There’s a time when trees are bleeding,
To fill the space with something new.
Or with the birth from something seeding
blossoms, tapping into something true.
Darkness shimmers in the winter,
Lit by stars and crystal air.
A meaning carried front and center
When bells ring out so loud and clear.
A life, a gift from God to sinners
In a sense puts heaven near.
So like the carols sound arisen
Sung out with a shimmering light
For our selves and for our children
Merry Christmas all, Good Night!
Like a flying squirrel that barrels down from its perch in the spruce,
limbs outstretched to maneuver the route.
Or a frog sitting pond-side, croaking then hops,
extending its haunches, an arc then kerplop.
A paper airplane from the rafters, lofted on air,
glides downward in spirals – a no assistance affair.
The mighty blue whale swims along as it sings,
I wander my world, and I ponder these things
with no such breaching to remark on my way.
Some landings are harsh with a huge debt to pay.
But the ease of the motion, the faith in the flight,
and the jump into deepness with the floor so benighted.
That gravity holds so much in its hands,
or lets as much go as we give way our stance
from a limb or a high point in a precipitous fall.
The squirrel nor the frog or the whale know at all
how the glide of the plane comes in for a landing.
Yet I know that I move in ways far less demanding,
with not so much height or a flight on a good day.
The landing is harsh, with a huge debt to pay.
Color me up to the edges of my outline in thatches of crayon strokes; bits of ochre, fern and midnight blue.
Rarely will I bleed ink on the pages, but mostly to my fingertips, black and blue from pressure on the quill.
Means are geometric for non-normal distributions. A gathering blue that peaks then tails into infinity.
Anything that rarely happens once is blue, like the synodic moon to achieve its baker’s dozen dominance.
But in the context of other palettes, blue marks the calmness
Love brings to the spirit.
Carried away in a winter flurry, I floated beyond the roadway to field
a cascade of tumbling and turning in fury with no senses left in my fractal to wield.
Drafted amidst an embankment of feathered snowfall and friends gathered up in the wind.
There is limited space in my baggage, and whether I stop or continue is reliant on spin.
It’s a harsh realization to how I might stay, unique as a creation, only to melt away.
Flying in dust with a storm from the desert, arid and blustered, sandblasting a wall.
I am the barrage that is hurtled, angered by winds and force-fed by a squall,
piled against structures both modern and ancient, weighted in crystal to bury the past.
Left as a mountain of sand filled with barrenness, nothing remains, and silence is cast.
Here lies a path of how to live at dead ends, angry, destructive, withered and bent.
Waiting in place for the sunrise to settle, tucked in a flower covered with dew.
Soon come the buzzwords and breezes of springtime, lofting me out to a story anew.
Thrumming and whirling from petal to petal, sometimes expulsion to ride on the air
Longing for fruits of a cross-pollination in scenes, not the plot from a book by Voltaire. Newness in bloom, a result of this happenstance, the physics of particles make up the dance.
A smoky glitter emanating from a fire,
stirred and stoked from flames as I admire
pulling misty conflagrations in my sight.
These shuffling sparkles fight with stars for focus now at night.
Opening salvos resonate unspoken tongues,
and golden tickets don’t always sing what one becomes.
Dancing bees regard me with a little gaze,
for I am not a flower or a gathering of bouquets.
Neither do I seek what’s meant of snags that drag me slow.
Efforts crafted nimbly well succeed in legato.
But an artist’s eccentricities stand out
like sand verbena after rain ends desert drought.
These purple blossoms on desert floors
flash life/disintegrate, but something more,
The dust of aged whispers, ghostly to be sure,
might only be conversant in myths and refutation of the obscure.
A beauty speaks some truths, as the nighttime fireside gleams.
This can hardly be the fruit or grains of my muse dream.
The fire has smoldered and ashes pulse and glow,
my thoughts of poetry fade in pianissimo.
Now berries of a bitter kind are hulled,
and I partake of all the sweetness I can cull.
~A villanelle~
The creation of art is a mystical power
a mirror of a mind, sometimes tedious or blind
but it’s something I could do for hours and hours.
Pouring a vision into handicraft that’s ours
becomes this tangible model of glitter, matte or kind
the creation of art blossoms its flowers.
Wily, constructions with transcendent powers,
a collage of many lives on as one in time,
and strikes the synapse at a witching hour.
Concluding the whispered poetry with a glower,
a musical interlude, rhymed and intertwined.
I could go on, as I’m musing the power.
That last fabrication, I observe and devour
and with concluding approval, I am so inclined.
The creation of art is a mystical power
and I could continue for hours on hours.
My father was a lifetime member of ACDA (the American Choral Directors Association), and despite his passing several years ago, I’ve continued to receive monthly copies of their flagship publication, The Choral Journal. Even though I am not a choral director, I find it a calming connection to my dad’s interests, in a way, and sometimes I learn something new.
For example, I recently read an article in the August issue of “The Choral Journal” about the problems and possibilities of Irish choral music. The article largely lays out the argument that Irish choral music is sparse due to the non-indigenous nature of “native” choral music in Ireland. This is partly due to Irish music’s historical development of ornamental solo melodies coupled more with unison responses; however, subsequent development is complicated by the cultural implications of British colonialism and the suppression of the Irish language, and the long polarizing battle over religious preferences. That many Irish themes in choral music are largely the work of British composers is unique to this environment.
Within the article, the author identifies that there are a small number of Irish-born composers that deserve more mention in the history of Irish music composition, and in particular, choral composition. One of these – Rhoda Coghill – is who I want to feature in this “Poet in Mind.”
Rhoda Coghill was born in Dublin on October 14,1903. She was the youngest of eight children. Her father was a Scotsman who worked as a printer, and her mother was a Dublin native. Rhoda displayed musical ambition at an early age, beginning piano lessons at the age of eight. She was talented and considered a prodigy. By the time she was 22, she had amassed twenty-one prizes at the Feis Ceoil [fesh-k’yole], an Irish classical music festival to encourage native Irish performers and composers.
Over her lifetime she was a sought-after soloist and accompanist and served as the primary accompanist for Radio Eireann. She was self-taught as a composer, composing piano pieces, selections for voice and piano, and arrangements of Irish folk songs. Arguably, her best-known work was composed when she was twenty years of age in 1923. It was a rhapsody for Tenor, choir, and orchestra, entitled “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” The work uses text from the poem by Walt Whitman. Coghill was a student at Trinity College, Dublin at the time, and being just after the conclusion of the Irish civil war, the work was unable to be performed due to inadequate orchestral resources. The work wasn’t fully performed live until 1990.
As mentioned previously, Coghill composed a number of original pieces based on Irish poetry. She specifically used several George Russell and Padraic Colum poems. Two examples are A Ballad Maker, by Padraic Colum and Refuge, by George Russell. Her poetic tendencies in composition fell toward the romantic and beauty in nature. Her attempts to be taken seriously as a composer were met with a certain ambivalence typical of the period towards women. She had conquered music as a performer and held a respected position as accompanist for the state radio; however, acknowledge of her compositional successes were not to come in her lifetime.
Coghill began writing poetry in the 1940s. She only published two small poetry collections in her lifetime: The Bright Hillside (1948) and Time is a Squirrel (1956) and, sadly, both are out of print. I’ve only been able to find excerpts that were used in the references. She wrote from a musician’s point of view, with phrasing and thematic elements that are expressed in rhythm. Her work was praised as a new voice at the time of publication. Several of her poems are gendered female and express the stark societal expectations of Irish women during the early 20th century: forced into marriage with older, more financially secure men, having very little control over their destiny, and the sense of duty carried. Some reviewers have speculated that her poems were a reaction to her dismay at the lack of recognition for her musical compositions.
With a gull’s beak I cry,
And mount through strong resistance.
My wingspan beats the sky,
Across the high distance,
Circling about your place,
Wheeling to cover your bed
With the curve of space
And the airs overhead;
To keep you, to delay
Spirit in one dear shape;
But spirit will not stay
When it has planned escape,
And life at last will leave
This, and all bodies dead
Those who remain to grieve,
The world they habited.
From “The Young Bride’s Dream.” In “The Bright Hillside”, Rhoda Coghill
Another poem excerpt appears to lament the loss of inspiration, and the hope of finding it elsewhere… perhaps in poetry.
…I’ll find a fruit upon another tree,
One day, so full of juice that I’ll be sucking
Until my very lips drip poetry
Coghill, ‘Lamenting a Sterile Muse’, The Bright Hillside, 1948
I hope to one day find a copy of either of these collections. I am grateful to have happened upon this writer and musician.
Boushel, Kevin, Irish Choral Music: Problems and Possibilities, Choral Journal, August 2024, Vol 63, No. 1, pp 6 – 20
Watson, Laura, Epitaph for a Musician: Rhoda Coghill as Pianist, Composer and Poet, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 11 (2015–16), p. 3
Schreibman, Susan, Irish Women Poets 1929-1959 Some Foremothers, Colby Quarterly, Vol. 37, Issue. 4 [2001], Article 4
In my personal shadow-box are many treasures and perhaps some rocks, toys and memories from my past, and in the shadow-box, they last.
From my pocket to the side, I pulled a pinch of something ossified, what once may have been from a wound debrided. It’s simply a pebble, I’ve now decided.
A marble, glassy, green and blue, from a collection of many I had and threw around the playground tree at school, collecting spoils for keeps like jewels.
His gun raised up high, a green plastic soldier from a platoon of recruits that I had as I was older. Despite the difference in my age and size, I never developed a loud battle-cry.
A tiny, tyrannosaurus rex, a figurine without a sex, insignias on patches and badges – but none of them jog my memory with matches.
A matchbox car painted apple-red, with opening doors and the letter zed on the hood. Don’t ask me why it’s there, I’m not sure I could.
An old pocket watch that no longer tells time, I’m grateful to all that had passed in its prime, next to a heart made from elastic and beads, stretchy and tactile and has met all my needs.
A rounded, polished piece of quartz made from tumbling, now distorts lines and letters like mumbling. This shadow box where these trinkets have graced, all the while keeping my memories encased.
Close your eyes and count to ten.
Wishes won't come true 'til then.
Considerations blink and mar your thoughts.
Up to two you've tied a dream in knots.
In this moment, circumspect
reaction might cause you neglect.
The delay in what your heart is wishing for -
not long - succinct - a brief six-seconds more.
Close your eyes, accumulate -
(your mind digresses while you wait).
Make a list of salient bullet-points
to greet the sunrise when you wake your voice.
And in the moment just before
you reach the end count's opening door,
in heroic fashion speak your truth and due
and banish all the hardness once beshrewed.
It’s a sound welling up from a guttural wheeze,
Brought forth in the presence of an obvious need.
Clusters of friendship, opening a door
for giggles and snorts and guffaws galore.
Nature’s convergence is there to create,
though few evident species can cachinnate.
The turtle, the emu, the rabbit or shrew
None of these chortle or cackle or spew
forth the boisterous emission of laughter,
the kind leaving you breathless and heaving thereafter.
And from the next room, while I search the thesaurus,
sniggling and outbursts blend into a chorus.
I’ve captured a moment, but not twinkling insight
to laughter, the remedy cure-all tonight.
*****
It has been quite a while since I have had the inspiration to write a poem. The last half of 2023 has been a difficult time. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in late summer and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. This evening, she was having a Zoom gathering with four of her best friends, and the laughter emanating from their conversations was infectious. Try as I may, I can’t reproduce their joy. But perhaps I shouldn’t worry about that, the joy is medicine for her. Thanks for reading. :)
Taps and Ratamacues 