Ways of Thinking
Walk in the park some afternoon.
As your gaze encompasses
path, nearby trees, horizon,
sky, birds, grass, the mother,
you are within it all, you are
universe, watching itself.
Now picture your car, computer,
your books and personal stuff
things giving you security? Suddenly
you’re walking through the park.
Separate from everything you see.
Two exclusive ways of perceiving
or thinking. You can’t do both ways
at the same time. Learning this
in the heart makes it possible
to do one, then the other, and
walk in two worlds.
Our ancestors’ languages developed
from the first way of thinking — walking
as a part of the park. Invaders’ languages
developed from the second way, with
the park as something to be mastered.
But our invaders fail all by themselves,
ludicrous in their arrogance and cruelty.
Failing as we watch. Out of resources.
Wallowing in pollution. Unsustainable.
The second way leads to chaos. So...?
Learn your ancestors’ language.
― Thomas Hubbard
The Cabin in the Woods
Raining, with thunder and lightning and
an occasional singular hailstone on the tin porch-roof.
Makes the forest mysterious.
Cooled enough now to turn off the box fan. But
the forest wants me in there amongst its bugs and shady ideas,
in there walking the paths of questionable righteousness.
The forest wants me to rub against it in the rain,
slick and sweaty and a little besmudged.
The forest must surely be female. I feel her pulling me and grinning, "Come on, Thomas.
Come on in, we'll make ourselves comfortable."
Rain washes away the forest's inhibitions.
Trees waving at me with abandon,
"Come on, Thomas, just down the hill and in through this path.
Can you see it?
If I look out the window she'll have me.
It'll be all over.
Even if I just peek....
(pub. Riverbabble #25 summer 2014)
― Thomas Hubbard
WRITE YOUR POEM:
What are you doing with the notion of space in your poem.
By its nature as a form a poem leaves space on the page. Beyond that, however there is the distinct between the rural or urban. From Han Shan to Sam to Thomas, certain poets reach for a different interior space. They don't claim it as superior. They simply remember it apart from mechanized compression.
Beijing was and is an urban center. Urban centers drive the poetry of the East coast in the U.S. Without deserts, forests, rivers and oceans there is nothing left to open up on the page. As you sit down to "remember and define" as Sam offers in his book Habitation consider the space on your page. Are your words rocks against an ocean of space? Are your words horns honking on predefined roads?
Write your poem in the frost of a window. Let it fade into the morning. Look out the window.
Black Marsh Eclogue
Although it is midsummer, the great blue heron
holds darkest winter in his hunched shoulders,
those blue-turning-gray clouds
rising over him like a storm from the Pacific.
He stands in the black marsh
more monument than bird, a wizened prophet
returned from a vanished mythology.
He watches the hearts of things
and does not move or speak. But when
at last he flies, his great wings
cover the darkening sky, and slowly,
as though praying, he lifts, almost motionless,
as he pushes the world away
― Sam Hamill
