Bumblebee Watching in Plague-time

Michael Sedano

Carpenter Bee hovers above nectar pool looking out at lens

OK, you’re right, Mrs. Phillips, my eleventh grade English teacher. There’s substance in that poem that used to crack us up when we did choral reading as 16-year old boys, the line about squirrels hiding their nuts in grass. We boys were impatient with corny sentiment.

The poem argues a fulfilled life is one that pauses to observe, to n.b., to dar cuenta. At 16, there’s a lifetime ahead that we shall fill up with cares and regrets. At 75, dar cuenta, and allow Davies his old man’s sentimentality.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

What indeed, is this Plague-time, if not an opportunity to use a super power, the power to stop time by standing, or sitting, and staring. For me, I sit staring at a spot in the air waiting for a bee to fill it, and when it does, I will stop time. In the meanwhile, time has little relevance, I'm bound to a bee's randomness. I like that.

Echinopsis blooms in multiples

One morning this week, I position my tripod to capture bees flying into an Echinopsis trumpet, floating in mid-dive above the gorgeous flower. This floral season, few bees made a show, at least when I was looking. I have two, maybe three flowering days left. I’m totally dependent upon blossoms in their season. Today’s crop dawned an impressive bouquet of violets, yellows, one red.

Standing at the tripod setting it up to stand and stare at the cluster of violet blossoms, a giant Carpenter Bee shows up to challenge my equipment and my eye. I hear the buzz approach from behind and loosen the tripod head. I look toward the sound now at my periphery, catch the bee whirling toward the Yellow Echinopsis.

Bumblebee digs in for a hearty fill-up.

I use the tripod like a monopod to steady the frame, tilt down and autofocus. I miss her going in.

The bee works that sweet meal. Several times she hits the flower, rises, returns, I miss the entry. I stand and stare, count my breaths and hum a waiting song. 

This Yellow Echinopsis exudes ambrosial perfume that permeates its immediate space. At night, when the flower first opens, the breezes catch the perfume, wafting it through my open window into my dreams. I feel the scent-induced smile stretch across my dreaming face, the perfume occupying its own space outside dreamworld, giving me something to look forward to in the light.

The giant bee dives into the trumpet mouth to be slowed by the double ring of anthers and filaments circling the trumpet’s inviting well. I don’t get a foto. The bee wedges itself deeper into the mouth until it disappears into the elongated body of the suddenly throbbing flower. I imagine a rich pool of nectar holding the bee powerless in the nectar’s sway. Like in a whirlpool, the bee cavorts head first in the liquid. She spins and spins inside the wall testing my patience to stand and stare, waiting for her to get on with her day.

Bumblebee singing "they had to carry harry to the ferry..." (Cal Drinking song)

Dizzy from nectar the bee struggles to emerge. She backs out to display pollen grains she’s gathered on the back set of legs that now grab the rim of a petal to fulcrum out enough to spin about. The bee’s rear leg reaches out blindly for the tip of a petal. Finding purchase, the bee pulls herself through the resisting filament forest. The petal bends the bee loses her grip. The bee abandons the task in favor of another plunge out of sight into the fountain of delights.

Sated, the bee makes her way out of the pool, careful not to pull too hard on the flexible petal she uses to millimeter her route out, the bee pulls and turns and maneuvers, finally she has fully emerged and takes a breather on the soft bed of anthers. I take the foto.

Freed from the confining forest, she whirls about to face the sky. Making her way to the edge of the trumpet’s mouth, the gloriously beautiful bee looks at me with a satisfied grin, and lifts off the Yellow carpet. I steady the tripod and get to work.

“Go to the Violet Echinopsis” my mind chants as I work the tripod head. Tormenting me, the Carpenter Bee floats and flits toward the violet beauty I’m targeting. I frame a gorgeous still life; with the bee, a vividly vital image. Come, bee, find the spot.

The giant bee noses into yesterday’s now-fading violet blossom. I hold my breath. I’m rapidly setting the tripod and focusing the lens on the next flower in line. Got it, sharp, framed, focused. All I need is the bee directly above the stigma.

I have set the shutter speed at 1/2000 of a second. Even when the bee flies parallel to the lens, the speed should freeze the wings in mid-beat. Bees flying away from the lens diving toward the nectar should display the veins of the open wings, at 1/2000--provided the bee is in the right spot, which is a cube 3" by 3" by 3" with this good lens at this close to the object.

I have the sensitivity set to ISO1600. At the speed I use, my aperture will provide the 3" depth of focus above the center of the trumpet and stop wings. Outside that range, the bee is a blurry blot. Failure. I take several of these too soon grabs, and lots of too lates. 1/2000 isn't fast enough and the wings partially display detail.

The beehemoth from the Yellow delight now floats toward the leading edge of my target flower. Where I am not focused, so I must stand and stare, like the poet says. Now the bee catches a scent of the delicately faint violet nectar. The gigantic bee so photogenic, its buzzing wings so loud, floats upward. My finger lightly presses the remote. The receiver lights green, shutter ready to click at near light-speed. The bee sniffs, floats back unimpressed. Once you’ve had Yellow, she must have said. The shiny black abdomen catches the sun and with the bright spot on her rump, she turns and I hear her buzz doppler off down the driveway.

I have time tomorrow to sit in the same place, and stare. The Violet Echinopsis plants have a single bud remaining. One more flower tomorrow, one more opportunity to stop and stare. Hey, big bumblebee, spend a little time with me. As it turns out, a shiny black Carpenter Bee visits and lets me stand and stare. It is the final Violet Echinopsis blossom of the year.

The last Violet Echinopsis of the season.

In Plague-time, what is this life but a lifetime's chance to watch squirrels hide their nuts in grass, and some bumblebees torment anxious photographers. The compensation of standing and waiting is multiple fotos of the lone Carpenter Bee who visited the lone echinopsis flower, that final flower of the blossoming season.

Bluebird Poets. June's Second On-line Floricanto.

Bluebird Poetry Reading Series Returns to Avenue 50 Studio

Michael Sedano

One of the featured poets was delayed, allowing lots of time for poets to contemplate their upcoming reading. Each individual has a personal method of getting ready. Poets chat, review their text, visualize their performance, or perhaps stew in their own juices, dreading that moment when the emcee calls one’s name.

Reading your own stuff aloud can and should provide a joyous, moving interaction between writer, words, and audience, and that should be true all around. Audiences will be incredibly forgiving. Understanding this, writer-readers are free to allow themselves to work on making each word carry its weight.

The readings Sunday at Northeast Los Angeles’ Avenue 50 Studio shone with moments of elegance where word, body, voice, setting captivated a roomful of listeners. Then, too, came moments when writers allowed the rhythm and structure of their lines to take over, lending a predictability to the pace, placing emphasis at the end of lines instead of upon ideas and images, chanting instead of meaning. Performers who provide enough shining moments earn forgiveness for those periods of neglect.

As the portraits below illustrate, Sunday's June Bluebird Reading Series offered a goodly share of the sublime. The experience offered, as Ceballos observes in her farewell remarks, “what poetry is supposed to be.”

Though we’d not met prior, Ceballos and I are Facebook friends. I asked Avenue 50 Studio director Kathy Gallegos to introduce me to my friend. 

Poet Jessica Ceballos organizes these 2d Sunday afternoon readings, along with an ambitious program of poetry readings in public spaces, Poesía para la gente, such as a recent Home Depot parking lot reading. 

La Bloga will have details on the August event Ceballos is planning now. 

Today’s Bluebird Reading Series program spotlights four poets, Tara Evonne Trudell, Karineh Mahdessian, Kim Young, Gloria Enedina Alvarez. There’s Open Mic time to follow and a goodly number of seats fill with a collection of regular contributors and first-timers, the ones with time on their hands.

Outside, Bluebird Reading Series organizer Jessica Ceballos waits, watching hopefully toward Figueroa and chatting with poets. I ask her about running the event on CPT, chicano poet time. “Chicana poet time,” she corrects.

The four featured poets take fifteen minutes out of our lives to present a variety of perspectives on mujerismo, from the theoretical to the hilarious from the bitter to the better off. Moreover they present with energy and emotion molded to their words. That makes it more worthwhile because we'll never get those 15 minutes back.

Jessica Ceballos cues the musical accompaniment then begins her reading.

A good reading offers a writer a way of honoring her labor and her art, while creating an ethos that enlarges her persona’s voice. Interpreting, not acting, gesture not stage business, movement not acrobatics, thought not meter. The sublime finds its moment, and in it, an audience locates the significance of a poet’s voice.

While these are big ideas, they are fit to big expression, like poetry. If the poem is worth bringing to a public, the poem is worth bringing effectively. That, happily, was the outcome at Sunday’s Bluebird Reading Series.

After the CPT start, Jessica Ceballos hews to the schedule. Ceballos says that she normally doesn’t read and emcee on the same program, but with such an outstanding lineup, Jessica carpe diems and joins them for this audience. Technology can be a bugaboo. She miscues her musical accompaniment and has to start twice. The audience doesn't notice.

The lead-off reader is Tara Evonne Trudell, an up-and-coming Oakland poet out of New Mexico, or a New Mexico poet by way of Oakland. Mejor, a poet. Trudell does art the hard way, and for sure on her own terms.

Trudell’s work pivots around twin themes of mujerismo and nature. After one audience member remarks that Tara is touring with three children on the road trip, I feel a twinge of guilt when I affirm the achievement.  I remember Tara Evonne Trudell is a single mother returned to college and doing arte. She’s not going to send the kids off to Interlochen while she tours.

Trudell’s tour pursues a dual course, sharing her love of poetry and marketing her recently completed documentary of her beautiful poesía in random places project.

In a fitting confluence of ideas, of woman, motherhood, poetry, art, listening, identifying, Trudell’s youngest, 6 year old Jackson, joins mommy on stage. Going into second grade, the boy exhibits admirable patience, quietly finding mommy's hand allowing Tara to read the poem into the moment.

I did not document what Tara is reading here but how appropriate if she's reading

you are woman

giving

opening hearts

offering

fearless loving

energy

The second featured poet, Karineh Mahdessian seizes home base. She does the photographer in the front row a huge favor, moving the stand off to the side and committing herself wholly to her work and the reading. Using the full technology of the body helps a reader learn to achieve a completely satisfying performance while making the audience experience just as fulfilling.

Karineh Mahdessian

Mahdessian reacts to the two cameras, hexing the guy in the front row with crossed fingers. I hold my lens at knee level and capture her animated, energetic reading looking up. Poets and photographers benefit from playing to the camera now and then, instead of shying away or scaring them off.

Kim Young

Kim Young weaves stories around her selections. It's an engaging patter that relaxes her and when she seamlessly segues into her work her familiarity and conversational ease flow with the reading. Young gives a highly animated performance, matching her vocalics with gesture.

Gloria Enedina Alvarez

Alvarez shares a rich variety of work, from intellectually charged scenes to light-hearted hyperbole with a sharp point. She projects and commits herself to vocal variety, honoring both word and intent, while gathering and holding attention.

Open Mic readers got three minutes. Amazingly, everyone who read respected the limit and used the opportunity to read their best stuff. Some Open Mic readers use, or signed up with, only their first name. Leave a Comment below if your foto is here but not your correct name.

Wyatt Underwood reads from his iPad

Jack Cooper

Conney Williams

Kat Morozova reads an 
impassioned piece struggling with
a tiny screen. Paper is your friend.

Vachine

Alex Hohmann

Carolyn Ziel

Jamie Planells

Joseph

The first-named poet, Joseph, reads passionately and comfortably while using all his space. He might enjoy putting down the paper, divert some of this energy to working from memory. It would be interesting to see him read a gentler piece alongside this one.

Lalo Kikiriki

Emilio Sotelo

Flor de Te 

Flor de Te engages her listeners with movement and careful articulation of key terms and phrases. Her frenetic  presence tends to serve its own end, as if Flor de Te's a dancer who recites poetry. Her delightful style evokes elocutionary training. Adding to this audience's delight or relief, she performs her piece first in Spanish then English.

Alessandra

In past years, May month I've been invited to coach reading your own stuff aloud to the writers at the NHCC's National Latino Writers Conference. Since I'm not engaged in that this year, I miss working with writers to get a text into personal best readiness. I'm considering hosting a summer series on reading your stuff aloud. If you're in the LA/Pasadena area, leave a Comments below if you'd be interesting in joining.

The greatest benefit of technology is it brings together gente who'd never otherwise have the opportunity to meet. And every once in a brown moon, you get to meet them in person.

As with Jessica Ceballos, I’ve been Facebook friends with poet Tara Evonne Trudell for years. I’d forgotten she was on the roster, so when I looked across the room and spotted her it was a double delight. This was my only time off this week, so serendipity carries the day again.

Northeast LA's Avenue 50 Studio convenes the Bluebird Reading Series monthly, the second Sunday. La Palabra, a second reading series hosted by Luivette Resto, comes the fourth Sunday of the month.


La Bloga On-line Floricanto for June Eleven 2013
Mario Angel Escobar, Iris De Anda, Frank de Jesus Acosta, Jonathan Heimarck, Anne Elizabeth Apfel

"For London and for Boston" by Mario Angel Escobar
"Manos a la Obra" by Iris De Anda
"The Sacred Place of Dreams by Frank de Jesus Acosta
"what do you bear" by Jonathan Heimarck
"SacRed" by Anne Elizabeth Apfel



For London and for Boston
by Mario Angel Escobar

Me despierto y siento la oscuridad del futuro
Un mundo donde la muerte tiene horario abierto
Testigo es un simple sustantivo sin acción ni contenido
Los lamentos son incontables
como los decretos de Dios en un mar de sordos
El hoy flagela el futuro para ser lo que soy:
un neurótico pesimista que pide a gritos
el silencio del mundo.

I wake up and feel the darkness of the future
A world where death has an open schedule
Witness is a simple noun without action or content
The complaints are countless
as the decrees of God in a sea of deaf
The now flagellates the future to be what I am:
a neurotic pessimist
crying out for the silence of the world.


Mario A. Escobar is a US-Salvadoran writer and poet born in 1978. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known as the founder and editor of Izote Press, the first Central American publisher in the United States. Escobar was born in La Union (El Salvador) on January 19, 1978. Escobar has stated that his exposure to “poetic sounds” began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from what he witness during the Salvadoran Civil War. Escobar began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Roque Dalton, Tato Laviera and Jaime Sabines as some of his early poetic influences. Escobar’s work has been feature in UCLA’s publication Underground Undergrads which recognizes the poet as an activist for the undocumented Student Movement. In 2004, Escobar was placed under arrest and was scheduled to be deported. In 2006, Escobar won his case for political asylum making him one of the last Salvadorans to win a political case fourteen years after the Salvadoran Peace Accords were signed in 1992. Escobar currently lives in Alhambra. Escobar has been featured in documentaries like Mimoun en Mario, studenten met een missie and in The healing Club. Some of Escobar’s works include Al corre de la horas (Editorial Patria Perdida, 1999) Gritos Interiores (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), La Nueva Tendencia (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), Paciente 1980 (Orbis Press, 2012).




Manos a la Obra
by Iris De Anda


muchas manos poco trabajo
los de arriba mas arriba
y nosotros abajo
la ley del obrero
trabajar para comer
comer para trabajar
salir a buscar jale
cuando el sol sale
la fortaleza de nuestros abuelos
presente cada momento
vivir vida digna
luchar por el pueblo
la circumstancia hace al hombre
y este sistema a nosotros
hay que seguir con honra
hasta lograr mas que sobrevivencia
la luz es de los que la reflejan
juntos hermanos crecemos
valientes y con esperanza
por un mejor mañana


Iris De Anda is a writer, activist, and practitioner of the healing arts. A native of Los Angeles
she believes in the power of spoken word, poetry, storytelling, and dreams.

She has been published in Mujeres de Maiz Zine, Loudmouth Zine: Cal State LA, OCCUPY SF poems from the movement, & online @ La Bloga.

She is an active contributor to Poets Responding to SB 1070. She performs at community venues & events throughout the Los Angeles area.

She hosted The Writers Underground Open Mic 2012 @ Mazatlan Theatre & 100,000 Poets for Change 2012 @ the Eastside Cafe.

Follow her story @ http://irisdeanda.typepad.com/la_writer_underground/




The Sacred Place of Dreams
Frank de Jesus Acosta

Last night I dreamt of you so vividly
In the us that was and is no more
Gone were the flowers, ocean-scape, or moonlight
Absent the sanctuary of your presence
Only joy in the bustle of the life and living we chose
We pause our rushing to no place in particular
Returning to a time of laughter and tenderness
A spirit child was present with your eyes and my smile
Suspended in that sanguine moment of ardor
Such is the precious temporal buoyancy of dreams
We are free again to touch and taste what was, but is no more
In my dream I was aware that my rapture was built on memories
Yet I danced on the thorns and thistles that scarred us in flesh
A dream reminded me all malevolence was scattered dust
Allowing me to dwell in the sweetness of passion’s lingering warmth
Knowing peace you dwell elsewhere in a preponderance of caring
A sacred dream returned me to a place our love remains eternal


Frank de Jesus Acosta is a writer and the principal strategist of Acosta & Associates, a California-based consultant group that specializes in community change ventures facilitated by non-profit management, organization capacity-building, fund development, project research/planning/development, and initiative management activities targeting philanthropic, non-profit, government institutions. Acosta is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Acosta’s professional experience includes serving as a Sr. Program Officer with The California Wellness Foundation, as well as executive leadership tenures with the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Downtown Immigrant Advocates (DIA), National Center for Community Change, and the UCLA Community Programs Office. In 2007, Acosta authored a book published by the Arte Publico Press Hispanic Civil Rights Series, University of Houston, “The History of Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos, Cultura Es Cura, Healing Community Violence.”



what do you bear
by Jonathan Heimarck

what do you bear
on the wings of others
and what on your own back
terrible as a shell?

the world
resting on a tortoise
could not see beyond its wish
and would not venture love.

if a wish survived
would it be the one you need
that sturdy face you wake to
crashing awful as the dawn?

if time’s ripe carcass
were just the look today
can it save a single life
a little boy from his gloom?

all this water!
I walked you like a curse
in streaks of wintry anger
on shoulders of boundless pine.


Jonathan Heimarck was born in Chicago on September 4, 1959, to Lois & Ted Heimarck. He counts among his influences Emily Dickinson, Hilda Doolittle, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas—whose poetry his mother Lois read to him aloud while Jonathan was in the womb. He has never pursued publishing his poetry, preferring to share it with poets whose gifts he considers greater than his own. Four of his poems were selected for publication in Four Quarters literary magazine in 2011 or 2012—a river bending sorrow, water strung, morning talk, and the sheet music rain. That is the extent of Heimarck’s previously published works.

Heimarck’s poetry has been variously described as traditionalist, lyrical, and anti-modern. He once described his writing method to friend and fellow poet Marilyn Basel as “taking a bunch of words, like a painter dabs at paint, and rolling them around on his tongue until a line sounds just about right.” As an art form, he sees poetry serving an important function in the human experience—voicing the conscience of each generation in a way unique to the written word.



SacRed...
by Anne Elizabeth Apfel


Our Sacred Trees, Corn, The Honey Bees
Our SacRed Mother....Once Fertile...Lands
Being .....Poisoned as we look away...
Pretending.....We can Live...in the Polluted..
Air and Water...Sun and Snow....
The Mother Laboring....To Breathe..
As we push her to the tipping point....
More Pills....To Cover the pain....we feel
of the Cancers growing in our poisoned body..
Forgetting the Simple life....giving qualities...
Of Life on the EArth...Living With...Her....Story...

Our Sacred Trees, Corn, The Honey Bees
Landing on
Our SacRed Mother....Once Fertile...Lands
Gentle
Being .....Poisoned as we look away...
Thoughts
Pretending.....We can Live...in the Polluted..
Generating...
Air and Water...Sun and Snow....
Authenticity
The Mother Laboring....To Breathe..
Heart Beats
As we push her to the tipping point....
Needing
More Pills....To Cover the pain....we feel
Creation
of the Cancers growing in our poisoned body..
Becomes
Forgetting the Simple life....giving qualities...
Regeneration
Of Life on the EArth...Living With...Her....Story...

SacRed Being...

a life on earth...
Our Sacred Trees, Corn, The Honey Bees
The kind red soul....
Land-ing on
Our SacRed Mother....Once Fertile...Lands
learning to become
Gentle
Being .....Poisoned as we look away...
forgetting they don't remember...
Thoughts
Pretending.....We can Live...in the Polluted..
The note say's please help..
Generating...
Air and Water...Sun and Snow....
She red the...
Authenticity
The Mother Laboring....To Breathe..
help them understand....
Heart Beats
As we push her to the tipping point....
Running out of time...it says...
Needing
More Pills....To Cover the pain....we feel
Can you help?
Creation
of the Cancers growing in our poisoned body..
I Am...
Becomes
Forgetting the Simple life....giving qualities...
To Bee
Regeneration
Of Life on the EArth...Living With...Her....Story...
With the Mother....


Anne Apfel is a Poet and Native Flute Player who lives in Buffalo, New York. Her photography, poetry and story have been featured in Yellow Medicine Review. One of her poems Datura can be found in Kim Shucks' Rabbit and Rose. This poem is in a style she has created and named "Two Voices Falling Into One" The writer listens as she writes to the voices in the wind...adding thought responses of the spirit voices speaking back...Listen for them as you read... The poem can be read as one poem or read between the lines as two or even three separate poems....using one reader or three.