Table Talk - while honoring all the end product I see on the plate I've prepared before me, I honor the butcher, the grower, the packager, who labors day in and day out as I casually drop by the growers open air market or designer market, only lifting a hand from shelf to cart.
I had such an awkward moment today. At a Unity elders circle in Taos, NM - talking about death, we passed the talking stick. The small, beautiful circle of people sharing all the wisdom. Impermanence, the art of grieving, the longing to shed skin’s confines for the sky out-longed only by sky spirit yearning for a cuppa coffee all Wings of Desire. Joe asked if anyone had anything else to share before closing the circle. I took the stick and said “ I could talk about how my friend who’d thrown himself into the Sound at Shilshole, talked to me about time and space the morning after he died. I could talk about the way a giant fish jumped in the Rio Grande, when I said a prayer for my father just as the white eagle feather touched the water’s skin. I could talk about what the Shaman told me about how he saw that I am meant to walk others from this world into the next. But none of that fucking matters, I literally shouted - to the me who lost my mother when I was a young girl and had no one to walk me through my grief’.
I felt embarrassed by the open, raw heart that surprised even me and wished I could take it all back.
The shoes in "Home" hit me in such an emotional way. Our shoe rack by the door is a source of constant consternation not to mention a trip hazard, but your poem suddenly brought to mind how our shoes have gone from tiny velcro, to light up sketchers, to Chuck Taylors, to crocks and cleats and one day it will be just my flip flops and my husbands lawn-mowing shoes and I will miss the mess.
love it when you give us multiple poems. The mosquito and the moon got me and it will take time for me to be able to verbalize why, just love it. I always have preferred cold to hot weather. It is cleaner and I have to do to stay warm, not nothing to stay cool.
I am lucky to be living the Winter of our Contentment. Your poem nailed it. So grateful for that shiver. And also grateful for the furnace. Sometimes I even take off the blanket to feel the cold, then luxuriate in the blanket's re-welcomed furnace.
Thank you, Latham. It was once part of a longer poem. I try to look for that when I write longer. Is there some smaller section that is truly the poem. Kinda like whittling.
"Opposite World" reminds me of a line from Doc Cochran in "Deadwood" -- "I see as much misery outta them movin' to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm."
Nov 1, 2023·edited Nov 1, 2023Liked by Sherman Alexie
HOME, and TABLE TALK are the long hits for me. (Though I see what you're saying, pointing to, in the last one --- and the truth that's there. It surely applies to people a hundred times a minute. There ought to be some kind of trafficking ticket for it. It would help towns & cities raise a lot of income just now.)
Thank you, David. A friend not on Substack read "Home" and said, "You know that lions in repose are just lions waiting to hunt and eat something." Turned a bucolic poem into something else!
What a wolf; that was some mosquito!
Sending this beautiful gathering of gems to my wife,Debra: www.mygoodwolf.com
Thanks!
Table Talk - while honoring all the end product I see on the plate I've prepared before me, I honor the butcher, the grower, the packager, who labors day in and day out as I casually drop by the growers open air market or designer market, only lifting a hand from shelf to cart.
I have missedmissedmissed your writing. Like air. Like my blood.
Thank you, Janet.
‘Then every death
reminds you of every
other death...’
I had such an awkward moment today. At a Unity elders circle in Taos, NM - talking about death, we passed the talking stick. The small, beautiful circle of people sharing all the wisdom. Impermanence, the art of grieving, the longing to shed skin’s confines for the sky out-longed only by sky spirit yearning for a cuppa coffee all Wings of Desire. Joe asked if anyone had anything else to share before closing the circle. I took the stick and said “ I could talk about how my friend who’d thrown himself into the Sound at Shilshole, talked to me about time and space the morning after he died. I could talk about the way a giant fish jumped in the Rio Grande, when I said a prayer for my father just as the white eagle feather touched the water’s skin. I could talk about what the Shaman told me about how he saw that I am meant to walk others from this world into the next. But none of that fucking matters, I literally shouted - to the me who lost my mother when I was a young girl and had no one to walk me through my grief’.
I felt embarrassed by the open, raw heart that surprised even me and wished I could take it all back.
The shoes in "Home" hit me in such an emotional way. Our shoe rack by the door is a source of constant consternation not to mention a trip hazard, but your poem suddenly brought to mind how our shoes have gone from tiny velcro, to light up sketchers, to Chuck Taylors, to crocks and cleats and one day it will be just my flip flops and my husbands lawn-mowing shoes and I will miss the mess.
That's a lovely response with that inevitable sadness.
love it when you give us multiple poems. The mosquito and the moon got me and it will take time for me to be able to verbalize why, just love it. I always have preferred cold to hot weather. It is cleaner and I have to do to stay warm, not nothing to stay cool.
Thank you. Just found you tonight.
I am lucky to be living the Winter of our Contentment. Your poem nailed it. So grateful for that shiver. And also grateful for the furnace. Sometimes I even take off the blanket to feel the cold, then luxuriate in the blanket's re-welcomed furnace.
I love the shoes as a pride of lions! Maybe that will make me less mad at the disarray!!
Beauty in the chaos!
You hit me with Nocturne. It reminds me of a Zen Koan, as I think about the monk pointing at the moon and everyone looking at his finger.
Amazing that four lines can evoke so much. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Latham. It was once part of a longer poem. I try to look for that when I write longer. Is there some smaller section that is truly the poem. Kinda like whittling.
that's a technique I'm starting to figure out in my own work. This section was divine.
I wept reading Home. No idea why. But I’m very grateful to have felt whatever it was that you unlocked Sherman.
Thank you, Chloe.
"Opposite World" reminds me of a line from Doc Cochran in "Deadwood" -- "I see as much misery outta them movin' to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm."
I love Deadwood! That’s a great line!
I especially love "Opposite World" (the specific piece).
Totally without your permission, I reprinted that in my little social media feed on counter.social. Attributed, of course...
Cool. Thanks.
HOME, and TABLE TALK are the long hits for me. (Though I see what you're saying, pointing to, in the last one --- and the truth that's there. It surely applies to people a hundred times a minute. There ought to be some kind of trafficking ticket for it. It would help towns & cities raise a lot of income just now.)
Thank you, David. A friend not on Substack read "Home" and said, "You know that lions in repose are just lions waiting to hunt and eat something." Turned a bucolic poem into something else!
Once it sees the flame
Does the Moth ever again see anything else?
These all got me, especially "Opposite World."
Thank you, Tomas.