Jonathan Luke

Yesterday was the day my brother died, and tomorrow is the day my grandfather died. I'm not sad - those are not the feelings clapping through my skull like tiny dwarves with hammers (or somersaulting porcupines). It's a confusing time to celebrate a birthday.
It reminds me of that one scene in Princess Mononoke (if you have not seen it, shame on you!), when Ashitaka is wounded and San brings him to the forest spirit for healing. Every step the forest spirit takes, flowers and grasses form up and bloom around its ankles, and then shrivel into death, as though each plant was born, grew, lived, and died in the space of a moment, in the time it took for the forest spirit to lift its foot from the forest floor. Life can be short as a breath or long as forever, depending on how you savor its gifts. As we celebrate new life, we witness the toll paid also for any life lived: its eventual end. Is there sorrow in this? That too depends on where and how you look at the world.

Today I spent time looking through a bunch of different poems with an emphasis on Elizabeth Bishop (whose poetry I have enjoyed quite a bit today).

I never really remembered my grandparents names on my mother's side. I don't remember them. My mother told me them, today: Bertram and Janet. Janet died when my mother was 7 from leukemia, and Bertram, my grandfather, died when I was very young.

Jonathan means the Lord gives and Luke is a latin name meaning light.


Between the ghastly fog
and the road, one lamp
pulses with a ruddy, unnatural light.
Luke, the Lord has given
Jonathan, my light -
I tried, oh, dear God, I tried
not to cry - it would only increase
the frozen stretch of street
layered beneath my feet.
the diffused glow of
orange and pink that bounces
between the shroud and snow
helplessly, I know what it is, and how
one solitary stretch of tears
the light won't mind

Huginn and Muninn

Louise Gluck was my poet of the day, brought to me by Simic's commentary. Simic is quite extreme with her writing, saying it's either brilliant or falling horribly flat: lacking in wisdom, wit, or even significant artistic merit. These are powerful words regarding a Pulitzer prize winning poet, and in the poems Simic describes as cliche and banal, I still see poetry far exceeding the quality of my own. I have no long-term desire to be a poet, but it provides a ready comparison that humbles my learning journey.

Yet it is heartening to hear that even the great poets of the last twenty years can falter and fall, writing poetry that lacks depth and direction. No one writes perfectly every time, and it leaves me wondering how many failed attempts great poets leave behind their successful endeavors. 

But Gluck writes some very interesting poetry, evoking powerful imagery in only a few concise phrases, such as this one:

It is coming back to me.

Pear tree. Apple tree. 

I used to sit there

pulling arrows out of my heart

(Louise Gluck)

It's a short poem, but it's beautiful, dreadful. 

Tomorrow (the 8th) is the day my little brother died. It's a day of Huginn and Muninn, those ravens that follow our wheel around us on our journeys through life. It is also Saturday, the Shabbat, and I hope to, if not finish, draw close to finishing the Renegade, by Simic. I'm glad it is the weekend, I'm glad the world is wrought anew in white, and I'm glad of friends.

The name of my little brother was Jonathan, which means the Lord has given. We often follow that phrase up with 'the Lord taketh away', and so God has. My parents could not conceive for years following that, and when they finally did, my little brother Samuel (God has listened) was born- appropriate in view of the story of Hannah. Good night - happy weekend. Enjoy the snow (if you have it)