Hasta Luego, Cofokabe!

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet, terza rima

I’m letting the Cofokabe River
run dry, pulling up stakes from one-horse
villages with nothing to deliver.

The waterways, they flourished once, their course
ran sweet as apricots and salsa hot.
We gathered, felt uplifted, never forced.

Your songs reshaped my politics, your thought
on Russian Lit unearthed simplicity
I feared I’d lost. We gave, we learned, we got.

But rivers bend and yearn to reach the sea.
Lid bangers, chronic grievers, sere the banks;
entangled, hopeless, you don’t interest me.

And so, dear Cofokabe, evaporate!
When springtime reigns, we may yet celebrate.

~~~

This sonnet was written in terza rima with an anagram thrown in, so as not to be too obvious.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

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Against the Grain

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry

You who seek
to open my mind
to correct and inflame
with your hammers
of right, wrong
of left, right
of outrage and shame
I offer in kind
in return
for your use
of my name
and my time
these few lines:

You are driving
a nail, nothing more,
in the wood
of the shade
of a tree
that has long since
been felled
for the heat
of a fire
whose warmth
fueled the mind
of a child
who yearned
to speak,
then to learn
how to read
and to write,
and with all
of her might
tried to love
the defeated
the ostracized
insecure, blamed—
though her efforts
fell flat.

Try as she might
she couldn’t combat
the woes
of her elders
or those of
the world
though she took on
their grain, in hopes
of some gain,
of their twisted
and angry
and hopeless
refrain
while the call
to be joyful
in spite of the lack
of the love
of the ones
she adored
fell behind
and behind…

and her branches
grew out
and her roots
plunged
deep
and she caught
in the breeze
of her leaves
now and then
the faint notion
that chances for joy
bright and new
were her right
crossed the sky
every day
if she’d only
look up and away
from the grain
she’d picked up,
but with each
repetition
of justification,
each time
she agreed
to the tedious
thump of a sounding
board for the bored
and defensive
her choices
and chances
for new joy
diminished.

The sway
of her branches
grew rigid
and stiff
the flow
of her sap
thickened and
slowed, the continuous
threat of a snap
whether cold
or of temper
with each passing
night, pulled her in
turned her old
insecure, she felt
blamed and defeated.
I grow here alone
in this forest of pain,
what’s the point?
What became
of the sapling
I was? Mercy me,
of this pitiful game
I have learned
I have played
way too much.

So retracted was she
so embittered and sad
this once promising tree
that she could not perceive
the first swing of the axe,
nor the next nor the last
until she was felled
chopped to logs, slowly
feeding the fire whose
warmth fills the mind
of this child who yearns…

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

New Habitants

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#bringingbacktheglosa, #CanadianPoet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, PM Justin Trudeau, poetry

~~a glosa~~

Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker
on this earth in which life blazes inside all things?
Your liberty does what it wishes with the power it controls,
but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there.

—from “Golden Lines”, Gérard de Nerval, 1854,
translated by Robert Bly

~~~

I have a shelf in a quiet corner
of my house where books appear,
where spines with startling titles
wink like coin upon a beach
you think, at first, is crumpled foil.
I move in close. You little stinker,
where’d you come from? Didn’t I just
dust here yesterday? Three Bly collections,
now there’s four! Best not to blink or—
free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker?

Laughter of the cynical sounds hardy
like a whack across the shoulder blades.
Well met, friend! One scarcely hears
the swallowed—gullible—or feels
the poisoned tip of reason penetrate.
The spy pretends to care. He brings
his little eye of mean intelligence,
then shrinks. He’s leather in the rain.
I know him well. I know he stings
on this earth in which life blazes inside all things.

Meanwhile, this new-found book,
the fourth or maybe fifth this year
falls open as do all things freshly
manifest, and from its novel pages
pour like immigrants through Ellis
and old Halifax onto these shoals
new habitants, thoughts never known.
Tides reverse. My salty backward-facing pillars
burble, angry, smash their begging bowls.
Your liberty does what it wishes with the power it controls,

The pale brittle shell of politics is broken.
Newborn patriots stand blinking in a sun
that’s never shone like this till now.
The rush of sea, the boats well laden
with supplies will dry all eyes
once sorrowful. You who swear
the age of miracles is dead, you’ll find your proofs.
Who negates life for afterlife, division
as your goal, we too will meet somewhere.
But when you gather to plan, the Universe is not there.

~~~

It’s been a while since I’ve written a glosa, but even longer since I’ve felt proud of my nation and government down to the cellular level. There’s been a sea change in Canada since the election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I see young people politically engaged for the first time. American friends post videos of our PM greeting new arrivals and say they feel the shift too, even through all their media clamour.

If glosas and form poetry appeal to you, please visit my website where you can learn more–and perhaps buy a book or two.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Robert Bly’s scintillating translation of Nerval comes from News of the Universe: poems of twofold consciousness, published in 1980.

Happy Birthday, Beethoven!

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#CanadianPoet, Beethoven's birthsay, Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet

Happy birthday, Beethoven, dear Ludwig!
Your season is here, your pure reason for
being. This blue spinning globe needs you more
every day as we plummet and soar, big
movements colliding with pockets of fear,
deafening hearts that seek to even some
score—what bores, pounding upon off-pitch drums.
You, though, never gave a ripe fig to fear.
You rose to odes of joy so we could hear
your ninth proclaims universal welcome,
encompassing all who have passed and come
again, naked and howling. With good cheer,
we shall compose beneath the moonlit tree,
and prove to be your greatest symphony.

~~~

If you like the framed photo of Beethoven as much as the music teacher who bought it, then you’ll love the gifts at Past Perfect Antiquity.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Writer Uses Methinks in a Sentence

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Elaine Stirling, poetry, the myth of writer's block

Too much is made, methinks, of the loneliness
of a writer’s life, of the chilly, slow, grim ascent
to swift success—or none—as though the fickle
muses take delight in luring button-eyed fiddlers
of the word from out their feathery nests or garrets
creaky and ill lit, only to drop them to the rocks
below as the eagle drops the clam.

The writer who believes herself alone
while at her task, feeling listless, even envious
when jostling midst the rabble and the starry-
eyed—their gazes always elsewhere—
the writer who can’t find his purchase
on some storyline is not, in that dilemma,
anything at all; he is a wedge, jammed
and dangling between demi-worlds
of reason with their madly shifting
compromise and That! the infinitely
grand, where any slightest flicker
of the notion of aloneness is a flea
on the fur of a dreaming Cerberus.

If you would write
and write abundantly,
they have assured me there,
turn squarely and with bold
imagination face abundance,
even in its crudest state. Desist
from your deploring and false
sympathies. All is grist, and all
is richness in the process of
becoming more. To that which
you would view as Paradise, hold
fast your gaze, and when you feel
the first arrivals of the best who went
before and better yet, the ones who’ll
follow you, audacious in their eagerness
to help, pick up your pen for you,
in that holy instant, form the center
of Creation known as writing.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Warning on the Beach

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Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet

In the interests of society,
we ask you, please, to not disturb the crab
on the beach. Leave him to his misery
if that’s what you perceive. Don’t let him nab
your purposes, knock over your sweet tea.
It is advised you find your own rock slab
from which to contemplate—and should you see
the same approaching vessel with its haul
of possibilities, and if the dawn
in that fine instant moves you from a crawl
to rise to knees and then to stand, look on.
Grant him his space to gravitate toward all
the joy he left behind when first he reached
across to soothe a crab upon the beach.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Travel Plans

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#IrishCastleHotels, Elaine Stirling, poetry

I’ll be staying at Irish castles
in the fall, sleeping on fine linen,
sipping oolong with wee sandwiches
in triangles of cucumber and cress.

I shall tramp the giant’s causeways
on the stormy northern coast,
hiking trails that once were coach roads,
chat with highwaymen in local pubs
who probably are ghosts.

At dinner, there’ll be game,
I think, of venison or quail
with tatties in their jackets
golden yellow from the butter,
beans as crisp and green as hope,
a dreamy trifle rounded off
with port or brandy, maybe both.

Midst all this happy tippling,
I’ll enjoy the lively tales retold
of salmon nearly caught
in Scotland and the B.C. coast—
we are a worldly lot—the fishes’
silver bellies brightly glinting,
and of rivers once pristine declined,
they’re shimmering again.

For every fall there is a rise,
you see, far greater than
the pinnacles of old; as each
of us reclaims nobility of mind,
a wholesome, holy state, the body
and its politic cannot lag far behind.

And so these are my travel plans
with friends I’ve yet to meet
and shall, whose company enriches
midst the tapestries and roaring
fires of Irish castles in the fall.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Image is of Waterford Castle Hotel, Waterford, Ireland

The Leafless Season

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Elaine Stirling, fall poems, poetry

And so begins the leafless season
limbs laid bare
like the countess of St. Petersburg
whose feathered masks
and cleaving skills distracted
from her business of
transferring gold and rubies till
no hint of former grandeur
in her prey remained
and yet
unmasked
is she the less extravagant
with boughs outstretched
no ruffling sleeves?

For all her past, no breeze
or gale is now capable
of shaking what’s deep-rooted
or denuding her of royalty serene

The carpet at her feet contains
all she will need to spring again

The leafless season, though
to human minds prolonged
is but the gentle closing
of the treasure house
for all within
to rest their feet
and count
the diadems and rings.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

Thanks Giving

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Canadian Thanksgiving, Elaine Stirling, poetry

Thanks is for giving
acknowledgment of space
and for receiving, not a one,
the better or the worse.

Joy has never been
a race, my friend,
nor poverty of spirit
some elevated state.
The one who finds
his summit obligates
no other to the climb.
Each to her center point
is called, once heeded,
called anew and higher.
Rising every day, it is
for me to choose
what’s risible.

There is no end to life
worth arguing, the spiny
pads of past provide
scant resting place
they are a lousy point
with none worth
driving home.

Your great defeat,
was it my victory
or otherwise?
Who knows? And more,
if thankful be, who cares?

Tin cups accrue no interest;
beggars rushing in with reason
battle for the space to rattle
what discomfits—
having rattled, feel no better.

To those ungrateful sounds
I slowly deafen, hearing less
what others say I must.

What’s cast upon these shores
for my receipt and yours, through
giving thanks, receiving it,
is endless gold, the roar
of spirited tranquility.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

The Quantum No Distance, Never Leaping, Never Falling Training Guide

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Elaine Stirling, poetry

Stand too near the edge
of something you have
never done, was told,
then thought you
never could
until you fully come
to know through faith
and science, back and forth,
including both, that distance
between tip of toe
and precipice
can be divided, halved
unto infinity, and with each
halving
scoot
ahead
precisely that amount
no more
and rest
until the noisy sound bytes
in your head stop clamouring,

“Too far, too close, too hard, too high,
too small, too big, too too too too…”

And when you’ve rested
not too much, allow yourself
a glimpse to know a little
more through faith that
safe you were
and safe you are—
that leading edge of anything
is only worth the measuring
of where you’ve been
to where you are
of where you are
to where you want
to be

until you see
the field vast and boundless
of your constant and unflinching proof
(a science personal) that all is well,
continues to be well, that no one
but yourself decides which way
to go and how or when
and then relax…

the path you thought
was precipice that’s battled
from the edges of infinity
on your behalf to reach you
at your feet unfurls

now
take a full step

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
photographer unknown