Sunday 14 January 2007

CROUCHING FROG

My first visitor came while I was assembling critters, the critters Oliver taught me to make last week. I've made 30 already this morning, six stripped pinecone cores wedged under the scales of a fat pinecone. I call them "Olivitters." I scattered them through my meadow, in pairs, on their own. They look like donkey ears, little cloves, hooves, water bugs with an air of prehistory. Crouching frogs.

RAT, O RAT

I shared the work of British poet Christopher Logue with Barrett, my first visitor today. Barrett is from Yakima. He is a short story writer and a lover of poetry. He read silently the poems I gave him, "Rat, O Rat" and an untitled piece by Logue on the subject of three blind men. "They find a table near the door./They telescope their sticks and wait."

We talked about a writer's need for community and solitude, the need to maintain a unique but connected mind. It is not just land they mean to mark. It is the human mind. Take special care of the mind.

Can we benefit from the breadth of opinions and ideologies we meet? How do we suffer from our inability to compromise, absorb, dialogue, concede? How do we suffer and gain from our theology?

MENDING A WALL

Barrett threw Robert Frost on the table. There, take that. "Mending a Wall." "The gaps I mean,/No one has seen them made or heard them made." It must have been a silent eruption then. Can the gaps Robert Frost is speaking of be poetry? Can the wall itself be language? "We keep the wall between us as we go." Must the barrier be long? Can a 2-foot length not divide as well? Divide artist from audience? "He is all pine and I am apple orchard./My apple trees will never get across." This is our fear, excommunication, isolation, being terminally misunderstood. Our fear and our concern. That the apples will in fact get across. And, at the same time, that they will not. Both have their obligations. This is where we spend our time. Where we lie in wait. "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.”

SNOWY MORNING

I read "Snowy Morning" by Henry Shukman to my visitors. "This is a day that decides all by itself to be beautiful." Bev and many others I talked to came to the lake to experience this morning, the ice bristles marching down the blades of grass by the fence posts, the white thorns radiating from the tree branches, the snow dust, the morning dew turned to confection in the grass. "Now, under the shag of decades, after so much/contact with things, it takes a morning like this."

The crow pulls his voice where he goes. The smoky morning becomes a frozen fog through which the sun, like a full moon, gradually shows. Bev and the others have come to watch the light rise in the southern sky, to transform the fog to a bow of crystals, lift and shimmer in the light. And then pour out, blue and light, catching like glass the tangled grass on the surface. No wind on the lake. Half dark, half lit, from where I lean on my desk. The sun, through my hair, warms my scalp. I forgot my hat, have thin dress socks under my slip-on shoes. I spent the night on a friend's couch, went to bed at 1:30am, woke quite early to select today's poems, to print a packet to share with Green Lake and then wandered around over the diamond crusted purse of the morning.

SWEEPING

Bev turns to the thawing fog, I to my screen. We search for the light in poems, in natural things. We look around for a verse capable of clearing the prose away. Something worth seeing, worth stopping over and blessing. The prayers of this world. I have finally put some paper into a plastic folder and put that under my feet to help insulate me. The cold is making stones of my feet.

So many warm feet on the path now that the sun is out. Now that the Sea Hawks have finished their game. This strange and quiet morning has given way. The path is again moving. It is noon. The thorns have fallen from the trees.

STENDAHL (1783-1842)

Begin in increments. "Vingt lignes par jour, génie ou pas." Twenty lines a day, genius or no, he says. Twenty lines. Let us begin.

It is To the Happy Few that Stendahl dedicates his work. To the happy few who understand him. The happy few who were born into privilege. The happy few who live without fear or hatred. The happy few, I might add, who...

• live in the rite
• walk a deliberate path
• wander with their eyes open
• with swaddled hearts
  
  GARUDA
  
  Vishnu, Master of the Universe, sent garudas today. In Hindu and Buddhist myth, garuda is an eagle. "It is said that when a garuda's wings flap, they create hurricane-like winds that darken the sky and blow down houses" [Wikipedia]. The garudas work as a team, swooping an attack over the splashes and swirls in the lake. A coot dives in to save itself.
  
  ROBINS
  
  A congress of red robins scourged my meadow today. These are the first robins I've seen since my project began in July of 2006.
  
  Mylinda, Scott and Beckett save the day with a thermos full of tea.
  
  Larry and Barbara save the day with Almond Roca.
  
  Eight Russian students save the day with a question, "What is your project?"
  
  The robins are back.
  
  ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP
  
  I read to my visitors Mark Ford's "Inside."
  
  "There are wheels within wheels, he yelled
  At the wall, and within those wheels
  Are tiny images, untitled books,"
  
  [from "Inside by Mark Ford]
  
  Ford plumbs the mystery for meaning. What lies between night and day, he asks? What lies between the visible and the hidden? Between knowledge and mystery? Ford proposes we look into that hour, the hour of the setting sun, between dusk and dark, when it becomes impossible to distinguish between a dog and a wolf, entre chien et loup. Hour of wonder and dread. Is Ford's mystery, the mystery Yannis Ritsos? Not a pointe vierge, not a distinct moment or an instance of perfection, fleeting and potent, but a drawn-out frame, an indefinite and irresolvable stretch of time that loses its lines, meaning and consequences, and because of a lack of perspective, gains new power to mean, form and associate both superficially and dimensionally.
  
  "Squinting sun, another set of assumptions to watch quiver
  And disband:"
  
  [from "Inside by Mark Ford]
  
  ON PAINTING AT DUSK
  
  It is the close of day. There is just enough light angling over Phinney Ridge to dapple Sherwood in a glaze of medium. The sun sets, this time of year, over the scotch pine to my right. The willow, at this hour, dips its fingertips in bronze. The branches that scoop down low to the lake catch the holiday light, brassy, in their palms.
  
  35 visitors.

Sunday 7 January 2007

A FLAGGING SPIRIT

44F. It is warm again. The wind is gusting out of the south. The apple on my desk rocks on its crown. There are white caps out on the lake. I woke to a deluge this morning. I woke thinking it was Monday. I often take it for a Monday and lay in bed wondering, how will I get to work? Am I late? Shall I bicycle? Perhaps I should call in, take the whole day? As the room settles and weight begins to fill the objects, I work into the day. Sunday, still Sunday, the day I bring poetry to the lake. I am going to stand out all day in this weather. Canceling the poetry desk is not an option. Not a desire. This is the important work.

By time I leave my apartment, the rain abates. I bundle up. Long johns, boots, hat, gloves, a rain jacket, three insulating layers. No matter what I wear, the wind will sap my heat.

Tattered leaves wave in the short grass. A dirty screen is drawn up over Seattle. The wind buffets a gull in my meadow. The Circlers race about with red faces. This is the sort of wind that knocks trees over. If I were to stand directly behind my Eastern White Pine, I would get relief from the wind. It is cold. My hands don't work. It is not yet 10am and I haven't entertained one visitor. I want to walk to the shop, find a seat, sit with a coffee and write. Time in a coffee shop would create results. What work am I producing here?

It is a pleasure to hear the bells, like old friends traipsing across my meadow. I must plead with the pastor soon to bring back the 5 o'clock bells. They mean so much. Perhaps their sound can only come from a hollow place? Perhaps such a hollow has a space for me? Perhaps I can begin to forgive the void as I invent a new story.

The circle is windswept and desolate after last week's bounty full. January in Seattle, time for an armchair, the an electric fireplace, a movie house, a bookstore, pub, café. If this were Pennsylvania, a day like today would be a horseshow, a field hockey game. If Boston, the warm wind and damp earth would be a sculpture in Concord, a street artist in Harvard Square.

It poured itself out this morning. Now there is no window to the sky. The dirt blows past. I shiver despite long johns, despite the hood I have pulled over my hat.

A PROSE ENSIGN

I am reading The Best American Poetry: 2006 edited by Billy Collins. I struggle with this issue, read poems out of it to my visitors. David Yezzi's "The Call." Much of the work in this issue raises questions about poetry. What is it? What is the distinction between poetry and prose? The poems I like best from it are more prose than poetry: Ilya Bernstein, "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"; George Green, "The Death of Winckelmann"; Daniel Gutstein, "Monsieur Pierre est mort." Remind yourself now that good prose harbors ample poetry.

Billy Collins, guest editor in 2006, is a poet I have long admired for his accessibility , for his work to bring poetry into schools. So what if he refuses to apologize for his mistakes and tastes. His final selections are poems that speak to him. Forget if it would reach a reader. He is the reader. He admits to being biased. You and I are biased too.

Collins scolds poets today for being mediocre. Choosing the best of 2006 was not at all difficult, he says, given the sampling. He harkens to a time "when personal taste was a legitimate basis for literary experience." But remember, while Collins was exposed to the intense mix of cultures in New York City, he was neither raised nor educated there. His own poetry speaks in the dominant mode: narrative, modern, white, male. His best list has twice as many male poets.

What about Collins' love of poetry was learned, by whom? Who is being taught today in schools? How many female editors has Best American Poetry had since its inception in 1988? The answer is five. And the number of men? Fifteen. Simply another something to consider.

Sunday 31 December 2006

READING, AN ETERNAL QUEST FOR ANSWERS

Once I have read a poem aloud, Joel puts forth his knee-jerk response, "But what does it mean? Does it mean anything or is it just words?" The recurring question of meaning is not only Joel's. We, all of us, read for meaning and so when poetry seems not to mean or is not clear, we want to know why. We want someone to explain. There are many readers suspicious of poetry, so how is it possible to move past our fears, to approach poetry with an open mind, to allow it to mean? Where shall we draw the line? And what, as readers, shall we demand?

It is the reader's work to pay close attention, to read well, to give the poem a chance to communicate and finally, in the end, to demand that it mean. Jean Cocteau said "every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered." It is the reader's work. And if after reading a poem you end up with just words, it is possible the poet has failed, it is possible you have failed, it is possible too that the time is not right to walk into this poem. The best you can do is read closely. Read and reread. Come at it when your mood is different. Repeated readings may bear meanings it is impossible to reach at first. If you are having trouble, set it aside. Read another poem by the same artist. Become familiar with her style. Learn her language and symbology. Learn something of her background. Approach her again later. Set yourself on a quest for her meaning. And for goodness sake, read your fairy tales. The more familiar you are with the great stories of death and resurrection, the easier poetry will be to access.

Yannis Ritsos calls the byproduct of poetry a mystery. Writing poetry "means joining things that don't normally fit to create the representation of a new thing." This is only achievable, "if there exists the possibility of sympathetic affinities between all that exists" [Best Words, Best Order, Dobyns]. Such affinities must exist and so the possibility must exist. Perhaps it is not so much a mystery as an uncovering? A reconnecting? That's a nice thought and a credit to the poet.

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

A poet should be of the
old-fashioned meaningless brand:
obscure, esoteric, symbolic, --
the critics demand it;
so if there's a poem of mine
that you do understand
I'll gladly explain what it means
till you don't understand it.

-- Piet Hein, Danish poet/scientist/architect

TRUTH

Connecting is tantamount for Ritsos. He insists on "the writer's responsibility to the reader to create a 'true' language so that the connection takes place." Truth cannot exist without a genuine word addressed to a real individual, a word put forth with the intention to communicate. "A word is not true unless it exists to communicate, until it exists for the reader." If it is uttered out of confusion or pride, it will fail to connect. Fail to mean. A poem made of such words will also fail.

"The poet's job is to use language to make the reader see what he has seen―first, to reduce the intrinsic isolation of poet and reader by making a bridge between them; second, to validate what the poet has seen, because if the reader doesn't see what the writer had seen, then perhaps the writer has merely hallucinated; third, to bear witness to the mystery. The first reason is social; the second is psychological; and the third is moral. Thus the body, mind and spirit of the poet remain in tact. And what at first seems selfish, takes on an ethical role" [Ritsos in Best Words, Best Order, Dobyns].

And the reader? What responsibility does she bear? How does she figure into the event? The reader's job is to demand truth; to meet the poet with courage through the work; and to participate in the mystery. I cannot do this for you, dear reader, no more than you can do this for me. The best we can do is to open dialog, discuss what it might mean, talk about what you can take from it and what I can take from it and together make a connection and open our thoughts.

BEING HERE

Is being here, beside the lake, enough? Can I relax my stance yet? There are those who have heard my diatribe a hundred times. Can I ease the message? No. It is my task to make this new, again and again. To rephrase this question. Discover new answers. The answers cannot become static, for if they do the matter is over and poetry will have been seated and we can all just go away. No, no, poetry must grow in order to mean. To live, it must grow within each of us.

WAVES

The day was clear and dry. Hoards of people on the speedway. My first contact was a wave from the pathway, "Happy New Year!" No one I recognized, but someone who knows me. Someone who recognizes me as the poet, the poet at Green Lake. Hallo, you there on the carousel, let us greet more often in 2007.

Steve came along then with his "I Am" faith and his poems, offering instruction on the miracle of "something from nothing," and "nothing from something." Small groups formed all day. The spirit of the great poets must have been somersaulting. Not long after Joel, came Kevin and Steven. Then Clinton and Hugo. And Bev. Pairs broke off and discussed lines further and those pairs split and reformed and the conversation became another thing. Contention about what we see. About what we hear and understand. What is our purpose.

Steve offered his blessings to a woman walking past. She looked like she could use a new coat, some place to rest. She gnarled a response, "I don't want 'em. I don't believe in 'em." Well," Steve chided, "Do you want my cursings?" "I don't believe in them either!" She was as tough as she looked and she wouldn't allow for Steve's two fisted constructions. For her, the concept of something from nothing was not plausible. There are too many circles already, too many definitions, too many relevant meanings to choose from, or perhaps no choice at all. What sort of plurality does she have in mind?

GOING INTO THE CENTER (THE PLUNGE)

I have vowed to swim across Green Lake before the end of the year. And here it is, one week away. I have been trying on wet suits at local dive shops. I finally borrowed one from a friend. The date is set for tomorrow, January 1st. I don't like the idea of going in after 8 hours at my poetry desk on New Year's Eve. Better to start fresh and warm on the 1st. Clinton and Mark have done this before. They know what to expect. Clinton's been swimming, as a matter of fact, all winter. "You get used to the cold," he says. He has booties and gloves and a neoprene hood. He is protected, but still there is your face and the back of your neck. Still there is the water that seeps into your suit.

LIBATION

Wyatt and the magnificent unclipped Zooey came to say hello. "I haven't seen you since summer!" No more a panama hat, now a cap and braided sweater framed his face. He pulled from his canvas knapsack a bottle of wine. "Thank you for being here and for representing the artists." What a soft speaker. What an eye on the world. Oh artists, oh poets, do you hear? This is cause for celebration. We have been recognized by a fellow. We've been recognized and this is cause. We'll drink this libation after we arrive at the center. We'll drink this after the plunge. Thank you. It is an honor to be seen.

GREEN LAKE PERFORMANCE ART

How to Hug a Meadow
Erasing a Duck
5 Circles Misunderstood
Why the Merman Sings
A Score in the Grass

Italian poet and composer of the Futurist Manifesto , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, is credited as the first performance artist. He was uproarious about the nostalgia for Classical art at the turn of the century, the longing for a pastoral time. It was in 1909. He called on his fellow artists to embrace the factory, to glorify in speed and the machine. "Beauty exists only in struggle. What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?" His response became the performance. His response became his art.

PEACE & JOY

There is a walk today, a meditation for compassion and peace, organized by the Interfaith Church. From 3-5pm, they will enact diverse spiritual traditions and walk around the lake. I cannot remember seeing so many people, such thick bands, turn the speedway. Not even on a summer day were the crowds so resilient!

Peace and joy, these words resurface. Maybe it is time to learn them? I have drafted my resolutions for the new year. My first order of business is to meditate for one minute of each day on world peace. But what does peace look like? What image, what text shall I conjure? Not myself on a bicycle harking at those who hark at me. And joy, what shall I do about joy? Peace and joy. This will require some thought.

HOW DO THE COMMUNITY & THE ARTIST INTERSECT?

This is what concerns me.

HOME-HOME

I am being accused of needing stability, which is to say I am lacking in stability. Indeed, I am seeking home. I am the first to admit it. That is what Nostalgia is about. Finding home. Or rather, questioning home. Questioning what we seek in home and in ourselves, questioning what we avoid. Because really, home is home. What's so hard about finding home? Go to the place you were born. Go to the place you grew up. Go to the place you remember. Go to the place that feels good. When you find home, you know it. It's familiar. You recognize the curtains, the screen door, the kitchen table. When you find your tribe, you know them. Ah, my people! And you can find them anywhere. In all economies, spread out over the globe.

So you say I'm creating the idea of home, literally, at Green Lake, and that in setting up and handing out this sort of continuity, this sort of stability and reliability, I'm projecting what I hope to gain from the world. Ok, let's say I buy that. Of course I'm looking for my place in the world. No, not of course. There are people wandering around who feel most at home wandering, I suppose. And there are those who have found their place, who are no longer seeking, who are settled in, which doesn't mean they might not go on a journey from time to time. No, the kind of home I am talking about is the kind you construct within. The self as home. What other home is there? I'm talking about the sort of home that travels with you. The sort that exhibits striving, not to be something else, but to grow within oneself. A striving at peace with peace.

I have included in my Green Lake Manifesto: Being here is enough. Learn to be here. I recite this to myself, "You are already here." Though I don't believe it. Not really. And perhaps this is why I am not here? Because I don't know what being here feels like? I can admit to this.

Andy Goldsworthy (environmental sculptor) talks about learning change from spending an extended period of time in one place, experiencing a place through the seasons. I have moved around enough to know difference, but am still ignorant of change. Green Lake is partly about this, about stilling myself and experiencing change. For the first time in my adult life, I am learning the names of birds and trees I myself am drawing and identifying. Counting the leaves as they fall. Watching the people pass.

But can I admit to seeking a home? Despite appearances, I am the first to upset the stability I find. I am happiest when progressing and that means moving in any number of ways. Is this true, what I am saying? Words are not a substitute for experience. Words are what life looks like, the sounds of belief, desire's direction, but the truth changes as it looks for a language. What I know is neglect. I have neglected my own spirit for so long, in lieu of my body and mind and heart. It is high time I began to tend my spirit, if it is still there for the tending. This, I believe, is what I am looking for at Green Lake. This is what I am hoping to provide.

Sunday 24 December 2006

LAKE VIEW

Horizontal shadows score the thick verticals and scooping lines of my willow. The cattails, like microphones, stand catching the ruffles of wind. All of the leaves are gone. My stand of birch trees is transparent. Here is the lake view they sold me on.

Vinnie, a visitor from my very first week here, in early July, came to say hello. Do you remember me? Yes, you were going to play a song for me on your guitar. Vinnie has since bought a new guitar and gave his old one to his teenage son. Vinnie says he's been playing more, which makes him happy. I say, happiness is a good guide.

Diane and Catherine, a mother and daughter duo and frequent visitors, bring a phrase from Margaret Meade, "freedom from load." Is this what we desire? Freedom from load? No, not me. I am constantly supplimenting my load, no sooner is a load carried away then I pile it on again. Like the ancient scarab rolling its little sun across the heavens, how do I know my burden is not also a source of light? And if the goal is to diminish the load? One must learn then to stop nourishing it. One must learn the art of decrease. How is this different from death?

Margaret Meade leads to Jean Houston and Jean Houston to Colin Wilson. "Poetry, Wilson argues, is a contradiction of the habitual prison of daily life and shows the way to transcend the ordinary world through an act of intense attention -and intention. The poet, like the mystic, is subject to sudden ""peak experiences"" when ""everything we look upon is blessed"" [Publisher Comments on Poetry and Mysticism by Colin Wilson]. Do burdens increase or decrease the likelihood of these peaks? What do peaks have to do with freedom? If we are speaking of a certain, restricting chaos of the mind, I agree it is unlikely for sudden and blessed images to enter the strained mind, but if we are speaking of physical burdens, I strongly disagree. I have long felt that the bearing of physical burdens does just the opposite and rather increases the likelihood of such peaks. In fact, I have based my life on it. What do I mean by physical burden? I mean particpating in the moral process of things. I mean the intentional journey. The winding route.

Diane points to Bill Holm. Bill Holm is a direction to explore. She suggests his Box Elderbugs Variations . Thank you. Perhaps elderbugs will clear up the matter.

Pam and David stop to report on their trip to Guatemala. And to thank me for being here. Thank you, Pam and David, for seeing me. That is the part of me being here that means. They tell me of a man sitting in my meadow, at a different desk, earlier this week. "There was someone here in your place. You've got imitators." "Well," I reply, "that pleases me. I'd like to meet this man."

ANCHORS

On my walk home tonight, at The Middle Place, I stop to wish for hope for those who have none this time of year. I kick over an imaginary anchor, a sea cross, Christian symbol of hope. Here, take harbor here. As I continue over the bridge, I notice the view from Aurora, between Canlis and the Aloha Motel, down to Lake Union. You can still see through the construction site to the lake, but soon this window will be closed. Walls will be constructed and a facade will go up. This stretch of sidewalk will be just another along Aurora without poetry. And Lake Union will go to the high-rises.

Dear High-Rise,
Keep watch over our lake. Care for it. Speak out if someone would harm it.
--The Sidewalk

THE WEIGHT OF A POETRY DESK

When you're standing at the edge of the lake and it is 44F, in the wrong jacket, the wrong shoes, it is a good idea to have a layer of insulation between the ground and your body. It is a good idea to bring heat packs. A cart with which to port your desk. I have been forgetting, for months, these things. The seasons will change. By spring I will realize how I have worked my way through winter without these things. How to explain the value of working around these things, things which would no doubt bring comfort? How to explain the experiences their absence provokes?

The opposite of comfort is not suffering. It is but an alternate way of understanding weights and distances, temperatures and volumes. A way of closing in on the world. On the rivulets streaming in the gutter, glistening in the street lights.

The most significant things I see each day, the things I would not otherwise see, sometimes it takes a desk and eight hours in the rain to see such things. Sometimes it takes wanting a comfort, asking for a comfort, looking for a comfort and then rejecting it anyway. Walking in the rain despite the fact that you forgot your jacket and left your umbrella behind, despite the fact that it is dark and, on top of that, Christmas eve. Then, as you climb over the piles of cut branches from the trees that fell across the way, trees that must have for a night and a day shut down this road, as you are forced off of the sidewalk and into the gutter, into that gleaming stream of water, you suddenly understand, in a way so clear it astounds you, the worth of things, the workings of things and your place in the world.

THE PORTING

What is the purpose of carrying a wooden desk these two blocks? How does it change you to know the weight of your desk? How does it change you to know the weight of your desk both before and after the gifts they brought? The chocolates from Bruce, the nuts from Clinton, the cookies from Hayley, the oranges from Joel, the canteen full of tea, the books? Why would knowing this make a difference? I had to stop four times on my walk to PCC, my desk was so heavy. Sometimes now, I carry my desk the entire way without stopping. After all, I am cold by 5pm. Carrying my desk means generating warmth. Carrying my desk means movement. I am happy to carry my desk off and wander home. The sun set half an hour ago. I am tired of standing in the cold.

I am not in exile. I am not in prison. I am not laboring against my will. This is my construction, this weight, this distance, this service. How could I possibly see it as suffering? Why would others see it as such? Cold is cold. Everyone feels cold, and especially today. Hunger is hunger. Heavy is heavy. Shall I avoid all that? Dust myself off each morning, call in the workers to suffer my weight, space and distance? Or shall I pick them up and know them myself?

ON THE DRAWBACKS OF BEING A POET AT THE EDGE OF THE LAKE

There are those who think I come to this meadow week after week for some reason other than poetry. There are those who think I am looking for companionship. There are those who believe I long for a partner. They are, perhaps, hopeful. There are those who think I am lonely or lost. Those who think I am looking for conversation. They are, perhaps, projecting. They see me as a personality, an outlet. They have moved past my purpose. There are those who assume I could walk away. Alas, but I am beholden to this post, this bit of land, this lake. Because of this, for this very fact, I am vulnerable. Still, there are those who would use my limits to their benefit. Siphon my search without beginning a search of their own. With no intention of forging out on their own. Perhaps they have come to direct my search. As if I were not competent to direct my own. As if I needed directing! To these people I say, "Go home. Look at your fears. Find a way to say what silences you. Find a way to explain why you start each day. When you can talk about your path, come back and report on your findings. Do not come before then."

ON THE DRAWBACKS OF HAVING A POET AT THE EDGE OF THE LAKE

Another obstruction.

ON THE DRAWBACKS OF MEETING A POET AT THE EDGE OF THE LAKE

The compassion you are apt to feel for the struggle of said poet is apt to push you to begin your own search. This will require commitment and work. This will mean risk. And failure.

POLICING THE SPEEDWAY

Just now a little boy outgrew himself, outstretched his boundaries, flew by on his tricycle, helmet proud and steady, a little mass bounding away from his father who stands beckoning on the speedway. His father's hollering grows farther and farther away. He turns his head, but only to me, for he is concentrating too hard to turn all the way around, and screams as loud as he can manage, "What!!?! I can't hear you!" Articulating each word for emphasis. He is behind the wheel of the machine now, going faster than perhaps he can control or imagine. His father begins to jog and then run, really it will take running to catch up to his son, his son is going that fast (perhaps it's time, after all, for a new bicycle) and finally catches up to him and brings his hand down in one stroke onto his son's helmet and stops him in his tracks and picks him out of his seat and turns his tricycle around. Never has a wild ride ended so abruptly. Never has a wanton spirit been more swiftly vacuumed up.

A GREEN LAKE POETRY MANIFESTO

1. A poem for everyone. Absolutely everyone.
2. Seek the poet. Know the poet. Be the poet. This is your work.
3. Begin the search for home within yourself.
4. Seeing is baseline. Hearing follows. Reading is of greater value still. But action is the ultimate. Action must take precedence. Think about your goals. Write them down. Take some small action toward achieving them today.
5. If you insist of walking in circles, walk with intention. Make sacred the ground you cover.
6. You have more in common with those on the path than you have dividing you. Use your common goals. Move forward as a community. Celebrate your differences. Practice sharing ideas. Other way of thinking.
7. It is never too late to hope. To dream. To act.
8. Being here is enough. Learn to be here.
9. Time is not money. Time is time.
10. Buy one poetry book this year. Read it all the way through. Memorize a poem. Change your life.