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Las Jaras
Few arts are quite as lost. This heritage
Goes back past pilgrims to the forest bands.
And to the Old World yeomen, Mongol hordes.
To be an archer: the apprentice starts
With weaving at the loom and learns to throw
The shuttle and not blink. The children stare
And marvel at the ancient chipped-flint shape
Grandfather holds, its edge still dangerous.
He found a nickel with a buffalo
Out in his garden and a still-live snail,
Waving its stalk-sprung little dots of eyes,
A life-form from the prehistoric times.
We hoarded spiral shells, like hermit’s caves,
And marbles with their inner staircases.
But never learned to play the glass ball games,
Or how to throw our knives the native way.
-Monika Cooper
My thoughts.
There is a bit more of an edge to this poem from Monika. It captures thousands of years of history and tradition. The sacred way arts and crafts are passed on and down through human cultures. Poetry itself of course is one such art. So much of what we produced in that ancient past would be viewed as art today. The flint arrowheads that litter the west are an example. Created with such care for what was a throwaway item. Marvels of the past.
A Country of Old Men
The eastward sun
Rising over the West Texas rose
The sheriff laying down his gun
For a sinner’s casket closed
The autumn Arkansas marshes stew
Where the ghost of trappers lay
But never will their honor be anew
Their country willed away
“The new colossus”, they said
“Has promised them a stay
So they let come and pay for their bread
And serve them day by day”
And now see where that colossus led
To a nation eroded and worn
The elite spent and fat and fed
And our people’s heritage wrought with scorn
The Ozymandias of the West
Look upon my works ye mighty and despair
People dumb and rulers deaf
A nation stumbling, blind and without care
-Ellis Howard Braddford
My thoughts.
This is a simple poem with rhymes that just are perfect to the subject matter. From that first stanza we are pulled in. This to me is a good example of a thematically political poem that is still good art. Careful composition delivers the message Ellis intends and it is rooted in parts of the country we all have ideas of. It also seems oddly fitting this poem runs as Cormac McCarthy is laid to rest (I scheduled this poem out a while ago, fate is like that sometimes).