A Time to Grow

January
something’s growing
in the sunshine
amaryllis, geraniums
grandkids


These last few days of January brought sun and thawing here in our neck of the woods. Mary arranged some plants in this corner of the dining area near our large patio door to catch the sun and they are doing well. The large bloomer is her Christmas-present amaryllis and on the floor she has started a flat of geranium seeds that poked out of the ground a few days ago to start their climb towards the sunlight.

We’ve been fortunate to see all the grandkids recently. Yes, they are growing, too. Eventually they will blossom into full adulthood and thrive in the sunshine they seek.

The Water Pump

filling my pot
at the kitchen sink
I remember Grandma
carrying a pail
and pumping the handle




The pump in the picture is ornamental, my backyard decoration. Often times when I stand at our kitchen sink and fill my coffee pot I look out the window at this scene and am reminded of the real water pump at my grandparents' farm. They had no running water and had to carry it whenever it was needed in the house . For some reason that water always tasted so good; maybe it was because the boy I was got to drink from the long-handled dipper that hung on the bucket.

For Everything a Season

North Dakota Veterans Cemetery



drifting snow
covers wreaths
and headstones...
for everything
there is a season

A few miles south of Mandan the remains of hundreds of military veterans rest, some with their spouses. On a dreary January day I drove there with my camera to find this scene. At the start of the Christmas season volunteers placed wreaths against the stones; the drifted snow partially covering the two objects reminded me of the poetry of Ecclesiastes 3: for everything there is a season. Here I saw two seasons represented: a religious holiday and a person's life.

. . . . . . . . .
I've been wanting to make my blogspot more interesting. Since I'd like to improve my poetry writing I constantly study the forms that interest me most. Lately I have discovered and read as many of the above style as I can find on the internet. The verse form is the five-line tanka and by combining the poem with narrative prose and a picture you come up with photo-tanka-prose, not that it matters one bit to anyone except the few of us who write that style. Of course, all it does is to keep those few of us happy knowing that we are practicing something that has a name. I hope the picture is bright enough to be effective. I fear I may have to invest in a better camera, but what the heck, Mary always tells me I can't take it with me even though I then respond I just want to make sure it lasts. At any rate, I will be utilizing this format for awhile which just means until I find something I'd rather do. In a week or two I will go back to my once-a-week schedule, but I may experiment a bit more and post a few extra.

Harry, the Wizard

Grandson Harry showing us how to upload pictures to this blogsite.

Lily telling Grandpa ...

Here is my granddaughter Lily explaining things of importance to her in her almost two-year-old world.

Rejected

It snows everyday! I blew snow yesterday morning after the weekend’s buildup, then it snowed again. Every morning we see a large herd of deer in the alfalfa field below our house. I know they find good grazing in the dried alfalfa stems beneath the snow. They started appearing as soon as hunting season ended. The other day as we drove along I-94 we saw two deer step out of a cornfield with no cares in the world.

Last week I printed a few of the poems that have been carried in the Ribbons magazine that is published by the Tanka Society of America. Here are a couple more with some background as to how they came about.

the morning sun
rises on veiled buttes
spreading its light
with the wings
of soaring hawks

This appeared in “The Tanka Café” section of the magazine and since its editor called for poems to be written with the theme “Things that Fly” for this edition I came up with this one. I couldn’t resist referring to the landscape that unrolls from here on to the west. Buttes and hawks, so prevalent, are easy to write of in combination with each other.
…

due south
Little Heart Butte
pokes from the surface
a lump on the skin
prominent yet benign

Some time ago a local columnist in our newspaper referred to the Little Heart Butte as a pimple on the ground. This butte rises prominently just a few miles south of my home, and I look at it often. Since it is more conical in shape than the commonly thought of flat-topped butte, it could be a metaphor for skin eruption. I took that idea and developed it into the foregoing tanka that appeared in the open-entry part of the magazine.

The next theme for “The Tanka Café” is Art and Artlessness. Lucky for me, the editor states “Generally, restrictions will be few and almost any treatment will be acceptable. The overall challenge will be to submit one’s very best effort.” I guess my work is cut out for me, so I’d better get started. Of course, high-flying balloons always come back to the ground. I just received a notice from another magazine to which I had submitted a group of poems. They rejected every one of them.

Mayhem & Poems

Much will be written and spoken regarding the recent tragedy of murder and mayhem in Arizona. The words that I bring to the subject matter little. A discussion has begun about toning down the political rhetoric which I am certain does influence mentally unbalanced, gun-happy people. Of course a defensive position has already been taken by the perpetrators of hate by saying that their words were only meant metaphorically. It should be well understood, though, most of the nuts with guns don’t know what a metaphor is. Can there be a more civil discourse? I doubt it. One of the sensible media people, Jon Meacham, said there is a class of people who depend on conflict for their living, not conflict resolution.
…

A few months ago I joined the Tanka Society of America, a group which specializes in the art of writing this ancient five-line form of Japanese poetry. TSA is a group of about 200 dues paying members, and when I recently looked over the membership list I was surprised to discover that I am its only member in North Dakota. The organization publishes “Ribbons,“ a very respectable journal that features member-written poems. I received the latest edition a couple of days ago and found within its pages three poems I had submitted.

midnight
the Soo Line train waits
at a crossing
engine-idle and frog-croak
blend in harmony

The section of the journal where this one appeared called for poems to exhibit a sense of loneliness. I remember laying in the upstairs bedroom of the farm west of Sheldon and hearing this on a summer night through the open window. The railroads, Soo Line and NP, crossed a couple miles west of the farmstead and, as I understood it, had to stop to verify that another train on the other track wasn’t bearing down on them. On a still night the sound of the diesel engine’s idling came across the fields, and I imagined it blending with the frogs in the creek just west of the buildings.
…


hard rains
in Vermont
flood fields -
pumpkins floating
in the Winooski River

Last fall we took a long bus tour through the northeast. While we never experienced any heavy rains we drove through an area in Vermont where crop damage had occurred. As we cruised along I looked out the bus window and saw this unusual sight - a crop of pumpkins floating against a dam in the river.
…

this daylily
blooms once and dies
but then
another bud opens. . .
my sons, their sons

Mary grows a wide variety of flower species in her gardens, one of them being daylilies. It is such a popular flower in this city that a local group held a national daylily convention here last summer. After learning that this flower has the particular characteristic of each bud’s lasting just one day, I began thinking that this natural metaphor begged to be written.

Just Thinking

The streets in Mandan and Bismarck are full of snow, blizzards keep us off the highways, and evenings find us drawing the drapes on our windows to keep some of the cold air out. Times like this foster a time of introspection and most likely permits me to do my deepest thinking. I continually write poems in my head and feel pressure to publish my third book. I often read good literature and well-written history so as to understand things better. And this blog keeps my mind agile as I try to write something worthwhile each week. But, alas, my work habits are poor as I fritter away too much time. Somebody said that a day is a span of time no one is wealthy enough to waste. My next birthday is my 69th; I know it is pointless to wish for subtracting any of those years.

I spend a fair share of time thinking and worrying about national and international affairs. Maybe that’s a waste of time since my little voice in this wilderness can’t be heard. The first book I downloaded on my new Barnes and Noble Nook is Barbara Tuchmann’s The Guns of August which describes in detail the month-long build-up to the beginning of World War I. One doesn’t have to be very perceptive in reading this text to see that only a few men caused the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands in the massive, ensuing battles - pieces on the game masters’ chess board. Wars have always been fought because of the desire to expand a borderline or because of a perceived threat or to settle some past infringement of honor, and in every case it is just a few puppet-masters pulling the strings to prepare the populations and ready the war machines.

I don’t believe this phenomenon takes place only in military wars, though. Pied Pipers abound to play loud tempting tunes of “follow me” on their flutes. A very interesting scenario just played out in our state’s U. S. senate election. John Hoeven’s campaign emphasized North Dakota’s one billion dollar treasury surplus which he, of course, hinted at being responsible for. He crowed of how he was going to take that message of success to the workings of the federal government and show them how it how to get it done. He was elected by a large margin, but now his fellow political party members in the state legislature are saying “yes, but…” much of that money can’t be spent because it has been earmarked for various funds and is therefore not available for the legislators to allocate. To go one step further, if the oil industry in this state hadn’t developed oil production to generate money for the state coffers there would have been no surplus to discuss and North Dakota would have been as destitute as many another state. Although I think he would have been elected to the senate anyway due to a weak opposition candidate, he sure made a lot of noise tooting that flute.

Our country just suffered through two years of criticism directed to individuals and institutions where support groups kept writing flute music. It’s been a cacophony of sound with “birthers,” “tea parties,” “don’t ask, don’t tell,” “repeal Obamacare” tunes playing and gathering followers. How about the two preachers: one rallies his flock to attend the funerals of veterans to blame their deaths on the evils of homosexuality and the other for wanting to hold a Koran burning. For awhile the message was we’ve become socialistic since we bailed out the car companies, but has that not developed into a success story? Well, the stock market looks pretty good right now and we invested in some municipal bonds that pay out pretty good so I suspect things will work out.