[we were chosen by the northerly]

we were chosen by the northerly
the reindeer
the fish
the birds
-----chose

and we
-----gained spring's singular sun
the tales of the blue nights

-Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, 1984

We seem to have skipped spring. I don't know if it's the constant sunlight that accelerates the season shift or some global warming thing, but after a long winter spring has been foreshortened as the temperatures leap, the snow retreats at an alarming rate, and Tromsøya (the island Tromsø is on) turns green. Even the snow on the mountains is vanishing, and and every day exposes expanding patches of dark earth and stone. And in the city, fleets of toddlers in neon vests go on field trips. Elderly women have taken up sunbathing.

Tromsø is pretty close to the roof of the world, and up here the year starts to feel like a strange wheel. There's something about it--when I got here in January the sun hardly existed, and now it's like that old country song: that lucky old sun just rolls around heaven all day. The middle of the night could be the middle of the day, and maybe it is: birds call, I sit up at my desk because I've lost track of time, or wake with a start to check the clock and discover it's 3 am, despite the clean light and blue skies. I miss the night, a little bit. There's something I love about summer nights--"show a little faith, there's magic in the night," to quote Springsteen--and up here summer is defined by the absence of night. Which is, on the other hand, freeing in a different way from the summer nights I'm used to: I can leave the house at night to go out walking and not worry about the encroachment of darkness. It makes time, and the day, feel infinite. Everything blurs together, and the sun rolls across the sky in a narrowing gyre.

Kef 21

First there was the earth in my mouth. It was there like a running stream, the July fever sweating the delirium of August, and the green buckling under the sun. The taste of sick dust ran in the currents of saliva which I heaved up and tried to picture when all the people would curse their own stinking guts and die. No. I am not wishing that everyone should die. Nor am I wishing that everyone should be still. Only I am squeezing out the steam in me.

-Henry Dumas

Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cup of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred--
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
--moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
--full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

-Mary Oliver, 2003

It seems like a million years ago that I started Wednesday poem day, although no accurate calendar would give you that number. An accurate calendar would say that I started Wednesday poem day a little over four years ago, and the ticker in the margin of this blog tells me that since then I've posted more than 200 poems. Which seems like a lot, but there is actually a surprising volume of poetry in the world, if you think about it.

There are days, I'll admit, when this starts to feel like this is something I do because anything else would be stopping, and the wheels of my life run in certain deep ruts. But then there are days when the thing I need in my life is a poem by Mary Oliver, and I have reason to pause and find one, read it slowly. My dad has a book of Mary Oliver's poems that I stole or borrowed when I went to college but before then, in high school, I used to go into the room in the front of the house where dad's books were, sit in Moose's chair, and read it. I remember this. I don't remember why I needed poems, then, just that I did. They fed and watered me.

I forget, until I remember again: this is not something I do without reason. Some habits have a quality of liturgy about them, and those are habits worth keeping. They pay unexpected dividends. 

Well would you look at that.

The Sweater of Vladimir Ussachevsky

Facing the wind of the avenues

one spring evening in New York,

I wore under my thin jacket

a sweater given me by the wife

of a genial Manchurian.

The warmth in that sweater changed

the indifferent city block by block.

The buildings were mountains

that fled as I approached them.

The traffic became sheep and cattle

milling in muddy pastures.

I could feel around me the large

movements of men and horses.

It was spring in Siberia or Mongolia,

wherever I happened to be.

Rough but honest voices called to me

out of that solitude:

they told me we are all tired

of this coiling weight,

the oppression of a long winter;

that it was time to renew our life,

burn the expired contracts,

elect new governments.

The old Imperial sun has set,

and I must write a poem to the Emperor.

I shall speak it like the man

I should be, an inhabitant of the frontier,

clad in sweat-darkened wool,

my face stained by wind and smoke.

Surely the Emperor and his court

will want to know what a fine

and generous revolution begins tomorrow

in one of his remote provinces...

-John Haines, 1967

Meanwhile

Driving, dogs barking, how you get used to it, how you make
the new street yours.
Trees outside the window and a big band sound that makes you feel like

everything's okay,
a feeling that lasts for one song maybe,
the parentheses all clicking shut behind you.
The way we move through time and space, or only time.

The way it's night for many miles, and then suddenly
it's not, it's breakfast
and you're standing in the shower for over an hour,

holding the bar of soap up to the light.
I will keep watch. I will water the yard.
Knot the tie and go to work. Unknot the tie and go to sleep.
I sleep. I dream. I make up things

that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
The trees in wind, the streetlights on,
the click and flash of cigarettes
being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight.

It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,
green beautiful green.
It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green.

-Richard Siken