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01 – Grandmother’s Sendoff
“The first night I was ever completely alone in the forest I was already a grandmother. Later that night the heavens opened and the earth and the rooted ones drank the waters and I stepped out of my tent into the rain and mud barefooted and did my spinning jiggle dance. May that which I felt in those moments be with you in mind and in spirit on your travels among the living and the dead. May you be as one on your way with our blessing. Walk in beauty.” Author unknown.
SOUL’S JOURNEY 2023
TRAVEL
02 – We begin…
I depart on my next voyage September 30, 2023, my mother’s 110th birthday. My plans are to go to a powwow on the land of the Massachusett people that day, and then proceed to the land of the Western Abenaki in Vermont, where I will visit friends and memories. Next Akwesasne, Minneapolis, Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, the Black Hills, Calgary, Banff, Vancouver, Orcas Island, Bainbridge, Seattle, Portland, Petrolia, San Francisco. I must get to Calgary by 20 October where I will rendezvous with my good friend Joy. I plan to be in SF by 11/10. “Where before we locked the gates, help us now to keep them open.”
SOUL’S JOURNEY 2023
TRAVEL
Free Palestine!
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension. True peace demands the presence of justice.”
M. L. King
I find that this piece entitled “I will not look away” – with words which have been thoughtfully composed by Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley – is particularly powerful and inspiring. It is a brilliant piece of spoken word, which is delivered over an accompanying backdrop of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata which serves to further drive home the melancholy feeling for the tragic subject matter.
FREE PALESTINE!
Short Trips
Venturing forth upon voyages and various viewings.
SHORT TRIPS
Women
Celebrating the power, beauty, wisdom, leadership of all women, and of “womanly” aspects. Okay, okay, maybe some regretable brutality too.
WOMEN
Indigenous Matters
I work at honoring and protecting indigenous cultures worldwide, particularly in North America, a.k.a. Turtle Island,` and particularly in Massachusetts, named for the Massachusett People, one of the indigenous nations that occupied the current state that bears its name. I wish to walk the talk and not just talk the talk of reparations, restoration of rights, and preservation of culture, knowledge, and belief. As the child of immigrants and invaders now living on the unceded land of the Nauset Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation on Cape Cod I find the message in the following video to be worthy and meaningful.
INDIGENOUS MATTERS
Beach Plum Jam
The beach plums
Enjoy the dunes
High winds
Blowing sands
Salt
The company of poison ivy
And everyone who uses them
Native American
Pilgrim
Cape Codder
Tourist.
The plums flourish on lands
First purchased from sachems
Who never owned them –
Not a tree or a dune –
For four coats
Three axes
A day’s plowing with a team of oxen.
Land that has seen grazing
And whaling
Fishing and fencing
Bogs and berries.
Land that remembers the Wampanoag
Here for but three thousand years
As do we who fill our pails
Boil the plums
Separate seed from fruit
Squeeze the beach plum flesh
Extract its essence
As we squeeze each other
The sweet juices we cook
In anaerobic jars
To make the jam
To smell the sweetness
The sweat
The sour
The desirable
To lick our fingers
And in memory
To preserve it all.
Poetry
Throwing Away
In further preparation for my grand exit
I dispose of material things
That once had value to me
And still do
A seventy-year-old
4 x 7 weathered fake-leather
Zippered autograph book
From public school 95
In the Bronx
An archeological time capsule
From the first half
Of the last century
Having survived wars, moves, and fires
Filled with empty limerick poems
from prepubescent classmates
comprised of red rose and blue violet couplets
And the hearty toast from my eighth grade English teacher,
Who like my mother thought
I had the potential to better conjugate verbs if only I paid attention.
I dispose now of high school trivia:
A senior pin.
The 1958 yearbook.
It is inconceivable anyone might care about this detritus
Rather it is in the mind
Where anything of substance remains
and there is no need to throw any of that away
As if one could.
I wrote my first poem
On assignment in freshman English
And I know the words to that poem verbatim
Sixty-eight years later
Worth exactly nothing o’er these decades
Except to me.
That I now throw into the fire.
Poetry
Uncle Sol
I cast away a trove of my uncle’s World War II bounty
Military orders handwritten on parchment
Photographs of shamed collaborator women
being paraded naked down the screaming streets
Next to letters of commendation
Nazi medals
Sewing kits. Bootie.
Jingoism and heroism on display.
With old correspondence
And letters from abroad.
He was in the psychological warfare unit,
Aide and driver to the Unit Commander.
I so admired the smell of his shaving cream
And cigarette smoke
mixed with the aroma of his morning
ablutions and eliminations
There
Next to the jeep
With the beautiful French women
Never married
Nor producer of offspring.
Who care that he served with valor
This unknown soldier
Absolutely anonymous
To all but me and a few cousins
One who turned a starter postage stamp collection
Into books upon books filled with cancelled postage stamps
Worth exactly nothing these decades later
Except to me
That I now throw into the fire.
Poetry
In the Maws of Israeli Justice – A First Hand Report
The court is in the police station,
That’s the first clue,
A building constructed by the British
To help contain the Arab population
Before the modern Israeli Era.
That purpose has not changed.
The judge is wearing an army uniform,
That is your second clue,
Something that suggests the outcome is foreordained.
You do not need any other clues.
But if this message is unclear
Or too nuanced
Please note that the translator is wearing an army uniform
The court reporter is wearing an army uniform
And the half dozen armed soldiers in the courtroom are wearing army uniforms.
Only the prosecuting attorney is out of uniform,
But he is still sneeringly self-assured,
For he too knows the outcome of this case,
As do the soldiers,
The court reporter,
And the prisoner,
Who has been denied access to his lawyer
for over three months.
Everyone knows the outcome,
Guaranteed and assured by hand and ankle cuffs,
By automatic weapons,
By nuclear weapons,
By the overwhelming power of the state.
The prosecutor speaks first.
He says the prisoner is suspected
Of being a member, or associate, or backer,
follower, fan, devotee, adherent, sympathizer,
organizer, sycophant, protégé, or operative,
Maybe.
Or perhaps being in the known presence
Of someone, or some organization,
Perhaps the political party that won the popular election,
Perhaps he is seditious
Perhaps a supporter of terrorism by the starving oppressed
Perhaps he holds positions antithetical to the government’s.
Besides, free speech and free association are not assured
Nor is the free exchange of ideas assured
And although no formal charges have yet been brought
And none are known to exist
Not to the defense
Not to the prisoner
Not to his lawyer
Not even to the judge
We are conducting an investigation,
Says the prosecutor,
And the investigation is not complete
And we need more time
Because during the time we had the prisoner
Chained and interrogated twenty one hours a day
For six straight days –
We rested on the seventh –
And he was most cooperative
Our prisoner
But we learned no thing
So the investigation must continue
And we need him in prison to do so
And an extension of his detention is needed
Away from his family and young children
Away from his students and his neighbors
Just like the hundreds of others we arrested and detained this week
Or was it last week, or the week before that,
On suspicion of being Palestinian.
The prisoner is allowed to speak
May it please the Court, the prosecutor,
The members of the army here today
And others in the courtroom, he says.
I am professor of law Hassan A. Gassan.
There are six Hassan Gassan’s at my university.
How does the prosecution even know
It was I, this Hassan Gassan, who was meant to be arrested?
That it was me intended to be dragged from his home
At two A.M.
My wife and children made to wait in the cold
My home searched without a warrant.
I have told the investigators everything I know,
Answered every question they have asked.
I know nothing more than the investigators now know,
Do not even know what the charges against me are
Or what separates me from my two month old daughter,
My son, my anxious wife
Other than the arbitrary power of the state.
Thank you.
Yes, yes, says the judge, tired of this tedium,
And who are these other people in the court with you,
It is unusual for anyone to attend these proceedings
Because the families of Palestinians
Are not permitted into Israel
And why would anyone else care?
Perhaps they will identify themselves.
We are Israeli friends of the prisoner and his family, we say,
We are international peace activists,
Educators, lawyers,
We are observers,
We are here to see how justice will be rendered in this case.
Very impressive, says the judge,
And most unusual.
That said, the ruling of this court
Is that the government’s request for an extension of detention
Is completely reasonable in this case and hereby granted.
It is really that brusque, that arbitrary
And that fina,l
Again and again
For Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli courts of justice
In the democratic Israeli state.
© B.R.Taub, Feb, 2008
POEMS FOR PALESTINE
