When I think of peacocks
I think of you and
There are so many peacocks
Here. Their colors are
Everywhere. You are
Everywhere. Teal, turquoise, and
Azure surround me as
The color of you. Your eyes,
Electric blue, Blue –
The eyes on a feather,
Royal, The color of Sky and
Oceans of blue,
Sapphires of blue,
Everything your eyes see
Makes everything I see
Iridesce with, flash with
You, Now
Everything reminds me of peacocks.
When I think of peacocks
I think of you.
Category Archives: Poetry
Peacocks
Metric
If I had been brought up with the metric system
I could hold an orange in my hand
And tell you how much it weighs in kilograms.
But I was taught with pounds and feet
And I can tell you how much a whole bag of oranges weighs,
Just about,
Or look at a board and give you the measure of it.
But how many meters it is?
How much the orange weighs in kilograms?
I’m lost. Dumb.
Right in front of me,
Any guess as good as another.
Love, I think—
Love is measured in metrics,
Or some other unit.
I can look at it,
Heft it.
No matter.
Ask me how much I love you:
I cannot say.
I can only look at you,
Sigh,
And trust it can also be measured
In those sighs and desires, and hope
You do not ask.
In Response to William James and “The Will to Believe”
Sometimes one leaf
Will wave, oscillate.
A perfect repetition
again and again.
A dancing leaf machine,
Just the right shape,
Weight, tilt and wind—
Bent back by breeze,
Pulled forward by the
Spring of the stem
Twisted tight,
Bent back by breeze,
Twisted tight again—
Leaf and breeze in
Harmonious twist
And spring, twist
And spring, twist
And spring.
That can go on
As long as the breeze
Remains constant.
External forces,
Internal reactions,
Cause and effect.
Sometimes just one,
One leaf in an entire tree,
Waves. I imagine
It looks at the others
hanging still, and wonders
Why it is the only one
That has chosen to dance.
When I Am Alone At Night
When I am alone at night,
When I go to bed,
In my head,
I disperse my goods.
I write notes,
Letters, long, detailed.
I imagine deep long rest,
Wonder if I’ve had enough.
When I am alone at night
I roll myself against the walls,
Scratch, stretch,
Rub, rock,
Hunger for sensation,
Pray for contact,
Want for touch,
Wonder if I’m here long enough.
When I am alone at night
I fail to create ambitions.
In my head,
I disperse my goods,
I write notes,
Look at bottles,
Estimate pills,
Wonder if there are enough.
Halfway Through March
When I woke this morning, I was afraid I could not write. I felt it was gone. It, whatever that is, felt absent. But during the day’s discussion, in the three minutes between classes, in moments during planning, the topic of poets came up. I found the poem “We Bring Democracy To The Fish,” by Donald Hall. Don’t blame me for the way the title is capitalized – blame Donald. Anyway, he was Laureate until that poem was published. Then he was Poet Non Grata. He and the Dixie Chicks hung out together looking for work.
Distressed Haiku had this line: “I finished with April/halfway through March.” His wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, had died in the month of April, 1995. That line. That one line. I have said that myself, nearly word for word. And I was writing again. But would I ever write of anything else?
I ask that, yet I have. I have. But, time and time again, I return to it. Why? Because one doesn’t go on. One doesn’t heal. One continues, with the wound. With the weight. One may be happy, one may be loved, and one may be content, one may have a wonderful life. I certainly do. But that is still there, because it is part of our lives. For those in this “club we’re in that I wouldn’t wish anyone to belong to,” as a friend of mine put it, one doesn’t go back to the old way of being, but creates a new normal around the space.
Everything is made of space. So, I guess, I’m still writing about everything. I guess.
Halfway Through March
It is second period.
I have been discussing
Poetry with Mr. Wolf.
Poets, appreciated but
Never paid well,
Never paid attention to,
Paid heed, respected,
Honored, yes: the Poets Laureate
Paid, at first, in wine.
Chaucer paid in
Gallons of wine.
Name bridges after them,
Put up markers roadside,
Have them inaugurate
The president, but don’t
Pay them enough to
Leave their teaching posts
So they can develop
Their craft without
Daily worries of bills due.
The discussion moved to
Donald Hall. One year only
He held his post.
He published
“We Bring Democracy To The Fish.”
So long and thanks for all that.
But now it is period three,
Donald Hall is in my brain,
So I am reading.
Students working,
Teacher reading, because
I can barely think
Anything else.
I didn’t know
He lost his wife.
Twenty-six years,
Cancer comes and
She goes.
I had always pictured him
Alone. Solitary, New Hampshire
Snow. Writing.
But he wrote of
Her leaving and
What was left,
He wondered if he
Would ever write of
Anything else.
Here, listen to his
Distressed Haiku:
“Will Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and complain?”
Here is the Universal.
Here is the experience
Of the creative. Of those
Who take everything
Of their lives, of their
Surroundings,
Turn it into something
To understand.
Make the internal life
External, visible, palpable.
Make something with
No hands reach out,
Shake you, shock you,
Leave you thinking,
Understanding what you
Did not understand before.
Make the solitary
The common experience.
Remind me
I’m not the only one.
The Photograph
I remember a photograph
I never took.
I remember.
I remember taking it.
I remember taking this photograph
Of three Tibetan monks at Chanukah
Smiling over candles we had just lit.
Lee said the prayer,
The kids watched,
I looked on,
The monks beamed.
Staying with us, eight monks
Touring the United States
Making sand mandalas
Here and there. A week spent
tapping, rasping ground stone,
Rainbows into patterns intricate
And sharp, fine and beautiful,
Complex and ephemeral.
Done, and one prayer,
A sweep of the hands
Across the surface from
The four corners in and
Gone.
The candles lit,
One asked, as well as he could,
To say their own prayers.
Chanting, grinning,
They blessed the candles, our home,
and the time we have.
There were small presents.
For the kids,
Trinkets and such,
For the monks,
Halva, dreidels,
Latkas and applesauce and a
Chocolate coin for each one.
For Lee they had a kata
White and light and flowing.
For me, a bracelet of skulls
Made of the bones of a water buffalo,
Dead of old age,
Alive on my wrist,
Whispering to me, always,
This ends. This ends. This ends.
More about Hanukkah? Or Chanukah? More about Monks?
A New Set of Malas
Chanukah
Skeleton Dance
Already It Is Too Long
Already it is too long For you To lie there With your one eye open Staring at nothing, or Something only you can see. I cannot quite tell If you are conscious but Incapable of movement, or Vacated so fully you do not even care to swallow However much we may plead. I ask how you are doing. They tell me facts - How many squirts of apple juice, How many half-teaspoons of pudding - But I don't want facts. Lives are not made of facts and measure and scales and What do they know? They didn't even know Which way to comb your hair. So we brushed it back and Now you look like you again and You can go now. Really. It's OK.
Adam Byrn Tritt and the Story of the 34th St. Wall -Isis Ash
Gainesville’s 34th Street Wall, loss and poetry. Courtesy of WUFT, Gainesville and WJXT, Jacksonville, Florida.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhsYb1l0pu4
Throwing Rocks at the Sun
Written with Sadie Amarina Tritt, age 4. My first collaboration with my granddaughter.
Throwing Rocks at the Sun
We can go to the park now,
And paint with our fingers on canvas sails.
We can dance now,
Tickle a ferret’s tummy until…
Do ferrets laugh?
We can plant flowers
And play with Grandma in the morning.
We can climb through the phone and…
Would we hurt the phone or
Would we hurt our noses?
Are doggies made of
Nothing but bone?
Can I see the pictures
When we get back home?
Tell me, do sea otters
Have bright big teeth?
What animals lay eggs?
What do they eat?
You and I,
We can go outside, and
We can throw rocks at the Sun.
Adam Byrn Tritt 