Gravity, poem by John Frederick Nims

GRAVITY
by John Frederick Nims

Mildest of all the powers of earth: no lightnings
For her—maniacal in the clouds. No need for
Signs with their skull and crossbones, chain-link gates:
Danger! Keep Out! High Gravity! she’s friendlier.
Won’t nurse—unlike the magnetic powers—repugnance;
Would reconcile, draw close: her passion’s love.
 
No terrors lurking in her depths, like those
Bound in that buzzing strongbox of the atom,
Terrors that, lossened, turn the hills vesuvian,
Trace in cremation where the cities were.
 
No, she’s our quiet mother, sensible.
But therefore down-to-earth, not suffering
Fools who play fast and loose among the mountains,
Who fly in her face, or, drunken, clown on cornices.
 
She taught our ways of walking. Her affection
Adjusted the morning grass, the sands of summer
Until our soles fit snug in each, walk easy.
Holding her hand, we’re safe. Should that hand fail,
The atmosphere we breathe would turn hysterical,
Hiss with tornadoes, spinning us from earth
Into the cold unbreathable desolations.
 
Yet there—in fields of space—is where she shines,
Ring-mistress of the circus of the stars,
Their prancing carousels, their ferris wheels
Lit brilliant in celebration. Thanks to her
All’s gala in the galaxy.
 
                                   Down here she
Walks us just right, not like the jokey moon
Burlesquing our human stride to kangaroo hops;
Not like vast planets, whose unbearable mass
Would crush us in a bear hug to their surface
And into the surface, flattened. No: deals fairly.
Makes happy each with each: the willow bend
Just so, the acrobat land true, the keystone
Nestle in place for bridge and for cathedral.
Let us pick up—or mostly—what we need:
Rake, bucket, stone to build with, logs for warmth,
The fallen fruit, the fallen child . . . ourselves.
 
Instructs us too in honesty: our jointed
Limbs move awry and crisscross, gawky, thwart;
She’s all directness and makes that a grace,
All downright passion for the core of things,
For rectitude, the very ground of being:
Those eyes are leveled where the heart is set.
 
See, on the tennis court this August day:
How, beyond human error, she’s the one
Whose will the bright balls cherish and obey
—As if in love. She’s tireless in her courtesies
To even the klutz (knees, elbows all a-tangle),
Allowing his poky serve Euclidean whimsies,
The looniest lob its joy: serene parabolas.

SOURCE: “Gravity” appears in John Frederick Nims’ collection The Six-Cornered Snowflake and Other Poems (New Directions, 1990), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Poet and academic John Frederick Nims (1913-1999) graduated from DePaul University, University of Notre Dame with an M.A., and from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. He taught English at Harvard University, the University of Florence, the University of Toronto, Williams College and the University of Missouri. His books of poetry include Zany in Denim (University of Arkansas Press, 1990); The Six-Cornered Snowflake and Other Poems (1990); The Kiss: A Jambalaya (1982); Knowledge of the Evening (1960), nominated for a National Book Award; A Fountain in Kentucky (1950); and The Iron Pastoral (1947). Among his honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, a National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities grant, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Institute of the Humanities. He served as editor of Poetry magazine from 1978 to 1984.

Painting: ”Le Château des Pyrénées” by René Magritte (1959)

Things I Say to Myself While Hanging Laundry, poem by Ruth Stone

THINGS I SAY TO MYSELF WHILE HANGNG LAUNDRY
by Ruth Stone

If an ant, crossing on the clothesline

from apple tree to apple tree,

would think and think,

it probably could not dream up Albert Einstein.

Or even his sloppy moustache;

or the wrinkled skin bags under his eyes

that puffed out years later,

after he dreamed up that maddening relativity.

Even laundry is three-dimensional.

The ants cross its great fibrous forests
from clothespin to clothespin

carrying the very heart of life in their sacs or mandibles,

the very heart of the universe in their formic acid molecules.

And how refreshing the linens are,

lying in the clean sheets at night,

when you seem to be the only one on the mountain,

and your body feels the smooth touch of the bed
like love against your skin;

and the heavy sac of yourself relaxes into its embrace.

When you turn out the light,

you are blind in the dark

as perhaps the ants are blind,

with the same abstract leap out of this limiting dimension.

So that the very curve of light,

as it is pulled in the dimple of space,

is relative to your own blind pathway across the abyss.

And there in the dark is Albert Einstein

with his clever formula that looks like little mandibles

digging tunnels into the earth

and bringing it up, grain by grain,

the crystals of sand exploding
into white-hot radiant turbulence,

smiling at you, his shy bushy smile,

along an imaginary line from here to there.

“Things I Say to Myself While Hanging Laundry” appears in Ruth Stone’s collection Simplicity (Paris Press, 1996), available at Amazon.com.

Photo: ”Our Clothesline Is the Favorite Place for Ants” by  *katherine*photo*, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruth Stone was born on June 8, 1915, in Roanoke, Virginia. Her books of poetry include What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize; In the Dark (2004); In the Next Galaxy (2002) which received the 2010 National Book Award; Ordinary Words (Paris Press, 1999), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; Simplicity (1996); Who Is the Widow’s Muse (1991); Second Hand Coat (1987); Cheap (1975); Topography (1971); In an Iridescent Time (1959). Stone was the recipient of the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award and received two Guggenheim Fellowships, The Bess Hokin Award from Poetry magazine, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Vermont Cerf Award for lifetime achievement in the arts. She taught creative writing at several universities, including the State University of New York in Binghamton. A Vermont resident since 1957, she died at her home in Ripton, Vermont, on November 19, 2011. She was 96 years old. (Source: Poets.org)

Gravity Haiku by Philip Hart

GRAVITY HAIKU
by Philip Hart

The sun does not set,
Leaving the world in darkness – 
The world turns away.

PAINTING: “Sunset on the Seine in Winter” by Claude Monet (1880)

Ivy League Dolphin, cartoon by Danny Shanahan

CAPTION: “If he was really intelligent, he wouldn’t limit his applications to East Coast schools.”

CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Danny Shanahan, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Dolphin quotes by Sagan, Aristotle, and Adams

“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English — up to 50 words used in correct context — no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.” CARL SAGAN, author of Cosmos

“The voice of the dolphin in air is like that of the human, in that they can pronounce vowels, and combinations of vowels.” ARISTOTLE, The History of Animals

“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…the wheel, New York, wars, and so on…while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man…for precisely the same reason.” DOUGLAS ADAMS, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Illustration: “Dolphin Dreams” by lillyarts. Prints available at zazzle.com.

Things I Say to Myself While Hanging Laundry, poem by Ruth Stone

THINGS I SAY TO MYSELF WHILE HANGNG LAUNDRY
by Ruth Stone

If an ant, crossing on the clothesline

from apple tree to apple tree,

would think and think,

it probably could not dream up Albert Einstein.

Or even his sloppy moustache;

or the wrinkled skin bags under his eyes

that puffed out years later,

after he dreamed up that maddening relativity.

Even laundry is three-dimensional.

The ants cross its great fibrous forests
from clothespin to clothespin

carrying the very heart of life in their sacs or mandibles,

the very heart of the universe in their formic acid molecules.

And how refreshing the linens are,

lying in the clean sheets at night,

when you seem to be the only one on the mountain,

and your body feels the smooth touch of the bed
like love against your skin;

and the heavy sac of yourself relaxes into its embrace.

When you turn out the light,

you are blind in the dark

as perhaps the ants are blind,

with the same abstract leap out of this limiting dimension.

So that the very curve of light,

as it is pulled in the dimple of space,

is relative to your own blind pathway across the abyss.

And there in the dark is Albert Einstein

with his clever formula that looks like little mandibles

digging tunnels into the earth

and bringing it up, grain by grain,

the crystals of sand exploding
into white-hot radiant turbulence,

smiling at you, his shy bushy smile,

along an imaginary line from here to there.

“Things I Say to Myself While Hanging Laundry” appears in Ruth Stone’s collection Simplicity (Paris Press, 1996), available at Amazon.com.

Photo: “Our Clothesline Is the Favorite Place for Ants” by  *katherine*photo*, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruth Stone was born on June 8, 1915, in Roanoke, Virginia. Her books of poetry include What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize; In the Dark (2004); In the Next Galaxy (2002) which received the 2010 National Book Award; Ordinary Words (Paris Press, 1999), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; Simplicity (1996); Who Is the Widow’s Muse (1991); Second Hand Coat (1987); Cheap (1975); Topography (1971); In an Iridescent Time (1959). Stone was the recipient of the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award and received two Guggenheim Fellowships, The Bess Hokin Award from Poetry magazine, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Vermont Cerf Award for lifetime achievement in the arts. She taught creative writing at several universities, including the State University of New York in Binghamton. A Vermont resident since 1957, she died at her home in Ripton, Vermont, on November 19, 2011. She was 96 years old. (Source: Poets.org)

Gravity Haiku by Philip Hart

GRAVITY HAIKU
by Philip Hart

The sun does not set,
Leaving the world in darkness — 
The world turns away.

PAINTING: “Sunset on the Seine in Winter” by Claude Monet (1880)

Gravity, poem by John Frederick Nims

GRAVITY
by John Frederick Nims

Mildest of all the powers of earth: no lightnings
For her—maniacal in the clouds. No need for
Signs with their skull and crossbones, chain-link gates:
Danger! Keep Out! High Gravity! she’s friendlier.
Won’t nurse—unlike the magnetic powers—repugnance;
Would reconcile, draw close: her passion’s love.
 
No terrors lurking in her depths, like those
Bound in that buzzing strongbox of the atom,
Terrors that, lossened, turn the hills vesuvian,
Trace in cremation where the cities were.
 
No, she’s our quiet mother, sensible.
But therefore down-to-earth, not suffering
Fools who play fast and loose among the mountains,
Who fly in her face, or, drunken, clown on cornices.
 
She taught our ways of walking. Her affection
Adjusted the morning grass, the sands of summer
Until our soles fit snug in each, walk easy.
Holding her hand, we’re safe. Should that hand fail,
The atmosphere we breathe would turn hysterical,
Hiss with tornadoes, spinning us from earth
Into the cold unbreathable desolations.
 
Yet there—in fields of space—is where she shines,
Ring-mistress of the circus of the stars,
Their prancing carousels, their ferris wheels
Lit brilliant in celebration. Thanks to her
All’s gala in the galaxy.
 
                                   Down here she
Walks us just right, not like the jokey moon
Burlesquing our human stride to kangaroo hops;
Not like vast planets, whose unbearable mass
Would crush us in a bear hug to their surface
And into the surface, flattened. No: deals fairly.
Makes happy each with each: the willow bend
Just so, the acrobat land true, the keystone
Nestle in place for bridge and for cathedral.
Let us pick up—or mostly—what we need:
Rake, bucket, stone to build with, logs for warmth,
The fallen fruit, the fallen child . . . ourselves.
 
Instructs us too in honesty: our jointed
Limbs move awry and crisscross, gawky, thwart;
She’s all directness and makes that a grace,
All downright passion for the core of things,
For rectitude, the very ground of being:
Those eyes are leveled where the heart is set.
 
See, on the tennis court this August day:
How, beyond human error, she’s the one
Whose will the bright balls cherish and obey
—As if in love. She’s tireless in her courtesies
To even the klutz (knees, elbows all a-tangle),
Allowing his poky serve Euclidean whimsies,
The looniest lob its joy: serene parabolas.

“Gravity” appears in The Six-Cornered Snowflake and Other Poems. Copyright © 1990 by John Frederick Nims, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Painting: “Le Château des Pyrénées” by René Magritte (1959)

Everybody is a Genius, Op-Ed by Albert Einstein

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Illustration: “Sky and Water I” (1938), Woodcut by M.C. Escher

Note: I woke up thinking about this Escher illustration today and just had to find a way to include it. I often see Escher images when I have a migraine coming on — and hope that’s not the case today!

Albert Einstein, Fashionista

Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.” ALBERT EINSTEIN

I shot the above photo this afternoon near LAX and was struck by the motorcyclist’s red and white striped helmet and red, white, and blue checked shirt. Must say I like his style!