Birthplace

A cold rain threatening snow
has closed the roads heading toward my birthplace.
Night already blurs the edges of day.
With so many seasons separating me from childhood,
even if I recall the faces of
family and faraway friends in the absence between,
silenced by this bitter wind,
their voices remain distant as the unseen starlight.
Despite memory’s insistence,
winter’s approach has left me a homeless recluse,
cut off by the first flake falling.

Instructions For A Beginner

Be patient before you plant.
Appreciate every rainy day spring brings.
In August, you will know why.
Believe me, no green thumb is required.
The recipe is a simple one.
Remember, sunshine is the main ingredient.
If rows aren’t straight, so what.
Soon overgrown, no garden is perfect.
But lacking attention, weeds will overrun.
So be prepared to get on your knees.
Do not despair when the bounty is shared.
This space is meant to be communal.
Creatures of the night are gardeners too.
A few failures are to be expected.
What remains will be an abundance.
After all, your plants know their purpose.
Even if you take all the credit.

Flute

A flute cannot open its
airways and sing without
the accompaniment of lungs.
Boxed since high school
orchestra class, surely it longs
for the ghost of you to
turn itself into a gust of breath.
Helpless and aware
of the music contained within,
it prays for a mighty wind.
But a former flutist will learn
attempting resuscitation,
that successful resurrection
takes more than hot air.

Comfortable Silence

After having weathered
so many seasons together without
walls, eyes become doorways

Our comfortable silence
is like the prairie grass bending
gracefully on a summer day

Neither root nor wind
seemingly sharing a conversation,
but entranced, fields dance

The Fellowship Of The Ring / J. R. R. Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring was published in 1954, the first volume of what would become The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  By 1968, it was a must-read among my high school classmates.  I fell under the trilogy’s spell at that time and have revisited the tale numerous times since.  This spring I again dived into The Fellowship of the Ring and found it still proved to be magical and totally engaging.

It is set in Middle-earth, an ancient land where dwarves, elves, hobbits and humans co-existed while being threatened by true evil.  Sauron the Dark Lord sought to overrun the culture of the time, using an army that included Black Riders, orcs, and other evil creatures enlisted to serve his quest for world dominion.  In this book, Frodo Baggins, a hobbit, possesses a ring imbued with power, which Sauron desperately needs to insure his victory.  Chased by Black Riders, Frodo, accompanied by three other hobbits, narrowly escapes to an Elven kingdom where a fellowship is formed to assist him and his companions in a trek to the Cracks of Doom, in order to cast the ring into its fires to destroy it.  Accompanying them are a wizard, a Dwarf, an Elf, and several other beings representing good against evil.

I was no fan of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptions of the Trilogy, especially his recreation of the this volume.  Jackson jettisoned much of its magical moments, focusing primarily on battle scenes rather than on the interactions of the Fellowship, where the characters bond and encounter other fascinating characters such as Tom Bombadil, who is left out of the film entirely.  For me, what makes this first volume special are the lighter moments of Tolkien’s fully detailed history that prove so captivating.  But as the popularity of Jackson’s adaptation shows, all these decades on, Tolkien’s tale still captivates.  Today, when fantasy fiction continues to be a genre that attracts younger audiences, The Fellowship of the Ring remains a story that stands as the key that opened the gate for other fantasy tales (including the Harry Potter series) to flourish. 

Wake Visitation

My parents told me
it was time to say goodbye
and I thought, but why

Aunts dressed for
mass on a Wednesday night
without a pew in sight

Uncles and Father
wearing uncomfortable ties
with tears in their eyes

To me, stiff and waxen,
a stranger presented as him,
so frightening and grim

How joyless he seemed
if indeed already in Heaven
to a boy nearing seven

Grandpa’s open casket
insuring mine will be closed
as to dust I’m transposed

The Berlin Stories / Christopher Isherwood

The Berlin Stories consists of two of Christopher Isherwood’s previously published novellas, Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye To Berlin.  This compilation was published shortly after the close of World War II.  Each covers the time period of 1930 to 1933 when the author lived in the German capital.  It is a semi-autobiographical account of his life during the last days of the Weimar Republic, with the looming subtext of Nazism about to overturn the apple cart.

This work won later fame thanks to the play that used it as it inspiration, I Am A Camera, which was later reworked to create the movie Cabaret.  One of the minor characters from The Berlin Stories, Sally Bowles, became a household name thanks to the movie’s portrayal of her.

In these novellas, Isherwood provides a snapshot of what life was like in Berlin during this volatile period of German history.  The author creates an outsider’s look at the city’s poverty, alternative nightlife, and the intrigue resulting as the Nazis and the socialists battle for control of the country.  What is heartbreaking is his portrayal of a number of Jewish families who were successful businessmen in Germany.  There is a sense of doom hovering over these presentations, even if as these Jews downplayed the treat.

Christopher Isherwood was a homosexual, and his sexual interactions with a number of the novel’s characters is hinted at but never acknowledged.  Lurking in the background of these stories, Isherwood captures the threat to him and the rest of the Western world should the Nazis achieve power.  This makes for an unsettling background, even as most of the characters portrayed are just trying to survive despite the politics of the time.

Night Cycle

Trees speak in shadows,
moonlight whispers a pathway,
tonight’s walls and doors

Cloaked, an owl awaits
movement’s betraying splash on
the dark’s stilled waters

The geometry
of stone ringing sleep, conjured
by a blanket’s weight

Envoys of demise,
crickets fiddle as Rome burns
in August’s exhale

Distantly churning,
a remembered ancient sea
still draws sleepers in

Dreams in predawn light
turn up the volume, muffling
the birds intrusion

Hitler : 1889-1936 Hubris / Ian Kershaw

This biography traces Adolph Hitler’s life from his illegitimate birth in Austria to his rise to become the tyrannical leader of Germany. In this first volume of Hitler’s life, Kershaw does an admirable job of elucidating how such a man could ascend from obscurity to god-like status and succeed in overthrowing a fragile democracy to become the sole leader of the country.  All of this resulted from a world wide depression and because of Hitler’s forceful personality and skill as a public speaker.

Throughout his life, Hitler remained a person with few friends.  It was Germany’s defeat in the Great War that launched him from a life of poverty into the lure of right-wing politics in the early 1920s, where he quickly became the rising star of the movement.  As Kershaw shows, there were numerous instances where Hitler could have been easily sent back into the shadows.  But thanks to good fortune and to the fact that so many politicians and other countries continued to underestimate him or hope to use him for their own ends, Hitler was able to manipulate his way into power.

Kershaw tries his best to capture the inner workings of Hitler’s personality, but the man left behind few clues to draw from.  Still, in presenting how Hitler used the collective anger over Germany’s treatment after the war, fear of a Communist takeover of the country, and his ability to portray the Jews as the cause of all ills, one gets a clearer picture of how the Nazi party under Hitler’s leadership rose to dominance.  

This book shows not only how the Germans were seduced into such an evil dictatorship, but how easily it can happen in any country.  With the rise of right-wing parties across the world and here in the United States, this biography is essential reading if we are to prevent a repeat performance in today’s democracies.

Cottonwood Blizzard

Five cottony days in May have
carpeted the garden paths white again,
a sticky accumulation despite
an abundance of temperate sunshine.

Adorning hat brims and
entangling in loosened braids, they await
the next breath of breeze to
once again suspend themselves airborne.

From dawn to dusk, through
moon and stars, a steady precipitation
unmentioned in the forecast has
been woven into a back yard’s fabric.

Even you, dear reader, are not
immune from this blizzard, as intuitively
you brush away the seeds of
cotton, settling in imagination’s folds.

Friendship Village / Zona Gale

Zona Gale (1874-1938) spent most of her life in Portage, a small town in southern Wisconsin.  Her stories gained national attention, and in 1921 she won the Pulitzer Prize for her writing.  This novel is a collection of intertwined stories set in the fictional town of Friendship Village, featuring characters limned from her home community.  Published in 1908, this book captures the tight bonds of small town America at the turn of the twentieth century.

Using the natural dialect of the time, her dense prose makes for a challenging read today.  In each chapter, a specific event is described that forces the community to put aside prejudices to deal with it.  By book’s end, one cannot not help but feel that the neighbors described are people the reader has grown up with.  Gale is not a well known author, but her writing serves as a time capsule presenting a supposed Eden we now remember with nostalgia.

She depicts a community that is lily white and joined by the bonds of a shared Christian faith.  Unusual for her time, she dares to present characters who have stepped outside the boundaries of propriety, and how a community forgives even if they do not forget.  This composite of stories blends into a delightful whole and deserves to be rediscovered by today’s audience.  Zona Gale is a regional author who stood tall on the national stage, and her stories still resonate more than a century later.