Sunday, November 29, 2015

CELEBRATING JACK MYERS' LIFE AND WORK, & THEA TEMPLE

2 POEMS BY JACK MYERS & 1 OF MINE INSPIRED BY HIM

After I am gone and the ache begins
to cease and the slow erosion I felt,
being older than you, invades you too,
you’ll come to see that an image of the desert
is the memory of water, like remembering.
When we were walking in beautiful Barcelona
and you said you thought the trees were gods
because they were rooted in earth
and flew in the air and magically made food
out of light and made the air we breathe.

As long as You’re Happy

I don’t know what the Bible says—
my mother who died after being
mercilessly kept alive
by machines at the hospital
looked at the photo of my fiancée
and said, “As long as you’re happy . . .”
as if it were the final measure of my reach.
The star through which I shot
my young heart has little value now
except as an occasional reference point,
a piece of cosmic punctuation
some third-rate planet may depend on
to survive.
What I thought was an ethical problem
of existence was just a broken heart.
The woman for whom I have ransomed
my wife and children would like to erase
the past. I would like to gather them all,
please, under one roof, one heart.
About my mother . . .
each day the doctors and machines
told us her chances of living
with one more operation
on her overburdened heart
would probably be better.
I thought of reading the Bible then.
It wasn’t a question of being happy.
            ~ Jack Myers http://www.vqronline.org/long-youre-happy


Are You Happy?
            Eve in Paradise to Adam:   “How are we happy, still in fear of harm?” 
John Milton.  Paradise Lost.

1.
Water from the artesian well
overflows and collects in a pool.
We kneel, drink deep.
Oh, happy moment!

2.
Be here now.  Certainly. 
Smell the blossoming lilac.
Snuggle with your beloved.
In the garden, eat
the sun-warmed tomato.
Cherish the moment.

3.
No zealots among the vulnerable
tulips.  Forgive them their gaudy dress. 
Lacking the shame of moral thought,
they flirt out their brief lives.

4.
Little yellow finches flit
through the poplars
and sing, Nature’s spoiled
children protected from
the Tree of Knowledge.
They yield themselves
to Paradise.

5.
Child-animal,
think,
become human.
Oh, loss!  Oh, hunger!
Bless us.

6.
Adam was led by lofty senses
of obedience to the eternal.
Eve was the one swayed by delight
in the ephemeral, the one to look
with longing.  Thus they rebelled
against the only commandment
in Eden.  Surely a merciful law
in view of what God knew
about all that would come after. 

7.
Juice was sweet on her tongue, dripping
down her chin, when she kissed him.
She brought the dewy  fruit
to their mouths.  They chewed and licked
until their whole bodies were drenched
in the juices, until the sweetness coursed
through their blood, until it pierced the DNA.

8. 
Even at that, could we not have been saved
if she had not said, See how good?
We will not surely die?
if he had not stopped then
 to think of eternity, 
if they had not hurried
to gather the leaves?

9.  after Mary Oliver’s “Morning Poem:”
The rapist pulls
the world down
into a heap of olive leaves.
Black-painted lilies
block the trails
leading to the wells.
Pray.   

10.
What to do the with that pile
of moments that became history?
What to do with the burning eyes
approaching the rose?


11.
Are you happy?  In the after myths
of Eden, struggle through
the painted lilies, the cult-
ivation.  At the wells, drink deep,
watch the finches, fill buckets
with water for your gardens.

                    ~ Alice Bolstridge, published Maine in Print, Spring 2005, 
1st Prize, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance  Poetry Contest.