Adventure and anthropomorphism featuring poems by Ann Howells, Ann Rayburn and Beth Paulson.
7 minutes
TRANSCRIPT
Here’s a little memory quiz: Do you remember where you were the night of July 20, 1969? I was housesitting in Oxford, Ohio, sitting in front of the Smiths’ television, watching Neil Armstrong step off the Apollo lunar lander and become the first human being to set foot on the moon. On this episode of Burning Bright, a couple moon poems.
But that moment wasn’t just about the moon. It was also about adventure, about taking risks, about leaving the old place and going to a new one.
In Passager’s Winter 2013 Issue, Ann Howells wrote about an adventure she had—riding a bike. She said the poem was inspired by an incident on a small island near the Chesapeake Bay where her family spent summer vacations. She said that incident was similar to the one described, though “I did take a few liberties.” Here’s Ann’s poem “Woman on a Bicycle.”
This is a baby’s bike! I need one like Charlie’s!
My grandson’s friend has a multi-geared, all-terrain bike
. . . and wealthy parents. Morning mist just lifting,
red sky in my blood, I lift the bike before the whine
progresses, straddle it, in floppy slippers and striped pajamas,
pedal the hard-packed dirt, knees jacked to handlebars,
narrow seat prodding buttocks, wobbly at first, then
building speed, standing on the pedals, facing a sun
that glistens every silver strand through dark hair,
then coasting – Whoo-weeeee! legs levered straight,
down the lane, screaming like a gull, swooping, soaring.
Airborne over the macadam lip, I rush, an incoming tide,
through honeysuckle-scented air onto paved road,
spokes a blur, slippers lost, tires humming like marshlands,
past fields of sorrel and bachelor button, wild carrot
and goldenrod, bike shuddering over loose pebble,
pajama legs snapping like sails, on and on, as if I were ten,
away from whiney little boys who need this and need that,
cheeks flushed, grin unvanquished, bugs in my teeth,
laughter splashing, past crab house and moorings, past
whitewashed cottages where grown-ups sleep in, past wide-eyed,
slack-jawed little boys, breathless, skimming the years,
certain as the hard-packed brown earth, flighty as a dragonfly,
knees pumping, throat open to the sky, Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
I close my eyes, approach speed of light, achieve lift off.
“Woman on a Bicycle,” Ann Howells from Passager Issue 54.
Back to Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong and the—a related digression: When I was in graduate school at the University of Cincinnati, one of the classrooms where I taught was next door to Neil Armstrong’s office. And sometimes, I’d walk past and he’d just be sitting there like any other professor. But he wasn’t. He was Neil Armstrong, for pete’s sake—sorry, back to Burning Bright and the 55th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing and the small step and the giant leap that soon followed.
Ann Rayburn’s poem “The Moon Without a Pen.”
The moon wants to write its own haiku,
three lines uneven as its surface. It envies
the orange, whom it sometimes resembles,
its failure of sentimental rhymes.
The moon draws a cloud across its eyes,
weary of watching the boy and girl embracing
by the lake, the shining paper lanterns strung
above the pavilion. I once lost track of the moon
for months. The fat Egg moon of April,
July’s Thunder moon pounding on its anvil,
all slipped by invisible as wind. At last, a coppery
Hunter’s moon arrived, its shadows racing us
as runners squeaked down fresh-packed snow,
then hissed across a frozen pond.
The man I was with got drunk on moonlight,
then on wine and the fire’s warmth, and picked
an ugly fight. He later swore he’d not do that again,
but he did. The moon breaks its promises one
by one, slices through the crust of love,
leaves the craters burning. If the moon had
a pen and fingers to hold it, a poem would scroll
across the sky, about its own rough birth. About
how it feels to be the Long Night Moon,
rising, separate, in the winter dusk.
From Passager’s 2007 Poetry Contest Issue, “The Moon Without a Pen,” Ann Rayburn. Ann said that her writing life had several long hiatuses, “a process which has required faith in the notion of discontinuous growth.”
Beth Paulson said her poem “Moon Directions” began with two lists – “one of favorite words, and one of words from the lexicon of needlework, which I had never used in a poem, though I grew up sewing.”
The night before, an amazing full moon
had risen from its usual notch in the mountains.
Before you start to make a moon
measure the width of the sky
and gauge the distance from the sun.
Next out of a knot of stars
hook light on its fragile needle.
Be sure to cast on stitches
enough to reach the frothed hems
of all the blue seas of the world.
Work circle-wise for the desired size –
then slip its white curve off
and bind the edges
with a single caught breath.
The sea is also a needlewoman
and with kelp her strong thread
she stitches a beach
her fabric shined silk the moon rides
on which she embroiders
the white borders of waves.
“Moon Directions” by Beth Paulson from Passager Issue 50, the 2010 Poetry Contest issue.
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For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
