Dane Cervine Writes

Three Poems in Broken Bridge Review

Broken Bridge Review, from Pomfret, Connecticut, published three of my poems in the Vol 3, 2008 edition: Strange Calculus; Magellan's Voyage Around The World; and, Looking Forward. They are each in the short prose format I've come to love:

Strange Calculus

 

The blue BMW took the curve in poor geometry, a straight line, unbending, finding the hypotenuse of the parked Caltrans truck, then the orange-clad worker angling toward the stalled motorist along the roadside, intersected by what remained of the Highway Patrol officer’s black motorcycle, multiplied by the carnage of odds, the equation of benign symmetry less than zero, a negative number—the way trees go on waving in the wind past any calculus.

 

Magellan’s Voyage Around the World

 

When the last biscuit had gone, they scraped the maggots out of the casks, mashed and served them as gruel. Then made cakes out of sawdust soaked with the urine of rats. The rats themselves, as delicacies, had long since been hunted to extinction. But oh!, the wonder of that unknown world, there, on the horizon—pineapple, mangoes, hope—worth any distance, any deprivation.

 

Looking Forward

 

Her grand Papa & Nana sit at breakfast in Madison, Indiana, talk about the latest doctor visit—his pacemaker in need of recalibration—and in her eyes I see how old we seem. But in the next breath, stories of their trip to China, being carried on the backs of elephants—her eyes wide, the world a playground for those old enough to know its mysteries. After, in the parking lot, she spins in the summer rain, arms raised, tongue extended, soaking in every last drop.

A Crack Between Two Worlds: Poetry and the Art of Suffering

I had the pleasure of delivering a talk at the 89th Annual Ina Coolbrith Circle National Poetry Day Banquet on November 1, 2008 in Orinda, California (just east of Berkeley). Given my dual roles as therapist and poet, as well as long-time interest in things spiritual, I was asked to talk about the relationship between suffering and poetry. It is entitled: A Crack Between Two Worlds: Poetry and the Art of Suffering. It includes several poems of mine; if you click on the link below, it will take you to a copy of the talk: 

Download Orinda Key Note 2008 by Dane Cervine

Ina Coolbrith was an early Poet Laureate of California who found poetry late in life. The first meeting of her literary circle was held at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in the autumn of 1919, and has been meeting regularly since then (located now east of Oakland/Berkeley in Orinda California).