I find my Dad’s stooped forward posture here
and my Mom’s tightly accounting lips as well.
Their every gesture and tone of voice
every feeling and judgment and way of seeing
all of it in my rulebook for betraying the magic
that’s right here in the splashing of soapy water.
But this boat-person Vietnamese Monk goes on to tell us
how the store room contains all of our interconnections
every star-born atom flowing through us,
letting us off the hook of ever being a separate self.
2019
Category Archives: Poems
The Alba Madonna
I sit meditating
before the Adoration of the Magi —
Fra Angelico and Fra Filipo Lippi
together captured this joy
of Christ’s birth
in a wonder filled circle.
An echo of hands rise up in Hallelujah
here
. . . and here
. . . and here
in the crowd of shepherds.
Blacksmiths shoe the Magi’s horses.
Children dance on a wall
to better view the new child.
I sense another, also unable to break away,
from this vision of the brothers.
We exchange glances but remain silent.
Galleries later I am caught by the same scene,
this time by Botticelli —
Magi bowing to Child and Virgin
amidst Classical ruins.
“Look, the Magi are the three ages of Man.
This one mature
. . . him aged
. . . and here the young one.”
It is my companion of the first Adoration,
speaking a gentle brogue.
We explore together, quietly noting
Joseph’s sweet smile,
a Magi’s horse rearing with excitement.
I say, “Isn’t this human nature too,
not just Auschwitz?”
He is Father Sean from Ireland,
here on a Sabbatical of prayer and study.
I walk on alone.
Then another painting glows so intensely
I cannot break away —
Dosso Dossi’s Aeneas and Achates on the Shore of Libya.
The crowd of Trojan sailors,
two tall trees,
and the curving shore
all an Impressionist dazzle,
with the two heroes alone
still living in Renaissance clarity.
And again Father Sean stands besides me.
“Father, I am so baffled by evil!”
My hand sweeps around the bright scene.
“How, when we have such beauty in us,
how do we choose
to do so much evil?”
“That’s a hard one, son.
St. Augustine wrestled with your question.
His answer,
Evil is a state of deprivation.
You can only understand it
in the context of the good.
It can’t stand alone.”
Then I come finally to Rafaello’s Alba Madonna,
again a circle,
a painting I thought I knew well.
The Christ Child’s translucent nakedness
reclines against Mary’s thigh,
holding a toy in his right hand.
His mother gazes serenely at the toy.
Young John the Baptist,
clad already in animal skins,
looks up at the toy.
They sit upon wildflowers.
Orchards and fields,
farmhouses and forested hills
stretch off behind the three.
The Christ Child
is total peace
flowing
in a circle
of total peace
and the toy He holds
is
the crucifix.
July 1991, at the National Gallery
Sonoma Fog Light
The last poem I wrote for Grace before she died.
I never managed to find a way
for you and me to live at the ocean
that and a thousand other dreams
I never managed to realize.
So now I drive up Highway One
through foggy landscapes–
you always loved them the best–
gathering the images of lupin in seas of grass
cedars and cypresses, sheep and cows,
barns and tacky vacation homes
all soft in their gray splendor.
I stop and walk along the Sonoma shore
pausing for you at the edge.
The sun breaks through the winter fog
shining the waves breaking up around black rocks
shimmering the water’s backwash
into flashing electric pulses
rushing to me through the milky air.
I know you’d know that vision
like you seeing your own true self in a mirror
like me looking into your clear bright eyes.
January 2014
Not a statue
We ran trips
in the park
overlooking paradise,
lost our way
when every way was equal
forgot God
while praising Him,
thought we were
our shadows
in the midst
of all this light.
Then she swam
in a man-made lake
while I meditated
by a man-made stream.
Little children
crossed a bridge
to me.
“Come here! It’s a statue!”
“No, he’s sleeping.”
“Touch him.”
“No, you touch him.”
“Look!
His skin moves
when I touch him.
He’s not a statue.”
1973
Medicine Bundle
In 1971 Rolf asked me to drive him to the Greyhound depot in Sacramento so he could turn himself in to the police. He’d killed a heroin dealer in a shootout protecting his former wife and child. He didn’t want to return to Santa Fe as a prisoner. I made a medicine bundle to renew his mojo and wrote this poem.
Take down these things from the Shaman’s tree –
three hairs from a brave white dog
a thorny seed curved round in spiral form
from a place where the earth was soft as breast
two pieces of jerkey from the deer D. J. shot on his first acid trip
a bracken mushroom like a gray furry rainbow.
Go through the bag of rocks from La Playa de Buriana.
Find one that looks like the whole earth.
Lick it to be sure.
Look through the tiny shells from a beach near Algeciras.
Choose the perfect one, though all are perfect.
Take a piece of abalone shell from Schooner gulch
out of your shirt pocket
one with silver waves sweeping a silver shore.
Search in Grace’s drawer for the flowery handkerchief
she bought in Granada.
Gather everything up and tie the bundle
with the leather thong that holds your hair
a limpet shell on one end, a holey rock on the other.
Drive your friend to Sacramento to catch a Greyhound
so he can go home without handcuffs.
Listen once more to the story of the battle,
the bullets through the ear and right arm
of this flamenco guitarist and blues man.
Tell him how he taught you to see your strength
by just saying, “Man, you’re so hip!”
when you felt so seriously square.
Tell him the story of this bundle of charms.
Be silent now.
Be still.
November 1971
Rolf performing in 1963
The towers falling
I poured water for morning tea,
hearing Larry Bensky
say “Airliners have crashed into the twin towers
of the World Trade Center,
the towers have collapsed.”
I go into shock,
dead to emotions,
before I even start the obsession
of seeing the towers falling,
the people running,
the smoke rising,
the towers falling
the towers falling
the people running.
Tonight Jimi sings
“The sky is hellfire red”
his guitar screaming
a healing theme for this day.
The distinguished panel
of presidential historians and PBS pundits
affirm our national resolve,
our strength as a nation
to rally our forces
to address this threat
to seek out and punish
the source of this attack
on freedom.
I shout “Get Kissinger!”
I see the bodies of Salvador Allende,
Patrice Lumumba,
Mossadeag.
I read the hit lists the CIA gave Suharto
to guide his slaughter –
hundreds of thousands of Indonesians –
when he “assumed power.”
Eliot Abrams affirms, once more,
our support for the freedom fighter death squads
we armed from Iran
the freedom fighter drug lords
who free-based our ghettos.
The smoke rising
the towers falling
The smoke rising
people running.
“America was targeted for attack
because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity
in the world.”
President Nobody
Jimi sings Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower.
“There must be some way out of here.”
Finally, I can cry
for my thousands of dead brothers and sisters.
for my millions of dead brothers and sisters.
Ernest Lowe, September 11, 2001
Notes:
This next morning I remember that many people with whom I share my life and poems have witnessed only a fraction of my two-thirds of a century. Perhaps they know the name of Salvadore Allende, in the news now as the courts of several countries, even including the US, consider the prosecution of Henry Kissinger for his leading role in supporting General Pinochet’s terrorist coup in Chile and the murder of Allende and thousands of his compatriots. (Nixon administration.)
But who is Patrice Lumumba? In 1960 The CIA assured a brief tenure for his democratic socialist regime in the Congo, protecting the multinational corporate interests in the rich minerals of Katanga Province. Through his murder the US put Mobuto in as a dictator who raped his country for the next four decades. (Eisenhower administration.)
Mohammed Mossadegh was the Premier of Iran who nationalized his country’s oil reserves in 1951. (US media ridiculed him because he cried in public for the pain of his people.) Alan Dulles, Director of the CIA and attorney for major oil companies, provided US support and direction for Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi’s royalist coup. The Shah of Iran’s dictatorship tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of his people. This is the basis for the rage against the US of the Ayatollah who finally threw him out. (Eisenhower administration)
This morning the SF Chronicle’s local section headline reads: Bay Area somberly wonders why. The media are piecing together the details of yesterday’s terrorist attack on America. An Arabic flight manual in a car abandoned at Logan Airport. The intercept of Bin Laden’s cell phone calls. But who speaks of the long context in which these “madmen” murdered my brothers and sisters in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania?
I misremembered Jimi Hendrix’ spelling of his name when I first sent out this poem. I can never forget his guitar’s shrieking of the Star Spangled Banner. His recording is perhaps one of the most deeply patriotic works of art in our country’s tragic history. Jimi felt the soul-ripping distance between our American Dream and the nightmare of our napalm and agent orange in Vietnam’s jungles. His anguished song calls us to live the dream.
September 12, 2001
(For these notes I refreshed my memory from a 1984 book by a renegade Wall Street Journal reporter, Jonathan Kwitny, entitled Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World. “How America’s worldwide interventions destroy democracy and free enterprise and defeat our own best interests.” Published by Congdon and Weed, NY. This is only one of many works telling the stories of American state terrorism.)
This clear space
Ten years ago I struggled to live in the clear space
between hope and despair.
Chinese tanks
had crushed the Goddess of Freedom
in Tiananmen Square.
Now, just eleven days from the turning of the century,
I am filled with hope,
growing feelings of hope
that we are at a great divide.
I fear I’ve lost that clear space
where true actions flow like water.
But I’ve walked, at sunset and twilight,
the high desert land of San Cristóbal.
I’ve watched Julia Butterfly climb down
from the redwood she named Luna.
Only two years of her young life up there and
Maxxam bowed to her pure will.
I’ve breathed the perfume of tear gas and pepper spray
on the streets of Seattle
and I’ve gone home
to campuses and neighborhoods
organizing around the world,
calling my brothers and sisters
to the great task.
I walk the skies
the waves
the rivers and
the fields.
I am the deserts and the forests.
No need for hope or despair.
I am this world
this universe
this clear space.
December 20, 1999
Theodore on the porch of the National Gallery
Forty-five minutes to wait for Allen —
who never did plant trees for the White House —
sitting on a bus stop bench facing Constitution.
Homeless black guy approaches and I stand.
“Don b’fray.”
Face of a monster! Fire? Nam?
One eye gone.
Mouth so burnt
his words are a puzzling blur.
“I’m not afraid. Here, Sir.”
I hand him a ten
He holds it up to his one dim eye
and smiles.
We shake hands.
“Hello, I’m Ernie.”
“Mm Thrrrrr.”
“Pleased to meet you. Say it again, your name?”
“Amm Thdrrrr.”
“Theodore?”
“Ssss, Thdrrr.”
Rain starts falling
so I move to the porch of the National Gallery.
“Don’ bfray!!”
“I’m not afraid. Just wet.”
He offers me his bottle
and tells me his story
on the porch of the Gallery.
I understand one word in ten,
looking into his one dim eye,
asking him to say it again
and again.
From time to time
fear does flit through my mind.
I might misunderstand
say the wrong thing to him
trigger an attack.
I tell him my story
to relax from the stress
of listening to words from a ruined mouth
I can hardly understand.
Then he seems to tell me about
a man and a lie.
I look at the valleys down his face
and hear about a man and a bottle of lye.
He offers me his bottle.
Little white flecks of spit hit my blazer.
I move to the side, out of range,
and tell him how Ely, my bro in Atlanta
was a freedom fighter in the Sixties,
freedom fighter even now.
Theodore points to his chest,
“Freem fire too.”
He waits with me, telling his story.
I understand one word in ten,
and look into his one dim eye
wondering when was the last time
anyone had looked into his face
or listened to his words.
Allen’s car pulls up and we shake.
Theodore holds on tight to my hand,
telling me one more story.
I pull loose.
He offers me his bottle.
June 8, 1992
Stereo poem for my lady
I originially performed this poem on stereotape
with two channels of words dancing back and forth.
| My Lady taught me life. My Lady taught me love. My Lady taught me to be myself. She feels. She feels. She feels. Deep, deep, like a bear’s bite, she feels. My Lady sings old juke box songs and drinks white wine in the afternoon. When she drinks white wine she talks like a bulldozer . . . or a bear. In a forest My Lady hangs My Lady’s name is Grace. Deep, deep,
My Lady taught me life. A bear Deep, deep, Laughter,
|
Laughter, my Lady’s laughter, shapes the universe. Love laughter. Bear’s laughter. Magic mirrors, she hangs magic mirrors in our house. She talks with clams . . . Love laughter. A bear runs Do not
Magic mirrors, Love laughter. My Lady sings Do not leave me, My Lady’s Hexagram Magic mirrors My Lady’s name is Grace. |
1971
“Momma’s waiting”
Crewcut hitch-hiker held out his sign,
“Momma’s waiting.”
“My mother worries about me a lot.
If she knew I was hitching
she’d really be upset.”
“It’s okay for you to be a soldier
but not to hitch?”
“Oh, no. she called the President,
told him he shouldn’t take me.
Talked with one of his aides
at midnight. She couldn’t sleep.
She used to call my commanding officer,
you know, was I getting enough to eat?
But she means well.
“When I got out she told me
I should come right home,
my dog has pups and she needs me.”
I said, “She can handle it.”
But she said,
‘She’s emotionally upset,
can’t be a good mother.
The pups will grow up disturbed.”
1970