Regarding "October"

This month’s “Poem-of-the-Month” at CrowVoice.com is titled “October.” This may be the most poetic of months. Old T.S. may have April pegged as the cruelest, though I disagree, but there’s something about October, something pensive and sadly beautiful, that makes for putting pen to paper and filling it with sighs and longings.

The poem “October” is a bit of departure for me, in that it’s on the surface, a piece of fiction. The characters and events are made up. Fabricated. Imagined out of the hunger for poetry in a mood that can be best characterized as October. However, I agree with an e-mail I just received:

“I read your October poem…how real to me it felt. I was that woman and I was that man …”

We’ve all been there. Unwilling to admit the failure of a relationship. Unable to accept the truth. I had no one in mind when I wrote it. I had everyone in mind. I had you in mind.

I was looking out of the window at the bar. I was listening to quiet jazz. I was working at the gas station, watching the guy at the pay phone.

“And I’m lost in the window
I hide on the stairway
I hang in the curtain
I sleep in your hat
And no one brings anything
Small into a bar around here.”

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"Rwanda" by Faruq Z. Bey & The Northwoods Improvisers

There are lions and oribi roaming through the savannah during the opening mystery of this song. Dark birds of prey follow their movements.

Mike Gilmore, Nick Ashton and Mike Johnston create a percussive landscape filled with shadow and flashes of light. The flutes of Faruq Z. Bey and Mike Carey begin the journey like winds over the tall grasses and rolling hills, heading toward the volatile waters of Lake Kivu.

When the bass of Johnston thunders into being, you are moving across the surface of the lake, feeling each crest and trough of the blue-black waves of Kivu. The flutes are now calling the barefoot fishermen to dance, dreaming of barbel, catfish and tilapia.

The Tenor Sax of Bey first, and then Skeeter Shelton, pull you into two worlds: you’re still on that deep and dangerous African lake, but at the same time, you are now viewing the streets of Detroit from the backseat of a slow-moving Buick. It’s late summer and the windows are rolled down. The tires hiss and the streetlights flash across your face.

Gilmore’s marimba solo brings you back to that Rwandan plain. Though now you are the lion, stalking the oribi. The saxes come back in, this time with Carey joining the drive and leading the expedition.

Finally, your are returned to the opening mystery. The bass and percussion dissolve the water and land into ethereal winds, and those dark raptors rise in widening circles until they disappear into the silence.

[Faruq Z. Bey & the Northwoods Improvisers Website]

An excerpt of this song is featured in the book trailer for The Moon Cracks Open:

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The Moon Cracks Open Book Trailer


 

Thanks to:
Mike Johnston and Faruq Z. Bey & The Northwoods Improvisers for the use of their song “Rwanda”
Kellie Schneider for the use of the illustration “Holy Pigeons”
Meg Kearney, Mike Johnston, William Heyen and Doug Peacock for featured blurbs

Poem excerpts from “La Sona de la Mar” from The Moon Cracks Open: A Field Guide to the Birds
Photography of Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and Mackinaw Island by the author

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