Whitman Meets Sopranos in Galilee: A Love Story

You’re either in the game or you’re out of the game.

It’s true the Parker Brothers went to a lot of effort.

But render unto Caesar what is called non-fiction.

Publish or perish is just another way of losing soul.

Poetry is not another way of saying victory and mine.

It takes a word to open up a world of words and see

behind the world is something that’s unspeakably

alive.

Spring Poem Before the Snowfall

The Second Dreaming Cantos
one

Ten thousand years and more
than countless lives in all
creation dreamt these words
I write in spring's recall.

~Son Rivers 2007

April Appropos 4: April Snow Showers Poem

April tries to be so perfect but it’s snowing.

It knows it should be filled with fair forsythia; instead it’s snowing.

Even rain is not so unexpected for an early April evening but it’s snowing.

Snow as wet as rain is falling on the grass as green as dirt in April when it’s snowing.

Perfect.

April Appropos 3: Hydrologic Poem

But it’s not the dream itself.

It’s the lie inside the dream.

A rainy stretch is just a natural component in the hydrologic cycle of the planet.

A rainy week in April is depressing.

But it’s not the rain itself.

It’s the April in our dream.

April Appropos 2: Spring Showers Almost Poem

April showers bring a metaphysical reflection in each raindrop of their downfall.

Like the loss of paradise.

Originality of sin is not some primitive event.

It happens every day.

The way we look at things as concepts separate from their essence.

A rose is never just a rose.

The rain is never just the rain.

It’s redolent with every thought passed down to us by word of mouth.

We are living in a dream of popular abstraction.

Reality is what we lost in Eden.

That’s bad enough, but we've gained is that far worse.

For we believe.

In the insufficiency of weather, in the lordliness of skies.

When all around and innermost…

rains life.





(rev-1)

April Appropos 1: The Cruellest Joke

I heard the first peepers of the season tonight.

They were few and far between.

But this smattering of chirps will soon become a rousing chorus.

This year, they’ve arrived quite late, indicative of our chilly early spring.

At least I hope that’s just the story and not some precursor to global warming.

That would be too cruel an April Fools.

(rev-1)

Opening Day Baseball Poem and Memorabilia

There's No Almost in Baseball

The month of March and all its weather madness makes to exit and it’s almost opening day.

The peepers soon will start to sound as late New England spring begins to understand "first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold," and then it’s almost opening day.

The spring of Matsuzaka-san is turning towards that haiku of “and now the leather / covered sphere came hurtling through / the air and Casey stood” before it’s almost opening day.

That double-headed monster of pure talent and enrichened anabolic steroids will be chasing Aaron’s singular citation and it’s almost opening day.

This Sunday’s April Fools Day for the Giants and Athletics as their fans are watching from the grandstands buying seven dollar beers and hot dogs for five-fifty and it’s almost opening day.

But still we thrill at every Schilling pill and celebrate the greatness of late inning Ortiz winning hits it’s almost opening day.

And say, say hey, it’s almost opening day.

~Son (of Sam Horn) Rivers 2007

rev-1

Chain Bridge Unchained Melody Kind of Prose Poem

This morning, the sun was rising as I was crossing the Chain Bridge. The sky was streaked in soft reds and the river reflected that gentle palette in its more mercurial way. Almost every morning for almost thirteen years I’ve stolen a glance in that direction. It’s a wild view of river and marshes and trees that stretches out beneath an eastern sky. I drink it in and then I ride towards my morning coffee. If that caffeine will wake the mind, then this outlook stirs the soul.

~Son Rivers 2007

A Baseball Poem for Walt Whitman

Both In and Out of the Game and Watching and Wondering at It

As if the pitcher threw a strike
and someone in the stands
was swinging.

As if the batter hit the ball
and somewhere in opposing sections of the park,
one-hundred twenty-seven engineers maneuvered
     for the out.

As if the center-fielder lost it in the sun
and seven thousand accidents were happening
throughout the outfield bleachers or within
     the luxury accommodations.

As if the play was close at second
and eleven thousand seven hundred sixty paying customers
began to say their prayers, or chant their mantras,
     or show appreciation to the universe.

As if the umpire called the runner safe and almost
thirty seven thousand maximum capacity attending Sunday’s game
detached themselves from play-by-play
     and saw the grass was green,

the sun was out, the game was just another sports page story,
and the lone statistic having any meaning was the breath,
upon their massive exhalation, that each one inhaled.

~GP2007

Jesus Loves Poems

Mellow Yellow Redux

I remember the radio was playing love. The story was only beginning and Jesus was still a character. His lines were written by the one Frank Capra and spoken with the clarity of Shane. They were lines the world would kill for.

We gathered by the river and listened to the strains of Sunshine Superman. It was the summer of love and we were too young to mix it up with sex and drugs. We tried but we were young. Instead we listened to the words and believed them to our legs.

The word was out. They made a satellite and circled it around the earth with tin foil. Producers made a stage and sound directors set the microphones and someone beamed a camera on some actors singing all you need is love. The world went far out.

That was then and this is now and everything that’s passed has just confirmed the all that we were singing then. Myself, I know that I’d be somewhere deep in space except the fact a child is father to the man. Because it’s life itself that saves.

~GP 2007

An Isleta potter : Edward S. Curtis

An Isleta potter

Almost everything we touch
is of this earth. Adobe. Clay.
The woman sitting in a faded
photograph. And if that very
photograph were in my hand,
that too. Its film of chemicals,
its paper stock. And if my eyes
were seeing nothing but the black
and white, those too. But light! And shadows
of the bushes falling on
that wall! And shapes of things we see—
like the potter and her pottery.

Son Rivers 2007

from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images from Northwestern University.

Tsi'yone ("Flying") (Sia) : Edward S. Curtis

Tsi'yone ("Flying") (Sia)

There’s no flight of airy
fancy when making timeless
pottery. It’s grounded
in clay. Even the potter
kneels upon the solid
gravity of earth
to work the coil around
her faith in open space
and grace of openings.

Son Rivers 2007

from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images from Northwestern University.

Potter - Santa Clara : Edward S. Curtis

Potter – Santa Clara

The stone that polishes
the clay is like the time
that’s made the hand that forms
the shape of life from nothing
but the lay of the land.

Son Rivers 2007

for information on photo see Potter - Santa Clara (The North American Indian; v.17)page of from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images from Northwestern University.

Hopi Potter : Edward S. Curtis

Hopi Potter

From the ashes of
a yellow house Nampeyo
paints migrations on
her living clay. And her
descendants paint that never-
ending change today.

~Son Rivers 2007

for information on photo see Potter (The North American Indian; v.12) page from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images from Northwestern University, an amazing treat.

Sales Poem / Sails Poem

Storyboard One: Little Sailing Lines

His office spoke in pictures, former
wife, two married daughters, and
his bygone sailboat, sails unfurled,
the ocean’s silver salt spray framing
its name, ‘The Soul Survivor.’ Meetings
often saw him glide his eyes
within its wake despite financial
inefficiencies or other
venture topics they discussed,
some critical, some not. He knew
that laughter was especially
a time when honest lines became
much easier to cross. He crossed
enough himself in twenty-seven
years of management—no joke.

He used to think that someone sold
his soul for one extraordinary
opportunity, just one
transaction made: lock, stock, and barrel.
Now he knew inconsequential
subdivisions merchandised
much easier, a little lying
at a time. That’s all the payment
needed, nothing more. Just look
them in their eyes and sell them half-
an-acre of what little you
maintain, convincing them of worlds
you know to be untrue, although
you’re stuck in one of your own making
now; there’s little you can do.

~Greg Perry 2007

Simple Poem

Convocation 5

We’re just some energy
that got the gift
of self-
awareness and then squandered
it on games
we play.
Creating tragedies
while making mazes
of
associations, we
forget we’re simply
mindful
energy. Mistaking
spheres of plans
we’ve made
for worlds we are, we trade
awareness for
self-conscious-
ness. While living dreams
we think we have
to die.
A lie!

~Son Rivers 2007

A Live Poem

Convocation 4

Mine eyes have seen the glory of
some high school chemistry and know
that everything is made of atoms
and inspired by quantum physics.
Life is not a carbon-based
reality but something all
around us. Woods alive! And rocks
alive! And even plastic that’s
contorted by machines alive!
Beyond the buildings and the roads,
the cultures and the businesses,
the homes and gardens, chairs and tables,
every single name we have
for everything beneath the sun
and stars, we are alive! Have always
been alive! Will always be alive!
There’s nothing but alive! Our death
itself alive! And eagles soaring
overhead, alive, alive! Alive!

~Son Rivers 2007

Ad Ignorantiam

Convocation 3

There’s a fallacy that most
of us contemporary knowledge-
based and scientific-minded
folk believe: that nothing’s thought
to be irresolutely real
unless it’s proven by our own
experience. Of course, that thought,
examined in the light of abject
objectivity, reveals

its limitations: we ourselves
are limited by thought itself.
Realities we’ll never know
are much too numinous to number.
I mention this in passing as
I look through my binoculars
and spot the eyesight of an eagle,
visionary, otherworldly,
but connected to my own.

~Son Rivers 2007

Separating

Convocation 2

The day my separation from
a wife of fifteen years became
predictable reality,
and moving clothes, old furniture,
and other miscellaneous
utilities took on the simple
task of driving from one place
to some place other than the one
my thirteen year old daughter still
called home, I slowed and exited
the interstate and turned towards eastern
pines that towered high above
the Merrimack, unfrozen yet
despite the month of January
seeming colder to my spirits
than it ever had, an eagle
drifted overhead like something
unconnected but alive.

~Son Rivers 2007

Wintering

Convocation 1

Every year they rise to me
when winter’s worn my spirit almost
through and nothing shows between
myself and devastation but

some photographs of time I used
to know when I was older and
a father and my daughter formed
my world distinct, unfading: eagles!

~Son Rivers 2007