Reading John Cage on Sound

Rocks by Sarah Webb

John Cage says, sound doesn’t have to

mean anything. 

I say, a rock

may be heavy in the hand

may grit against the fingers.

We don’t have to write on it Stone

though I have a stack of four

on my railing for just that purpose–

to write stone in black ink on the flatter side

to write a haiku about time compressed into layers

to tell the rock to be archetype, meaning

but maybe it’s enough just to be rock

and maybe that’s why 

the rocks in that stack have sat

through ten summers of heat and rain and the step of doves

and I’ve never written on any of them.

—Sarah Webb

What is a poem?

The writing group dissolved.

I stopped writing

for 15 years.

I became a doctor of sorts

and conducted a business of helping others hear.

I would not hear my own heart calling. 

I pushed down my stories, slammed the door shut

tossed the key in the weeds.

When the tidal wave of COVID hit the main land,

I found the Zen writing group.

I lifted a rusted key to a long-locked door to an infinite corridor, 

where pickled songs and fairytales lived.

Some tumbled out, eager to see the light and taste the air again.

Some turned their owl eyes away from the darkness, 

blinked in the glare of the opening, 

uncertain if others would entertain their ugly splendor.

Other songs remain in cobwebs,

buried deep among the bricks,

waiting for a time before death to be revealed.

Some may stay silent. 

Some stay afraid

The songs that tumble out, they take our hands.

They guide us to the poems that live on the earth:

to the little green grasshoppers that spring away from our footsteps,

in the long stripes of Bermuda grass that defy Texas drought,

to the striped spiders the size of a silver dollar sidestepping the drip of the watering cans.

There is a poem in the slide of horsehair across the violin strings,

in the furrowed foreheads of symphony players, 

determined to boil the perfect spell of sound. 

There is a poem in the scream of the child who has no words yet, 

in their parents who frown, and sweat and embrace their uncertainty, their fear and their rage,

in the silence of the audio booth that holds them together

There is a poem in the paper wasp that licks a small castle 

from nothing to something

in the space of 10 days

There is a poem in the chair painted pistachio.

Despite all its bumps and its scratches in its moving and time,

it resists a collapse,

stays upright and strong.

—Emily Romano

Being Born Human

— Kim Mosley

Response to Birdsong, from the Terezin Concentration Camp

If the tears obscure your way,

try to open up your heart to beauty. 

Weave a wreath of memories.

The blind man listening in the woods 

sees as much as the sighted man, 

knows what the birds know

and where (in the world) he stands.

He cannot see the yellow wood sorrel 

but he can sense the timbre and tremolo 

and knows things about the birds

you haven’t dared to learn.

The birds he hears are free

but we make prisoners of humans.

Children kept in cages.

Here or there, what does it matter? 

Separated from their parents. 

Then or now, what does it matter?

Across the centuries

the birds observe

the anguish and the misery 

and still, the birds sing.

Oblivious to their song, in childhood

I wove a crown of vines in dappled shade

and wore it like a badge o’er my brain

in shadows like the camouflage my cousin wore

        when he was shot at

when his innocence was slaughtered 

along with his friends.

In my grandfather’s time,

he lied for the privilege to go to war. 

In my father’s time,

he had to be drafted.

In my cousin’s time,

the military was his last good option. 

In my children’s time,

can war cease?

In their children’s time,

which birds will remain

to sing?

— Erin Taylor

Untitled

bird sings in the trees

leaves sway in the high branches 

the world sleeps in peace

—Paul Causey

In Secret

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret.” — Pablo Neruda Sonnet XVII

One night I put God away,

packed Him—Her, perhaps it was—

away like an old toy, a childhood journal.

Not the right path I said, and it was true—is true

that God is too small, a cutout painted,

the edges jagged from scissors that tore the cardboard.

But I packed something else away that night

a love, some slant of light on the sparrow at the bench, 

from a face on the street.

Not gone entirely, some scrap

of song, a darkness on the wind

coming round about, not at the front door

but a leak through the sash of the window

no longer nameable.

Maybe this had to be—

to stop pinning and naming, being good,

to stop doing the work

and let the work lead on its secret way.

But, oh, I have lost—the honey

green of leaves in childhood,

a light like milk falling from a basement window.

Throw it on the fire my teacher said. 

If it’s true, it will not burn.

And I, childlike, threw it in—

God and all the sacraments, the voice 

that whispered to me, the desire

for light and sweetness falling from the air.

And so a long, slow burning

a prayer like a coal in the mind.

So many years, all the world burning 

and I do not know where I stand

in a land sacred despite me.

Me still wanting to love—but what?

a glow in the night sky?

Me still wanting to throw it all on the fire— 

myself, God, Zen, the boxes and doors and names,

still wanting to stand in the rain and be nothing but rain

still hearing a sound chink chink 

bird call, whistle tone

voice asking, do you love me?

and my child voice answering, Yes. 

Yes, I love you.

If you tell me to, I will do it again.

—Sarah Webb

Oops!

I know I shouldn’t make fun of god,

but I think he goofs every now and then.

So, what must it be like to be all knowing,

omnipotent and everything to everyone?

Pretty heady stuff I would imagine.

But what happens when that entity, that person, or god,

is carrying a tray full of paint of every color imaginable,

and steps over a mountain range,

catching their toe on the topmost peak.

Can you see it?

God cartwheeling across China,

paint flying across three provinces,

the music, can you paint with all the colors of the wind, 

playing in the background?

When the paint clears, is it a catastrophe?

Like the time I spilled my cereal all over my mother’s new rug.

Or is it simply another masterpiece,

like so many god has done before,

like the flowers covering the low valleys in springtime,

or the black and white paintings he does in winter

of snow-covered peaks in moonlight.

I suppose, these mountains in China

are just another example of god’s artistic

method of letting things fall where they may.

I’m beginning to wonder if anything is ever planned, 

any thought given to design in advance.

No wonder evolution is such a popular theory of creation.

After trying for seven days to get his technique down right,

he just quit and let things run their own course.

Now look what we have.

Unadulterated beauty everywhere.

It’s enough to throw your hands up in the air

and just sit, crossed legged,

take it all in and call it a day.

Maybe that’s it. Those mountains, 

full of color, unnatural color at that,

happened on the first day,

followed by everything else afterward.

No, those mountains in China were a slip,

a muscle spasm upending the paint tray of life,

what a spasm it was.

—Paul Causey

Inspired by the visual prompt: Rainbow Mountains of China’s Zhangye Danxia National Geologic

Park (https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/03/02/rainbow-mountains-china-earths-paint-palette/?sh=2ca712f3e5e7)

See Me (Lessons From A Blind Kindergartener) For: S.G.

They tell me of these colors bold,

Of wondrous sights to see.

What means so much to you,

Means so very little to me.

I reach out front,

Beyond me.

Teach me about what I can feel!

The seen path you take for granted,

Neglects the navigation of this hill.

The object dropped,

Reverberates,

Loud upon the floor.

The sound so piercing to my ears,

With ease you can ignore.

As I walk through the darkness,

I have you along my side.

When you close your eyes with empathy,

You become a better guide.

—Jess Godwin

Inspired by the visual prompt: Rainbow Mountains of China’s Zhangye Danxia National Geologic

Park (https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/03/02/rainbow-mountains-china-earths-paint-palette/?sh=2ca712f3e5e7)

Eclipse

Twenty-five years ago I fell into a deep well,

landed on the eiderdown, 

bounced up and landed 

on the ground and bounced again.

I floated into love, 

    covered in a coat of golden feathers,

       scented with you, like the green grass that bursts from the earth 

        after the spring rain.

As time and love passed away,

        most feathers molted and fell like ash. 

            I still hoist your colors, I still carry banners in your memory,

Though your sweat and sound have faded,

       the snow still melts, 

the crawfish scuttle from the rocks.

The blades of green return. 

Each year they hold me in a love 

where once I held you.

This is the love I walk in. 

This is a love I move in, 

a love that touches currents, a sound to tightrope.

This is a love that cracks the crust of earths,

that dwarfs the galaxies, and swallows 

the universe, whole.

This is a gravity I cannot escape, 

nor would I wish to,

for though the scent, the sound, the feel of your breath is gone,

I still walk in the cool night air we ran together through, in childish delight.

I know now, once, I was loved, 

when so many are not,

and that is enough.

—Emily Romano

The Rarity of Being Born Human

 

— Kim Mosley

Inhale/Exhale

I thought I saw something out beyond the barn,

a light perhaps, a reflection off

the window of the house.

Strange little baubles,

blurred like streetlamps in the rain

in a watercolor painting.

Breath, inhale, exhale.

It’s nothing to be afraid of.

But the little girl, holding a basket

of corn beneath a starry sky,

that is something to wonder about.

Is she a figment of my imagination,

a symptom of the hunger I feel,

a sign of the need of the world and its fulfillment,

or simply that of hope and what will 

happen in the days, weeks, months to come.

I fear she is an illusion.

I fear that the people need more than

what she can give.

I hope I am wrong.

Breath, inhale, exhale.

I hope that her nemesis, the spirit 

of hunger for all things living is more

the illusion than the little girl.

Hunger will devour us all one way or another.

Hunger is not necessarily searching for food

for the body, but food for the soul.

The spirit of hunger is insatiable,

Corn will not satiate its cravings,

but power, fed by the energy of souls

will only increase its cravings.

More people, more souls, more power,

more, more, more is not enough.

Breath, inhale, exhale.

It is the only thing that is real.

Breath, inhale, exhale.

Be alive. Just breath.

Just be.

—Paul Causey

Girl With Corn

In the old way, there was corn, 

a food from the stars,

and wheat and rice and taro.

We worked together to plant and gather.

We added our life to the life given us.

Family is given and grown

in just this way.

Song, as we open to it.

Fire.

A girl stands in the night.

Stars open the black behind her.

Her dress is the color of coals.

Corn shines in her basket.

The green of its growing wraps it.

A bird has come to bless the offering.

The girl's hands hold the basket with care.

They hold the plenty.

—Sarah Webb

Rain on Tin

It’s raining here tonight,

the heavens breaking their weeklong fast

with the earth,

their drops landing softly upon my tin roof.

I can hear each drop as it lands,

like pins dropping into a glass bowl

and later, like the sound of bacon

frying in a hot pan.

At some point, their identities blend into one,

like a drum roll over my head,

but if I listen carefully,

I can hear each individual drop

as it hits the roof.

And then, all is quiet

except for the drops hesitating

before they fall from the branches

of the tree outside my window,

shaken loose by the wind

with a sigh and a resigned letting go,

a lingering memory 

of the soft rain dancing on tin.

In the morning, the sky will be clear

and I will be able to see for miles.

—Paul Causey