Natural Wonders Archives - John Barr Poetry

The New England Championship Sled Dog Races

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

The last race over they begin
training for next year, move to the Arctic,
follow the snow south holding part-time jobs.
They never sell a dog, breed a hundred,
choose a team, destroy the rest.
That one must do so much to excel
in even this disheartens me.

John Barr, The Hundred Fathom Curve: New & Collected Poems

St. Augustine

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

I saw the Portuguese men-of-war
shipwrecked like a treasure fleet
a solid mile along the shore.

Hard aground they tried to beat
to windward, set their living sails
this way and that around our feet.

A wave would sometimes climb the trails
of slime and lift one almost free,
then lapse and leave the pooled entrails.

We tried to flip one back to sea,
using a piece of board to help
dig under—unsuccessfully—

then left them, fouled for good in kelp,
the great blue spinnakers to gleam
and gesture, either after help,

or merely sailing their species' dream,
judging the distance as before,
keeping the middle of the stream.

John Barr, from The Hundred Fathom Curve: New & Collected Poems

Bird Voice In The Halls Of 5 A.M.

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

theebro eebro eebro

In the mild dark
the radiator is with difficulty white.

eebaw eebaw

The syllables vary like a signature.

kohl kohl kohl

A new voice tries
the uvular, diphthong
of its particularity.
Fricative, apocope, an insectic click
join the tuning symphony.

Again the chance
to go forth on the soft lawn,
to take, like my sprinkler,
differing angles to the ground,

to the Aw Aw
of a bitumen crow in hemlock
give jambo, the greeting in Swahili,

to each each chip chik epeleeklaw

chaw

Reply in the lingua franca tjonn tjohn.

Terrapin

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

Last night we used him for a centerpiece.
Pet Rock. Rubbleman. Sepulcher Sam.
Our Brobdingnagian wit fazed him
not a bit. The wonder is that life informs
the carapace (big black and pumpkin chips),
the legs that tractor earth’s unevenness,
the serpentine head, at all.
Only the eye—and it a slit of semiprecious
light—looks other than conglomerate.

Having no place for shelf life
we keep him casually corralled
(Does he go snow-blind in the sink?),
include him in what we do.
But the household god steadfastly will not eat
our offerings of parsley, meat;
for hours holds head extended or a claw
as if reverted to his quarried
origins, the living rock.

Perhaps he’s trying to hibernate
in a winter our warmth will not provide.
Or refuses, always, to respond
for reasons of turtle dignity.
Or fears to be soup, or hopes to lithify
remembering how good it was in the Jurassic.
The life within withdrawn, he’s comatose—
or raptly attends some call we cannot hear.

Clearly we're tuned to different frequencies:
the elder species and the parvenu.
Today you put him out for air
in the turtletight backyard, returned
to find him–Allakhazam–not there.
And as he was elsewhere when among us,
now he is a presence in his absence.

John Barr

Monstera

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

I know it's in the nature of wonder not to last,
but wonder now at your tactile vigilance,
the quality of attention in this new leaf–
how, learning of light, it unfolds and contorts
in the slow acrobatics of your kind.

I am impressed by your tolerance for neglect.
Latitudes removed from your Latin roots.
you're spared the hazards of the rainforest
if not the usual affronts to household plants–
overwatered or, worse, left waterless.

You're old enough to have followed the neighbor boys
to war and back, but unlike them you self-renew
and never know old age. Had Ponce de León,
when he lay down to die, only known
Eternal Youth bloomed just above his head!

Given modicums of soil, water, air,
new meristems will never cease to grow–
and death for you need never come.
In a world without end you can arabesque,
flourish forever as a species of one.

Which makes my duties for your sustenance
less the chore of an inconstant gardener
than of a monk bringing to the temple
quantities of driest sandalwood
that the fire of fires may never die.

By John Barr/from Dante in China

Water’s Way

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

It takes 500 years for the ocean’s waters
to complete one trip around the earth.
National Geographic Society

The prodigal returned, a bride running late,
it races from the street,
climbs the plumbing in the walls
to the bathroom tap, then halts.

Water is weather. Pulled from swells
out where cyclones make the only news,
its vapor ladders latitudes to the pole,
refreshes bergy bits, brash ice, floes––

or crosses longitudes to fall
as shoures soote upon us all,
then drain away to aquifer.
Weather is God’s will writ small.

Water is extended metaphor:
Its antecedent, alchemic character
commonly denominates
all things, in compound or by temperature.

4 a.m. Fill the glass.
Let the molecule from Christ
stand again in human state
even as it quenches thirst.

John Barr/Innisfree Poetry Journal

Flyways

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

I used to think of them as marathoners
raised to a power of ten: seemingly
indefinitely able to postpone
over Olympic hauls (four, five thousand miles,
a quarter of the globe's waxed face)
the need to flop down, flabby with exhaustion
and wait for rest, in its own good time,
to bring a better state of being.

After the bouillon of Canadian lakes in bloom,
fingerlings grown too big, air filled with lateness,
they lift, taking in stride the variegated land,
brick bunkers of the Bronx, the lay of Central Park,
giving room to LaGuardian pterodactyls,
the prickle of hunters on the Chesapeake
with their coy deceits, out over open ocean,
the earth's hull visible…

the camber and bell and hollow bone
(as grasped in the sienna studies of Leonardo)
working well, minute adjustments of the tail
with inertial certainty
keeping well to the right
the wrinkle of burnt Sierras, one side snow;
the desert incised by rulered roads,
by rounds of irrigated green; large-mannered Mexico,
the Mayan rhythms gathering to isthmus–
until you pointed out, two days ago,
that neither does the heart (not the "heart"
but the heart as grasped in the dissections
of Michelangelo) need rest, seemingly
indefinitely able to maintain
a heading and speed, resting as it goes,

through day's distractions, night's curing cold,
inclement weathers of every sort
until, after years of regularity,
it comes to a Patagonia not seen before;
landing in this new non-flying it doesn't need,
it joins in the clamor of its kind;
on shingle, inhospitable but free of predators,
just above the surf's antarctic burn,
it assumes the nesting rights established
when the pole was elsewhere and the continents one.

John Barr/from Hundred Fathom Curve

Wisteria

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

"Mm," I thought of your slash-and-burn approach
to pruning. "Cut to the bone of bark, this one
won't come back." Here at summer's end
I am informed of my mistake.

Not sooners, not Jack's bean,
not the Persian Expedition
or the Crown of Thorns'
infestation of Pacific reef
bests this vegetable version of eruption.

Out of the ground in a surround of trunks
merged half to tree, hand over hand
up downspouts, stucco, the failed copper of gutters,
green creepers the windows barely hold
at bay declare, from the antenna's mast,
a quarter of the house rattanned.

Even now new shoots depart the mother bundles,
like biplanes execute slow rolls, shallow
dives, the stall. Their leaps of faith–of six feet,
more–into the yonder of their kind
try for anything at all: the lob,
the double helix, the lazy eight of infinity.

In lieu of sight a sure touch for what
comes next, they find the grounds for another try
or fail, canes braiding themselves to rope

in vacancy. They base in air
small Permian fronds, refreshingly thornless;
lavender puffs the blunt bees bore and buss.

Under the overhang, overwhelmed, I write
"Offspring of wistful and hysteria.
God in my garden, rooted good."

John Barr / from The Hundred Fathom Curve: New and Collected Poems

Oyster House

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

Blue Point, Skookum, Kumamoto–
Malpeque!

In rings of a dozen they arrive;
each shell enthrones a puddled king.
Sitting with us, pitching in,
the hoplite scarfs his ostrean,
the lictor wolfs his ostrea,
the Breton gargles his huîtres.
All downed with a chalky, cheerful Chablis.

The piles of shells go out to the dumpster–
buttonized for jewelry,
pulverized for roadbed by the ton.

And what of you, Filter Feeders?
How do you answer the reavers–
waterman, starfish, gull–
out of deep time?

Let just one of you, turned female,
release 100 million eggs:
the tide dims, spat settle,
whole reefs rise
from your animal magnitude.

And why else would the murex
lift secretion to an art form,
if not for immortality?

John Barr / from Dante in China

Mapping The Interior

By John Barr / Natural Wonders

U.S. professor disappears during Japan valcano hike.
–CNN World, April 30, 2009

Volcanic eruption at Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland
–CNN Report, April 26, 2010

In April, Craig Arnold entered the volcano.
"Every day poets try to lose control
(I can hear him say although I never met him)
"in a productive way. The earth we know,
the one we don't: Poetry happens
when it can get its footing properly on neither.

"It's the manic in geology that interests me.
Not the Major Oils whose business is to
find and exploit transsexual oil and gas reserves.
We poets undermine the situate.
It's when energy is nearly not contained–
brio under stress, brisance–
that the human spirit can be rampant.
These are the conditions for grace under pressure.

"Immense, the work, to leave behind the gentled parts,
a lone man loggering, and probe the crags
of the infrastructure skull. Phrenologist's art,
to plumb the fractal welter, enigmatic surfaces
crusted with meaning, and enter the informed

enormity of fastnesses, deeps.
To stay the course–temperature rising toward Absolute Jesus–
down to the anatectic charge in the embers,
burnt chemical flowers of igneous on the boil,
the matter of tomorrow's fire.
A poet's visit, I can tell you, is something strange,
like deputizing the face of chaos."

April to April he traveled through the earth
exiting the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull.
"Living or dead we add no weight to the dead weight
of a trundling planet. Our spark weighs naught as a neutrino
but is the imperiled particle of Original Resolve."

2012: a record year for solar storms.
Craig has his eye on those as well,
the hydrogen fire, bright button of awarded sun.

_____________________________________________

Eyjafjallajökull: AY-uh-fyat-luk-YOE-kuutl-uh

John Barr / from Dante in China

Natural Wonders

The last race over they begin training for next year, move to the Arctic, follow the snow south holding part-time jobs. They never sell a dog, breed a hundred, choose a team, destroy the rest. That one must do so much to excel in even this disheartens me.

I saw the Portuguese men-of-war shipwrecked like a treasure fleet a solid mile along the shore.

Hard aground they tried to beat to windward, set their living sails this way and that around our feet.

A wave would sometimes climb the trails of slime and lift one almost free, then lapse and leave the pooled entrails.

We tried to flip one back to sea, using a piece of board to help dig under—unsuccessfully—

then left them, fouled for good in kelp, the great blue spinnakers to gleam and gesture, either after help,

or merely sailing their species' dream, judging the distance as before, keeping the middle of the stream.

theebro eebro eebro

In the mild dark the radiator is with difficulty white.

eebaw eebaw

The syllables vary like a signature.

kohl kohl kohl

A new voice tries the uvular, diphthong of its particularity. Fricative, apocope, an insectic click join the tuning symphony.

Again the chance to go forth on the soft lawn, to take, like my sprinkler, differing angles to the ground,

to the Aw Aw of a bitumen crow in hemlock give jambo, the greeting in Swahili,

to each each chip chik epeleeklaw

chaw

Reply in the lingua franca tjonn tjohn.

Clearly we're tuned to different frequencies: the elder species and the parvenu. Today you put him out for air in the turtletight backyard, returned to find him–Allakhazam–not there. And as he was elsewhere when among us, now he is a presence in his absence.

John Barr

I know it's in the nature of wonder not to last, but wonder now at your tactile vigilance, the quality of attention in this new leaf– how, learning of light, it unfolds and contorts in the slow acrobatics of your kind.

I am impressed by your tolerance for neglect. Latitudes removed from your Latin roots. you're spared the hazards of the rainforest if not the usual affronts to household plants– overwatered or, worse, left waterless.

You're old enough to have followed the neighbor boys to war and back, but unlike them you self-renew and never know old age. Had Ponce de León, when he lay down to die, only known Eternal Youth bloomed just above his head!

Given modicums of soil, water, air, new meristems will never cease to grow– and death for you need never come. In a world without end you can arabesque, flourish forever as a species of one.

Which makes my duties for your sustenance less the chore of an inconstant gardener than of a monk bringing to the temple quantities of driest sandalwood that the fire of fires may never die.

By John Barr/from Dante in China

It takes 500 years for the ocean’s waters to complete one trip around the earth. National Geographic Society

The prodigal returned, a bride running late, it races from the street, climbs the plumbing in the walls to the bathroom tap, then halts.

Water is weather. Pulled from swells out where cyclones make the only news, its vapor ladders latitudes to the pole, refreshes bergy bits, brash ice, floes––

or crosses longitudes to fall as shoures soote upon us all, then drain away to aquifer. Weather is God’s will writ small.

Water is extended metaphor: Its antecedent, alchemic character commonly denominates all things, in compound or by temperature.

4 a.m. Fill the glass. Let the molecule from Christ stand again in human state even as it quenches thirst.

John Barr/Innisfree Poetry Journal

John Barr/from Hundred Fathom Curve

"Mm," I thought of your slash-and-burn approach to pruning. "Cut to the bone of bark, this one won't come back." Here at summer's end I am informed of my mistake.

Not sooners, not Jack's bean, not the Persian Expedition or the Crown of Thorns' infestation of Pacific reef bests this vegetable version of eruption.

Out of the ground in a surround of trunks merged half to tree, hand over hand up downspouts, stucco, the failed copper of gutters, green creepers the windows barely hold at bay declare, from the antenna's mast, a quarter of the house rattanned.

Even now new shoots depart the mother bundles, like biplanes execute slow rolls, shallow dives, the stall. Their leaps of faith–of six feet, more–into the yonder of their kind try for anything at all: the lob, the double helix, the lazy eight of infinity.

In lieu of sight a sure touch for what comes next, they find the grounds for another try or fail, canes braiding themselves to rope

in vacancy. They base in air small Permian fronds, refreshingly thornless; lavender puffs the blunt bees bore and buss.

Under the overhang, overwhelmed, I write "Offspring of wistful and hysteria. God in my garden, rooted good."

John Barr / from The Hundred Fathom Curve: New and Collected Poems

Blue Point, Skookum, Kumamoto– Malpeque!

In rings of a dozen they arrive; each shell enthrones a puddled king. Sitting with us, pitching in, the hoplite scarfs his ostrean, the lictor wolfs his ostrea, the Breton gargles his huîtres. All downed with a chalky, cheerful Chablis.

The piles of shells go out to the dumpster– buttonized for jewelry, pulverized for roadbed by the ton.

And what of you, Filter Feeders? How do you answer the reavers– waterman, starfish, gull– out of deep time?

Let just one of you, turned female, release 100 million eggs: the tide dims, spat settle, whole reefs rise from your animal magnitude.

And why else would the murex lift secretion to an art form, if not for immortality?

John Barr / from Dante in China

U.S. professor disappears during Japan valcano hike. –CNN World, April 30, 2009

Volcanic eruption at Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland –CNN Report, April 26, 2010

In April, Craig Arnold entered the volcano. "Every day poets try to lose control (I can hear him say although I never met him) "in a productive way. The earth we know, the one we don't: Poetry happens when it can get its footing properly on neither.

"Immense, the work, to leave behind the gentled parts, a lone man loggering, and probe the crags of the infrastructure skull. Phrenologist's art, to plumb the fractal welter, enigmatic surfaces crusted with meaning, and enter the informed

April to April he traveled through the earth exiting the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull. "Living or dead we add no weight to the dead weight of a trundling planet. Our spark weighs naught as a neutrino but is the imperiled particle of Original Resolve."

2012: a record year for solar storms. Craig has his eye on those as well, the hydrogen fire, bright button of awarded sun.

_____________________________________________

John Barr / from Dante in China

The last race over they begin
training for next year, move to the Arctic,
follow the snow south holding part-time jobs.
They never sell a dog, breed a hundred,
choose a team, destroy the rest.
That one must do so much to excel
in even this disheartens me.

I saw the Portuguese men-of-war
shipwrecked like a treasure fleet
a solid mile along the shore.

Hard aground they tried to beat
to windward, set their living sails
this way and that around our feet.

A wave would sometimes climb the trails
of slime and lift one almost free,
then lapse and leave the pooled entrails.

We tried to flip one back to sea,
using a piece of board to help
dig under—unsuccessfully—

then left them, fouled for good in kelp,
the great blue spinnakers to gleam
and gesture, either after help,

or merely sailing their species' dream,
judging the distance as before,
keeping the middle of the stream.

In the mild dark
the radiator is with difficulty white.

A new voice tries
the uvular, diphthong
of its particularity.
Fricative, apocope, an insectic click
join the tuning symphony.

Again the chance
to go forth on the soft lawn,
to take, like my sprinkler,
differing angles to the ground,

to the Aw Aw
of a bitumen crow in hemlock
give jambo, the greeting in Swahili,

Clearly we're tuned to different frequencies:
the elder species and the parvenu.
Today you put him out for air
in the turtletight backyard, returned
to find him–Allakhazam–not there.
And as he was elsewhere when among us,
now he is a presence in his absence.

I know it's in the nature of wonder not to last,
but wonder now at your tactile vigilance,
the quality of attention in this new leaf–
how, learning of light, it unfolds and contorts
in the slow acrobatics of your kind.

I am impressed by your tolerance for neglect.
Latitudes removed from your Latin roots.
you're spared the hazards of the rainforest
if not the usual affronts to household plants–
overwatered or, worse, left waterless.

You're old enough to have followed the neighbor boys
to war and back, but unlike them you self-renew
and never know old age. Had Ponce de León,
when he lay down to die, only known
Eternal Youth bloomed just above his head!

Given modicums of soil, water, air,
new meristems will never cease to grow–
and death for you need never come.
In a world without end you can arabesque,
flourish forever as a species of one.

Which makes my duties for your sustenance
less the chore of an inconstant gardener
than of a monk bringing to the temple
quantities of driest sandalwood
that the fire of fires may never die.

It takes 500 years for the ocean’s waters
to complete one trip around the earth.
National Geographic Society

The prodigal returned, a bride running late,
it races from the street,
climbs the plumbing in the walls
to the bathroom tap, then halts.

Water is weather. Pulled from swells
out where cyclones make the only news,
its vapor ladders latitudes to the pole,
refreshes bergy bits, brash ice, floes––

or crosses longitudes to fall
as shoures soote upon us all,
then drain away to aquifer.
Weather is God’s will writ small.

Water is extended metaphor:
Its antecedent, alchemic character
commonly denominates
all things, in compound or by temperature.

4 a.m. Fill the glass.
Let the molecule from Christ
stand again in human state
even as it quenches thirst.

"Mm," I thought of your slash-and-burn approach
to pruning. "Cut to the bone of bark, this one
won't come back." Here at summer's end
I am informed of my mistake.

Not sooners, not Jack's bean,
not the Persian Expedition
or the Crown of Thorns'
infestation of Pacific reef
bests this vegetable version of eruption.

Out of the ground in a surround of trunks
merged half to tree, hand over hand
up downspouts, stucco, the failed copper of gutters,
green creepers the windows barely hold
at bay declare, from the antenna's mast,
a quarter of the house rattanned.

Even now new shoots depart the mother bundles,
like biplanes execute slow rolls, shallow
dives, the stall. Their leaps of faith–of six feet,
more–into the yonder of their kind
try for anything at all: the lob,
the double helix, the lazy eight of infinity.

In lieu of sight a sure touch for what
comes next, they find the grounds for another try
or fail, canes braiding themselves to rope

in vacancy. They base in air
small Permian fronds, refreshingly thornless;
lavender puffs the blunt bees bore and buss.

Under the overhang, overwhelmed, I write
"Offspring of wistful and hysteria.
God in my garden, rooted good."

Blue Point, Skookum, Kumamoto–
Malpeque!

In rings of a dozen they arrive;
each shell enthrones a puddled king.
Sitting with us, pitching in,
the hoplite scarfs his ostrean,
the lictor wolfs his ostrea,
the Breton gargles his huîtres.
All downed with a chalky, cheerful Chablis.

The piles of shells go out to the dumpster–
buttonized for jewelry,
pulverized for roadbed by the ton.

And what of you, Filter Feeders?
How do you answer the reavers–
waterman, starfish, gull–
out of deep time?

Let just one of you, turned female,
release 100 million eggs:
the tide dims, spat settle,
whole reefs rise
from your animal magnitude.

And why else would the murex
lift secretion to an art form,
if not for immortality?

U.S. professor disappears during Japan valcano hike.
–CNN World, April 30, 2009

Volcanic eruption at Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland
–CNN Report, April 26, 2010

In April, Craig Arnold entered the volcano.
"Every day poets try to lose control
(I can hear him say although I never met him)
"in a productive way. The earth we know,
the one we don't: Poetry happens
when it can get its footing properly on neither.

"Immense, the work, to leave behind the gentled parts,
a lone man loggering, and probe the crags
of the infrastructure skull. Phrenologist's art,
to plumb the fractal welter, enigmatic surfaces
crusted with meaning, and enter the informed

April to April he traveled through the earth
exiting the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull.
"Living or dead we add no weight to the dead weight
of a trundling planet. Our spark weighs naught as a neutrino
but is the imperiled particle of Original Resolve."

2012: a record year for solar storms.
Craig has his eye on those as well,
the hydrogen fire, bright button of awarded sun.