A HUG FROM AUNT LILA

Asked by an editor to offer an example of the New England, Maine, culture behind my poetry I offered a description of my surprise when my Aunt Lila hugged me as family and friends gathered for my mother's funeral. When the account was published an illustration was added. Obviously the artist belonged to a different culture, or a more recent one, and I was depicted as a small boy. The poem , written later, was a response to the illustration. The poem was published, in a slightly different version, in a journal with the unlikely title of The League of Laboring Poets. As a current non-event I should add that , in  Poland Spring, as far as we could sense, the only earthquake was on the six o'clock news.

  Aunt Lila

They asked for an example

of that Down East Yankee reticence

they’d heard about, some incident —

Well, I said, you could do worse

than hearing what Aunt Lila did

at mother’s funeral: Lila, the youngest,

the last survivor of grandmother

Chute’s five ,children.

I can see her waiting, thin, fragile, 

outside the church: stepping up 

to give me a sudden brief hug,

ππmumbling a few words, then

releasing me. I can’t recall

any family member, mother, sister, 

aunt or uncle ever making such 

a display before.

A shy boy, a taciturn, loving aunt?

The boy, born long before

the dawn of this hug-hug, kiss-kiss age,

was a grown man with children

of his own and that embrace is

what he remembers best from a sad day 

half a century away. 

            [much later I remembered}

I remember Aunt Lilla as a woman,

tall, thin, brittle, not as father did, as

his young sister who helped him care for

grandfather's milk cows, pigs, chickens.

She had married Everett Bean whose

summer business was speedboat rides for tourists,

his Chris-Crafts all varnish, polish, and shine.

I was given a wind-up, painted model

of his boats. His were shark slim, cedar,

mahogany, and brass. A ten minute

one dollar ride always ended with

a sharp high speed turn, a shock of spray

and shrieks of surprise. Then the boat

wallowing, the engine's deep throated chuckle.

Uncle Everett must have had more to offer

than the thrill of a fast boat ride. Women,

specially the young pretty ones, sat up front

with him. Then, one summer, he took up

with one of our guests, a single lady

from Philadelphia who rented a cabin

for the summer. That fall they left together. 

One morning Everett dropped by for coffee.

"Some storm last night", he said. "Lightning

hit a big pine behind the camp. Both Martha

and me sat right up in bed." We were in

the hotel kitchen. My mother was there.

It was about then that "the lady from

Philadelphia" became just "that woman".

If I'd payed more attention I'd have learned sooner

women as well as men enjoy sex. The paint

on my model boat peeled. Then the spring broke.

AUNT ANNE: PART TWO

When I post a poem on my blog it doesn't "feel" published but, according to most editors it has been published and is, therefore, not acceptable for publication in their journal. If I worked in an office and posted it on the bulletin board, would that count as published? Oh well—

Of course all editors, quite properly, ask that any item reprinted from their publication be credited so I should I should admit I neglected to indicate, in my last post, that the poem, Sisters, appeared in The Puckerbrush Review (Fall, 2010) but with the name Delano, misprinted.

Today I want to add one more Aunt Anne poem. This one appeared some years ago in The Beloit Poetry Journal. The local pictured is the farm near Kimball's Corner in Naples, Maine the farm Uncle George called "Limbo". I imagine Anne there, near the end of her days, after George's death. I don't know if she had a cat or if the grass was unmown but my cousin Bill, who spent many summer days at Limbo with his Grampa and Granny, says he recognizes Anne on the step, down to the persistent cigarette ash.

Aunt Anne Puts The Cat Out

For The Last time

She stood on the door rock

of granite hand quarried

two generations back.

Only the cat’s white tail shows

as it follows its trail

through uncut grass

to the barn.

She hesitates just

as the breeze pauses,

tipping her head to hear

the sigh of yard tree tops

relaxing. One cricket

of the chorus start too soon

and, embarrassed, stops.

Sounds so soft the scuff

of carpet slippers

on stone drowns them.

Her constant cough’s so small

the pendant ash of the cigarette

pinched in her thin lips

still won’t fall.

Her hands, spotted, knobbed

and veined, no longer

need to find each other

to be at rest: no longer 

pick at faded flowers

on her cotton dress.

AUNT ANNE'S TURN

     My first substantial collection of poems was UNCLE GEORGE:Poems of a Maine boyhood. It was well received and I had enjoyed producing it, both the poems and the wood cuts that illustrated the poems. When my cousin told me he would give me the collection of diaries kept my George's wife, Anne, my mother's sister,  I was elated: here was a possible source for another collection. They did inspire poems but I think you can see as you read them why they did not inspire a collection. As the first poem tells you, the diary began a year and a month before my birth.

          Aunt Anne Begins Her Diary

Jan. 1, 1925: decided today to keep a diary.

So there will be a record

good or bad of this passing life.

Will I have anything to say?

It may be enough if it

makes me remember, tomorrow,

the trivia of today.

Can I call what I do “something”?

Writing may be more important

than what I write about.

A list of unpleasant things —

   Work on Saturday

   Sewing tickets at the laundry

   Cold weather

   Mr. Kardish

The order of the poems is, as well as I can remember, in the order of composition. They were sometiems years apart which accounts for the repetition.

              The Diary

The twenty years fit easily

each in one slim booklet. 

Aunt Anne gave equal weight

to each item with hardly any 

lines to read between.

George and Bobby caught a fish.

Bought dress material at Porteus.

Lizzy writes from Florida.

George died today.

No notice of Uncle George’s death

beyond these words as terse

as brittle as rose petals pressed

between the pages.

George died today.

Perhaps that was 

all there was to say.

         Aunt Anne’s Diaries

Seventeen slim volumes

as spare as winter trees.

Warm for this time of year.

Lizzy wrote from Florida.

Weather. Names only

of neighbors who called.

Bought material from Porteous.

George’s new teeth don’t fit.

Shopping lists. Threads

of a life worn thin.

We let the furnace go out today (May 15).

George and Bobby caught a fish.

The blank remainders of each page filled

with wash worn silences hung out to dry.

Tue. August 14. Lizzy died

half past twelve today.

The record ends. A life so nearly spent

no surprise remains.

Went to ride with Bill in AM.

Watched old yr out and new yr in.

Tomorrow will be no surprise

even if the sun won’t rise.

Sisters

Aunt Anne had come

to live with mother

for the summer. The operation

had been delayed

too long.

I read the short flat

line-a-day entries

in Aunt Anne’s diary.

Very hot.

Delano and Olive visit.

Lizzy had a bad day.

How well these almost blank 

revealing pages

echo the snow-bleached fields

outside my window. (I’d been

many miles away.)

How well they echo

long empty afternoons,

those hot breathless

August nights

they waited through.

Lizzy died: 2PM today.

I was miles away.

KNOW THYSELF

"Know thyself" the ad for eight books from Princeton University Press says. Here are the titles and subtitles of the books in their ad from The New York Review.

Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness

Why  Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and The Modular Mind

The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization

Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our work, Wages, and Well-Being

Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do About It

Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds

Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality

The Brain and the Meaning of Life

The last, by Paul Thagard, had no  subtitle but the ad offers this comment on its content from Michael Shermer in Science. 

"[Thagard]offers a tightly reasoned, often humorous, and original contribution to the emerging practice of applying science to areas heretofore the province of philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and politicians. What is reality and how can we know it? Are mind and brain one or two? What is the source of the sense of self? What is love? What is the difference between right and wrong, and how can we know it? What is the most legitimate form of government? What is the meaning of life, and how can we find happiness in it? Thagard employs the latest tools and findings of science in his attempts to answer these and additional questions,"

Before you invest I suggest you try to answer a few of these questions for yourself, as the heading of the ad seems to suggest.

BEING IN TOUCH

We received an e-mail from a friend in Australia. One of her students was having a serious problem with cyber-bullying. Suddenly it seems the obvious solution to this; pushing the off button, going off line, not opening e-mail has become impossible. The weapon has become a necessity for the victim's generation..

About Being In Touch

Reading the work of others so familiar

with foreign places aware

of the latest fads films music celebrities real

or self-assumed should I

feel abashed by my inexperience which seems

to be almost ignorance

that not only have I not seen but have no desire

to see Venice (not that I want to die

sooner of course) but should I retire to my thicket

of bushes and erratic boulders

where my actual vista is as restricted as my

experience for how can I be

in touch with society humanity my national

family in touch with what

they call reality to share the feeling of all

those people out there who

surely have souls too if I had never seen

the twin towers before

they died on TV and if instead of new towers

I'd recommend a simple

circular park with a central fountain for

the new bull's eye (although I

hope I will not have to visit New York City again

before I die) then they'd

all cry he doesn't understand the cost of real-estate

but I'm not retiring for

I'm beginning to find not doing things not facing

facebook uneatable blackberries or

a telephone smarter than I am that not doing

many things is rewarding

as editing what they call reality is a happening

fewer and fewer enjoy may  

Invention Necessities mother forgive me.

The Science Side

Something From The Science Side

Something from the science side of the scientificpoet this time.  In 1971 Harper and Row published Environmental Insight, a collection of articles dealing with environmental issues and problems which I had selected, edited and prefaced with a brief essay. Each of the six sections had quotation or a poem as a prolog. The poems of course were mine. The section on population was titled The Fateful Exponent, followed by this poem. Looking back after 34 years I'm not sure why I chose that poem.

Genesis

(and God be directed

          to cast one vote...)

God made Heaven and Earth

and all its murderous

mountainous features

With all its crawling

and squirming creatures —

equipped them with wings

and musical screeches.

And then he made man

in His image

and man said, "I move

the nominations be closed..."

I'm sure Harper and Row made no money from the book I certainly didn't make enough to pay for ten percent of the labor, but they gave me an advance, I took a year's leave and wrote an introductory biology book that was published in 1976. I tried my best to get them to give it a title that would give a fair clue to the fact that it was not a conventional introductory text. It was a vision of a different way to teach introductory biology: there were six sections or topics, each developed a topic from molecular-cellular level to population-social concerns. I wanted the title to be something like Six Introductions To Biology. The editors, in their wisdom were adventurous and titled it An Introduction To Biology. So everyone who ordered an inspection copy didn't get what they were looking for, a conventional introductory textbook. It got good review and I received come very pleasing letters. It was soon remaindered.

Each section sported a sub-title page, some with a poem or a collage (mine of course). Despite its commercial failure (no teachers wanted to alter their entire lesson plan for a radically new arrangement of content) I still receive a hundred dollars or so in royalty after 29 years. Someone in England is using photocopy material from the book every year. If you are really curious there are still a few used copies listed through Amazon--really cheap!

THE ICE IS OUT

I grew up on a 150 acre farmstead my father had converted to an American Plan summer resort on the shore of 9 mile long lake (Long Lake) connected by the very short Chute River to another lake (Brandy Pond) which was connected by the Songo River to Sebago Lake which was connected by yet another river to Casco Bay and the Atlantic. My wife and I were married by a gazebo near the shore of Long Lake at her grandmother's summer home. Since that event we have lived, among other places, on the shore of that lake and three others in Maine. I had intended, in this post, to say something rude about the ever increasingly intrusive digital technology which so clearly proves again that invention is the mother of necessities, but when you live, as we have, and as we do now, with a lake, the day of ice out is just too important to ignore. As Thoreau might say, the lake or pond is earth's eye and it's open again to view the heavens.

In the thirties when I was growing up by Long Lake we got our news from evening radio commentators. I remember especially H. V. Karltenborn (he came first, I think) and then Lowell Thomas (sponsored by Seth Thomas Clocks) and every spring (I am sure it was Karltenborn's measured voice) would announce to the national audience that the ice was out of Lake Sebago. Would that we were blessed with such announcements on the evening news. 

I'll add a poem (publish here) a poem anticipating ice out — and could sign off as Lowell Thomas did — with "So long until tomorrow" but it will be at least a week.

Spring Became Official At 4:39 AM,

    The Earliest Advent Since 1847

Winter's had it. The red-wing blackbirds

are replacing red-polls at the feeder.

The first pair of golden-eyes bob and shine

like newly pained buoys in the open narrows

where the secret current that flows from

upper to middle pond licks the softening ice

into submission and spring slowly opens

its wet legs beyond the outlet bridge.