.
Salmon - Boaz - Obed (detail): Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1511-12, fresco, Cappella Sistina, Vatican
never blink in compassion
and care, straight hair
always at the ready
church on Sunday
PTA and ballgames
during the week
an upholder of Christ’s
dictum to visit the sick
came in one day with
an accidental needle stick
used needle, owner of said
blood unknown
she shivered and shuttered
herself in fear of HIV
but it had been there
overnight, reassurance
the horror the possibility
an unlikely outcome
she went back to who she was
bravely, knowing the risks
Asa - Jehoshaphat - Joram (detail): Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1511-1512, fresco, Cappella Sistina, Vatican
9 comments:
Charlie Vermont is a poet and healer in the tradition of William Carlos Williams.
Forty-some years ago he began sending me terrific poems, which I in turn put in that journal now famous for its wall-to-wall rich kid balloon and taxidermy parties. Back then however the publication did have one claim to relevance, at least for the Intelligence Agency which (as we poet dupes would latterly learn) was covertly "running and financing the operation". It made a really cool front. All that's now been found out. A cure for the disrespect this journal has thereby earned and richly deserved is to search the ancient files and dig up the actual poems.
Charlie's poems may be found by the perspicacious in issues #47, 49, 51 and 55 of The Paris Review.
It's been a long time since Charlie and I have seen one another (Bolinas in the Jurassic Period) but then it's been a long time since I've seen anybody, and I feel Charlie's personal presence all the time in his writing voice. In those interim years which I've assiduously wasted Charlie was putting his folk shoulder to the communitarianism and conscientious social activism wheel across the wilds and stretches of the High Southwest and ended up going all the way for his principles, becoming a people's doctor in a part of these States where that kind of miracle can still occur. All hail and salute then!
Knowing the risks is taking them. I see that risks can attack, suck away and tug at you. This is how it is at the wheel. Charlie Vermont. A name with a state in it. A place.
Life or death situations seem to bring out the best in some people.
Michelangelo's images of compassion appeared to hold up here and the human feeling content also being upheld would constitute a remarkable thing in itself; not many poems can stand without embarrassment in the light of the Sistine Chapel after all.
Susan, about places -- Charlie probably has that legendary New York State of Mind deeply engrained, but now he's in, no not Vermont, but Arkansas. He has been a close observer of American life from those as well as other interesting vantages; the privileges of the several avocations and professions.
Re “In those interim years which I’ve assiduously wasted”—I think all of us out here in the wasteland—Charlie Vermont included—would counter with a Don’t be so hard on yourself, Tom.
I contacted him in Arkansas a couple of years back and he told me about his care for the late Arkansas poet Besmilr Brigham.
"never blink in compassion and care"
The physical impossibility of keeping your eyes open when attending to the suffering of another - and yet that's what you're called to. Set this alongside the "possibility" of "the unlikely outcome" - to be passed over as "...she went back to who she was...".
This is somebody writing out of a place full of tough ethical demands and writing great poetry at that!
It often feels like wasted time
away from the poet's words
his dispatches
generous
greens, mauves, oranges
greys
there
the downcast eyes he goes
on and on
about...
even ellipses are fascinating
and thoroughly examined.
What is found there
is what time is all about
more or less
true. Like bears
are true.
Tom,
All hail to thee, blythe spirit --
"never blink in compassion"
7.10
light coming into fog against invisible
ridge, birds beginning to call in field
in foreground, wave sounding in channel
this group of drawings seen,
repetitions of “types”
as one appears, what before
it, something happens
grey white of fog against top of ridge,
shadowed green pine on tip of sandspit
This is really splendid on all counts. Bravo Charlie; Bravo Michelangelo. Curtis
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