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Light Wave Heatwave
When the temperature rises, a worker despises
__The withering glare of the sun.
When the sweat’s so profuse that our skin is a sluice,
__Even golf and croquet ain’t no fun.
A jug of cool water grows hotter and hotter
__As Sol makes his way up the sky,
And the salt that we eat is drawn out by the heat,
__Till our bodies feel drier than dry.
We retreat from the light, and we wait for the night
__To bring down its ironic relief,
For our work must be done in the light of the sun,
__And our comfort is ever so brief.
.
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The Contested Sovereignty of Light
Is there a sky in Heaven?
If we find we’re too old to compete for the gold,
__And we’re willing to settle for bronze,
Let our habits not slacken—let’s head for the bracken,
__To the shade of the feathery fronds.
When we’re long in the tooth and still seeking the truth,
__May good angels come bear us away
To that wonderful land where all goodness is planned
__And no shadows shall darken the day.
It appears that we might be afraid of the light,
__But this malady doesn’t much matter,
For the light and the shade that in Heaven are made
__Are a comforting multi-hued spatter.
Though it seems when we talk there’s a screeching of chalk
__On the blackboard that’s known as the sky,
We won’t keep our mouths shut till we’re certain of what
__The Good Lord has provided, and why.
.
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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
These poems are home runs in my ballpark. Great writing! Thank you, C.B.
Your ballpark, D.P., is definitely a hitter’s park, and I always like playing there.
Those are wonderful poems for our sit alone homes as we savor the rhymes that are said. The light of the sun may be too warm for some as we cover the skin on our head. Fascinating thought about if there is a sky in heaven. I really loved reading the cadence of both poems combined with the meaningful messages and the calculated use of words.
If nothing else, Roy, anapests definitely produce cadence. Right now, as the sunlight is declining, my neighbor’s giant maple trees are depriving my tomato plants &tc. of the solar energy they need to produce fruit.
Superb. The rhyme, meter, language, and messages together are outstanding work, worthy of repeated reads. Thanks!
Thank you, Russel. The funny thing about anapests is that, once I’ve been working with their galloping rhythm for a few days, it’s hard to go back to tick-tock iambics.
These are brilliant anapests. They trip along gaily, and make their points as clear as Waterford crystal. I’m reminded of the Gilbert-and-Sullivan song about the “private buffoon,” or hired family comic and his problems. Here’s the start:
Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon,
If you listen to popular rumor;
From the morn to the night he’s so joyous and bright,
And he bubbles with wit and good humor!
“Light Heat Wave” follows this comical pattern, which is more or less expected in anapests, and its three quatrains are perfectly chiselled. But “The Contested Sovereignty of Light” actually moves from the comic to the theological! This poem brings up a question (facetious, perhaps) about arrangements in heaven, in the voice of a sincere believer who also happens to be curious. So Kip Anderson has pulled off no mean feat here — a poem that makes us laugh, but also reinforces religious faith. Even an atheist like Mencken would have loved this poem.
K.A.N.D.
Anapests are fun, Joseph, but I doubt I could carry them through an entire operetta. The older I get, the more I am preoccupied by theology. I’ll have the answers I seek soon enough, I suppose. Since you didn’t mention it, I assume that you thought it was obvious that “multi-hued spatter” = “dappled light” or,
if you prefer, “dappled shade.” With the days we’ve been having lately, except for the politics, it almost seems that heaven is at hand.
It’s hard to react to C.B. Anderson’s poems with any remarks that won’t come off as hackneyed.
A gem for me is the simple “And the salt that we eat is drawn out by the heat,”. And then there is the metaphor in “Though it seems when we talk there’s a screeching of chalk/On the blackboard that’s known as the sky,”. No easy task to come up with fresh metaphors for something as elemental as the night sky.
I am happy to see “bracken” as part of a lighthearted thought. I learned it translating terrible events from the summer of 1995, and the way language works that stuff has come back every time I’ve periodically thought of that (for me) uncommon word.
Leave it to a Kansan, Stephen, to understand how heat, dryness and salt come in to play. We grab metaphors from wherever we find them, and they’re never that far away. I’m not sure whether “bracken” refers to a particular species of fern or just to any pteridophyte that carpets the forest floor, but we can be damn sure that it’s shady there.
You’ve captured exactly the preoccupation of the past three weeks (the heat) here in Saharan West Africa. Today, although the weather raised a sweat, it was relatively pleasant.
Alas, there’s no croquet or golf here.
Thanks for the reads.
An old man once told me, Paul, that the older you get the more you like the heat. This may or may not be true. It depends.
“A comforting multi-hued spatter” sounds to me like a brilliant theory from a cosmologist tired of black holes and white holes. And having thought of it that way, I see “screeching of chalk” in the last stanza of “Contested Sovereignty” as raucous talk of the many cosmologists who can’t keep their mouths shut about creation.
“Light Wave Heatwave” shines it like it is. I like the mention of salt, as there is always controversial conversation on the subject during hot weather. I found no good in salt tablets supposed to make me feel better during September military training in humid Alabama. They only make one thirsty, and water being the real biophysical need, I prefer it straight.
Nice work, C. B., and stay hydrated.
Everything you write, Margaret, is on point and accurate, and the accompanying wry humor is not lost on me. Cosmologists, on the whole, are athiests who wish there were a God, so let them speak and write, that someday there might be written a Second Book of Revelations.
I found salt tablets effective when I worked summers in a steel mill in Pennsylvania, but straight water, like straight whiskey, is probably the way to go.
I found these anapests to be anti-pests, enjoyable to read and got a chuckle out of the first.
A chuckle, Michael, is worth a peck of huckleberries, provided that no pesticides were used in the growing.
These are both great fun, C.B. — a fun in the way the pieces flow metrically which brings a lightness (no pun intended) to both pieces, but especially to the philosophical observations in “Contested.” Joe mentions Gilbert & Sullivan and he’s absolutely right. There’s something about this meter that makes the reader want to hear the words set to music.
Poetry comes in many forms, Brian, as you well know. If I have been able to keep you amused for this long, then I have done what I set out to do.