Norbert Krapf
The Come Home from the Flood Telegram
Are you OK come home STOP
wrote the brother to his third
sister in the great Louisville flood
of January 1937 and she came.
Came back across the Ohio River
to the hill country and worked
as a secretary in a lumber company.
A few years later met the man
who became my father. They stayed
home until called into another world.
More than seventy years after the flood
waters receded, the yellow telegram
floats in a drawer of my desk.
After thirty-four years I came
home from New York. Nobody
sent me a telegram. Home called
in other ways. What if? What if
she had not come back? Had not
listened to the command that must
have come from her mother?
Is there not always a What if
whenever there is a flood?
Some heed the call and some
do not. Some know home
as where you must go when they
call you back after your time
in the city. Others know home
as the place you must get beyond,
where you shrivel and die if
you go back. Some ride the waters
and settle wherever they recede
and say they never look back.
Some cut off all ties and face away.
Some go back and look within.
Some close off, some stay open
and ponder What if telegrams.
Basho’s Waters
No matter how far
he journeyed
into the interior
Basho always knew
where water was.
He listened to
frogs plunge into
the sound of water.
He watched the river
sweep a hot day
away into the sea.
* * *
He saw the camellia
pour rain water
when it leaned,
the windblown banana
tree pour rain drops
into a bucket.
* * *
He watched tides
slide in and foam
in autumn full moon.
Autumn rain made
mountains beyond
beautiful to the eye.
Hearing dew drops
drip, he wished
to wash the world.
He walked round
and round a pond
in harvest moon.
* * *
Moving, he cast
his shadow like
a divining rod
to find and tap
the ancient well
from which
he allowed
his readers
to drink deep.
Walt Whitman on the South Shore
for David Steinberg
When Walt Whitman stood as a boy
on the South Shore of the Island
on which he was born, he listened
to the midnight roar of the waves
crash onto the sand and ebb
back out toward the depths.
Between the crash and the ebb,
he heard the sad notes of a bird
lamenting its loss of a mate.
From the moment of this rebirth,
he knew his calling was to sing of loss
but also light, sadness but also joy.
He learned that when you accept
the call, there is no going back
to the boy you once were before
you took on your lifelong mission:
the pain and the tumult, yes, but also
the sweet taste of singing for all.
The Float Forever Held
for Vince Clemente
Friend, your words
come to me again
in a distinct rhythm
I recognize at once
as the pulse
of your spirit
stays with me
wherever you and I
go as we move on
into the next
phase of finding
where we settle
as time flows on
and we float
our words
and spirit
on the surface
of whatever waters
turn beneath
heaving us onward
toward the far shore.
Saying Patoka
Patoka, Patoka,
I say, not knowing
what the word means
but sure that it sums up
the spirits of those
who were here before
we came to their place.
Patoka, Patoka,
I say again,
wanting to conjure
water still so pure
I can step into it
and float in currents
in which spirit flows.
Moon of Falling Leaves
I am a canoe carved of tulip poplar.
It is the Moon of Falling Leaves,
and I float open on the White River
in the light of a moon that is full.
Into me fall leaves of many colors
and shapes and names that drift
together into the verses of a song
that many of this land shall sing.
These leaves of so many shapes
and hues make a rainbow of names
I ask you to sing with me as we
glide on moon-white currents
meandering toward larger waters.
Let us sing together the song
of our many different leaves
whose names make the music
of this place we love:
Miami, French, Lenape,
English, Potawatomi, Irish,
Scots, Piankashaw, German,
Hebrew, Wea, Welsh.
As I float around the bends
of this River called White,
I collect more and more falling
leaves and verse builds upon verse
in this song that shall never end:
Italian, Shawnee, African,
Latvian, Winnabago, Pole,
Slovakian, Wyandot, Chinese,
Japanese, Nanticoke, Lithuanian,
Greek, Mascouten, Asian Indian.
More leaves expand our song.
Into this poplar canoe floating
in full moonlight fall and settle
Korean, Munsee, and Belgian,
Hungarian, Kickapoo, Swiss,
more shapes and lines adding
colors, layers and texture:
Hungarian, Mexican, Vietnamese,
Colombian, Cherokee, Dutch.
Shine, Moon of Falling Leaves, shine.
Fall, multicolored leaves to come.
Flow, river, flow into deeper waters
as we sing the song we compose.
~~~~~~~~
Norbert Krapf, Indiana Poet Laureate 2008-2010, is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, including the recent Sweet Sister Moon and Invisible Presence, a collaboration with photographer Darryl Jones. He also released a poetry and jazz cd with pianist-composer Monika Herzig, Imagine – Indiana in Music and Words. Songs in Sepia and Black and White, 100 new poems with photos by Richard Fields, is forthcoming in 2012 from Indiana Univ. Press. For 34 years Norbert taught at Long Island University, where he directed the C.W. Post Poetry Center. As IPL, he had a mission of reuniting poetry and song.
