Amongst the French

Amongst the French
by Paul Zimmer

I do not have their words,
do not have their years or customs.
Passing them on the road,
shy as fog passing down
slopes into the valley,
I always give first utterance
or make an uncertain gesture.

My neighbors are kind,
knowing I am like rain,
that if they wait long enough,
in time I will go away.

It is the same for me in
all directions—under stars
swarming out of foothills,
on the gravel I churn
with my shoes—east, west, 
north, or south—the same.
If I remained in
this friendly place forever,
I would always be a stranger. 

"Amongst the French" by Paul Zimmer, from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited. © The University of Georgia Press, 2007

Smoke

Smoke
by Faith Shearin

It was everywhere in my childhood: in restaurants,
on buses or planes. The teacher's lounge looked like
London under fog. My grandmother never stopped

smoking, and walking in her house was like diving
in a dark pond. Adults were dimly lit: they carried
matches in their pockets as if they might need fire

to see. Cigarette machines inhaled quarters and
exhaled rectangles. Women had their own brands,
long and thin; one was named Eve and it was meant

to be smoked in a garden thick with summer flowers.
I'm speaking of moods: an old country store where
my grandfather met friends and everyone spoke

behind a veil of smoke. (My Uncle Bill preferred
fragrant cigars; I can still smell his postal jacket ...)
He had time to tell stories because he took breaks

and there was something to do with his hands.
My mother's bridge club gathered around tables
with ashtrays and secrets which are best revealed

beside fire. Even the fireplaces are gone: inefficient
and messy. We are healthier now and safer! We have
exercise and tests for breast or colon cancer. We have

helmets and car seats and smokeless coffee shops
where coffee has grown frothy and complex. The old
movies are so full of smoke that actors are hard to see

and they are often wrapped in smoking jackets, bent
over a piano or kiss. I miss the places smoke created.
I like the way people sat down for rest or pleasure

and spoke to other people, not phones, and the tiny fire
which is crimson and primitive and warm. How long
ago when humans found this spark of warmth and made

their first circle? What about smoke as words? Or the
pipes of peace? In grade school we learned how it rises
and how it can kill. We were taught to shove towels

under our closed doors: to stop, drop, and roll. We had
a plan to meet our family in the yard, the house behind
us alive with all we cannot put out...

"Smoke" by Faith Shearin, from The Empty House. © Word Press, 2008

Word for the Day: Litotes

Litotes

In rhetoric, litotes (pron.: \ˈlī-tə-ˌtēz, ˈli-, lī-ˈtō-ˌtēz\) is a figure of speech in which understatement is employed for rhetorical effect, principally via double negatives. For example, rather than saying that something is attractive (or even very attractive), one might merely say it is "not unattractive".

Litotes is a form of understatement, always deliberate and with the intention of emphasis. However, the interpretation of negation may depend on context, including cultural context. In speech, it may also depend on intonation and emphasis; for example, the phrase "not bad" can be said in such a way as to mean anything from "mediocre" to "excellent".

The use of litotes is common in English, Russian, German and French. They are features of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas and are a means of much stoical restraint.

George Orwell complained about overuse of the 'not un...' construction in his essay "Politics and the English Language".

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The vast potentiality for happiness

From “PostCaptain” by Patrick O’Brian.

“When I let my mind dwell on the vast potentiality for happiness, and our present state? Such potentiality, and so much misery? Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving – childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill health – poverty for nearly all.  Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone.  All under sentence of death, often ignominious frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honor, that deadly, weak and silly notion.”

Guatemala

Guatemala

Ruth Yarrow, Seattle, Washington

waking to soft light
on our interior wall—
sun gilds the courtyard

motorbike
over sun-warmed cobblestones 
her bosoms jiggle

she slaps rhythm
into her tortillas— 
hoofs on cobblestones

monastery:
cascading toward the fountain bouganvillea

poor end of town—
between rusted roof ridges 
streams of silver rain

tour guide’s violent tale—
through the shutters, faintly marimbas

Antigua at dusk—
among the cobblestones 
glass shards glitter

barefoot in velvet dark
only a whiff of woodsmoke . . . 
and smooth cool tiles

Spring

Spring
by Jim Harrison

Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud
to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but
then what is two weeks to life herself? On a cool night there is
a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that's why we
sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the land of enchant-
ment." We crawl to it, we short-lived mammals, not realizing that
we are already there. To the gods the moon is the entire moon
but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish
in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can't stray
from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released,
but I don't know, in our private night when our souls explode
into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool in
the forest, far from the cage of flesh, the unremitting "I." This was
a dream and in dreams we are forever alone walking the ghost
road beyond our lives. Of late I see waking as another chance at
spring. 

"Spring" by Jim Harrison, from Songs of Unreason. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

SAP'S RUNNING

SAP'S RUNNING
by Laura Rodley

The hearts of trees are sleeping,
But the sun’s warmth wakes them up
A fever from root to bud
A raging that froths the ground
Boiling bubbles, time to start
Tapping, collect their tears
Drink them as boiled sugar
Syrup for hot pancakes, sausage links.