I reckon it’d do you well, beating and belaboring or no, to read that before reading this; I’ve done the gold-panning for you, and until I’ve laid the nuggets out real nice-wise in an order and a time that seems good to me, I’ll point you prospectors there, once, agin, and many mo’ gin, till it’s time to hitch yer britches, hem a few haws, and mosey on whithersoever ye list.

It’s an introduction, a theme, a reprise, and a coda all in one; and since I don’t trust your musical memory to recirculate that fine air with a steady enough hand to keep the consuming fire of your consciousness hungry enough to digest what I’m puttin down fuh yuh, you’ll forgive me for turning your ever-esteemed attention to it early, often, and ever with my characteristic manful expressive vigor.

Huh?

Don’t worry about it. We’re havin some fun here. We can’t always just stand around in top hats and coat-tails sniffing my farts from fluted glasses and remarking how droll they are.

We need ACTION, Poindexter, and – j’accuse! – I point my dexter-index-finger at my own heart.

Hold on, let me hitch my britches first – hep!

Aaaah, that’ll do ‘er.

I’ll try to keep it both brief and comprehensible this time, deo volente, since I really just wanted to share two things that you might call “poems” with you here today.

Both came to mind, at one time or another, in the last few days, amid both my metaphorical digging and some literal forest-walking, but only recently – in time measured by mere hours – did it occur to me just how suitable it would be to present them in conjunction, as constituting one thing with a more-than-arbitrary suitability of juxtaposition, if you follow.

Going back to what I said earlier about memory – in my experience, memory isn’t stored and recalled in some sort of strictly linear format, like looking up dictionary-entries, but rather is stored in groupings characterized by harmonic emotional resonance, so that “one thing tends to lead to another” in not just an organic, but even a satisfyingly musical-poetic way.

Which brings me back to poetry.

When I’ve had occasion to speak about my Studies in University, specifically Linguistics, I’ve usually settled on a canned shorthand response to the effect that, “I finally decided I would get a degree after all, but the closest thing I could find to something aligned with my language-interests turned out not to be what I expected. Linguistics students turned out to be computer-nerds interested in language-programming, or programming languages, while I loved language as a poet.”

In fact, in one of those thirteen essays I alluded to here, I put it this way:

“I'd always enjoyed language as an esthete -- I loved poetry... imagery... sound, rhythm, the sudden joy of fresh expression.

“I liked the mythological and genealogical and palaeo-onto-logical aspects of languages and their relationships to each other.

“It was vocation.

“To me, it was like getting to know a naked woman in the dark:

“But to my linguistics professors, it was post-mortem necropsy:

“They sound the same, but they're pretty different.

“But that's words for you.”

Please forgive me the shocking image – elsewhere, in alluding to these essays, I said that I thought better of sharing them, and in part, this sort of thing is why; but the visceral shock of disgust generated by the one image, heightened by contrast with the keen sensuality approaching the sacred in the other, was intended to convey, in an immediately felt sense, what it was like, for me, to go from the one to the other in entering Linguistics from my own finer study of the arts, if you follow.

Which brings me back to poetry.

At this point, I have a stricter definition and a more narrowly circumscribed sense of what “poetry” is, and it ain’t “anything goes,” as the spirit of the age has it, and would have you have it.

As I’ve said elsewhere here, usually by way of discussions of Mastery in the context of Qigong and Persian classical dastgaah music, only in the context of a clearly-delineated form with certain strictures, usually passed on as part of an ancient oral tradition, does real expressive beauty arise.

So, I can’t, and won’t, say that what I’ll share is poetry.

But as I’ve also said, or thought to say, many times, in speaking about my writing, to me, poetry is less a form than a flavor – beauty, wonder, rhythm, balance, an infusion into the worldly of the elusive fragrance of transcendence, – and my work in written expression – my poetry, if you’d like to call it that – has been to blur the boundary between prose and poetry, with an emphasis on evoking subtle and sudden graceful turns of phrase in unlooked-for places.

So, herewith, appended, with some further ado, two such pithy unions of heaven and earth.

I said earlier, didn’t I, that it only recently, hour-wise, occurred to me just how appropriately paired the two are? Didn’t I?

I meant what I said, and I said what I meant; old Oliphaunt am I, and I never lie!

Yes. Yes, I did.

I will let you take them in and decide for yourself why I said that.

I guess all I’d add, without further ado, is that the first poem, I wrote early in 2009. I forget when exactly, or for whom exactly.

But I do remember that it was for a co-worker of my dad’s, who I’d never met, who was quite ill from a cancer, breast cancer, that she’d suffered from for long, and who I believe died from it not long afterwards.

I think it fell on my dad to get a card for her and to write something appropriate, and he didn’t know what to say. So, he asked me, and I – having let the weight of this circumstance fall deep into my being – wrote what I’ll share below. I heard back from her, through my dad, that she was touched by it.

I don’t have a name for that poem.

The second poem, I wrote a year or so ago.

I don’t have a name for that, either, and I don’t quite remember why I wrote it, either.

I do know, of course, that it’s just one small flowering amid a vast and variegated pleasance that is the collection of the many blessings mushroom-hunting has bestowed upon me the last few years.

To me, it carries the savor of a classical Chinese or Japanese poem, and that certainly seems right, in more ways than I'll bealbor your ears to hear today.

Jian

4 June 2025

From womb we are drawn to first day's dawning, and yet we cry for darkness lost.

After the ache of new teeth's cutting we learn to eat, yet still we long for mother's milk.

Leaving home, the wide world unfolds at our feet, and yet we moan for floors and walls.

Why do we always look behind us, when the road winds ever forwards?

Could it be – the winds that toss us, in which we trudge, fists tight, eyes closed, head drawn in –

Could it be these winds would bear us lightly, as birds a-wing,

Or as tender blossom from the branch?

Could it be – if change were held closely to the heart, it would tell us its true name is – love?

My love is like fungus in an old forest – hidden, all-pervading.

Many pass it by, few dare to taste it.

Here today, gone tomorrow, it is ever-present.