The Directions to Blue Willow

Geoff Peterson

Description

A Late Offering
But today is different.
I recognize I can’t go on
doing this alone.
Today he will need God. That’s the man on his knees, praying to something or someone as vast as the dark and as quiet as the heat coming on. It’s what’s left when time fades to a stop, and words have all fallen from the trees.
______________________________
Reader Comments:
Peterson’s new offering, The Directions to Blue Willow, is a compelling, powerful, and at times exquisite testament to the life of the spirit. Each poem is precisely at the heart of a man searching his soul for a way home.
—Sharon Butler, l’aluna di Abril
The poems in Peterson’s latest are among the man’s best. Here he returns to a recurring theme: At what point am I acceptable before God? But now as he ages, the poems are lean and simple, and the search made clear.
—Andy Vinca,
poet-proprietor, Poets’ Warehouse
I can’t shake the image of Masaccio’s fresco of the Holy Trinity. At the base a skeleton lies upon a sarcophagus beneath the inscription: I was what you are, and what I am you shall become.
“Every book is a confession,” says the poet, and we the priests ready to offer absolution or exact an appropriate penance. But soon we note that each poem is a bead on the rosary of his life, and there has been penance aplenty. Perhaps the birds that visit carry the desired pardon, or his trips to Blue Willow may provide moments of peace. With each offering he extends his naked hand and we are left to wonder who will answer.

—Barbara D. Crone, artist & poet

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 02 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798823002370
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Directions to Blue Willow
out-takes & repairs
geoff peterson


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© 2023 geoff peterson. All rights reserved.
Cover art: Jackie Goldman, 2022.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 3/02/2023
 
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0238-7 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0237-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903892
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.
Contents
Author’s Note
 
How It Is
At the Door
Crossing
Hummingbird Hymns
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Nerves
Cloud-Watch
Civita di Bagnoregio
The Comfort of Recited Prayers
The Faithful
Quotes
The Dream
Night Visitor
Scripture
Pilgrimage
Prophecy
The Map of Blue Willow
La Vita Nervosa
After the Storm
Daily News
Doors
Chair of Forgetfulness
Sitting, 5 a.m.
Soon. Very Soon.
All Is Space
Expecting Rain
The Stairs Going Down
World Without End
Night Vigil
Lives of the Saints
Praktokos
Objects, Ourselves
Leftovers
The Work
Cities of the Night Sky
Cross Town
Low Bottom
The Masters
Death Valley
Selah
Homeward
The Mile Track
Prayer for the Dead
Asuko’s Bath
Moonrise
Sabbath
Doves
Breathless
The Punt
Ministry of the Night
Homily
Flashback
Nothin’ Special
Vocation
Nameless
Prodigal Son
Orphan
Touch Therapy
Defective
The Text Itself
Generation
Radio Rosary
Sleepwalk
The Difference
Signs
Photo-Op
Hunter’s Moon
Last Supper
A Huge Black Bird
Morning Swim
Monarchs
Night Owl
Litter
Finches
Lauds
My Mother’s Soul
Westbound
Sonoita
Love Poem
The Habit
Vespers
Road Trip
Cursed
Gifted/Talented
Blue Willow
Upper Room
Report to M
The Train Has Left
In Love
It Was Today
Curriculum
Song of Blue Willow
Static
So Much at Once
Sonora
Lightning
Night Flight
Little Things
Eucharist
Horrible Haircut
Self-Portrait
Media
Out-takes (1)
Out-takes (2)
Out-takes (3)
Out-takes (4)
Gethsemane
Road Work
My Angel
Consultants
The Final Turn
Paperbacks
On the Edge of Deserts
Night Light
Feast of Our Mother
Sign In, Please
At the Well
Feast of All Souls
Wrestling
Self-Examination
God Comes to All Men
Storm Brewing
Paris was…
Elsewhere
Letting Them Go
Dec. 31, 2022
 
Afterword: my way to Blue Willow
Acknowledgments
Reference Notes
About the Author

The Literature of Missing Persons
previous titles by Geoff Peterson
Cordes Junction (1987)
Medicine Dog (novel, 1989)
Hecho en Mexico (chapbook, 1995)
Bad Trades (novel, 2000)
Cold Reading (2007)
Crazy Stairs (2008)
Drama & Desire (2009)
The Greyhound Bardo (novel, 2009)
Cine Bahía : the Suicide Codex (2009)
Fiery Messengers (2010)
She Dropped Me in the Middle of Nowhere (2011)
Dark is my Therapy (2011)
Tucumcari (with Megan Collins, 2012)
The Perry Square Gospels (2012)
Penance (2013)
punto : poems with time running out (2013)
Horrible Intimacies (2014)
The Moira Cycle (2015)
Not Sleep, Deeper: on aging & living alone (2016)
No Services: 69 haiku for your driving pleasure (2017)
The Folding Chairs Meditation: prompts for a season on the skids (2017)
3:30— nocturnes & études (2017)
Trance States: memory, apparitions, and the movies in my gut (2018)
Archipelago: selected early poems (2019)
Death Work: the late poems (2019)
Alone, with groceries: notes on a passing world (2020)
Breakfast for Dinner: poems over easy (2020)
Open Ticket: post-mortem sketches (2021)
In the Underground Garage: poems incognito (2021)
5 O’clock Shadow (stories, 2021)
False-Positive: The Quarantine Verses (2022)
Most titles available at authorhouse.com; others can be found online or through your local bookseller.

For Susan, my sister who struggled on her own terms,
rest in peace.

None of their old maps worked anymore.
—Susan Anderson-Smith
Homily, Feast of the Epiphany
Author’s Note
I am not a pious man, but decades of doubt led me to the night I folded my hands and spoke words taught to me as a child. Simple really. Disillusioned with a life seeking answers outside myself—in women, books, song lyrics—the urge to pray sneaked up on me. I don’t mean church on Sundays or a tour of the Holy Land. Just a prayer without footnotes or caveats about who or what’s coming.
A prayer from memory, as it were. Out loud, as it did not feel weird exactly. I knelt beside my bed and listened to the room I’d lain in for years, gazing at the ceiling and wondering about ever finding love again.
Maybe that was it: love again . I worried about a future without it—and sought someone at the bottom of the world who might be listening. Either someone far away or up close. I listened in silence to what lay down there. (Yes, listening is a sound). Was it my mother, my father, God?
A teacher once exhorted me to renew my faith. “You suffer from pride,” he warned. “Intellectual pride, the worst.” And now I fear time has hardened me against messy things like love and grief. I struggle to reconcile certain facts with my dream of a meaningful life: death being foremost. Solitude another. Despair, third. Fourth and coming like a bullet: insomnia, panic.
Gradually one prayer bleeds into the next. The words come, unforced. Without concern for the minutes spent, I felt like a boy just discovering loneliness. I take my coffee bold, unforgiving. But that morning a calm came over me that felt like surrender—words, my life, my jumpy nervous system. There was a sense of stepping back from the roulette table of my days and stacking my chips.
Cash me out, Lord.
It’s an old story, made strange because it happens to you. Which makes it true because time makes it real. I am not inclined to preach or solicit. Only that my life runs deeper than what the brain deciphers or my fantasies of desire can offer.
I’ll stop now. I think it best to not go on or I’ll miss it. You see, every book is a confession.
Geoff P.
Blue Willow
2022
How It Is
Such is how it is,
you wake up, you’re old.
It’s happened before.
But today is different.
I recognize I can’t go on
doing this alone.
Today I will need God.
At the Door
Let go of that life