On the backs of
seahorses' eyes
Journey of a man through time
Also known as Book Four
§
new & selected poems
and other storybook tales
1962—2012
by Don Cauble
introduction by
Tom Kryss
foreword by
Audy Meadow Davison
Other books by DON CAUBLE
Poetry
Inside Out
early morning death fragments
Three on Fire
I am the one who walks the road / A selection of poems
by Douglas Blazek, Tom Kryss, Don Cauble,
with poem-drawings by Linda Neufer
On a hair-pin curve just under a blonde's left eye
Prose
This Passing World / Journey From a Greek Prison
On the backs of seahorses' eyes
copyright © 2013 by Don Cauble
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated. For permission, address your inquiry to: seahorseseyes@gmail.com
ISBN paperback: 978-1-937493-38-7
ISBN hardcover: 978-1-937493-39-4
ISBN eBook: 978-1-937493-40-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934677
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cauble, Don
On the back of seahorses' eyes
1. Poetry; 2. Short stories; 3. Storybook tales. I. TITLE.
Book design: Carla Perry, Dancing Moon Press
Cover art: Tom Kryss
Cover design & production: Jana Westhusing, StudioBlue West
Back cover author photo: Jane Speerstra
P.O. Box 832, Newport, OR 97365
541-574-7708
www.dancingmoonpress.com
info@dancingmoonpress.com
First Edition
Author's note
Be not deterred by the length of this book. Simply read a poem or two, if it pleases you, then ponder upon the thoughts and feelings these words may have inspired within you, and then put the book aside for another day.
As for the stories in this book, are they real or imagined?
All stories are fiction, even true ones.
In grateful acknowledgement
In times gone by, some of these poems, in various forms, have appeared in the following daring and underground-breaking small press publications:
ACID/ Neue amerikanische Szene; ampersand; Analecta; Blazek-Edelson Anthology; Broken Cobwebs; Costmary Press; Death Row; entrails; Lung Socket; Peace Among the Ants; stones tongues pools running brooks; Thee Tight Lung Split Roar Hums; Thee Flat Bike #1; The Willie; Tansy; 48th Street Press.
Special thanks to Audy Meadow Davison for permission to publish "Flight of spirit," and "What happens when I read poetry." All rights to these works belong to Audy Meadow Davison.
And special thanks to Lo Caudle for permission to publish her poem, "It's Your Birthday: November 30, 2009." All rights to this poem belong to Lo Caudle.
In the presence of death, my mind has reached its limit and found a new freedom. Disillusioned, I rediscover a deep form of hope. Hope, as opposed to illusion or optimism, is not a prediction of things to come, nor is it redemption from something my small ego considers dreadful, nor is it a special knowledge revelation of a hidden future. To hope is to finally recognize the limits of my ability to comprehend the Power that has, is, and will bring all that is into being. Beyond that, all I can do is trust that inexhaustible mystery we all touch when we discover our spirit provides our best clue to the nature of Being.
Remember to look for a heaven in a wild flower, and an eternity in an hour.
Larry Setnosky
Friend, teacher, artist, carpenter
and fellow traveler
4/10/1940—2/25/2010
§
One becomes two, two becomes three,
and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.
Maria Prophetissa
Third century alchemist
Contents
Considering Don Cauble
Flight of the spirit by Audy Meadow Davison
What happens when I read poetry by Audy Meadow Davison
Before the beginning 1962-1965 Lost words
Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?
Transformations, Diabolical Urges & Divine Inspiration 1965—1972 We begin with the sun
3 night letters
Death, too, is a game people play
Even God must be lonely at night
After the Wipe-Out Gang come the Keepers
All night the river flows
Love outside the asylum
Somewhere between streets & asylum wax-stocked girlflesh torments & wet eye focuses
Cars move straight like over streets and I'm moving toward
Come on in, she said to me
Inside you whispering thru shut sockets and circling light dreams
Standing still
Deadwood with screaming roots
There's nothing you can save
With one foot in the grave, the fool pauses & dreams he's dancing
When you come to her door empty handed, and she tells you, It's time to go
In a moment you'll begin to suspect who I really am
Death of the fly
The last man standing
Out of the tomb, a child of light
Remembrance of you Journey to Greece 1972-1975 Before
I knew we would never meet again
A single flame lights the universe
Bottoms up
How the world came into being
Remembrance of you
The big iron gate
Beyond walls
To be free
The cry
Ten times worse
In stillness comes the fire
Only the earth
On the work farm
Chopping corn
"Dear Amur," her letter begins
Aspirations of a poet or, a minor urge to explain myself
The days come and go
The whole room turns to light
That night of stars
Total fire, at last 1975-1981 Total fire
All those years
Thinking of you
Just like that, I am born
Surrendering
Thoughts on a river
The gathering storm
Getting in touch with your psychic energy
Dancing in the fire
Total Fire, Finally
Turning the wheel
All these things twice
The last thing on his mind
I'm leaving
Going
Going into the darkness 1981-1985 As night descends
Drawing people out
You knew
Thinking of Helen on an island off Greece
A bone for the dogs
Going into the darkness
This something-in-movement Or, Cr
azyMan Returns to Mother's Arms 1987-1995 Every road leads to paradise
This something-in-movement
Grace & grit
Wild strawberries
Endless the beginning 1996-2005 Before the beginning
I remember
Outside my thoughts
Endless
Looking out my kitchen window at the cemetery 2006-2010 In praise of Basho, W. C. Williams, & Charles Bukowski
Knowledge on the line A few questions
Even if I can't carry a tune
They could not remember a time
An essay in which I attempt to explain to a friend how I see the world
Rummaging around in the basement A confessional poem
Winter, thinking of spring
As I look out my kitchen window
The Dusty Traveler I sing this moment
Once upon a time, A love story of timeless and personal proportions Or, in the words of Emily Dickinson, "a route of evanescence"
It's Your Birthday: November 30, 2009…….. for Don
Returning to the future
What will you take with you?
Some people think
On the mother of all roads
Falling in love
Let us now praise famous poets
Late thoughts Where did the morning go? 2011-2012 In between, I am becoming
We're here or we're not
10,000 years from now
Why are we here?
This world we live in
As if you had never been alive
As long as the fires keep burning
Gravity always wins, and a dog, they say, is never wrong Or, Watch out for that falling apple!
To future poets, whoever you may be
The Truth about the real truth
Turning 70
Looking back, with a bottle of wine & a grain of salt
To grab the tiger by the tail
After the last line, what? (4 billion atoms I'm told)
Running streams
Tonight, alone in the house, I drink and I ponder this world
Growth of a kangaroo court
In praise of small things
Singing in the morning, singing in the afterlife
Only so many mornings, only so many evenings
Dreaming, just dreaming
Tombstones after all these years
Round and round goes the moon
Stretching to touch you, relaxing in the flow. Nowhere to go.
God speaks to me
Whose child is this?
Let the story begin Out of our dreams, comes the world
For you
This Passing World/ Journey from a Greek Prison
Thoughts on This Passing World
About the author
How to order this book
Considering Don Cauble
In June 2004, I came across several of Don Cauble's poems in a pile of publications passed along by the poet and publisher Matthew Wascovich. At the time, I hadn't heard from Don in many years and the sight of the wonderful poems prompted me to contact Wascovich to convey my excitement. Matthew Wascovich provided me with Don's email address and, after 27 years, we were again talking. One of the forms these communications took, and to bring each other up to date, was the emailing of poems back and forth between our respective screens in Ohio and Oregon. For the most part, they were works by other poets—poems that for one reason or another had stuck in our hearts over time like a series of arrows. We broke off the shafts, so to speak, and exchanged them over the internet, without much explanation or comment. Within days, my email box was overflowing with poetry and I received via postal mail a typescript copy of Don's On the backs of seahorses' eyes and began reading it without taking the time to assume a seated position. From the first words, it was easy to see that Don's own poems were every bit as remarkable as those he admired by others. There were warm, philosophical letters to friends, stories from the work farm and prison in Greece, acts of magic performed by the stars over the Aegean, meditations on love and the wave—all from the perspective of a man who constantly questioned his own need to set into words the thousands of poems lived and experienced in the course of a day. In a poem dated from Corfu in the seventies, Don wonders whether he will ever again see the Oregon rain. The Oregon rain. How does it differ from the storm on Olympus? By the time I had ingested this tour de force of samsaric travel, I was again standing firmly on both of my legs, as it was the only possible position from which to launch a salute. Returning to the lawn chair in front of the early generation Dell, I had the odd pleasure of opening up an email from Don that included, in attachment, a high-resolution photograph of a galaxy. In Don's "A Single Flame Lights the Universe," he witnessed, gazing into the night, the death of a star, and in the accompanying instant his field of vision segues to the woman sleeping beside him. Now it is the summer of 2012 as I read the current version of this book, and it is again late at night. Don's words, the ongoing product of a life of contemplation and engagement with the moment is, to me, a staggering record of one man's commitment to the human spirit—glow, as soft, as textured, as the map of the sea in a seahorse's eyes.
Tom Kryss, June 2004—July 4, 2012
Flight of the spirit
by Audy Meadow Davison
I've been thinking about people like flocks of birds—you know how they will suddenly fly into a tree, first a few and then the whole flock, and stay, dancing around, and then one will fly and then another, and then the whole flock except for a few. I've been thinking about people that way. A generation comes in and we dance around here on earth, chatting and flirting with each other and one of us will fly, and then a few more, and then almost the whole generation, just a few are left. It seems like our generation has started to fly. How do we choose when to follow?
What happens when I read poetry
by Audy Meadow Davison
it is simple to slip on the silk garment
that we call life, even though the world
we pass through is always turning it into
a rough cloth or something synthetic, artificial
and unhealthy. Still the morning is clear,
and at night, the stars can almost be seen
through the light daze of the city. Even the
sidewalks grow moss and weeds. If we pay
attention, life keeps calling us. Even our busy
days give way to sleep and the dreams that
speak in different languages, images and
emotions. Even our own minds return over
and over, if we let them, to forgetfulness.
And our bodies talk to us in pleasure and well
being, they talk to us in stiffness and pain.
Isn't that enough? What are we seeking?
Moments of simple joy arrive and disappear.
Pain comes and goes. Who knows where? Who
knows why? Who do we think we are? And
through all our tomorrows, life keeps calling.
Portland, Oregon
Spring 2012
On the backs of
seahorses' eyes
§
Journey of a man through time
Before the beginning
1962-1965
§
Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent?
Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
Remembering speechlessly, we seek the great
forgotten language,
the lost lane-end into heaven,
a stone, a leaf, an unfound door
—Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
§
all which isn't singing is mere talking
—e.e. cummings
Lost words
Where are the lost words that drag my heart
deep, deep into your shallow arms?
Lost words that drag upon my heart.
Sounds that speak your eyes.
Lost voices muffl
ed by the noisy throb
of your steel
and concrete heart.
Somewhere in the hot Georgia night
a pretty girl with soft slurred voice
laughs
as the lightning flashes.
Somewhere on a ragged beach, two young lovers kiss.
A sob catches in the girl's throat.
Then, silently, they wade into the ocean.
The water crawls onto the shore
and washes their proud sure footprints
into lost time.
Lost words.
Lost sounds.
A passing glance through a car window.
Warm sparking eyes seek the wanderer's face,
they promise him life and love forever and ever
until the morning,
if only....
Browned grasses that bend beneath the October wind.
A girl dressed in a yellow two-piece suit
lies upon a small rotted wharf. She watches the waves until she drowns.
Where have the words gone?
Lost words. Lost voices.
Books lie scattered in the mind
like clusters
of dead leaves,
like dry, rustling wind-sounds.
A college boy searches for a lost chord
on a cheap guitar.
He thinks of a girl with aureoles
of sun-warmed hair.
A girl with freckles across her nose and cheeks
stammers, There is a god.
A boy with unruly hair takes his hand from her blouse
and answers, There is no god.
Lost sounds.
Lost voices in the night.