Claude Monet, “Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare”
Dreamscape on a Night Train
The train was a cradle that rocked me into a dream-filled sleep. I am young again, walking through a surreal fantasy-scape of dances, school, and boys. Seashore romances and glowing sunshine hours that seemed endless, but they did end, of course. Dreams became nightmares, and I became someone else, as if my soul was a baseball soaring through a calendar, reborn in a strike-out of the ninth month. Midnight became my time, I who had always loved mornings. In September 1940, Nighthawk hatched. I rose from the ashes and rubble around me. It took some time till I flew, but I did, circling and grabbing my prey. Then I let my guard down for you, and you betrayed me.
But Nighthawk is back, and some skills are never forgotten. I wake resolved.
A continuation of my spy series for dVerse Prosery. The given line is: “Out of the Ninth-month midnight,” from Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” I have mixed feelings about Prosery, and I found it very difficult to include the line in prose. I don’t know if it works, but here it is. I don’t think I’ve ever used a baseball or sports metaphor in my life!!! (I am not a sports fan at all.)
“So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream Speech”
“Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me” Martin Niemöller, “First They Came”
“Here, on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister’s eyes, and into Your brother’s face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope— Good morning.” –Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning”
Here we are
on the cusp, or the precipice
I want to write with eloquence, words of hope and inspiration
I have a dream
we are repeating history 1692 Salem, Massachusetts in 1860, almost at war, in the 1920s, the Klan at its peak, in 1938—the world ready to burn
as it is again.
Some would pour gas on the fire, burn it all— in bonfires of the vanities, books and rights,
they’d clothe our bodies in burkas, turn us to handmaids
No.
They say they are “pro-life,” but they let us die,
No.
We will look for Sophie Scholl among the students
We will follow Rosa Parks tired only of giving in
We will be as the Mothers of the Plaza looking for our disappeared,
deer protecting our fawns.
I have a dream
we will be Joyful Warriors ticking off the items on to-do lists,
and saying Good Morning with feeling,
But WE WILL NOT GO BACK
I have a dream the sun will rise over a sea of blue.
Sorry, I could not come up with an eloquent, inspirational, poetic post today. Tomorrow’s election is pretty much all I can think about right now. Everyone who reads my blog knows how I feel, and those who have voted for hate, or who plan to do so tomorrow, probably do not read my posts.
We’ve been having the most gorgeous autumn, even if we are facing a drought. We had a tiny bit of rain on November 1—and I even saw a rainbow. I’m taking that as a good sign.
We saw an excellent play on Saturday at the Arden Theater in Philadelphia, Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage. It did get off to a shaky start, however. It started about 10 minutes late. Then shortly into the first act, two women in the audience left. A few minutes later two more left. It turns out someone was sick—fortunately on the opposite side of the theater from our seats. They paused the show, turned on the house lights, and spent a long time cleaning the area. Despite that, we managed to get involved again in the performance. It’s about a Black woman in New York City in 1905. She came from the South and learned how to sew and create intimate apparel for women. She has friendships that are constrained by race, class, gender, and religion, and eventually she is courted by a man working on the Panama Canal. The play was inspired by Nottage’s great grandmother’s story. I thought all of the acting was excellent, and I like how the characters flowed into scenes within the set, which did not change. As usual, we walked around before and after the performance.
We finished The Devil’s Hour. I’m excited there will be a third season. We started season 2 of The Diplomat. Our horror films for Halloween night (with pumpkin pie) was It Follows. Our night after feature with homemade pizza and wine was Dr. Sleep.
Micro-fiction and poetry for the day. Happy Halloween!
You’ve Been Warned The orange letters on the front window of the small ranch house went up in October. “Keep Out,” they declared, though smiling Jack-o’-lantern stickers softened the message, giving it a seasonal nod-and-wink feel. Every night mechanical skeletons and ghosts on the lawn danced jauntily to Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre” –cheerful scares—the sound loud enough to mask the screams from deep inside the house.
Marc Chagall, “The Wedding,” 1944 (Painted shortly after the death of his wife, Bella.)
The Corpse Bride
Her bridal finery triggers the monster-mob’s fury, it feeds on fear and blood, the slogans of “don’t let them survive.”
They toss her body in an unmarked grave, its red-stained gown and veil an unseen warning, a furled sail, waiting for the wind–
but sated, they scurry, less-than-rats, into the night.
On his wedding eve, years later, a young man jokes, places his ring on bony-tree -root laughs with his friend as he says his vows–
a corpse arises, and he shivers, as she declares she’s now his bride, clutches him with cold, dead fingers, and follows him to town
where before a group of rabbis, she demands her wedding night.
The scholars hem and haw, but murmur the rite was true, but in further consideration declare, the living cannot wed the dead.
At this, the corpse-bride crumbles, cries for her lost life, a spool without a thread, her bones unclothed with reason, fall.
The living bride tenderly gathers bones and tattered gown,
her eyes salt-water the rusty stains, she promises to remember in each joy, the tears not far away,
to tell her children and their children of the corpse-bride murdered in her prime, who rose
even from dust (as women must)
her memory passed down through time, the ghostly echoes, again– we must never forget.
This is a revision of a poem I wrote a few years ago for Paul Brooks’ “Folktober.” One of the origins of the corpse-bride legend is said to be a woman murdered during a pogrom. The recent hate-fest in Madison Square Garden and the felon’s talk of deportation and camps makes this tale timely.
“Only her shadow once upon a stone I saw,—and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.” –Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Ode to Silence”
Shadows in the garden, history bides, half-thoughts, half-hidden, their half-lives indeterminable almost halfway to solstice
the monsters strut spewing dragon-venom into the crowd— shadows of goose-steps, raised arms—
“It can’t happen here,” we say, but it is,
the ghosts cry out, though mostly unheard,
the leaves fall in russet ribbons, crunch underfoot, twigs snap and squirrels scurry, geese play Marco Polo in the fog,
The moon closes tired eyes, the sun spreads marmalade between toasted boughs,
still, the shadows lengthen and the winds whispers, “watch, be wary.”
What another long, strange week it’s been.
“It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight,” wrote Heather Cox Richardson. It was a total hate-fest, which called to mind, quite deliberately the 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi rally. The felon wore Proud Boy colors, the speakers spewed hate, including calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage,” and the felon spoke again of “enemies within,” and alluded to his secret plan to win the election.
This is where we are now. I don’t know how anyone can be undecided; even worse, I am saddened and horrified that people are voting for this vile creature, and even worse, they will put in place the people who will actually rule if he is elected.
On Friday, we got our flu and Covid vaccines. Other than sore arms, neither of us experienced any side effects, except perhaps being tired on Friday afternoon.
On Saturday morning, we voted. We were surprised to see a line. We’ve never experienced a line when voting early before. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
We had watched Season 1 of The Devil’s Hour, but it was a while ago. It sounds like a horror show, and the first episode seems like it is, but it’s not. It’s more of a very strange mystery, though it’s hard to say more without giving anything away. Social worker Lucy Chambers wakes every morning at 3:33 with strange dreams. Her son Isaac seems detached from the world, and Lucy experiences odd visions and déjà vu. At the same time, there is a series of murders that police are investigating. We re-watched Season 1 and started Season 2, which is definitely the way to go. It’s a strange, Merril series, but for those with eclectic tastes like me, you will recognize Lucy Chambers as Jessica Raine, who was Nurse Jenny Lee in Call the Midwife.
It’s still very dry here. This morning it was quite chilly, 34 F when I woke up, and there was fog at the river, but the temperature should reach 80 F on Halloween. There’s a slight possibility of rain that night, which I hope happens. I hope Election Day is bright and sunny though.
The kittens continue to bring much-needed joy. Yesterday I participated in a Zoom open mic hosted by A.R. William of East Ridge Review. The kittens were out of camera sight, but this is how they looked.
The dark belly of eternity explored in fevered nights, dreams of whispered ghost-light, velvet-sheened grass, concrete cities colored coffee and caramel, fiery flowers, blazing truth in their laughter.
There are secrets in surroundings, held in the space between the trees, if carried on wind-sighs—
you wake to silence in stilled air, dawn a blush away from day’s face,
you wonder if marble remembers the heat and pressure of its formation, the touch of chisel, the sculptor’s smile,
and polished beach stones, do they recall once being part of something larger?
This beech tree grove, a dappled delight as mid-day’s light prances and dances between arched branches,
a cathedral ceiling of greenery, in sun-gold glow though aberrant shadows lurk below almost unseen–
unsettled in the gloaming, when grey mist shifts, shapes the semblance of a woman’s form
her face imperceptible yet you feel the emanation of grief in waves across the bower like a tempest of invisible tears.
Through the dark hedges she wanders, her quest unknown but every night, the same,
her spirit seeks
(Don’t look.)
drifts from tree to tree, till at the last,
she disappears.
For dVerse Open Link Night. This is a revision of a poem I wrote for Paul Brookes’ Folktober a few years ago. It was inspired by the image above, Dark Hedges.
“This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.” T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
The dance of shadows in the dying of the light, the last breaths not far— across the sea, bombs burst, cities fall and here, men scheme, adds bots and trolls as apples drop, recall what was,
inhale, exhale taste blue diamond sky the aquamarine water glimmering in rays of warm, chardonnay-gold, though the breeze touches you with a refrigerated hand, “I’m coming,” it says, and the moon watches with stoic face, sighs when you turn in your sleep.
Radiant days, the blaze of scarlet-gold against sapphire, chevron skeins untangling in the sky, lifting like river fog—
it will not last, it will not last, but still you hope. Wondering what is indeed possible, as a kitten in your lap somehow purrs and snores at the same time, proving magic exists.
The solstice will come. The sun will sink. But, if there are shadows, there must be light.
Quite a week, huh? Just when you think things can’t be crazier, they are, and the convicted felon, the GOP candidate for president of the United States, talks about Arnold Palmer’s penis. Honestly, I watch the kittens knocking pens and papers off the table, and there’s more sense in that than in his words. The emperor is way beyond not wearing clothes, and yet the MAGA crowd shrugs. Remember that time Biden didn’t perform well at a debate, and there were all the cries about him being unfit? We can’t give up hope though. I know some people are sick of me talking about this, but as Heather Cox Richardson says, “take up oxygen.” I’m unlikely to convince anyone, but still, I need to counteract the lies: Immigrants are not eating pets, the country has not been destroyed under Biden, and women are dying and more will die because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Project 2025 is real and will turn this country into a “Christian” Fascist state with Vance in charge. You want help after a hurricane? That help will not happen because those offices will be gone. There will be no federal government overseeing roads, education, or health and safety. It drives me crazy that people are voting against their own best interests and the future of their children and grandchildren. I mean unless you’re a billionaire. It is important to vote blue down ballot, as well as for the presidency. Here is Heather Cox Richardson’s letter for today.
BUT—deep breath—the weather in south Jersey has been gorgeous, though we need rain in this normally humid region and the climate is crazy everywhere. It was cooler at the beginning of the week–good soup weather. Now it’s unseasonable warm during the day, but still with cool nights. Perfect! It will be around 80 F today. We took advantage of the beautiful weekend. On Saturday, we went to Grounds for Sculpture. Some of the sculptures are clever sight gags, such as an artist painting an artist painting an artist painting a scene, or a man hidden behind a fence who appears to be peeing in the bushes. We’ve been there several times, so I was most interested in how beautiful it all was with the autumn colors at near-peak. A molting peacock was very interested in Doug’s sandwich. Yesterday, we walked up to the battlefield for the 18th Century Field Day and Fall Festival. Every year, reenactors stage the Revolutionary War battle that took place there where the soldiers of the Continental army defeated the Hessian mercenaries. (The British still took Philadelphia, across the river.) Just a few years ago, archeologists found bones of Hessian soldiers buried there.
Then yesterday, afternoon, we went to William Heritage winery. It was warm enough to sit outside in short sleeves.
We finished re-watching the TV show, Fringe. (We loved it all over again!) The entire fifth season is about people fighting against all odds to re-take the world back from oppressors. Perhaps we can’t re-set time, but it’s still a poignant lesson of hope.
In New Jersey, in-person early voting begins next weekend.
He laughed like no other men, this father-man, born in a shimmer of green brilliance, surrounded by seven sisters, perhaps more, dispersing coffee-clouds with dazzle-stirs, devouring darkness with delicious dedication— it takes your breath way, the caramel breezes, if you remember, the once was, the ghosts of light, and waving viridescent ribbons, buried now, fallen angels, haunting your dreams moss, leaf, vine rising, flowering again.
The Oracle gave me some strange word/phrases, so I just went with them.
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 