The Things I Forgot to Tell Mara on the Phone Yesterday
and Some Things I told Marie in Email. . .

“and see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,”
–Jane Hirshfield

I was such a pleasure to take a little walk
inside your head with you
while this was sprouting,
these ferns uncoiling their sacred spirals
into the dappled light of the woods.

I forgot to ask you about the plural of tanka.
I think I will say tankas,
though to conjugate the Japanese in Latin,
to write many tanki,
would delight my soul.

I forgot to tell you how Ellis says
he knows the language of birds,
that the goldfinch told him
from the branches of the Poet-Tree
that it likes my poems.

I wanted to tell you about the Valley where I was going,
the place where my ancestors first lived in this country,
the way I feel as I am driving toward that place,
like a magnet draws me onward.
How I have decided not to put
the Weaverland Cemetery poem
into my collection.  How the demons in it have been exorcised.

I forgot to tell you that I am writing a new book,
forgot to ask how yours is progressing.

I love the streams where consciousness flows,
says my friend Bev.  I wanted to tell you
how I am learning to follow that stream,
especially this month, how I want to break words open
and see how they work from the inside,
the way Leigh does, and you do.

My sister quotes an expert in her book:
Take everything here as intended.
This is not fiction;
still, it is intended.

You will notice that I left out the but in that last sentence.
I suppose that still is a cop-out, but
I’ll keep it there and move along.

There is a scar on my belly
where my children were born into the world.
I have worked so hard on myself about that scar,
mostly remembering that it is a new opening,
a sacred space opened up for new life to enter the world.
When I don’t catch myself,
I find myself thinking of it as a reminder of my failure,
questioning, always questioning whether I tried hard enough
to bring my children to birth in the natural way.
Next time I start to fall into that chasm,
I will think of my proud flesh.

I have not worded the journey
in quite this way before.

Now that it comes down to it,
most of what I am telling you now
is things I have thought about today,
remembering the sound of your voice,
the delicate silences in your phrasing,
the poetry you weave in the music of your voice.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Oh, William Stafford:  “I place my feet with care in such a world.”
2.  Elderberry syrup and brandy.  I will not catch that cold.  I will not catch that cold.  And I will be very happy while I am not doing it.
3.  One step closer.  The day was filled with the magic of stepping closer to becoming.
4.  The dream of Grandma’s house.  For years, it was my most commonly recurring dream theme.  After the house was torn down in 2005, I stopped dreaming about it.  Yesterday, we drove through Blue Ball to the Weaverland Valley, past the garage that is now where her grand old Victorian house used to stand.  We visited her grave, and the graves of my uncles.  When we got home, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion, like something was calling me into sleep, and when I slept I walked through her house again, as always discovering rooms that I had never known were there.  This time I found things I had written years ago, found pieces of myownself that I had forgotten.
5.  Julia Butterfly Hill.

May we walk in beauty.