Lament of a Burning Hollow: a poem

 

Lament of a Burning Hollow

The tree that perches in the soil of me
and fondles all my cares
is empty
save one
and I have left it ripening
for you.

Take it, this orb of flesh and feeling,
this fruit of yearning and hope.
Palm it, my years of untouched skin
until you are ready to feed your desire.

If I could, I would wash my hands
of my shame, gather my crazy from
the tendrils of your memory,
each day a pebble rustling.
I would leave this crusted-over
sagging heavy load in the midst
of burning thistles,
all thorns aflame,
leaving roots ready to stretch,
a soil refreshed anew.

Some say desire is a fire
but all I have is the shape of emptiness,
of missing you;
the thread of silence
coils around this heart.
The hole within grows as it clenches;
when I am near you, the ache enlarges
into the hollow shape of your touch.

It is as if you are no longer real;
no one’s life exists until it is shared.
You are no one now.
No one loves me.
No one wants to touch me.
No one fills my heart.

No one fades to a whisper.
No one is in the wind.
No one has seen it
blowing the tears I do not cry.

 

Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold

10.14.23

written in Norfolk Library’s Writing Lab, pulling words and ideas from various poems and stories

Once, Again: An old poem revisited

Posting an oldie but a goodie.  I wrote this for my sister, who was a state officer in the Order of Rainbow for Girls.  But the symbolism in this can touch so many other people at this point in the political and cultural scheme of things.  If you have reached out and fallen; rest.  But don't stay.  Find a rainbow, and reach again.  You will indeed find a friend. 

Once….Again

Once I tried to
                        touch a star
                        reach a constellation.

I  s t r e t c h e d
my hand way up there,
            but I couldn’t
                        touch the stars.

Once I tried to
                        touch a star
                        reach a constellation.

I struggled, hanging on to nothing
Hoping for my life.

But they  t h r e w  me back
            and I went hurtling
to the ground
where I began.

 Yes, once I tried to
                        touch a star
                        reach a constellation.

But instead of getting everything—
                        the heavens and unknown—
            I ended up back on the ground.

The stars were not my own.

 Yet later,
            in a cloud
            I found a ladder made
                        of a rainbow, arched
                        and to take step by step.

So, daring once more to
                        touch a star
                        reach a constellation

My hands grasped the edges
and my feet found a rung.

I began my climb once more. 

 ***

Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold
June 1994

Just Fishing: a poem

 

Just Fishing

Something fishy this way comes
or he wants it to
standing on the edge of the riverbank,
a new spot he’s found now that
he’s moved away after high school,
feet standing in the tall grass
remembering days of chasing
popcorn frogs and water bugs
by the sandy rim of the lake
when he was knee high to a
grasshopper and too excited to
concentrate on his own fishing line.
Now he straightens his cap and
recasts, reflecting on the bird
quietly watching him from the tree
branch across the water, wondering
if it’s one of the few wandering in
from the south, visitors from the
warm climates who can’t handle
the midwestern winters; an example
of each immigrant species laying
with wings folded and feet clutching
invisible twigs, their backs pressing
against glass shelves in the University’s
new exhibit in the museum, colorful
feathered bellies rounded, facing up
in the case he walked by on the way to
the mounted insects, pointing out
each one he has encountered in his
short two decades here on this planet,
now listening to the water trickle
by against small stones as the fish
he waits to hook create rings on the
small still surface of a pooled outcrop
beside him, and the time, the sun,
this afternoon, for once seems to
almost stand still, as still as the
moment before his pole bends and
his bait yields a bite and his shout
sends the startled bird off flapping,
tree branch waving goodbye, goodbye.

Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold

 

1971 to 2023: Have We Really Changed?

1971 to 2023: Have We Really Changed?

I was perusing the discards of our local library’s book sale, and came across some issues of LIFE magazine from 1971. Interested, I picked up a couple to read later. 

Scanning through the issue for May 7, 1971, I was encouraged to see the things that have changed, and depressed that so many haven’t in the 52 years that have passed.  

You’d like to think that we have progressed, but I’m not so sure. On the front, in bold huge white letters, proclaims there exists a feminist that even men like. Our culture is still very reliant on the prejudices that define the binary genders of man and woman, even though some of us are trying very hard to step out of that limiting world. But here are some of my observations while reading this magazine:

Something that hasn’t changed: the alcohol ads, especially whiskey. We are still addicted to our chemicals, and like the feeling it gives us, or need the feeling it gives us.  We keep it legal because some of us can control our intake, and only socially drink the liquid, while more and more of us have developed into alcoholics, where it dictates our lives.

Something that has changed: the cigarette ads.  There were so many in this magazine, it amazed me. We still have tobacco as legal, but we stamp the warnings all over the packaging, and you don’t see advertisements for the cancer-sticks in every other page that you read.  One of these even implies that you don’t have to light it, just keep it in your mouth, because smoking makes you look cool and sophisticated. Does anyone else miss the Marlboro Man?

In 1971, they were still getting used to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It was still relatively new, and especially in the southern United States, some areas were having trouble adjusting. Now, you would think we would have had time to fully integrate our neighborhoods and lives and cities and businesses.  That isn’t the case.  Some neighborhoods are still not desegregated or treated equally; we are still dealing with racism and healing from wounds due to treating “different” people cruelly. We can put a law on paper, but you can’t force a person to stop handing their bad attitude down to their children.

Technology changed drastically in 52 years.  There were cameras with film, window air conditioners, a “new” concept in whole house air conditioning, the new toaster oven to try. Now, we take digital photos with our cameras, you can’t find window air conditioning because every house comes with central air, and who uses a toaster oven? We have air fryers and hot pots.  You would almost think their minds were primitive.  At least they weren’t scared of a vaccine. An article reminded us that, starting in 1923, they proudly came together and rid the world of diphtheria.  That disease is extremely rare today because everyone possible got vaccinated. Ditto with polio; every person bared their arms for the vaccine to eradicate the disease.  What do we have today with COVID-19? A situation like the flu.  When the flu epidemic hit in 1918, they didn’t stop it with a vaccine; it ran its course until everyone either died or became immune. That made the virus able to survive, and mutate into variants that still hit us today.  It keeps on mutating, so we are unable to eradicate it (there are too many variants now), we just fight it the best we can with the few antibodies we have in the flu shots you get each year.  This is what happened to the COVID-19 virus.  Because not everyone was willing to get their vaccine, it survived to mutate again and again, and lives among us to kill again and again. We are so hung up on our individual rights, that we can’t see what is better for the human race.  It is all about me, me, me. 

In 1971, they had a photo of a child playing with a gun to demonstrate danger.  You would never see that ad today.  What you saw then, and still see now? Complaints of city crime and overcrowded, clogged prisons, and varying opinions on how to solve that.

In 1971, people wanted the Vietnam War to end, even to the point of running against Nixon in the election (Paul McClosky).  We know how that went.  Now we are arguing over gun policies. Should we regulate guns, make you apply and pass a series of tests, and wait for your gun, thus handing out less guns to fewer people; or should we let anyone own a gun to fight their own crime in their own home; put the law in their hands?  Which one would lessen the violence? Again, is it about what is better for everyone, or is it all about me?

Other things that have changed:

·         Station wagons are no longer cool, especially the ones with the fake wood paneling

·         Cars no longer cost only $2174

·         Automatic transmission in a car is no longer a novel thing

·         Music is available on other medium than records

·         Water and ice dispensers are standard now on refrigerators

 

Some things still haven’t changed:

·         We have a fascination with death and hell and gore (then, The Exorcist was just coming out in book form.  Now, we have everything from IT to The Walking Dead to the creatures that you can kill in video games)

·         We use comedy to cover trauma; we laugh to change something painful into something that is funny (Neil Simon said this is why he wrote comedy instead of drama).

·         We are more concerned with political parties: Republican or Democrat: with how we differ than how we can come together to get along. Our politics and the outspoken on the soapbox are the rich, old, and extreme governing the masses, who fuel our anger, catch us off guard, and gather the vulnerable and uneducated under their wings.

·         The average person is ambiguous in their true beliefs on social issues. They are sorry for the downtrodden blue-collar worker and the hard-up person who can’t get ahead, but they blame them, too. They don’t want to hate anyone different, but they don’t want them as friends or living next door, either. They are frustrated and fearful, and this is what leaders feed on.

·         Feminism is still fighting. Germaine Greer’s big issue in 1971 was speaking out against marriage and abortion. Roe v. Wade hadn’t happened yet (1973). Who knew we would be back there again, running 52 years backwards? We need feminists even more than ever.

·         We are still hurting the environment. The Clean Air Act had just been written in 1970, and the government was still figuring out how to regulate it.  It went through a big change in 1990. We are getting better.  But. In 1971, there were wilderness fires that occurred because of draining wetlands. Now, we are still affecting global warming, and we are fighting wildfires and forest clearings, lowering native fruit tree yields that kill wildlife and melting ice, increasing global temperature and our continued use of coal.

 

Something I have learned from reading 52 years into the past: it’s an old saying….

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

Time moves so fast—sometimes, though…it doesn’t move fast enough. And sometimes it seems to be moving backwards.

 

Thanks for reading

 

May 30, 2023

Tansy Julie Soaring Eagle Paschold