Compensation: On The Ides Of August

Compensation On The Ides Of August Six thirty AM: naked in the picture window, pleased by the rising sun — but soon I must drew the shades for you pay for the light with heat and by noon the room would be too hot. Nature, Emerson says, is not given free and like any pleasure payed for by protecting it or restraint or other compensation. Afternoon, reading on a bench by the pond an old oak substitutes for the shades. a tree which isn't mine in the sense of being me but I protect, care for, as I guard and care for my home. As for my pleasure in rising early to stand naked and dress in the morning sun, where is the payment, the compensation Emerson claims must be due to even this if it gives pleasure? It must be that I am here alone — I mean I should have been a sufficiently different me. to have brought thee,whoever you are, to be here with me in Nature's blessed light.

ADVANTAGES IN LIVING ALONE ?

Compensation On The Ides Of August Six thirty AM: naked in the picture window, pleased by the rising sun — but soon I must drew the shades for you pay for the light with heat and by noon the room would be too hot. Nature, Emerson says, is not given free and like any pleasure payed for by protecting it or restraint or other compensation. Afternoon, reading on a bench by the pond an old oak substitutes for the shades. a tree which isn't mine in the sense of being me but I protect, care for, as I guard and care for my home. As for my pleasure in rising early to stand naked and dress in the morning sun, where is the payment, the compensation Emerson claims must be due to even this if it gives pleasure? It must be that I am here alone — I mean I should have been a sufficiently different me. to have brought thee,whoever you are, to be here with me in Nature's blessed light.

A Poem From Yesterday, April 22

White Fences I took the country road today so I could see what April brought of early spring. Also to pass the farm where the caring lady I've never met, only seen, who always had clothes on her lines unless it rained, who kept board fences a quarter mile along both sides of the road behind which cattle grazed. White painted, parallel boards never damaged or discolored. Several times I'd seen her out, retouching the white paint. But when I passed twice last fall, its neat signs cautioning "Animals Crossing -Take Care" (most often wild turkeys or squirrels not cows), there were no clothes drying nor any cows so I wondered if the lady I never knew had moved or passed away. Today, this early spring day, not only were no clothes drying, board fences were sagging, boards broken, paint peeling. This made it clear why she'd cared for them every year. Now I'll never meet this caring lady I don't know. I hope she doesn't know how badly those sad, sad boards need care — there's hope however, for on one end, a few new unpainted boards, already nailed in place..

Denial of Native American Relationship

With, I admit, much regret,the following. I feel it only fair and honest to refute any notice appearing on line of Native American relationship. Recent DNA analysis refutes the long held Chute family oral history which indicates my maternal grandfather was a Native American from the southern Maine area. DNA analysis of myself to determine ancestry yields the following results: MY relating the family story which found its way into a review of one of my books -- thus to Goggle etc. Britian 69 % Northern Eurpoe 20 % Scandavian 5% This fits very well with the existing written history of the family. Originaly migrants from Norway/Sweden to northan France, then colonization of Britin with the invasion in 1066. My feeling and interest in the Native Americans my family helped to displace is not reduced. I hope this survives without critical correction. March 3, 2015 June 21 The pre-dawn light of this longest day's a slivering suggestion of what's to come as we stand silent, shadowless, beneath a vast cotton candy overcast. We might as well be deep within some clear tropic bay as we stand by the doorway, eight steps leading down to our un-mown weedy lawn where daisies, tied by unseen stems, to the sodden grass, hold their blossoms, radiant and motionless as coral creatures, waiting for winds to enliven them, bring this sunless world to life. When the first bird wakes may it be your song he sings.

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.