a simple blade of grass

The Welsh poet, Leslie Norris

Absence

Have you noticed that I haven't posted for a while?

My friend Michael Martin Murphey did. He asked what that means for subscribers. I had to admit that I’ve not felt like I had much constructive to say lately. Every time I sit down to write, what comes out are rants, wild pronouncements, mostly about what’s wrong with the world.

That’s no way to treat what's supposed to be a boost, right?

So for now, I've paused paid subscriptions to Loose Cannon Boost. I like giving value, especially when I’m being paid.

All of you who've paid to subscribe to the Loose Cannon Boost have helped me produce my collection of treasured cowboy songs, Cowboy Sutra. Again, thank you.

I hope to continue sending out the occasional Boost, but they'll be free for the time being-- little kites flung into the wind, each with scribbles on its face.

The Magic of Spring

Today, I’d like to share a poem and short feature Taki Telonidis and I produced for public radio from interviews I conducted with the great Welsh poet and our Utah neighbor, Leslie Norris. Leslie passed away in the spring of 2006 and this aired then as a memorial to him.

Listening to his words again evokes the wonders of springtime.

It also makes me nostalgic for my friendship with the man who wrote the poem.

A Blade of Grass

LISTEN NOW: CLICK HERE

In the cool light of rare perfect days

Air possessed such clarity he thought

Of Eden. On these mornings the world

Was newly made. Blackbirds sang their early songs

From the laundry hedges; and the boy

Heard them each time for the first time.

Alone in the singing and shining, he walked

The disused railway lines to the Donkey Tip.

He sat cross-legged on the short grass,

Intent, still, staring into a sky

Without clouds until he saw the world

Transformed into its motes, the visible element

Of his meditation. That done, he pulled a stem

Of brief grass, releasing it from its green tube

With a little squeak. He nibbled its sweetness.

— Leslie Norris

We often talked about our mutual love of dogs. In one of my last visits, Leslie introduced me to his recently adopted Welch Terrier, Tansi. He told me Tansi would likely be his last dog. I remember how he looked out the window and with some emotion confided that bringing the rescue in to his and his wife Kitty’s home might mean they would not be able to move back to their ancestral home of Wales as they had always planned.

As it turned out, Tansi outlived Leslie.

Leslie was beloved in his new home of Provo. At his funeral, I met many of his friends. One of these was the esteemed Utah painter, Brian Kirshisnik, whose painting of Leslie as a young man I've shared below. As I remember, Brian and a few other artists constructed the beautiful casket Leslie Norris was laid to rest in.

Brian Kirshisniks painting: “Young Welsh Poet with a Dancing Dog”1994, oil on panel, 60”X48” used by permission of artist

I’ve always wondered what drew Leslie Norris--a poet much valued in his homeland-- to settle in Provo, Utah and to teach well into his eighties at Brigham Young University. He told me once how as a young man he'd ridden his bicycle to attend a poetry reading above a village bookstore and there met Dylan Thomas for the first time. Leslie had lots of stories about Thomas and years later was asked to recite at the unveiling of the Dylan Thomas Memorial at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Why Provo?

I got an inkling of an answer when I read an obituary written by Leslie's friend and publisher, Meic Stephens,for the Royal Society of Literature, of which Norris was a Fellow.

“Leslie was criticized in both Wales and England for a lack of social awareness and avoidance of adult relationships, for seeing everything through the eyes of a boy, and for his conventional techniques. But in Mormon country, despite not being a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, he was their laureate. And so he stuck to his last, choosing to write as an outsider, content to remain always ‘at the edge of things’, that mysterious land where the familiar and the wondrous meet, and where his poems and stories had their abundant source.”

His young spirit flourished in this new world.