In Honor of Egil's Fight with the Frisians

I'm reading Egil's Saga...Yes, again! Each time I read it, I discover something new. This time, it was the magic used by Atli in his duel with Egil. For some reason, it simply didn't filter into my head that Atli, "skilled in magic arts," was blunting Egil's sword strokes with magic! Yet, the text is quite clear. Most marvelously and quite in character, Egil gets around the magic thus,

He threw down his sword and shield, ran for Atli and grabbed him with his hands. By his greater strength, Egil pushed Atli over backwards, then sprawled over him and bit through his throat. Atli died on the spot. -transl Bernard Scudder

This outrageous act is followed by Egil running over to the sacrificial bull and breaking its neck. He follows this up by, of all things, a poetic recitation of his own composition.

I'm so smitten with Egil and his feats that I wrote him a poem, In Honor of Egil's Fight with the Frisians.

Egil and his sea wolves chased the Frisians who fled

across a bridge over a ditch to a farther field.

Once over, the Frisians pulled the spanning planks

but Egil leapt running across the banks.

Too bad none of his band was as largely bred.

The Vikings left Egil forfeited,

but he fought eleven till the field ran red

then returned to the wolves who had thought him dead.

Ch'ing P'ing Lyrics

Waking in the gallery
at dawn, and told it's snowing,

I raise the blinds and gaze into pure good fortune.
Courtyard steps a bright mirage of distance,

kitchen smoke trails light through flurried skies,
and the cold hangs jewels among whitened grasses.

Must be heaven's immortals in a drunken frenzy,
grabbing cloud and grinding it into white dust.

-Li Po


Li Po is one of my top ten favorite poets. :)

Moonlight drifts down to the snow;
one glitters, one glows.
Silent is a great, old owl.

Written on a Snowy Night

One Summer Day in the North

Blind in one eye, Bright in the other,

Ve and Vili's brother, the bees' conductor.

Buzzing galdr and songs of Balder

Among poppies so bold, brewing mead so gold.

A Note on Winter by Emily

LXXX

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

If I Were a London Taxi

If I were a London taxi, I would drive around town, never exceeding the speed limit.

I would show you the fabulous London tower, Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen of England.

I would ride you on a slow boat to China, eat lunch from a brown paper bag, serve Foster's.

If my engine grew tired and cranky, I would fill it up with premium fuel and call "Click & Clack" on my radio Saturday morning.

If I had a fleet of Mercedes, I would throw them into the drink so no one could envy them.

-Dave Sparlin

June Rain

Squalls shake the Basho
tree -- all
night my basin echoes rain.


-Basho

The Wisdom of Rainy Days

.............CXXXIII
.
Water is taught by thirst;
Land, by the oceans passed;
Transport, by throe;
Peace, by its battles told;
Love, by memorial mould;
Birds, by the snow.

-E.D.

Garage Sale Poetry

...those poems that have sat in the garage for years, not good enough to use, but not quite ready for the dustbin if only someone with a little effort would take the time to salvage them, patch a rip, revarnish, mend a broken slat or maybe tease it all apart and make the resulting cloth into something new. I have some of those broken, garage sale poems that I should throw out, but can't quite make myself do it. I get that pack rat gene from my mom, a trait against which I must have constant vigilance--and still the stuffs pile up in the nest. Here's one I really should trash, but it holds the sentimental memory of a certain time of study around 2000, a time of Classic gods and of the Kalevala and other connections I made around then. It's not of much use except to store away, only to bring it out once in a while, blow off the dust, sneeze and remember.


Tell the Lay of Ol' Pan Horny
How he prances spry and randy
By the brook of living waters,
Where the hollow reeds are soughing
By the pines with cones and pollen,
By the pillar lofty rising,
In the moonlight he is dancing.
Not alone the goat God dances,
But with maidens fair and lusty.
All his satyr girls adore him;
On the lawn they love him rutting;
In the trees they love him laughing;
On the rocks they watch him gambol;
Over hills they watch him trotting,
Hills that quake when rage is breaking
Like the raptured issue bursting.
Expectation stirs the ether.
Spritely lasses shake their nubbins,
Hairy tails of piebald patterns,
While above the clouds are moiling.
Then the rain and hail are striking.
Lightning strikes the highest oak tree,
Thunder quails the nymphic lovelies
As they covey then they scatter.
In their Panic rushing blindly
Into arms so strong and tender,
Of the all-embracing Lover,
He who rules the mighty thunder,
Lord of Sea and Sun and Nature,
He who banishes the Fury
With a strident stomp, a mandate,
Where the damsels find their refuge,
Sanctuary, arms encircling,
Like the seasons that are turning.
In the Spring they love him nightly;
Summer warms their blood for dancing;
In the Autumn surge their urges;
Winter finds the goat girls lounging
In the cave of Pan's reclining
With his wine and bread and honey,
With his goat girls by the fireside,
With his maidens sweet and musky,
Passes winter drunk and lusty
Till the southern Sun approaches
From the south whence He was summoned.
Then the goat God herds his ladies,
With their bellies fat with babies,
On to pastures green and springing,
By the swollen, warbling streamside.
Heavily the gravid goat girls
Welcome spring in quiet fashion.
Then the night hears in the meadow
Groans abundant, blood and birthing.
In the starlight Pan is pacing
On the hilltop till the morning.
Then the kids, the little Pan kids
With their itchy horns just budding
And the lively, infant faun girls
With their silky hair just growing
Play on lawns among the daisies,
Tumbling, innocently prancing,
Till their cloven hooves are weary
And their little tummies grumble.
Off to rest on mama's titties,
Ample dugs divine and milky,
While their Father, God and Ruler
Sage and mighty, watches over.
Yet another good year passes
Under Sun and Moon and Heaven
While the Lord is merry-making
Through the sacred seasons burning.
Thus immortal insight springs up
Like the blossoms He has bidden
In the meadow as he passes,
In the goat God's cloven hoofprint,
Like the seed that He is planting
In the flesh of pretty satyrs.
From the pipes that He is playing,
In the drifting songs of goat herds
And the goat girls they are tending,
Is the harmony and timbre,
Of the wisdom for tomorrow.

-me

I See Eye-to-Eye with Robins

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.

The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

-E.D.

A lady red upon the hill...

Reading through the Nature section of Emily's Collected Poems, each one seems to capture and then reveal in fresh colors the myriad essences of the springtime experience. Emily had two (among many others I'm sure) enviable traits. We know she was an honest and expressive writer. The second trait we deduce from her practice of the first, that she possessed a sensitive and receptive soul.

Here she is painting the paper with the colors of her spring, infusing the threads with the fragrances she captures and sharing her insight of the very trees beneath which she wanders. Notice, too, Emily's excitement in these revelations as she marks her verses with exclamations (in contrast to the staid woods). It is our excitement, too, both as we wander and as we share the season with her in verse.

A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!

The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?

The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile--
Orchard, and buttercup, and bird--
In such a little while!

And yet how still the landscape stands,
How nonchalant the wood,
As if the resurrection
Were nothing very odd!

To Say Nothing But Thank You

My uncle sent this to me today, no doubt reading my future in his morning tea leaves.

To Say Nothing But Thank You

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips' black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.

~ Jeanne Lohmann

Bio: At nearly eighty-six, she relishes walks through her Olympia, Washington, neighborhood and remains active in the local poetry community.

A Nightmare Poem

Over the years I've done my writing on several generations of computers. The problem with that is updating the file types to be read on the new machine with all its updated software. I'm experiencing that again as I struggle to open old files, some created in the 90s, with the Office software that "Ajay" loaded when he fixed my computer a few weeks ago. It's a mild nightmare to say the least.

A few of the files are opening, but only a few, probably some that I updated to new formats recently. Speaking of nightmares, here's a poem I wrote pre-2000 after having a terrible nightmare. It's a far cry from what I usually publish here, and for that reason, just the thing to publish.


.......................Nightmare Visit

Welcome to my nightmare just down this marble step.

In a niche behind this wall are piled clowns and dolls.

A cobweb spans that other alcove like dusty tiffany,

concealing silences that devils dare not break.

Notice the brigands brandishing sunset-lit torches

guarding the exit? Vultures guard the thieves.

Here, an auburn-haired Mnemosyne robed in steel

screams for pearls and blood and leans over an ebony cradle.

Behind this iron door, an endless corridor. Its end,

a fire burning whispers and old grimoires, around which a feast

of dirt and bone is spread on the Mensa Sacra.

Saved from eating the King's first fruit we now rise

on a titanic raven to a topaz moon where stinging nettles

wend in chiaroscuric craters and hyenas harvest

ten thousand pricks a night, saving them for little heroes.

Wandering, we arrive at a windowless wall stretching into winter

where a famished Queen sways in her chair at a wheel,

nervously brushing spiders from her hair and spins glass

from bits of mirror strewn at her naked feet.

Warring cardinals declare morning on the lawn

as our visit falls away like cherry petals in late spring.

Padding past the barren nursery at dawn

on oddly pained soles we imagine a dusty wind

rustles the faded wallroses and sighs advice,

but we've had enough of visions and hurry on.

Song of the Grandfather Bees

I am gone from my beloved Rivergarth for a week. When I return I expect many changes in my garden. I assume the lilacs will be at the inception of bloom. The redbuds and the crabapples will be bright with flowers. The bees will be busy, I think.

The lilacs, bending many a year,
..With purple load will hang;
The bees will not forget the tune
..Their old forefathers sang.

--Emily, of course. Who else uses such vivid paints?

Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

While I am surely enjoying the jeweled tones of Italy, there is no spring for me like a Kansas spring, neither in delicacy nor in fury. Those who don't garden think the summer burns, but for the "planter", it's spring that is on fire with green flames of life and love.


Putting in the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work tonight
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth,
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

--Robert Frost

In Heaven All Along

The Heathen seizes the day and lives life well. It is an art as well as a philosophy. Emily Dickinson was one of those great artists.

Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome,

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preaches,--a noted clergyman,--
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I'm going all along!

A Heathen Child's Bedtime Prayer

Thanks to Rod for sharing this link.

Magnificent Mani
God of the Moon
God of Dreams
Protector of Children...

Help me to have no bad dreams,
Keep me warm,
and safe in my bed.
Hail Mani!

March Wears Purple Shoes!

Before March passes, I must honor it with a touch of Emily, the following poem especially since Dad and his occupational therapist, Kelly, saw a snake yesterday when they walked about the yard!

We like March, his shoes are purple,
..He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
..Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
..And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
..That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
..Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
..On his British sky.

Canadas

Only occasionally is my backyard graced by these stately birds. This is twice this week.

.

Fortunate me.

.

WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good,

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting,

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile, the world goes on,

Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,

Over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers,

Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

The world offers itself to your imagination.

Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,

Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Cross-Quarter Day

At Rivergarth, the signs of spring are sparse and far between just now. There is the change in the behavior of ducks, and the stars of bethlehem breaking ground, but these are more indicative of late winter than a hint of spring. When I hear the first wood duck keening down the river, then that will be spring.

When I was teaching, I had a student in his mid teens bemoan the lateness of spring. I told him, "Just wait. It's soon, very, very soon." A couple of weeks later he came to me with wonder in his voice, "You were right. How did you know?"

I could have laughed, "Because Spring always comes, young padawan, don't you know?!" But this young man was serious and believed I had presaged the return of spring. I won't forget my sense of discovery in finding that the young have not lived enough springs to know without a doubt that spring will come again. The winter is never yet so long that it can not be endured.

Today is the Bloggers Poetry Event, but though I searched for days, I could not find the right poem to express my sense of quiet waiting and wonder as winter lingers on. In the end I found, instead, a piece of beautiful prose. This excerpt is about birds, and it is the birds who keep us company through the white and gray days. It's the birds, too, even before the earliest bulbs begin to bloom, who call out spring.


From Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from the wood-side. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn....

At Rivergarth, we notice the simple signs, wonder large at the small joys, like chickadees..as Thoreau did at Walden...although, our chickadees sing "dee-dee-dee."