Can I still believe in love, in spite of you?

Was it a Pisces thing, you loving
so much? For nineteen years
I’ve swum slow circles around your death.
I rarely speak or write of it.

People tend to turn away,
afraid to touch my pain, fearing
a touch will make it theirs. Even I
feared to swim this way again.

On jury duty, two years ago, I was
excused because I’d think too much
of you, who shared the barest thread of fate
with a man who’d been shot dead.

You’d be fifty-six and still I swim
against the pain, inching myself
your way again. Did I love too much?
Can one love anyone too much?

The oldest sister, a Pisces like our mom, and
shy yourself, you seemed to understand.
You dished out love, but did you claim
your share? Did we return enough to you?

How can one love so much? I try to think
of love as holy fish and bread, divided, multiplied
’til all are fed. But if that’s true, how is it
one you loved so much could harm you?

Was it a Pisces thing, your love? You were
no cold fish. Sometimes I think you loved too much.
My Pisces Mars dampens me into a steamy
bog for love. Your Pisces Sun was light.

Was it a Pisces thing, you loved so much—
so much, no holding back—so much it melted
ice—a river overflowing so with Pisces
love it made a flood? Even so, was it enough?

I should not think that I can love too much.
A fish lives, once entombing ice melts down,
and you were no fancy goldfish drifting delicate
as feathers in a glass bowl. You would’ve laughed.

When your body fell—then did your love
swim free? A wild salmon, did you bunch red muscle,
at white water, over rocks and logs, leap up falls,
spinning unending love back to its source?

Were you the first to forgive? Before God, even?

I still believe in love because of you.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser

With a few clicks I hang words here
faster than ink could dry. Quick speech
cast on the winds may evaporate
to half-forgotten recollection,

but this is more permanent.
Poured in careless streams with little
edit, boldly the slant and kilter
of unfiltered thought sinks deep

into real time. Collective thoughts carve
a virtual Grand Canyon online,
with little grounding or meditation
in the haste for expression.

Elders paused, honed tools, crushed pigment.
No delete key forgave errors in execution.
They chronicled tales pre-told and re-told,
their gradual unfold governed by slow prudence.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser

Today I did something I never did before. I asked a stranger to turn down his music. I didn’t want to do this, but there’s a threshold beyond which desire, reason, and tolerance clash and all inhibitions fall away. Action must be taken before the senses are taken leave of.

I’ve put up with loud noise before. I’ve made some loud noises myself. But I don’t think I’ve ever had another’s noise assail my senses in quite this way. Not without being paid to endure it, and even then protection or escape was provided.

It was so loud the walls vibrated with each bass pulse. This went on for a while, and I tried to ignore it, put it out of mind, thinking any minute it would stop. I finally went out and shouted to the person to turn it down. I was four feet away and he didn’t hear me until I waved my arm and he turned and saw me.

All day I’ve contemplated why anyone wants to listen to music at that volume. A volume beyond which nothing else can be heard. A volume at which it seems to me hearing loss isn’t just a threat but a certainty. With the bass turned up so high that anything but that part of the sound is lost beside the assault on every cell in one’s body.

The reason I thought so much about it is that I like to live and let live. I don’t like to ask that anyone change how they live, be it appearance, behavior, or tastes. And it appears loud music is a taste. But I was given no choice. Sound doesn’t stay on a leash like a dog. It crosses boundaries. I wasn’t able to go about my business without him changing his. I couldn’t keep my hearing healthy and intact, keep my blood pressure down, while putting up with his choice of loss and overexcitement, the price for his immersion in explosive sound.

Why do some people like their music so loud? Or anything so loud? Are some ears, some sensibilities, more sensitive to this? Or have the less easy with loudness simply not lost as much, are we less impaired as yet, so we hear it more acutely? I too want to hear all the notes, but I didn’t hear all his notes. I didn’t hear any notes, only noise. It wasn’t music to my ears. I wonder if mine would be music to his, or if they’re already deadened to it.

I have no answer. But in searching for one I came across a Stephen Dobyns poem online, on this very topic, Loud Music, in which he examines the difference between his favored volume for music (loud) and that of his four-year-old stepdaughter. Some compensation, at least. I got a good poetry fix out of it.

I watched a mourning dove
fly up with such slow beat
of wings, it seemed barely
enough to make it fly.

My heart, a free thing, loose
and at odds with itself,
longed to fly with it, to be
its mate, to nest—to raise young—

to free young things in flight
in time, to stand at the edge
of a nest, full-fledged,
and push lovingly from behind.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser

Another passion of mine besides poetry is clouds, and recently I discovered a web site dedicated solely to clouds. The Cloud Appreciation Society has published a book titled The Cloudspotter’s Guide, which I’ve added to my growing wish list, and while looking for their book at Amazon.com I came across Recognize, which if the cover photo is any indication should be breathtaking.

I don’t know all the scientific names of clouds, and I’m not a very skilled photographer. I can’t even apparently be bothered to find a better location to shoot from than straight through the power lines. But when armed with my digital camera and faced with a spectacular sky, sometimes I just start turning knobs and pushing buttons and get lucky. (One of these days I should read the instruction manual—that’s sure to improve my luck.)

This was a special sunset last January when the clouds became streamers of burnished gold:

The following cloud seemed to come to life and dominate the sky one afternoon last February like a great fluffy beast:

Closer up you can see how it reached a furred arm for the telephone pole:

I sometimes wish the telephone pole wasn’t there when I’m taking sunset photos, but then where would the crows sit to do their bobbing mating dance? Where would the mockingbird do whirly-gigs in the air, flashing the white bands of its wings? Where would the red-tailed hawk perch to survey the hillside while every other bird falls into breathless, waiting silence? The cloud didn’t snatch up the pole and run away with it after all, so at least the birds are happy.

This fiery sunset in November 2004 made me want to run for my watercolors, but using the camera was quicker:

While not a cloud picture, this was another stroke of luck, taken when our dog treed this little guy in the palm tree in our back yard. He patiently waited for me to snap a couple of shots, preferring the camera to the dog’s barking. He peered first from one side of the tree, then the other. Finally we went our peaceful ways, except the dog, who returned grudgingly indoors, thinking humans don’t know how to have fun. He grumbled for a while, but got over it.

A poem is violin song.
It asks only that you let it play,
even as it sings your life back to you,
and rends your heart to hear it
and do nothing
but listen.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser