Thanksgiving in Moscow 2009

Three poems

Hi, all! Wanted to share three pretty cool poems (I thought) from our November poetry gathering. A friend brought the first two. I brought the third one (read it in Jan. '08 "New Yorker"). I tried to post the poems here in a different form--like an embedded attachment you could open or a link, but no luck--this will have to do. Sort of unwieldy. Any suggestions? I guess these would be better sent as attachments to an email.

If you care to, I would enjoy hearing your comments on both/either the form and/or the content. I really like the first two--whether or not the "news" story is factual or mythical . . .

FIRST POEM:

FROM UNDERNEATH by STEPHEN DUNN

A giant sea turtle saved the life of a 52 year-old woman lost at sea 
for two days after a shipwreck in the Southern Phillipines. She rode on the turtle's back. 
–Syracuse Post-Standard





When her arms were no longer 


strong enough to tread water 


it came up beneath her, hard

and immense, and she thought 


this is how death comes, 


something large between your legs


and then the plunge. 


She dived off instinctively, 


but it got beneath her again 


and when she realized what it was

she soiled herself, held on.

God would have sent something winged, 


she thought. This came from beneath, 


a piece of hell that killed a turtle 


on the way and took its shape. 


How many hours passed? 


She didn't know, but it was night 


and the waves were higher. 


The thing swam easily in the dark. 


She swooned into sleep. 


When she woke in the morning,


the sea calm, her strange raft 


still moving. She noticed the elaborate 


pattern of its shell, map-like,


the leathery neck and head 


as if she'd come up behind 


an old longshoreman 
in a hard-backed chair. 


She wanted and was afraid to touch 


the head – one finger 
just above the eyes –


the way she would touch her cat 


and make it hers.

The more it swam a steady course 


the more she spoke to it 


the jibberish of the lost. 


And then the laughter 


located at the bottom 
of oneself, unstoppable.

The call went from sailor to sailor 


on the fishing boat: A woman 


riding an "oil drum" 


off the starboard side. 


But the turtle was already swimming


toward the prow 


with its hysterical, foreign cargo 


and when it came up alongside


it stopped 
until she could be hoisted off. 


Then it circled three times 


and went down. 


The woman was beyond all language, 


the captain reported: 


the crew was afraid of her 


for a long, long time.

SECOND POEM:

ESSAY ON COMPASSION

After Stephen Dunn's "From Underneath"

The cat wound tight against my foot idles himself

to sleep

I tell myself he loves me past food and shelter

past my fingers' rough massage

I think I know this to be true but I say I tell myself

to show how carefully I assume nothing

to prove I am no sentimental fool

When I cut my hand this same cat lapped

the blood that pooled like cooling grease

but when I cried for what I thought was loss

of what again I'd thought was love

he touched my cheek with one dry paw

stared into my eyes until I looked away

The newspaper says a giant sea turtle

carried a shipwrecked woman most of two days

before delivering her up to a fishing boat

How to explain the turtle's choice

that it rose beneath the woman twice

before she let herself ride that cold back

that in two days the turtle did not once dive

How would a biologist dismiss this as

some odd coincidence of instincts

the woman saved without the turtle caring

I say and mostly do not trust that the turtle

saved her life because it wanted to

I say too with all the certainty of one

who never made or saved a life

this must have been compassion

that well fed in calm salt water one turtle

had no stronger thirst that day than to try on

a cast off human goodness to see if it would float

When this deaf and aged slack ribbed cat

gets up to walk his bones across the room

stops and seems to slowly reconsider

then limps back to where he'd started

I think it better for us all that I assume

that when he seems to think he thinks

that when he seems to love he loves

that the turtle knew exactly what it did

and what would happen if it didn't

-Richard Lehnert

THIRD POEM:

SCIENCE FICTION

I can travel

faster than light

so can you

the speed of thought

the only trouble

is at destinations

our thought balloons

are coated invisible

no one there sees us

and we can't get out

to be real or present

phone and videophone

are almost worse

we don't see a journey

but stay in our space

just talking and joking

with those we reach

but can never touch

the nothing that can hurt us

how lovely and terrible

and lonely is this

-- Les Murray

So glad I am able to travel by plane (and train?) to come see you all sometimes, and that you all are able to travel sometimes to Moscow or a mutual meeting place so we all can be real and present! : ) --Love, Mom, MaMa, Gret

Pictures

If you would like your picture to be on the Family tree please email it to me at foresstguy@yahoo.com!

See ya,
Forrest

New Family Tree!

Hey guys, wheww, it's been a while since i was on Blogger... Justin and I Made a Family tree I think i sent out invites to most of ya'll, but if i didn't please email me at foresstguy@yahoo.com and tell me your email address. If you see that i left out info on your card, i don't know it! Please email it to me if you would like it to be shown. Also if you know info left out for others! I am having problems, mostly with maiden names... I decided not to use middle names because that would be totally overwhelming! If you notice, i already have notifications from the site saying they've found trails(Mostly in grampy and his dad, and grampa.

Arcane Stewart Trivia -- Audio edition

Rogers Street crew,
Here are some gems you should recognize from back in the day that made me smile to hear again. I dug these up out of curiosity of how they would sound now after not hearing for 20-30 years. Maybe you’ve heard these since the olden days, but hope it’s fun for you too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af2j59zzX3Q "All right girls, you're in this too!" at 2:21

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGGvpUoF6k Those saxophones at the beginning used to scare me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIQL4MH-lJ0 My favorite is “watch out watch out for Lukie!” (the way we used to sing it) at the 1:00 minute mark of the video. Didn’t Luke get really sad/mad when we sang it that way?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywz7vN0GF_Y “Top that!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qSNcgJtqzw Wait till the music starts, then from the first note, I’m instantly in the yellow car, driving down to Cincinnati for lessons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66aqcOsnP2E What to do now that we have an 8-track player in the new yellow car? Stop by Rinks and pick up K-tel “Hit Explosion”, duh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4D40r-E7yk&feature=related I couldn’t press the button fast enough to skip to the next track as a kid, but on first listening as an adult, it actually brought a tear to my eye!

Thanks, also for the easy link to the set of 39 Moscow photos!

Yep, I really enjoyed seeing your photos so easily--once I noticed they were there via the link below the "Over the River and thru the Palouse" photo -- (I missed seeing the link the first time because the font was so tiny?!) Anyway, thanks a BUNCH for your efforts to keep us in touch. Feels very good and is so enjoyable. I promise I'll be attempting to post some things of interest very soon.

Thanks to you and for you all at Thanksgiving.

Wow, Luke! You've outdone yourself. And what late hours you were keeping on Thanksgiving Day! Thanks for the gorgeous "over the river and through the Palouse" photo you took on our way to the Spokane airport last Monday morning. So glad you posted that cute piece of memorabilia regarding our house on Rogers Street! Everyone see where our roots are planted and what amazing amenities we had? Also, thanks for your compliments, Ly, We absolutely loved having your sweet company (and help with dishes as well as design help in the living room and dining room.) Dad sent you the photo showing our changes since your departure. Maybe we ought to post it here so the rest of the fam can see what our home looks like now. How about it, all, does Luke's idea about getting the "small" branch of Stewarts (the beyond Rogers Street Stewarts) generate some creative ideas? Hope so. Love to All . . . from Grandmother Graywolf, Mom, Gretchen, Grandma Stewie.

Over the state-line and through the Palouse...

originally uploaded by lukewho. click on the photo to see more pictures from this album.

...back to Spokane airport we go. Thanks for a great weekend Dad and Mom! You guys were great hosts. I'm really glad I got to hang out with you both for a long weekend of thanksgiving-y activities. My bed was cozy, each meal was delicious, Moscow was charming, and the snow was just an added bonus.

As for the rest of you, Beth and Ben, Forrest, Justin, Wendy and Jake, Bjorn, Jackson, and.... Hope we all get together soon. Let's figure out when that can happen. Summer?

Happy Thanksgiving, peoples! Good night. :)

Luke was here in Moscow for a pre-Thanksgiving weekend. You can see (in the picture above) the late-night snack of homemade pumpkin pie and whipped cream that Luke and Deano (and I) are enjoying! This was following the concert by Josh Ritter at the local junior high school--A benefit for his former junior high school science teacher who's a youngish, active guy with a wife, kids, and inoperable brain cancer.

Luke's visit was totally fun. Complete with massage, coffeehouse time, beautiful all-day snowfall, playing Blokus, a good service at church, our cooperatively created Thanksgiving dinner at home late Sunday afternoon, Josh's concert after that, and lots of leisurely time throughout the two days just sipping wine by the fire. I'll post more photos later this week.