The Beetle or the Bellflower

A poem for Emily Dickinson on Her birthday, December 10

In late 2019/early 2020 I wrote the following poem in and around Emily Dickinson’s birthday. “For Emily Dickinson” was published to Sonder Midwest, Issue V in Spring 2020 where it was paired to a facing page featuring the powerful and innovative artwork of Leah Oates. Sonder Midwest: https://sondermw.com/issues-2/

As for the poem, the observations of the tireless twitching of the natural world in the transition from Spring to Summer could have come from my own backyard. I made little effort to borrow Dickinson’s voice, except to imagine her Greenwood, which appeared in one of her very early poems. It is a 13th Century term for the woodlands and often a den for outlaws. Of course, ours’ is an original Outlaw Poet, long before Ginsberg, Corso and Waldman. She lived near Amherst, where she likely wandered into her Greenwood and maybe even sometimes napped upon its mulchy floor. The rest of it comes from the American West where I live and Spring to Summer days vary from still to vigorously windy, snowy wet to spells where things bake and become as “tawny as wolf lint.” An mp3 recording of a reading is included below.

For Emily Dickinson
a poem by Vincent Hostak
© 2019

So, take me to the greenwood--
I want to know it all:
the story of the understory,
how you wandered, slept and woke in the woods.

Show me where you stood--
the dissolving mound of fallen oak ribs,
jaded with lichen and splitting under your soles, 
where you spoke your vows to the sky and Him.
Then take me to the meadow
where, were I a mite,
could climb a crocus, 
Find the sacred insects there,
comb through pollen froth
and count the hustling legs of bees.

Tell me how everything quivers heavenward--
bursting up from clay in coils:
the beetle or the bellflower.
Things unfolding eyeless and dew drenched.
Eating heat, sweating sugar through their days--
then baking dry and tawny as wolf lint.

None rising ever expected
to be shredded by the sparrows,
made midden for nest beds
or scattered to tether to a tree trunk.
But you told us so.
Chant from this secret songbook 
pecked in slanted script- those dashes,
those measures on chocolate wrappers
or cleaved on yellow parchment.
Sing to me from all the scraps
that were never fed to the fire.

Recording of reading:

As it was read by the poet in 2020 at a Landon Review of the Arts in Texas: Tejascovido gathering of poets

Notes, Two Things I Borrowed:

The Dash: Her manuscripts have dashes that are short and longer, often represented in typography as “-” and “–“. Scholars of her work will long postulate on the meanings of the ciphers. Personally, I think they just work to add rhythmic color to your silent reading across the stanza. The dash and longer dash has been adopted by many contemporary writers. I don’t read to much into this “comma with more drama.”

Him (?): “Him” is a reference found in Dickinson’s poems, such as “I could suffice for Him, I knew” (643). The protagonist is in conversation with god/a greater presence, using the symbolic notation of poets before her for that presence. Like others, I don’t read it as explicitly signaling a being, let alone a gendered one. She was appreciative of the place of the human in the natural and spiritual or metaphysical world, perhaps a transcendentalist. In fact, poem (643) explores the questions of “Would I be Whole (?)” without nature or humanity, as if it were asked by god/a greater presence. I suppose these identities would have helped the reader contemporary to the time. Readers, you say? While she published only ten poems in her lifetime, she embedded her verse in letters to private, trusted readers like writer and abolitionist, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and certainly Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.

Capitalization: You can find other manifestations of energy in her universe, capitalized, both elemental varieties and some things greater: the Sun, Nature, “the furthest Star.” Here she addresses the Moon, personified as Her, in the same Poem (643) :

The Answer of the Sea unto
The Motion of the Moon—
Herself adjust Her Tides—unto—
Could I—do else—with Mine?

https://poets.org/poem/i-could-suffice-him-i-knew-643

Lessons Before Daybreak from Kwish-kwishee, the Steller Jay

Photo: NPS / Jacob W. Frank, Public Domain

I Do Not Blame the Steller Jay

-a poem by Vincent Hostak-
I do not blame the Steller Jay
for all my frenzied sleeplessness.
She seems enamored with concerns
pecking by the window ledge.
l'm grateful for her restlessness. 

Within her anxious struggling
there works a skillful sorceress 
enchanting from these toughened hulls
abundance in each shell concealed.
It's not her fault - my busy mind.

Now rise into a cobalt plume,
break from the guard you've fastened here,
and heave all husks into the air.
Disturb and nourish others, Jay,
who cry for lifted hearts today.

Notes:

Steller’s Jay is an American Corvid found in the North American West, particularly in the Rocky Mountains. Sociable and intelligent, they can be observed easily in these parts. Pairs nest for life. Female and male Steller Jay’s are not easily differentiated, as all have the same bold colors, similar loyal behaviors, and an color appearance of graduated blues across the body to a blacker head with the same distinctive crest. They may be characterized, far too generally, as “aggressive.” Protective of nests, their family and social groupings (flocks) are probably more accurate, and less judgmental, perspectives. They have been known to flock with other species, so “territorial” doesn’t fit and, in my opinion, is a holdover from patriarchal biases in the language of natural history. They are non-conforming in many ways that we humans tend to categorize all inhabitants in this world: how they look, gender roles, behavior in groups, and even how they sound. Songs are at one time “harsh” and another “melodious.” They can channel the sounds of other birds, even raptors. Call them Kwish-kwishee, as named by first peoples of the Pacific Northwestern Coast, the Makah. There is a context of “rakishness” connecting these birds appropriately to the original mythologies of the continent. Look up: how Kwish-kwishee got it’s crest.

The Callers + The Called

to hold the glassy relic to his head,
so he may hear the surf again.
A Poem + Commentary from a Half Year of Listening During a Pandemic

I’ve been struggling to write something about my experience in a wholly new field of work since July.  I joined a corps of case managers during this Pandemic Summer and stayed on when contracts where offered to continue in a full-time capacity.  I hadn’t intended to work or at least work in this way. It meant putting aside some projects, delaying more what had already been delayed.  Contributing to a public health effort to offer assistance to those coping with the illness and delicately let their contacts know of their exposure seemed a way I could be part of something more than passive grieving. The struggle was how to honor the truths I hear and present in only an abstract way.  They are as sacred as they are confidential.  I can only impart fragments of feelings, patches that capture the whole of the cloth in a small segment of the pattern of lives lived in mid to late 2020.  So, no names of people, no places, no direct experiences and no shred of identifying information.

It’s humbling.  I am not sure that this is wholly the word.  It is a humbling and profound experience.  Maybe the word captures both these sentiments.  Maybe humility should be profound.  Either way, each of these five days a week, the experience for the Callers are both these things.  There are measures of meaning, hour by hour, drop by drop.  The Called have a lot to say, even beyond answering questions about clinical details, isolation instruction, how to find resources if help is needed, and recounting possible exposures.   There are many questions, but there is twice the listening, twice the time bearing witness, and twice the reminding that “this is not your fault” when someone expresses regret.

Many work in residential long term care, meat packing plants, schools, retail, offices, construction sites, orchards and, of course, there are the skilled nurses.  A third of the time I do not speak their native languages and place a three-way call with an interpreter with their consent.  Then, those bearing witness are multiplied by two.

This blog is about the inter-regions.  Life is lived in intersections of time and place.  I’ve heard our current time and place called“liminal” — as if we are on one side or the other of some time and place we regard as more “conscious” or real. We express this as though we are only upon a threshold.  It is as though we think of time and place as if the throughfare is real and the side streets are not.  We live on the side streets, possibly more of the time.  We embark more now upon the place where the snow is rarely plowed and getting out into the world “at large” is an adventure and sometimes treacherous.  We were meant to live in this time.  We live in this time and place, where many are experiencing something profound with deep humility, and we are still alive.  We are still conscious…maybe more so.  Wake up, call and be called, take to your side streets and please wear a mask. Wander with care for others–all of them, whether or not its clear that they are exhibiting the same for you.

 The Callers
 © 2020 by Vincent Hostak

 In the morning I put on my ears.
 In the morning your voice carries delicate messages.
 I imagine you aren’t speaking just to me
 but the world gathers your words directly through the air
 like the blessing of birdsong.
 In hours free from clouds of distraction,
 when ears are tuned to receive essential frequencies,
 the words, the songs arrive. 
 Above a parade of noisy scrap your net catches more.
 Free of all that insulates, we become conductors.
 Cadences crackle, the voice is frail, the message is not.
 “Listen,” a nurse said,
 “I’ll tell you:
 The broken ones of the world are repairing other broken ones.
 I have a pocket full of fragments of shells
 collected near the gulf that separates
 my ward and I.
 I am trying to reassemble just one,
 to hold the glassy relic to his head,
 so he may hear the surf again.
 Listen.
 The healers are sick and the sick are healers.
 We are calling from tidal flats.
 We are sand clinging to a line of glue
 and I run the length of a sandbar
 to bring this fragile earpiece to someone
 before the tide returns.”