Blog o' Gnosis

This poem may not be finished—I have spent the evening taking it apart and putting it back together, and still have some tinkering to do around the edges. But what fun to have a new poem to share for Brigid! And to be writing poetry again. The stress of the past few years must be easing [...]

I had to go back to this post to find the earliest reference (Reya’s original blog post is lost in the mists) to the now annual Silent Poetry Reading in honor of Brigid (Saint or Goddess, as you prefer). And while the first invitation was for a single day’s blogging event, watching the misty full moon tonight got me thinking of [...]

My dad said he was a diamond
in the rough. Forty years and
no diamond. Your children
inherit a chisel.

Has it really been four years now that we have been doing a virtual poetry reading for Brigid? Apparently so. Here is one then, in honor also of the great Hermes:
 
Trismegistus
O Egypt, Egypt—so the great lament
Of thrice-great Hermes went—
Nothing of thy religion shall remain
Save fables, which thy children shall disdain.
His grieving eye foresaw 
The world’s bright [...]

Are we bloggers going to do another poetry fest in honor of St. Brigid? Her day is less than a week away, and I’ve had an old poem rattling around in my brain lately, so I figure I’ll beat the crowds and post it a few days early.

Another year of losses, of big questions that elbow their way into the room and refuse to leave. A young man who grew up down the street and went to school with my kids was stabbed to death at a party this weekend. Two young men charged with his murder had a brother killed in Iraq at the beginning of the war.

What happens to kids? What makes one succumb while another one thrives? I don’t understand it, and all my pat answers, fears and suspicions merely mask the fact that I simply don’t know. I can’t keep my kids safe now that they’re grown, and the more beautifully they blossom the more I am aware of how fragile our hold is on this life we cherish.

Recently an old, dear friend of mine took off on an extended midlife journey. He sold or stored his possessions, left his practice, untied the mooring lines which kept him here in the Bay Area, and let the current take him without knowing whether it would bring him back.

Having dinner with him and a few other friends shortly before he left, I was reminded of this poem. I used to give a copy of this to everyone I knew who was going through a rite of passage, whether adolescent or adult, and before my friend left I sent him a copy, too.

The past few days I have been searching through old journals and notebooks looking for notes on an event I went to years ago. I haven’t found the prize yet, but in the process of not finding what I was looking for I did find some other interesting stuff.

Back in 1990 I was taking a poetry class in the evenings, and I worked on those assignments in the same notebook that I used for recording meeting minutes, jotting down ideas for articles, and writing songs. Somewhere in the middle of all that I found the following, dated July 12, 1990. I have no recollection of writing it, but I think I was in the middle of writing a song that wasn’t cooperating, so this came out instead.

Okay, well I guess I am now collecting poems having to do with dreams. I spent some time this evening browsing through a friend’s poetry collection, and came up with this beauty that I had to share. I don’t know whether Reya is doing her Poetry for Brigid blog this year, but here’s my first contribution anyway.

Back when Bowen and Lyra were about 5 and 3, I was a frustrated songwriter. I had several under my belt from years past, but not as many recent ones as I would have liked. There were two or three half-finished songs I was trying to pull together, and somehow I thought it was a failure on my part that I couldn’t find the time with two little kids to finish them. When I did take time from everything else to work on my songs I found I had nothing to say, or rather was too full of things I didn’t know how to say. Not understanding the cause or the cure, I called it writer’s block.