GOOD SAMARITANS

The first snow of the year falls on her cheek, her eyes stare beyond us

(struck dumb and useless for all our sophistication).

A motley group of youths are gathered round her now, some gathering up her spilled shopping, the oldest one  -  aglitter with nose-rings, ear-rings, eyebrow rings  -

starts to apply mouth to mouth resuscitation; until finally, exhausted and realising it is useless, simply cradles her in his arms until the ambulance men arrive, when he hands her over  -  and her dentures from his pocket.

Then off into the blinding snow,

with the taste of death on his lips.

her cold flesh
touched
by his living warmth

CHIPMUNKS

Crossing the Mojave Desert we stopped off at the old mining town of Calico.

This once thriving silver- mining town, became a ghost town when the miners moved out in the 1890’s; since the 1950’s it has become more of a themed area  -   most of it restored to look as it did in the 1880’s (one of our party actually worked on the restoration, and showed us  his old  Stetson, still hanging there on a wall in the store, after the passage of some twenty-five years.) Nevertheless it was still exciting to wander the streets and imagine the old-timers working this area. Inevitably we ended up in the saloon, where we enjoyed a glass of Sasparilla;

Unfortunately, there was no honky-tonk piano punching out ‘Careless Love’ or the like, which would have perfected the scene.

.

Heading back to the bus, we suddenly came across, what was the thrill of the day for me: a group of chipmunks, working furiously in the shade of an old ore-truck –  digging up buried treasure.

sunset  -

rusty mine machinery

merging with the hills

SCHOOLDAYS

I remember him well, with his long horse’s skull of a face

and the sad suffering eyes.

We lived in fear of him, with his ‘quick draw’  belt  -  no strolling  over to the top drawer of his desk for him, no, he carried it with him at all times rolled up in his pocket, a black coil of pain readily leaping to hand.

Sad, really that it’s this bleak picture one has of him, for I’m told that in later years

He became quite a successful poet:

wandering Elysium fields filling buttercups with sunlight;

friend to birds and toads;

they even say he was very humorous  -  hard to believe this of our old antagonist.

Pondering it, I can only believe that he, like us, just didn’t want to be there!

school's back:
street
of tiny dramas

COMING THROUGH THE RYE

-------------------------------------------

A few hours in Fukuoka:

we headed for Shofokuji Temple  -   Japan’s first Zen temple.

Arriving early morning the only life we encountered were the sparrows

having a sand bath at the old temple door: a building standing since 1195, when Eisai brought the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism (and green tea) to Japan from China

(how many sparrows in all that time?);

taking off my shoes I crept into the new meditation hall for a few moments of silent meditation

clouds’ shadows

move across

the polished floor

Setting off again we had another ambition to fulfil: our first tasting of saki.

After much wandering we eventually spied a hostelry across a busy thoroughfare and    

waited at the crossing.              

Suddenly, as the lights changed in our favour, the air was filled with very loud music (signal to cross) 

astonishingly, what was playing was the Robert Burns song:

‘Coming Through The Rye’: the ploughman poet’s work still appearing

In the most amazing places -  as with his contemporary, Basho, whose frog is still plopping into pools all over the world  -  truth of the simple life!

With the arrival of our sakis we raised a warm one to Burns and Basho,

and later, a cool one to J.D. Salinger  -  who had also got in on the act  -

(after all it was the fourth of July!)

first saki  -
Santoka's haiku
swim past

THE GAELIC POETS

You have re-strung the harp of Gaeldom,

and it is firelight dancing on red hair.

The spear once broken in the glens  -  all

the light in the world glitters from it today  -

the lightning of the waters is no longer cold silver in a creel.

You carried your tabernacle  -  sun of love by day;

flame of freedom by night  -  into our time , and wander now, Bard,

by the streaming tide; turning pebbles, and turning the turning of pebbles into poems;

and the deaf (such a one as I)

cry and ache to have one word of them  -

that would burn in the breast, like a young man’s first dram.



 

highland stream                                           

its purling
vocabulary

                                                        note: dram: measure of whisky

THE JEWELLED HEART

Crossing the Sinai Desert our guide stopped the bus

to show us one of the few remaining oases;

suddenly six Bedouin children appeared from nowhere,

holding out to us large platters on which were spread the most amazing agates;

urging us to see!  -  see the wonders grown out of the desert’s silence:

the crystalline brain of the hidden purpose.

Later, our guide explained to us how the Bedouin people were the first people to

introduce Islam to Egypt.

the Bedouin boy

splits the rock for us

shows its jewelled heart

JAZZ STREETS

  (for Miles)   

Night streets itchy with intent:

alleyways anxious to unburden their illegitimate offspring:

a drunken brawl or a stiff corpse.

Suddenly:  the air abubble with bop: a trumpet  -

what wizard! what shaman! weaving from his own soul

this amazing sound?   -    here was spirit trying to break from clay;

a rustling forked-lightning translated into music;

a minstrel wandering new by-ways  -

although,

the pain born of slavery

was always at the cutting edge.

Carolina

to New York

black cats and blues