STANDARD TIME: NOVENA FOR MY FATHER by Dionisio D. Martinez

We’re turning back the clocks tonight

to live an hour longer.

I suppose this is a useless ritual to you now.

Late October brings life to the wind chimes

with that perpetually nocturnal music

so reminiscent of you.

I memorize a small song, a seasonable dirge

for the night that lives outside my

window. I call each note by name:

All Hallows Eve; All Saints Day; all the souls

in my music pacing, talking to themselves.

All day I sit by a statue of Saint

Francis of Assisi, birds on his shoulders,

nothing but faith in his hands.

At dusk I return to the house you knew

and a life you would probably understand.

There are night birds waiting to

breathe music back into the wind chimes when

the forecast calls for stillness.

I still remember what you said about belief,

how you laughed when I said I thought

the world could carry the cross I’d carved

around my shoulder and through my fist.

The world is busy with its clocks and its

wind chimes and the night birds that never fly

home once they learn the secret of exile.

I let out one sigh that is almost musical.

I know you can hear this much.

I take a small step back and picture

you here before I light the last candle.

All the souls in hell couldn’t set this world

on fire. Even if they prove that our lives

are mathematically impossible, we

will cling to the last flame in the equation.

Aye, this is good and telling, this gets the irony; our search for salvation and eternal life is conducted in an existence of limited duration. In our haste to find and follow a path of wisdom, we make mistakes justified with disguised versions of unwarranted pride, which blocks us from the sunshine of the spirit. It would seem a rigged game, "gaffed" as they say in the Carnie, that keeps us running in circles, Nice choice. A poem of my own about time and change, in several nuanced meanings.

What It’s Time For

I was a sneak thief

for the passion of

Joan who croons

in the moonlight

that falls upon her Daddy’s car,

a Cadillac Seville

that he drove but once a week

on Friday nights

when he was ready

to tie one on

with a new issue of rope.

I know all about

taking a peek

under the slats of

witless blinds,

I know all about

your business

and I wish it were mine,

this road to happiness

is studded with rocks

and barbed wire,

Joan, I ask you,

what’s a girl like you

doing in a nice

place like this?

That’s all there is

from this side of the fence,

outlaw existence

is persistence

in the clothes

that gets worn

for days without a

wash, the important matters

are louder than what any newscaster

declaims,

we need a place where the hash browns are good

and the cash register is full.

Those were days

when I didn’t

miss a guess

about whose car

would follow whose

in that slow chase seen

that wound up in

motel rooms near

the airport

or the county fairgrounds,

counting the cash

and cutting the coke

on a table top

that was scarred with burns

and initials carved

into the black, waxy buildup.

Those were days

when no had

a watch

because everyone

in Daddy’s car knew

what it was always time for.

O, great keeper of the poems -- You've really exceeded all expectations here, finding a poem that mentions standard time and All Saints Day in the same breath :-)

Hi, Ted, Great poem. Love the "what's a girl like you doing in a nice place like this" line.

Taken from Woody Allen, but it fit. :)

Time,
standard
or daylight,
goes either too slow
or fast. Mostly I'm glad it's past.
It seems I've spent my time walking down the same sidewalks
in the same town, grinding a path. Nothing can stop me now except a nuclear blast.

perfect loveliness
lovely perfectness, Mary Ann.

and here's my offering for All Souls Day, from Cardinal John Henry Newman's
The Dream of Gerontius

Soul: Dear Angel, say,
Why have I now no fear at meeting Him?
Along my earthly life, the thought of death
And judgment was to me most terrible.
I had it aye before me, and I saw
The Judge severe e'en in the Crucifix.
Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;
And at this balance of my destiny,
Now close upon me, I can forward look
With a serenest joy.

Angel: It is because
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear...

and I hope you all are well on this first day of November 2009!!

monica

well, of course I'll share it with you!

<link>

monica

Ya didn't respond to my follow-up to the other discussion.

Monica, how nice to read you here on the PoemsFray!! Hope life is getting a bit less hectic for you.

robusto:

Ya didn't respond to my follow-up to the other discussion.

True enough, but I did very much enjoy your comments on the ending of the Thoreau poem. Guess I could have said at least that, even if I didn't have the time or ideas to say more than that.

You're the one who asked about that, after all.

Dear Mary Ann,

hectic has given way to disciplined. i try not to squander a minute. i hurry a lot less when i simply force myself to get the next list item done. then my diminished time with GoodHusband and kids really belongs to us.

but discipline is so hard-- after two-plus luxurious years with PerfectBaby in my lap, fresh coffee and PoemsFray, i feel like i've been robbed. (and getting dressed every day in something better than jeans and t shirts is a pain in the ass, too.)

but i love the work, i just hate everything about it that makes them jobs.

just this week, Indub, came home with an assignment from his English Lit class. he was asked to present 2 poems with opposing world views. he chose Macbeth's Tomorrow and Tomorrow soliloquy, "It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing."

and Hopkins' God's Grandeur,

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

his instructor was impressed and said, 'so you know something about poetry?'
to which Indub responded, "yeah. my mother used to make me read PoemsFray every tuesday."

well, whadyano?

a belated thank you for the birthday wishes!

monica