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march notebook I.

March 1, 2012 / Klaus / 8 Comments

Orchard in March by Norbert Blei

MARCH NOTEBOOK I.

by
Norbert Blei

There is such a solitary beauty to orchards in March, row after row in winter white, bare branches yielding both to stillness yet already reaching for sun, for buds, for green, for spring blossoms when their world comes alive in a dance, in chorus lines all pink or pop-corn white…such beauty to behold for passersby. Look at us! You will find nothing more beautiful in the fields of Door…not rows corn, not stacks of hay, not patches of pumpkins. We are mystery, we are magic…our generosity, unending…blossoms galore–to red cherries, juicy apples. And then we rest awhile again in silhouette, in clear calligraphy, thinking March, spring pruning, the flowery fire within us.

THIS IS THE MOMENT BEFORE RESURRECTION…when the earth’s bare bones protrude through the dead grasses and blanched leaves…broken and dead branches, stones, birch bark, the ground littered with the broken limbs of trees. Color, if it can be called color at all, muted browns, qualities of gray, shades of yellow in stages of decomposition a long, long time. A quiet medley in morning, decay, where even the suggestion of funereal black seems too rich for this soundless, sameness theme of dereliction. A certain weightiness of angst that has suffocated the earth for weeks, now that the snow has gone, leaving it lifeless, the color of old tallow, with hardly a memory of green.

MORNINGS WHICH COULD BE OCTOBER…unraveling in a slow dance of fog, heavy and cold breathing, the solitary walker’s footsteps borne aloft amidst black, wet trunks of trees waltzing by, fields and farmhouses drifting forward and back in a rhythm of waves, the caws of crows wrapped in gauze, the world waiting invisibly for revelations of sun.

THE FIRST SPRING CALL OF THE CHICKADEE…such a plaintive cry, finally heard this early March morning after cold and snowy weeks of waiting for something that speaks spring to arrive. It’s even more reassuring, more bitter sweet, earlier in the year…back in February, in January, in those days when winter is tangled in an old man’s workshed-mind as he rummages through seasons of junk and discontent and suddenly discovers an old red fishing bobber warming his hand.

THIS IS THE TIME OF THE THIN ICE…the saturated snow, sap running from the maple trees, chipmunks and squirrels scampering across the sometimes wet, sometimes frozen earth, birds finding their way back, mornings and evening dressed in fog, the sun trying to distinguish itself in a black and white photograph. A knock at the back door: no one is there.

TALK WITH A NEIGHBOR YESTERDAY…who keeps eyes and ears attuned to the natural setting. “Red-winged black birds are back. I could hear their call in the trees the last few days,” he says. “Crows nesting. Meadowlarks should be here soon. Peepers in another month, still too much ice for them to come out.”

THE EVIDENCE ALL AROUND STILL SPEAKS WINTER…the snow has not yielded the fields; the ice has not revealed the rivers, the creeks, the lakes, the low wetlands; temperatures at night remain comfortably below freezing; the furtive wind seeks its familiar northern pathway; there is a silence everywhere about to speak.

SLUSH…the seasons still teasing each other on the first day of spring, 32 degrees, rain falling all night, snow falling all morning. Slush. Walks, pathways, roads, fields covered in white, filled with this magical mixture, water and white. Along the trunks, high into the lacy branches of beech, birch, maple and pine, winter has etched its beauty along the dark lines…birds shake their feathers, horses shake their heads…smoke from the farmhouse chimney climbs then merges gray into white. Winter exercising its failing strength. Only a momentary thing now. The miracle of air, of water, of snow. Snow no longer what it was. Snow what it is: a magic act. Invisibly visible. At the mercy of warmth. The coming sun, only moments away. The advance of spring. Now you see it, now you don’t.

MARCH 21…Robin.

MARCH 23…Robins, robins, robins…

THE SEE-SAW BATTLE WAGES ON…mornings of thick, wet snow followed by afternoons of warmth, of sun, of the white lifted off the landscape like the quick vanishing act of a magician’s hand, like a woman removing a bed sheet with a flap of two arms…revealing the dull earth in all its tangled confusion–leaves, sticks, stones, earth–of late last fall. Lasting for days. Followed by thick, wet snow blanketing the earth again.

THE BAY THIS YEAR (Sister Bay) EITHER OPEN OR MOST LIKELY STILL LOCKED IN ICE…(Consult `The Ice- Out Chart’ compiled by Bill Bastian.) Some say it won’t move till two winds blow simultaneously–one out of the northeast, the other out of the southwest. Others say it should happen soon because the ice in the bay has turned black. Only a short distance beyond the ice, however, open steely-blue water as far as the eye can see.

THIS IS MARCH MAGIC…the sight of men deep in snow, deep in their orchards on a mild winter day, pruning apple and cherry trees; cold nights, mild days–the sap is running, the trees are tapped…maple syrup time; wind howling its warm and cold memories of the at its mercy of sound and invisible strength; the snow-cover along the road’s edge, slowly drawn back like a blanket by the sun each day, exposing more and more earth; the first sound of a robin, March–the first day of spring, March—the first regret that the privacy of winter will soon be lost.

IT ALWAYS RETURNS WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT…winter snow, which both breaks and lifts your heart. Your mind is in two places: that need to recapture the returning song of the unseen robin in the woods just a day or two ago. The yearning to extend the white curtain of isolation a little longer. You are better in winter. A better human being. More tolerable. More thoughtful of the darkness within you. More holy. More serene. The silence suggests the comfort of a quiet end. You have been taken away. Disappeared..

UNDER A CAT FUR SKY THIS LAST MORNING OF MARCH…amidst a final gasp of new fallen snow last night, filigree-ing the branches of old maples and birch, threading the high electric wires stretched down the road to infinity, dusting the fields and fir trees …the sudden stop-and-go burst of robins everywhere, flashes of sunny breasts helter-skelter through the woods, to the tops of trees and telephone wires, and down to the fields, a sweep of charcoal gray wings into a stand of pines, fluttering snow.

TO LOOK UP FROM THE DESK AND OUT THE WINDOW AT 5 P.M…and still see daylight at this time of March, both delights and saddens me. I need that late afternoon, lingering sun…that drowsy vermillion light that warms the bark of the white birch to a rosy glow. I think of the days ahead and that same light stretching into 7, 8, close to 9 o’clock at night when I will know again the pleasure of coming back to the coop and working on into darkness. That same darkness that I miss now…that disappears a little earlier each day with the change of season. I want the early darkness. I want winter and night outside my window at 4 P.M.

SIGNS OF THE LAMB….the narrow path through the snow I have shoveled all winter, from inches to snow to a late March depth of more than two feet. But with the thawing of the past few days, I watch the path visibly spread, grow wider with each day…now last fall’s leaves, dead grasses, the wet muddy earth at my feet; the chipmunks have awakened…tame, gentle, amazed at the sight of snow they carefully tread. Comic creatures caught above the earth on a landscape they find impossible to negotiate, running crazily here and there, back and forth…put of place, out of time…squirrels, too, encouraged by their time-clocks are now chasing partners across the snow covered ground, up and down tree trunks (occasionally fully engaged), acrobatic acts from tree to tree along the mazed circuitry of bending branches, sometimes, incredibly, missing the connection–as yesterday, when suddenly a squirrel came plummeting at fifty feet from the sky, head first past my window, landing in a one foot cushion of snow, shaking it off and dashing up again. But, ah, the serenest sight of all–here and there in some of the woods that still sing the old songs of March: galvanized buckets hanging lazily from thick trunks of old maple trees, gathering sap all day, a drop, a drop, a drop at a time.

REMEMBER, Remember, remember…The furnace still going on at night…the continued comfort of sweaters and flannel shirts….Cold , cold rain….

february notebook

February 4, 2012 / Klaus / 7 Comments

Dance of the White Birches | Photo by Norbert Blei

FEBRUARY NOTEBOOK

by
Norbert Blei

The writer goes through his notebooks and comes up with February…many Februarys condensed in pages and pages of notes…He puts together that month through the years. How different it seems this early morning as he walked across the slightly frozen, crunchy earth from the house to the coop. Only patches of snow lighting up the ground cover…last autumn’s fallen leaves emerging again…the light in the eastern sky, breaking…a wash of diluted dawn colors, almost metallic. The way it all feels. The way he feels. There will be daylight galore. A cold but welcome sun. Opening the door, he is engulfed by the warmth of the coop inside. He sheds his down jacket, his cap…makes his way to where he now sits…checking the work to be continued from yesterday…responding to email…eyeing one of the many quotes scotch-taped to his desk: “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”—Rilke. It is 19 degrees above zero outside his desk window, clear skies, no wind, no sound of song birds yet —at least another month before their music begins. He finds his old February notes…smiles, ‘old’ February…not quite today’s February, a predicted high of 38 degrees. That “in-and-out” time of winter. Back and forth. Hope and despair throughout the same day. That brief but beautiful time, he reflects, he watches the day opening in light like a flower…he remembers…

THE SAMENESS OF THE MONTH AND THE SEASON… bitter cold, ice and the unyielding snow. December, January, February are one. The calendar holds no promise. The days of the month are blank. Nameless, numberless, neither black nor red. White. Only white. Winter has vanquished the fields, the roads, the water, fastened everything in ice. Day, snow: night, snow. day. Time is temperature. Frozen.

THEY ARE SPEARING STURGEON… on Lake Winnebago come Valentine’s Day. In daylight and darkness men lean over large rectangular openings in the ice, green water, murky water, lantern in one hand at night, the pitchfork of Neptune in the other, their eyes trained for the prehistoric shadows gliding deeply between water and ice.

A SHIFTING OF SENSIBILITIES… that time of the year when the earth, still blanketed in cold and snow confronts an alien, warm wind wafting over it from the southwest. And the earth relents momentarily, expires, rises above itself and mingles in a prayerful haze. While over the pearl, violet horizon, the sun struggles to free itself from bed linens of clouds.

BREAKING THE BACK OF WINTER… the feeling that somehow this is evident in mid-February. The numbing temperatures are gone. The mercury rises to the high teens, the twenties, the thirties…. A warm freshness to the air. The spring-like call of the chickadee. The sound of the woodpecker drumming tree trunks in the early morning. The meltdown: roofs, roads, earth has begun. Even the sky opens to welcome the sun.

RAIN…for the first time this year, three-quarters of the way into February. To hear again, for the first time, the sound of rain drops…the window glass of the coop, weeping. The earth coming back to itself.

SUN AGAIN/SNOW AGAIN… the contrariness of February, unsure of itself, especially in its later days, as it quickly fades into March. What shall I be today? Warmth and melting snow? Sun and the temperatures climbing into the 40’s? Rain. Maybe unexpected rain…the slightest hint of spring. Or fog. Fog would be good, rising from the snow fields, drifting across the highways at night stealing the light and motion of automobiles picking away at the moveable wall of white. No. Enough. It is winter yet. A show of strength. A sky wrenching, wind lashing blow of snow from early in the darkness of morning into and all through the day. Snow, snow, snow, snow. Blowing and drifting snow. Snow falling and rising. Squirrels tunneling to their storehouses. Birds fighting the windblast to the feeder once last time. Snow, unending snow. The silence grows deeper and deeper. February will not be forgotten. The sky weeps. The old man sleeps. Even the graveyards disappear. Death has no dominion in the hidden world of white.

THERE ARE SUNDAY MORNINGS IN FEBRUARY COVERED WITH LAYERS OF SNOW… temperature near zero, wind as sharp as broken glass when I back the car down the snow-banked drive, head down the icy roads into the heart of a Sunday winter day so alive and anxious to engage on all the back roads. With any luck, the sky is the color of pewter and a light snow is falling. With even more luck, the sun, the color of a large dollop of lemon has broken through and scattered its blinding brightness across the field and through the naked woods. The quiet, unforgiving wind blows an angular, steady, thin layer of snow across the icy road like a floating stream—armies of buffeted frozen flakes blindly on the run, this way, that way, up the road, down the road, around the road…wherever the wind dictates. I know where I am headed. Which county road, especially, desires my inspection on mornings like these. Restlessness in the midst of deadly silence. WHITE transforming the barnyards, fences, machinery…rounding all the angles. I drive till the road disappears. Till the morning absolves me in all things that are transient, still, white….

I LIKE THE FEBRUARY DAYS THAT START OUT LIKE SPRING… but by afternoon return you to gray wooly skies, biting wind, the confirmation of cold.

I COULD LIVE FOREVER LIKE THIS… driving the rural back roads, that nobody knows, where nobody goes…notebook beside me, ideas brewing like fresh coffee…to savor it all. To be alive, alive in moments when everything is both possible and uncertain. But beautiful. To go on driving through all of this. Drifting above the road. Over the very land itself. Over it all, Chagall-like blue, white. Eternity in the imagination of desire.

Good Morning | Photo by Norbert Blei

n.e.w. voices

February 2, 2012 / Klaus / 3 Comments

Editor’s Note: This is both an announcement and a congratulations to editors Nancy Rafal and Henry Timm for launching N.E.W. VOICES, A Literary Platform for North East Wisconsin, published by Caravaggio Press. The county has been too long in dire need of a legitimate and handsome publication such as this to feature its many accomplished writers. A quick look at the table of contents reveals a number of local poets and writers featured in this first issue, and an acknowledgement and celebration as well, of our current Poet Laureate of Door County, Barbara Larsen.

“Little magazines” have a long and significant literary history in this country. Every major writer, Pound, Faulkner, Hemingway etc., began in this small way, a universal rite-of-passage for authors throughout the world. It is important to note that little mags are born and die every day— which is their nature, given the time and expense it takes to get a single issue in print. Given all that it demands in pure energy and devotion to keep everything going, though sales are mostly minimal, subscriptions chancy at best, patrons few and far between.

N.E.W. VOICES will face the same challenges I am certain. And needs our support. — Norbert Blei

ON A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

After Barbara Larsen, especially Beach Road Year

On a day like any other
……..the poet might practice Yoga or Tai Chi
……………….Watch the fog lift from her window

hear a robin rustle on the forest floor
……..feel the sun against her eyelids
……………….see the moon driving her charioteers across the night sky

listen to Vivaldi or chamber works by Brahms
……..stand in the rain holding fast to a rainbow
………………wonder at the gull that stays airborne without moving a feather

remember a man’s hands holding her first grandchild
……..imagine death as the sun dropping into the bay
………………walk a country road singing Laudamus Te

cope with elemental winds and waves all day and flee into a sanctuary of sleep
……..return to the childhood orchard or sandpile where all things were possible
……………..play tag in memory or listen to grownups talking under the night sky

let stories flow like little streams that feed the wide Wisconsin
……..read Rilke, cummings, Yeats or the Upanishads
……………..never thinking that these moments might

add up to six books and gamer me laurel wreath
……..to honor the poet and the sanctity of ordinary things
……………..on a spring day like any other.

— Estella Lauter

MR. CHARNEY’S PLUMS

for Barbara

My neighbor, who is a poet
beat me to it. Last year
she wrote a plum poem
before I could, and wouldn’t you know it

even posted that poem above
the money box where I would see it
every time I stopped by
Mr. Charny’s red barn
for my weekly basket of plums.

What can I say in this poem today
that she didn’t already?
How many plum words are there?
How many ways can you say
exquisite?

I pick up my basket,
drop a dollar in the box,
nestle on my tongue
that first sweet, purple globe.
Suddenly the day is singing.

Savoring the juicy flesh,
I puzzle over Eve’s choice of an apple.
**What could she have been thinking?
One of Mr. Charny’s plums
might have changed the world.**

— Sharon Auberle

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: N.E.W. Voices is proud to announce an open call for manuscripts for its Winter Issue, Vol. I, No 2. Tentatively entitled: Poetry in the Cloud or Archetypes and Androids, we are interested in hearing reactions to the very far reaching, post-modern take on storytelling, research writing with Wikipedia, living with all of our intellectual properties stored up in the internet cloud and so forth. Can there ever be such a thing as intellectual property rights under such an open system? What about tradition? (Jane Austen with zombies?!) What about the ownership of intellectual property? About sanity? We want to see poetry and fiction about living in a completely open culture. What does it mean to have virtual liaisons? Whatever happened to plain old plagiarism? What the heck does “Post Modem” mean?!” Topic too open? Then just send us the best poem you’ve written this year, your pithiest short (or shorter) fiction, your best shot at an example of or essay about steampunk fiction, or William Gibson or China Mieville. Caveat: this issue is neither about traditional fantasy ala Narnia, Harry Potter and the like nor about traditional sci-fi. Virtual and alternative history, cyber or weird fiction is more to the point. What happens when Emily Dickinson looks out of her bedroom window to discover Walt Whitman bathing stark naked in her rain barrel? (See, Di Fillipo, Paul, The Steampunk Trilogy.)

TO SUBSCRIBE: For one year (two issues and all the broadsides we happen to publish) drop a line to Caravaggio Press, P. 0. Box 41, Ellison Bay, WI 54210, giving us your regular mail address, your email address, and a check for $10.00. We’ll pay the postage when we send the magazines. That’s a real deal. Broadsides come by email as pdf files.

DONATIONS: Once again, remember, we are a 501(c)(3) business and all donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. You’ll also get our eternal gratitude and your name will appear on every thank you list we make along the way. In coming issues we will be soliciting sponsorships which will be discreetly manifested on the inside of our covers. These sponsorships will help to underwrite the cost of printing the magazine.

dan anderson | base camp

January 9, 2012 / Klaus / 11 Comments

BASE CAMP/Dan Anderson…

County Culture

by
Norbert Blei

I was the first to arrive the other morning, a little after 7. Craving my coffee, my warm croissant with butter. Whether it’s Joel, Ann, Andy, Kate, Katie…or a new barista at the counter, I seem to have reached the status of morning ‘regular’ as they tell me what I am about to order, begin warming the croissant, readying the dab of butter, filling a mug of hot coffee while I check to see if my favorite table is empty, set my stuff down and wait for my first hot jolt of java for the day, though I have been up and writing since 5 a.m. If it’s an afternoon coffee fix, I lean occasionally toward a cappuccino, or more likely a late afternoon latte with some sweet, soul satisfying pastry from the aromatic kitchen. Maybe one of Ann’s chewy/crunchy over-the-top oatmeal-raisin cookies.

It’s become a habit. My morning meditations/habitations, after forty-plus years in Door, are few but particular: the counter of Al’s, booth #4 at the Viking (Stef, my waitress), or the back corner of the back room at the White Gull. I used to move around the three larger tables at Base Camp (preferring the one on the upper deck near the bookcase with the northern exposure window-view and the stove warming my back in winter), especially those times when meeting with folks over the ‘business’ of books, of writing, of teaching, of art, of local gossip, politics, etc.), but for months now I find myself comfortably in place at the small, round marble table by the end of the counter (heavy traffic), where I put down my briefcase and newspaper, where the lighting is best to read, make notes, concentrate…or partake of all that is more than coffee at Base Camp: to survey the entire room of coffee drinkers; contemplate the current art exhibit on the walls (presently, the stunning photographs of Dan Anderson); talk with Joel, Ann, Andy, Kate…visit with anybody who has something to say, including Julian (Hagen), who rambles down the stairs often in a mad dash to catch the ferry back home to the Island. Julian of-the-eternal-smile, waving and sending an eye-contact greeting to everyone in sight, hugging BIG hellos to all the women–his special calling card. His presence raising the warmth in the room another notch till eventually (always in haste, one foot out the door) he sidles up to the guy at the small round table…our two/too loud voices immediately gearing up to a frenzy of greetings, stories, memories, future plans—continuing the conversation from wherever we left it last time: yesterday, last month, last year.

THIS, then, my morning shot of high octane coffee and socialization these days: solitary old writer getting more solitary and older with each warm cup slowly growing cool in his hand…cool to the touch…cool to his taste…cool, cooler (time passing), till finally cold, the almost bottom of the cup during his hour or more ‘outside’ in the real world, before returning to his other life ‘inside’…to make some meaning of it all in words.

If it’s not the best coffeeshop in Door County, I don’t know what is. I’ve tried them all.

Each has a little something to offer but Base Camp has it all. The best coffee. The best pastry. The best croissants, The best luncheon menu. The best soup. The best atmosphere. The best staff. The best prices. The best, most interesting mix of customers. Old, middle aged, young. Locals. Outsiders. Tourists. Everyone’s there or on their way. I’ve never seen anyone asked to leave though he or she may have ordered only one small cup of coffee to nurse through hours of working on a laptop.

It’s ‘the’ place to meet in my book. I’ve had great coffee and conversation with locals, neighbors, friends, strangers…visiting writers and artists from all parts of the state, and the country at well. A perfect setting to relax and get things (or absolutely nothing) done.

I doubt Joel, who opened Base Camp (downstairs, in the back) to a slow start in May, 2005, (most people couldn’t even find it) had any idea it would grow into what it has become. A very unique Sister Bay/Door County landmark.

Joel, who keeps the whole place alive in good food, service, conversation…the maître d’, the Frenchman-in-charge, the king of the kitchen…Joel Kersebet extraordinaire. While his wonderful, hard-working wife, Alicia, runs her superb, successful outdoor clothing shop above, Ecology Sports, Joel lends his personal touch to everything below, exuding a fascinating foreign presence at the counter, in the kitchen, around the tables—the very sound of his authentic French-speaking-American voice something special. There are customers who frequent the place just to listen to his accent. And feel better all day because of it.

But there is still another level to Base Camp that Joel and Alicia are either consciously creating, or instinctively feel happening, coming together because of who they are, where they are, what they offer as the setting has slowly but surely become a small, intimate center of ‘county culture’ in its own right, where artists, musicians, and friends meet, mix, gather to share the best of themselves, the best the county has to offer.

Case in point: the present sublime photographs by Dan Anderson, gracing the walls of Base Camp. NOT to be missed. Anderson, our own Ansel Adams (with whom he once studied) is the dean of Door County photographers at this point, in a county rich with accomplished young photographers, painters from traditional to abstract persuasion, actors and actresses born to perform on our few but vital stages, poets and writers who know where the stories are, and musicians who can sing the blues, pick the strings of folk with passion, rock the parks—or bring you the breadth of Beethoven on a summer’s night.

I call your attention to only two of the nine Anderson photographs featured on the walls of Base Camp. My old friend, Gust Klenke’s garage in winter, in Ellison Bay. The oh-so-blue sky, the branches of the trees flocked with snow, the red sign, the rusty sign, the Christmas wreath on the broken door. The chair where the ghost of old Gust sits himself down a while, whispers his trademark sigh of ‘Yep”…taking in all that’s happened around the old garage since he’s been so long gone.

Then there’s that incredible window from a local farm (Barbara’s farm) that Dan has been photographing for years. “Window with Reflections” he calls it. Reflections, indeed. It leads the viewer first to the peeling paint around the old window frame, the sill, all so real you can feel the peeling paint on your fingertips. It’s hard to believe this is a photograph…it’s everything a great painting is and more. It leads your eyes then to the torn white curtains inside…then immediately inside, beyond the glass, where you find yourself “reflecting”…inside looking out? No. Outside looking in AND out…out at the fields in fall. Stillness. Beauty. Silence takes hold…won’t let you go. Finally you shake your head, turn away, carry the image inside you…back to the table. Open your New York Times for a reality check on a chaotic world too visible, filled with words of little or no reflection. You take a long last bottom-of-the-cup swallow of cool-by-now coffee …one final jolt to put you back in place. Back in Base Camp. Joel gesturing, speaking his beautiful French-American to a customer. An old neighbor, Gene Wills, waving hello to me from over there. Julian hurrying down the steps with a smile. Ann asking if I would like a little-warm up of coffee. Yes, I say, yes…glancing back at Anderson’s window over my shoulder, calling me home.

a new year’s day

January 1, 2012 / Klaus / 11 Comments

A New Year’s Day

By
Norbert Blei

Editor’s Note: It’s a new day here that can’t make up its mind…rain, snow…gray, brightening…mild, freezing…windy, calm.

While the New Year’s Eve greetings sent to friends yesterday, suggested anticipation, hope, with the first new day about to break, here we are now: tomorrow has arrived, bundled in gray, with the reality of whatever the day is, and the uncertainty of the days, weeks, months to follow.

William Carlos Williams captures the moment of ‘was’ and ‘is’ and ‘forthcoming’ in a way worth noting, given the first new day–reverie and invocation. — Norbert Blei

Reverie and Invocation

by
William Carlos Williams

Whether the rain comes down
or there be sunny days
the sleets of January or the haze
of autumn afternoons, when
we dream of our youth our gaze
grows mellow, wise man or fool,
we were young, the future
beckoned us.

Now we grow old and grey
and all we knew is forgotten
there comes alive in
the ash of today, memory! a god
who revives us! the apple trees
we climbed as a boy
the caress on our necks of
a summer breeze.

Come back and give us
those days when passion drove us
to break every rule.
We weren’t bad, but good!
May our preachers find us
the courage still to sin so
and win so! and win so!
a life everlasting.

[from: Collected Poems]

Editor’s Note: Snow is finally falling upon Door County as I write. There goes the plow down my road. The first plow, the first real snow of winter that has so far escaped us—to the joy of many, to the dissatisfaction of others who have come to look upon this peaceful time with reverence. While the young think of snowballs and snowmen and sleds… I think of the incredible transformation of the rural landscape…snow falling on trees and barns and fields and small graveyards… a quiet so silent, so serene, I strive to hear a snowflake fall as I walk into it… taste the new morning… –Norbert Blei

Winter Mind

One must have a mind of winter…

For the listener, who listens to the snow.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

–Wallace Stevens, “The Snowman”

I’m not finished with winter yet. And winter is not finished with me.

If I put everything down in words I want to say, there would still be more secrets under the snow.

These are a young man’s fears and an old man’s love. Or the opposite. I am neither young nor old. Winter beckons.

To make note of things–all a writer really does. To find a way in and a way out, making changes with each step. Scribbles, ramblings, seeds in a pod. Dry leaves rattling on bare branches in a fierce autumn wind. Note.

I should step back and revise all I have written so far. I should vaguely consider what lies ahead. But I am out of time. What lies ahead is always the next word.

There is a cold rain falling today…
I can barely wait for what comes next. My mind is laden with winter.

It has been said that a writer possesses a mere handful of themes to which he returns and refashions time and time again. Winter is one of mine. The clarity of ice. The perfection of snow. The silence to transformation.

I love the time before the coming snow. Months away, days away, moments away. As radiant as the coming of spring may be with all its wonder of leaf, flower, thunder, warmth, and water. As regenerative the heat of summer months of mindless joy. As thoughtful the autumn color, the falling light. Winter is where the gods lie in pastures of white beseeching a hand to hold, to take into the deep.

Here, take mine.

[from WINTER BOOK, Norbert Blei, Ellis Press]

snow fences

December 22, 2011 / Klaus / 12 Comments

Snow Fences

By
Norbert Blei

There’s a very short entry in my journal, DOOR STEPS, for December 1st titled “Winter Lines”:

The rhythm of snow fences set in place in the open fields along the roadway.

That’s all. That’s it. I must have sensed the poetry in the wavy line of snow fences then for the first time, more than forty years ago. How they suddenly appeared to me. What they might have suggested as I drove by in the countryside, taking in my new natural world. I had never known or seen a snow fence before.

I was reminded of this again the other day, a very unnatural warm day in December, still no snow on the ground, as I saw workers unrolling, unfurling, stretching them out across an open, barren winter landscape. Pounding them into the earth in a somewhat straight line. I recalled that I had once written something about snow fences in one of my books. And I always wanted to say some more…this pre-winter warning, this ritual in the rural.

There was a reason for that short entry, coming to the end of the journal I had been diligently keeping for a year…the discipline I forced upon myself: Put something down about the natural world, some observation, thought, memory, description every single day! I was tired of the task by the time I reached December…worn out … determined never to practice such a discipline again…my entries honed down to almost haiku “ah, ahs” at this point, my eyes sharply focused on holding just one thing in the fewest words possible, compared to the paragraphs I had begun with, worked with day after day, month after month when my world seemed more crowded and expansive.

And now, at first, I see? Just a roll of weather-beaten natural wood slats, a fence about 4 feet high, 50 foot lengths? held together by 4 or 5 strands of wire and meant to stand tall with metal stakes. A roll of practicality, unrolled just before winter, with a mission to minimize snowdrifts upon the highway, make the world safe for drivers.

But that’s too much factual information. That’s not what snow fences are all about. Where’s the poetry of their faded red, weather-beaten color against the whitest winter snow? The rhythm of them as they wind this way and that way in winter? The long shadows they cast in a late winter afternoon? The humor in them? The sadness, standing there all night in the dark? The stark beauty on a moonlit night? And how, if you drive slowly down a road in a blizzard, sense their presence in a field beside you, gently open the car window and listen…sometimes they sing.

the hagen family christmas

December 12, 2011 / Klaus / 0 Comments

The Hagen Family Christmas

by
Norbert Blei

If you still enjoy or remember Christmas in the Big City these days from the distance of Door County, you recall neighborhoods and suburbs coming alive again in sparkling new light. Or you look back with fondness and nostalgia as I do to Chicago Christmases of store windows aglow along State Street, “Merry Christmas” on everyone’s lips…an unusual comfort and love upon the sometimes mean, gray streets…and maybe a slow walk along Michigan Ave. in a soft snow, breathing it all in…the beauty of a city so alive, burning bright.

But there is something to be said as well for Christmas in slow motion…Christmas in the rural, in the small towns and villages of Door County, each one bringing its own small gift of Christmas cheer—white lights, wreaths, a large tree, the live goats on the roof of Al Johnson replaced by lighted reindeer. Much for neighbors, friends, strangers to take in, appreciate in small measure while, passing through. A homemade Christmas.

And while we don’t have the big concert halls and opera houses where city people flock to hear wonderful choirs and Christmas theater productions…we do have the Third Ave Playhouse in Downtown Sturgeon Bay, where every Christmas we get to enjoy a Washington Island family of singers and musicians–the Hagen Family Christmas concert, a holiday tradition for about thirteen years now.

Multi-talented (singer, songwriter, musician, humorist, storyteller, somewhat ‘middle-aged’, heart-and-soul Islander to his very bones), Julian Hagen sort of heads the family these days, since his father, Jack’s passing a few years ago. Old Jack was a wonder to behold upon the stage. A great storyteller. A singer who could yodel too.

“I have so many fond memories of my Father,” says Julian. “He just loved to sing. He was so proud of the family individually and together. I think it was on stage that I felt the most connected to him. We both loved attention! Pop can never be replaced. I think my sisters and I actually share the hierarchy. There are, I think, 21 or 22 of us now, including mates and kids. The stage gets really full. Everyone will be at the concert except my niece, Marisa, her daughter and husband.”

Though the county at this point continues to offer some of the best music of all kinds and some of the finest musicians, singers and songwriters, Julian is probably our one and only, authentic Door County. He knows the territory. Talks the talk. Walks the walk, Writes and sings songs that hum down home.

“The Washington Island setting and tradition is very important to us in this concert. Just like we grew up…we argue…eat, hug, visit, drink lots of coffee, pray, sing…”

I recall a Hagen family story he sometimes tells when a new member of the Hagen family is born…how the doctor slaps the baby…and if the baby does not let out a cry, a song…it’s tossed aside. Not a real Hagen.

“That’s totally true,” says Julian. “Actually, it’s sent to the mainland.”

As for Christmas on the Island? “Music has always been very important,” says Julian. “Being poor, singing was a cheap entertainment. It got us attention with free meals, helped with self-esteem, inspired social gatherings. We always went Christmas caroling. When I was really young, I would go with Dad to the barn to do chores. By the time we were done, Santa would have brought the presents. I always finished the chores quickly that night!”

There’s a Christmas song he wrote that remains a favorite. “It’s called: ‘Get Up, It’s Christmas’. A choir performs some of the lines (in italics), it begins like this:

Shepherds watched their sheep that night—what happened then
An angel appeared and gave an awful fright—those poor men
He said “Easy now, don’t be afraid.
I bring you good news of where the Savior is laid.”

Chorus: Get up, Get up, Get up it’s Christmas
Celebrate into Bethlehem
Get up, Get up, Get Up it’s Christmas
Born is the Savior of men.

When it comes to the music of Christmas, Julian believes, “To me, music goes with anything, everything…putting clothes on or taking clothes off and on and on. Certainly if there is going to be a celebration, there is going to be music. You are getting awfully philosophical,” he says to me. “We need a Guinness in our hands or a good scotch.”

Readers one and all, in Door County, out of Door County…consider being put on notice: Christmas doesn’t officially arrive in the county till the Hagens sing. Saturday night, December 17th, 7:30, the Third Avenue Playhouse. “An evening of music and merriment” reads the poster.

“My family is comfortable in front of a crowd,” says Julian, “but there is always nervous energy on the loose as well. Jokes, costumes, interactions, and ‘accidents’ will happen, whether starting a song over, running into each other, or babies crawling across the stage. I’ve often said it’s a bit like going to NASCAR. You enjoy the race but you wait, sometimes hope for the accidents!”

left with the pieces

December 8, 2011 / Klaus / 11 Comments

Left with the Pieces

“Ruinage Is Hardly Ever a Pretty Sight”

by
Norbert Blei

There’s a chainsaw whining in the woods behind me as I write. December already…trying to snow. Another day of whirling metal teeth biting into timber. Another day of noise. Another friend come to claim the chaos surrounding me. To cut, to chop, to split. To keep the home fires burning. Not mine. Theirs.

Help yourself to my destruction, friend. Not a pretty sight.

No, I don’t burn wood, though I should, given whose woods these are I think I know …know all too well. Yes, I like fire, the warmth, the flickering light. But not in my living room. Not in this old farmhouse. Not to forget the houses going up in flames here in those ‘back-to-the-earth’ ‘60’s, ‘70’s…wood fires, bad chimneys. Smoke and ashes.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” they say. So let images speak for now.

But for this: the remains of late September’s storm, long gone, thanks to the skill of friend, Andy Hartman (acorntreeservice@gmail.com ), his keen assessment of the scene confronting him: height, girth, danger… (whatever befalls a man, falls)…But what falls first? where? how?…Helmet, goggles, lifeline—ready/set/up he goes, scampering into treetops…a dance in the limbs (lighter than air?)…a chainsaw balanced in one hand, bringing it all down just so, on the mark, while his tireless crew of rudimentary tree surgeons take to the fallen carnage…(crashing trunks, broken branches)…a chorus of chainsaws, then a solo roar from a hungry wood-chipper machine, chewing everything it is fed, spitting out woodchips for future pathways through the forest.

Mostly stumps and sawdust remain this December stop-and-go-snow-morn, though the storm…literally, metaphorically…continues to swirl in my head…and the words won’t go away the way the trees and everything else went away. The pictures remain in my head. NOT out of sight; never out of mind.

I see it still. The aftermath persists. Toppled giants spread every-which-way upon the forest floor. Maple, oak, basswood, birch—no matter the name, no longer called to stand tall to attention. They lie, lean, hang…wind breakers, widow-makers. Broken the way a man often feels broken.

Make note: No matter how straight, how tall, how young, how old, how beautiful, how reaching…how anxious in spring, silent on a summer’s day, joyful in autumn, crazed in winter’s howl…no matter how comforting, caring, cool the shadows cast on an August afternoon…how loving the lace-work branches in all seasons…how shiny in spring rain, how bountiful in summer green, how full of themselves in fall, how nakedly anointed in winter’s soft white. Inevitably they break, they fall, they separate from one another. Bent, broken, bereft…they kiss the ground they fall upon, nestle in weeds, plant themselves in place, prepare to be forgotten. They pass the seasons unknowingly, staring at blue or cloudy skies, absorbing cold, sun…drinking rain, snow, sleet, slowly disintegrating … awaiting whatever karma they root into…re-entering the earth in time to the wonder above it all…above its short or slow-far reach into one form or another. Some to be what they once were, survive, reach old age, fall to earth again on their own…broken, hollow…awaiting redemption. Others to remain standing tall, no matter the age, no matter the weather…only to await the scream-song of the grasping chain saw…yield in the end to the taste of flame.

All this whirls in the mind of the man who has comfortably lived and worked much of his life in these same woods, found his place in and among birch, maple, oak, the pine… Came to know and respect them…let them be. The woods are lovely, dark and deep indeed. Sanctuary…his quiet coop tucked among them all. In their pact of forty plus years…room enough, peace enough for both to grow without knowing what the next day or night will bring. Though age, now, has been catching up to both. Nature, destined to take both down. Saying goodbye in this place in the woods would be a good way to go, he plays on the words of Chief Joseph’s: “Today is a good day to die.”

That late September storm…winds gusting to 70 mph…purging…cleansing…striking down the straight and strong old stuff…rooting systems letting go….

Clear now of old entanglements…whose woods these are… now open to more light…

The new light he sees before him out the coop’s desk window, this December day, weeks later…the two old trees once before him, gone forever, the stumps ground down to earth… So much more light, more visibility brought to his old invisible domain. Can there be too much light? His eyes squint into the openness of it all. Too much to see from his once hidden sanctuary of shadows? Something has been disturbed. Made light of. Miraculously, nothing fell on him or the coop. He sits in the same place, stares out at/into the same world—remains standing in his own way.

Thought towering behind him high above the roof, up against the back wall of the coop stand two giants of great girth and length. Two old friends who have shared over thirty years together in the same place.

“They’ll be the end of my story someday,” he tells his friends. “I can’t believe they’re still standing after that last storm. The two old ones in front went down, falling away from the coop. But these two in the back withstood it all… Destiny?”

“You must take them down,” I am told. “They’re dangerous.”

I can see that large maple in a storm, poised perfectly to come crashing down and take me out right at the desk as I key my last word. Yet I have far too much trust in the nature of things.

Then again, what better way to go?

…ruinage is hardly ever a

pretty sight but it must when splendor goes

accept into itself piece by piece all the old

perfect human visions, all the old perfect loves…

goes part of a poem by A.R. Ammons

I can see the article on the front page of the local paper: “Local Writer Felled by Tree”. On second thought, no, it would not make the front page which reserves that space for photographs of unusual looking vegetables and feature articles about weather. The story would probably appear above the fold on the obit page—the only page with any news.

But it’s no longer the Obit Page. They call it “VITALS” now. So the local writer’s demise would probably not reach that vital prominence either, since he had a vital history of satirizing the local paper every chance he had. Then again, he was not born local.

Eventually they would find some hole in the paper to fill, perhaps under the chiropractor’s ad (TREATING SCIATICA”) or stuck in the classified ads section and they would print something about his passing in one almost complete sentence.

They would run a photo of him, but it would not be him. The title of the obit would be severely edited because of space. They would drop “local” and “writer” and “felled” and everything else. They would just print the fact: BLEY DEAD.

old news…memories: thanksgiving, family, flowers

November 23, 2011 / Klaus / 10 Comments

OLD NEWS…MEMORIES:

Thanksgiving, Family, Flowers…

by
Norbert Blei

Thanksgiving always brings reflection, especially when one has spent many of them alone as I have, mostly my own choice (around mid-life) as I went through youth, marriage, non-marriage, partnership.

I like being alone, I always tell myself and others, especially when something like sympathy comes my way around this late November day, and heart-felt invitations are extended. I can’t thank people enough for thinking of me. Thank you, but no thank you. I’ll be fine. I’ll discover whatever the day holds for me as I usually do…a walk through the woods, or down some piece of the Lake Michigan shoreline…a drive through the backroads with a little Bach or Mozart on the car radio…a stop at the Pioneer, the local store in town, which is always open, where I’ll no doubt run into a neighbor or friend, maybe a stop for coffee if I can find any place open. For dinner, I’ll make something easier to cook than turkey-for-one. Something good to eat. Then return to my desk for a while. Write. Watch a little football later in the afternoon. Night? Embrace it. Everything. Be thankful for that. Even the loneliness.

It comes with the territory of a writer’s life, which I learned early on, long before I ever knew what I would become. An only, lonely child those early years, though I had no name for the feeling at the time. Just lived it. A latch-key kid, home alone, lived for the moment breaking out—into the streets, into the neighborhood, off to school, church, the playground, the corner candy story.

The Thanksgivings of my youth were probably the most joyous, parents, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…so much food, laughter, language, storytelling. So much to be thankful for, though I don’t recall anyone giving thanks. And too, amidst all this noise and celebration, as I would learn later, there was always an undercurrent of frustration, conflict, disharmony, dissension in these family gatherings. Someone was always doing or saying the wrong thing. Someone else couldn’t be trusted. Yet another wasn’t pulling his or her load. And someone always left the scene vowing (to himself, herself, never to talk to HER (or him) again. Amongst my mother and her sisters—this went on forever. And some of the silence (between my two remaining aunts) continues to this day. They will go to their raves not having talked to each other in thirty or forty years. Don’t ask me why. They probably don’t know themselves. Happy Thanksgiving…family gatherings.

This is not how I intended to start this piece or let it develop, but here I am stuck in the middle of family, joy, solitude, loneliness…giving thanks.

Let me take a slightly different direction.

My kids are scattered, one on each coast. My son, Christopher, his wife, Nia, in California; my daughter, Bridget, her husband, Bob, my three grandchildren: Corbin, Courtney, Caroline ‘almost’ on the East Coast. Though I can’t remember the last time we all spent Thanksgiving together, I give thanks for them, their mother, Barbara, who nurtured them so well…so thankful am I for all the caring, joy, love they have given me, and continue to bring, to my slowly-winding-down life.

Looking out at the road from my desk this November morning, I can still see ‘young’ father and son, Christo, hitting baseballs, playing catch, slamming a puck with a hockey stick on the icy winter road…or going out deep…way out…further, for a perfect pass on a beautiful Sunday, autumn afternoon…the woods around us aglow.

I read a passage in a novel the other night which so beautifully captured the meaning of cut flowers in a vase…I immediately marked it…immediately thought of my daughter, Bridget, and something I once wrote about a bouquet. I thought of all those women who instinctively add such a presence and dimension to a room, a man’s life, with little or no recognition from too many of ‘us.’

I give thanks to all of them, for all of this.

Bridget’s Bouquet
June 30

I have no time, it seems, even for the flowers along the road. The goatsbeard, already in downy fullness to match the moon last night. The orange and yellow hawkweed dotting the roads and fields in perfect freestyle flows of color. And the white daisies, singularly, the most beautiful petaled flower. These my daughter secretly gathers for me in a small bouquet for my desk. Through the white daisy we both speak summer, though the act is one of silence. I will enter the coop, usually in the early shadows of morning, flick on the desk light, and there, in a white vase near the typewriter, a small bouquet of daisies. And that will set the day—a child’s gesture of unexamined love.

[from DOOR STEPS, by Norbert Blei, Ellis Press, 1983]

…First things first, and the first thing was to take a look at the living room and see to the flowers. “They” always said, “What beautiful flowers you have!” But “they” never imagined how much time this irrelevant passion took from her work, at least an hour every morning in summer. No man would trouble about such things; the imaginary man in her mind got up at six, never made his bed, did not care a hoot if there were a flower or not, and was at his desk as bright as a button, at dawn, with a whole clear day before him while some woman out of sight was making a delicious hot stew for his supper. Hilary had often asked herself why she felt the need for flowers ….but there it was. The house felt empty and desolate without them. They were silent guests who must be made happy, and who gave the atmosphere a kind of soul. She went out with her scissors and cut two or three daffodils, one white one and one or two yellow ones, and a few poeticus narcissi, and let them arrange themselves in a Venetian glass, taking it with her into the big room, standing there in the doorway, seeing it all through the eyes of the interviewers. New York eyes, sophisticated eyes. Would they feel the order and the peace, as much a creation as any poem she had written? This room too had gathered together a huge complex of living and harmonized it, all focused on the small intimate glimpse of sea cut through the scrub and brush, framed in French windows…

[from MRS. STEVENS HEARS THE MERMAIDS SINGING, by May Sarton, W.W. Norton & Co., 1965]

alice d’alessio & sharon auberle | praise the undaunted

October 31, 2011 / Klaus / 7 Comments

ALICE D’ALESSIO and SHARON AUBERLE

Earlier this month, The Brew coffeehouse in Ellison Bay featured an opening exhibit of the work of Madison poet, Alice D’Alessio, and Sister Bay poet / photographer, Sharon Auberle. The show, a harmonious and stunning combination of Alice’s perfectly pitched poems and Sharon’s artful photographs, will be up for at least another week or two. If you haven’t seen it, try and catch it. There is also a beautiful book of their work, PRAISE THE UNDAUNTED, available at The Brew and/or directly from Alice or Sharon.

I take a personal interest in these talented people. Both have a long history in my annual Writing Workshop at The Clearing. My small press, Cross+Roads Press, published A BLESSING OF TREES (2004) by Alice, and SATURDAY NIGHTS AT THE CRYSTAL BALL (2008) by Sharon, both bestsellers, both long out of print, though the poems of Alice in this exhibit (and those that appear in PRAISE THE UNDAUNTED) were selected from A BLESSING OF TREES. — Norbert Blei

Contact Alice by clicking here… | Contact Sharon by clicking here…

Enter the Forest

Find the path
where rain drips from beechlings
brightening their greenest green
trembling the twisted ties
of yellow moccasin flowers.

Pay homage to cedars,
robed in lace, their spongy
carpet a velvet dusk, breathe their incense;
lay hands on ironweed and linden,
each with its secrets. Come with me

I will show you the way. Here in this temple
we study the Druid fathers
learn to grow old proudly,
chant the psalm of the hemlock.
We will hold white limestone in our hands
recite the only prayers we know.

Praise the Undaunted

How the trees inform us,
how they stand, how they stand!
How they celebrate the wind!

divide the sky, grab each
a share of earth for sustenance;
Folding their tents at noonday

they close their stoma-eyes
to conserve their life’s blood. Faithfully
they follow seasonal rituals
like pious monks, intoning plainsong.
How they stand! How they stand
embracing the sun, outlasting

unbelievers, generous with succession.
They breathe our smog
without complaint and exhale life,

waving their colors boldly. Blithely unaware
how much we ask of them.

Something for the Journey

Suppose, for instance,
this is the last morning. You never know.
You wake to find a wet snow
has sneaked in after midnight
wrapping the branches
with an airy gauze, spangled with diamonds
so that every snarly twig and tendril
is an epiphany of white
etched against the purple-blue
of an undecided sky.

And you want to be sure to seize it,
store it in scented linens,
in carved and gilded coffers
along with last May’s poppies,
August sunlight spilling its motes and spores
among the pines and sandstone cliffs,
and a copy of your only perfect poem.

Because we must take something with us,
like the pharaohs.

The BREW coffeehouse in Ellison Bay

click the images to enlarge please…

MARCH NOTEBOOK I.

FEBRUARY NOTEBOOK

ON A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

On a day like any other ……..the poet might practice Yoga or Tai Chi ……………….Watch the fog lift from her window

hear a robin rustle on the forest floor ……..feel the sun against her eyelids ……………….see the moon driving her charioteers across the night sky

listen to Vivaldi or chamber works by Brahms ……..stand in the rain holding fast to a rainbow ………………wonder at the gull that stays airborne without moving a feather

remember a man’s hands holding her first grandchild ……..imagine death as the sun dropping into the bay ………………walk a country road singing Laudamus Te

cope with elemental winds and waves all day and flee into a sanctuary of sleep ……..return to the childhood orchard or sandpile where all things were possible ……………..play tag in memory or listen to grownups talking under the night sky

let stories flow like little streams that feed the wide Wisconsin ……..read Rilke, cummings, Yeats or the Upanishads ……………..never thinking that these moments might

add up to six books and gamer me laurel wreath ……..to honor the poet and the sanctity of ordinary things ……………..on a spring day like any other.

MR. CHARNEY’S PLUMS

My neighbor, who is a poet beat me to it. Last year she wrote a plum poem before I could, and wouldn’t you know it

even posted that poem above the money box where I would see it every time I stopped by Mr. Charny’s red barn for my weekly basket of plums.

What can I say in this poem today that she didn’t already? How many plum words are there? How many ways can you say exquisite?

I pick up my basket, drop a dollar in the box, nestle on my tongue that first sweet, purple globe. Suddenly the day is singing.

Savoring the juicy flesh, I puzzle over Eve’s choice of an apple. What could she have been thinking? One of Mr. Charny’s plums might have changed the world.

BASE CAMP/Dan Anderson…

County Culture

A New Year’s Day

Reverie and Invocation

Whether the rain comes down or there be sunny days the sleets of January or the haze of autumn afternoons, when we dream of our youth our gaze grows mellow, wise man or fool, we were young, the future beckoned us.

Now we grow old and grey and all we knew is forgotten there comes alive in the ash of today, memory! a god who revives us! the apple trees we climbed as a boy the caress on our necks of a summer breeze.

Come back and give us those days when passion drove us to break every rule. We weren’t bad, but good! May our preachers find us the courage still to sin so and win so! and win so! a life everlasting.

Winter Mind

One must have a mind of winter…

For the listener, who listens to the snow. And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I’m not finished with winter yet. And winter is not finished with me.

If I put everything down in words I want to say, there would still be more secrets under the snow.

These are a young man’s fears and an old man’s love. Or the opposite. I am neither young nor old. Winter beckons.

To make note of things–all a writer really does. To find a way in and a way out, making changes with each step. Scribbles, ramblings, seeds in a pod. Dry leaves rattling on bare branches in a fierce autumn wind. Note.

I should step back and revise all I have written so far. I should vaguely consider what lies ahead. But I am out of time. What lies ahead is always the next word.

There is a cold rain falling today… I can barely wait for what comes next. My mind is laden with winter.

It has been said that a writer possesses a mere handful of themes to which he returns and refashions time and time again. Winter is one of mine. The clarity of ice. The perfection of snow. The silence to transformation.

Here, take mine.

Snow Fences

The Hagen Family Christmas

Left with the Pieces

…ruinage is hardly ever a

pretty sight but it must when splendor goes

accept into itself piece by piece all the old

perfect human visions, all the old perfect loves…

OLD NEWS…MEMORIES:

Thanksgiving, Family, Flowers…

Bridget’s Bouquet June 30

ALICE D’ALESSIO and SHARON AUBERLE

Enter the Forest

Find the path where rain drips from beechlings brightening their greenest green trembling the twisted ties of yellow moccasin flowers.

Pay homage to cedars, robed in lace, their spongy carpet a velvet dusk, breathe their incense; lay hands on ironweed and linden, each with its secrets. Come with me

I will show you the way. Here in this temple we study the Druid fathers learn to grow old proudly, chant the psalm of the hemlock. We will hold white limestone in our hands recite the only prayers we know.

Praise the Undaunted

How the trees inform us, how they stand, how they stand! How they celebrate the wind!

divide the sky, grab each a share of earth for sustenance; Folding their tents at noonday

they close their stoma-eyes to conserve their life’s blood. Faithfully they follow seasonal rituals like pious monks, intoning plainsong. How they stand! How they stand embracing the sun, outlasting

unbelievers, generous with succession. They breathe our smog without complaint and exhale life,

waving their colors boldly. Blithely unaware how much we ask of them.

Something for the Journey

And you want to be sure to seize it, store it in scented linens, in carved and gilded coffers along with last May’s poppies, August sunlight spilling its motes and spores among the pines and sandstone cliffs, and a copy of your only perfect poem.

Because we must take something with us, like the pharaohs.

The BREW coffeehouse in Ellison Bay

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Norbert Blei

On a day like any other
……..the poet might practice Yoga or Tai Chi
……………….Watch the fog lift from her window

hear a robin rustle on the forest floor
……..feel the sun against her eyelids
……………….see the moon driving her charioteers across the night sky

listen to Vivaldi or chamber works by Brahms
……..stand in the rain holding fast to a rainbow
………………wonder at the gull that stays airborne without moving a feather

remember a man’s hands holding her first grandchild
……..imagine death as the sun dropping into the bay
………………walk a country road singing Laudamus Te

cope with elemental winds and waves all day and flee into a sanctuary of sleep
……..return to the childhood orchard or sandpile where all things were possible
……………..play tag in memory or listen to grownups talking under the night sky

let stories flow like little streams that feed the wide Wisconsin
……..read Rilke, cummings, Yeats or the Upanishads
……………..never thinking that these moments might

add up to six books and gamer me laurel wreath
……..to honor the poet and the sanctity of ordinary things
……………..on a spring day like any other.

My neighbor, who is a poet
beat me to it. Last year
she wrote a plum poem
before I could, and wouldn’t you know it

even posted that poem above
the money box where I would see it
every time I stopped by
Mr. Charny’s red barn
for my weekly basket of plums.

What can I say in this poem today
that she didn’t already?
How many plum words are there?
How many ways can you say
exquisite?

I pick up my basket,
drop a dollar in the box,
nestle on my tongue
that first sweet, purple globe.
Suddenly the day is singing.

Savoring the juicy flesh,
I puzzle over Eve’s choice of an apple.
**What could she have been thinking?
One of Mr. Charny’s plums
might have changed the world.**

Whether the rain comes down
or there be sunny days
the sleets of January or the haze
of autumn afternoons, when
we dream of our youth our gaze
grows mellow, wise man or fool,
we were young, the future
beckoned us.

Now we grow old and grey
and all we knew is forgotten
there comes alive in
the ash of today, memory! a god
who revives us! the apple trees
we climbed as a boy
the caress on our necks of
a summer breeze.

Come back and give us
those days when passion drove us
to break every rule.
We weren’t bad, but good!
May our preachers find us
the courage still to sin so
and win so! and win so!
a life everlasting.

For the listener, who listens to the snow.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

There is a cold rain falling today…
I can barely wait for what comes next. My mind is laden with winter.

Bridget’s Bouquet
June 30

Find the path
where rain drips from beechlings
brightening their greenest green
trembling the twisted ties
of yellow moccasin flowers.

Pay homage to cedars,
robed in lace, their spongy
carpet a velvet dusk, breathe their incense;
lay hands on ironweed and linden,
each with its secrets. Come with me

I will show you the way. Here in this temple
we study the Druid fathers
learn to grow old proudly,
chant the psalm of the hemlock.
We will hold white limestone in our hands
recite the only prayers we know.

How the trees inform us,
how they stand, how they stand!
How they celebrate the wind!

divide the sky, grab each
a share of earth for sustenance;
Folding their tents at noonday

they close their stoma-eyes
to conserve their life’s blood. Faithfully
they follow seasonal rituals
like pious monks, intoning plainsong.
How they stand! How they stand
embracing the sun, outlasting

unbelievers, generous with succession.
They breathe our smog
without complaint and exhale life,

waving their colors boldly. Blithely unaware
how much we ask of them.

And you want to be sure to seize it,
store it in scented linens,
in carved and gilded coffers
along with last May’s poppies,
August sunlight spilling its motes and spores
among the pines and sandstone cliffs,
and a copy of your only perfect poem.

Because we must take something with us,
like the pharaohs.