion. I know I cannot.

But Prufrock gets to me. ‘Let us go then, you and I/ when the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table;/ Let us go …’ Well, Eliot goes on for several pages. I think that he is talking about time. He uses the word ‘time’ directly any number of times.

I first read this poem years ago. Before I got married, even, and that was half a lifetime ago. Thirty years this year, if you’re counting. One night -I don’t know how all of this happened - I read the entire poem out loud on the telephone to a friend of mine who is completely blind. I could hear her breathing in my ear. It turns out, I have never read that poem better than when she was listening. Of course, I have read it silently and out loud for myself and also for a few others, both in fragments or whole some times since. And now I would like to share Mr. Eliot’s poem with you. If it doesn’t mean anything to you, if you don’t enjoy the sounds of the words and my voice, am sorry. Or maybe it was my story that soured you. Time is what can never be recovered

But if, and I trust you, if there is any stirring in your soul as you listen to me read, go to the Social Service League – or find a street performer - and give them something for their time and stuff. You don’t have to tell them that Prufrock sent you. But gratitude should be paid. The universe is a vast and random place – but not without some personality. You and I are part of the universe, after all. And I, of course, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think that I enjoy reading Prufrock more if someone – even if I am only imagining you – is listening. Some mystery is involved.

So now, Cracked Blue Pitcher Productions presents “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot:

"Let us go then, you and I, …

**

~ 8 min audio: My reading of 'Prufrock' with sampled soundtrack from 'Still breathing.'

~ 8 min audio: My plain reading of 'Prufrock.'

Here is also a link to the text of the poem itself which includes another reading http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/173476

or you can listen to a YouTube of Eliot reading his own poem 

https://youtu.be/JAO3QTU4PzY


The words are the same, but the sound is different. You may or may not hear anything differently. If you do, it might have to do more with who you are at the particular moment.

Some things simply take time and attention.

Mime

Link to story 'Mime' on an alternate site

Band day

I don’t even believe in marching bands.

There’s no reason that they should exist.

But I wondered if God might have been

the very tall soldier playing a snare

in the Army band from Fort Riley.

He was at least a head taller than everyone else.

And Jesus looked like a young, black drum major.

Who knew she would be a high school girl?

But by the holy ghost,

I wept and prayed,

when the fat girl fell down to her knees

at the very end of the parade,

on the last of the summer’s green grass in South Park,

breathless.

And then a short skinny girl took up

her golden baritone sax

and they walked slowly away,

arms around each other.

When the music died

all the marching bands

walked off the street.

I sat and waited for the world to end.

Then I stuck a feathered plume into my hat,

and called it macaroni,

and I hitched a ride on the last yellow school bus

for McClouth.

For some moments, I had had some doubts.

Teaching a man to ride a bike

Teaching a man to ride a bike 

My resolution is pretty good. My memory card is organic. I framed her image in the window of the bike shop on Delaware. Her fingers went through her hair – light brown, soft – I had held it for a lingering moment when her arm couldn’t reach her collar. She had ridden last year and accidentally tumbled onto her head and shoulder on the bike trail below the levee months ago. Later while she had been abroad, her bike had been stolen. She was picking up a new used one. Now, as I watched, she pulled her hair tight and thick into a bundle in one hand, the other hand manipulated a rubber band in her fingers as if she had done it a thousand times before.

I watched her carefully as she turned to face me, one strand slipping away from her pony tail like in thousands of pony tails I had looked at before. It’s physics I tell you – the way they bob and swing, the wind the familiar force that makes the tail end of the hair flutter. This wasn’t physics.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. My heart must have been beating, but I didn’t notice. The baker had asked me if she were my daughter. My imagination had not stopped hoping since we had finished the coffee and pastries and walked to the bike shop. My resolution isn’t as good as I’d like, but I don’t want a new camera for Christmas. What I want is for what I want – mostly I want to have what I have and always to want more than I can have.

We rode across the bridge together. From in front of her I looked out at the sun on the river. The day could hardly have been brighter. I could see quite clearly her joy entering my mind, the wind in her face, her voice, carrying as far as my ears. She was simply so happy to be riding her new bike. I suppose I will have to refresh my image of her pony tail, but that is not what I am trying to tell you about.

How could I have known what I wanted before I saw someone else’s daughter in a coffee shop more than a year ago. And the look in her eye as she looked at me? It was more than imagination.

I had made some videos – one of my wife riding a bike along the Haskell Creek Trail – and she had seen them. My young student cinematographer friend told me as we rode that morning towards the sun that the first thing I should do is improve my camera resolution and she asked me what I wanted for Christmas. We were out along the levee by then and I told her that I really didn’t want anything. She laughed and said that was what her boyfriend had told her when she had asked him. I didn’t say much more, but I couldn’t really tell her that I hadn’t really told her the truth. But it wasn’t a Christmas thing.

But if I could watch her pony tail, fluttering in the wake of her smile, once or a thousand times more, I could possibly live with that. She will always be someone else’s daughter. But that summer morning, she was riding bike with me.

**

Postcard to a traveling friend:

I had simply neglected my work this morning. A househusband’s work is never done. But the weather was perfect for a bike ride. But in the other room my wife was slamming the school books and muttering. So I instead unlocked just the one bike, but at least I didn’t leave without uttering those words a spouse longs to hear: “Do you need anything from the store?”

Well, when I then rode past your place on my way to the store, I knew that you were already playing hooky yourself and wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks. But “I was thinking of you” is always a good way to start a postcard. And to be completely authentic you should conclude with, “wishing you were here.” But I was standing by the red bell peppers by then.

And you won’t believe it, but I will tell you anyway. I came home without the eggs my wife insisted were essential for a happy marriage.

I could have cared less, or was it instead: I couldn’t have. I should have cared about someone or something and truly I had and I would. But the bright blue sky was in my eyes. Friends and lovers might be just over my shoulder or across the deep blue sea. Imagination is sometimes the next best thing to reality.

And so here I now sit. My bike, locked up on the porch. Even my cat is taking a nap. Maybe after lunch I can go for swim. I know a quiet pool were the fish won’t nibble at your tuckus. And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Or maybe I’ll take a short nap in the sun and then I can reopen my eyes. And maybe my wife and I can take a bike ride after supper. And maybe I can ride again with you still later in the month.

But still wishing I hadn’t forgotten the eggs.

-          Yours truly on a blue sky day in Kansas

       **

Apricot moon

The moon

is the only night time

object bright enough

to shine through the mists

and it is barely two days from full.

More like a dull falling apricot –

let go the branch,

not round and

a little fuzzy.

The air

is cool

and still

- the night -

my heart beats

slowly. My

head is

dull.

I could have slept

and thought of all my night time cares

in daylight if I could have slept.

But instead I pour two glasses

of cold water in the kitchen

and I’ll probably have a

headache in the

morning.

Still -

the air -

cool.

And still the moon,

not unlike

a dull apricot –

pausing in its tumble

down, almost ripe and

nearly sweet.