Michael J Hoover

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, held in even-numbered years since 1986, is the largest poetry event in North America. Nearly sixty internationally acclaimed poets read and discuss their own poetry and lead conversations focusing on various topics concerning poets and poetry. The mix of poets varies greatly from biennial to biennial, yet many of the best beloved poets in America participate.

Events are held all day and evening in performance tents accommodating anywhere from 100 to over 2,000 people. During each day of the festival, ten or more separate stages offer different activities simultaneously. In 2006 nearly 17,000 people attended.

Each festival has special programs for high school students and for teachers of all levels, elementary through college. More than 4,500 students and 2,000 teachers from throughout the country participate in conversations and readings designed specifically for them during the first couple days of the festival.

This year’s festival was held this past weekend at the newly renovated Village of Waterloo in New Jersey. Waterloo is a restored symbol of nineteenth century existence. Many of the village’s buildings, including a blacksmith shop, apothecary, grist mill, saw mill, gunsmith, and pottery barn provide the perfect settings for the exchange of literary art and ideas.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the Sunday morning reading of Rumi and like minded international poets by Coleman Barks and Jane Hirshfield, infused with the improvisation of the jazz ensemble The Paul Winter Consort. At one point Hirshfield rendered the best reading of Emily Dickinson I’ve ever heard.

Barks is considered the pre-eminent translator of the thirteenth-century Persian poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi is one of the great spiritual masters and poetical geniuses of humankind who founded the Mawlawi Sufi order, a leading mystical brotherhood of Islam. He was an accomplished scholar in religious and positive sciences. If there is any underlying theme in his poetry, it is his relentless and devoted love of his Beloved, God.

Consider the following poem by Rumi. In it on the literal level, there is the speaker’s implied quest to find the answer to a perennial question, what is love? Though the poem uses words which imply that he is talking about the intimate love between two people, the speaker actually implies that the same intimacy applies on a spiritual plane. The first obvious hint comes with the capitalization of Love.

The Meaning of Love

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.
Love has no cause;
it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.
Lover and Loving are inseparable
and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love
when I experience it I am speechless.
Although I may try to write about Love
I am rendered helpless;
my pen breaks and the paper slips away
at the ineffable place
where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious
by the light of Love.

- (The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, 1995)

Boldly the speaker proclaims that we love God as intimately as we ever have loved a human being. This act is not perverse; rather, it is expressed to indicate the level of desire we can have even on the spiritual plane. Since we as humans can barely understand our physical lives, it seems logical that the feeblest and noblest attempt at having and explaining a relationship on a spiritual plane be described in physical terms.

The perfect metaphor for spiritual love, then, becomes the words we use for physical love in its most exquisite and purest expression. If we remember the passion we feel when we first fall in love, a passion sustained in all its dizziness and utter devotion to our beloved, we can identify with the intensity of the speaker’s attraction to his beloved, who is God.

As the speaker as poet continues to pursue his relationship with his Beloved, he gives attribution for his inspiration to his only muse, his Beloved. He can express his best testimony and art when said in terms of his and our strongest emotion, i.e., love.

Art as Flirtation and Surrender

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

- (The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, 1995)

As you read this, I will be three days on the other side of a robotic assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy. It hurts just even to say aloud. Taking my cue from columnist Cubby Conrad, and hopefully tapping into her courage and wisdom, I will take a hiatus from writing to devote my energy to healing. Esteemed area poets will write guest columns during my time away. I welcome their wisdom as broader dialogue in our conversation about poetry. Please enjoy their contributions.

The brief journey I’ve taken since late July, though it has had its eternal episodes, has required local and interstate doctors’ and hospitals’ visits, examinations, consultations, scans, and tests. It has heavily taxed my family and friends with worry and concern. It has placed additional stress on my colleagues’ and students’ lives. It has taken me through all the stages of potential loss. It has confronted me with the most essential questions about faith and survival.

When I had been referred to my soon-to-be urologist by my primary physician after she encountered my high PSA reading and abnormal physical exam, I found myself at a local coffee establishment sitting outside, under a simply gorgeous, cloud laden, summer day, mulling over my immediate and long-term prospects. Being a Gemini, I tend to think a lot, which is of course an understatement.

While I was sipping at my lightly-topped-off-in-milk bold roast, my photographic eye was drawn to the cross bar of a telephone pole. There sat a big crow seemingly looking my way. Being a literature teacher and writer, the symbolism did not escape me. Before I could mutter, “Just what I need—,” two smaller birds appeared out of nowhere and began pommeling their larger relative until the biggish creature rose, then plummeted and swooped, trying to avoid the onslaught. The two brothers-in-arms, or should I say wings, continued their pursuit like fighter planes fending off a bomber.

Having witnessed every detail from my quiet place, I was encouraged by the reversal of the symbolism suggested just moments before. The scenario prompted some hasty notes and, later, the following poem that I knew was about cancer. To aid in a quicker appreciation of my poem, its title is derived from combining two phrases labeling a gathering of birds, i.e., a murder of crows and a charm of finches.

Charming Murder

A dark thought crouches like a crow,
potent, folded wings poised,
the prospect of carrion
gnawing at its brain.

Silence shouts he’s not
sentinel but scout, sent
to find some weakness
for the flock to unfold
its furtive business upon.

From nowhere, a pair of finches
squawk and dive, caroming off
black sides until the inky blot
careens from its quiet perch.

The ebon menace lurches
into free fall, as tiny specks
peck at the erratic, flapping
jet kerchief shrieking west
ever away from yellow.

- Michael J Hoover

I am often surprised how quickly the muse of trauma operates (ew, good pun, for my part). You see, one mustn’t lose one’s sense of humor, eh? Recently, I had only written a couple of poems, but this one came fast and clean in both its imagery and expansiveness. Without its association with me personally, the poem speaks to the broader application of any dark thoughts we may experience and simultaneously to the last vestige we have in keeping us in the light, that being hope. Not faith nor courage nor wisdom nor love will hold on to the bitter end. Rather, hope is our utmost tether to sanity and this life. Check out Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers.”

In addition to artistic and contemplative advantages, having cancer has presented opportunity, enlightenment, and even moments of joy. In addition to the education I am receiving, my empathic sensibility has grown exponentially. Every person without exception whom I have encountered has offered to me the quintessence of what is at our human core. I celebrate their level of professionalism, their courtesies and kindnesses, and their air of compassion and earnestness.

A few years ago I had helped a friend, a dyed-in-the-wool giver, to accept that it is sometimes more blesséd to receive than give. I offered that by graciously accepting others’ gifts, we provide an opportunity for someone to be able to give. We sanction their good will. We become a vehicle of goodness completing their desire to provide.

My friend, in turn, helped me to cope with how to deal with suffering. She said that rather than bemoan our condition, that we should instead embrace our suffering and accept what others offer in consolation. That our suffering yields an opportunity for others to express respect to us, plus granting them a chance to dignify our suffering. We, then, become vehicles for grace.

I have been and remain so blessed in every aspect of my life.

Who would be crazy enough to pick the last weekend in unofficial summer to come to the most toured town in our area to see the very popular, recently reconstructed visitor center? Yep, that’s me. But what an experience I had this past Labor Day weekend, though things did not appear to be so promising upon arrival at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center. First, all the parking lots were brimmed full except for the farthermost which afforded a couple spots near some gravel piles.

The first positive sign was the day itself which was one of those perfect late mornings that inspired the famous, “It’s a beautiful day in Pennsylvania!” We all know these kinds of days. But I’ve be lulled by that false sense of complacency before, having such a day spoiled when I then encounter a throng of humanity shoulder to shoulder jockeying for viewing positions at other museums in both big and small cities where popular exhibits exist.

The biggest surprise was that inside things were so orderly and non-chaotic, so smoothly run and invitingly presented that all my consternation melted away as I surrendered to the moments, one at a time, to have one of the most enjoyable times of my out-and-about life.

Ever since my youth when I lived four plus years in Texas, I have been fascinated with the Civil War. Even as I teach American Literature this week where my students and I have been reading and discussing a book dealing with the major economic cause of the war, the institution of slavery, entitled The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , I remain enthralled by every aspect of this time in our history that changed the direction of our nation forever, in the direction of renewed commitment to possibility and to what freedom and equality can become as we attain our potential as a country.

What I discovered in the words inscribed and preserved throughout the museum, especially of the men and women who actually lived through the five years of horrific turmoil and upheaval in their lives, was so overpowering as to nearly overwhelm my sense of empathy and compassion, even a hundred a fifty years removed. Their words gave a sense of immediacy and relevance to every thought and feeling stimulated.

To give myself a chance to come back to the mundane, I traipsed into the gift shop where instead of a momentary escape from sensory overload, I discovered another gem of intellectual and emotional stimulation. I thought I would retreat into a book of poetry available in the shop and lose myself for a while; however, I only found myself exposed more rawly to the experiences of our ancestors.

Here, in a book on Walt Whitman, who was also a nurse during the Civil War, I found a poem of his that I had not read before. Having first read dozens of journal entries and letters written home to his mother, the poem had a greater impact. He had written especially about how young the boys were who fought in this terrible conflict, how many of them he encountered losing limbs and lives, many with such innocent hopes still remaining amidst such desperation.

In the following poem Whitman celebrates such heroism and elevates the sacrifice made, to equate it with a most divine act rather than relegate such a sense of loss to despair and chaos.

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on the stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair,
and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?

Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?

Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm,
as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself;
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
- Walt Whitman

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.” Most writers use listing as a way to support or elaborate a point presented in their argument. Creating lists without using “etc.” still invites the reader to add to the list ad infinitum.

Here, in support of recognizing “beauty,” Emerson creates a metaphor combining the spiritual and the physical planes in “God’s handwriting.” He is emboldened by his success, extending the comparison using the oxymoron “wayside sacrament.” So, the first subtle invitation for readers to add their own item to a list is begun by this two-fold extended metaphor that the writer himself adds to again at the end of his argument in “a cup of blessing.”

Just as Emerson has unexpectedly combined spiritual and physical elements, he sets up a parallel combination, by associating beauty and fair. Beauty is sublime; fair, a bit earthly, mundane, though one could make a semantics case that fair in Emerson’s day was often exchanged for beauty. I suggest that the writer wants us to see a spark of heaven in every aspect of life on earth, even in the most common occurrences. Thus, the common is elevated is the equation of unlike objects to that which is wondrous. Ah, the mathematics of figurative language! Furthermore, doesn’t beauty reside in the eye of the beholder?

Now we come to the second listing in the excerpt, namely fair, or uncommonly common phenomena. For face and sky and flower begin the cadence of addition. I would like to add a brief encounter I had last week that not only extends the list but also centers around the truly essential word in Emerson’s offering: opportunity.

Nothing warms the heart like witnessing the excitement when a long time wish is granted, especially for a younger person who still has a strong faith in happenstance and, being on the verge of adulthood, is beginning to have that faith in humanity challenged by the array of disappointments that become just another part of life. Insert here the cliche about nine rejections for every one successful attainment, sale, or acceptance.

I was privileged to be in the same coffee establishment that a friend and her teenage son were in, when the young man was hired as a barista, beginning the next day. Of course, getting a job in service may seem fair at first, but it is elevated to the status of awesomeness if the seeker has included the job’s pursuit in his dreams of happiness. Such was the case. He had been drooling after this position at this particular establishment for over two years.

I had seen this young man get his hopes up and dashed too many times, his filling the void with jobs that didn’t quite measure up in his estimation. But, this young man seemed to be a manifestation of Henry David Thoreau’s words: “All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.”

The sparkle in this teen’s eyes and the body language that shouted sheer joy was too much to resist joining in with my own broad smile and laughter. The event, fair as it may have seemed to the unobservant, was priceless, as the commercial goes.

The irony of having an opportunity to witness someone getting an opportunity was not lost to me. It only made the moment that more enjoyable. It’s certainly affirming to both our desire and talent when someone, especially a future employer, recognizes that we can apply the best of ourselves with passion and have as a result the benefit all concerned. This young man’s positivism and persistence revealed his inner strength of faith in himself. How refreshing and rewarding to behold! What a blessing all around!

Please send comments and poems to michaeljhoover@gmail.com. Archived columns can be found at hooverpoet.com or at eveningsun.com. This first Friday, September 5th at the Ragged Edge in Gettysburg features every poet bringing 5 poems to share. The event has been dubbed “Five on the Fifth.”

Each year I go through the ritual of purging my wardrobe as I prepare to start back to teaching. And, at least once every year, I am sorely reminded of one the talents I lack and am occasionally jealous of those who possess. I’m talking about organization.

I want to be organized. I really do. And, I believe I share this sentiment with more than just my best friend, who has been tearing out and passing along chapters from a book entitled Secrets of a Professional Organizer as she finishes with them herself.

The exercise has helped some, I admit, but what has been accomplished most is that I am more vigilant for opportunities to apply some of the techniques suggested. One thing I learned is that each of us already has a sense of organization. We don’t have to radically change our system to be like some one else’s, but rather learn how to adjust our own.

By getting to know how we are organized from the inside out, and not changing who we are from the outside in, we get to know ourselves a bit better in the process. I know that the observing nature I have doesn’t allow me to linger sometimes, and I create a pile to return to as my attention wanders to the next encounter of my senses. When I return, no matter when that is, I can usually pick up where I left off with little trouble. This happens in my classroom and it happens with my writing. It also happens around my home.

A lesson I learned about the latter is that every room can call for its own sense of order. For example, my bedroom moans to me each time the closet and the dresser become overstuffed with shirts, socks and shoes, and short and long pants, burgeoning during the transition seasons, especially when fall is impending, though it is only August. Call the complaint “The Back to School Blues.”

Parting with clothing that is still functional, even though it may go to a charitable organization for possible recycling, has never been easy for me. It’s hard to part with something I may still convince myself I have use for.

But, turning over a wardrobe does have its healthy effect. “The fresh start” and “the new look” hold such a sense of promise and optimism. We feel energized when we wear an outfit for the first time. A power of positivity overcomes us and we can hardly wait to share ourselves with others. Confidence and power seem to build with every step we take in our new duds.

Another room in my house that has its own personality and its specific demands for order is my writer’s room. Nearly everyone has a drawer or two in their homes where things are hastily stuffed. Sometimes it is during a mad panic to straighten up before company arrives and a surface simply must be cleared in short order. Other times, it’s that we don’t exactly know where to put that letter we’ve been rereading or the souvenir we’ve been keeping out to look at once more. I have one such drawer in my writer’s room.

At times during the course of a year, I will open the drawer as fast as a blink to toss in some tidbit or scrap or memento that I intend to get out later to ponder. On one such occasion, I became attracted to the array of stuff that appeared when the drawer was cracked only a few inches. My mind began to wander to all the occurrences that had produced such a jumble of what some folks might say is junk. But one man’s junk. . . .

As I began to catalogue the memories, the idea occurred to me to write some of them down. Then I thought, no, don’t write the memories. Just write down the objects and let the audience identify with some of the listing and conjure up their own correlations. Let the poem be the impetus to find your own drawer to contemplate.

Sometimes a journey through a drawer can lead us to rediscover pleasant times, kind faces, and untold wealth. Who needs order in a drawer whose sole purpose is surprise, discovery, and inspiration?!

Spring Cleaning

Life comparmentalized in drawers–
micro-biographies of discards, get-to’s and save-these:

a smattering of tattered snapshot, neglected notes,
a small vault of keys without locks, tack-pins for lost causes,
a keep of obsolete receipts, a cache of collectible coins;

defunct phone numbers, broken-pointed pencils.
one dead AA, a hoarded pen hardened in the artery,
an assembly of unused parts, assorted cards from the kids–

forgotten remembrances: a tomb for trash and heirlooms;
sepulcher of treasure awaiting disposal or resurrection.
- Michael J Hoover

In the grand scheme of all things that comprise America, Michael Phelps is practically a local boy. Less than an hour’s drive from Hanover, Towson, or the Republic of Towson as my son-in-law has recently come to call it, has brought the world’s eyes to focus on this suburb of Baltimore in fascination.

I know very little about this young man other than what I have gleaned from T.V. and the internet, but he seems to be an all-American twenty-three-year-old to me. As a competitor he is fierce, but as a winner he seems pretty humble, at least when immediately interviewed.

I also heard something curious from a close friend, who attended an in-service this week on differentiated learning whose tenets require teachers to plan lessons to include the full spectrum of learners. The presenter used Phelps as an example of a kinesthetic learner, that is, one who relies on his muscle sense to learn. Phelps is among the largest percentage of learners who process best by engaging physically with their environment. Ironically, these learners are notably the most distracted and challenging students found within a traditional classroom framework. However, when given recognition and direction, these students often attain physical, mechanical, and artistic merit that outpaces their more verbally or mathematically inclined peers.

Sometimes people who are striving for excellence find themselves isolated for many reasons. They must be single-minded which sets them apart from their peers. They choose a relatively narrow channel of accomplishment. For example, how many people like to swim? How many swim competitively? How many people are willing to practice for hours every day?

Once having achieved recognition, how many are willing to go forward in the face of criticisms and unkindness that abound as a result this excellence?What type of an ego exists that re-directs itself into the hands of an apt mentor, knowing that in only this way can success be assured? The ego has to know enough about itself to turn itself over to more capable guidance than itself. The only other element to supersede ego and vast experience is intuition, which defies rationality.

Uniquely successful people also have to be knowledgeable of winners who have gone before and be able to place themselves within a winning paradigm. An appreciation and understanding of all the strategies, methodologies, and even secrets of previous record-setters must be scrutinized and used as models so that distinction might be achieved in a new way.

I read a letter posted by his sister just after Phelps won his seventh gold medal, and the comment I remember most was that she observed how utterly exhausted her brother seemed but that she knew he’d be back, as he said earlier in the week, “to be where [he] had to be.” In this seventh competition it was evidently Phelps’s acknowledged understanding of exactly where he was in relation to himself and his competitors that propelled him to the winning half-stroke. Phelps intuitively did what others would not have. He chose not to glide as the swimmer who was besting him, but rather to break the anticipated rhythm of his final approach to the wall.

Indeed, where are we all in relation to others, as we, too, strive for success in our daily journeys?

In the following poem from the collection edited by Terry Allen entitled The Whispering Wind: Poetry by Young American Indians, the speaker, much like an Olympian competitor, reflects upon his isolation, his goals, his sense of place in history and his heightened sense of presence. He knows exactly where he is and yet knows he has never been here before. He must let go of rationality and embrace what his senses tell him. He must believe in what seems to be the impossible, the miracle of being connected to something larger than himself while still maintaining his own identity.

Miracle Hill

I stand upon my miracle hill,
Wondering of the yonder distance,
Thinking; When will I reach there?

I stand upon my miracle hill,
The wind whispers in my ear.
I hear the songs of old ones.

I stand upon my miracle hill,
My loneliness I wrap around me.
It is my striped blanket.

I stand upon my miracle hill,
And send out touching wishes
To the world beyond hand’s reach.

I stand upon my miracle hill,
The bluebird that flies above
Leads me to my friend, the white man.

I come again to my miracle hill,
At last, I know the all of me–
Out there, beyond, and here upon my hill.

- Emerson Blackhorse “Barney” Mitchell

Our common denominator has to be love. The most common, love of self. The least, love of others. Here’s where less is really more. The indivisible, the smallest fraction. Reduce ourselves to love of others. So simple. So fulfilling. Yet, the most difficult of choices. It goes against our instinct to survive. But, it is our deepest moral imperative.

I wax philosophic for three reasons. First, J. Cameron Cummings sent me a poem, via his father (a former student of mine), just prior to my departing for a three-day photo foray in New York City. Cummings further peaked my interest with his candid responses to a couple of questions about his interest in poetry.

He writes, “I can remember writing poetry from as early as I could write. I love to read, so I believe my interest in poetry started from there. My first grade teacher introduced poetry to the class and I liked poems so much that I started writing them.” By further stating that he considers poetry “definitely a great way to express yourself,” Cummings shows his love for the word.

My second reason for digging into what is at our basest levels coincides with my vow to take as many people pictures as I could in the city. Usually, I am too distracted by store displays and architecture. This trip I wanted to capture more of humanity in its raw honesty rather than simply the art created by that humanity. Because of this young man’s poem, I had been further inspired to focus on human interaction and engagement.

The third reason for being in a philosophic whirl was a phrase resonating in my head from a couple of the more heated discussions my Dad and I had recently. He kept saying that the main problem with our country, and with the world, is greed. I have always maintained that the only sin is pride. That all the rest of sins center around putting oneself before any other. My father insists it is greed. If one does the math, they’re one and the same.

That Cameron Cummings could have the wisdom of an octogenarian at eleven years old may not surprise any parent of a son. At eleven resides the pinnacle of boyhood where idealism is strongest before the realism of manhood begins its distortion of truth, displacing innocence with desirousness. Poet William Blake composed his “Songs of Innocence and Experience” around this precept.

Just when I believe young people are not paying enough attention to the world at large, I get bushwhacked. Just when I think young people are too engaged in games and gadgets, I find myself on the floor with no rug to comfort me. Cummings wrote in his letter to me that he earned his Junior Black Belt two years ago. He said the exam to earn this belt was very hard, and he “found out how much perseverance one needs to achieve a goal.”

Here in his own poem, another kind of examination is entertained by this young South Carolinian poet. He earns much by his perseverance. Cummings plays with rhetorical questions, perfect metrics, and even risks repeated rhyme to challenge his audience to pursue answers, though they may elude us for a lifetime. He knits his sounds subtly to juxtapose the soft and the harsh, so that his message with its implied admonishment is easy to take in, but leaves the audience with a taste of self-awareness and a sense of gathering strength. Consider for yourself:

Great Greed

Why does everybody have a want for
things they do not need?

Why are people so obsessed for money
and great greed?

For is it something so unsaid, it tears us
all apart?

Or is it something going wrong with
people in their heart?

Why can’t we all just want the things we
need?

And, not obsess in certain things that
give most people greed?
- J. Cameron Cummings

Having returned from my excursion to the Big Apple, I downloaded about eight hundred pictures and began the arduous task of editing and discarding. Nearly two thirds of the people photographed held cell phones in their hands, even if they were not actively engaged in phone conversations. I didn’t notice this peculiarity while I was taking their pictures.

In a city symbolizing everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with our country, its life blood, its citizens, pumped along, self absorbed, greedy for attention, connection. Surrounded by materialism and the electromagnet of consumerism, people roamed the streets aimlessly purposeful, ever prepared to be wanted, instead of prepared to serve the moment’s subtlest need. What has gone wrong in our hearts? Why has want replaced need?

During my father’s recent stay, many of our conversations centered around family, genealogy, U.S. history, personal history, and of course, politics. We had avoided our talks about religion, per se, even though we have come to some unexpressed accord after years of not recognizing we’re really on the same team.

So, when he said to me at breakfast the morning after hearing me read poetry at a feature, that he had a revelation the night before, it was with great anticipation that I awaited what would pour forth from his mouth next. I thought we may be having another breakthrough in our relationship, that something I read or alluded to had inspired a fissure in one of the dams between us, to crack it open and release understanding and newfound wisdom. Silly me.

Dad said, “I think I might be able to take a stab at this poetry thing. I really liked those limericks that one poet recited last night.” Though my heart took a minor dip, I recovered quickly to realize, hey, did I just hear my father say he was going to write poetry? Another booster engine ignited to propel my father forward in expending his Sagittarian energy!

He quickly related how he had recently been following a Reader’s Digest’s contest where potential poets respond to a piece of art with a limerick. For those of you whose memory needs jogging, a limerick is a kind of humorous verse of five lines, in which the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines, which are shorter, form a rhymed couplet.

Mostly, limericks have acquired a rather untoward reputation because of the overt or implied sexuality usually tied to them. When my father heard the retired pastor deliver four innocuous but meaningful limericks in a row, he was hooked.

Over breakfast, I imparted all I knew about the form and spouted one I use with my students.

The once was a man from Nantucket,
who kept all his cash in a bucket.
His daughter named Nan,
ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nan took it.

Since my father is mostly a hands-on kinda guy, I retrieved some printouts from websites for him, brimming with definitions and examples. But, knowing also he is not a big fan of reading much beyond non-fiction success stories, I also had to provide auditory cues to get across the idea of metrics to him. But, he’s a quick study when he can smell profit in the wind. Or, when he can find another outlet for his tremendous sense of humor.

Within two days of his return home to Roanoke, he had copied the art that was to inspire contestants and had written four limericks for my critique. Before I could respond by email, within two more days he sent six more. He’s since written to say that he’s entered the contest and eagerly anticipates publication! But, will this fledgling poet be satisfied? No, he has been bitten by the muse, Dame Humor.

After this week’s whiff of a sweep, when the Orioles defeated the Yankees in their first two games, my Dad sent me an email saying he was enclosing a limerick in a sympathy card and sending it to his pastor who is a dyed-in-the-wool Yankees fan, but with a sense of humor himself.

There was a team from the big city,
who showed their enemies no pity.
But one of their foes,
known as the O’s,
gave them a lesson in humility.
-B. Jerry Hoover

What do you think? Has the man got promise, or what?

If it weren’t for mothers, the world would not lose its harsh edge. Moms have a way to soften the blow of human gales and the globe’s disasters. They are the first defense we have, our protectors, our nurturers under the laws of nature. A blesséd day to all women who mother!

This day also marks the beginning of a week long celebration of women and men who stand as our first defense against those who choose to break the law. They, too, soften the blows of human maelstrom and at times volunteer to face off with nature; more often, they just do their daily job of nurturing the rest of us in compliance with the law.

May 11-17 is National Police Week 2008. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy designated May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the calendar week in which that day fell as National Police Week. As most appointed times when we are provided reasons to celebrate, this commemoration is one that deserves special merit especially in light of the Philadelphia tragedy involving PA Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski this past week.

Fallen officers for the past year and designated officers from previous years will be honored at a vigil annually attended by 20,000 people. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund joins others to present this Annual Peace Officers Memorial Service in Washington, D.C. The organization will celebrate the 20th Annual Candlelight Vigil on Tuesday, May 13 at 8 pm at the national memorial.

All of this information was researched after a poem was sent to me last weekend by Cpl. Bob Heuisler, Maryland State Police (Retired). Heuisler included the brief note of introduction: “Time again to honor our fallen law enforcement officers. They are our first line of defense in the war on terror!!!!”

Heuisler writes also that he began writing poetry several years ago as a way of getting some of his feelings down on paper, usually writing about a friend or family member. In addition to law enforcement, he was a member of the Manchester (MD) Volunteer Fire Department. He was a member of the Maryland State Police from 1987 until his retirement in 2000.

Heuisler writes that he “had spent the previous 10 years working ‘undercover’ in various assignments from being a ‘narc’ in the Drug Enforcement Division to working as a ‘hit man’ for murder-for-hire investigations in the Criminal Enforcement Command. [He] saw a side of society that really made an impact on [his] life, both professionally and personally. [He] also realized that very few people outside of law enforcement understand the sacrifices made by someone who works in a covert capacity.”

“This poem was written shortly after one of my fellow Troopers, Ed Toatley, made the ultimate sacrifice. Ed was gunned down during an undercover assignment in Washington, D.C. while working on a federal task force. I would like to dedicate this poem to Ed and also to everyone that works ‘undercover’ in law enforcement. It is truly one of the important jobs that police do on a daily basis…they are our first line of defense!!!”

Undercover

No crisp uniform of honor did he wear

Nor golden badge of glory did his chest bear 

Only troubling thoughts of money, guns and drugs

Fighting back the tears as he collected his nightly hugs



In this secret life he chose, he clearly was the best

But his uneasy path was much different than the rest

He knelt in prayer with his family at night

Before he quietly went out to carry on his fight



They kept a scrapbook of his many feats

But his true worth is not captured on these sheets

He knew that he was a soldier in a losing war

And his return to those who love him was unsure



His futile fight to save a city block by block

Resulted one night in that tragic knock

His friends sadly called upon his loving wife

With a tearful message of how he lost his life



One last time his brothers gave him praise

But only half way up Old Glory did they raise

And in the end the bugler played his solemn tune 

With prayers that his soul will enter soon
- Bob Heuisler

If we all could be projective and accurate, the world might be perfect, for each of us. But, risk and irony abound, perhaps as a blessing, to make life unpredictable, frustrating our ability to be in control and to know it all.

Failure and disappointment force us to adjust our attitudes and strategies. The danger lies in becoming manipulative and egocentric, as we reset our aims and the means of accomplishing them. The reward can result in our becoming better people because of the experience, opening our lives to compromise, self-sacrifice, and unconditional love.

Too often we are hurt because our projections are idyllic and fail to include variables beyond our control, and sometimes our understanding. The most common oversight usually involves the volition of others, which seems as unpredictable as a political contest.

Just when we count on a person to be who they’ve always been, they appear to change. Usually the unexpected actions of others have little to do with us as causes. The alienation of two people at times is so subtle that neither is aware of the change, until it becomes too late to make any effective adjustment.

Daniel A. Armstrong’s prize winning poem in The Reader’s Café annual adult competition broaches the paradox of “contrast within apparent harmony.”

Olives, Bread and Wine

We ate olives, bread
With the bottles we mass-murdered
Olives and bread, your lips
The taste, the wine.

You, who fell from my sky
Into my lap
Ever the muse
And catty.

You toasted asagio bread
I pulled the cork
We learned each other’s
Topology with noisy Braille
Kisses between nips and sips
Of another dead magnum.

You then killed yourself
With a lost and dog-eared
Notion, or maybe it was I
Who died
So you could run back
To your Mediterranean
Moon, and pale mornings.

The matter not, just the
Taste and texture
Of olives and bread
Keeps me glancing
Towards the door that
Stays open, and the
Wistful corkscrew.
- Daniel Armstrong

The first hint that the speaker in the poem has been blindsided comes from the use of past tense throughout all but the last stanza. This use of past tense hints that the experience revealed lingers as a memory, something which cannot be changed by the poem’s conclusion.

The use of the present tense in the final stanza reveals that the speaker will remain sated by memory, until a time when all might be enacted again, a kind of desperate, hopefully romantic notion only a jilted lover can conjure. The “wistful corkscrew” is a strong image that is summative in what the speaker has been reduced to, an object whose sole function is to begin the treacherous affair of imbibing wine, and love, once again.

The very title with its central images of bread, wine, and olives suggests a relationship that is steeped in antiquity as the nomadic, mid-eastern diet seems to indicate. Here also, on a whole other level with its occasional, violent imagery, the poem invites the audience to wonder whether interaction centers around two countries, mid-east and west. Perhaps they formerly wooed one another but are now left in a state of separation with the west hoping beyond hope that the relationship can pick up where it left off.

Also suggestive is the curious commingling of Last Supper images of Mt. Olivet, or Gethsemani, and the sacrificial bread and wine. Recall also that during this famous meal, betrayal and abandonment were mentioned among images and words of eternal hope.

Whether the poet intends all this mixture of secular and religious imagery is irrelevant. The fact is that the symbols are well versed in tradition and most probably picked for their strong ties to sacrifice, as the speaker seems to feel his relationship has become. Will their love be resurrected?
Will their world be saved?