 |
| Photo by Vic Midyett |
The first is a dream of night, real as real:
Siegfried has returned from having left us,
from being gone away,
his nubby hair stiff in short sprigs
because it is weeks past his last grooming.
It feels so real on my imagined finger tips,
stroking him as he sleeps on top of our covers,
himself as real as a character in a drama,
as real as the person he had been for us:
daily, nightly, always, forever.
And a dream of day has me running
a 12-year-old mention of my sister in Arkansas,
when Flo Elowee was still alive.
And I don’t annotate the post
to say that she too, now, is gone.
And Paul Clark’s dream of Chaos embracing everything,
squeezing even gods out as no longer needed,
Mother Nature’s logic ruling all,
embracing and unfolding every story –
in aspect of both event and poem:
Vic Midyett’s photograph a testament to it,
of a spider’s web strung 40 feet
between two trees and moored to the grass beneath.
Paul, who plans a museum of his old cameras,
proposes to include my camera,
purchased 60 years ago, before I left for college.
Each of the hundreds of photos that Zeiss recorded
remembers an event and recalls a poem,
like the black and white photo on my desk,
of me and my wife and my parents
in the yard of the house where we all four lived
for those few short weeks in 1966.
Jeff, my father, looks off into infinity
somewhere above and to his right of the camera.
(Other photos of my father record him dreaming like that.)
The satirical video Neil Hoffmann sent me,
“The Liar Tweets Tonight,” with
its refrain, “Vote him away, vote him away,”
is sung with such cheer,
I feel hopeful for the election.
(My wife and I voted yesterday.
We took our ballots to the election board.
We testified officially:
Vote him away, vote him away, vote him away,
end his unnatural chaos.)
And I come across a dreamy line
in Chapter 30 of a manuscript by Ed Rogers
that summarizes everything of dream and reality:
“At some point the dream becomes real,
and the real becomes dream.”
_______________
Siegfried has returned from having left us,
from being gone away,
his nubby hair stiff in short sprigs
because it is weeks past his last grooming.
It feels so real on my imagined finger tips,
stroking him as he sleeps on top of our covers,
himself as real as a character in a drama,
as real as the person he had been for us:
daily, nightly, always, forever.
And a dream of day has me running
a 12-year-old mention of my sister in Arkansas,
when Flo Elowee was still alive.
And I don’t annotate the post
to say that she too, now, is gone.
And Paul Clark’s dream of Chaos embracing everything,
squeezing even gods out as no longer needed,
Mother Nature’s logic ruling all,
embracing and unfolding every story –
in aspect of both event and poem:
Vic Midyett’s photograph a testament to it,
of a spider’s web strung 40 feet
between two trees and moored to the grass beneath.
Paul, who plans a museum of his old cameras,
proposes to include my camera,
purchased 60 years ago, before I left for college.
Each of the hundreds of photos that Zeiss recorded
remembers an event and recalls a poem,
like the black and white photo on my desk,
of me and my wife and my parents
in the yard of the house where we all four lived
for those few short weeks in 1966.
Jeff, my father, looks off into infinity
somewhere above and to his right of the camera.
(Other photos of my father record him dreaming like that.)
The satirical video Neil Hoffmann sent me,
“The Liar Tweets Tonight,” with
its refrain, “Vote him away, vote him away,”
is sung with such cheer,
I feel hopeful for the election.
(My wife and I voted yesterday.
We took our ballots to the election board.
We testified officially:
Vote him away, vote him away, vote him away,
end his unnatural chaos.)
And I come across a dreamy line
in Chapter 30 of a manuscript by Ed Rogers
that summarizes everything of dream and reality:
“At some point the dream becomes real,
and the real becomes dream.”
_______________
| Copyright © 2020 by Moristotle |
Excellent poem - poignant, hopeful, and oscillates beautifully between past realities and dreams, present vignettes, and future hopes.
ReplyDeleteI was moved deeply by this, Morris. I'm not sure which paragraph moved me the most, as each was unique. I felt as though I were a time traveler moving through the veils of your life.
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear cousin and dear friend (who have actually met each other, unlike me and Ed)! Your comments reassure me about this spur-of-the-moment, insufficiently self-edited attempt at a poem. Its first draft really needed the couple of revisions I had time to make, and I felt no assurance last night before bed that it didn’t seriously need another two or three.
ReplyDeleteBio of Roy Zimmerman, who leads the singing on the video. Excerpt:
ReplyDelete“The best musical satirist working today.” —Bay Area Reporter
In the current national nightmare, we need to laugh. And we need to hope. Roy Zimmerman’s signature blend of heart and hilarity has never been more necessary.
In a career spanning more than thirty years, Roy’s songs have been heard on HBO and Showtime, and his videos have garnered tens of millions of views on social media. With his satirical folk quartet The Foremen he recorded for Warner/Reprise Records. Roy has shared stages with Bill Maher, Ellen DeGeneres, Holly Near, Robin Williams, Arlo Guthrie, John Oliver, The Roches, Andy Borowitz, The Chambers Brothers, Kate Clinton and George Carlin.
Roy has done several shows with The Pixies’ Black Francis, swapping songs in a solo acoustic setting. He provided comic commentary to the live premiere performance of Francis’ score for the classic silent film Der Golem.
RiZe Up is Roy’s tenth album release as a solo artist. It’s a funny and forceful expression of resistance in the age of Trump. “Satire empowers people,” says Roy. “To laugh is to fight back. To hope is to fight back.”
Roy co-writes these songs with his wife, Melanie Harby. Melanie is a three-time West Coast bluegrass guitar champion. She was an original Broadway cast member of Quilters, and performed the show at regional theaters across the country.
Melanie was Joni Mitchell’s guitar tech and her research assistant on the Hits and Misses project. She was also research assistant for the Fox Movie Channel’s Legacy series with Tom Rothman, reconstructing how the deals for many classic Fox films were put together with particular emphasis on how casting decisions were made. Melanie’s children’s picture book All Aboard for Dreamland is published by Simon and Schuster.
Great job!
ReplyDeleteJust magnificent, Morris. You transformed my simple photo and observation into a purposeful, heart felt, muse masterpiece.
ReplyDeleteVic, thank you so very much for another validation that my poem didn’t turn out so bad. I appreciate it!
DeleteFabulous writing, Morris, you covered much, and said it all well.
ReplyDeleteAs I write this I've just come across two headlines: 'Ruth Bader Ginsburg, liberal giant of the Supreme Court, dies at 87' and 'Mitch McConnell says Senate will vote on Trump's pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg' (same Mitch McConnell who refused to consider President Obama's Supreme Court pick in an election year) and I again think, please let this nightmare we have lived for almost four years turn out to be a dream. To paraphrase Ed: "At some point the nightmare becomes real, and the real becomes nightmare."
I had just finished reading the same two articles when I saw your comment. Ed, as he always does, speaks true!
DeleteThe Supreme Court will pick the next President of the United States! RGB put up a hell of a fight trying to hang on until Nov. 3 but I fear it's all over now.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn and I watched the first episode last night of the 2010 Danish TV dramatic series Borgen, which “tells how, against all the odds, Birgitte Nyborg Christensen (Sidse Babett Knudsen) a minor centrist politician, becomes the first female Prime Minister of Denmark.” I hope that Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (and others) will watch it too, and choose, as Ms. Christensen does, to do what is good and right and just (and say “fuck you” to Mitch McConnell).
DeleteThere is no history to back up that ever happening, but I guess one can hope.
DeleteWhen we watched Episode 2 last night, in which Birgitte Nyborg Christensen succeeds in becoming Denmark’s first female PM, I noticed that “Nyborg” was the surname by which she was referred to (not “Christiensen”). The most interesting thing about the episode (for me) was its illustration of how power rests to a significant extent in one’s using it, and in Ms. Nyborg”s discovery that she too (a woman) can play that man’s game. (Both of two male opponents who were also vying for the PM spot attempt to sideline Nyborg with a show of power that they don’t really have. A wise mentor of hers points out what she can do....)
DeleteCollins, Murkowski, Romney, et al, seem to occasionally have a pang of conscience that makes them talk about doing the right thing, but if actually doing the right thing seems it will cause themselves, or their party, any real discomfort, they almost always fold and do the Republican thing. For people who very seldom stray from the party line, they achieve an amazing amount of publicity for talking about straying from the party line.
ReplyDeleteI emailed a Mormon friend to do what SHE can do to influence their Mormon Senator....
DeleteI sent money for fighting to gain Senate seats Nationally plus our local race. It wasn't much but I felt I had to do something.
ReplyDeleteLovely poem.
ReplyDeleteShirley Skufca Hickman
Here’s a pretty explicit admission that Trump’s going to try to do a Hitler, or a Brezhnev, or a Pinochet:
ReplyDelete“Trump Won’t Commit to ‘Peaceful’ Post-Election Transfer of Power”
In response to a question, the president complained about mail-in ballots and said: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
By Michael Crowley, Sept. 23, 2020 NY Times