Refund

The road has returned
my missing scarf -- almost
before I knew it was missing. I found it
lying almost undisturbed on the snowbank where
I must have dropped it
yesterday, whilst rooting through my pockets for some-
such I've since forgotten.
A little wet
in spots, but mostly dry, yes --
that would be the scarf I was looking
for this morning before
I set out.
Thanks be to country roads
where precious few walk on foot
and a dropped item can be
reclaimed
with as little fanfare as kicking a pebble.

Waltz Whitman

You propel me out onto the roads today,
brother. Striding
down the long hill away from my house, all
I want of the day
and the woods around me, is
to see.
Like you, I am queer
as the day is long, and I know better than to suspect
the cozy coddled world of established ways
will have me as I am -- without alteration -- or reward'
me for my defiant differences.

The sight of a well-train'd runner got your juices
flowing in 1867. I, myself, grapple with whether or not to dote on my work. I think, not. My work
shall arrive a paper out of time.
Should ti prove durable enough to pique curiosity, lo
those many years down the line, I"ll leave it
to the academians to determine the precise year of my poems'
inception.
I have the dates marked down
somewhere.
let them dig for them. It will give them something
academic to do...

But back to "The Runner" -- such a small
poem, that. Almost
haiku.
And I embarrass myself with all this verbosity over
four simple lines.
Like a Chinese fan, you snapped that moment closed on paper.
I am pulling it open again, perhaps finding more
within, than originally existed.
From your grave
I hear you chuckling -- what a complicated mess
we butterflies pinned tot he board of the 21st Century
have made of simple things.
A runner.
A moment.
An impulse.
We are starving to understand mechanics, we moderns -- hungering to detect
THE mechanics
of Life, all secrets
we suppose
laid bare under the glass of adequate scrutiny.
But the microscope lowered too far
cracks the plate, and the specimen is lost
to intellectual greed.
Best
to wonder from a distance.

My distaste with analysis sends me out
onto the roads today -- no pack on my back, no staff
in my hand, only paper and pen in my pocket
and a charged cell phone -- just in case. The road
eases by underfoot, the lives of all Sunday homebound citizens
who line this track out on display
for passers-by like me, to note well and bless with our attention. The woods sweep by
on either side -- oak and beech
and pine and hickory and maple and redbud
and more, most alive, some dying, many dead -- centering the road
with their sentry density.
You, brother, took alternately to city and country, much
as I have,
now and then traveling some distance to find some trace
of What Must Be Worshiped
or simply Must Be.
There was too much love in you
to be held to just one way or place,,e and my own
promiscuous muse is restless, now, too, aching
and whining
to be fed some new sweetmeat of experience.
But I am no single man, free to ramble
about my nation's back roads, criss-
crossing at will whatever country calls me. No,
I am a married woman, wedded to the kind
of life I suspect you disdained, and I have much
I must accomplish today.
The road leading away from my house
down
the
hill
beckons. I take with me
the sense of you,
my pockets full of Now.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop and Wondering...

Had I been born in, oh, say ‘07, and had I
known then what I know now,
would we have called each other up to travel,
or summoned one another with telegrams --
“Pack those bags, girl -- we’re going away
again!” attaches of papers and works
in progress
tucked under our arms, the streetnumbers of fay friends
settled down towards Cuba neatly
penned into our address book.
Would we have known each other
at all?
Could we have not?

Reminiscence

Dreams of Hemingway once
sufficed -- my battered old copy of Islands
In the Stream still travels everywhere
with me, and I promise myself
frequently, I’ll read it again
soon.

Halcyon days they were, when visions of expatriates sipping
anise on the Left Bank and signing on
with ambulance crews to prove
their devotion to a cause could extend past
paint or canvas
moved me as much as the words they called their own.

At 18, I dreamed
it was enough to flee one’s homeland
and cluster abroad in pockets of conscience
to retrieve one’s life
from a predicted, prescribed fate.
At 18, I planned to travel
widely and leave
all calculation behind.

And at 20, I did.

Commute

The world goes silent
as the train rolls in -- traffic stopped
at the crossing, cars idling in patient
resignation till the bells sound again,
the crossbars raise,
and their trips work-ward can resume.

Along the platform, we
wait, heads turned away
from dust blown up by the wheels and wind,
steeling ourselves against one more day,
as resigned (but not quite so patient)
as the sedans and SUVs lined up
on either side of the tracks.

Where will this day take us?

The train eases to a stop -- the open doors
at the next platform down from where
all of us have gathered.
Silently, we file down, climb aboard past
the conductor, our thoughts already well into the day
that takes us far from this silent place.

Loss – No. 1

It’s 6:00.
Where are you?

It wasn’t every
day our paths
crossed, but it was often
enough
to turn seeing you into a habit.
A comfortable, comforting rite of my pass-
ing day, a marker
that told me how well my week
was going
and made many things right
just by right
of your being
there.

What is this odd-strange world that makes friends
of virtual strangers, simply
by rights of habitual proximity?

What is that weird pen-
chant I/we/some people have to turn
acquaintances
into fixtures that fix
our wandering gazes just long
enough to hold us
close — all eyes and ears — close
enough to make us
feel
this must be something more
than accident… and no,
this was not some trick of chance log-
istics — it was
…
more.

Surely, we must be
connected… Or is it little more than
chemistry, instinctive cerebroglandular en-
thusiasm pumping us full
of what passes for contentment
impelled by nothing
more than
familiarity? “Nothing more than…” I say?
I don’t mean it, of course. I know better. I know…
at the very heartroot of familiarity is
“family”.

Routine relates us.

But now that is broken.
And so am I.
That little part of me that hates to admit to limit-
ation, to begin
with, is abashed
at how little it takes to throw
me off
…
way off.

Have I told you lately how much I
hate
this?
Of course not, you are nowhere
to be found, and I am dis-
traught over —
what?
A fracture in my routine
that my heart takes personally?
What?!

It is 6:20.
And it’s been weeks since I last caught
sight
of you.

I am a fool.

And would have it
no other way.

Going East to Look West

I see it all more clearly from a great, wide distance --
the speed, the urgency, the mad dash to whatever
grabs our attention
and holds it tight - tighter- tighter, till the sheer force
of centrifugal speed breaks the grip of compulsion.
From a great, wide distance across the sea,
the Way Things Are
becomes almost comical, when stripped of daily context
and the collective, assuming mind
that conditioning lulls.
GET AWAY! cries the voice I usually drown
with coffee and the flow of a carefully packed schedule. GET
AWAY
to where they can't' see you to assign one more task, to where
you can't see that side of you
any longer
that's arranged by the clutter of expedience. Get Away
to where you recognize, there is more to life
than billable hours, allocated resources, status checks. Get Out
to where milestones still are lumps of granite
nestled in a wild tuft of grass by the side of a well-worn path.
And there
in that place, look back over your shoulder, catch
a glimpses of the old heads-down world
you put behind, for however long you can afford to, and know
in your bones
all that which a 6x6 foot cubicle
cannot encompass.
Know the feel of the grasses crushed underfoot, the cool
packed earth of that old path, the coarse
solidity of this honest-to-God milestone marker.
Breathe
deep.
But do more -- live
more deeply.
And believe.

Poems for those who pass through

I have had a lot of people passing through my life, of late. People I haven't seen in years who suddenly show up... people who I've known for years who are moving on. It seems to be going around... I've been hearing a lot of stories about people losing friends to suicide or retirement or relocation or career changes or starting a new family. Either way, change is change, and it puts us through our paces.

People come, people go, and as the world is in such flux, these days, it seems only right to, well, write about it.

Verse is really the only thing that's making much sense to me, these days. Prose just ends up glomming up the pipes. So, I write poetry. And it helps.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop and Wondering…

Had I been born in, oh, say 1907, and had I
known then what I know now,
would we have called each other up to travel,
or summoned one another with telegrams --
“Pack those bags, girl -- we’re going away
again!” attaches of papers and works
in progress
tucked under our arms, the street numbers of fay friends
settled down towards Cuba neatly
penned into our address book.
Would we have known each other
at all?
Could we have not?


Copyright (c) 2009 by Kay Stoner
All Rights Reserved

Winged Destiny

Spun of magic
and of grace, this moment
crackles with its newness,
like fresh crepe paper from the wrapper
embraced by eager palm.

The emerging monarch climbs free of its cocoon, spreads
its damp-heavy
wings to the shifting breeze and lifts
from from my finger.

Milkweed feasts come first, while
South America awaits.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Kay Stoner
All Rights Reserved

Paradise Coveted

I would be Milton, that well-versed
poet, who commenced his obsession over words of others -- and
intently so -- prior to his practical life’s
inception, and never forsook
his flame. I covet
the choices of his driven father, who afforded his son
the luxury of becoming book-bound. If only
my own father had been less poet,
himself, and more provider...

I would be Milton, who made such casual
references to classic facts, assuming
he’d be understood, whose pool of truths
was perhaps less wide, yet
far less shallow than that from which we dip
today -- who could well afford
to reference Hector
and not be trashed as a pretentious hack,
to draw from Virgil
and be taken for sincere, not quaint,
to cite comparisons of old
without the gaze askance
from a differently educated peerage
with no sympathy
for Clytemnestra,
to type the names of kings of old with no
arguments from a spell-checker that had no record
of their monikers till I showed up at the keyboard.

I would be Milton, despite his failed love
life, his latter pragmatic partnering, his unruly
daughters, his failures to keep mute
when silence would likely have served best his public stature.
I, too, would press onward
against principalities and powers, known
for a quick tongue and rambling pen
that by its very lucidity breaks
the back of vociferous opponents,
deliberate defiance marking my path, even when passing
through friendly hosting lands.
I would profane the pompous with brute force
of learned mind, and cause the critics to lament the waste
of my talent, as a cheap
and imprudent pamphleteer. I would broaden
my reputation with propaganda most impassioned, lauded
in tomes not once, but threefold in the same century.

I would cast in my lot
with king-slayers, then bemoan how monarchy
prevails -- even in the guise of populists -- and rue
the rashness of my
impolitic endorsements. I would reap
the seeds of discontent sown
and fly in the face of advancing night
with such a deluge of vitriol
channeled hard against the advancing tide -- so hard
that none
could make light of my drive.

I would be Milton, who thought better
of telling only tales of woe, who saw
that most grievous loss could prompt a bit of gaining, and knew
full well to whom credit for the brighter song
should be attributed.
I would seek out the company of others
well-read, and spar with princes
in their courts.
I would parry the fumbling advances
of “modern” usage, slice off
that custom blade at the hilt, and send it
scuttling across the flags to dark corners
where the hounds repose,
and brandish my older, sharper, more
tempered blade
in victory.

I would trust the cadence of scriptures
and not be put off
by their popularly suspect intent,
seeking infamy’s father in the illiterate judgment of ob-
scured truth.
I would seek -- and find -- God
on my own terms, regardless of king and country.

Would that I were Milton. True --
his bloodline, for all we know, ended
eventually, with no modern men to pen
“M” as their second initial, quite the way
he did.
True -- his escapades into love and friendship ended
tragically. Perhaps
too much so.
True -- his were viral times, fraught with
danger and early death.
True -- there were events so crushing even he of boundless expression
could neither articulate nor eulogize, so
deeply did they slice into his heart. But
still...

For ever so brief a second, would that I
could esteem myself as learned,
as linguistic, as treasured in syllable
by a knowing crowd who turn no
deaf ear to these ancient rumblings.
For the most fleeing of instance, would that
I could lust openly for Rubens’ curves,
and not be accused
of base lechery.... would that I could dwell at
length upon the conceits of Olympians, rant
contrary to hubris-driven posers, invoke Uther’s bloodline
and cry to Queen of Heaven
in unison with a host of readers
who themselves would claim
Milton’s glory
as their own. And shrink
not from it as conceit.

Let us all be Milton.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Kay Stoner
All Rights Reserved

I am neither painter... nor poet...

I am an adventurer who ranges far and wide to see what life has to offer, and then records my experiences in color and words. If color happens to use paint and canvas as its medium, or even pen and paper, then so be it. But it can just as easily find expression in wood, stone, clay, marker, colored pencil, graphite, oil pastel, watercolor... or on the monitor in front of you.

Acrylic paint on heavy canvas suits me better than the more refined "professional" supplies that promise to make a work of art an "investment" for the collector. And it gives me a broader, wider, deeper "vocabulary" to work with.

Just as written words, spoken words, felt words shaped and plied in solitude feed and sustain me far more than public performances or "poetry slams" (heaven help us).

These media give me a way to record/express/memorialize/archive my adventures in a shareable and (I think) exciting way. Through the use of color and light and texture... through the sing-song lilt of vowel and consonant... the nuances of not only what I've experienced, but also how I've experienced it, can be captured and expressed.

Through the eye and ear -- and through touch as well -- the full range of human experience can reach into the deepest centers of the brain and tickle the mind to new knowledge, new understanding, new appreciation, new experience, and renewed humanity.

I don't "think" art should ennoble us. I know it should.

New poetry from Provincetown

It has been way too long, since I last posted... I've been busy, I guess ;) Studying this and that, reading this and that, writing this and that, and drawing/painting this and that.

Funny, I hadn't realized until lately, how remiss I've been with my blogging. Oh, well.

A funny thing happened the other day. I was talking to someone about my writing, especially my poetry. I was showing him all the poetry books I've written, and he asked if I'd written anything recently. I said -- off the top of my head -- "Oh, no... I really haven't written much at all for a few years. I just haven't been in the mood."

Then I decided to double-check, and lo and behold, I actually have tens of poems I've written over the past three years -- since 2006. I have a real sheaf of paper filled with words, some of them pretty good (I think, anyway).

I don't know what got into me, but I was convinced that I haven't written any poetry, lately. Odd.

I think I've just been so wrapped up in a lot of work-related stuff... stuff I'm doing for others... that I've shut off the part of my brain that keeps track of what I do for myself. Hermetically sealed, as it were. I think I've been too stressed over job transitions and just keeping my life on track, to delegate attention to my poetry.

Because my poetry is something I don't have to work really, really hard at. It just comes. I don't know how or why, but it comes. I have my theories about sound and vocalizations and the sight of letters and words on paper, but the bottom line is, poetry comes very naturally to me. So naturally, it almost seems like second nature. And it doesn't capture -- or hold -- my workaday attention the same way that work-work-work-harder-harder-harder activities do.

Strangely, it seems like, if something comes easily to me, it must not be that big of a deal. I know it's a big deal for others -- they like what I've written, and they want to read more. But somewhere in my mind, I have it stuck that if it's not really, really hard, it must not deserve a great deal of attention.

Well, that's changing. I'm changing it. I'm going to publish my poetry here, as I type up the different pieces. There's a lot of it, so I should have plenty to post... for the next several years.

And I won't need to be this delinquent again.

Here's a fresh start -- please, note, there's profanity in it, so you may want to cover your ears ;)

Echoes of Hell Town*

It's easy to forget, this was
an artists' colony long, long, long before
anyone thought of charging
nine dollars and change for a salad. But
its true. Crazy
motherfuckers have wandered the streets
of this only-recently-straitlaced place
since time first thought of building up
a spit of livable land out of
nothing
more than sand and seeds scattered
by birdshit.
Only an idiot would set up house
on a dune more than fifty miles out to sea... but
still
we came -- all we crazy mother-
fuckers, bags packed for Hell Town,
ranting and railing against The Man, ever
a source of entertainment
or outrage for those stuffed-
shirts of Barnstable, Hyannis or Boston.
Sands shift, though.
Roads get closed off in high winds,
escape routes blocked, right-
of-ways impassable, except
by expensive four-wheeler.
Grain by grain, dune by dune,
it gets easier to forget this place
was ever an artists' colony.

26. Jan. 06

* Back in the day, when polite people stayed in Truro, and only "sinners" crossed over to Provincetown, they called the place "Hell Town". In a way, it's a pity they can't (don't dare) to still do that...