An Old Note

A couple scraps of paper with some words I wrote while visiting Starbucks a few years ago has been lying on my bookshelf since I rediscovered them recently. I want to throw the paper away, but not the words. So I'll type them here, even though the note doesn't necessarily reflect my current style or perspective. I still like it :)

The world around me seems especially beautiful. It is one of those moment when I sense that the world is awash in wonder and beauty, like a long stream despite debris of ugliness or sordid evil. In the coffee shop, light catches, apricot colored, in the large bowl-like light fixtures. Against the gray wall of windows, a woman's red curl of hair looks like some work of art. The black man on his phone is a living sculpture--dark against the gray glass and behind the black tables. A lovely voice sings meditatively to a guitar's strumming, and the very leaves on the sidewalk are worlds of wonder--their pale undersides covered with a bright river delta of red veins, their snakeskin surface studded with the gems of last night's dew.

It's odd how different days we see different things. And which vision shall we choose to believe?

Limitations

I lie on my back
in the mostly deserted
November park.
Sun beats red against
my closed eyelids.
On opening them, the sky
is fantastically blue--
blue-bright beyond dimension
until a needle and thread
of jet tells lens how to focus,
tells brain how to read the sky,
guess at distance, adjust for glare.

Watching the jet trail dissolve
over my patch of blue, I notice
floaters in my left eye, clear circles
(like cells under a microscope)
in fixed configuration, sliding, always,
away toward the side of sight.

We are always looking, aren't we,
through our own lenses? Watching
through the floaters in our eyes. Listening
through the tinnitus in our ears.
We get nothing straight . . .
only a million refractions
of glory.

Winter Gardening

It is still winter--sharp, dry
winter of the acidic wind,
coldest February yet.
Everything is breaking:
the furnace,
the doorbell,
focus, and
our delicate peace.
Veterans say this is normal
for the time of year.

Still . . .
stepping into the warm hallway,
small voices call my name;
small arms reach for hugs.

Perhaps we are all
like larkspur seeds,
enduring our freeze
to later flame our brilliant blues,
our double pinks,
our triangled spires of blossom.

Endings

I love this place, this corner of "forgottonia" where my family has lived for five generations. When I revisit the long gray stretches of winter fields with bins and bare trees silhouetted in the afternoon light, when night falls and I drive home with the black miles around me and distant strings of orange or yellow farmstead lights necklaced across the horizon, I feel grounded in a way that no other place duplicates. There is a steadiness and rhythm here: spring into summer into fall into winter into spring, again--with the same changes of foliage and sky. The earth changes its clothes, but it is the same earth, the same body underneath. This is a most comforting thing.

But on the human level, there is profound change and decay. My brother and I paused on our walk today (a short one, due to a bitter wind) to examine an old sign post just down from my mother's house. It stands sturdily, but embraced by a young tree's branches. Grass has totally overtaken the corner the signs once marked. Not long before my parents moved our family back to this area, authorities closed the train crossing which gave the corner purpose, choosing to maintain only two ways across the tracks that split the village in half. A good move, and one I appreciate, as it hugely diminished traffic past the house that would become our home. But in the years after the move, we watched that bit of abandoned road turn to grass and disappear before our eyes.

We also watched a house just down the road move from habitation to collapse. Soon after moving to the area, my sister and I met a blond boy with a dog named Oreo who lived in that house. After a while the boy and his family moved away. Eventually the front porch door hung open over sturdy red steps. We could see holes under the eaves. Now nothing remains but a pile of rubble topped, last I noticed, with a bit of the peak of the roof. Around here, you can watch a house and road disappear bit by bit, year by year, right in front of your eyes.

From the kitchen window, I look across the field to a ruin of bricks around one tall, definitive chimney--my grandfather and my mother's old high school. Swifts live in the chimney, flying from it to grace periwinkle evenings with their twittering songs and little paddling wings. From Mom's front porch--the part of the house facing the village rather than the fields, I see the shell of my grandparents' church, looming above the neighbor's little house. In earliest memories of visits to my grandparents', I vaguely recall a dim, high-ceilinged interior with big wooden chairs on a dais. My mother remembers that a cat once wandered in during a service and sat in the wooden chair reserved for the pastor. He, being a cat-lover, simply chose the chair beside it and let the cat enjoy its seat.

I don't know where I'm going with this post. Perhaps it is the melancholy of knowing my visit to western Illinois draws to a close--but I feel this evidence in front of my eyes (I've grown up with this evidence) that the lives we build and the things we build don't necessarily last. The seasons with their beauty and trouble will roll around again, but maybe not for us, maybe not for us in this place . . .

November Evening

I am miles from tranquility--
young enough to feel
the almost adolescent angst
still lurking in my bones,
to sense shivers of rage
when things just don't seem right,
to run from a forest of fears.

But I am old enough to recall
grace after grace--kind
soul sustenance about the roots
of bright or darkling days.
I've seen the universe pierced
with point upon point of light.

A Few Thoughts

As I move through the rhythms of a richly blessed existence, I find myself suddenly reminded of the fragility of life. One friend's unspeakable tragedy occurs against the backdrop of several friends' joys . . . joys that could quickly (and seemingly, senselessly) turn into the same gaping loss. Life is a wonder,  a small blossom of flame full of intricate brilliance and energy, vulnerable to any sudden gust. Nearly every day, I watch little children run into their parents' arms, watch the flash of delight between the large and small beings, witness something warm and sure and precious. I hear laughter, but just now, the air also seems full of Rachel weeping.

I walk to work, noting the handful of leaves still attached to the end of each branch of an almost bare ornamental maple. For the first time in years I feel anchored, present with the turn of the earth. Rather than feeling uneasily left behind as seasons change, or struggling to catch myself on details beyond a personal fog, I feel pretty much all here. Which is beautiful. But I find it difficult to express my profound gratitude and wonder over finding myself in this place. It is new and tender, and perhaps I fear it may fly away. Then, too, I cannot say how marvelous this is without acknowledging the anguish of before.

Someone has said that we must learn to hold the feather and the rock, because both are present in our lives. Joy and sorrow mix, certainties and uncertainties walk together, presence and absence and essence mingle in inscrutable ways. I play with students. We yell jubilantly. We chase over the blue and yellow play equipment. At the back of my heart, from a long way away, I feel the crying.

Ancestral Obituaries

The old type
tucks the dead
neatly in their coffins:
church member,
devoted matriarch,
model citizen gone
in gentle repose.

But we know better,
we sons and daughters
same as many
a parent gone by.
We're all
the molding
and the glass--
the colored shine,
the weird shadows.

Better, I think,
something like this:
she had her cracks,
and sometimes
the light spilled through.

After Eucatastrophe

My hands are suddenly full of rainbows,
so full they begin to spill over, so
I fold up the bottom of my long shirt
like a little girl, and pour the rainbows
into the pocket and carry them close.

What do you do with a shirt full of rainbows?
Share them, surely . . . but the world
is so loud and I have learned to be alone.
Do you know what makes rainbows?
Storms and sun, oil slicks and garden hoses.

In the sky just now, a rainbow!
Pale-bright behind silver drops
beyond my yellow lamp.
A secret too good to keep, this rainbow!
This audacious trick of the light.

My hair dripping rainbows, my eyes leaking rainbows,
rainbow pieces running down my arms,
I survey the muddy world.
The ark is rough against my back.
I wonder where to begin.

Thoughts on a Sunday Night

There is a part of me that wants to love everyone--to throw open my arms and draw them in, to understand them, to appreciate what is beautiful, to shield what is broken, to deal kindly with what is weak, to delight in what is good. But there is another part of me that is itself blemished, hurt, and angry. My choice of what to do with that self will affect my ability to demonstrate love. Will I hide? Bully through? Deny? Will I blame others or cloak myself in a wounded identity? I would rather let that frightened, craving soul gape for the sure thing of God's comfort--and doing that--be able to lavish on others what I, myself, have first received.

Lasts

This sunset, this last breath of summer, suggests,
surely there comes a wisdom in learning goodbye . . .

Too Much Thinking

There are times I wish for a summer storm sheet of tears--a warm torrent stilling
of these chalk calculations' ceaseless reconfiguration across the surface of my mind.

Tears are tiring in a completely different sort of way--empty
as air cleansed of humidity to slowly refill with rhythms:
shoes on gravel,
crickets by bricks,
the humble drumming
of a drip and a can . . .

Oh, bother

The problem with becoming more aware of my opinions and feelings is that I also have to learn when and where and how to voice them or not.

Poets and Poetry

I have impressions of poets (and their kin) circling my brain tonight: Denise Levertov's Caedmon, called from his loneliness into the surprise of words and belonging; Jane Kenyon and Sylvia Plath, who both felt depression, both married fellow poets, yet sang quite different songs; and Richard Wilbur's mother-in-law, Edna Ward, who was not a poet, and who died with "the thin hand reaching out, the last word love." I am tired, have a weekend trip starting tomorrow, and am (unfortunately) no student of these poets, anyway, so I'm not going to say anything profound about them. Still, as one of their very little poet sisters, I am fascinated by their examples of what we do with our poetry and our lives.

In his poem "Cottage Street, 1953," Wilbur describes a moment of Edna Ward's hospitality. Though what we see of her life seems common place enough, she lives 88 years of "grace and courage." Her guest Sylvia Plath's tortured life stands in stark contrast within the poem. Plath (who ultimately took her own life) is "condemned to live" for now. She "Shall study a decade, as she must, / To state at last her brilliant negative / In poems free and helpless and unjust" (lines 26-28).  This characterization of her work haunts me. How terrible for one's life work to embody a "brilliant negative." (As a side note: I don't know how fair Wilbur's judgment of Plath is, and I feel empathy for her suffering and sadness that she lost her battle--one that I know is brutal.)

I don't want to state any "brilliant negative." Nor do I want to stand aside from humanity in general. Some conventional knowledge paints artistic types as extreme individualists, a bit at odds with ordinary folk. Poets can be observers and recorders of the outer world or cartographers of the self. But what I'd like for myself and my poetic endeavors, is to bring a kind of hospitality in the midst of fractured life. I'd like the general effect to be some kind of knitting together. (That was a horrible, vague sentence, but it's too late at night for a manifesto.) If I had to choose between a life of loving engagement with others and the ability to create poems, I hope I would choose the former. But surely poems themselves can be a thin hand reaching out and words whispering love, love in a thousand sharp or subtle ways.

Going / Back

The present, is it like performing a
recital piece? Or like the way one knits
a scarf? Lithe armor wards the cold away,
each link a piece of all the whole, no slits
to break the one long thread of notes or yarn.
So much the same, with yet a difference--
a song must not be stopped, must always yearn
inside each dancing now, the dissonance
of error slid from mind already drenched
in this next moment. Knitting is not so.
One old, forgotten stitch means long rows wrenched
to crimped string till the cloth is whole. Each soul's
agape with stitches dropped and melodies
and hunger for the hope that never dies.

Something

You can do a little--

add a little understanding,

a little bald-faced tenderness,

a little pale blue, pinking-sheared beauty--

in the midst of a general unraveling.

Recounting Blessings

Tonight I am grateful for home and kindness, and for the ability to recall good memories.

Have any particular blessings caught your notice lately? I'd love to read about any you wish to share here!

Signs

My headlights illuminated the unfamiliar sign planted at the end of the grassy bank at my childhood home. It was large, disposable, and semi-sturdy like signs waved outside urban stores advertising tax filing services or store closing sales: "EVERYTHING MUST GO!" Only, these words proclaimed an upcoming sale of land: "Tract 1 of the ____________ Farm. For sale by auction." At first glimpse, the sign seemed a curiosity; I regarded it with little except interest. Oh, that's the sign my sister was talking about. It wasn't the only sign. Another greeted me as I returned from a trip to town the next day. Heading back to my residence in the city, a third bade me farewell as I passed the strip of woods that harbors the place which inspired this blog's name.  Each new sighting reminded me of the oddity of seeing my grandparents' farm (identified by their names) paired with the words "for sale by auction."

Tract 1 isn't the whole farm. It includes the sale of outbuildings next to my mother's home and fields behind her house (not the house itself). Anticipating these losses, I find myself wanting to keep actual pieces of the home place. I claimed a carved bit of woodwork in Mom's basement, removed from a door frame after a past renovation. I want a piece of the barn, which my family anticipates the future owner will tear down and bury. I wish I could somehow keep a tangible piece of the field behind the house.  I don't tend to get terribly attached to "stuff," and when space became a solace to me after my dad's death, my taste in decorating took a spartan turn. When asked by family if I wanted anything of my grandparents after their deaths, I maintained that the memories I could keep and fashion into words were my best treasure. But sometimes you want something you can hold in your hand. And words can be illusive. Even writing now, I feel that tired flatness which says, "This is too much and too close." I feel that a whole collection of poems might catch enough to paint a true picture. An entire book might capture the sunshine and shade, the underfoot-and-up-through-heart quality of my life in those places.

The field, the barn--those are my holy places. More than in any church building, in them I sensed and sought God's nearer-than-breath presence. They were places of dreams--some realized, some half-bloomed, some dangling and broken yet. And it is hard to watch the last mist of dreams burn as the day's sun grows hot, even when the day is good and the change is right. I don't have anything profound or universally significant with which to make sense of this post. Though my mind could certainly find an appropriate passage of scripture or devotional thought, I think I'm content to allow my heart to catch up. It is somewhat sad right now and uncertain, with a great deal of sorting to be done.

Deep Down Things

the scent of spring in a March snow
the first red blush in the timber
a sudden remembrance that life can be sweet
a sister's voice, a sister's understanding

Three Feelings

The burn of exploration: a footstep in a field of snow, a prism rainbow on the palm.

A wash of sadness: water colors dripping, a blue hole, a long rain.

Wonder unfolding: a letter from a beloved, a butterfly drying, a kite

Your turn, reader! How do you "see" emotions?

Note to Self: Don't Worry

If fear could fill an ocean,
if shame could drown a sea,
if darkness were a garment
and sleep, reality,
if tears could bring no solace,
and words could not relieve,
if hope had run off laughing,
had snickered in her sleeve,
if  (after all) the earth were flat,
and I fell off the brink--
then after all the all of that,
it wouldn't make Him blink.
It wouldn't faze Him, wouldn't change
the elemental tug;
Not chaos nor a dread routine
can stultify God's love.