Category: poetry

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Summer Thoughts and Sights

Growing up our family lived in small towns surrounded by farms.  In suumer the lightning bugs would glow  as tiny yellow flying dots in the warm nights after dark.  They flew their courses at our level of play.

We would take the quart glass Bell jars used for canning vegetables, punch air holes in the metal covers and put in some cut grass. Then we would catch the yellow flickering, flying tiny creatures with our hands. Put them in the jar. We’d take the jars of small nightlights to our bedroom to watch them blink on and off  till sleep.

Frost had a different image in mind.

Fireflies in the Garden

by Robert Frost

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,

And here on earth come emulating flies,

That though they never equal stars in size,

(And they were never really stars at heart)

Achieve at times a very star-like start.

Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.

Summer is vacation time.  School is out.  We look forward to swimming pools opening, time off for holidays and occasionally the ultimate challenge, what are we going to do today?

For Mary Oliver, summer’s hiatus from fixed schedules is a time to ask, what is it you plan to do with  life?

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean –

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life? 

Summer Colors

My oldest azalea planted over 40 years ago is the last to bloom in mid-June protected by the shade of a tall maple and redbud trees.   Yes, those are two topiary steeds guarding our front door in the background.

Best year yet for gladiolas.  The bulbs take several seasons to reach their full glory at a height of over 6 feet.

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NOW. . . A Poetic Call to Decide

Had not seen our next door neighbors for a couple of weeks.  She updated me about events in their lives while working in the yard.  Her father who had been in hospice for almost a year died two weeks ago in Baltimore.  That took her away for much of the time.

in this same time frame, after 27 years in her career as a government employee, she agreed to take a voluntary early retirement, She is  in her early 50’s and would have preferred to stay in her job.  But given the uncertainty and possible legal changes to benefits, she decided to leave.

A Poet’s Insight

Poet James Russell Lowell wrote about these life altering decisions in his poem, The Present Crisis.  In its musical form as a hymn, it is titled, Once to Every Man and Nation.  The opening stanza:

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by for ever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.

Lowell wrote the poem as a protest against the Mexican-American war in 1848.

Life’s Choices In Credit Union Land

Life happens for all.  Sometimes the moral choices are chosen by us.  Other times they are thrust upon one by events.

These turning points can shape the rest of our lives.  My neighbor is now open to finding a new opportunity to help others, perhaps in non-profit work.

In credit union land, these pivotal events are unfolding daily.  NCUA’s leaders are in unchartered territory.  Will they step up or step back?

CEO’s are being tempted with buyouts, some sought and others dangled with incentives to transfer their legacy to another CEO’s command.  Do I do the right thing, or take the money is an ever-present temptation. And the classic rationale, everybody is doing it makes taking the payoffs seem defensible. 

As if the daily industry challenges were not sufficient, all Americans face a growing crisis in democratic governance at the national level.

It is easy to hunker down and just follow distant events on the news.  That is not my problem.  My attention must be on those things I directly control.  One point of Lowell’s poem is that we all have a choice in these moments:

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet ‘t is Truth alone is strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Importantly, Lowell   expresses  hope that once engaged, we will make the right choice in these critical moments. Because “amid the market’s din” our “souls” will tell us  what is required.  Are we up to the multiple challenges confronting us in our personal, professional and public choices?

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—
“They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.”

Our Moment

In our credit union lives and our duty as citizens, we are not living in an era of business as usual. Now is the moment to decide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Poetic Political Observation

I enjoy poems that are accessible on first read.  Who Remembers Davenport tells a story of two jazz artists first encounter.  The writer sets the scene so realistically you can see it.

More than a story, he uses jazz as a metaphor for inspiration and commentary on social change.  Read the first line and last stanza again.  This is a story making a statement.

           “Didn’t He Ramble”—Fate Marable and His Orchestra
with Louis Armstrong (1920)  

            “Singin’ the Blues”—Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra
with Bix Biederbecke (1927)

Who remembers Davenport, Iowa, in 1920,
the year the city voted Socialist?
No one now alive could cast a ballot,
and the white-boy jazzers of Scott County
Didn’t care about the Revolution, but stood
on a wharf overlooking the muddy river,
Waiting for a riverboat loaded with music
from the red-light district of New Orleans.
One of them, just seventeen that year,
had heard it hardest. On the deck
Of the paddle-wheeler, high above the dock
and its straggling crowd, a Black man lifted
His ordinary cornet and blew the world away.
No one in all of Iowa knew his name
Except that young man, who understood
his betters when he heard them.
That day he heard it all and soon he would ride
Like Armstrong up river to Chicago on a golden cornet.
You want a revolution? Music was his manifesto.

The clarity of his tone, musicians said,
was like bullets shooting a bell.

The author’s comment

“Who Remembers Davenport” evokes two jazz pioneers, one white and one Black, and centers on the moment when Bix Beiderbecke, then in his late teens, heard the greatest trumpet player in history, Louis Armstrong—an encounter that naturally had a profound effect on Beiderbecke.

The transmission of the art across generations and racial boundaries is a source of fascination for me, no matter what the art; but jazz, more than most, has reinvigorated itself many times in just this way over the decades. Perennially reborn, jazz (and most other musical forms) remains for me a central source of inspiration.”
—T. R. Hummer

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Nature’s Ritual

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty     how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

Note from poet’s almanac:  Edward Estlin Cummings, born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a poet known for his radical experimentation with form and syntax.

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“Sweet Feedom’s Song”

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, now celebrated as part of the President’s Day holiday.  It is still vital that we honor the passion he bought to serve and save the nation and our better selves.

A Poem of America

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, also known as  “America“, is learned in grade school and sung at most public and patrioc events. The lyrics  were written by Samuel Francis Smith.[2] The song served as one of the de facto national anthems of the United States  before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the official U.S. national anthem in 1931.[3] (Wikipedia)

Ironically, the melody used is adapted from the national anthem of the United Kingdom, “God Save the King“.   Below is a version using the song’s meter and words to communicate a message in poetry calling for Lincoln’s vision to be realized.

 

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Would I could sing;
Its land of Pilgrim’s pride
Also where lynched men died
With such upon her tide,
Freedom can’t reign.

My native country, thee
The world pronounce you free
Thy name I love;
But when the lynchers rise
To slaughter human lives
Thou closest up thine eyes,
Thy God’s above.

Let Negroes smell the breeze
So they can sing with ease
Sweet freedom’s song;
Let justice reign supreme,
Let men be what they seem
Break up that lyncher’s screen,
Lay down all wrong.

Our fathers’ God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
How can our land be bright?
Can lynching be a light?
Protect us by thy might,
Great God our king!

Frank Barbour Coffin, born on January 12, 1870, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, was an African American poet and pharmacist who owned and operated one of the earliest drugstores serving the Black community of Little Rock, Arkansas. He authored one poetry collection, Coffin’s Poems with Ajax’ Ordeals (The Colored Advocate, 1897), and his poetry was otherwise published in journals. Coffin died on March 1, 1951, in Little Rock.  (Souce:  Poets.org)

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“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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Two Readings for Insight

In a beautifully composed family Christmas letter,  the final paragraph is the closing stanza of a poem Walls and Bridges.  It was written by the husband to his wife in celebration of their 53 years of marriage. The poem recounts his thoughts listening to a priest’s sermon in Hamilton, Montana during the peak of the 2024 election season.

You asked me why I go to church,

When so many that we know no longer do.

And I replied,

I don’t know where to find

A better explanation of the world

The way it is and the way

We want it to be.

A Cooperative Response to a Dominant Online Retailer

These Artisans Built a Coop Alternative to Etsy

The opening paragraphs of this December 11 article by Cinnamon Janzer of Next City:

In 2022, Etsy’s earnings topped $109 million in consolidated net income. “Despite significant macroeconomic headwinds, we maintained the vast majority of our pandemic gains and delivered double digit revenue growth and excellent profitability for the year,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said in a press release.

Days later, Silverman announced that the marketplace platform would raise the transaction fee Etsy takes from each sale from 5% to 6.5%. In response, some 14,000 Etsy sellers closed their shops and went on strike for eight days.

The article presents details of the initiative to build a better digital marketplace where members would own the platform.

The goal was to create an organization with a direct stake in the livelihood of its user artisans.

The Artisans Cooperative was launched in the fall of 2023.

The funding model is described on the website and includes both members and owners.   Outside assistance from groups like Start a Coop, Operation Buffalo and Seed Commons was also important.

The effort is still a work in progress.  No credit unions have apparently been involved yet.  But it would seem a natural affiliation and potential further benefit of membership for the coops users.

The most important message is the artisan-organizer’s belief that people have the option to organize and manage their economic efforts with a cooperative design.   Certainly a spirit much in need of rekindling in the much older and larger credit union system.

Read and ask if your credit union has this belief in its mission for its members.

 

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The Windy City in Poetry

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have
seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Bulding, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his
ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

(Editors note:  My hometown from 1974-1981 when working at First Chicago and then Supervisor of Credit Unions for Illinois’ Department of Financial Institutions)

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Crossing the Bar For Mortal Stakes

This 1889 poem, Crossing the Bar, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson has been quoted on many occasions in life’s passages:  graduations, changing vocations, marriage/divorce, and the obviousreference to life’s end.

I just attended my granddaughter’s college graduation at which a musical setting of the poem was sung.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5FlS76eTVs)
Sunset and evening star,
      And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
      When I put out to sea,
   But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
      Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
      Turns again home.
   Twilight and evening bell,
      And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
      When I embark;
   For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
      The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
      When I have crost the bar.

Student Observations on Crossing the Bar

The poem’s sentiment certainly matched the setting for those leaving the familiar shared college experiences to venture out on individual journeys. The two senior speakers spoke of this challenge when “putting out to sea.”

One asked: How do we locate ourselves in the big picture questions confronting society and hold ourselves accountable?

Another:  As we pursue our individual paths we underestimate the power of community; yet that is how we are able to emerge with the confidence to go forth. 

There was an aspiration in their words best captured in the final stanza of Robert Frost’s poem Two Tramps:

But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

All of us will cross several metaphorical bars in our lifetimes. Often this arises from the never ending effort to find in Frost’s phrase work that is play for mortal stakes.
I believe that is why so many enjoy the credit union movement as a profession and doing good works serving members, “where love and need are one.”
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Nature: an Artistic Resource and Renewer of the Soul

Photo by Cody Doherty

The Giant Cactus of Arizona

by Harriet Monroe (1914)

The cactus in the desert stands
Like time’s inviolate sentinel,
Watching the sun-washed waste of sands
Lest they their ancient secrets tell.
And the lost lore of mournful lands
It knows alone and guards too well.

Wiser than Sphynx or pyramid,
It points a stark hand at the sky,
And all the stars alight or hid
It counts as they go rolling by;
And mysteries the gods forbid
Darken its heavy memory.

I asked how old the world was—yea,
And why yon ruddy mountain grew
Out of hell’s fire. By night nor day
It answered not, though all it knew,
But lifted, as it stopped my way,
Its wrinkled fingers toward the blue

Inscrutable and stern and still
It waits the everlasting doom.
Races and years may do their will—
Lo, it will rise above their tomb,
Till the drugged earth has drunk her fill
Of light, and falls asleep in gloom.

Note from Poem-a-day:  Harriet Monroe, born on December 23, 1860, in Chicago, was a poet, critic, and editor best known as the founding publisher and editor of Poetry magazine.