Winter’s Withered Hand

Winter’s withered hand

Scrapes across muted landscapes

And steals comfort from the earth.

Birds fall frozen to the ground,

Lambs to the seasonal slaughter,

Ducks held fast in unflinching ice.

The elders give up the ghost,

Just fade away

In this death-howling season–

While pale newborns struggle towards spring.

In this silenced land of winter,

colors stark, dissolved,

Black limbs lifted to a somber sky–

Wooden beggars pleading for alms,

I listen for the melting

One unseasonable day—

The breaking of ice around a dam,

The baby  babble of some brook

The laugh of a crow overhead,

The drip-drip of a leaky faucet—

The earth will turn

On its axis

With the promise

Of Winter fading.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

Winter Poem, #1

I wrote quite a few poems last winter, and this winter I will add to them.  This season of thin light, when it doesn’t quite reach the ground, when a nighttime snowfall can make alien territory of what we know; well, it is conducive to poetry.

WINTER POEM, #1

Walking in the new winter woods,

crunch of frozen ground beneath

my boots,

my dog’s paws will be sore tonight

for we aim far afield.

I think of this morning when we

argued at breakfast,

the smell of maple bacon should

stop all that, but didn’t.

We can’t get past the desiccated ghosts

who have taken up residence in our hearts, inviting

slights and outright blows never delivered

but still lingering in the air.

I took the gun loaded with birdshot

in case there was a duck down by the pond.

Were, but they were those sitting ducks

didn’t seem right, too easy a target

like this morning at breakfast when either one

of us could have let swing and landed a good one

on tender flesh and raw nerves.

The dog is game for hunting, but my heart

isn’t in it.

My thoughts go back to you standing there,

that old apron around your waist,

determined not to let me see tears

and my own cracks and soon I head back with

a peace offering of a bough of holly.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

Steve Isaak reviews a review of “The Kite Runner”.

Steve Isaak is one of my favorite writers.  I met him on ERWA a while ago, and though I can’t claim I understand all he writes, he’s a powerful and visionary writer.
And he makes science fiction  accessible and magical for one who has fear of that genre.  And he is damn funny.

I am also beholden for his review of my first book, “A Seasoning of Lust”.  I saw my own writing through new eyes and some how it changed my perspective about that book.  The main complaint from a number of readers was there were too many themes, but that didn’t detour Steve at all.  In fact, he gloried in  it.

Lady Nyo

Steve writes:

This book review transcends the usual book review in that it’s more philosophical in its view than the book reviews that focus on the nuts n’ bolts of the writing: characterization, structure, theme, taking it into a more PERSONAL realm for you, and us, the readers.

I tend to be less philosophical in my book reviews — I’m a nuts n’ bolts guy, because, at the end of the day, writing is not a mystical experience, it’s everyday grunt-through-it, deal-with-the-writing-elements work. There’s delicious inspiration, and moments of glee (especially during the plotting/characterization phase), but you’re more spiritual about it.

I sometimes wish I could be that way, but we’re built the way we’re built, right? Might as well celebrate our strengths in a world that would tear us, as individuals and groups, down.

That’s why I enjoy your writing, and why I could appreciate why you appreciated “The Kite Runner,” a novel I couldn’t get into.

Hosseini has plenty o’ mood, and he’s done everything right (in terms of building characters, structuring the story), but it felt too technical for me — like he was trying to build up to some momentous event that would be less-than-momentous for me, the reader.

Bear in mind, I’m mostly a crime and horror-fiction reader, with occasional reader-forays into non-fiction books.

Your take on it has me admiring the novel a bit more than I did, but I think my cultural differences with the author were too much to surmount. Other readers, thankfully, felt differently.

Thanks for the recommend, Jane. Any experience that prompts us to think and appreciate beauty (that is, become better people) is a worthwhile one, and you’ve certainly added one of those to my daily life.

*********************

Hey Steve!  I don’t know about ‘becoming better people’ while reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, the second book by Hosseini.  He detailed the humdrum daily violence and fear these two women, both married to the same man, so well and horrifically,   I felt a killer instinct rising from my gut as I read.  Now, to me, when an author can involve you in such anger, pathos, injustice, …well, that is a mark of a good writer.  Involvement and connection is what we strive for, and if we have a story that has all those human elements of breaking out for some sort of freedom, ….it gets to the gut of readers.

You may be a ‘nuts and bolts’ kind of writer, but you engage readers on a wicked level. And your stories flow effortlessly and into the mind of this reader.  And many of them haunt.

Steve Isaak is working on his own book and hopefully it will be published in a while.  He’s a careful writer and  is NEVER boring, and with Steve, it’s grab your hat and hold on tight.  I can’t wait to review HIS book!

His website is well worth visiting:

readingbypublight.blogspot.com

And Steve?  I find your writing to have passion and spirituality.

Firing on all cylindars!

Mystic Marriage

Mino begs a gift of Poseidon and

from the sea comes a white bull.

Glorious Bull! With hooves of gold,

eyes of fire and sweet of breath.

Pasiphae, Mino’s wife

besotted with the sight of him

begs Mino to spare his sword

and offers her handmaidens

for the sacrifice.

Tender-hearted Mino allows his wife

to rule his judgement

all sense is pushed aside,

havoc soon overturns the throne.

Pasiphae builds a wooden cow

and besotted with lust

climbs into the decoy

Seduces the golden hoofed Bull.

The Minotaur is born, suckled from

Pasiphae’s paps,

grew wild –the labyrinth

built to imprison him.

Unnatural love- making produces

unnatural monster Minotaur

half man and half bull,

given freedom only in a maze,

fed on virgins of both sexes.

But Poseidon has the last laugh.

He was the gift, the snow white bull

and cuckolds Mino

for his greed.

Mystic marriage overturns a throne and kingdom,

reveals the deception of woman

produces monster offspring.

In his maze all paths lead to the grave.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

Winter Comes Too Soon

This poem is still in rewrite, rethinking.  Autumn/Winter usually throws me into poetry that reflects the monumental changes around us.  But what I am finding out is it isn’t enough just to notice and write into poetry those external changes in our environment.  I think that realizing the internal changes, those thoughts and memories of the past and now present…well, they, combined with those external, outside things makes for something perhaps deeper.  Frost did exactly this: an eye to the environment and a thought to humankind’s connection.  One followed the other.

Lady Nyo

******************

Autumn,

That too-fickle season

Has thrown off Jacob’s coat

And turned to winter.

Gone the leaves

Brilliant hummingbirds,  airborne jewels

Illuminated in prismatic splendor

By the sun piercing a brittle blue sky–

Replaced  with blackened limbs

Stretching naked arms towards a now glowering sky.

The season of alms and hunger has begun.

Gone are the pelting rains

Which poured down window panes

Like crinkled crepe paper

Distorting our view of the shearing outside.

Gone, too are the golden sunsets

Where a beam of light transposes

Distant trees, paints the belly of clouds.

The leaves and color are gone

And that is as it should be.

What is now outside

Hints at what is growing inside–

This long passage through a muted season.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

“First Snow”

First Snow

The morning brought a first snow,

And with it wind from over the mountain.

As I watched snow turn to ice,

Invisible sleet hit the panes a’ hissing.

There was soon a crystal coat on tender branches—

Invisible hands pulling to earth,

Anchoring them fast.

I depend upon the silence

Creating a space to remember,

Solitude, too, now to be shared

Only with ghosts

Or perhaps a cat or two.

Inside the crackling wood,

Well seasoned of last year’s split,

The sweet, sharp scent of pine and oak,

The groan of a log as it shifts its failing weight—

I remember your boot kicking it back off the hearth,

Sparks flaring upward,

Stars enfolded by a blazing sun.

Outside the pelting sting on windows,

The howl of winter racing round eaves

Looking for attic-access between clapboards,

The hambone skeleton dance to

Shake their palsied bones warm.

Soon  fading light at twilight

Suspends the day

In a cocoon of white, unfocused mystery.

The night brings a muffled benediction

Over the land,

And memory is put aside for the morrow.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

Poetry and Tanka

I am trying to gather in poems of the past year.  I  have sent “The Zar Tales” to be published with the generous labor of Bill Penrose.  I now have time to consider what I love  best: poetry.  I am working on the next book, one that is only poetry:  “White Cranes of Heaven”.

It’s not easy to write poetry as I am finding out.  Perhaps when I was not conscious of the difficulties it was easier.  As soon as I realized there were certain ‘rules’….or perhaps  when people TOLD me there were rules….well, that’s when I got  nervous.

I have been reading two books of poetry, and about as different as one could get on the issue.  (Anthology ) ” Robert Frost’s Poems” with a commentary by Louis Untermeyer and “The Ink Dark Moon”, translated by Jane Hirshfield with  Mariko Aratani.

Untermeyer states that Frost’s poetry is poetry that never pretends. It’s the poetry of good conversation; it is a language of things as well as thoughts.

And in more a poetic frame: “Again Frost’s rich and ripe philosophy/That had the body and tang of  good draught-cider/And poured as clear as a stream”.

There might be half a world away in the poetry of Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, (9th and 10th century women poets ) but as stated by Tsurayuki’s preface to “Kokinshu”  (ca. 905):

” The Poetry of Japan has its seeds in the human heart and mind and grows into the myriad leaves of words.  Because people experience many different phenomena in this world, they express that which they think and feel in their hearts in terms of all that they see and hear.  A nightingale singing amongst the blossoms, the voice of a pond-dwelling frog– listening to these, what living being would not respond with his own poem?  It is poetry which effortlessly moves the heavens and the earth, awakens the world of invisible spirits to deep feeling, softens the relationship between men and women, and consoles the hearts of fierce warriors.”

There are not that many ‘miles’ between the sentiments of Frost and this statement above.   Poetry’s proper concerns are human emotion in general.  And perhaps poetry is best found in an awakened heart.

Lady Nyo

#1

The futility

Of love should queer the seeking-

But it never does.

Hopeful, yearning, we are fools

Ignoring our history.

#2

When nature is known

reason for awe can be found

in familiar sights.

Intimacy at the core-

astounding revelation!

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

Samhain, A Celtic Winter Song

Winter Tree, (annettebudd)

 

Dark mysterious season,

when the light doesn’t

quite reach the ground,

the trees shadow puppets

moving against the gray of day.

I think over the past year

praying  there has been a

kindling in my soul,

the heart opened

and the juiciness of life is

more than the loins,

a stream of forgiveness

slow flowing through the tough fibers

not stopper’d with an underlying

bitterness

but softened with compassion.

This season of constrictions,

unusual emptiness,

brittle like the dried twigs

desiccated by hoar frost

just to be endured.

I wrap myself in wool and

watch the migrations,

first tender song birds which harken back

to summer,

then Sandhill cranes,

their legs thin banners

streaming behind white bodies,

lost against a snowy sky.

They lift off into a middling cosmos,

while I, earth-bound,

can only flap the wings of my shawl,

poor plumage for such a flight,

and wonder about my destination.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

A Bittersweet Thanksgiving

This is a special Thanksgiving for my husband and myself….and our son, Christopher Duncan.  He is leaving for the Navy Dec. 8th, and we have to stuff in Christmas before he leaves.

These changes will be enormous.  For his parents, and especially for our son.  He was homeschooled and basically held to the Quaker mold from very early on.  His enlistment into the Navy was quite a shock for us, but he seems to have a plan.  Bill Penrose has shared some of his own son’s history in both Navy and Army and thinks that this is a good course for our son.  I trust Bill in many things, and because he has raised his own two sons well and they are fine men.  I am leaning on Bill here.

So this last Thanksgiving is heavy with our concern, not the least because there is a war going on.  And our son at just 22 seems hardly military material.  He is a thoughtful and gentle young man, who brings home stray kittens and dogs.  He is a computer geek and between classes, is making a pile of money fixing computers.  I wish he would continue his classes but he feels he needs more than what his college is offering.  I can remember the same restlessness at his age.  I solved it with marriage.  For a while.

He took some pictures of our Thanksgiving and I thought they were beautiful.  He is very handy with a camera where I am not.

The day was beautiful; a perfect late fall day where  the temperatures reflected the winter to come, the wind kicked up and clouds scuttled by, white clouds early then tinted a rosy hue as the dusk fell.  After eating I laid on a sofa and watched the wind whip around our huge pecans and live oaks.  There still are leaves on these trees, and in the distance I could see the colorful hues of maples and sycamores.  The trees outside my windows facing north were really dancing up a storm; apparently a cold front was coming in.

The blessings of our small family here, this last Thanksgiving before our only child goes into the Navy, well, we are counting them.  We are fortunate to have our child with us.  Many families this Thanksgiving don’t have their young soldiers  with them to enjoy the blessings of this wonderful national holiday.

The new kittens, Ali and Baba.

The Table

Candle fireplace

The Feast

Thanksgiving, Pumpkin Pie and Chickens…..

The Pumpkin Pie from a Live Pumpkin

Yesterday’s mix of butchering a pumpkin left o’vr from Halloween, ONE glass of eggnog (well spiked) and chickens  actually turned out a good pumpkin pie.

I am posting a recipe, probably too late for most cooks I know, but I learned something along the way.  One, that Libby’s canned pumpkin ISN’T pumpkin at all…it’s  butternut squash.  Who knew?

But I had this lovely shaped pumpkin before me and a sharp knife.  I cut it in half, lengthwise, and scooped out the seeds and the strings into a wooden bread trough because my son left the compost bucket in the compose pile.  In carrying the seeds across the kitchen, I dropped the whole mess on the freshly washed floor, so decided in my eggnog-fogged state to call in a few chickens to hoover it up.

You don’t call a few chickens in: most of the  flock crammed through the screen door, raced through the mud room and into the kitchen.  8 of 13 hens made it through the door before I slammed it, and did a good job of hoovering up the seeds and pulp, but left their own offering on my floor.

The problem was getting them out again because chickens are curious girls, and  and human food must have smelled good to them because ‘laying pellets’ with a side of whatever is in the compost bucket that day…well, this was more interesting.    Problem is that some of them wandered into the dining room looking for the silver, and I had a royal time shooing them out.

Finally, I could get back to my pumpkin and make it into something that would serve as a pie.  You cut it up into large chunks, put it into a steamer and steam the life out of it.  Cool. I did overnight, and separating the pulp from the skin was easy.

Usually a ’sweet pumpkin’ is used for a pie…about 6 inches worth of pumpkin.  It makes for a ’sweeter’ pie, but I also read you can use any pumpkin,  except for  those huge 1200 lb. monsters grown for the express purpose of seeing who can grow the largest pumpkin that year.  There is a festival in upper New York state that does so every year.  I always wondered what you do with the 1000 lb. pumpkins that lose.

But my Halloween pumpkin gave me enough pulp for two good sized pies.  Recipe below.

Take the pulp and mash or blender it well….I just mashed it up because it was very soft.  Drain it in a colander for a while because there is a lot of water in fresh pumpkin.

2 teaspoons of cinammon

grating of nutmeg

1 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of brown sugar

4 eggs

1 can of evaporated milk

2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice mix of ginger/cloves, cinammon, etc.  I didn’t have but I did have “5 spice mix” which probably had the same thing from Whole Foods.  The print was too small for me to read what was in it, but it looked like it would do.

2 tablespoons of flour

more spice to taste.

Pour into unbaked pie crust.

Bake at 400 degrees (fast oven) for 20 minutes and then reduce to 350 for an hour or when a butter knife inserted comes out clean.

Cool.  I decorated mine before baking with fresh cranberries because it looked pretty.

We already tasted a sliver each tonight, and I thought it could use a bit more sugar, but others thought it fine.

A Southern touch to pumpkin pie is to whip your cream for the topping with a dash of sherry.  Makes a wonderful difference.

Lady Nyo…and Happy Thanksgiving, with Pumpkin Pie or not.