Thanks to editor Belinda Subraman for featuring my poem at GAS.
https://gaspoertyartandmusic.blogspot.com/2022/08/gas-featured-poet-lana-hechtman-ayers.html
Category: Nature
November 2021 Prompt Me Poem
Welcome to my monthly blog feature, Prompt Me, where I read a new poem I’ve written inspired by a prompt offered by one of you, my wonderful blog followers! And to say thank you for tuning in, I send special gifts to the person whose prompt inspired my poem.
This month’s prompt is “the way mountains are fearsome in dreams” suggested by Brain Moreau. Thanks, Brian!
Please post some prompts for me in the comment section below and I’ll see you back in December for the next Prompt Me poem!
August 2021 Prompt Me Poem
Listen to me read my latest “Prompt-Me” poem in the video below.
My poem “Prints” was inspired by two prompts: A quote from Robinson Jeffers provided by Dana Cunningham Anderson and a fox vixen postcard poem sent to me by Stephanie Anderson Ladd. To thank you both, some poetry books are in the mail to you.
Now it’s your turn!
Please leave me some poetry prompts in the comment section below.
If I use your prompt for a video Prompt Me poem, I’ll thank you with a special gift.
My poem in Rattle!
Can’t believe after umpteen rejections I finally made it into one of dream journals! Thank you, Tim Green. My poem “Twenty Twenty” published on New Year’s Eve 2020:
For Marvin Bell
Poet Marvin Bell died last week. I had the opportunity to meet and work with him several times. He was always kind in his feedback and upbeat, excited about poetry and life in general. Rest in peace and poetry, Marvin. Here is a poem I wrote for him fourteen years ago, after his famous Dead Man poems.
The Dead Man and Haystacks
by Lana Hechtman Ayers © 2006
for Marvin Bell
1.The Dead Man At Haystack Rock, OR, July 2006
The Dead Man knows Haystack Rock is not one of the eight wonders of the world.
Still, he half-expected (his alive half) that it would be like another World’s Biggest Kielbasa in Chicopee or Half Dog-Half Deer outside Des Moines.
Roadside attractions and tourist destinations often turn out to be the way some enterprising folks bilk the low-intellect Americans of their not-so-hard-earned bucks.
The Kielbasa wasn’t much bigger than a picnic table.
The half and half dog simply had a bobbed tail and graceful stature.
But Haystack Rock takes the Dead man by surprise, he who’s seen so many rocks, above and below ground.
If he were a pre-teen he’d dub it Awesome.
At his wizened age, whatever that is, he calls it Awesome.
Despite all the photos, postcards, and paintings of it—its presence in person is awe-inspiring.
The scale, he thinks it must be or maybe that old Hebrew notion of the rock as God.
Whatever it is, it feels good sometimes to feel small.
With a perfection such as Haystack Rock before you, it lessen the burden of having to try to be
so perfect all the time.
It becomes obvious how fool-hardy the quest for perfection is for anyone, especially the Dead Man.
2. The Dead Man At Chailly, Sunrise 1865
The Dead Man finds himself in front of the most gargantuan haystack he’s ever seen—hay not rock.
The sun has already climbed midway, so that the haystack casts its shadow over him.
The Dead Man is confused.
He knows he was just in Oregon, thinking about the shape of the stone and how it reminded him of something else he’d seen.
The Dead Man notices there’s something odd about this place.
The sky seems to comprised of tiny dots of paint.
The haystack too, the green ground, the shadow, the distant blue mountains, all dots of paint.
Am I in need of glasses, am I going blind, is this a seizure? the Dead man wonders.
Just as the Dead Man is about to faint with worry, he remembers Monet, the painting.
This is the one that Monet painted before all the others.
It took Monet 25 more years to do that famous series of wheatstacks.
This is the haystack that started it all.
The Dead Man realizes he is standing inside the painting.
The Dead Man checks to see if he is also made of tiny dots of paint.
He is not.
Somehow the notion of art has transported him inside it.
The Dead Man decides Monet’s obsession with the scale and proportion and color of haystacks was more than justified but wonders about the 25 years of not painting haystacks.
3 Poems Published
I am grateful to Jason Barber for publishing 3 of my poems in the current issue of Buddhist Poetry Review. Such an honor to have work in this fine publication.
https://www.buddhistpoetryreview.org/archive/vol-three-issue-three/lana-ayers
Tales from Shelter in Place: Mice
Lana Ayers
Tales from Our Shelter in Place: Mice
I worry over the squeaking sounds the come from the walls between the kitchen and the laundry room. At nights, our cat Silvia, the former feral one from the hoarder house with fifty-nine cats, stations herself in front of the dishwasher, feet tucked under so that she resembles a roast. And one morning we wake to find a quarter-sized daub of blood on the linoleum. Nearby rests something resembling a four-inch long leather shoelace. My husband tells me it’s a mouse tail and I feel faint. We can’t locate the rest of the mouse and hope it made a quick snack for Silvia.
I consider myself lucky that I’ve never experienced rodents inside my home before this. Back when I was young and single in New York City I lived among cockroaches like an alien invading their apartments. Despite the diligence of landlords calling in exterminators, time and time again, to spray deadly poisons, nothing ever truly did them in. Though I wished then it had.
But here and now in rural Oregon, it feels wrong to interfere with the mice. Their ancestors likely claimed the spot where our house is built long before my husband and I ever arrived. The crawlspace under the house is a place of warmth and dryness away from the constant damp. Who am I to fault the mice for wanting respite?
The mouse traps my husband ordered arrived weeks ago and remain unopened in boxes on the floor of our mudroom. I have not nagged him to set up the traps. Us killing the mice feels wrong. We are thousands of years past our hunter-gatherer days. Why not just let our cat Silvia follow her instincts as she is closer to her formerly wilder nature?
Though I can’t put it into words, something about this whole situation nags at me. Maybe a deeper question about the environment and ecosystems and human disruption? Or perhaps, it’s just that this mice issue feels like one of privilege? We humans hold the power of life and death over beings no less worthy of prosperity than ourselves. All species of life are sacred. This was true of those darned cockroaches as well.
I’m not saying that those squeaks between the walls don’t freak me out a little. They do. They activate some hind brain fear, I suppose. But in this chaotic time in America where racism is finally at the forefront all across the nation, and vital protests are taking place, this is the time for rampant compassion. No doubt the setting right of years of injustice is complicated and will take time. But it must be accomplished beginning now.
We humans have erected all sorts of us and them boundaries—barriers to empathy—from the small like bugs, to the exceptionally large like entire continents and the peoples who inhabit them. Our little mice dilemma amounts to not much in the scheme of possible problems. There are greater goods I should worry over and find ways to contribute to solutions. And here in my house, surely, my own compassion can extend to the beings between the walls.
Those traps need to disappear from view so my husband will forget they even exist. His attention span for all things domestic, that I normally curse for being short, can come in handy this time. As summer blooms warmth and dryer days, the mice, too, will take advantage of outdoor beauty. And so will we. Perhaps the mice between the walls will redouble in the fall when the rains return. But as we shelter in place in this beautiful slice of the world, I do my best to focus on and appreciate each day as its own gift of breath and bounty—even if some of that breath and bounty squeaks with joy.
Threads, a pandemic poem
My emotions have been all over the place in these last couple of weeks. It’s been so difficult to stay optimistic and motivated. I’m trying to focus as much as possible on blessings. Of which there are so many–clean water, fresh food, my pups and kitties, my husband, family, friends, the beauty of the natural world, the beauty of all the arts, that I am still here. Here’s a poem that I hope you’ll find uplifting.
Lana Hechtman Ayers Threads Threads hang loose from the ties of my too robustly laundered mask. Any day could be my last. This was true even before the coronavirus. But the sky distracts us with its palette of blues, its permanent drift. There’s a Buddhist rift in autonomy now, how probability shifts destiny as if fate was ever more than poetry. The stars are themselves at last, clearer now without excess exhaust. Despite all human losses, summer blooms & blooms, fragrances brighter. My personal regrets grow lighter, float off. Only what I can do this moment matters. Old misgivings scatter like dust motes in a breeze. I remember to breathe deeply, though breath is the way in for this unstoppable death, it’s also the only way to live.
Random Assignment
Lana Hechtman Ayers Random Assignment What in nature could dwarf unjust murders by agents of human law? Not the rain that washes the streets of pollen and petal fall spilled blood and the spittle of a black man’s dying breath. Not the sun that pretends bright mood and warmth penetrating that soul of all who bathe in it— full spectrum white light composed of rainbow. Not the breezes that blow across continents and great waters across imaginary divides of greed— breezes joining breath to breath to breath all equal in lightness. Not the mountains that kaleidoscope through green, blue, grey, brown, black, golden, pink in changing light— each peak all races. Not the trees that bless the air with transformative life— trees of every shape, size, description drought tolerant torrent tolerant tolerant. Not the ground itself every shade of brown millions of years of heat and upheaval cooling and hardening and softening in great rains— gouged, relocated, steamrolled, tread upon. Not the clear not sky its firefly stars blinking from vast numbers of eons ago their code of creation embedded in every creature’s DNA on planet earth every one everyone. And none of it nothing of nature dwarfs the violation the violence of one human against another rooted in random assignment of pigment.
Close, Closer: a quarantine love poem
Close, Closer a quarantine love poem breathe me into a heat that flares air tightening between us i burn within your eyes myself aflame & wondrous speak my name over & over swirling vibrations around us —antidote to isolation i have loved you [inside of time] ) outside of being ( this moment is a trench i am the sea encompass galaxies of night you are moonrise & every gleaming shadow © Lana Hechtman Ayers
