the season of crows

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Maybe it’s a little early in fall for this poem. I don’t find myself in this mood much until after Dia De Los Muertos. The days are still warm, no need for heat at night. But at least last night we had a heavy fog.

This piece has never been on Metaphor before, and if the time isn’t right maybe the poem will hasten it on.

Darkening

Now in the dying of the year
in the season of crows
the blue of everything in my life
deepens, turns to the steel
of an old knife.

I throw a shadow, blue as a bruise,
which rises and gathers against the ceiling.
On my stove the flames of gas
are almost black.

I start to write to you
but the paper darkens
until my blue words disappear.

The moon which shaved its silver
on my bed in spring
hangs as an indiscernible grape.

Venus weeps over the shoulder
of the moon, to see me
writing poems in blood.

Crows appear in my writing pretty often; among the non-humans around me, they’re second only to dogs. It’s funny because we don’t have a lot of crows here. Just small flocks and individuals cawing from pine and eucalyptus trees. When they stand and caw alone, they have a certain restlessness; they seem to be saying that something is wrong.

I spent a lot of autumn days in the San Joaquin Valley, when I was younger. I remember great flocks, legions of crows.

Here’s another poem in which I pondered these birds.

Click the image of Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Crows to enlarge it. To see it even bigger, click here.

To view/download the PDF version of Darkening, click here.

Darkening by J. Kyle Kimberlin
is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States License.

Naming Stones

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Here is a small bowl made of clay,
with a long crack down one side.
It holds eight smooth stones,
named for the facets of the moon.

It once held sandalwood and sand
ground fine by water and by salt,
in time ground fine by the spinning Earth.

The stone named Sleep is black
and veined to mock the stone named Death.

The stone named Death is white as pearl
and flat. It bends the light.

The stone named Love is pale blue
and marbled like a cloudy day.

The crack is named for Time.
In time, the bowl will come apart
and like the facets of the moon, go shining.

Download PDF

Naming Stones by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed
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NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
(Click link for information on copying and sharing this work.)

Good for Something

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

It’s been 10 days since I posted? Wow. I’ve been overcome by events, I suppose. Other-minded. So tonight we’ll have some thoughts on happiness and a poem not before posted here on Metaphor. Set in motion between my ears by today’s A Word A Day quote:

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
– Thoreau

I was talking with friends recently and my friend asked me “Are you happy?” I said yes but the question has stuck with me, largely because my friends seemed so genuinely happy. I tried to joke off the question by paraphrasing the old saying (attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein):

"I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."

My friend pointed out that I had missed – evaded – the point, which I knew was true. So the question continues to ebb and flow in the back of my mind.

We don’t do much existentialism here at sea level. We lack the elevation, the air’s too thick, and ardent introspection clashes with the beach motif. My friends brought it down from greater altitudes. So I’ve had to use my imagination.

I suppose that most days I’m not exactly what you’d call happy; not sad or gloomy, just sloshing back and forth with the tide. I try to catch the first wave to break above unhappiness, at something like being at peace with myself. I try not to hurt other people or animals – or myself – very badly, and there is some contentment there. Happiness seems to be always coming in the next set of breakers; I can feel its portentous swell beneath me even now.

Gladness flows from simply being of use to others from time to time.

If one is only up to his knees in the foam and talking to the sand birds, it’s hard to be swept away.

I am reminded of another quote of Wittgenstein, "Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only." And I wonder whether God might say I’m really very happy after all, but it’s our little secret.

And I am inspired, frequently, profoundly, though mostly by you. And that’s OK, right? To live week to week vicariously steeped in radical amazement? Even the flashing, streaking Perseids will look around at one another, don’t you think? Maybe now and then one shouts, “Boy, is this great!”

Here’s a beautiful little video for you to see, to make the most of the ocean metaphors. It’s a short film about a surf photographer, who has some deep things to say about the sea and creativity.

http://www.youtube.com/v/1swPZzxv0tI

By the way, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s last words were reportedly, “Tell them I had a wonderful life.” To be contrasted with those of Ludwig Van Beethoven,"Pity, pity—too late!" He was dying, knew it, and someone told him he had just received a gift of a case of wine. (A pretty mean trick, yeah?) By which the blogger reminds his readers tempis fugit, y’all.

What about you, then? Are you happy? I hope so. Here’s the poem.

LIGHT FROM THE SURFACE

The winter waves have stripped away
   the sand and left these rocks
   great shifted reefs of jagged black
Raked countless small gray stones
   in somber sheets beneath the bluff

I’ve come to ask a favor of the sea
   hoping she might take away my fear
Embrace it as she would a drowning child
   sweep it fast and deep and forever
   along the Channel to the south

They say that after the panic
   as light from the surface falls away
   it feels like drifting off to sleep
This dread is well accustomed to the cold
It would rest so happily in silence

In springtime a fisherman in Mexico
   will find my fear
Catch it with a snag of kelp
Carry it home for his supper unawares
   with a small string of perch

He will wake up in the night
   worried about something
   he was supposed to be
Clutching his chest in the soaking dark
   and smelling the pitiless sea

Light From The Surface by J. Kyle Kimberlin
was first published in 1994 and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Which means it can be freely copied and shared, with attribution.

Dog’s Birthday

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Those who have been reading Metaphor quite a while know that I used to have a little dog named Tasha. When she came to live with me, her former owners said she was about 14 months old. It was October,1991. So not knowing her exact birthday, I decided we would celebrate it on the first Saturday in August every year.

That idea found it’s way into the poem below. You can tell it was written a while back, because of the references to then-current events.

You can see a video of Tasha eating a cookie on her last birthday, August 2005, by clicking here. There’s a bunch of photos of her and a tribute too.

Today is the first Saturday in August.

Happy birthday, old friend, wherever in the Heaven of Dogs you are playing today. I still miss you, always will. Remember to show up at the bridge on time, OK?

Stormlight

Stand facing the ocean
with your back to the railroad tracks.
Stand there even if a train goes by,
a long, thundering freight. Stand
even when the sun is rising or setting.
Stand facing the ocean in the rain.

If the air is still in your shaded patio
play the windchimes by hand.
Cast a big reflection
of your joy across the yard.
Stop to watch a lizard sleeping
on a stone. It’s bad to awaken
reptiles, who dart into the jasmine
with their tails flickering.

Pray for peace in eastern Europe
for sobriety and a cure for AIDS.
Slow down passing graveyards,
hospitals, nursing homes.
Cross yourself or bow your head. Do this
also passing the tavern and the jail.
If tears come, believe in them.

Choose a Saturday, declare it Dog’s Birthday.
Buy squeaky toys, chewy things, party hats
and candles. Put off washing the car.
Take the dog out and stand facing
the ocean, with your back to America
and your face in the stormlight,
in the awesome churning of solitude,
until it’s time to turn again for home.

____________________________________

Stormlight by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Feel free to copy and share!

Inked Well

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Over at Drachenthrax, my friend Joseph has posted a splendid poem of love and death and the arrow of time, called Inklings of Hope. I commend that to you. Go and read it – chew it carefully a few times (always the best way to eat poems) – and come back here.

Joseph’s poem put me in mind of a poem by Pablo Neruda, which begins

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,’The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

And it brought to mind this poem I wrote about 15 years ago.

Sleepy Little Dog

I begin to write: the little dog
is sleeping by the door, breathing
the sour dampness of the yard,
her paws moving slightly, dreaming
of rabbits and the taste of grass….

I have come to know this pen,
the weight of it, the point
which must be turned just so.
The cheap gold pitted
by the sweat of my hands.

My pen is hard and cold;
with it, I can write only words.
Your voice and even least
amazing smile are lost
to the physics of thought.

The ink I use is black.
I used all the blue for failing at love.
I thought love was soft color,
carousel horses and a rainy day.
But maybe it’s arc light and violence,
a tiger and a spray of blood.

So I was wrong, and this old
pen is useless, dead
without the rhythm of your step
and the flight of your hands.
But now it’s all I have, because
the dog has drifted off to sleep.

We went very different places when we began to think of ink as a metaphor. He toward hope and I another way. But I affirm that there is something primal about the act of inscribing the world with color, leaving one’s mark.

Sleepy Little Dog by J. Kyle Kimberlin
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Once in a while

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

“… there is a moment that emerges when the creative process itself seems to "talk" to the artist. Those who have listened deeply to this "voice" that echoes the rhythms of the universe, and can recite its reverberations back into the stream, are capable of creating work that can enchant the very cosmos itself. So I have faith in the surrender and acceptance of the creative act and the humility to know that a great artist is but a conduit for an expression that resonates with something that is greater than him or herself.

— The Director of the Imaginary Foundation
http://goo.gl/hCd7d

Once in a while you get shown the light
in the strangest places if you look at it right.
— The Grateful Dead

Patience

Waiting for my life
to begin again,
for the dead clock to run
backwards to my birth,
for the dawn to bend
humbly over Carpinteria,
San Francisco, Death Valley;
wherever I am when it finally
happens:

when sugar of the orange
runs back to the tree,
airships float whispering
through my suffering sky,
the blue dog of mystery
meets me on the other side,
my scars fade to roses
and cities are built on my bones.

— J. Kyle Kimberlin

Patience by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Shutters

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

a new poem

I wish that someone would take
photos at funerals, someone
professional who knows what not
to miss and not to capture.

Maybe we should all be clicking
and flashing away as at a wedding.
The moment slips from memory
as moments always do, and I’m left
with vital colors lost.

The colors of caskets fade, the stands
of carnation and lily, and the hearse.
I remember only bronze in kind
sunlight, the green lawn stretching
to a rusty wall, gray stones.

I remember the motion of leaves
but not the depth of green shade
cast by an awning on the catafalque
and mounded earth.

If I had pictures I could see that you
were there with us: bright shirt, black
tie and the dull blue of sky that framed
your head. And the dead already resting,
hardly even listening anymore.

It is a kind of wedding, isn’t it?
A putting away of childish things,
a new tribe and loyalty, a faith to be kept forever.
And then, maybe there’s dancing.

Shutters by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed
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NonCommercial-NoDerivs
3.0 United States License.
Feel Free to Copy and Share

Toward Water And Home

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

They say the history of a tree is learned
by counting its rings, though to see the story
you must cut it down. I say leave the ax
at home. The tree remembers more than that.
No need to turn your hand to violence.
Walk up and touch the rough body
listen to the rhythm of the upward-flowing
xylem drum. The wind will shift and change
the pitch of leaves. Now it has a voice.

The tree will tell you stories of animals
which men do not deserve to hear.
The black bear passes sometimes late,
sighs heavily beside the tree, moves on
downhill through blackberry and oak
toward water. The old doe sleeps
beside the trunk and wakes with the sun
on her face. She rises, moving on.
And the tree tells the story of today,

how you have been in pain without remedy
or very much hope. But you came.
You rose and stood up to the bright
and thoughtless light of spring
and you came to hear. Now you are moving
on, with everything, as everything is looking
for a place to be. And the old tree leans
happily into April again. It leans a little more
each year, toward home.

Third Draft May 1, 2011

Toward Water and Home by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Feel free to share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work.

How I Double-Wasted A Couple of Hours

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Here’s the premise: we all know what it means to waste time. But if you’re doing 2 things at once, both of which are pretty useless, that’s double-wasting time, right?

I think I mentioned that I’ve been having PC troubles. My beautiful desktop machine started crashing – blue screen of death crashing, which is serious – about 8 days ago. Before that, its video functions had been funky. Once the crashing started and I’d ruled out things like virus, bad memory, dust in the tower, and registry fubar, I discovered that the graphics card was overheating. It was twice as hot as it was supposed to be (approx 215 F), but the fans are running.

I’ve been advised to replace the graphics card. I’m working on that. The PC is on injured reserve and I’m using my trusty but temperamental laptop. The desktop still works just fine, with a little fan blowing cold air into the case. But that’s like driving a car around with a bad water pump, and the back seat full of water jugs. Better to let it mostly rest until new parts are obtained and installed, than to be constantly worried and watching the gauges.

In the mean time, of course everything is backed up as much as possible. All of my writing is saved onto a second PC, CDs, flash drives, and up yonder in The Cloud. But I said to myself, “Hey self, wouldn’t it be cool to have all those poems in one file, which could be updated at will, and saved easily to Dropbox for backup?”

So, since there’s just no arguing with myself when I get a brilliant idea like that, off I went through the short prime time hours of last night, building a Word file of poems by me in alphabetical order. And properly formatted for efficient mapping and retrieval, of course. And while doing that, I was – here’s the double-wasting part – watching TV.

Not writing or reading or winding the clocks or pondering the luminosity of the Waxing Gibbous moon. Shuffling stuff I’ve already written, and glowering at the tube.

Oh dear. But I learned that I have almost 140 completed poems, now all nice and neat. And there’s another folder of unfinished ones; drafts, loose pieces, false starts and insensate stuff. Probably many more in there. But I’ve come to my senses, for now. I’m not diving into that. Instead, I’m writing this.

By the way, the last post, Cheesy Blogging, really was allowed to ferment for over 24 hours in my vat of drafts before posting. I’m not sure it it improved the flavor. Maybe it just made the stuff a little stale.

Speaking of which, for being such a good reader and sticking with me, here’s a treat for you. From deep in the crusty casks of the Unfinished Poems folder, a poem. It’s from way back in February of 1999.

OPEN WATER

I can see nothing.
I look out into limitless dark
that hours ago was the sea
and into which now
everything — boats, birds,
men and islands and all
the world I
knew in daylight —
has disappeared.

I wish I was home
in my old chair, but we
had our final good-byes to make.
I wish I was anywhere candles
burn with happiness
but the ocean called me out tonight.
Up and down on worrisome swells,
then the morning tide wakes and turns
and carries this wreckage
in first light for open water.

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Open Water by Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a
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3.0 United States License.
Please feel free to copy and share it with others.

Happy Anniversary!

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Today – February 3 – I’m sending out Happy Anniversary greetings – and a big I love you – to my Mom and Dad. It’s their 55th wedding anniversary. I love you guys.

I remember where I was on their 30th anniversary. I was sitting in my car on a trailhead on a high buff overlooking a canyon, with the lights of Chico far below. I was in college, working as a security guard, assigned to watch a weather station. I had my dinner in a brown bag, a thermos of coffee, flashlight, a couple of text books, and my notebook for poems.

IN PASSING

I have spent these hours
in silence watching darkness
take this blue canyon
a little traffic
and the town lights
in the valley

A pair of mice eyes
like black seeds watched me
pass on a steep trail pushing
my little light to the end
of this road

I wonder what you’ve known
together what nights in quiet
canyons lights passing quickly
to rest in distant places
these thirty years

At sunset I saw a hawk
on a fence post far below
spread his wings and climb
beyond the light

Click here to listen to this poem.

Podcast 1

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Kyle Kimberlin

Here’s the first episode of my new podcast.

This first effort at making a recording isn’t quite to the quality standard I’d hoped for. That’s because I still have a few things to learn about editing the file and creating the Mp3. It’ll get better, if I do more of these. I might, from time to time.

Amends

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Kyle Kimberlin

If I have hurt you, but I know
I have hurt you and left your love
withering like doves stunned
on wires, through countless days
of incredible sun, forgive the sun.

I have wandered off again,
looking for the perfect way
to make amends. I can’t imagine
finding it, except that you might
fly away and leave the wires

trembling and bare.

Kyle Kimberlin
December 29, 2010*

Wiser men than myself have counseled the wisdom in taking personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admitting it. I’m sure they didn’t mean that coming face-to-face with one’s defects of character on an annual basis would be sufficient, and I hope no one thinks I’ve truly been so remiss. Still, as the year of entropy and disaffection yawns to a close, it seems fitting and proper to sweep the sidewalk just a bit. To the foregoing new poem, I would add just a bit.

I am a sinner who does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official.
— Francis Wolcott, Deadwood

No, that doesn’t seem quite right, normatively. I’ll try again.

I am by the Grace of God a Christian man; by my actions, a great sinner.
– The Way of a Pilgrim, anonymous, Russia, 19th century

That’s better, because … you know … I offer my sincere contrition, gentle reader, if I have offended, this year. So I do hold out hope for absolution. Feel free to confer it in the comments. Bogdaproste. Many thanks for that, and for your attention in 2010.