A VERITABLE VENUE
Valentine night’s Revel of Wine at Le Petit Trianon is not the only veritable venue for poetry by Nils Peterson.
Frank Ashton, the Los Gatos Winemaker whose brand name is ‘Downhill’, has used two of my poems on his Pinot Noir labels.
I think a wine bottle is a great venue for poetry, offering two ways of having your spirits lifted. I’d like to think that my poems give as much pleasure as the wines, but I’m not sure all would agree. -Nils Peterson
October 2010
HERBSTTAG
Rainer Maria Rilke
Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.
Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.
November 24, 2010
On the Eve of Thanksgiving…
On the eve of Thanksgiving, I would say “thankful” instead of “grateful,” thankful for the revels that have not yet ended, thankful for family and friends, and art, the common language of us all that has shaped us and guided us from the beginning. I type this as the sun sets over my neighbors’ houses. The light is a thin pale orange. Trees have almost given over their colors to stand black against the sky. A moment ago, a bicyclist peddled down the street to give his dog a run, an action requiring in this time and place much faith. Blessings to you all. Nils
June 2, 2010
Here are two baseball poems by Nils that recently appeared in Stymie, a magazine of sports literature.
Thinking of my boyhood one – not long before
a Victory Garden – the ground uneven with the ghosts
of furrows past. The outfield tilted up to the street.
No level playing field here. There were those
who could play and those who played anyway.
Over the fence was a home run at first, then,
a double – when most of us could clear the fence,
an out. In truth, it was a pain, the left fielder
scrambling over the railing to chase the ball
before it started rolling down the hill.
If you didn’t get it quick, it could go a quarter
of a mile. We learned to swing level, to try
to meet the center of the ball for a line drive,
or a little above for a sharp grounder made mean
by the hard-packed, lumpy earth. It was nothing
but Zen. At last the playing field felt as tight
as last year’s sports jacket, and we set out
into the great world to find a larger.
But now I’m thinking of poetry, of life, of my life,
of the fact there are no sandlots anymore and what
it means to try for singles instead of swinging
for the fences. I’m thinking of the Vossler brothers,
of Joe Mosca and his father who would take me
to Yankee Stadium on the subway, I’m thinking
of Joe Dimaggio, his lovely long stride along the plate
into the ball and the whip crack of his arms as they
swung around, thinking of my brother Bill, and George
Hamilton who lived across the street but never played
anything except bagpipe music on an old Victrola.
I’m thinking now of Tommy Heinrich, “Old Reliable,”
whom the Yankees could count on for a single
when there were runners on base. I’m thinking
of this poem, wondering if it might skip through the hole
between first and second to send someone home.
THAT’S THE BALL GAME
A single – but Russ, knees high, pumping hard, leaned round first with never a stop thought as the right fielder overran then fumbled the ball, and when the whole body sings with moving why drop anchor at second, so by the time the short stop caught, wheeled, and heaved it wide, Russ was hell-bent for home, ready to barrel into the catcher who simply stepped aside when no throw came.
Wrapped in a warm summer cocoon of the city park’s stadium light, the three of us cheered from the bleachers, my friends halfway between me and Russ in years, beginning to mourn their distance from the carelessness of the young body, from the confidence that this day’s bruise will be gone by tomorrow, from the understanding that life would offer no hurt more than a bruise, from the conclusion:
Why not run heedless – breath comes easy, flesh is immortal,
the last obstacle will step aside, there’ll be friends to cheer.
by Nils Peterson, Poet Laureate, Santa Clara County, CA
MAY 3, 2010
Friends,
I find this hard to believe though I know it’s true.
September, 1950. My parents drive me from Mount Vernon, New York into the city to Grand Central Station (“crossroads of a million lives”, no, it must’ve been Pennsylvania Station,) put me and my suitcase on a train and sent me off to college. A trunk with my newly-purchased clothes had been sent separately. I rode all night long and on into the next day quite thrilled. This was a time of the fancy dining car with elegant silver and linen napkins. Though I did not have much money, I treated myself to dinner and breakfast. I can remember the long ride through the long night through the long state of Pennsylvania. Then Ohio. When I got to Cincinnati, I change to another train, a little less elegant, but still exciting.
At last I got off in Danville, Kentucky, as they said “in the heart of the bluegrass region.” The other young people I had noticed on the train were greeted by friends. There was someone from the school to direct us the short way to Centre College (chosen by Forbes this year as the best college in the South), I had lived in and around New York City all of my life. I had never been as far south as Philadelphia before. The high school I went to was a college prep school filled with bright students, many blacks, many Jews, a large Italian contingent, a few Swedes, in sum, a most cosmopolitan place.
I was 16.
Danville at that time was a place where segregation lived, separate drinking fountains, separate places at the movie theater, a downtown where one never saw a black. The college, though supported by the Presbyterian Church, would not admit blacks. The county Danville was in was a dry county, and so there was smuggling. One drove through the black section of town and a man shuffled out in an enormous trenchcoat with 20 or 30 pockets sewn inside, each one containing 1/2 pint bottle of bourbon. The barbershop, run by blacks, would not cut a black man’s hair, said they didn’t know how. There was also moonshine available, readily available. I must admit that during those first months, I wandered around wide-eyed like Margaret Mead in Samoa. I need also to mention that some of my fellow schoolmates were veterans from World War II and they and I therefore were competing for the same girls of the freshman class. I must confess, that I did not compete very hard. I should also add that my trunk of new clothes never did arrive. I am still waiting for them 60 years later. So for most of the first semester I wandered around dressed in the clothes I had worn on the train, and a few extras that I had had in my suitcase looking scruffier and scruffier.
“My Lecture On Romanticism” has something to say about the nature of Romanticism, but even more to say about my survival that first year in Kentucky, 60 years ago this coming September.
Nils
by Nils Peterson, Poet Laureate, Santa Clara County, CA
TO KISWICK AND BACK
The Squire strutting down the drive? – No, a partridge on its way.
Still Life: stone fence; moss; sharp, stiff holly leaves; soft drape of cedar.
Lady in brown, black, white – walking between two collies –triplets.
The cow steps forward, raises her tail – a shit waterfall.
The dropped pound chings against the bar’s brass footrail.
“Autumn, Autumn, Autumn, Autumn,” the old drunk murmuring in his pint.
Tall blonde on high heels, smoke in one hand, drink in the other, bored look.
Eight black cows in a line hurrying towards the open, forgotten gate.
Beneath the dappled cloud masses – the jet’s double streak.
On all sides, mountains – I look up. They don’t look down.
Nils Peterson
I thought it might be helpful to show various kinds of poems that seem to me to reflect our life here in Santa Clara county. The first is by Sally Ashton, a Los Gatos poet.
INTERMEZZO
Incomplete and out of balance, the moon
catches in an elm’s branches, snagged
at its unfinished edge as if earth
would slow her course tonight, reluctant
to let the moon go, rolling swiftly toward fall
and the cooling of things. Today I made jam.
You can’t let grapes wait long once
they’re ripe. Already some had raisined, others
hung loose-skinned, pierced by yellow jackets
anxious for whatever sweet they could find.
There are always more than enough grapes
and jam is easy to make. It’s more the timing
of it all, the necessity to pick
when the fruit hangs ready, their weight
heavier with each shortening day, even
their scent when the sun is high reminding me
time to pick or lose the crop. I bent
among the vines, mounded my pail. On the stove
crushed pulp bubbled and frothed,
the kitchen heady with the smell of grape,
my fingers stained purple, everything sticky.
Everything jam. Amethyst jars stand
upended on the counter to seal as they cool,
others line the window sill glazed by moon
no longer caught. Just the hem of its light
slips through the elm’s bare grasp,
past the curtain I’m not quite ready to close.
Sally Ashton
Well, we grow a lot of grapes in our county. We have lots of wine makers, but Sally has chosen to use the life of our county to talk about other things. The more you read the poem, the more the simple task about the kitchen becomes something larger, and we can puzzle in a pleasurable way about the last lines.
So, a Santa Clara County poem doesn’t have to be about the look of the brown hills in summer (like sleeping lions?), or the loss of the orchards, (but it can be about those things).
The next poem is one of mine. I sit in a Santa Clara coffee shop noticing what I see and jotting it down. When I reach the end, well, you can see the poem has gone from the outer to my inner though the life of Silicon Valley fills it up.
COFFEE SHOP IN THE LATE AFTERNOON
The beautiful woman gone
leaving the shop to young men making
their way in the January world
with cell phones and computers –
and me.
Outside, a sunny day.
too warm for the season.
A phone rings – a barista calls out
“Tall vanilla soy latte.”
Strange talk to one who grew up
with a nickel cup of joe.
There are fewer and fewer
native speakers of one’s born language.
You learn to live with translations.
Nils Peterson
In the next poem, I use our winter weather as a way of thinking about a lost friend.
POEM FOR FREDERICK
Driving back from a night at the shore
between hills green with new rye grass. Home,
I see in my neighbor’s yard the year’s first
iris bud. The purple of that almost-here
flower, makes me remember that Frederick
wanted a winter poem by tonight for The Crow.
Well, here it is, a day late, finished up
in a coffee shop, Super Bowl Sunday,
temperature in the fifties, air moist,
low gray clouds moving in a slow scud.
There’s skiing three hours drive away.
I won’t go, yet I have “a mind of winter.”
Well again. It isn’t finished. I type
a week later. Now jonquils and daffodils,
and when I walk my dog, I see heron—like
white clouds—nesting in a still barren tree.
Yet my winter mind dozes in its burrow
refusing to come out of long sleep.
Three or four years later, still not finished,
and you now sleep the longest sleep. Frederick,
this year I missed the gravity of your smile in the dining hall
where we once leaned on coffee and waited for sunrise.
So fierce you were against injustice, at such a cost.
You would not dance, but there was such a longing in you.
Nils Peterson
I offer these poems to emphasize that our county life can be the way to a subject not just the subject. These are suggestions. There are so many paths to so many places. Each of us must find our own.
