She Was A Hippy

She never smoked, never drank,
Never joined a cult or sect.
Her hippiness, her happiness
Found itself in waist length hair,
Patterned tights,
Bra dismissed
And short, short skirts:
Her expression of new freedom.

Fifties beatniks never reached her,
But the sixties found a new awareness
Which addressed her heart,
Unleashed a part she only guessed at;
One which dressed her mind.
Convention could not bind her
As behavior took a shape unstudied,
Natural - hardly touched before.

Maturity without hashish, Rajneesh,
The itch of spirit bringing in a shift in old priorities.
A little bolder, somewhat older;
Hippy of a different sort.
Mother, wife, musician, poet
All and each each supportive
And escorting her some steps to standing,
Understanding and continuance.

She Was A Hippy 3.13.2020 Pure Nakedness II;  Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Signs Of Maturation
   (Or, You Don’t Need A High IQ)

I notice time and time again
I’m not the smartest on the block.
And yet, and yet,  
My art is smarter than the poppycock
Set down by others.

Trying to avoid cliches, banalities;
Striving to go deep; concrete
As every Brooklyn street I walked,
I still fall into traps of slickness,
Fear revealing cowardice.

Then pluck returns, turning
Weakling into un-concealing
Rhyme & meter, candor, frankness,
Frightened youth turned madame Truth:
Nakedness, no underwear, aware, yet baring all:

I try to use a thoughtful wording:
Criticize an oversized dictator;
Cruelty, unfairness, ******,
Herding reader into paths that further,
To the murkiness which lurks in secret.

Paradoxically, and never knowing what to say
Until I’ve said it, concepts, insights coming out
From God-knows-where, I let it shout.
Draft by draft, refining, re-defining,
A conclusion whispers, “That’s enough!”
It isn’t tough.  I stop.
And hope
           I’ve reached you.

Signs Of Maturation 9.5.2020 Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Mandy Mercer-Neder, friend, daughter of composer Johnny Mercer for whom he wrote the hit “ "Mandy Is Two”  in 1941, died Sunday August 30, 2020, age 81.      
    
      Honoring Mandy

Deep inside
I sighed, I cried;
Internal sighing, crying
So, so hidden and unbidden,
Bringing life's death to the forefront.
With an unexpressed
Heartbrokenness.

Mandy dear, unwell for years,
Brave and perky,
Generous to kin and peers,
Using what low strength she had
To cheer on others.

A state from fate we all shall share.
We were not there.
We will be there one dated day,
One way or t'other.

In the foremost corner of my mind
I honor Mandy.
Innermost, I find regard
I saw no hint of,
But by dint of her departing
With intention, mind and heart,
An unexpected urge,
A surge of empathy stirs, spurs me on
To honor Mandy.

Honoring Mandy 9.1.2020 Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Inspired by the story of Petra Kormos.

   One Of Forty Thousand

It’s Sweden, 2020.
Population:
A shade over ten million,
Ranking country’s population
By percent of Europe’s calculation
Sweden ranks as ninety-one.

Not many people one might think,
And they’d be right,
                              and yet,
Forty thousand humans yearly,
Life corrupted by a sepsis,
Interrupted  by a virus,
Death an outcome or a nearly…
Limbs that blackened;
Life force slackened:
Source unknown;
And amputation!

I, one of the forty-thousand.
Coma housed, un-rouseable,
Hand  defaced,
Erased forever, their profession.
No appeal or cry for pity.  No confession
Only fact; a plain statistic:
Unemotional, un-egoistic,
‘Forty thousand’ makes it prime;
Time to make the virus traceable,
Follow up the un-erasable,
Taking sepsis off the table.

A task that’s not too much to ask,
As one sits fingerless
At the piano.

One Of Forty Thousand 9.3.2020 Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*sepsis| noun [mass noun] Medicine
the presence in tissues of harmful bacteria and their toxins, typically through infection of a wound.

This could have been written with different pronouns (you, one, we etc.) but I have no hesitation in using the confessional I, since I’m pretty sure that I is you is we all.


          The Older I Become #3

The older I become
The more I need to meditate,
The date with death come into sight.
Not all people have, feel, need this need,
The quandary multi-sided:

Disliking the idea of ceasing,
Vanishing, not knowing
If we go nowhere, somewhere or anywhere.
And as perplexing:
Loving living,
Loving what each breath is giving
Even though the world’s in downfall,
Twisted egos big and small;
Endless ills and kills banal.
Saddest and regrettable,
Gifts that die, disposable.

The basic problem may be fear:
Deep and cold as one grows old;
An angst and anger at no longer being;
Feuds between the bad and good;
The sense of global threat and danger;
Scared of losing what comes closer…
God knows what…

And so I meditate.

The Older I Become #3 8.3.2020 Birth, Death & In Between; Circling Round Experience; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;  Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

A quick look at the world around and you understand the theme.      

    Issue: Change

How can one progress
From feeling ****** to slaphappy,
Sourpuss to silly goose.
Powerless, to one empowered
In a second or an hour,
Humdrum life humming along
Where nothing can go wrong,
Cause/effect singing its song.

The laws of life inscrutable.
The only thing assurable is change.
Its mysteries whose histories
Can, one day to the next,
Both enter, exit,
Borders touching or contiguous.
So strange!

As planets move in rings of space,
Galaxies and stars their place,
All you need’s a straight kept face,
Knowing that you absolutely can't erase
An earthly thing.

Change will happen as it will.
It’s just for you to act with inner stillness,
Taking in and on what happens,
To convert it all to happiness.

Issue: Change 2.23.2020; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

When I’ve nothing to write about, I look at nature and I’m there!  Somewhere the mind binds to this observation which then turns into a meditation or a contemplation.  Below is one such occasion which turned into an opportunity.

       Picking Lingon In The Sun

Sitting on a heather-filled and rugged hill.
Ground abounding in a million lingonberries,
(Simply called in Sweden, lingon)
Weather still, some breeze and sun,
If pleasure is a word for fun,
This is a perfect definition.
Who could want more?
This is Nature in its glory.

Oak standing near
With tiny birches there like weeds.
And I, on knees squeeze in between
To separate the fruit from green
To find  the bitter/sour berry
Growing most prodigiously
Five and six per stem.

Mindful and relaxed,
A wee bit taxing,
Climbing in, out, up
Focussed on each future cup
Of jam-to-be
I cheerily fill up my oblong plastic cup
Short of the top
For fear of dropping my collection.

Once at home
This sweet reflection
Will end up a poem.

Picking Lingon In The Sun 8.24.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin