PAST PUBLICATION PRODJECT

     I have never bothered to do any organized recording of poems published over the years. Thinking my surviving relatives, or possibly friends, might like some record I have spent a dull onto making a list of all those of which I had a record — probably more than 90 percent of the total. I listed them aby title, with an A or aThe omitted. One discovery was the totally significant fact that I most frequently had poems,the title of which began with an "S" (61). I also found I had never published a "Z" poem ± SO…


      A to Y

Listing poems published so far, the total
as the last is added, seems to be six
hundred and one  alphabetically

by title: initial, "A" or The" omitted,
and I find there is no "Z", no "zed". I
can hardly wait until I write one.

Unfortunately  there are no zebras
in Poland Spring, and in December,
in Maine, "zephyr" doe't fit for wind

over the pond as it sonly frezzrs.

HISTORY IS WHAT WE SAY IT IS

    Selling The Sky

It was a welcome for
the new territorial govenror. A chief
 rose to make a speech. Dr. Smith
took notes. Thirty-three years later
his impression of the speech,
stated with Victorian elegance, appeared
in the Seattle Sunday Star
and reappeared, as history, with some
additions, after another fifty years.

What you see now, phrases and scrapes
on T-shirts and posters, is drawn
with no credit given from a TV script
with Southern Baptist and Environmentalist
revisions — he's been
a Catholic pragmatist.

So, what did Chief Seattle really say?
How can you sell the sky? Well,
you sell what you have, to buy
what you  must. Fictional Indian quotations
bring a better price than real ones.

………….Further research should yield you more detail but this is sufficient to show us we should quote past heroes with care.

fPerfect Pitch

Perfect Pitch

Sixteen I was. Hitching a ride.

This man come by, a  tuning fork

in his pocket: tapped it, held it

to my ear. I’d know

it anywhere — middle C it was.

Right then I knew

I wanted to do what he did:

tune pianos. I’d never touched one.

Laugh if you want to, Sonny, but

we were dirt poor. In the morning,

five below, no frigging thing

in the house to eat, I’d go out,

dig frozen apples under the snow

with my bare hands. That

was breakfast — and maybe why

I never grew beyond five foot three.

I went into the C.C.C.

up in Bridgeton. That sort of thing

might be good for you, Sonny.

We got overalls, long johns,

shirts, shoes, three meals a day

and all the work we could eat.

God bless Mr. Roosevelt is what I say —

and they had an old piano.

An upright, veneer all peeling off.

One fellow could play some.

I watched inside to see

hammers working, levers, strings.

I knew, damned if I knew how,

it was way out of tune.

When no one was around I’d tap a few

notes out. It hurt me to hear

Working on the road one day

I heard piano music form

this summer camp for girls,

a girl that worked there playing

so the campers could sing. Well, Sir,

I lay my shovel down

and walked right in. Afterward

she played some just for me.

To make a long story short, I married her —

well, not right then. Bought some tuning forks,

been tuning, off and on, fifty years.

Why am I working here, mopping

classroom floors at Seventy?

That’s another story, Sonny.

There’s some things in life

having perfect pitch don’t fix.

Yes, this really happened. The comments from the college janitor are as true as the poetic structure allows. If I wrote short stores not poems what he told me that late lunch afternoon could be a short stories. You can visit the CCC hiking trail up Pleasant Mountin is still a fine hike. Wsst slope of the mountain off route 202 between Bridgton and Fryeburn.

LABOR DAY

         Years and Years

How many times have I told you

my interest in pop music paled

when Glenn Miller's plane vanished? 

I don't know why — but it might

have something to do with my first

bike, a blue coaster-brake flyer.

Dec, 1944

Ceiling zero, freezing drizzle,

when a small british plane ferrying 

Glenn Miller to Paris to celebrate 

it's liberation never reached France.

I was seventeen, my brother in

the air force, my sister a WAVE.

Fall, 1941.

Glenn Miller had come to town — well

to Portland, only thirty miles away.

In Windham my bike pedal broke. I

was in the town my family settled.

As he drove me home Father told me

it was in seventeen thirty-eight

Summer, 2014

The only big band I saw was

Les Brown's Band of Renowned at the

Hollywood Canteen."Ignored the Beetles?"

All expressed despair.  But as a 

biologist I knew of God's infinite

and obvious affection for beetles.

  Weighing Moonlight

On the ides of March my moon was full,

of course I'm sure that your moon was too

as my moon rose over Poland Spring Hill,

unrolling a ragged ribbon of reflected light 

across the frozen pond into my window. 

My living room a picture which need not

be taken, framed in memory more precise

than photography that detailes forgettable 

bits and pieces of reality. The next night 

the moon was  hidden by low clouds, most

of the light piled high, leaving me to ask, 

can its mass break through if ii's only sun's 

reflection? Wondering, awake at three, 

if you shared this moon-dream with me.

If Reborn An Animal...

              If I Were Reborn

I'm puzzling a problem nonexistent, 

beyond my control even if existing. 

If I were to be reborn an other animal, 

which one would I choose? What aspect 

of their life would be most important to me? 

Sexuality keeps shouldering creativity aside.

A song sparrow identified by song

when I can not carry a simple tune or

tell one tone or key, sharp, flat (whatever

they are) from another. We dream of flight.

Not sparrow flutter but raven's soaring. 

A bull with a heifer harlem, tackle 

challenging porn star's fire-hose tools. But 

dominance's not my desire. Hard to know 

how the heifers feel about being herded. I 

want no mutuality demanding ownership.

I chose salmon: land-locked Salmo solar sebago. 

that best swollen streams each spring to spawn, 

sexes sharing body's beauty as sleek for

stroking as a breast or thigh or groin to grace

those blessed waters where I was born.

              

A choice even now as I view the winter's 

last ice-fishing shed on the frozen pond. 

Salvaged metal panels shine with sunlight in 

contrast to the ice and rutted crusty snow. 

The door, open, invites me in and down into 

the world below. I'll wait for warmer weather.

Black Islands Continued (3)

Father Martin de Munilla at Espiritu Santo: 1606 

We sailed into a great bay a small river

between the headlands four months fourteen days

from Peru dense forest wilderness hills rise

St Phillips St James Quirós names the bay

in the new unknown comfort of old names

a supposed continent becomes Austrialia

Del Espiritu Santo if it be

island or Main may be beyond measure

future plains beyond forests misty green

as babes wishes we hold them to our breasts

feed them milk of holy names history 

we convince ourselves will see us well blessed

discoverers of dreams reality sees

black heathen feathered spears angry bees

shouting darting briefly shadows trees

Dark dashes out stabbing red topped sticks

in the sand boats answer with harquebus

aimed high echoing silence rules the beach

smoke from the hillside seems to invite us

homesick for the peasant farms of homeland

what we find becomes far from domestic

the sounds we followed shouts chants sticks rattled  

might have been the best of Satan's hectic

jeers blindly our sturdy harquebus fires

high in trees until a deserted village

after months of salt-beef baskets of yams

pigs tethered in a row I granted pillage

it was not fit that Spanish should not eat

while the savages feasted on yams fresh meat

we taste fruits while yams pork flavor the heat

                       (break)

A month much health restored I bless the gifts

of food God's nature yields natives untouched

left nought but to hunt fish our course now shifts

south to explore on a stormy Thursday

yams smoked-pork coconuts stored we weigh

our anchors are more blown than sailed away

                       Dance 

Those colorless men who paddled backward

second eyes beneath the strange leaves covering

their heads these pale men whose spears barked and smoked

are gone so our men dance the women sing

men too young chant and drum so we all come

alive again those who lead are men who

have twice payed with circle pig tusks who are men

so high when they dance the trees will dance too

trees lean and sway fire rises to light the sky

while they dance the night away we rock clap

sing as drums come into us our hearts drum

we are alive again free from the wrap

colorless men bound around our world the fear

we'd never felt before the cobweb ghost circling

the ring is ours the hunter's heart beats

we feel too as they stiffly stalk and spring

throw their dream spears so when black hawk sweeps in

arms spread wide we rise to greet the morning

             Friar Maleo de Vascones

                    

Four months after Espiritu Santo

Friar Munilla sickened died at mid-night

ides of October sixteen-hundred-six

like bundled dry sticks dropped out of our sight

those eighty-year old bones lightly slipped sailcloth

to sink the banner of St Francis his shroud

for epitaph he'd written He chose the path

the fate of his voyage he wondered aloud

not knowing was new land he blessed country

or island nor do I half prayer half dream he

walks there now his dreamed fertile field valley

gentle breeze our world his revery

              Continental Drift

Not easy to get the drift of continents

it's no surprise his prize escaped the last

persistent conquistador turned explorer

the fabled southern continent however vast

it might drift many million years miles so well

it might be as fabled as was dreamed indeed free

to drift in confusion those years before

Quirós set sail we shouldn't assign blame he

nor Torres wouldn't know land could be there here

move around so time enough time to spare

for pieces of Pacifica to reappear

among the Aleutians or to flair

in the Andes the rest furtive as a kiss

despite its dimensions easy to miss

Black Islands Continued (2)

Maps of Quirós: 1598

Unknown southern continent uncovered

as a woman blind and her lover in

the visceral dark we find explore share

our ignorance these uncertain faint thin

strings wordless by intent without design

lines we draw of one another meaningless

disconnected in daylight curved insular

strokes might be something of a shape we guess

a blind reader feels excitement or bliss

from feeling and the slightest touch a swell

of breast or a bay of thighs an island's

sudden promontory faint lines that may well

mark the corner of a chart which uncurled

outlines vast lands which balance half our world

in which we may share our visits flags  unfurled

                  Star Paths

Islands are green stars in a deep water sky

as broad as the one cast over us nightly 

a reed mat where light sparks are held so high

we sail between them and their reflections

and we needn't know or name every star yet

we sense where they are just as we know where

parts of our body are in the darkest net

of night even children's fingers as they could

with fiber threads pick patterns from formless air

so we're children again sailing empty seas

in patterns that may not seem to be there

but our boat feels the currents our bellies

feel the lift beneath the waves confusion 

for there where a star sank the cloud we saw

as if fixed by trees was no illusion

to which birds fly but a green effusion

The Black Islands

        I wrote the first draft of Black Islands almost 40 years ago and spent the last 6 months reviving and revising the the poems and presentation. I'll just give you the title page today and try to remember to add the content bit by bit.

Black  Islands

Robert M. Chute

All that has been lost in America

may be gained in Australis del

Espiritu Santo. It seems as if

God kept the better and the richer

lands to the last…

.

                                                            Petro Quirós (1506)

Between the Solomon's, New Caledonia, and Fiji lies the cluster 

of islands, reefs, shoals, and live volcanoes which Captain Cook, 

with singular inappropriateness, named  the New Hebrides. To the 

confusion of topography, vegetation, and native peoples white man 

has added his destructive genius,so that the archipelago now stands 

unchallenged as one  of the unhealthiest, wildest, most mistreated, 

and the most mismanaged spots on earth.

                                          Oliver: The Pacific Islands (1961)

Well I might as well give you the first page…

Author's Introduction

About thirty-five years ago I read Thomas Harrison's book, Savage Civilization, for me a compelling account of his experience in the Pacific islands known as The New Hebrides. As a consequence I spent hours of reading and research, fitted between preparation for teaching and research in Biology, and wrote a series of poems dealing with the people of those islands.

In an optimistic trial for publication I received encouragement but the suggestion, twice, that some uniformity in the form of the poems would fit the general uniformity of the content. Other interests intervened, some, dealing with the civil-rights movement, indirectly related to the poems since a better term to identify the islands would be Melanesia. How much trouble that pigment has generated in pale minded pale people.

In any case here are the poems approximately 450 years after those island's first recorded european contact. About a year ago they surfaced in my disordered files and I decided to revise them. The form of the originals had no uniformity. These revisions are based on a ten syllable line with the even numbered lines rhymed: the end of each major section a couplet, triplet or even quartet. I offer no defense for this decision since I have none, nor for the omission of punctuation —unless I wanted the reader to have to stop and think from time to time.  

Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia: many islands, tiny islands, black islands.Melanesia, as a geographic, cultural entity, stretches southeasterly from New Guinea and the Solomon's to Fiji. The southern foundry includes New Caledonia but not New Zealand.  It is the Polynesians and Micronesians who are the "noble savages" of South Pacific romance. They are taller, more european in appearance, and, significantly, lighter in color with straight hair. Shades of South Africa and Old Black Joe.                                                      

BACK TO SCHOOL

For the first time I'm attending a course studying poetry: Bob Farnsworth's Modern Irish Poetry begining with Yates who is relatively modern and a necessary background. I am auditing and not participating except for a sentence or statement now and then. In the next session students will discuss Yates' Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the struggling girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He hold her helpless agains this breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening  thighs?

And how can body laid in that white rush

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

A broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead,

                                           Being so caught up

So mastered by the brute blood of the air

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak let her drop?

At least Yates presents the event as a cruel and violent act contributing less to the classical implication that one of the offsprings of the rape, Helen, was not just present at the destruction of Troy but its cause: a classical (in several senses) example of blaming the victim for the crime. An all too familiar attempt at defense in a rape trial. (Helen shouldn't have worn that tight gown — how could I control myself threatened by her "tightened bow" of beauty?). The tightened bow a metaphor from Yates' poem No Second Troy.

A fair example of romanticizing Leda's rape was one of the first things I found when I "goggled" Helen of Troy: a copy of da Vinci's painting of Leda and The Swan. Leda's expression, as she leans naked agains the swan, combines  contemplation and anticipation — and she seems to have the swam well under control. After all this the one poem I wrote, years ago, seems trivial.

Apprehended: White Male

Zeus, moving softly

to not disturbe

Hera murmuring

in her sleep, slips on

   his stocking mask.

prowls the neighborhood,

his white spandex

jogging suit shining

like swan feathers

in the moonlight.

Leda worked late

in the library that night.

Her divine fate

overtakes her

on a path across

the moon-dark park.

Originally published in Exquisite Corpse (ca 1970)

ANOTHER YEAR

                          For The Previous Year

  The Whole I's Parts

Anaxagoras says "the things that are

in the world are not cut off from one 

another as with a hatchet. In everything

there is a portion of everything."  *

Magnified

asterisks

are constellations

as a telescope 

reveals

atomic nebula

stairways 

to heaven

Mobius strips to Hell

and a sand grain

on my beach

a mountain.

Quote from Russell: Wisdom of the West.

                  For The New Year

      Faith

I’ve never found an arrowhead,

one flinty chip f history.

Young Thoreau, they said, if he walked by

some farmer’s fresh plowed field, could just

stoop down and pick one up. As if

the spirit that had shaped them drew them

up to his attention. Stoney bread crumbs

no birds will eat, these points and flakes

led him from the town into the

saving woods and wilderness, marked

the path to a wildness which might

save us all. His faith led him on

to find what he believed. We find, 

he said, what we’re prepared to see.