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Rising with the Sap

You would not call them blocks, those obscure streets
Where people live. Their driftings trace the hem
Of Manchester. I drove there once at dusk
My windows down, in the sleepy perfume
Of gardens and the insects’ dreamy jaw
And passed a house whose screen porch angled round.
The only lamps yet lit were deeper in.
It seemed a friends’ or family gathering.
A young girl, like a shadow through the screen,
Lifted her chin and tucked her violin.
I never heard the note and so it’s stayed
And lingered with me ever since, like smoke
From homestead stacks or purple lilac haze.
I had the silence of the violin
Before the flourished bow awoke the string.
An art you practice is an art not lost.
Here every season recollects far times
And roads less travelled keep faith with the past.
This Spring, I’ve driven past and watched the smoke
From piled deadwood, smokers, sugar shacks
And felt tradition rising with the sap,
Something that never died alive today.
Look up and read the signs. Our ancient friends
And enemies return. Much farther North,
Scientists watch a pair of mating wolves
That think they keep the sunlit glades alone.
And I myself have caught not one but two
Eagles aloft, at play with altitudes
And circles that don’t touch, while far below,
In full orchestral thunder and white burl,
Negotiating countless crevasses
In massive sides of mammoth granite blocks,
Bate the great waters of the Amoskeag.

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The Two Suns

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the “two suns” are an image of the
separate, but unopposed, powers of Church and State. A related
image appears in Dante’s De Monarchia: the State (the moon),
at its most just, seems to equal the Church (the sun) in glory.

The two chief lights meet forehead to forehead.
Stronger this dawn than twilight- or day-star,
She seems her brother’s equal and the pair
Gaze warmly eye to eye across the red
And snow-white checkered plains, today agreed
To solve between them mankind’s snarled affair.
Two great minds think alike, one just, one fair,
And play chess with our chips of gain and greed.
The moon and sun appear to be two suns.
Today at least, let earth take cues from heaven
And God’s Prince parley with a king of men,
A king of kings, while smoke from censers runs
Upward. And let the chessboard groan with grain,
Priests bless their kings, the people say amen.

.

.

Monika Cooper is an American family woman.

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18 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    “The Two Suns” sonnet flows beautifully with excellent rhyme.

    Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    “Rising with the Sap” is a remarkable poem, and more in the classic modernist style than what we are used to here at the SCP. The poem does not declaim, does not orate, does not attempt to convert or persuade, and avoids the three miseries of meaning, message, and moral. It simply recounts the speaker’s visit by car to an old neighborhood, some of the small things noticed there, and finally a sense or intuitive perception that something is coming back at last. The speaker mentions “tradition,” but there is something here that goes far beyond the cliche meaning of that much-abused word. You have to “Look up and read the signs,” and they are very ominous: “Our ancient friends / And enemies return,” wolves are mating, eagles are circling overhead, while below there is “orchestral thunder” as water crashes on “mammoth granite blocks.”

    These are terrifying images, and make the poem much more than a nostalgic visit to a former residence. The poem seems to take the “via negativa” to where it wants to go. The most notable memory is that of a violin note that is never heard. The most palpable sense is that of smell — the perfume of gardens and the smoke of fires. The poem begins with “blocks” that for the speaker are not there at all, and then ends with those huge “blocks” of granite at Amoskeag Falls.

    There isn’t an iota of preachiness in the poem, not a whiff of gassy earnestness, not a shred of child-friendly Smiley-Face sentiment. All that is said is this: What is coming is coming. It doesn’t even give us the standard and boring warning to “Be prepared.”

    Poems can be frightening. The cool and untroubled perception of the speaker in the face of what is clearly something shattering and soul-wrenching in the near future is like the benumbed tones coming from the Pythia on the tripod.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      Thank you for your words here, Joe. Your reading is excellent and honors my poem. The danger is there but with it the glory and the thrill. And, yes, something “cool and untroubled” hovers above it. I deeply appreciate your thoughts.

      Reply
  3. C.B. Anderson

    To follow up on much of what Joseph has written, these poems rip me apart. All expectations are shattered, and the mind imagines rhymes that don’t exist. This cooper has put together a barrel fit to contain, age and enhance the rarest spirits. The allusions come thicker than the fluid matrix of a mixed-fruit cobbler. Outstanding!

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      “The mind imagines rhymes that don’t exist”: whoa, C. B., so glad it had that effect. Allusions are a kind of rhyme perhaps. I think in them all the time and I know I’m not the only one. (Have you seen Sarah Spivey’s new poem “The Dispossession”? You should look it up, if you haven’t; everyone here should.) Thank you for your wonderful comment. It’s good to be back.

      Reply
  4. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Monika, thank you for two beautifully crafted and thought-provoking poems. Joe has given a wonderful analysis, which highlights the marvel of them beautifully. I will just add that to me, they are multi-layered marvels that appeal on many levels. There’s an air of mystery about both, and (for me) your words tap into something deep in my limbic that stirs a curiosity and a desire to read them again… and again.

    In “Rising Sap” the wolves leap out at me… after the admirably portrayed nostalgic images of the first half of the poem, nature in its raw comes to the fore. I detect a hint of man’s intervention, reminding me of the reintroduction of wolves program. These lines: “Scientists watch a pair of mating wolves / That think they keep the sunlit glades alone” reminds me of our privacy ebbing as new technology progresses.

    For me, “The Two Suns” hints at what little power the people have here on earth when up against two formidable forces in a game they only watch and wonder at. I may be wrong in my interpretation, but that’s the beauty of your poems – they allow the reader a lot of room to think.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      “These lines: “Scientists watch a pair of mating wolves / That think they keep the sunlit glades alone” reminds me of our privacy ebbing as new technology progresses.” Yes, intriguing. We’re watched from every street corner and probably in ways we don’t imagine. Little spy-phones everywhere. I think of that line from the song: “I said: be careful, his bow-tie is really a camera.” Now those cameras are carried in plain sight by “citizen-journalists” of all stripes.

      Appreciate your thoughts on the “The Two Suns” as well. Your angles on both poems are refreshingly unexpected to me and I’m so glad you commented. Thank you!

      Reply
  5. Margaret Coats

    “Rising with the Sap” presents a perceptive reflection on tradition. It’s spring, and people are out looking for sap and starting to process it. That central statement naming the thing that’s rising like sap invites reflection on it. The unheard violin note announces it. “An art you practice is an art not lost.” The season itself recollects (gathers again) far times; the less travelled of roads are the ones that keep faith with the past. The very excursion of the speaker is such a road in search of what can be found. Every detail reveals in an active and in a symbolic way “something that never died alive today.” As usual with your poetry, Monika, the reader too must make the search as well as follow your discoveries. In this poem, the discovery goes on to full orchestral thunder. A good sign if an overpowering one.

    “The Two Suns” brings all into a civic order ideally planned to rule night and day, in the natural institutions of Church and State. The end of the poem ceremonializes the ideal in a splendid and highly desirable picture that can inspire even when not actually observed. Wondrous work to offer this!

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      Thank you, Margaret. You always hear so much of what is there to be heard. Very gratifying: because when a tree falls in the forest it’s with the hope that the complexities of the moment aren’t lost in the sound-waves!

      And, yes, will we ever see Dante’s vision realized? It’s there to give us hope, as my brother once put it, “hope for this life also.” To precede the realization the vision must be shared as widely as possible. Easter morning 2023 I saw the rising sun look across the sky at the setting moon, still almost full, a snowy world between them. And when I read the relevant passage in De Monarchia the memory returned.

      Reply
  6. Daniel Kemper

    An art you practice is an art not lost.

    A great line. Hugely motivational in tough times.

    Very thoughtful poems. Hard to add any praise not spread said. Bravo!

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      Thank you, Daniel. You found the moral (or at least a moral) hidden in plain sight, buried in the middle. It was a cheering song I made up as much for myself as for any fellow pilgrim. So we “keep practicing.”

      Reply
  7. jd

    Monica Cooper, American family woman, you are an amazing poet. Thank you.

    Thank you also to Joseph Salemi for the beautiful exposition and to everyone who shared his or her varied thoughts on these two poems.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      Thank you, jd! I always appreciate your comments. Dr. Salemi’s interpretation was virtuosic.

      Reply
  8. Paul A. Freeman

    Thanks for two wonderful poems, Monica.

    ‘Eagles…at play with altitudes’. What a fantastic image.

    and ‘Two Suns’ had me in more distant realms of the galaxy, on a planet orbiting a binary star, sometime in the future, after mankind has arrived.

    Thanks for the reads.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      Thank you, Paul. The responses to “Two Suns” have been fascinating to read. There is something sci-fi about Dante and even futuristic, or anyway prophetic, at times.

      Reply
  9. Sally Cook

    Monika, you seem to see around corners and through prisms. Thanks for your broad gaze and for what you take in and present to us. In short, thank you for two thought-provoking, wide-ranging poems.

    I am reminded of my mother, another American family woman, who kept violins at hand so she could pick one up to play whenever she felt the urge. I keep a photo of her perched on the arm of an upholstered chair, playing one of them. It keeps me focused, in the way I believe you keep focused.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      That is wonderful about your mother and her violins, Sally. I wrote “Rising with the Sap” to reflect the beauty of New Hampshire and for me homemade music is intrinsic to that. Something drifts up to us from Boston, I think. Thank you for your words. We will both keep our prism-periscope eyes focused and open to beauty. Vision is a gift.

      Reply

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