Phoenix
Gratitude List:
1. All those naked ladies tiptoeing through people’s gardens right now.
2. Katydids
3. Friends who take care of me. Thanks, Nancy and Abigail!
4. Mosquitoes. Okay, not really. But think of all the wonderful people they feed! Bats and swifts and swallows and. . . So yes, mosquitoes.
5. Night sounds of August
6. Growing older, growing up
May we walk in Beauty!
I used to tie myself in knots with finding the perfect word or phrase for a poem, working and reworking ideas and sounds until things began to sound like something manufactured in a plastics factory. Then, in November, when I decided I needed to loosen up or let my Poet die a quiet death, I found myself spewing random verbiage all over the place. This was a good thing: my Poet survived.
Lately, the pendulum has begun to swing back again. I don’t plan to let myself get knotted into that editorial straitjacket, but I do want to add a little more deliberation to my poetry again. Here is a revision I worked up on my July first poem. It’s not significantly different; the biggest change is in the line breaks. I wanted to create more intention to the rhythm of the lines, with a sudden shift in the final stanza. I think it works. I’d be glad of any feedback you have about the differences between the poems.
These are the Days
These are the days when I become
a quiet rock, a quivering leaf,
an ear of lichen listening to the stones grow.
The words have wandered off on tiptoe,
eloquence eludes me, and all my sentences
begin with the word So.
So the wind will sing in my sun-rimed feathers
but my own story waits like a seed in the earth,
like a dream that must rise through mud, a bubble,
the nymph of a damselfly crawling through centuries
up the stalk of a smooth green reed
to be born to the clear blue light.
There is a roaring in my ears
like the sound of a newborn grief or rage.
But it’s only the lazy hum of summer,
of fireflies clicking their aching rhythms
into the velvet indigo of solstice,
communing with the waxing moon.
Another day I’ll dawn,
but for now I will sink
slowly into the pond
with Grandmother Moon
and leave my message with the fish.
Gratitude List:
1. Variety
2. Revision
3. Sweaters and scarves in August
4. Balance
5. Partnership
May we walk in beauty.
Mockingbird Says:
“Protect your nestlings with every ounce of courage and ferocity you can muster. Whether it be Monsanto or a kitty cat, zip in in a whir of flashy feathers and nip them on the nether regions–just like this! Aha!”
–Oh, Mockingbird! Yes. I do get your point, and so, unfortunately, does little Miss Winky. Poor Kitty Cat.
Gratitude List (the typical 5, plus a few bonus from an amazing weekend with my gang of college friends and their children):
1. Lasting friendships, powerful in their intentionality and their serendipity
2. Scott’s rock and sand collection
3. Awakeners
4. A happy gang of kids, riding bikes, playing games, swimming, giggling, sharing jokes. . .
5. Being part of the cold and broken hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
6. Late late night conversations around the fire, sharing the bitter/sweets
7. Walking out of the labyrinth
8. This moment: We were sitting around in the shade yesterday morning discussing shame and the impact it has on our parenting, and how it is used in schools. Before long three of the children had gathered with us in the circle, and they started telling us their own ideas about effective and ineffective behavior management in school, about what seems fair and right and what is a violation of their sense of self.
9. Taking pictures of the fire with Luke
10. Africa House, where we stayed
May all beings be blessed.
Mockingbird says:
“Listen well, and your own speech will be enriched.”
Gratitude List:
1. The trees, those people who grasp the Earth between their toes and grow down toward the heart of the mother, who dream their leaves and needles and nuts and flowers and fruit into the air, who breathe for us.
2. The spiders, those people who fling themselves with abandon into the air and drift on their own silk to a new anchoring place, who make the connections, who spin and weave.
3. The birds, those feather people who dash from tree-branch to tree-branch or rest on a hammock of sky–treading wind currents, whose very speech is music, who range in size from the hummingbird smaller than my open hand to the eagle whose wingspan is greater than my own.
4. Margaret Atwood, who is tearing at my heart with her book, The Year of the Flood.
5. Fresh corn for supper tonight.
May we walk in Beauty.
I know I have already posted a Gratitude List for today, but,
MONARCH! I finally saw one today.
I have been feeling weary and depressed about the news of monarch decline, worried that someday I will be telling my children, “Remember the orange butterflies? The monarchs? You saw those before they became extinct.” The word is bad. Pesticides and herbicides here in the US coupled with deforestation in their wintering grounds in Mexico are depleting the populations at an alarming rate.
And part of me has been feeling hopeful, too, like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. Like maybe I can be sincere enough and hopeful enough that they will at least appear here in this place, lay eggs, grow fat and healthy on our organic nectars, and develop strength for the next generation to journey south. And one appeared today in the milkweed patch that we keep for their welcome.
She is female, of course. I don’t know that for a fact, but I am willing it to be true, so that she will lay as many eggs as her little body can manage. And I will tend them with hopeful energy.
This is not the one I saw today.
Gratitude List:
1. Inventiveness and building creativity. Camp Invention for my oldest boy: “Camp Invention is the complete opposite of swimming lessons,” Ellis said. Swimming lessons were a bust. Swimming lessons were labeled Torture. “I love Camp.”
2. Healing: Winky the cat is getting back to her old self, grooming herself, eating, asking for petting. This is the second year she’s gone through a June-July malaise.
3. This weather: I think I am getting over a malaise of my own. Crisp, clear mornings, cool breezes, blue sky with fluffy clouds. Bring it on.
4. The lovely *Ping* that canning jars make as they seal. That’s the sound of satisfaction with a completed task. Even when it’s tomato sauce, and the jars are upside-down on the counter, there is often a muffled *ping* that announces their completion.
5. All the people who help to make the ongoing story of this farm possible: Jon Weaver-Kreider, the intrepid farm crew, friends and grandparents who care for the children, Tracey who cleans the house, customers who treasure good fresh food, people who support local and sustainable businesses. I get by with a little help from my friends.
May we walk in Beauty.
The summer has caught me up in its tangled strings. Throughout the day, ideas for my gratitude list pop into my head. I try to grab and secure them, but someone has left the lid off the pot while making this batch of popcorn, and they zing away before I can grasp them.
I’m not too fussed about it. This is the nature of summer. As the cooler weather returns and daily demands of the farm settle into more predictable rhythms, I’ll get the lid back on that wanton kettle of my brain.
Perhaps I have written this before: My friend Sarah and I have talked about how perhaps something about the gratitude list ought to be a little difficult, how for those of us who live fairly closely with the natural world, it would be pretty easy to rattle off a list of five natural things every day, and this might defeat the purpose a little. This is a temptation for me. On the other hand, I want my gratitude lists, like poetry, to carry several layers of meaning, as I hope this one will.
Gratitude List:
1. Hummingbird: Yesterday when I came down from harvest, I let myself drop underneath the poplar tree. I lay there watching the sun glowing through the pollen-golden wings of a tiger swallowtail wandering among the leaves, when suddenly there she was, wings a-blur in a patch of blue between the branches. I don’t think I’ve ever observed a hummer in flight from directly below before. She was a double fan of pure motion and light. A lemniscate. No wonder the Hopi and Navajo see her as the messenger between the worlds. If I see her again today, what message shall I send?
2. Toad: Yesterday I was with a crew harvesting tomatoes, while Holly and Mary Jo were picking squash. Suddenly, Holly started to whoop and holler. A few moments later, as we were loading our tomato bins into the back of the truck, Holly came over, her hands cupped together. I thought she was wringing out a wet rag: water was streaming from between her fingers. Instead, she was gently holding the largest toad I have ever seen, and it was performing its natural response to being picked up by a human. I’m still a little stunned that it could hold that much liquid inside it. Toads have been a watchful presence in my writing this past winter, so it felt like a doubly good omen.
3. Pears: Driving the tractor down the hill, I noticed the pears shaping up beautifully on the trees in the orchard. I can almost taste them.
4. Tomatoes: Tomatoes satisfy on so many levels. I have my first six quarts of 2013 sauce on the counter ready to go to the basement shelves for the season. Fresh salsa with cilantro and lime and hot peppers. But right now, the thing I love so much is the wanton variety of their shapes and colors when you put them in a bin together. I didn’t get a shot of yesterday’s bins, but the one attached to this post looks almost the same.
5. Rilke: “I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.” Rob Breszny challenged his readers to write their own permutation. Here’s mine: ” I am circling around the Core, around the Source, and I have been circling since my thousand times began, and I still do not know whether I am a watchful toad, or a wordless prayer, or a cool wind above the fields.”
May we walk in beauty.
To put in the Who-Are-You-And-What-Have-You-Done-With-My-Children? File:
1. This morning, the one who looks like my four-year-old child named Joss, woke up and got himself dressed entirely by himself. Without fussing.
2. This evening, the Joss one ate his supper without asking me to feed him. Without fussing. And it was soup! (see #3)
3. For supper I served eggplant soup. Both of these people who look like my children said it was the best thing ever, and could I make it every evening?
All I can figure is that there must be faeries about.
This is a photo from yesterday: Joss eating slices of raw onion. When he was two, I left him in the market room by himself for a few minutes, and when I came back, he was sitting on the floor munching on a raw leek. He ate at least four that day, maybe five. He still likes raw onions, though now he needs to have a cup of COLD water handy, and he does sometimes get a little overwhelmed by them. Today was the first that he showed an interest in eggplant.
Gratitude List:
1. Thunder
2. Jon Weaver-Kreider
3. Today’s picnic lunch. The boys decided that we were having a family picnic up at their garden, to eat what they harvested. Hot as blazes, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
4. Eggplant soup
5. Thumbs.
May we walk in Beauty.
(for Bret and Sue, in memory of Eli)
the tiny bird needed
someone with the fierce
and tender heart of Buddha
to scoop green feathers
into cupped palms
someone who knew
–oh, how you knew–
to neither cringe at dying
nor waste hope for living
but only to watch
to feel the quivering heartbeat
to listen for the feeble chirrup
to look into the white-ringed eye
to say I am here
to feel the slide of feathers
as wings took the shape
of your palms
and filled them with air
with a whole world
light as ashes
scattered over sunset
Gratitude List:
1. How tidy the bank looks after I have mowed
2. Sweat
3. Root Beer Floats
4. Golden tomatoes that look like the sun
5. Hummingbird
May we walk in Beauty.
I wish I had had my camera. I wish I could draw well and fast. Instead, I’ll have to try to give you the picture in words.
It’s a really hot day on the beach. The elements are all doing their elemental best to claim the day: sand, air, sun and waves. You have to yell to be heard above the pounding of the surf, and the tide is rising fast, claiming sneakers and chairs and sand pails faster than their startled owners can drag them in. One dad gets a bright idea to stave off the loss of his space by building a sea wall, and digs a fortification in front of his family’s umbrella: a deep hole with a wall on the side to the ocean. Suddenly kids from all over have gotten into the act, digging and fortifying.
My boys ran down with their cousins to join in. Parents came, too, and we built drip castles all along the line of the wall. And the wall held against the tide, giving the umbrella people another forty minutes of time before the hole behind the wall filled with fresh cold sea water, and the children went from castle-builders to merfolk, dabbling in the pool they’d created and covering themselves with yellow foam.
Gratitude List:
1. Family time at the beach
2. Mama Ocean
3. Watching Joss devour every kind of seafood he could get his hands on: clams, flounder, shrimp, scallops.
4. Coming home to Jon
5. Myotis lucifugus, the little brown bat. The first one to roost in the barn we called Otis because it seemed more likely that a solitary bat would be male. The friend who was roosting with him today we will call Lucy, in hopes that they might be a breeding pair. Fly well, small ones.
May we walk in Beauty.
Mockingbird Chronicles 