POEMS for LENT • THE TIGERS of NANZEN-JI

"The Tigers of Nanzen-ji" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"wander an extraordinary / maze whose very / air's alive, alit with breeze- / borne inebriants" and "but claws / bedded in their velvet-napped paws, / for there will be no killings tonight." —from "The Tigers of Nanzen-ji" by Brad Leithauser, as found in Cats of the Temple

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I illustrated an ekphrastic poem. (I'll let that sink in for a moment.)

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I had an image in mind before I sought out a reproduction of the artwork to which the poem refers. While I appreciate what the poet does with the original painting, I still decided to bring my own piece to life. (Otherwise, what is the point of the project? And I didn't want another Leithauser poem; I wanted this one.)

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In the poem, I sense a divide between what is wild and what is domesticated.

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And there is a playfulness here. This is the "pretend" and the "play" that we often relegate to the realm of children's games, even though those games are real and difficult work.

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In the poem, I sense a notion of working within the bounds of what we know, with the knowledge, resources, and tools that are at hand. (Can we really do anything else?)

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We cannot know what we do not know, for good or ill.

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Sometimes we need a guide. 

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Sometimes we need permission to encounter things as they really are.

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The punchline of the poem comes in the last two stanzas. We are reassured that "the danger's all a bluff" and that we are "free from harm here." Yet can we truly be safe and secure in the face of an encounter with the divine—even if it is mediated in the form of a work of art, a wild beast, or a religious sanctuary? (Or in this case, some thing that serves as all three?)

POEMS for LENT • SKIN

"Skin" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Sometimes I nerve-hover hand-sized square to square, nick-naming (and mind-mapping) every burn mark and blemish: starfish, Utah, Pee Dee River; Africa, amoeba, mole-mound, quail." and "daub each one with a cold cube of yellow butter" —from "Skin" by Atsuro Riley, as found in Romey's Order

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I played a bit loose and simple with the images from the poem, but I absolutely love what ended up on the chalk board.

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"Constellations," clockwise, starting with upper left (as imagined by Romey): rabbit foot/Florida; tepee/Fuji; starfish; Africa; general scar; anchor; amoeba.

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Skin as existential map. Skin as a field of constellations. Skin as a "suit" that reflects how we live, declares that we are alive.

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Scars as stories of life lived.


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I also imagined skin as a skillet. The cube of butter becomes a pat of butter gliding about on the griddle of the body. 

POEMS for LENT • WATER LILIES

"Water Lilies" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"like children who pierce their flesh // and press wound with wound as if like ancients / we assembled a cairn of stones and a pillar forbidding // each other pass with evil intent." and "squinting towards // that one pink blossom, framed by the purple -spiked bee balm, / that has stayed open all this time to forgive us." —from "Water Lilies" by Philip Terman, as found in Rabbis of the Air

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I have had the privilege of hearing Philip Terman read some of the poems of this collection. What I find compelling about his writing and his reading of his poetry is that it is infused with rite and ritual and holiness.

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For me, "Water Lilies" is a poem of memory, loss, longing. Yet it is also a poem of presence, reconciliation, forgiveness.

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I like that instead of creation being redeemed along with (and through) humanity those in the poem are redeemed along with (and through) creation.

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The images that stand out for me are the lighting of a candle, of a stack of stones, of the tiny frogs in the pond, of a single pink blossom floating on the surface of the pond.

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This poem is prayer.

POEMS for LENT • SONGS of EXTINCTION

"Songs of Extinction" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"dodo bleating reedily to English-bred hounds," and "The last Victrola cranked to play in earnest. / The bright green town of my youth." —from "Songs of Extinction" by William Kupinse, as found in Fallow

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The songs of extinction in this poem parallel the history of humanity. They move from the death throes of a mastodon to the current day. They move from the universal and humanity to the personal and individual.

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The first five-line strophe is of animals of the past. The second four-line strophe is of animals on the verge of extinction. The third three-line strophe is of losses of human culture. The fourth (and final) two-line strophe is of a personal moment soon to be lost.

The movement on the page—full, longer lines to fewer, shorter lines—is an extinction itself.

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Once again, I am struck by beauty in the midst of loss. This is an elegy that truly sings.

POEMS for LENT • THE GRASS

"The Grass" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Bouteloua black / grama grass red / chino side- / oats blue grama grass / hairy buffalo- / grass toboso three-awn / land's dawn" and "whispering seeds / will pass, will pass / within leaves / listening" —from "The Grass" by Jeffrey Yang

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Jeffrey Yang conjures up an immense sea of grass: grassland upon grassland called forth through incantatory lines that name the various species of North American grasses of the Great Plains.

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I have stood in the midst of the such a sea of grass in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland in southwestern South Dakota. Standing in the midst of chest-high grass, where all I could see was more grass in all directions was a bit of a "Pip moment" (like the experience of the cabin boy in Moby-Dick when he is left abandoned in the middle of the ocean). There was only grass and sky. It was a moment of great joy, as well as a moment of great terror when I realized the vast scale of grassland and how small I was in the midst of such scale. Just as in the poem, I found myself "hitched to everything else / in the universe."

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What happens when one realizes how small one is? What happens when one realizes the vastness of the cosmos and the immensity of the divine?

The answer is whispering in the wind. We merely need to listen.

POEMS for LENT • THE FISH

"The Fish" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Now the sea / is in me: I am the fish, the fish / glitters in me; we are / risen, tangled together / certain to fall / back to the sea." —from "The Fish" by Mary Oliver, as found in American Primitive

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This poem is many things.

It is about nostalgia and recollection.

It is about a loss of innocence.

It is about the necessity of destruction in the act of ingestion and nourishment.

It is about interdependence and interconnectedness.

It is about suffering and the mystery of the same.

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Yet there is also beauty here.

In the midst of death there is fascination.

Through the "law of contagion" one becomes a fish through ingestion. One swims in the sea, just as the sea swims in the one.

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I imagine all of it a net. We may slip through, but it is unlikely.

POEMS for LENT • UNHOLY SONNET

"Unholy Sonnet" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"All lengths of gut are pasture, all membrane / Peels back and off like ripe persimmon skin." —from "Unholy Sonnet 9" by Mark Jarman, as found in Questions for Ecclesiastes

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Upon reading this poem, all I could envision was the anatomical drawings of Andreas Vesalius in his De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body).

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This particular "Unholy Sonnet" is a play on the "Collect for Purity" from the Book of Common Prayer—"Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden..."

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We are stories read by the divine. Nothing is hidden. All is seen.

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We are called to turn back toward God in the same way that the comets follow their courses. But this is no clockwork universe. This is a God in relationship with humanity. Even though we are seen and known, there is still choice available to us.

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We may not hear God's voice in this unholy sonnet, but we do see God's handiwork in the beauty and complexity of God's creation, especially in those made in God's image.

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And, for being "unholy sonnets," these particular poems will feel familiar to those who entertain faith in the God of Judaism and Christianity. The language borrows heavily from the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the traditions that have arisen to worship that same God. But the poems are wholly Jarman's, which may be why they "aren't" holy.

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Thank God for the questions of the poets!

POEMS for LENT • THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER

"The Learn'd Astronomer" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Even then, I knew the stars to be empty cans." and "the art of love is less mysterious than you suppose: / a plastic toy in a rubble of caramel corn." —from "The Learn'd Astronomer" by Michael Robbins, as found in Alien vs. Predator

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The poems in Alien vs. Predator are a mixture of pop culture references, song lyric snippets, and traditional poetic forms.

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"The Learn'd Astronomer" shrinks distances between the far and the near, the ethereal stars and the tangible manifestations of our lives. Instead of playing the cliche of saying we are star dust, Robbins collapses the stars into our lives as "junk in a Safeway cart."

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This is a "romantic" poem, a "love" poem, that has been stripped of what we think of as romance, what we think of as love. I think this is a love poem for the "end times," for the end of the universe.

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Perhaps, though, being alive, existing, is romance and love enough. May the "stars" forever shine!

POEMS for LENT • PLUME

"Plume" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"For years / it may be locked / in the matrix / of silt and sand / like a photo- / graphic image" and "this beautiful / movement / fanning / between interstices / feathering / void to void" —from "Plume" by Kathleen Flenniken, as found in Plume

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I am constantly amazed that as a species we think we can control and contain things. We think we can control and contain the divine that is breathed into our clay vessels. We think we can control and contain politics and culture. And in "Plume," as in the real world, we think we can control and contain nuclear waste.

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Yet we can control and contain nothing. Even ourselves most of the time.

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In "Plume," Kathleen Flenniken adopts a column for the shape of poem. Like in Komunyakaa’s “The Towers,” the form is important to the structure of the poem. Unlike the majority of poems in Carson's Red Doc>, Flenniken handles the form well. Her hand is present and visible in the line breaks, which lend the poem a movement similar to the what the words of the poems themselves capture.

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The poems of Plume, as a collection, are both a love song and an elegy to the people and places (and primarily the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Tri-Cities) of the Atomic Age. These poems are personal, with Flenniken's father working at Hanford and then, later, Flenniken herself.

But "Plume" is the poem that universalizes the collection for me. It conveys the poison that we have planted in the earth. It deals in half-lives and longevities that are difficult for me to imagine.

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"Plume" is a matter of scale.

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"Plume" is a matter of structure, and that all structure will fail and decay.

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May God have mercy upon our souls.

POEMS for LENT • MYSTERION

"Mysterion" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Mysterion is / never elsewhere, ever looms, indivisible / and here, and compasses a journey one / assumes as it is tendered on a spoon." —from "Adventures in New Testament Greek: Mysterion" by Scott Cairns, as found in Philokalia

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In Philokalia, Scott Cairns has five "Adventures in New Testament Greek" poems scattered throughout the first two sections of the collection. These poems examine theological terms—metanoia, hairesis, nous, mysterion, and apocatastasis. I originally intended to read "Adventures in New Testament Greek: Metanoia" since it covers the very Lenten concept of metanoia, "turning back," repentance. But it didn't have any good imagery, being too cerebral, too abstract.

By contrast, "Adventures in New Testament Greek: Mysterion" has more concrete imagery, but I couldn't quite capture it. So, instead, I attempted to draw what is hidden yet right in our midst, and what felt true to Cairns's poem. I drew how I envision the Lamb from the book of Revelation.

I've taken a few liberties with the vision of John of Patmos. There are still seven eyes, but there are no (seven) horns. And there are not seven "lamps" but three candles, a trinitarian representation. Additionally, as per one of my "black psalms," Lamb is a lampstand!

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This Lamb is mysterion—a paradox, a mystery, a balance of opposites. The Lamb is a sacrifice, a bearer of suffering, just as the goat of "Buzkashi," just as the cow of "The Winter Cow."

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There are things we cannot understand, that we cannot intellectually apprehend, but that we can experience, that we can "feel" on some level. Even though we cannot comprehend them, we can encounter their manifestations in the world of the enfleshed and tangible.

Like in the language of poems. Or in religious rituals. Or in art.

POEMS for LENT • THE WINTER COW

"The Winter Cow" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"The cow stood to be milked. She had to. / She had to last until May since the milk / was needed." and "The body is a great boat that knows the way / through iced blue distances." —from "The Winter Cow" by Nance Van Winckel, as found in No Starling

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Last night, I was at a literary event—a series of featured readers, followed by an open mic—which was also the three-year anniversary of Creative Colloquy. The first half of the literary celebration (and shenanigans) was guest emceed by Washington State Poet Laureate Tod Marshall. He was giving away prizes to those who correctly answered poetry-related questions he posed.

He asked the audience of about 90 people to name one of the previous Washington State Poet Laureates. I waited a few seconds to see if anyone would raise their hand. No one did, so I raised my hand and answered, "Kathleen Flenniken." Mr. Marshall awarded me a bottle of Lantern Brewing Dubbel ale and a copy of No Starling by Nance Van Winckel for my response.

I started reading as soon as I arrived home.

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There is horror in this poem. The cow that we meet has had her hooves amputated due to extreme cold, and, I would assume, frostbite and gangrene. But she needs to be kept alive until the spring. This is the abject horror of existence in the face of absolute suffering.

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There is also horror in the utilitarian function that the cow serves as she transforms grass and grain into a "white froth" through her digestive processes.

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There is beauty in this poem. The boy that we meet treats the cow with as much tenderness as he can muster in the face of the horror he confronts. He still has to milk the cow, for she serves a purpose, but he can act as a salve to the suffering. There is extra hay fed to her on a couple days each week. The boy tries not to topple the cow as he works.

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I can’t help but think of the Norse creation myth. In this scene of cow and boy, I hear echoes of Auðumbla and Ymir emerging out of the primordial ice.

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Like the poem "Buzkashi," I won't be forgetting this poem any time soon. It is haunting me and I anticipate that it will continue to do so.

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I imagined the cow as a cave painting done by ancient ancestors and then "vandalized" by modern street artists and the geometric shapes of our age.

POEMS for LENT • MOBY DICK

"Moby Dick" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"'Pale mast, so long!' I say, as I drown, mad..." —from "Moby Dick" by Anthony Etherin

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This poem is Oulipo on steroids.

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There are multiple constraints.

First, it is a sonnet, which means fourteen line of ten syllables in each line. Second, it is a Petrarchan sonnet, which means that its rhyme scheme is a b b a a b b a c d c d c d. Third, it is a palindrome. Fourth, it manages amidst all of that to convey the narrative thread of Melville's Moby-Dick.

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Let's return to the fact that the poem is a palindrome. Not only is it bound by number of lines and syllables and end rhymes, but it does it all with the second set of seven lines being a mirror image of the first set of seven lines!

I don't even think like this. The poem is amazing to me.

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And then the poem ends as the novel, with the crew dead because of the madness of the captain, the ship sunk and all (but one) drowned.

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The chalk art is inspired by Polynesian death masks, in addition to the lines of the poem.

POEMS for LENT • YOU ARE GONE, BROTHER

"You Are Gone, Brother" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"We danced in sewage / And brushed our teeth with ash." and "We float like eyes stitched to the sky, / Looking for each other / In all the wrong places." —from "You Are Gone, Brother" by Zubair Ahmed, as found in City of Rivers

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This poem, along with its companions in City of Rivers, is filled with a multitude of images and the vibrancy of life. It is also filled with longing and loss.

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The interesting piece for me, though, is what happens between the strophes. In the spaces between them, there are pauses, moments of silence. Each of these is like a breath between words. Each of these is like a time and a space where reflection can take place.

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This poem is remembrance and it is prayer. This poem is seeking and searching. This poem is ephemeral and fleeting things. It is filled with stench, dirt, ash, sewage, sand, and other things that "are vanishing."

Yet, even though things are messy and in a state of decay, the poem still miraculously holds together.

POEMS for LENT • EARLY POMPEIAN

"Early Pompeian" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"that portrait / with its plum-parted lips, / the skin of pomegranate, / the forehead's blank, unborn bewilderment."

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"On the black wings of your screams I watched vultures rise"

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"the sea / is black and salt as the mind of a woman after labour."

—from "Early Pompeian" by Derek Walcott, as found in The Fortunate Traveller and Selected Poems

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As I am reading this poem, I learn that Derek Walcott died yesterday at the age of 87. He lived a long life. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

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Many of Walcott's poems are about his native Saint Lucia, but he also frequently incorporated biblical imagery and the myths and cultures of the ancient world. In "Early Pompeian," he conflates a stillbirth and imagery from the culture of Pompeii, in addition to its destruction by the volcano Vesuvius.

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There is power in the labor of a birth and power in the eruption of the volcano. There is an echo of those buried by the eruption in the curled form of the stillborn infant.

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Death, birth, still birth, premature birth, suffering, existential despair. All of it couched in beautiful language—rich, vibrant, lively language.

How did I end up here again? Oh, yes, by choice. So here I am in the dust, the ash, the flesh, the mess.

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Rest in peace, Mr. Walcott. Thank you for the poetry.

POEMS for LENT • DEATH IS a DIALOGUE

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"Death Is a Dialogue" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Dust—The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust"—

Death doubts it—Argues from the Ground—
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

—#976 (Johnson numbering) by Emily Dickinson

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I had to work my secret girlfriend into this project! (I think her poem speaks for itself.)

POEMS for LENT • from THE BOOK of the FOUR PRECEPTS

"The Four Precepts" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"You dream: from your heart grow / a prickly palm-tree, a pink lotus / your head has sprouted a bush with a nest in it, / you dream, a bride in red / beside you, you in red ornaments / dance for the joy of the Lord." —from "from The Book of the Four Precepts" by Yuli Gugolev (translated by J. Kates), as found in Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology (Evgeny Bunimovich, editor; J. Kates, translation editor)

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"Imagine yourself asleep, pretending to be dead," is how the poem begins. But I get to escape death and enjoy the dreamscapes that Gugolev leads us through, because it is only pretend.

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I don't necessarily understand everything here, but that is quite alright. The images are rich and strange. There is a sense of myth and religion sneaking into the lines. There is beauty amidst the weirdness.

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We may not be dealing with dust and ashes here, but there is Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind as foundation. It gives form and life to the persons, places, and things in the poem.

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When I imagined the anthropomorphic plant in the poem, I could only see the plant-man as having a lotus head, even though the poem clearly states his heart begets the lotus and his head is a bush. So artistic license was indeed taken with his representation. And I imagined the bride as a plant as well.

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I fear that I may be missing cultural references that I do not know (and don't even know I'm missing). Even so, there is plenty here to reflect upon and revel in as one image morphs into another, as one line leads into the next. So that is what I'll do. I will read and savor, read again and savor once more.

POEMS for LENT • PSALM 88

"Psalm 88" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"I am as those who've run out of time / Without vigor, afloat among the dead" and "My eyes burn with acid sufferings / And every day I call out to you / Every day I reach out my hands toward you" —from "Psalm 88" by Norman Fischer, as found in Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms

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I didn't intend on being in Psalm 88 today, but here I am.

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These translations of the Psalms are written by a Zen priest and poet who was raised Jewish. There is a meeting of different religious faiths in these renderings of the Psalms. Yet, they still sing and sorrow, whether of a Buddhist flavor or of their original Jewish sources.

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Originally, I was planning on Psalm 90, which has more of a Lenten feel to me (and feels better balanced between lamentation and celebration than Psalm 88), but then death set in. My cockatiel, a long-time family companion, died. Then I had to work a funeral, which I knew was coming. But both were bookended by other deaths. Death everywhere. Dismal weather. Rain and gloom. The sorrow of watching a nation and its people crushed by those who worship wealth and greed at the expense of that same nation and its people.

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Psalm 88 is a cry for help to a God who seems absent. And the cry in this psalm is never answered. It just hangs there.

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The language, both familiar and unfamiliar, due to the difference that lives in the lines of these translations, causes me to approach these psalms with caution and quiet. The difference makes me see things that it becomes easy to not see when I read them in a "normal" translation. The difference allows me to hear the pain and suffering of the psalmist in this particular lament.

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Sometimes one is "Pulled down to the bottom / Gasping for breath". If that is the case, then how can one still scream?

POEMS for LENT • THEOLOGY of NONEXISTENCE

"Theology of Nonexistence" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"But if I plunge into this via negativa, the figure I'll find is not on high , and I expect no revelation" and "Of not accepting that you're not, the silence" —from "Theology of Nonexistence" by Jacques Roubaud, as found in Some Thing Black (and translated from the French by Rosmarie Waldrop)

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Some Thing Black is a collection of poems by Jacques Roubaud that explores the aftermath of his wife's sudden death. These are poems of mourning and grief, and, eventually, coming to terms with his wife's absence.

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"Theology of Nonexistence" in other words is "God-word of Not Being." But what if God is silent? Or worse, God may be speaking in some sense, but one cannot understand it?

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"Theology of Nonexistence" falls in the middle of these more than 80 poems. It is a balance of loss and love. It is a cry into the abyss of death. It is protest and remembrance.

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Some Thing Black is one of the inspirations for my own Black Psalms. There is something about these poems, these ruminations and reflections upon death and existence, that presses into truths as it moves along. There is brutal honesty placed upon the page, and it was something that I hoped to emulate as I likewise explored disease, suffering, and existence. Answers may not necessarily be forthcoming, but sometimes the simple act of asking the questions is enough.

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One of my favorite ways of creating chalk art is when I can build a new piece over the remnants of an old piece. "Theology of Nonexistence" uses the "bones" of "Of a Child Early Born" to create a new image.

I like the process of transformation that this kind of art-work entails, especially when the results are satisfying.

"Theology of Nonexistence" and its predecessor are two of my favorite chalk art interpretations of this "Poems for Lent" project so far.

POEMS for LENT • PHOENIX-TONGUE

"Phoenix -Tongue" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"What some refer to as love / others burn as fuel." and "One egg we cooked in the center. The rest we saved." —from "Phoenix Tongue" by Michael Schmeltzer, as found in Blood Song

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This is another poem that is not only for Lent, but of Lent. In fact, it starts with an epigraph of Genesis 3:19—"...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

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The (divine) fire that scars often returns us to the (mortal) ash and dust that we are.

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This sonnet contains so much that it needs to be read many times. That is the only way to unpack everything within.

Sex. Death. Family relations. Childhood memories. The Towers from 9/11. Cruelty and care residing together. Loss. Joy and suffering. But mostly suffering.

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The poem is the first in the collection and acts as a gate for the rest. Be careful when you enter that you aren't consumed. (Perhaps that wouldn't be so bad, though. We dabble in being born once more.)

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In addition to the imagery of the poem, I couldn't shake the notion of the speaker being the Titan Atlas. (And I don't even know from whence this notion comes.) Here Atlas holds the egg of the world, cooked in the flames that "set the nest ablaze."

POEMS for LENT • OF a CHILD EARLY BORN

"Of a Child Early Born" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"For the child is born an unbreathing scripture / and her broken authors wait / on one gurney together." and "if lightning staggers down the hall of mothers" —from "Of a Child Early Born" by Katie Ford, as found in Blood Lyrics

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I could have easily chosen nearly any poem in Katie Ford's Deposition (2002) or Blood Lyrics (2014).

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Like "The Anti-Golem," this poem is about creation and the messiness that it entails. It is likewise about ritual, prayer, and incantations to ensure that the creature lives.

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Like "Evolution," the process of creation involves being scarred in some sense as creator. In "Evolution," it is fire. In "Of a Child Early Born," it is lightning.

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I know this longing and pleading and negotiating. Not due to a premature birth, but due to miscarriage and loss.

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The comparisons—things that weigh as much as "this child of grams"—are what really carry this poem for me. I can feel the lack of presence, the lightness, the fleeting quality of this life manifested in metaphor and words.

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The chalk art is inspired not only by the poem, but also by the Star Child in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

POEMS for LENT • THE ANTI-GOLEM

"The Anti-Golem" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Prenez d'abord une poigneé de poussière et cendres et, en disant le nom d'anti-Dieu, c'est-à-dire de Satan, soufflez dessus."  —from "The Anti-Golem" by Alta Ifland, as found in Voice of Ice / Voix de Glace

"Start by taking a handful of dust and ashes and, saying the name of the anti-God, that is, of Satan, blow upon it." —translated from French to English by Alta Ifland

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There are so many things right about this poem.

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First, it is a dual-language edition, with the original French facing its English translation, both written by Alta Ifland.

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Second, it dabbles in Jewish folklore meets Charles Perrault by way of the Brothers Grimm.

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Third, it is humans meet God by way of Satan. Or, more so, it is humans become God by way of Satan. Except that is the "lie." (And there is the connection to "Bell Theory.")

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Fourth, it is a prose poem that is so finely crafted that it doesn't need line breaks. (In fact, that goes for the entire book. These prose poems have been written in French, translated into English, fine-tuned in French, fine-tuned in English, et cetera, until they sing.)

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Fifth, not only is it a poem for Lent, but it is a poem of Lent. It is "poussière et cendres," "dust and ashes."

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The meeting of the man with Sleeping Beauty, now both awake, and the awakening of nature that follows, is a weirding way of examining the Fall. Paradise is the "lie." We are left with questions of life, new life, a return to life. We are not given answers.

POEMS for LENT • BEETLES

"Beetle" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"The men then sat upon the rotten floor, / and talked of how the beetles had got in, / and how they grew within the grain of oak and beech." —from "Beetles" by Ada Ludenow, as found in Small Events

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As in yesterday's "Hive," today's "Beetles" is a sonnet breaking out of its form as it explores insects.

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Numbness and not noticing what goes on around us leads to "disaster" in this poem.

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I hear echoes of Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Orwell's Animal Farm in these lines. Yet the compression of the ideas of these works into such a small space lends the poem power and authority.

I echoed works by Albrecht Dürer and Shitao in my chalk drawing interpretation.

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I heard the words of this poem scuttling about in my head throughout the day.

POEMS for LENT • HIVE

"Hive" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"what we serve, preserve, avowed in Latin murmurs" and "alchemical, nectar-slurred, pollen-furred, / the world's mantra us, our blurry sound" —from "Hive" by Carol Ann Duffy, as found in The Bees

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"Hive" is one of the shorter poems in The Bees. It's a fractured sonnet of sorts. (Not all of the poems in this collection are about bees, but enough of the poems are that it is the predominant theme.)

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This poem is filled with a wonderful buzz of language—rhymes at the end of lines, rhymes within lines, vowel sounds that excite the eye and tongue, simple words joined into compound words, the use of f and h and m and v to give "breath" and  "murmur" and "hum" to the poem.

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This poem is a reminder to me that we each have a place to be within community, that we are "concelebrants." It is a nice pause within a week of reading poems mostly focused on loss or questioning existence. It is a poem that affords one a space to sit and reflect on the joy of being alive.

POEMS for LENT • EVOLUTION

"Evolution" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"So our toes and fingers were all roots, once touching, / and a body sometimes grown up / to a standing beast that later came loose from the earth, / nails painted red." and "Only real life has slower zig-zags, leaving its burn marks on us," —from "Evolution" by Allan Peterson, as found in Fragile Acts

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This is such a strange poem. Flora begets fauna. Lightning becomes bone marrow.

(Who is the mad scientist / Creator here?)

Yet, in the strangeness is comfort and familiarity. There is a sense of belonging and a sense of home.

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Forsythia are to Carson and Yoon as azaleas are to Yoon and Peterson.

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Ultimately, I feel as though I have crawled out of the primordial slime of this poem and into a space that I don't necessarily understand but thoroughly enjoy. I am these bones. I am these words.

POEMS for LENT • BELL THEORY

"Bell Theory" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"(I touched the globe moving in my throat, a hemisphere sinking.)" and "Lie on a field lined with golden bells, loved." —from "Bell Theory" by Emily Jungmin Yoon

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This poem rings and sings. There is rhythm and there is rhyme. There is exploration of language. And it is beautiful.

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There is darkness. There is misunderstanding. There is insensitivity. There is racism. And it is ugly.

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There is a reaching back. There is a being now.

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There is some sort of balance that is found. There is a power that is reclaimed.

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Like "Not the Forsythia" there is a field of forsythia. Once again we are amidst its blazing yellows, and we are amidst "vibrating bells in their mouths."

POEMS for LENT • THE MALDIVE SHARK

"The Maldive Shark" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank / Or before his Gorgonian head;" and "Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, / Pale ravener of horrible meat." —from "The Maldive Shark" by Herman Melville

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The beings of creation are mostly indifferent to our presence.

There is beauty and horror in existence.

There is a dance between the pilot-fish and the shark they "serve" that we do not and cannot comprehend.

POEMS for LENT • MY SPIRIT SAID to ME

"My Spirit Said to Me" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"The next morning, my friend and I have walked down / from the village to help gather, when we hear the killing / committee coming for us.” and “I linger out over the sea, and my soul’s helper who has been / with me through the stories of my being says, 'You can go / back and change the story.'" —“You Can Change the Story, My Spirit Said to Me as I Sat Near the Sea” by Joy Harjo, as found in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

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I like poems that challenge my assumptions. This poem by Joy Harjo does that. It blends the dream world and the real world. It brings mythology into our midst.

Simultaneously, this poem proposes things that I actually believe: (1) that there is value in the stories we tell ourselves; (2) that there is power in the stories we tell ourselves; and (3) that we can change the stories we tell ourselves, and therefore change the value and steal the power for ourselves.

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The trickster in this case is a victim of violence and therefore “flips” the way that I expect the story to function. The trickster is not the protagonist, but a “minor” character, who nonetheless causes the story to move forward.

"When I return to present earth time, I can still hear the / singing." Even as the poem comes to a close, the worlds still merge and weave, wax and wane, in their encounters with one another.

I am satisfied with the conclusion of the story within the story. There is justice on the backside of potential injustice. There is truth in the telling.

POEMS for LENT • THE TOWERS

"The Towers" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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“while others walked dead / into a fiery brisance, lost / in an eternity of Vermeer.” and “Apollo was at Ground Zero / because he knows everything / about bandaging up wounds. / Men dug hands into quavering / flotsam, & they were blinded by / the moon’s indifference.” and “your wings of beeswax & crepe singed beyond belief.” —from “The Towers” by Yusef Komunyakaa, as found in Warhorses

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As far as I am concerned, Anne Carson’s poems in Red Doc> are hampered by form. In Yusef Komunyakaa’s “The Towers,” form helps to confine the poem and give it life.

There are two columns of poetry. The left “tower” begins with the word “yes,” while the right “tower” starts with the word “no.” Both reflect upon the everyday and ordinary lives of the men and women who died on 9/11 in the attack on the World Trade Center. Both reflect upon those of us who are mere mortals trying to reach for the realm of the gods—whether victim or infidel; whether working in the tower of Babel, striving for greatness in the afterlife, or attempting to touch the sun like Icarus.

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There are so many poems in Warhorses that I could have chosen, but this is the one that speaks most fully to my heart.

It is a marriage of form and language. It is a marriage of contemporary America and ancient Greece. It is a marriage of questions and answers. (And then more questions.)

Ultimately, the poem feels holy to me. Sacred space on the page for now-hallowed ground.

POEMS for LENT • NOT the FORSYTHIA

"Not the Forsythia" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"he doesn't let the herd eat the forsythia but / knows they like to be / amidst its blazing yellows." and "A / lone white one (Io) glows / like an idol and is Ida's / favorite." —from "Not the Forsythia" by Anne Carson, as found in Red Doc>.

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From yesterday's dead goat to today's live musk oxen.

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When Red Doc> was released, I ran and and bought it immediately. I was looking forward to it because it was promoted as a sequel to Anne Carson's earlier novel in verse, Autobiography in Red, which is one of my favorite books of poems. And then I opened the book and encountered its layout and form.

Supposedly, the format was "randomly" selected by the word-processing software that Carson was using and she was so enamored with the form that she kept it. In fact she dedicates the book "for the randomizer." I was angry at what I saw as the clunkiness of the form and what I perceived as the laziness of the poet.

With all of that being said, I recently decided to try my hand at reading the book again. It's a bit of a difficult read at times because the line breaks don't really follow the rhythm and meter of the words on the page. In other words, I have to read slowly and deliberately and "against the grain" to hear what is there. There is reward in such slow and attentive reading. It opens up the text despite the "randomizer" and the poet "getting in the way."

(Let's just say that I'm learning to like Red Doc>.)

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I love the simplicity of the scene of "Not the Forsythia." G (formerly known as Geryon in Autobiography of Red, as well as in the poem by ancient Greek poet Stesichorus that was the inspiration for Carson) and Ida (a character new to these poems) are standing in a field as G watches his herd of musk oxen and Ida sketches them.

It is a scene of observation and beauty, of watching the world and being in it. Meanwhile, there is a simple conversation going on between G and Ida, and then misunderstanding perhaps. Or something else?

POEMS for LENT • BUZKASHI

"Buzkashi" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"She knows / not to be devoured is a perfect sentiment" and "He turns her face to the window: mountains / oddly still in the milk broth of oblivion." —from "Buzkashi" by Diana Khoi Nguyen

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For me, this poem is a punch in the gut. It's imagery is both brutal and beautiful. It is about existence.

I don't completely understand the poem, which is why it intrigues me. There is a cultural barrier. There is a sports barrier. Until I knew what buzhashi was, I misunderstood the poem to be about the preparation of an animal for a meal. Now that I know it is not, the loss is tempered a bit by a potential win.

There is beauty at the edge of the abyss. There is longing for more time.

POEMS for LENT • ASH WEDNESDAY

"Ash Wednesday" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, charcoal, and chalk pastels on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." —GENESIS 3:19

"Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still. // Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death / Pray for us now and at the hour of our death." —from "Ash Wednesday" by T. S. Eliot

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I've never really been one to give up something for Lent. Instead, I am more inclined to add something, usually an in-depth study of sorts.

This year, I have decided to delve into a new poem for each day of Lent. Two years ago, I spent my Lent in the poems of Robinson Jeffers. This year, my plan is to work through different poets and spend some time with each of them, and one of their poems that moves me, for a full day.

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It seemed appropriate to start this Lenten journey of poetry with a poem about Ash Wednesday, so I turned to T. S. Eliot. "Ash Wednesday" wrestles with faith in the language of holy text and in the rhythms of ritual and rite. There is a "turning back" (repentance) and a bursting forth toward God and the holy. There is the collapse of one's self in the acknowledgment of one's sinful self and moving into the grace and mercy offered by the divine.

"Lord, I am not worthy."