Creative Thresholds

Robert Rhodes, ‘ This was written by hand so you can feel it next to your heart (3).’ Ink and acrylic on Arches paper.

This post is part 2 in the series “Call Me Down the Rain” (the first post is here).

Preface:

This series first unfolded during the first week of July, 2015, when I posted “Call Me Down the Rain” on my Facebook page as a response to another round of attacks by Boko Haram in Jos and other locations in northern Nigeria. Poet j.lewis responded with a poem, and it became a conversation, with poet amu nnadi contacting me to add his poem “we fled jos” to the sequence. Poet and artist Robert Rhodes gave us permission to use one of his paintings as an accompaniment, and we are grateful to Creative Thresholds for bringing this conversation to wider audience.

–Laura M Kaminski, July 2015

drought

the air stands still and watches
as thirsty clouds drift, looking for water
an ocean, a river, or a lake perhaps
in whose familiar smile they will rekindle passion
in whose fevered shivering and chattering
they will find enough fetish for tears
enough shadow on bleached faces for refreshing

but the baked earth is too hard hearted
to stir the wind into this ritual of remembrance
leaves lie inert, their souls drained of humour
so they lie about, without language or memory
that can tell day, the high priest, how cowries
lost their voice and potency to the sun

here and there trees lean into themselves
eating their last memories, the last harvest
their hair is wispy weak, like a malnourished child’s
a few empty nests tell of stilled tweets
and all the fairweather friends who pressed the block button
and went seeking other friendlier walls,
their lean branches are spread out in supplication
begging for friendship or a drop of water
in which lie the translucence of rebirth

like a herd of starving cattle
burdened by humps of thirsty anecdotes
days come and go, panting, swallowing air
seeking like the clouds
a waterhole in which it can dip
the head of this angry sun
so clouds may cry with relief
so all the leaves may wipe their brow
and smile again, the air sighing,
so all the birds that migrated may return
and it is a new season

amu nnadi
a field of echoes
2015

==

how far to jos

there are no more guides
no one who will walk with me
past bloody fields
along the dusty highway
to j-town so
i make my way
alone

stranger to this country
but not to violence
the callous killings
for any or no reason
that leave us gaping
grasping at any hope
that someone we know
will have been spared
and we flee
if not in body
then in spirit
seeking peace
seeking hope

the burden of so much death
is heavy on my soul
and the miles are hard
on my feet
on my heart
i dare not stop
i cannot stop remembering
the faces in the news
the childless father
the motherless child
the stunned survivors

i stumble, fall, and
a graying man approaches
cautiously extends
one hand to help me up
the other busy
with a begging bowl
i try to fill with water
fill instead with tears
as he offers a quiet
blessing on my journey

he knows, he says
how far it is
to jos

j.lewis

==

this road is earth

i am this road
that goes on and on
gathering memories
as vehicles, wreckage and tar,
on both sides trees stand
taciturn, entranced
having journeyed from afar
to stand by the arena of roadsides
and watch all of life speed past
with loud presumptuous noises

sometimes you would see them
shake their leaves in disbelief
their blood white sap of shock
at how easily time and moments
and their diverse seasons
and lost lessons fly past
or crash into a crushed heap
of aborted journeys

i do not begin
where the first word is uttered
nor end, just because
before me
a hill rises as a full stop
or before us a river lays her traps
of drowned dreams
euphoric with ripples, bounding
with waves, boundless

i become a ship laden with memorials
or a gull travelling the expanse
buoyed by air and the currents
crying with my plaintive poems
of the vastness of earth and spirit
and how we do not end
when we find land again
or a branch of eternity

for we are this road
we neither begin nor end
when for us dawns break
our wings break, hearts break
or mud breaks our fall,
and with yearning and purity
earth breaks her silence
with eulogies of blood and wind

amu nnadi
a field of echoes
2015

==

funeral dance

we write as though
bagpipes were calling
scraping their tunes along
seacliffs and moors, calling
come,
come join the minor key–
turn slowly together
to mourn this latest
life gone out

we do not answer instantly
but let the sad notes linger
hollowing our hearts
until the walls are paper-thin
and we hold our breath
against the danger
that they may tear through
bleed us, drain us
dry as the clay
of this shallow grave

we begin a low droning
hymn of humankind
step closer to hear
the contrapuntal verses
of pain, tears, and hope
letting the unfettered
feet of each line
form their own impromptu
funeral dance

j.lewis

==

let this be enough

this is what is given us:
we sing despite chapped lips,
write despite the tears that drip and thin
the ink, attempt to rinse away
the grief that thickly chokes our words

this is what is given us:
our feet move slowly
as if the only destination
left is an exit, not an entrance
and we stumble as we dance

this is what is given us
so let this be enough:
we fashion the drum we will play
for God and practice, even when
we do not see the stars

Robert Rhodes, ‘Night map (1) so we can always find the way to one another.’ Acrylic, gouache and pencil on Arches paper.

Preface:

This series unfolded during the first week of July, 2015, when I posted “Call Me Down the Rain” on my Facebook page as a response to another round of attacks by Boko Haram in Jos and other locations in northern Nigeria. Poet j.lewis responded with a poem, and it became a conversation, with poet amu nnadi contacting me to add his poem “we fled jos” to the sequence. Poet and artist Robert Rhodes gave us permission to use one of his paintings as an accompaniment, and we are grateful to Creative Thresholds for bringing this conversation to wider audience.
–Laura M Kaminski, July 2015

Call Me Down the Rain

work-song honoring those attempting to return home to territory reclaimed from Boko Haram

I must dance a circle
bring the monsoon
call me down the rain

pray like someone greedy
give me give me give
more than my share

of this year’s water
bring it bring it bring
the water, carry me the river

call me down the rain
and flood the plateau, bring
rags and buckets to me

you will find me on
my knees and scrubbing
more than red dust

more than harmattan,
I must scrub the northland
clean down to the bedrock

how can we return
to farm and village, how
can we plant new crops

in this earth from which
we’ve lifted the broken
bodies of kin and country

washed them, taken them,
them all, to mourn and bury?
how can we till land

charred from bomb-blasts,
how can we plant when
we keep finding bullet-

casings in the soil?
our lips will not permit
yam and cassava grown

in blood-soaked dirt
to cross them, our bodies
will refuse such tainted

nourishment. no. you
must carry the Benue
here, bring bring me

water, call me down
the rain so I can first
scrub the stains

of blood and bitterness,
scrub until there’s
nothing left but dancing

here, until the stain is
gone from memory,
from sole and soul —
call me down the rain

–Laura M Kaminski (Halima Ayuba)
(first published in Synchronized Chaos, forthcoming in Dance Here, 2015)

response to rain

.
news footage and online video
carefully avoided to skip the tears
i only see him in my mind
where she painted his struggling plea
knees in the red sand, bleeding
for every friend and countryman
pulled down, laid down too soon
.
i see the rain clouds forming
sense sentinal drops, then deluge
as nature bends to help him purge
the unnatural evil that claws
at everything, everyone he knows
.
i see his upturned face
wet with the thundering gift
grief and faith and gratitude
mixed in his tears, in the rain
and i cry with him, for him
for a county i don’t know
for brothers and sisters unmet
for the violence in my own streets
ceaseless, senseless death
wondering if there will be
enough rain to cleanse us all
.
j.lewis
7/4/2015

Laura to J.Lewis, 04-July-2015: Blessings on you and on your house.

Sometimes simple phrases are a prompt for a poem. When Laura said “Blessings on you and on your house,” I knew I wanted to respond in kind. Here is my response poem:

poem of blessing

your words flow in my thoughts
and in my veins, as though
you were my natural sister
not a stranger with a pen
who cuts me rapier wide
with every new description
of overwhelming sorrow
of overpowering joy

you are in my heart, my head
as familiar as the ones
around my supper table
around the hasty coffins
we have both seen filled
weeping for the silent days
empty of their laughter
empty of their love

your pain rolls down my face
until i cannot tell if
these are your tears or mine
your stories or my memories
and i know without pause
that knowing you, reading you
fills me with a fervent hope
for better tomorrows

and so i call a blessing down
as one might call the rain
on fields of drought
a blessing on your head
and on your house

j.lewis
7/4/2015

gathering blessings

with heartfelt thanks for two recent poems from James E Lewis, “response to rain” and “poem of blessing” — another mourning for Jos, 07-07-2015

it rains. i stand beneath these
lemon-gems, sunflowers two meters
tall, heads bent in grief above
me. drops slip down the yellow

petals of their cheeks to drench
my hair. my own body seems too
small, unable to create enough

tears for me to weep, insufficient
reservoir to handle all the news
of dying. oh, jos! i cannot cry
enough to rinse away the vision

of so many bodies stretched out
side to side, lives now stilled
wrapped head to toe in fabric,

small rectangles of paper placed
on each, weighted with a rock.
as messages arrive, i dance
the passage of those known to me,

and weep. my friend, lend me
your tears, that we may honour
known and unknown both, may wrap

and cover each of these still
bodies. many are now the last
ones of their bloodlines, have
no other family to mourn them.

lend me your tears that none
of these are left to make their
final passage without the tears
of kin to bless their way. jos!
my heart is hollowed, a begging
bowl, i hold it out to gather
blessings, catch the rain.

–Laura M Kaminski (Halima Ayuba), 07-July-2015
(forthcoming in Dance Here, 2015)

we fled jos

for laura m kaminski (halima ayuba)

we fled jos when the catapult was merely hot
sending down hail, and katako was a purgatory
caught between heaven and hell, between
what was dreamed and the singeing of stones

the long walks to faringada at dawn, to share
those balls of peas, like green bullets, and carrots
sharpened as flints and dagas, the grey potatoes
and those cabbages hiding inside fold upon fold

memories and fading innocence of a thinning city
taught us how to turn casual strolls into a never
ending escape, the screams burning haram holes
into backs too scarred to fall into a trap forged

for pillars of salt, that lose their taste to hate;
today, laura, those stones have become bullets
they flower into thunder, bury their fiery heads
in soft flesh, and explode into flicking forked tongues

of despair, ceasing the heart of man and city
ah! jos grows too hot for warmth and embrace;
but how can we flee what festers in our hearts?
how can the heart not burn, our eyes not sing
when in us jos lives as city and lost companion?

how can we flee the love of its calm days, its
apple weather made for joy, sowed within us
which now fruit into acres and acres of kind
memories, as if once more faringada receives

all her broken farmers, with their wares of life?
how do you bury those picnic afternoons upon
shere hills, where man and cloud slept together
where the air, stoked and resolved, lustily sang
and all stirred leaves, and our thumping hearts

danced, and in the distance, like a fallen devotee
jos lay with her open arteries, invoking a mad god?
how can you truly flee what cannot leave you
for in our different places now, with stricken pens

we hold in ink the grief of love that coagulates
as blood, memoirs of our city, sad memories
of what dies, so poets can shed their singing
epitaphs, like this, with blood and angry stones

–amu nnadi, 07-07-2015
(forthcoming in ‘a field of echoes’, 2015)

About the Poets:

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poetry and music reflect the difficulty and joy of human interactions, sometimes drawing inspiration from his decades of experience in healthcare. When he is not writing, composing, or diagnosing, he is likely on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California.

amu nnadi is a philosopher who describes himself as a lover of love and the elements. He insists on writing poetry without capital letters and full stops, declaring that poetry is life itself and is the spirit of God working through humanity to extend creation and enrich life. As he says: “life is a seamless stream of many commas but no stops. Poetry is bigger in all estimation than man.” Recent collections include ‘ihejuruonu’ and ‘through the window of a sandcastle’. He is currently working on ‘a field of echoes’, due for publication in 2015.

Laura M Kaminski (Halima Ayuba) grew up in northern Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. She is an Associate Editor at Right Hand Pointing and an occasional contributor to Via Negativa. Recent collections include And Yes, I Dance and Considering Luminescence; she is currently working on Dance Here.

Robert Rhodes is a poet and artist. We are grateful to him for allowing us to use his artwork as an accompaniment for this series. The painting is titled: ‘Night map (1) so we can always find the way to one another.’ Acrylic, gouache and pencil on Arches paper.