On the Eggemoggin Reach

On the Eggemoggin Reach sailors begin at one or two

After mornings in Bucks Harbor, Center Harbor or Blue Hill on clay courts with puddles of rain, or small hikes in Cape Rosier Tides tell you when it’s best to swim and how far to go and if you might Picnic on the pirate island, or head to Castine to Bah’s

Summer brings sunny days one after another not so typical here

While Pennsylvania is steaming in 95 and 100 degrees Who thinks of home, though? Or news, or goings on.

It’s time to visit the Point and the new tent with its fly, high ceilings and double views of the sea To look for bullet shells or arrow heads, or walk the new bridge Light the fire for Jack and remember Indian names with Chloe

Girls sleep in while we bustle about serving and practicing our backhands The only thing certain is the swim, first thing, afternoon late tide, or midnight No day is missed

The water is warmer this year We see seals and wonder if it seems easier to swim further To stay firm in such glassy water Where green, blue and brown sea glass Lay beneath our feet.

- Askling, 2010

 

Shall I Go Lightly - a poem for NPSH

Shall I Go Lightly

Shall I go lightly
down Applegrove Road
Riding one leading two
Grandchildren in tow
One, two, three and on
posting on ponies fat and gray, chestnut and bay

Shall I sit on the edge of the swimming pool
Iced tea, broken arm and Lilly skirt
While children play in the dank, green
Deep end
jumping from the wooden dive.

Shall we stand in the tack room
Practicing our reins
Practicing, practicing
Among racing tack, wooden trunks
Leather girths and saddle pads

Shall I stop at Spingdell Deli
For a Mountain Dew and a sandwich
sit for a second to talk the cost of hay,
the King Ranch
And the cattle that lived there.

Shall we pile on top of the Jeep Wagoneer
Ages one thru thirteen
roll around
holding on tight
While speeding down the drive
Mothers aghast.

Shall I pass once again through Saturday country
Pinkerton, Chalfant, Brooklawn and Webbs
Heels fiercely down
hands light and sailing
over the Brooklawn Double
And on towards home.

Shall I pass through this natural world
Heart brave and soundly beating -
I shall.

- 2010, Christianna Potter Hannum Miller
 

pity me not

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man¹s desire is hushed so soon, And you no longer look with love on me.
This love I have known always: love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
　
 

I am never pearls

I am never pearls.
 
I am black fishnets.
 
Heels by Ferragamo.
 
rarely diamonds.
 
I do green and gold bangles
 
Italian hoops with rubies.
 
gold Grecian evening dress with no back.
 
silver strapless with lace underneath.
 

Black long velvet to the floor

 
Pink silk underneath.
 
Like skin.
 
I am never pearls.
 
 
Askling, 2009
 

the man of my dreams

The Man of my Dreams

 

The man of my dreams is one of those men that you could write poetry about. Even though he is very grown up, he wears braces and his hair very short, like in those pictures you see of young men in the 1950’s when they are in the sun with a girl.  He is from the south and when he talks it is very slowly unless he is excited about something.  If he is mad, it comes out and surprises you, like the taste of butter when you don’t normally eat it. He is a really good listener. He laughs all the time, even when he is sad, which is a lot of the time. 

The Quakers believe that there is a light inside every person. The man of my dreams can see it, even in the darkest, meanest person who has never done one thing but hurt other people.  He can see that light, and he listens and listens to that light, until it turns on inside you.  Then he steps back because he knows that it is turned on and bright, and he walks away, slowly, laughing all the time.  Sometimes when he laughs it is an evil laugh that comes up from a long time ago because he remembers what it was like to be bad, and he remembers when he made people cry.  He can make people cry very easily, the man of my dreams can, because he is very beautiful.  And, beautiful people can always make you cry.

The man of my dreams likes to tell stories.  Sometimes he will tell you about the time he went home to the South where his father was preaching in church.  He rode the bus all the way from New York City.  His father was telling all of the people in the church about God and love and about how if you believe in the man they call Jesus you can get to heaven.  And my man he waited in the back of the church where there were some girls whispering and giggling, because in a small town, everyone watches and giggles when you come home again.  So he waited and after the service, he went up to his Dad and he gave him a hug and they went home to have a cold drink and to talk. 

My man said to his dad I have something to tell you, and his dad told him a story about his grandmother who was sick, and told him about Nell, the black Labrador his dad had since she was just born.  He said that Nell had gone down to the river and rolled in the mud and come back home and laid right down on the rug in front of the grandmother and made the rug dirty and wet.  And the grandmother did not even care and so she just reached out her hand, which was burning hot and touched Nell’s wet head, and it cooled her right down.  When she went to sleep, Nell went right back to the river and got all muddy all over again, and then laid down in front of her so she was right there when the grandmother woke up again.

After that story about Nell and some lemonade it was time for lunch and all these people came over after church.  They had whisky sours and ham and some people brought potato salad and rolls.  Everyone ate and drank whisky sours and my man’s father went to sleep in a chair after telling a good story about the time the church burnt down. 

My man went upstairs to his room that had the twin beds and the rodeo poster hanging up. He lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling where there were tiny holes all sprinkled about like pepper.  He says that his best friend and he would lay on each bed with their feet on the pillow end and throw darts at the ceiling and laugh when they bounced off and hit each other on the leg or on the head. 

Sometimes they would both lie on one bed and throw the darts one after another very fast and see who could make them stick in a pattern like a cross or a circle or an x.  My man’s best friend was better at it than he and could always get the dart to stick the longest in the ceiling before it dropped down onto the bed spread.  Then his friend would get to “go-spin” first which was when my man and his friend would go outside by the hammock and take deep breathes over and over while they were leaning over very far. After about ten or twelve breathes, my man would wrap his arms around his friend, pull on his stomach hard and fast, and his friend would fall to the ground like a stone.  He would lie there and seem to be dead.  But in about ten seconds he would open his eyes and look up and see my man looking down at him with clouds racing by behind his head. And then they would just about laugh their heads off. 

dark, dark, dark Light 2000

 

Interim

Interim

Behind the desk she is amazed that a beautiful girl like me would tell her such a thing.  She is a Presbyterian minister at fifty-five with brown eyes that are begging for it.

I met the Reverend Blyth Sailor in my hometown when I rang the bell of the Presbyterian Church to drop off some old clothes with my sister.  Curtiss had on her swimming goggles and we were driving a Uhaul with a faulty battery that we left running when we walked up the path to the door of the church.

She did not answer when we knocked so I went around to the side door and rang the bell. 
I go to a cloistered Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut and there you have to ring the bell before you can enter.

Reverend Blyth Sailor came to the door and her face was tan and lined and she said: “Can I help you?”  I pushed my sister in front of me and whispered to her and she said: “I am Curtiss Penn Smith.  We have these old clothes and you have our cousin Corbett in your Baby Bible class.   Reverend Blyth Sailor took us inside and I watched her hands.  Unringed.  She picked up the phone to call the Goodwill office in West Grove.  I waited until she was talking to the man on the other end, then whispered: “Where did you go to seminary?  I want to go this year.  My sister is studying to be a nurse mid-wife, you know.”  She looked at me and then at Curtiss who had sat down and was twisting the goggles in her hand.  Reverend Blyth Sailor paused and said: “Well, thank you and God Bless,” to the man on the line and then she hung up.

I stood next to her by her desk and saw that she wore Belgian loafers.  Her linen pants pulled at the waist.  She asked Curtiss about nursing, until I said, still whispering: “The Uhaul is running, we have to go, when can I come t o visit you?”  I moved behind the desk and pushed her stapler slowly towards a book of  parables.  Reverend Blyth Sailor said anytime and that she would be delighted and then she walked Curtiss and I out the front door of the church.

She kept on talking and stood on the lawn and said that she knew our crazy grandmother and wasn’t our mother the realtor.  I got in the passenger seat and turned on the radio, watching her mouth moving and her hands reaching as Curtiss crossed the lawn.  I noticed that her hair was brown and gray and thought that she must not have been very pretty when she was young.

Curtiss got into the truck and she put her goggles back on.  We drove around the church parking lot once and stopped and looked up.  The curve of sky suddenly seemed the draped marquis at our brother’s wedding in Yorkshire.  My sister and I were bridesmaids in red.  We stared up and up at the white clouds gathered up high around the center pole of our sky-tent.  My sister and I said nothing but thought of our own wedding days, of tents and dancing and the things people would say.

I waited three days and then I called.  Reverend Sailor answered the phone and her voice was brash, deeper than I remembered.  “I am Christianna,” I said.  “With the Uhaul.  Are you free tomorrow?”  “A fter eleven am,” she said.  “I am delighted.”  I borrowed my grandmother’s Jeep Wagoneer and wore my running shorts and saw that the palms of my hands were red from pulling weeds at the Haskell’s farm.  When I went into her office to sit down I took a business card off her desk.  Interim Pastor.

I told her that that I was making a film and that everyone thought I was gay, and that I had dreams about the color blue, and woke up sweating from nightmares.  I said that I believed chastity would give me the freedom to be an artist.  I told her that she had beautiful eyes and that my cousin blew his brains out and that we would be friends for a long time.

She said, “Slow down.  Breathe.  Did I ever stop talking?”
She was bored around here but nobody was knocking down her door. And didn’t I know that preachers just couldn’t run around sleeping with everyone in town.

Swishpan, 2003
 

Quick, boys

Quick, boys
When I am with you
I am just 31
There stands Ben
towering over me
too quick to shake a hand
to jump in with a name and a story
those wide set eyes
perfect girl’s mouth.
Poems rush easily
Songs, too

Ah! When I am with you
You lean in too close
bump into the cab
while gazing back at me.
I reach into my pocket
a shiny Abbey stone
you pop it in your mouth
begin to swallow!

Whether I leave at 5 am
to cross Central Park
or stand Wednesday hips pulled back
Quick, boys. 
It’s much the same.

Askling September 4, 2009

 

 

the conservatory at Longwood

With lights at Longwood
I would elope
would orchids be my witness
and giant palms
royal and warm
the air, humid like kisses. 

Askling
December 6, 2003
 

Never hit Sonoma unattended

Never hit Sonoma unattended
never hit Sonoma unattended
if the wedding is planned for Saturday
there are pretty girls and parasols
in green and teal
you may find yourself
sitting on the left side with petals
passing from hand to hand.

on the right
the rows are full of loving couples
They sit there.
the wide-eyed beauty reads aloud
her voice thick with occasion
and summers in Umbria

Jerusalem and Corinthians too, of course.

He is mountain state, boarding school
barefoot across Stanford's green
four poster bed and whales,
like we have foxes.

How the unconscious can cape one
in rapid heartbeats, shaky hands
in perfect coincidences
when you find yourselves alone.

Nineteen degrees in Pennsylvania
The gray light of every afternoon
You are asked to explain. 

Flat out and freezing
California wedding left behind
Gravel in your back.

Try to touch now.
once the easy sun and sheets of Sonoma
found you quite forgetting

You tell yourself to reach way up.
in flat-out fear
of your
own bare skin
Sticking fast to the ice

 Askling, 2009
 

the names of foxes

The names of foxes or sempre una madre

It was nothing so eventful
but a few days in Lewes
when I have a dream.
On the steep slope of a green hill
We watch the food stations
like circus cars rolling by.

Its an Indian wedding in Ontario
Storm clouds are big buildings that lumber in
so obvious to my dreaming self
Lightening strikes and hits hard
I curve over him. 
I am a huge tortoise shell.
“You will not die, you can breathe”
I feel the yogi breath that I never quite master
staving off his burn.

Her tears hold off but by Memorial Day
Her lips swell so to warn us
that a young girl’s long
back and shoulders
can rarely carry it all.

Her week is
this-would-have-been-my-wedding-week.
It’s open, too pale
Pulpy pink grapefruit raw
inside of my bitten check
my tummy where I hate to be touched.

Six kits play along Tarpon Drive
They glow burnt red orange
jumping over each other and over again
My sister and he stand in the topmost balcony
The fox family fiery in five o'clock light.

My lightening bolt is
a 100 gazillion degree burn in my dream
but, daytime brings only
a single soft ‘O’ sound from my sister.
No.

Her blue eyes are rarely so still and so flat.
two pieces of pale stone hanging around her neck

The quietness of the sound hits him hard.

She is very tall but not so strong today.
nor a bride.
She has to go
and so she tells him.
But even so, sempre una madre, she wonders
“Wouldn't a vixen name her kits?
You’d have to with six, don’t you think?”

May 27, 2009 Askling

About

Dark, dark, dark light; Swishpan; and Askling (which means "darling" in Norwegian) are three compliations of stories and poems that I have been writing from 1986 to the present. Only Askling is still a work in progress.

Dark, dark, dark, light is about God, a Benedictine Abbey, and stories of my childhood. Swishpan looks at the jarring NYC sexy, post 9/11 world of girls and boys. Askling are stories of my engagement, my marriage, my separation, David's girls, and the trouble I seem to get into.

Swim Pictures is my studio. I am making a movie called Keeping Sound. I am a Leo with an Aries moon - all fire signs. I need water and to swim alot.

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