A BIT OF FAMILY HISTORY

Thus Was The Tongue Of A Dog Made Useful*

The beggar lay at the rich man's gate.

The rich get richer saving crumbs,

letting beggars hang by their thumbs.

Let the dog's rough tongue grate

the sores on the body of the poor

who lay in pain by a rich man's door.

Safe now calmed by the Heavenly choir

you forget he who left you by his door  

sent his dogs to sooth your sores. 

He burns now in the Devil's fire. 

You don't wet a finger to damp his thirst. 

Who'll say which of you is worst?

  *Cotton Mather: Marginal Christi Americana (1702)

Cotton Mather officiated at the marriage of Thomas Chute

and Mary Curtis in Boston several years before they moved to         

                          Maine.

INVEST IN TIME

With the days getting shorter and me getting longer, it's a little boring around here by the pond so I've decided to occupy myself with a business venture:  Invest In Time.

It may sound a bit risky at first, but no more I'm sure, than having your body frozen and stored until sometime in the future the body can be revived and repaired — in fact much more probable, and safer, I'd say.

All my customers will need, and risk, is a few hundred dollars and faith in the future — and it's really no more complicated than compound interest. The customer will deposit their money with the business, Invest In Time, Inc The company, IIT, will guarantee to hold the fund, earning compounded interest, for as long as necessary until a functional system of time travel has been developed. 

It should not worry the investor that the time period would perhaps involve a century or more for two reasons. (1) By that time the original invested fund will be very substantial indeed. (2) At that time the investor will be transported from the time of the investment to the new present, age (of his or choice) and physical health unchanged. Time Transfers, in they chose, can be returned to their original time but no financial refunds will be allowed.

I of course plan to make an initial investment myself. The legal corporative  documents will provide the mechanism for moving the business from generation to generation.The next time I meet with you I may have the necessary papers so that those interested can sign up and join this venture. 

It may have occurred to you that I am assuming our political and economic system will persist for the period of time required.  If I can encourage a large enough number of people to join the venture I am sure they all will try to do their best to make sure our system does persist.

Robert M. Chute  CEO/IIT     

  Celebrating Dr. Who's 50th.

A NEW FOUND MEMORY

The poems tells most go the story.  The rest you will be able to read in the book, Excuse For Being Here, which Just Write Books will soon be releasing, a mix of Thoreau inspired poems, prose text on Thoreau, perhaps too much of my own biography. The poem tells the truth: a vision of the room in which my father slept in the summer, in the main house keeping a close eye and hand of The Chute Homestead: that vision of the bed, the pillow, the blod spot did appear as I revised the Emerson poem but I don't think my father died of TB, however real the blood spot was.

            Found Memory

2013: I find, read, consider revision

of a poem written 25 years ago.

Emerson Spends A Restless Night: 1831

He woke to her cough, felt the tense

curve of her back, the sharp contraction

of her chest. The dark was all enveloping.

Curtain open he could not sense separation 

from bed-chamber and moonless space.

He knew at the first cough, knew as if

a  window opened and November's

cemetery chill suddenly swept in. He

could not shut his mind to his mother

saying "use cold water for a blood spot

or the cloth will be forever stained."

But in the morning Ellen folds, hides

her handkerchief, an offering to this

new divinity whose mark she knew 

the coldest water would not wash away,

and in her journal wrote "I am the grave's. 

It's seal is set upon me."— and I,

suddenly, or think I suddenly remember —

the blood spot on my father's  pillow

in one of those 1940 years so long ago.

I know I've told you they didn't tell me

he was ill or what the illness was, that,

brought home, I don't recall the funeral

although I must have been there — and yet —

and yet that blood spot has not washed away

as Emerson's mother says "I told you so!"

and Ellen: "Death will have it's offering."

NEW MOON FOR AUTUMN: Oct. 7

         Where Winter Is

December thirty-first we go to bed

at the usual hour. No paper hats, 

no horns

to toot at midnight. 

Others may claim a year ends

a year begins but it's just winter 

settling in.

The movable feasts that mark the cycle 

of our seasons are the night 

the pond freezes

          the day the ice goes out.

The gray cataract skim turns

fall to winter in one night.

Then the year ends.

The ice sheet softens like a wafer

soaked in wine

the pond opens like

a sleeper's eye. That day

the year begins.

In between

winter's more another place than another time.

No Julian or Gregorian reform

can patch the cycle here.

Winter

is its own world where roof ice 

grins at the moon with crystal teeth

shadows strike sun-bleached snow

as an archer's arrows.

      Patience

wears winter out.

      Falstaff's Option  

The meadow mouse stood as tall as it could

on three of it's very short legs, stood it's ground, 

considering a blow to our cat's nose.

Every hair on its body erect to seem as big

as a meadow mouse can, but was still smaller,

relatively, than I would be facing a lion

on the African veldt. The blueberry bush

over their heads became a spreading tree.

Our little cat was too young to realize

its responsibility.Wisely the mouse decided 

to run, discretion the better part of valor.

More Desk Drawer Mining

           Maine's Millennium

The heavenly sheriff might yet come

his great white horse maned with fire

come at a ghostly gallop down route nine

from Calais to Cape Porpoise to Kittery

past nested farms coastal cities country towns

where selected friends and neighbors

would disappear as simply as silently as they

lived yet always being there if need be

good mute faithful all with books in

balance some capital intact as father taught

deciding now after consideration and in 

fairness to give the Messiah a second chance.

          Dark Continent

Searching still for the Nile's source

we sample substance niaga, climb

the rhinencephalon to take a sight

on distance stellate ganglia where

flows the encephalon, where all

the natives still point south reciting

names of ancient cities sung of

but seldom seen. Will we ever reach

that fabled palace where the queen

of consciousness rules supreme

without a fixed address or throne?

Hippocampus, hypothalamus remain

points on our map with precious little

in between. What, we wonder rhymes

with amygdala? Wise men whisper:

you must follow your own star, follow

as your time unwinds bushing each

new pattern of colored sand away

you'll be swear when you arrive. 

REVISION TIME ; CLEANING THE BOTTOM DRAWER

Some of you will perhaps be old enough to remember Burma Shave roadside signs.

                 

   Roadside Requiem

   Here lies the body

   of Harry Chaplin.

   The tree has fallen

   that once, as a sapling,

   went on a hay ride

   with Rudy Arness.

   Didn't he notice

   when she lifted her dress?

   Sign follows sign

   each marking a year.

   Each telling how Harry

   didn't make out here.

   Don't worry, Harry,

   limp in your grave.

   They all forgive you —

   BURMA SHAVE!

(and, generated by a news story about accidents on a French highway..)

Flicker Fusion Frequency

Sun  through  leaves  if the leaves  if  the  breeze

would   blow   there  might  be  meaning Sun  on   water sandy  bottom  flickering Heart  

beats  under the body's  weight  eight  standard   leads  octopus  out

There  is  a  pattern on the screen.

The  cerebrum  intervenes

Someone is saying it softly over and over 

the heart beating beneath the bodies weight

sunlight stammering through the leaves

eight standard leads octopus out

spider tight

center line in the highway flashingπ headlights    

Light reflected from poplar trees planted

with such care precisely apart

my flicker fusion frequency  crashing me

the prisoner after torture saying  yes  yes  yes

sunlight endlessly

stammering through the leaves stammering

I didn't mean  mean   mean    mean

Forget  forget  forget  the train wheels say

climbing

forgive  forgive  forgive they say

descending

Planted so precisely the poplar tree trunks flashing

flashing  binding   blinding     bound

by eight wires why

don't I think of you

as I'm dying? Please

be a tree   a tree    your leaves   shimmering

again already!

I realize this is not usual for me but time moves fast these says in the 87th year. I realize also that the material about publications, activities needs editing. Will do, perhaps even soon. To alert you, my next book, Excuse For Bring Here (my life with Thoreau) is proceeding and should materialize this fall. In the mean time, another poem.

       The Cooper's Art

A well-made barrel — she was

well made — every curved tapered

stave fitting seeming seamless. 

Promised — No — remembered 

liquor mellow as her belly 

swelled.  But now. drinking's done.

Sun, age, time, build strains 

the cooper's art still restrains. 

One hoop at either end

kept the spirit young until I

took one tight rusted ring away.

Staves tumbled every which way. 

The head fell in on a criss-cross 

pile of odd shaped sticks. For

the loss of that one hoop, shape

design, meaning, all undone. 

VISITING MYSELF, ar last!

Well, I can be brief, then get back to work.

NEWS: My wife departed, Virginia (vicki) Chute's second novel should be available in August. Look for The Daughter of Francis Martin.

And as for Me:  I burrowing through stacks of old poems, doing many revision sufficent to make them new. Here are a couple bits that I had forgotten

A haiku in a strict quote from Thoreau.          
                "Dandelions
          how surprising their
          bright yellow discs. Why study
          other hieroglyphics?"       [The journal: 5/24/1853]



And from Wittgenstein:         

           "That singular sun
              setting behind the hill does
              not hypothesize."

Saying Goodby

The poem below was written more than two years ago. The copy of The Aurorean in which it was published arrive in my mail Thursday, May 2nd. Vicki drew her last breath about 9 AM Monday, April 29th as I sat by her bed,  holding her hand.

In Lieu of Flowers

I didn't read Sunday obituaries

beyond a glance for names,

avoiding the ages of demise

but the eyes stray. 

The phrase "In lieu of flowers" 

being frequent, pleases: 

positivity facing the 

ultimate negativity.

Suddenly the question intrudes: 

what would I say at 

the loss of my partner 

of sixty-six years?

In lieu of flowers — let them grow.

If you find a bug 

carry it carefully outside 

and let it go — 

as she often did:

that's what I'd say.

MARCHING INTO APRIL

Hydrogeological Cycle: Easter, 2013

Luck of a north wind brings

rain from formless clouds higher

than our common air, un-prophaned

by breath of machine or man,

or so it seems, unless you

analyze rain drops for unseen 

nitrites, sulfates etc and so on  

as my curiosity has done. Is 

it force of falling that forms

them or their mutual fear calling

them inward to communal spheres?

Until, through no fault of their

own, they strike stick slide down

the window panes. Misshapen

tear drops until they slip drip

run in trickles, becoming water

here on earth again to later rise

in their certain resurrection,

achieve by chance and being what

they are what faith dreams of.

Visiting For Possible Revision

Leafing through stacks of old poems, most not published, I find some so well forgotten and, now not understood, I wonder...

Just A Cigar

Hairy Haw-Mouth swallowed Freud's cigar hoping

there would be fire where there'd been only smoke

at least something more than pink bubble gum

but waking found the dream unraveling to bare

a breast then another leaving tangled wool from

too many sheep to count and rose quickly to

write the dream's meaning on his slate the screech

of cheap school room chalk stopped him so he wound

the tangled yarn into two neat pink balls

tied them together and went back to bed

AN ALOMST NEW YEAR

(almsot on time this time)

JANUARY THAW

The pond, earth's eye, does not open

in this early January thaw, the pond's eye

that closed more than a month ago. Which,

for months before, appraised the sky

effortlessly, reflectively, in calm or storm, 

by night or day. It may stir now, as an 

uneasy sleeper, but we can't see and what

we hear may be it's bowels rumbling —

do not even know: Does it deeply sleep 

or only (how much greater could an only

be) meditate so profoundly it shames 

distracted human kinds in their most

intent imitation.  I know silver salmon 

sleekly swim silently, invisibly below

as my thoughts swim unseen by you.

Are they the neurons in the pond's Oh

so liquid mind? Or thoughts, memories 

the pond may not remember when it wakes

in April?  Are those rumbles peans, for 

the pond's own reasons, this new-moon night, 

as the pond is stirred from meditation

by winter's warmth, warmth the silent 

salmon of my mind anticipate as well  ?

Jan. 13, '13

The Sun Slept Late

Unreasonably

unseasonably

the feathery

coverlet of fog

the sky descending

to the ground

seems to warm me

although the sheets

of snow and ice

in Nature's bed

remind me

it's winter still

but the fog's confusing

invisibility

does warm me

even as ice-fishermen

suddenly return

with ghostly reality