Author: L.E. Hansen

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Words From Bobby

And my aunt Sooky

BobbyDMost people think that only driven artists who don’t work in the public area are truly doing what they want to do. Not so, my aunt Sooky would say. She was a biologist. Yet more (possibly) improbably, at moments in a spiraled upward life, research biology. Yes, in a lab. Dylan’s words reminded me of Sooks, and I’ve not thought of her in years.

When I was very quite young she used to come to our house and stay some weeks in the summer. I loved seeing her, though I never quite understood what it was all about. In retrospect, I do believe she came to recharge, unwind, balance herself. This she did primarily in our back yard on a beach blanket. Whilst holding a Carling Black Label beer in one hand and a cigarette in another. She was tan and wore a boob tube. Her hair was fairly short and curly. Dark, like she was. Of course I adored her. And brought her the beers from the kitchen when she needed one. Periodically she would jump up and run for her travel bag, retrieve a large leather notebook and write something in it. Sometimes that would put an end to the sunbathing and she would spend the rest of the morning or day in the kitchen at the table, writing and sketching. More than once Mother would set the table in the dining room and we would have our supper there, leaving Sooky undisturbed at the table. This, to me, though without the words for it at the time, was the consummate work passion. It invigorated her. It left her smiling.

I don’t know how much relaxing she did, or how restored she was when she left, but she always left smiling. And she said wonderful things that sounded wise, and made me want to be her, to live her life. Sooky said things like the Dylan quote. And, if you’re doing what you want to do, enjoy doing, it’s not work at all. Sometimes they pay you for having fun. Think of it! What joy.

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What We Leave Behind

It seems we don’t know what we leave behind until it is gone. It’s also true that our songwriters, authors, personal diarists, all (if not in a singular voice) tell us that. But we take no notice. Even when we say, yeah, yeah, true, true. The problem, it seems to me, is that we can only take note of the past, our history. From here, from now, from a future projection— is nothing. We don’t know what will fill our memories, fill the file box of wrongs, loss, despair, and joy. Or we may know an example: the dog I love today will leave me to grieve the same as the dogs who have gone before. But we don’t feel it, we don’t know those things inside-out. Our mind observes, undaunted by Truths, only the facts. And so we stumble on, leaving behind the things we will mourn, or forget. And we forget the most important thing that the notetakers don’t tell us to remember. When we leave the old for the new, we need to be sure it is replaced with something of worth.

abandChurch

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For Jakob Gator

Jake, the little green bastard. I’ve been missing him a great deal lately, and he died quite a few years ago. Isn’t it funny how the dead return in a soft splendor, and leave us with such longing. Jake was more like a little person than a parrot. It’s that personhood we miss. The companionship. And he pretty much had something to say about everything.

So, for you, little man…

I saw the wing of a bird
stretched open before me
a dark green shadowed by the forest
from where he came
and then I felt the beating heart
nestled into me
his head upon my lips

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Sometimes

(Only because it takes a while to dig yourself out)

When I think I can

I’ll transmute the poems in the air
the ones that haunt and suffocate
to paintings of English Gardens
or maybe a little stream where
silver fish glimmer and glimpse
the part of me that lingers there

When I think I can’t

I’ll slide the scale of dumbed down
notes to impossible depths of immortality
where the worn and sick climb
rocks of smooth and simple betrayal
not of human form but life
on songs that were not chiseled there

(And then sometimes you don’t quite make it)

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Post Mum’s Day

Slump. When the kid leaves there’s this big yapping hole that slips within my space. The Indestructible Energy has moved to become peaking and waning motions of energy here, fields that shake or shiver or are silent. That’s the thing, Silent. As silent as remorse or a sleeping cat. A constant connection that moves like sound waves. Water through a hose, making a fountain of captured rainbows. Doors opened and shut. Words written on the air. Calm. Breathing. Returning to remembered cottages, and rivers.

odmosswmsecgard

Old Moss Woman’s Secret Garden

 

 

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