Arlene Corwin Poetry

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake

She let a moth drown in the lake,
Waves taking stackars* little thing
Further than her oar could reach.
Standing on beach, cupped eye,
Squinting, trying…
Moth was gone.
Death had won.

Just so you know I do not lie,
That ‘she’ was I.
I am the wimp who hesitated.
Fear of depth, of cold, of wet.
Excuses inexcusable.

Death of moth, still flapping moth
Is just as undeserving as our own demise.
Pedestrian, prosaic, commonplace,
Disgusting,
Yet compulsively discussable.

All living things delight in life-ness.
While they move and throb the slightest,
They delight.
Who takes a life by standing by
Will also die.
It is essential, is it not, to cry,
Identify with kin?
Kin hereby meaning ‘life within’.

Left with remorse and shame
She self-condemns,
She takes the blame.
She hopes some force
That knows the individuality of moth
Shows sympathy in rebirth
In some future form that has a breath.

So be it, Om, Amen to Earth!

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake 6.14.2020 Birth, Death & In Between II;Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II;Pure Nakedness;Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover, Corwin

*stackars; Swedish; ‘poor thing’

Mourning Patricia’s Mom

Patricia’s mom, gone. Ninety-one.
How to write a requiem:
Remembrance in honor…and an honor
For this writer.

Reaching ninety-one, then gone.
I didn’t know her,
But know her daughter
And I wish to honor all I saw.

One learns a lot from observation.
More aware of what one’s got
When day comes and there’s not a dot
Of earthly earnings, birthday’s energies run out.

In the meantime, one’s learned
Love’s devotion is the winner
Where there is no sinner
But an ocean of reward:
Award: a honeycomb of golden good.

So in meekness I pay homage to:
The daughter
And the mother
And all others who, with gestures of unfeigned support,
Find words of thoughtfulness and comfort.

Dear Patricia,
Know that I impart,
The dearest feelings in my heart,
Certain that you’ll pass them on
With love and deep affection.
Without selfishness but blessedness,
A messenger to all surrounding.
Mourning mom with love abounding,
Mourning Patricias’s Mom 6.29.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Thought To The Writer

I’ve decided – no concluded
That there is no finished product –
That the motto is revision,
Which takes courage and reflection;

Perspective, understanding that
It’s destiny that leads,
Needs continually changing,
As are viewpoints –
Frame of reference
Ever you.

When you’re reading what you’ve written
(I say this from observation)
You’ve come back a different person.
You discover when reviewing,
What was smitten needs renewing:
Shakespeare tearing up the script,
To Romeo and Juliet
Because he thought the first was sh_t.
No double suicide;
No place where anyone has died.

Yes, there is no finished product;
Not in literature or life.
We inspect, reflect, reject
And we rewrite.

A ThoughtTo The writer 6.29.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Ducks Came Onto The Grass Today

It is divine. A day in June,
A paradise.
As here we sit and chat a bit
‘Bout that and this, this and that.

Paper plates of summer food.
Some tête á tête:
The world seems good.
Unparalleled.
Who could want more,
The summer air our succour.

Our new clipped lawn
Down to a our boathouse
Housing table, chair
For guests who come there.
Little rowing boat with motor
All prepared to spawn small trips
For tiny ships
Onto the relatively little waters.

Speaking of our lakefront syrup,
Ducks came up onto the grass.
They hadn’t asked,
They visited, so used to bread
Were they.. Then suddenly,
Five more waded ashore,
Ready for a bready
exploration.

Eight pm, sun still high,
Ducks swum away, good TV waiting
Sauntering, we left our haven
For the secondary heaven
Of our home some steps above.
A sort of, kind of
Paradis-ical true love.
What a day!

Ducks Came Onto The Grass Today 6.25.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Experience;

This started personally, turned philosophical, then existential (or vice versa) but ended with the current pandemic!

The Benefits Of…Having Been, Becoming, Being
Once you have been comatose,
Been handicapped, come home and started life.
There is no pre-supposing.
It’s a door.
You pay attention so much more.
You notice other’s posture,
Belly, maturation, stature.
On yourself and on the other –
And say nothing.
Judgement gone
It’s but to carry on.
All mankind is afflicted.

You are functions and non-functions:
Need to buy a button-hole-der, buttoner (they do exist!)
Set in motion one more ‘trick’ or sleight of hand;
Leave the left, to write with right
Hold the knife without self-wound.
When standing up to feel heel first,
Be wary when foot’s bare, ground’s wet.

Yet, what you notice even more’s, the gifted
And the giving, all the love around,
The boundless care
When your own hair is falling.
People are so kind,
So hard defined.

As for every passing day.
Creative in its way,
With pandemonium’s pandemic,
You now frolic in the kitchen,
Train and try new, fewer gimmicks,
Mimicry from TV inspiration one’s own new found brick.*

Oh, the things you learn from having been.
Most of all, that you remain.

*British informal, dated a generous, helpful, and reliable person: ‘You are really a brick,’ Gloria said.

The Benefits Of… Having Been, Becoming, Being 6.25.2020 Birth, death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Motivated first by the thought of Co-vid people (stuck down or not) living in small apartments, forced by necessity to be alone and perhaps going bonkers. Then, of course, I knew I was speaking to any- everyone – period.

How To Tackle Loneliness

Tackle: such a funny word,
A lovely word, an active word.
Loneliness: a sad, inactive, ‘only’ word
Which smells of isolation,
Friendlessness, abandonment, rejection.
Unalloyed projection
Of a mind not seeing rightly.

All it needs is rectifying;
Taking thoughts from out the air
Or in the head where thoughts are spread.
Rejecting systematically the whirling round,
And casting out their ugly sound;
Lifting hand or leg or ‘bum’
To something new albeit ‘dumb’.
It does not matter what you do.
It’s just to shift the thought somehow;
Shake the body, use the eye, eyebrow;
Limbs too are there to help you stay
New focussed, endlessly creative.

You’re not alone when you’re alone.
Make your thoughts a telephone.
Ideas are constant.
Change the coin
With which to launch the motivation –
And the whole becomes a boon
To get your ‘happy’ hormones working.
Happiness is always lurking –
There to make you comfortable.

Loneliness, the thief of solace,
A grief giver, full of malice
Leaves when you create in mind,
Find and form and shape some kind
Of Anything.

Use your senses – all of them:
Eyes, nose, ears, tongue, touch: each limb.
You’ve got a toolbox built within.
You have and are your best companion.
There! A sound and practical solution
Lies at hand.
How To Tackle Loneliness 6.22.2020 The Processes:Creative,Thinking, Meditative; Definitely Didactic II;Arlene Nover Corwin

Writing everyday, as I do, I really do write down any thought that catches me. It’s all a kind of etude: a study, a learning process. Themes differing, but always a Corwin thread underlying, it seems to me everything I compose has validity, both artistically and philosophically. (see poem enclosed:)
Words & Marriage
Word Paralysis: Stunted Growth

Couples do it all the time:
Talk in phrases long cliched by platitude,
Of staled attitude.
They don’t communicate
(except perhaps when fornicating).
Don’t learn,
Phrases all the same,
Repeated at each meal, each film.

They’re missing out
On IQ raising inspiration,
Real communication
Worn or lost in years or habit:
Customary words inadequate.

They learn to neither listen
Nor to pay attention,
Stopping up their listening ears
Through years of word paralysis.

Sometimes deafness very real
Strikes one or the other mate.
There goes the skill of conversation,
Life’s love communication.

What to do?
What the solution?
Partnership and marriage
As a dance for two
Goes falling through.
Through simple lack of word renewal.

Who wants boredom,
Wants to snore when loved one speaks?
Love goes sneaking out the door
When words no longer stir or spur.

Words&Marriage 6.20.2020 Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Suddenly ’In’

We’ve had to wait until it’s ‘in’.
Why must we wait
Until it’s late…too late
To get the message to not care
About the skin –
NOT be aware,
Period.
It is absurd
That grisly murder
Must take place
Before we register the obvious:
Oblivious to face, to race
Without excuse or cause
Or any justifying basis.
Unattached indifference once expressed,
The chief compensation and success.

If evil has its origin in ethics and morality,
Dis-pathy (I made that up)
Vile, injurious;
Stinking, dirty, ruinous
Where all rejecting ‘-o u s’
Are harmful in the end,
Then hatred of the pigment
Leads the trend.
Mindless hatred, mindless rage:
It it to represent our age?

In any case, I’ll join the group
Of ‘hoopdehoopers.’
Silently, I’ll do my bit,
Writing a little,
Saying to the world, “i love you all”.
Even if I too,
Have miles to go.

It’s Suddenly ‘In’…6.19.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Tychism*the doctrine that account must be taken of the element of chance in reasoning or explanation of the universe.

Cause vs Chance & Chaos
(an intro into…)

Nothing winds up accidentally,
Nothing is an accident.
An arithmetic from some all-hidden source.
A mathematic not yet solved, but real nonetheless,
With causes, laws that do not pause
On earth and in the universe.

The chases, choices
Numberless conditions
With their endless combinations
Make for every present moment.

Causes vs Chance & Chaos 6.17.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience: Arlene Nover Corwin

A Swedish Midsummer 2020

Geography the usual;
The place on planet just the same;
The night light full till after midnight,
Daylight’s dawn at one or two
With so few hours in between.

This year then,
A little different.
Last year when
A crowd would meet
To dance and sing and drink and eat
On park or lawn or balconies,
Families and friends to hoopla til a dark
Which almost never comes
Makes the ending for them.

This a deviating year;
Debating and departing from
The customary dancing, prancing,
History may chronicle as Distancing,
Fiascos, blunders, six-feet-unders.
Romance from six feet of space

This midsummer in the North
Coming forth with likenesses
Has, by the laws of nature
Put the emphasis on differences
Which we, survivors aa a race
Will surely neutralise and chase away
One future day.

A Swedish Midsummer 2020 6.16.2020 Nature 0f & Nature In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin