She wore the thin
leather boots bought in Haight-
Ashbury. On the ride
back to Krakow
a disturbance crept up on her,
a disturbance she could not recognize.
Joseph, her great-grandfather,
arrived in one of the last transports,
never left.
Does blood murmur to its own
through ash that still dirties the air,
bone whisper to its own
through dust piled beneath the soles?
In this place where the dead survive
did Joseph’s fire-digested eyes
know Emily on sight,
the daughter of his daughter’s daughter,
a link in the dying chain
miraculously alive.
(c) 2011 by Georgia Jones-Davis
Blue Poodle (Finishing Line Press)
He was born into a fighting world, into the lineage of samurai. His father was an Oda. His mother,Tokugawa. He inherited the blood-steeped past of both. But his heart held light. His given mission: to rewrite the warrior world into peace. In the Japanese Collection at the Pacific Asia Museum there is a child’s kimono with his family crest displayed in a long, clear box. The crest on the child’s kimono reminds me of my fighting thoughts: the car that sliced in front of me today, the woman at the bank who stole my place in line. But I remember Kotama who placed the Oda and Tokugawa crests on the fence of his house in Atami so he would never forget his past and judge the conflict he saw, the rancor he felt in others. Every day he would pass those crests and practice humility, offering apology for his ancestors. We are all children of warriors. We all once knew light. The image on the child’s kimono suggests fidelity. An old man at the water’s edge rakes sand. An old woman next to him holds a broom. Together they make a stand against the chaos of their world, sweeping the beach clean.
at the water’s edge
a child digs a moat in sand
over and over
I posted the poem I read on my blog; it is inspired by artwork of Beth Shibata commemorating the prisoners of the Japanese-American Internment Camp at Manzanar and dedicated to one of the former prisoners, painter Henry Fukuhara who organized annual plein air workshops of artists at Manzanar. APC Gallery in Torrance held the exhibitions, and Poets of Site from Pasadena started writing poems about the art. It is the fourth year that we have done that, the fourteenth year of the art project.
SKYDANCE
~ to Henry Fukuhara and the prisoners of Manzanar
the mountains rose and fell
with their glory useless –
trapped in time they did not
think they’d make it –
days so long, stretched
to the horizon, mindless
and the sky danced above them
avalanche of paper cranes
it was not a time for joy
the landscape said –
bleak, unforgiving,
it was not that time yet –
in gaps between minutes
a shadow rose, a breath
and the sky danced above them
spring dreams of paper cranes
contours remembered,
felt in the fingertips
filled the world with color
faded pastels, knowing,
pale rainbow, hues
of distance, peace, serenity
and the sky danced above them
paper cranes, oh, paper cranes
Westside Women’s Writer’s group: Kathi Stafford, Millicent Borges Accardi, Susan Rogers, Georgia Jones-Davis, Maja Trochimczyk, Lois Jones!
Poem for Poets for Change
EMILY AT AUSCHWITZ
by Georgia Jones-Davis
She wore the thin
leather boots bought in Haight-
Ashbury. On the ride
back to Krakow
a disturbance crept up on her,
a disturbance she could not recognize.
Joseph, her great-grandfather,
arrived in one of the last transports,
never left.
Does blood murmur to its own
through ash that still dirties the air,
bone whisper to its own
through dust piled beneath the soles?
In this place where the dead survive
did Joseph’s fire-digested eyes
know Emily on sight,
the daughter of his daughter’s daughter,
a link in the dying chain
miraculously alive.
(c) 2011 by Georgia Jones-Davis
Blue Poodle (Finishing Line Press)
Poem for Poets for Change
THE TOKUGAWA KIMONO
for Kotama Okada
by Susan Rogers
He was born into a fighting world, into the lineage of samurai. His father was an Oda. His mother,Tokugawa. He inherited the blood-steeped past of both. But his heart held light. His given mission: to rewrite the warrior world into peace. In the Japanese Collection at the Pacific Asia Museum there is a child’s kimono with his family crest displayed in a long, clear box. The crest on the child’s kimono reminds me of my fighting thoughts: the car that sliced in front of me today, the woman at the bank who stole my place in line. But I remember Kotama who placed the Oda and Tokugawa crests on the fence of his house in Atami so he would never forget his past and judge the conflict he saw, the rancor he felt in others. Every day he would pass those crests and practice humility, offering apology for his ancestors. We are all children of warriors. We all once knew light. The image on the child’s kimono suggests fidelity. An old man at the water’s edge rakes sand. An old woman next to him holds a broom. Together they make a stand against the chaos of their world, sweeping the beach clean.
at the water’s edge
a child digs a moat in sand
over and over
Renovation
It’s Sunday and he makes the mistake
of brandy. The flooring nearly done.
A terrible error, stepping back
to admire grout and rimed borders
like old battlefields he’d rather forget.
In no motion at all, he feels
the wall of malice, limbs freezing,
wires hanging from trees.
His wife, the work has ceased.
The solidity of existence pressing
against a metal fence prompts
the man to drop to his knees.
A changed man, returned to no fanfare.
As cars go by, triumphant against
the task at hand, he suffers. Across
the bathroom floor, he picks up his cutter
and begins again. Day after day, he crawls.
Every combat bone in his body, every
thing he can remember is a wall he cannot
shake. Hanoi. Ho Chi Mihn. The moon
in the open vault of heaven calls out to him.
A holy city inside his head. There is no material
he is familiar with, there. Pain
is not locatable. Not above his waist,
not where he can reach it.
Not even stones are this everlasting.
I posted the poem I read on my blog; it is inspired by artwork of Beth Shibata commemorating the prisoners of the Japanese-American Internment Camp at Manzanar and dedicated to one of the former prisoners, painter Henry Fukuhara who organized annual plein air workshops of artists at Manzanar. APC Gallery in Torrance held the exhibitions, and Poets of Site from Pasadena started writing poems about the art. It is the fourth year that we have done that, the fourteenth year of the art project.
http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2011/09/one-hundred-thousand-poets-for-change.html
SKYDANCE
~ to Henry Fukuhara and the prisoners of Manzanar
the mountains rose and fell
with their glory useless –
trapped in time they did not
think they’d make it –
days so long, stretched
to the horizon, mindless
and the sky danced above them
avalanche of paper cranes
it was not a time for joy
the landscape said –
bleak, unforgiving,
it was not that time yet –
in gaps between minutes
a shadow rose, a breath
and the sky danced above them
spring dreams of paper cranes
contours remembered,
felt in the fingertips
filled the world with color
faded pastels, knowing,
pale rainbow, hues
of distance, peace, serenity
and the sky danced above them
paper cranes, oh, paper cranes
Pax Kathi Stafford
And I will give peace in this land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. Lev. 26.6
Deanna Kay tells me my toys wake up
each night at two a.m. and hold
wars without my permission. She lives next door,
Her Swedish faith in magic unbroken
by desert. Tumbleweeds skritter their dry
realities against the adobe wall
While Deanna whispers to me about mayhem,
Barbies with toy swords and motorcycles
ready for duels and sudden death.
Ken drives his tank against the battle
line, his olive khakis covering his thin
limbs. Flares pulse out rigid scales as
Another bomb clamors and
he loses a leg. Deanna Kay rips
the head off a blond doll and it goes
Pop in the night and we hear her father’s
heavy thud as we dive under quilts etched
in lingonberries. A decade later we will
Fret over friends caught in a draft, over napalm
that curls above their path
in a jungle with no arid hope.
Channel Four will fling out bodies torn
in dying color. O Deanna, where is sweet
sleep and the hope that the
Cycle of violence will ever break
like a toy, a childish phase
we will put down at last?
Turn from mischief,
breathe in the hymn of peace.
[file]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/PoetsForChange_2011pdf.pdf[/file]