The Artist

. . . the more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. ~ Vincent van Gogh


"I love you more than you can know,"
Grandma brushes my hair from my face
at our final greeting.


And still, at night I sleep beneath
thousands of tiny white stitches
run from needles held
by Grandma and her friends
on Tuesdays in Arkansas.


I curl beneath scenes of appliqué children,
each with a companion: the worms in a corn can,
the kite, the frog in the pocket,
the Bible with the girl in Sunday best--
the indignities of sleep swathed
beneath a drool-stained hem,
beneath thread-bare trousers
and raveling dresses
whose soft fabric was salvaged
by one who never forgot the Depression.


Isn't this what we ask for--to leave,
with help from our own Tuesday Ladies,
some substance of our love?

A Farewell

On Thanksgiving weekend, I learned that a significant portion of the original Our Place will be sold on Friday. (For a description of the place for which this blog is named, see here.) The physical Our Place is very dear to me, and I'm grateful that I managed a super quick trip back to say goodbye today. Perhaps I may find words to share about this. For now, a few pictures:

 

 

 

Mother

In snapshot depictions
of our family's life, I see
so much reading:
Grandpa and The Roly-Poly Pudding,
The Hobbit and my dad.
My sister reads to me. I read to my brother.
The one who does not appear to read
is Mom--who read us a chapter
every evening, year upon year, unremarkable
as a hug goodnight.


Also, she was behind the camera.

No Island is an Island

"You're complicating my life,"
an offhand remark at work--
the speaker not knowing,
and not to blame,
that I hear in the words
confirmation
of my darker fears:
I am a complication.
On balance,
I am more trouble
than I am worth.




I suppose, we all complicate
each others' lives.
Our root systems snarl,
fibrous root to spider-lace tip,
around each other.
You can't--
you cannot--
uproot yourself
without taking from others.




As a creationist spoke
of Antediluvian forests, I pictured
strange trees knit by tangle
of root and branch
into islands riding
a broad warm sea.
In such a case,
complication
holds life together.

Take Care, Now

8:20 and agonizing
over engaging my first towing company
for a car which I suspect
has given up the ghost--
but the young driver is courteous,
friendly, even. The winter
was so short, he kind of misses it.
He carries food in a grocery sack
and water in a gallon jug because
he's seen how bad it can get:
a car up a tree, one under a drift,
and the human gore that drunken
"assholes, excuse my language"
leave behind.
He's witnessed, also, the aftermath
of the quaking blur
between good and bad:
the woman in tears, not from
injury to self or car, but because
"that car was in her backseat,
and she'd just dropped
her little kids off at daycare."

We both admire the magnolias.
He would like one in his front yard.
The route is confusing;
he doubles back and I,
never good at geography
(local or otherwise),
lose my way walking home, later.
A woman at a bus stop
points me in the right direction,
explains two or three times
until she is satisfied that I understand:
"Take care, now."

Nature and Nurture

When I trek to the bird feeder,
following my own footprints
the few yards through yesterday's snow,
my heart retraces other paths with other persons:

Dad's momma, halfway up an Ozark hill,
with her post-Great Depression blend
of the frugal and generous, scraping
every last scrap of leftover food stuff
into the ditch, for whatever creature comes by--

Mom's dad, concocting meals for dogs and cats,
calves and cardinals and finches--
each feeding following another
in the measured pace of the farmer's aging gait.

I come in, and think of coffee break--
something sweet and warm salvaged
from the rigors of the day.

Hero

Illness and meds leave him, sometimes,
confused, like one half-waking.
"He always was your hero," he mutters.
She pauses, surprised: "Who?"
"John Kennedy"--a bit resentful, jealous.
Despite the ether of life going on
with its going away, she laughs,
tender, amused--touches his shoulder:
"You're my hero."





[Editorial note: Yes, this post is a week early.]

Old Pictures

I have been looking at some old photographs which I scanned earlier this summer. Here are two featuring my dad as an infant with my grandparents.

 This photo of Grandma and Dad feels to me like such a genuine glimpse into a moment in this young family's life. Grandma was small as a child, and appeared younger than she was even as a woman. She recounted how she used to answer the door of her own home as a married woman, only to be asked by a stranger to go and get her mother.

Grandpa is wearing his World War II uniform in this picture. He was a "flight instructor by instrument" in the Air Corps. In their last year or two, Grandma and Grandpa loved to tell us stories about Dad as a baby and their life on military bases.

Watching

In memory that is not my own,
but my mother's, I am
a tiny girl toddling down
the darkened hall to watch
the rumblings of a nighttime
train, on miniature pilgrimage
between sleep and sleep.

I wonder about that small child
I have forgotten (beyond a few
blurred memories-of-memories,
a few yet definite emotions)--
how she dared to rise after bedtime
and watch through a window,
alone, unaware of fond eyes
remarking her singular joy.

Moments with Grandma

[I composed this several years ago, when Grandma was still living. I ran across it today, while looking for something else, and thought I'd post it here.]

“You are—?” She leans toward me, apologetic. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a stroke and can’t remember things.” She has dementia, actually. Unfortunately, she kind of knows this.

 “That’s okay, Grandma,” I say brightly, “I don’t mind telling you. I’m Elena. Your daughter Susan is my mom.”

“Elena?” testing the word, she finds it a little difficult.

I try to catch her slipping memory. “My sister and I live up north.” (That’s how she thinks of Chicago.)

“Ah!” her face brightens. “You’re the one who sings!”

“No,” I say, trying to act like this struggle for identity is a part of all interesting and polite conversations. “That’s my sister. I play the violin.”

“That’s right.” She is happy now. For the moment, we are both found.

“Elena,” uncertain jubilation brightens her voice. She thinks she has remembered, but isn’t sure.

“That’s right, Grandma!”

* * *

I’m visiting Grandma in her home—the farm house where my mom, and Grandpa before her, grew up. A striking city girl from Wisconsin, Grandma moved here in the early years of her marriage. I’ll sit with her a few hours while my aunt, Grandma’s primary caregiver, does chores.

 “Can you stay a while?” she asks me.

“Oh, yes,” I reply. “I came to visit for the morning. If that’s all right with you?” Never mind that she can’t be alone, so I must stay.

“Hmmm,” she pulls a long face, denim-blue eyes glinting. “I’ll have to think about that one.” We laugh.

* * *

Grandma has enjoyed a family dinner at my mom’s house. Now I walk her back to the car where another family member will ferry her back home. I swing open the passenger door with my best chauffeur imitation: “Your car, Madam.”

She pretends to be staggered by my joking gallantry, catching the car’s frame for support. “Boy. Good thing there was something there.”

Finally seated, she reaches out and finds the arm of the door. Before pulling it closed (shutting the door herself is one of her last—and fiercely defended—bastions of independence), she looks up at me. “Thank you, ma’am,” she says, playing along with my charade.

As I turn back toward the house an almost forgotten memory reasserts itself—two little girls at bedtime making Grandma laugh and laugh so no one can say goodnight. It is a warm image, full of yellow lamplight on old wallpaper.

Evening, June 28

Tonight I remember -- I am so blessed by words to speak, a way to be heard, and loving souls who listen. What richness!

[Untitled 4]

At church, in stained glass:
white and gray clouds, blue sky,
an orange-brown butterfly
with perfect veins.

The pastor approaches the
inevitable subject. "Shit,"
mutters my neighbor,
stereotypical in her polyester
pants, her orange-white old lady hair.

I feel the ember dread of hell
upon me, of late --
the objective horror of it,
the hot breath like the sulfur's
last sensation before the mower's
searing of tattered wings,
smashing of gently fuzzed body.

These are things we try
not to think about -- like butterflies,
symbols of new life which never live
for long, like all the little frogs
we unwittingly squeezed to death
as small children at the water's edge.

Are You cruel? I ask. Well, are You?
Are You? the scales loosening
from wings of faith, the wings wilting
in gray gravel and dust.

But somewhere, still, I trust.
I am following the monarch memory
through generations of my own faith.

Remembering A Friend

Window light bounced from the disc of music you sent
(a last sharing) to the underside of a violet leaf:
 red-orange-yellow living light, down to the blue-and-purpled
serrated edge. A moment only, but
you would have liked it.

Daughter's Song

When I whistle, sometimes,
soft and high from the front of my mouth
with a tight vibrato, I catch
a hint of my father's sweetness.
The sounds were better, he said,
before he lost that tooth,
but I've heard no one, then or since,
whose whistle was so warm,
so free from shrillness.

My dad was a mostly gentle man
who still admired certain zealots (hence
my name, O Savonarola's mother).
We grow more different, it seems,
with the passing days. Doubly dear,
then, those few notes I carry
between teeth and tongue.

Sinful Woman

I grew up on wholesome stories
of girls who grew to beautiful womanhood,
stumbling just a bit over hurdles of vanity, selfishness,
or temper, and chastened soon to sweetness.
I taught myself to shrink from the silly and the crude--
grew adept at disguising the darkness within myself.

I've been told my smile is lovely and to keep it up,
but I am enthralled by the spill of a fallen woman's tears,
her audacious outpouring over our Lord's dusty feet. The real scandal:
His prodigality of forgiveness and her answering love.
 

Untangling

As a child, I watched a toddler
friend playing a favorite game.
He pressed his forehead to his dad's,
chanting gleefully,"One eye, one eye, one eye!"
This is how another's eyes appear
when so close to one's own.

With this stepping back, I feel
cool air in place of the warmth
of our closeness. The rhythm
of our breathing may, in fact,
be different. Our pulse may not
be sensed under the fingers as
an unconscious regulation, unspoken
reminder that this is who we are. 
This is how to be us.

But I begin to see you better--and
you are beautiful.

Tombs

Absences eat words.
We can write and talk
about what's been removed,
measure the cavity--
an inch for every
thing we miss--
but the nothing
left behind
still dries our tongues.

Merciful Savior,
what must Your followers,
Your loved ones, have felt
when all that they had left
was the terrible yawn
of Your body
emptied of You.

You, Who felt what it is
to be forsaken, fill
these, our absences, with
Your most tender light.
Through emptiness spill
astonishing resurrections.

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.

Thoughts On My Father's Valentine

Mom's love for Dad was
the lowest string of a violin--
deep and (to me, their child) unsurprising:
a kiss and his lunch box every afternoon
before he left for his shift,
a smile just between them,
and, as the day neared its end,
"Kids, let's do a 'quicky pickup'
so the living room is nice
when Dad gets home.'"
The G is the thickest string,
slow to break, able to stretch
(I think) to heaven.

Discoveries

At Grandpa's farm, I discovered much:
an abandoned room of bottles that I mustn't touch,
a play house complete with wire wreath,
the delicious sense of being a secret in the grasses,
the courage to climb a shiny, silver bin--
but best was the nest of kittens in the barn,
soft ears folded over tiny, hard heads--
perfect translucent claws clutching
air as revealed in the dim loft-light,
hues and patterns noted, then cradled,
softly, under my chin.

Once I thought I found a way to grow time:
rise early, and precious days expand,
grow long past expectation. Each morning
I'd step through darkness to the kitchen's light
radio murmur of hog/corn/bean prices,
and find my grandpa, always in his chair,
cutting toast squares for cats.
The ritual feeding: from back porch, to barn,
to machine shed, to silo and grinding shed;
the herd of cats; the happy dogs;
the eager, round-eyed cattle--Grandpa
led in his great rubber boots. He seemed
rather like the knobby-knuckled, wry
or silently laughing farm's soul.
With him my day began and expanded
through dust and mystery.

With age comes knowledge,
with even two or three new years.
When the kitchen, too, was silent--
my grandpa, old and in need of more sleep--
I stepped outside, somehow bereft,
walked alone to the silo, watched
color seep up the edge of a navy sky.

You never get more time--
only the hint of a coming sun,
the rose and turquoise rim
around the turning earth.