I am extremely sensitive to place.

Perhaps my Irish background, with both sets of grandparents only a few miles from each other, shaped me that way. This includes the flora & fauna, the ancestors and the spirits of a place. My poetry is poetry of place, grounded in seasonal settings and the particulars of location.

This is why my poetry over the past twenty-two years is Hawaiʻi-based. It’s also why I dance Kupuna Hula.

Poetry is my life.

Both my grandfathers were poets. I’m simply following their lead. I’ve never stopped writing poetry. I’ve published in small presses, but the bulk of my current published poetry was self-published (under the aegis of the Inkwells, a writing group I belong to here in Kohala, Hawai’i Island).

Browse and read my poetry and writing drafts by the year:


2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Back To The Sun

Back to the sun with half a cup
of Americano to go fathers
looking for their children as they
head off to work out on the open
ocean the night still a little fuzzy
at the edges of morning questions
of remorse are usual why do we
do the things we do the old men
at the coffee shop snapping
their newspapers against the wind

Back to the sun with half a cup
of Americano to go fathers
looking for their children as they
head off to work out on the open
ocean the night still a little fuzzy
at the edges of morning questions
of remorse are usual why do we
do the things we do the old men
at the coffee shop snapping
their newspapers against the wind
asking why they the other guys
do the things they do and why
the punishment isn't longer more
difficult whatever happened
to an eye for a tooth or was it
no no there's no good answer for such
crimes so much hope dashed
against the walls an epic slaughter
nothing to replace what's been lost
on the horizon Botelho's water
jets into the air over the sunburned
fields flies keep busy around my ears
and over the hood of my black truck
where I'm hunched keeping my pen
moving in case I have to stop
and look up or make a decision
overhead a myna sits on the higher
of three taut cables looking hopefully
to the east and above that a plane
moves like a shining mote in the big
blue eye while everything here
on earth clings to the dark center
as if word is out that justice
will never be done which can be
taken more than one way and for one
eye there is no certainty it has truly
come to that all we can do
is hope for better reception up the road
and call again to see if the kids
are okay find out did they make it

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Leave It Open

LEAVE IT OPEN

We start the day early each with our list
my wife taking hers down the coast in her
fist calls me saying Maui’s unusually clear
maybe I’d take my walk where I could see

but I set about loading the cuttings one
more thing on my list leading to another
until a change in the weather reminds me
I’d better head makai to find Haleakala

LEAVE IT OPEN

We start the day early each with our list
my wife taking hers down the coast in her
fist calls me saying Maui’s unusually clear
maybe I’d take my walk where I could see

but I set about loading the cuttings one
more thing on my list leading to another
until a change in the weather reminds me
I’d better head makai to find Haleakala

gigantic on the horizon a floating blue
mountain drawing all the sky's shadows down
to the dark bowl of sea into the forbidding
channel called Alenuihaha where clouds

shrink and fall laughing into whitecaps
but in a scientifically plausible reversal
night begins to inch its sapphire way
upward to heaven—connecting under

to upper world with Maui’s sleeping
heart beating against what’s reasonable.
I park in long cane grass and thread my
arms through a gate’s galvanized frame

swung open expecting and desiring
more than beauty can give me when I
notice one fencepost leaning away from
the long barbed lines of wire nothing

standing still not even my joy as it
happens not on my list when a tractor
bucks down the field’s hard-packed
edge toward me and I draw a circle

in the air signing Shut the Gate? but
the farmer smiles and shakes his head No
so I follow him out till I’m in my truck
—and I picture my wife returning home
her list the long road map of her day
her hand finding my own list still clean
on the kitchen counter
and I imagine her beauty
laughing against what’s reasonable

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

I Look At The Moon

I look at the moon and think of the world these words
will never touch up there in the steadfast blue
somehow lunar reality seems upended
while the moving dot I call my mind
begs me to hold up a thumb and compare

the cuticle I call my own with this
heavenly satellite its light never its own
as the sun plays with us no it's more
a piece of cloud laughing like Kohala
mountains asking us to see through

I look at the moon and think of the world these words
will never touch up there in the steadfast blue
somehow lunar reality seems upended
while the moving dot I call my mind
begs me to hold up a thumb and compare

the cuticle I call my own with this
heavenly satellite its light never its own
as the sun plays with us no it's more
a piece of cloud laughing like Kohala
mountains asking us to see through

the illusion that cannot possibly be nothing
everything conspires this way
into a sort of symbology of souls
meeting and colliding themselves
heavenly bodies with a soundtrack

that throws us somewhat
we check our watches note the location
establish a few reference points or
coordinates and breathe into our
curvature of make-believe

rest or stillness and soon enough
the half-moon becomes the top
of Buddha's curly head lifted so far
off the planet there's a quiet gasp
who said that how did we get here

and what's the point surely
I'm just a visitor here surely
I kept my promise and it's time
to move on surely the pages
will keep lifting and fluttering

in these whirligig gusts until
the story ends or begins or flips
to that really gripping scene
the one where kingship is at stake
and we're ready to sacrifice everything

and though we know there's nothing
extraordinary really going on
what with the sounds of traffic
the engines belching and droning
the voices of strangers inserting

words words words into this moment
inside our own galaxy
the alarm is out and when the moon
disappears behind a rooftop
our blood runs wild

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

To Watch You Walk

That's how it all began.

The gallery the sepia colored photographs
of ships against the quay at low tide
the harbor less silted the men in the rigging
small boys and girls appearing twice
 or more in those days when picture-taking
was slow and the exposure long
for the youngsters of that sea town
in those days and now those youngsters'

That's how it all began.

The gallery the sepia colored photographs
of ships against the quay at low tide
the harbor less silted the men in the rigging
small boys and girls appearing twice
 or more in those days when picture-taking
was slow and the exposure long
for the youngsters of that sea town
in those days and now those youngsters'

children how many years? the generations
looking out to sea all this time
collecting samphire on the marshes
slipping through the mud-slick estuary
each new moon and here they stand
clustered 'round the old prints
the forgotten photographic plates
retrieved from attics now the photographer

from London is in town and so he stands
on the edge looking across the figures
meeting and recognizing great grandmothers
and each other in this way
the gallery walls holding up their past
where the past likes to be
at eye level though young Frank
or Susan need holding up themselves

to see and through all this
your elegance in long Bedouin colors
long dark hair pinned back
with your Hawaiian shell comb
the heavy black-veined turquoise stones
hung quietly I see this quietly

how you walk head high
like an exotic bird gliding
through peoples of another place
tied there by the pull of the sea
tied there so firmly they almost
do not see your peregrinations
your way of touching down
and passing through

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

If I Tell Her

If I tell her I'm available
she will look at me and smile
and leave me guessing her intention
whether pleasantly informed
or cynically inspired

It will not do she said
and rescued me from doubt
to blame the clock the calendar the phone
the internet the outside world your gout

If I tell her I'm available
she will look at me and smile
and leave me guessing her intention
whether pleasantly informed
or cynically inspired

It will not do she said
and rescued me from doubt
to blame the clock the calendar the phone
the internet the outside world your gout

I waited wishful of her sage advice
my inner voice cried tell me more
but she stood back as if the play were mine
and so it went reversing roles

The ping-pong ball flew wild
I lunged and with a snap of wrist
returned it to the line
I wonder she said if ritual of sorts
makes intimacy a little easier

I wondered what she meant
ritual? really? like weddings
funerals birthday parties and state dinners?
engagements made or broken?
contracts drawn and quartered
or simply holidays celebrated
carved up with drumsticks
and requisite cranberry relish

Is that what intimacy looks like?
again the space between closer
and further apart like the breathing
like the ribcage like the bird
we call the heart

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

I Saw A Garden

I saw a garden I was small
bushes flowers weeds were all
the same to me back then
things green woody bright or dead
contained within three walls
we lived in the city
shared a house with other families
though the war was over
several years before

I saw a garden I was small
bushes flowers weeds were all
the same to me back then
things green woody bright or dead
contained within three walls
we lived in the city
shared a house with other families
though the war was over
several years before

one bathroom for the house
a manual wringer squeezed the water
from the hand-washed clothes
and lurked like some enamel clad
iron beast on the way to the garden

safe in the garden hours alone
though small I'd read King Arthur
his knights his Roundtable
exploits and adventures
robins and sparrows sang out
as I crashed through the thicket
swinging my sword of milkweed stalk
snapped off that morning

cobwebs hung dew laden
like lace set to dry in the sun
I left them there

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Boil

An angry sound with no pause at all
between the lip-pressed consonant
and the gush the release of fluid
the non-stoppability innocent enough

when it led to the whistle in the little
passageway my parents called the kitchen
the short window-less hall connecting
our shared bedroom to the front room

An angry sound with no pause at all
between the lip-pressed consonant
and the gush the release of fluid
the non-stoppability innocent enough

when it led to the whistle in the little
passageway my parents called the kitchen
the short window-less hall connecting
our shared bedroom to the front room

did we live there? I only remember solitary
hours crouched into the corner
where the BBC poured forth
Dan Dare Pilot of the Future

or the Light Service of endless classical music
50 years later the sounds with no names
never knowing Bach from Beethoven
until decades of repetition

imbued my soul with signatures
of emotions or calculus
all this released by the morning kettle
but those other sorts of eruptions

the doubling of bubble that
came on my knees all too often the knees
given over on Sundays to the hard boards
St. Mary's-on-the-Quay before the Lord

the genuflection that lasts so long
I had to sink back on my heels
till I disappeared from view
and my mother's knuckle would find

the tender place between my wings
and I would rise up once more
for Et Cum Spirit Tu Tuo
or a chime and glimpse

of the bedazzling circle of tasteless bread
and come away rubbing my right-
angled places now dotted with red
swellings the pus-filled follicles

of the post-war diet the boiled
sweets all calm on the surface
the world at peace but our mornings
unto the altar of God with a boil

and so on till I left home

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

It's Always One Of Those Days

It's always one of those days you find yourself
gently winkling some imaginary debris
out of the corner of your right eye
I suppose when a sleeper comes away
on the tip of your index finger
that's reality and you can move on

when I was a kid I read that Crusoe
kept track with marks and when his
indigenous friend aka the slave turned up
he was named Friday

It's always one of those days you find yourself
gently winkling some imaginary debris
out of the corner of your right eye
I suppose when a sleeper comes away
on the tip of your index finger
that's reality and you can move on

when I was a kid I read that Crusoe
kept track with marks and when his
indigenous friend aka the slave turned up
he was named Friday

what if we were all named after the day
we all turned up Hi nice to meet you
I'm Sunday...but then there's the question
of turning up which I think more forgiving
than being born or that other cruder
handing on of the genetic line in the term
delivered

no I like turning up because it gives
both the turnee and turner
a balanced sense of presence
but I suppose what you don't want
to hear as you commence your stay
because being here is one thing
telling the tale quite another

what you don't want is someone
to yawn widely and let out of their mouths
the damning phrase Oh it's always
one of those days...as if there couldn't
possibly be anything at all remotely
heroic in your turning up just
an ordinary event

no shooting star just a little dust
found its way to the corner
of somebody's eye and waiting
to be revealed as real
or imaginary

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

It Repeats

It repeats until you drag yourself reluctantly away and begin the search.
It's not in the receiver not in the basket with the remotes nor nestled down
in the cushions of the couch maybe there's time to find one of the other three
the one in the study oh yes still in its cradle a curious name for something
small black and boxy that bawls out its electronic repetitions until you
feed it with your now, your center shifted to another moment...
Thich Nhat Hanh all those letter Hs there for breath he says Thank you

It repeats until you drag yourself reluctantly away and begin the search.
It's not in the receiver not in the basket with the remotes nor nestled down
in the cushions of the couch maybe there's time to find one of the other three
the one in the study oh yes still in its cradle a curious name for something
small black and boxy that bawls out its electronic repetitions until you
feed it with your now, your center shifted to another moment...
Thich Nhat Hanh all those letter Hs there for breath he says Thank you
telephone thank you for bringing me into the present but what if it's the
obnoxious neighbor or the annual policeman's fundraiser or the Obama
campaign and right at dinner-time the beans green and soft in their pan
the mashed potatoes and celeriac hot over the steam and yesterday's
brilliant and dynamic flash of presence stripped of its shimmering skin
and sizzling in the pan so thank you is in order I suppose
not just to the repeating cadences of the phone
or the living brilliance the other end of the wireless line
who initiated the call thank you to the way it
the way the present moment we call now keeps teaching and
waking us up poking us to rise up from our slide into hibernation
get out of our caves and blink into the sunlight

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

What Do We Need

I say these things happen
at night while we lie sleeping
in the morning green rain
picked and gathered

Circle of wicker on the doorstep
open up by twisting and letting go
step out into another turn of the planet
face into the sun even with the clouds
between always something gathering
collecting and passing through

I say these things happen
at night while we lie sleeping
in the morning green rain
picked and gathered

Circle of wicker on the doorstep
open up by twisting and letting go
step out into another turn of the planet
face into the sun even with the clouds
between always something gathering
collecting and passing through

What don't we need
the love of hate will do
the green left to wither
and a helpless pull away
from the center don't you wonder
what would happen

Action now
action places if you please
don't you wonder about
movement without all this
say before our tongues
got tied up and we were left out

Dying of thirst
falling out of bed
out of a tree
out of memory

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Evening On The Suez Canal

Evening on the Suez Canal and not a pint of Guinness to be seen
the dark peat strain of an Irish night locked up tight
between the ears a blood red beret keeping the lid
on stars come down to look out from archways and porticoes

rooftops too you might imagine Oh the cream at the top
of a glass sure isn't it the imperial pint you're after
well isn't it the imperial pint of oil that brought us here mate
and what are we doing here at all dressed up for a cold

Evening on the Suez Canal and not a pint of Guinness to be seen
the dark peat strain of an Irish night locked up tight
between the ears a blood red beret keeping the lid
on stars come down to look out from archways and porticoes

rooftops too you might imagine Oh the cream at the top
of a glass sure isn't it the imperial pint you're after
well isn't it the imperial pint of oil that brought us here mate
and what are we doing here at all dressed up for a cold

mountain night with no hope of a turf fire when all the world
burns morning noon and teatime 'Tis cold enough at sundown
sure and the smokin' chimneys no more and the biscuits
broken in the saucer the cows in their lower field

with the old man takin' one last nip before he retrieves
the well-darned socks from the soot-black bar
over the embers 'Tis here in the gut now the fire
spices ground up in the devil's own kitchen

don'tcha know be jaysus paprika and cumin cayenne
and the little children chasin' after our heels
like dark sparks all day where d'ye s'pose
they put their heads where's their mammies

and that flowered water they gave us now back
at the little café them pointing to the vine climbing
up the walls the flowers too comin' down like stars
wouldn't a pint of Guinness go down beautifully now!

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Salmon

One follows salmon with single malt scotch and sets aside the small square glass
on a square of Brazilian quartzite all sounding very exotic for effect but it's the world
you know so don't go raising your eyebrows just accept the miracle our large

planetary group represents and get over it, under it, through it, I've said it
all before the prepositional prospecting we need to claim but the point is
smoky boxed up salmon good till 2016 can you believe that but cut into

One follows salmon with single malt scotch and sets aside the small square glass
on a square of Brazilian quartzite all sounding very exotic for effect but it's the world
you know so don't go raising your eyebrows just accept the miracle our large

planetary group represents and get over it, under it, through it, I've said it
all before the prepositional prospecting we need to claim but the point is
smoky boxed up salmon good till 2016 can you believe that but cut into

and opened up for a decent soiree I'm shrugging my shoulders here why
not? one asks and also...with that lovely though slightly shy-making odor
on the fingertips well it's not everyone who understands, not everyone

who accepts you for who you are just fresh as you might be from a soiree
quartered beets dark red so deep you look outside and check to see yes
it's night and cucumbers cool as courtyards in northern Africa their seeds

naked and inviting okay this could go on right through to lychee sorbet
pink with sliced peaches and more zinfandel can you believe it yes
it takes a kind of faith to carry on in such a world where was I

the peat of single malt Scotch from Islay the small island windswept
and stories of Moroccan rendezvous it's crazy how these intersect
but they do it's true and you I'm sorry I just don't know how

we got here 

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Sometimes Getting From A To Be

Sometimes getting from a to be can be so what was the word she was looking for? dreamlike.

She left her car unlocked without looking back and cut across the road through the haphazard morning rush hour such as it was out in the sleepy town thinking to herself the so-and-sos never pay attention to crosswalks anyway. She reached curbside where the coffee shop regulars had vacated table and chairs on the edge and pushed back under the overhang.

Sometimes getting from a to be can be so what was the word she was looking for? dreamlike.

She left her car unlocked without looking back and cut across the road through the haphazard morning rush hour such as it was out in the sleepy town thinking to herself the so-and-sos never pay attention to crosswalks anyway. She reached curbside where the coffee shop regulars had vacated table and chairs on the edge and pushed back under the overhang.

Oh yes. Thunderstorm on the way. Everybody who had any wits about them could see the nimbo-stratus heaviness and gloom fast descending from the east. Air temp had dropped and the smell of what exactly. That curious freshness. Maybe ozone?

The line leading to her morning fix shifted from one or more legs to another like a pantomime centipede body angled against the doorway and looping back inside where body heat was palpable and conversation was shall we say politely reflecting the state of the world at 7a.m.

She touched the headlines of today's Gazette and asked people seated and standing This anybody's? When she got the blank looks as permission she didn't hesitate and turned on the typical Martha performance that is doing something useful in an otherwise tedious situation. Make it fun. Right? Her eye caught a subheading bottom right that made her freeze and the room busy with lattés and mochas double shots and English muffins toasted crispy—all that disappeared.

Oh my God, she said aloud.

People she'd recognized from her community over the years people who would at one time have distanced themselves moved closer. What's up? Whatcha got there? But she didn't have time. She abandoned her place in line just as the barista called out Americano!

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Some Dreams

Some dreams are so tactile the bed falls away
the air in the room loses ambience and any chill
of waking in the dark

— some dreams find the center and turn the whole of you
inside out without you knowing it
what do you know anyway
what's forgotten reappears
reminds you it's showtime every time
and the wings flying system substage
and of course auditorium are occupied
each pair of eyes turning their own
insides out in a kind of melding
that far surpasses your usual stretch of the imagination

Some dreams are so tactile the bed falls away
the air in the room loses ambience and any chill
of waking in the dark

— some dreams find the center and turn the whole of you
inside out without you knowing it
what do you know anyway
what's forgotten reappears
reminds you it's showtime every time
and the wings flying system substage
and of course auditorium are occupied
each pair of eyes turning their own
insides out in a kind of melding
that far surpasses your usual stretch of the imagination
where intimacy is concerned touching say as we do
bumping into each other as if a casual
idiomatic expression has much deeper meaning
but it takes some serious dreaming to get the picture
who's to say it's not the other way around?
that we limit our perceptions in this so-called
wakeful life for the sake of navigation
getting from a to be or do I mean Chicago
to New York or was it from the front door
to the closet where the cat food is kept
there in the dark because between down
during and under over up the inches
or miles separating cities and mundane
journeys of the domestic kind we'd be
floating in perpetual confusion maybe
get side-tracked into a little unknown
cul-de-sac and settle down for 30 years
or so do you think that's why some people
have several families spread around
the globe some dreams do seem so
tactile as if by staring straight ahead
the distance will magically rise to meet you
but this means nothing really how
I mean how can dreams so ethereal so
unquantifiable so subjectively
identifiable so out of reach and yet
so within how can they mean anything
more than just movie-going
for the common man

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Cable Knit

Cable Knit

Her entry way was curiously empty, bare linoleum with no soul, only the small kitchen at the back beckoning with its sound of the kettle whistling.

Ah, tis grand altogether, she said, as I hovered on her threshold. It was the height of the three day fair that came in like a pagan carnival ruled by a great long-horned mountain goat and went out like a drunken flea circus—the smells of cattle and sheep at my back—the bleating and crying in the street, mud and piss spilling into the doorways. Only the dirty little children sticky with boiled sweets gave us any sense this was supposed to be fun.

Cable Knit

Her entry way was curiously empty, bare linoleum with no soul, only the small kitchen at the back beckoning with its sound of the kettle whistling.

Ah, tis grand altogether, she said, as I hovered on her threshold. It was the height of the three day fair that came in like a pagan carnival ruled by a great long-horned mountain goat and went out like a drunken flea circus—the smells of cattle and sheep at my back—the bleating and crying in the street, mud and piss spilling into the doorways. Only the dirty little children sticky with boiled sweets gave us any sense this was supposed to be fun.

She stood with her arms crossed keeping a life of celibacy close and tight against her chest, keeping the cold Irish morning at bay with knotted limbs, keeping those strong fingers warm and ready for her next fierce battle of the knitting needles.

Tis the sweater, ye call it—we'd be calling it a jumper, or a pullover, sure—isn't that what ye're after?

Neither sweater nor jumper seemed adequate descriptions for the thick patterned arrangement of lanolin-heavy wool called an Aran. Yes, yes, I said.

My God, I can smell the turf burning in her back room to this day. And there the stairs that led to her life as spinster seamstress, to the room at the top where miles of fleece combed and spun into yarn struggled against her fingers till they succumbed to the ancient patterns, twists and turns willed into being by this remarkable woman whose keen memory needed no plan written down to make for you something that would ward off wind and cold and much, much more for a very long time.

She jerked her head with half a nod, a timeless country shrug, eyebrows and all, and gave a short tut with her tongue. They say this one's The Tree of Life, she said.

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Woman Found Guilty

WOMAN FOUND GUILTY OF THEFT reads the headlines. She took it. Something so big or so valuable it warrants a very big can't miss it boldface typeset layer on the left side of the front page. Maybe she stole a shopping center, pretty big. And if she did the news would read HOW DID SHE DO IT? or IT'S GONE! Maybe MOLL STOLE MALL!

Maybe a diamond necklace? Nah! Why would she steal something she expects to be given by the man of her dreams? Gucci bag? HAG BAGS BAG?

WOMAN FOUND GUILTY OF THEFT reads the headlines. She took it. Something so big or so valuable it warrants a very big can't miss it boldface typeset layer on the left side of the front page. Maybe she stole a shopping center, pretty big. And if she did the news would read HOW DID SHE DO IT? or IT'S GONE! Maybe MOLL STOLE MALL!

Maybe a diamond necklace? Nah! Why would she steal something she expects to be given by the man of her dreams? Gucci bag? HAG BAGS BAG?

This is getting nowhere fast. She stole someone's heart! Now that's guilty as proven but who's the judge? What annoys me about this headline? Oh, it's a WOMAN found guilty. Would we see MAN FOUND GUILTY? Ah, forget it.

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

'Twas A Water Buffalo

'Twas a water buffalo no horse
that Lao Tzu rode across the plains
Bubalus bubalis 'twas of course
ten thousand silken threads for reins

Tell me said the wanderer to the moon
how it came to pass that Lao Tzu's mother
carried him sixty two years in her womb
till she could go not one step further

'Twas a water buffalo no horse
that Lao Tzu rode across the plains
Bubalus bubalis 'twas of course
ten thousand silken threads for reins

Tell me said the wanderer to the moon
how it came to pass that Lao Tzu's mother
carried him sixty two years in her womb
till she could go not one step further

How she leaned against a plum tree
and out came the philosopher fully made
whisky-face, long ears and wild goatee
swinging his necklace of single twist jade

The moon leaned down to reply
but out of the east a dragon cloud came
and devoured the earth, the moon, the sky
swallowed the wanderer and his name

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

White Space

White Space

There it is. Right here. Not there.
Take that distance in the form of the letter
T the man outstretched the road
with two choices and breathe
for the white space is here

and now a resting place
a place of letting go in the shallows
where the effort relaxes and the poet
sings through the spinal chord
and every guitar resonates

White Space

There it is. Right here. Not there.
Take that distance in the form of the letter
T the man outstretched the road
with two choices and breathe
for the white space is here

and now a resting place
a place of letting go in the shallows
where the effort relaxes and the poet
sings through the spinal chord
and every guitar resonates

without a single string being plucked
each word untangling itself
from your childhood fears of periphery
wooded dark enticing ensnaring you
with its magnetic candy

till you become unstuck from your sheets
and scream out in confusion against
a night oppressed by imagery
in the cave on the linoleum the ceiling
where's the mother's voice when you need it

okay she would say it's okay
you're just having a bad dream
and light somehow dispelled
those difficult words though
I do wonder if I'm old enough yet

to understand even the things I say
myself and so I say it's here
the four corners and the inner circle
the loops and dots the marks
the child mind brings to meditation

till the room spins it's the emptiness
after all as Lao Tzu would from his horse
say peach in hand ready for the bite
of his life teeth grazing over the grooves
of the stone embedded in the body of flesh

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

Imaginary Invalid

Plaza Inn, Ashland, Oregon May 29, 2011

Sound of the creek past midnight.

Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire singing in my ears—Oded Gross and Tracy Young's adaptation, that is. Once again, fabulous ensemble work—and I mean the entire cast, not just the song and dance ensemble who came in at key points like the girls in Little Shop...

Plaza Inn, Ashland, Oregon May 29, 2011

Sound of the creek past midnight.

Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire singing in my ears—Oded Gross and Tracy Young's adaptation, that is. Once again, fabulous ensemble work—and I mean the entire cast, not just the song and dance ensemble who came in at key points like the girls in Little Shop...

How remarkable now I think of it, the interaction with the audience, specifically a 25 year old from Grants Pass named Joy Cunningham who works as a teller, facts gleaned in a laid back ho hum Fool's errand into the auditorium sliding along the apron as our main man slept in his wheel chair. Audience members audibly groaned with disapproval as the Fool walked away saying Well, no one could be expected to write a song of beauty with such information, that name, that age, etc.

So how extraordinarily effective and explosive when much later he emerges "cured" by the Scottish doctor (the maid disguised) with a song filly luxuriously with Ms Cunningham's details...extraordinary for its effect but also for its clear connection to the core of the play, in that we are married to our personal perceptions of ourselves (and through that feat of psychic engineering, everyone around us) in sickness and in health—nay, therefore choosing sickness or health as our stance...

A remarkable demonstration. Do you know there is little work of note on the subject of audience?

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2011 Carolyn Jakielski 2011 Carolyn Jakielski

In Memory Of Our Friend Joy Craddick

She is a bead of rainwater at the top of the ridge pendulous on the new branch of green sprouting maple

She is the cloud rising or falling who can tell there in the canyon making love to the creek as it rushes through dancing over under and against the granite boulders still lodged happily where flood left them

She is a bead of rainwater at the top of the ridge pendulous on the new branch of green sprouting maple

She is the cloud rising or falling who can tell there in the canyon making love to the creek as it rushes through dancing over under and against the granite boulders still lodged happily where flood left them

She is the sentinel crow mounted atop live oak as we descend into the switchback

She is the lilac burgeoning in faint purple clusters in the wet fragile bushes of the town

She is the smoke on the cheek of the woman on her porch coffee in hand phone pressed to her ear

She is the broad dark span of wings outstretched as the great blue heron soars over the quiet road

She is the laughter of the a small girl in the corner of an eye in the curve of a bridge in a sudden step of the curb in the sleight of hand of the clown on the plaza

She is the release of an audience into the afternoon their applause clinging and singing in their clothes the wool the modern fibers the leather feather weave and braid button and belt

She is the teeth crowded into the smile of an old woman on a bicycle bent into the hill

She is the railroad tie thickening underfoot

She is the long endless reach of the stainless steel rail how the spikes pin the incongruous together and invite the journey into the open passage through mountains where the emigrant fell to his knees by the spring and cried out in despair

She is the hand touching your arm as the breath leans into you

She is Medicine Buddha

She is Christ's smile

She is Muhammad's fierce gift

She is prayer flags unrolled and tied up into the wind on the most auspicious morning

She is the circle of women remembering their grandmother's stories as the long braid is cut and the head shaved before the surgeon's cut

She is the daughter wielding the scissors

She is the youngest one crying for the first time

She is the last cry and the birth of a sigh at midnight

She is the fire in the hearth before it is set

She is the snow in the gap in that brief wink of sunlight

She is the shovel left in the ground and the thrush gripping the handle

She is the worm working the onion peel the coffee grounds the green trimmings and castaway grains of rice soaked in shoyu

She is a hollow vibration slipping into the second chamber of the black walnut flute in the key of G or was it F sharp?

She is the voice of my father embedded in an oak tree

She is the ballerina without points liberated from the wings last seen tiptoeing like a ring-necked dove over the rooftops

She is the wheel the rim the spokes and whirring mile the spinning question

She is an opening and the memory of a door

She is the alpha wave trading places with the beta wave

She is the gift of the ocean and the emptiness of a boy's pocket

She is the key turning in the lock

She is the dust on the page a list undoing itself punctuation pretending to be invisible

She is pain trembling for its very existence a vial of truth in the hesitation that comes between breaths

She is the palm of your hand passing over the forehead clearing a second thought to make way for every first thought

She is the quiet battle in the vast plain

She is the small heart in the humming wire

She is the preoccupied mind occupied with suffering in the motel they call this life

She is a window cleaner a waitress the man snaking his hose from an air compressor to your flat tire

She is the scent of pure joy on the wrists the twist of sage and the allure of the tattooed bic lighter

She is the light that is left that was always here and never left

She is a soft footstep heard overhead a gentle greeting

She is two eyes widening with love and compassion

She is a small furry creature curled into a cushion made by the first woman

She is a slight shift in the way you stand an inclination of the head

She is the grief you take out of your purse at the end of the day

She is the relief the release the repeating syllables of prayer snapping and cracking in the cast iron stove the recognition of this life in the mirror the fingertips against the temple walls the permission the flight from the garden the illusion and the descent of painted scenery when you least expect it

She is the living treasure weeping on the edge of the stage and the fox leaping into the piano

She is the word now appearing like dregs at the bottom of your glass

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