Grand Canyon Part 2: Unleash the Poems

I cannot seem to post poems on this little blog without an admission that I know my poetry is terrible. (I disclaim at length and provide my apologia for ‘doing things poorly’ here.) But I enjoy it. And the mix of mental downtime and metal stimulus on a scientific float trip produced some entertainingly earnestly nerdy poetry at the interface of geology and theology, which may just make up in ironic value what it lacks in aesthetic value.

The first poem is about the great unconformity: a stratigraphic plane at the base of the Canyon Formation where the rocks above are 1.2 billion years older than those below it. You can span the conspicuously missing time with the breath of your hand.

This kind of cognitive incongruity almost demanded aesthetic response…and my response is usually a terrible poem.

The Great Uncomformtiy

Books are mostly white space;
Absence the dominant content of narrative.
And geologists are spendthrift with years.
What’s a million here or there?
But a billion year silence?
…It's deafening.


Ediacaran, we hardly knew thee
Cryogenian need not apply
Toninan has not Trilobites
(so we hardly care anyway)
Just beneath Tapeats,
encroaching on the dawn of life
Vishnu rumbles
Biding its isostatic release


Like Similarion [1] dusty on the shelf
Back-story imagined but unread
One point two-thousand-million
Years of pre-Cambrian lack
Like confessed sin
Vanished
A Story that was, isn’t
And is more startling for its absence

The reference to Vishnu in the first poem is from the name of the metamorphic base unit[2]: the Vishnu Schist. It is a gorgeous unit. And it is dark and complicated, ancient and mysterious. And the ancient metamorphic mass seems an apt metaphor for a deity who is known as ‘the preserver.’ It makes you think the naming geologists may have actually given it some thought. But there is also evidence that they just had the surface understanding of eastern faiths that accompanied shallow 60’s religious experimentation and syncretism.

The Vishnu schist has two sub-units: the Rama and Brahma formations. Rama makes a ton of sense...But Brahma…as a sub-unit of Vishnu??? I am no Hindu scholar, but even I know that Krishna makes way more sense there. Rama and Krishna are the two most famous avatars or incarnations of Vishnu. They are taxonomically ‘sub units.’ But Vishnu is a Trimurti ‘sub-unit’ of the Brahma whole. To make Brahma subordinate to Vishnu smacks of “dude, isn’t it cool to name rocks, like, after Eastern ideas…that will make me seem worldly…and totally piss off my mom.”

Oh, but we are not done. The Vishnu schist is stark and lovely in its own right, but it is most dramatic when it is criss crossed with streaking granitoids…plutonic intrusions marking the dark tangled matrix of the schist with sharp, bright, pink streaks of K Feldspar. For this formation, the namers came west a bit, and selected a more novel deity to match the more novel rock, calling it the Zoroaster Granite.

Well, I have a few rules in life. And one of them is, if you spend multiple days staring at two gorgeous intertwined units, named after ancient eastern deities, to the point that they start to take on the properties of those deities in your mind…you write a poem.[3]

A Confrontation Epic...In Basement Rock

If Vishnu and Zoroaster were to meet,
Anywhere but the Mumbai streets [4]
I suspect that the story would repeat
The drama just beneath Tapeats


Vishnu ‘s ancient complex rock
Slow steady change on an enormous clock
Ancient but mutable basement block
Rama [5]opens a can and draws his Gloc


Then flashing through the dark formation
Zoroaster’s plutonic nation
Bringing novel simplicity[6] (and a Persian persuasion)
Like (very slow) lightning through the seventh incarnation [7]

 ____________
[1]This is Tolkein’s encyclopedic history of middle earth that even some of his biggest fans mostly ‘mean to read but have never gotten to it.’
[2]I am convinced of two things: 1) Metamorphic rocks are so rich with wonder and narrative that they may bee the coolest of the geologic Trimurti (see what I did there)…and…2) Metamorphic geologists are kind of like the drummers in high school band. Everyone respects them, no one understands them, and we all think they are a little odd. (As to whether or not, like the drummers, they also get the most girls…I have no data.)
[3] Actually, you write 4. I filled notebook pages with fragments, stanzas, even a comically bad limerick. I hesitate to tell you this, because that suggests that the drivel below is the better than that…but sadly its true.  But my favorite unuse line was actually from the first poem...'Uncomfortably unconfomable."
[4]The only extant substantial Zoroastrian community currently lives in Mumbai.
[5]I had one line I really liked that likened the army of the monkey king in the Ramayana to the invasive tamarisk, trout or burrows. By the way, if you’d like a primmer on the Ramayana, I recommend ‘Sita Sings the Blues.’ It tells the story in 3-4 recurring art forms. My favorite is an animation of a discussion by 3 people who only vaguely remember the story from their childhood, and the narrative changes as their memories surge, wane, conflict and converge.
[6] Zoroastrianism was a form of stark Persian dualism which substantially post dates Vaishnavite Hinduism.
[7]Rama is the seventh avatar of Vishnu.

Part 1: a photo post is here.

An Erie Wedding Day

I have apologized many times for my awkward, overly sentimental, pseudo poetry...most substantially, here. But we just went on a 'vacation' that took us across the country by plane, to 3 states, 6 different sleeping arrangements, 2 weddings, >700 driving miles with a 2 year old and a 6 month old produced many frazzled moments, many fine memories, giga-bytes of pictures and a poem. Here is the poem:

An Erie Wedding Day

I usually forget that I’m Italian,
though only one generation removed
from Apennine grapes
and German bombs.

But for Erie weddings
I’d simply default
to my Father’s line,
American since Bradford…of the Mayflower.

To me, Erie is the most Italian place on earth.

Today I’m Italian.
The summer wedding
of the youngest daughter
of four immigrant sisters.

The last wedding of a generation.
Next time it will be a funeral.

The cavernous nave of St. Pete’s
half full with affection,
the artistic making
of a generation born an ocean away.

Steal money earned the hard way,
carefully saved, proudly given
in a cultural moment
when one’s prized things
were held in common
in a great stone building
on 10th and Sassafras.

Peter’s translucent form
looks on, engulfed by the tumult
of an unnaturally blue sea.

Other beatific figures
also stand silent, spectral witness
rendered anonymous
by narrative vacuum...

twice martyrs
the cumulative calcareous carcasses
declare God’s glory
through the death of one and millions.

A spattering of communicants
step forward to receive the host
dodging reverse traffic
of toddlers deprived of naps.

Prayers are offered for the dead.
I am startled to hear the name of my Father.
I don’t pray for the dead.
Luther wouldn’t approve…
Calvin even less.
But as the priest intones
a request that they join us
at the eschaton’s great reception
I feel the wet wind
of an ‘Amen’ pass my lips.

Great wedding bells chime
but are twice drowned
by the sound of sirens
in a cacophony of joy and pain.
I can think of no purer symbol
of the life that awaits the bright young couple.

Picture Credits: Spire & Statue

This post was written while listening to: Pachelbel’s Canon

The Singularity of Bethlehem

I am always looking for ways to make Christmas an actual celebration of the event of Incarnation. By rejecting the liturgical year but keeping Christmas, Protestants have left themselves with a single day that can not bear the weight of all the expectations (both Christian and ‘secular’) that we have put on it. So for the last 5 years or so I have tried to embrace the rhythms of the liturgical calendar, working advent readings into my devotions and observing Christmas for more than just the 25th (as the church historically has done). So I am always looking for new ways to make Advent and Christmas reflective and worshipful.

Recently I have been leaning on poetry. This year I tried to create some. I challenged myself to write a poem in the last week of Advent that I would post regardless of its quality on Christmas Eve. I have already given my disclaimer for my brutal poetry, but I recently encountered this quote in Martian Luther’s Bondage of the will:

“What if any one, intending to compose a poem…should never think about, or inquire into his abilities, what he could do, and what he could not do…what would you think of such a poet?”

Hopefully you would think well of such a poet…or at least one who has considered his abilities, found them wanting, and tried any way.

The Singularity of Bethlehem

A misplaced star
awkwardly indicates
the singularity of Bethlehem.

The God-man paradox
even more befuddling
in its God-baby instance.

The infinite packed into
an adorable, finite vessel
Glory squished so dense.

The intractable mystery
suffers not from a deficit of intelligibility,
but a surplus.

Incarnation,
God con-carne, meated
redeeming and ennobling flesh.

God soils his swaddle.
Meconium declares the glory of God.
The co-suffer has come to share our shit.

Wizards from distant deserts
and sheep wranglers from proximal hills
seekers and the sought
worship the baby

‘Who can abide the day of his coming’
Today as a helpless baby
Tomorrow, tatted up and into swords.

This annual training in waiting.


Well if you got through that, here is one of my favorite actual poems that I use in my Advent devotions. I don’t know if it is actually a Christmas poem (or even a Christian Poem), but it certainly does the job:

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

-Sylvia Plath

Have a great Christmas.

Flaming Bronze Angels From The Omaha Airport

So another 60 hour work week is not conducive to creative output, but ‘fortunately’ I am stuck in the Omaha airport (going on 7 hours and counting) and I find airports to be a particularly productive ferment for poetry. For some reason, like 80% of the poems I write come from planes and airports. So I banged one out that has been percolating all week. First, an introductory word about my ‘poetry.’ Every time I share a poem with someone I hear the Smith’s melancholy British dig ‘I never knew you wrote such bloody awful poetry.’ I suspect that it isn’t actually poetry but something vaguely like it…more like stream of consciousness prose. Some day I hope to actually learn how to write a poem from a bona fide English professor. But until then I doggedly adhere to Chesterton’s dictum that ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.’

So I spent the week in Omaha, easily the most surprising city I have ever been to. If you were to score cities with a ratio of actual coolness to expected coolness, Omaha would have to be near the top on the strength of a solid numerator and a very weak denominator. Chalk it up to east/west coast elitism I guess. Anyway, downtown Omaha got me thinking of downtown Buffalo and I got a little nostalgic. So here it is, six years later…an Allentown Poem.

Allentown

Gabriel, the majestic greenish seraphim
holy fire obscured
through the condensation on
my second story window.
Now I see in part as through a glass.

Early morning streets,
soft with the cold cashmere
of untouched effects of the lake.
Street lights refracted in all directions
by the curiously clumps
of solid precipitation.
I squint to see
through my windshield,
carelessly scraped.
Now I see in part as through a glass.

Oh, Buffalo.
Where bison fly but never roamed.
City hall could be the playground
of some costumed vigilante,
like some obtuse Gotham envy.
And the great coliseums overflowing
with passion and disappointment.
Ornate Victorians,
the aging smell
of your steel money exhausted decades ago.
Your proud faces, rarely white.
Your rust belt glory.
Now I see in part as through a glass.