Trains I Haven’t Been On
Tag Archives: Travel
New Tribes
Neil and Dorsey are part of the Imago Relationships International Peace Project, and have helped to develop a model of safe sharing in groups called Communologue.
In 2007 they were part of a weekend gathering of three generations of Palestinian and Israeli families at a Kibbutz on the Mediterranean south of Haifa, co-led by their friend and associate Orli Wahrman. Many of the second and third generation had never met one of the ‘other’. By the end of the weekend there were no ‘others’.
QU’APPELLE AND ESL
QU’APPELLE AND ESL
(Cree – Kah-tep-was “The river that calls”)
They come today
from countries far away
to learn this country’s
names for river, lake, and tree
There was a time
the natives of this land
sat in these same desks
in de-braided fear
learning to forget them
WRITING THE AUSTRALIA TRIP
WRITING THE AUSTRALIAN TRIP
We went to teach, we went to learn
we did a lot of both and more of some
We met amazing people – they met us
perhaps none will be the same again
Details I leave for further poems
which I hurry to hurry to write
before the ripples rippling out
are lost
clockwise and counter clock
down the toilet bowl of time
ON THAT NOTE
ON THAT NOTE
Classical music fills the car
as we home from the airport in traffic
Our host is from Bulgaria
he plays the trombone, his wife the violin
sometimes they tour, sometimes he drives cab
He loves Austin, he loves his wife
Ahead and around
drivers speed and weave
I wonder what they’re listening to
GRANDFATHER’S MOUSTACHE
GRANDFATHER’S MOUSTACHE
The moustaches
of my grandfather and Carl Jung
(Twins separated at birth)
have lives of their own
Jung’s stays in Switzerland
combing the unconscious
My grandfather’s travels to Brazil and Canada
gathers rainforest moisture, dirty thirties dirt
and remnants of strong cheese and pipe smoke
(Carl’s certainly contains some of that too)
When grandfather sneezes, I get to share it all
NEW TRIBES
NEW TRIBES
From the old tribe of Isaac
and the old tribe of Ishmael
Israeli and Palestinian
couples and their children
come together by the sea and share
We are teaching the skills of listening
the skills of sharing and skills of hearing
The rules are simple
tell your truth as your truth only
Assume as you listen
that the person makes sense
If they do not seem to make sense
assume you need more information,
By the end of the weekend
the eight year olds are sleeping over
teenagers walk on the beach till dawn
A new tribe being formed
RED STICK WEDDING – BATON ROUGE
RED STICK WEDDING – BATON ROUGE
When you get married at the Alligator Bayou
in the middle of a Louisiana swamp
it is well to expect some magic
When you get married on the anniversary
of Granny Jean’s death in her 100th year
you can pretty much expect she’ll be here
The sky cracking open with lightening
just as the preacher starts preaching
and the thunder and rain and hail
rattlering off the big tin roof
all through poem and ceremony
might have happened anywhere
But when the wedding vows slow
that rain to a stop, so we can go out
on the flat bottomed boat at dusk
come around the corner and see
Two cypress stumps fifty paces apart
struck by the wedding party lightning
burning like twin candles and flickering
firefly sparks against the night
we know we’re not in Kansas
MARY OLIVER
MARY OLIVER
Of all the poets I admire
only one did I envy
How she could take us all on her journey
remind us of the wild beauty of our lives
and the soft animal of our bodies
It is disowned parts of us I know
that we hold too high or low
And yet I wanted to go where she could go
This year in the merry month of May
on a trip in search of other things
a book I didn’t know she’d written
in a town where I didn’t know she lived
I hung five days like her hummingbird
on the green wheel of its wings
Her flowers were my food
her town became my town
her dunes became my dunes
Sip by sip on that Cape Cod shore
I began to envy her less
and love her more
And that pretty green stone
I was taking with me
I threw it back into the sea
THE BELLS OF LE CROTOY
THE BELLS OF LE CROTOY
In the little village by the Baie
bells still wake you every day
And since not all the churches agree
we wait while each has its pretty say
then snuggle back for a little nap
because a bell is just a bell
and we’re on holiday
If we had really listened
we might have have heard them say
We are the bells Jeanne d’Arc heard
breaking over walls of prison stone
the morning of her walk to Rouen
and then never heard again
We are the bells Jules Verne heard
rattling rough shuttered windows
get up lazy writer and grasp that pen
you have leagues to write ‘fore you rest again
We are the bells that the fishermen heard
on the mornings behind their names
on the monument to men lost at sea
heard last before going to sea