Spring Lies Down

Fourteen

Sudden wind sent plum blossoms swirling,
and I saw you stop to stand among them.
I thought, or almost thought I saw
the rosy petals pause halfway between sky
and ground in the ebbing of the season.
But no, they fluttered slowly down around you;
a mayhem of tiny butterflies dancing ardor
for a boy who stopped.  For a moment
the air shimmered, light glittered through May’s flurry.
You stood so still, just for a moment,
as spring lay down at your feet.

A lot of  poetry has sprung from mothering three boys over the past eighteen years. This poem describes a moment in which the business and confusion of daily life dissolves and the precious essence of the child is revealed.  These moments, for all the joy and wonder they provide, are often accompanied by a twinge of sadness, a regret that this precise sweetness, the sweetnesss of this boy on this day, can't last.  My youngest child is now thirteen. My middle child is driving.  Soon they will all be older than the boy in the poem.  My oldest is eighteen, and has a new kind of loveliness about him -- one that is more remote from me, more mysterious, turned away from me and our family toward his own future.  I have to admit, it is hard to accept that this child who has brought us so much joy is at the end of childhood.
         
An early draft of the poem ended with the line "spring lay down her life at your feet."  I was trying to suggest that one moment must die for the next moment to live.  A reader of that version suggested taking out the words "its life," so that in the poem spring lies down like a gentle animal, a companion enjoying the beauty of the day and the child, rather than lying down like a helpless sacrifice to the future.

This little change improved the poem, and it also provides some wisdom  for me about how to approach  parenting a boy at the threshold of adulthood.  The sense of loss that accompanies this stage is sometimes so intense it overflows into tears no matter how hard I try to hold them back.  But what if I could simply be soft and attentive with my children through change instead of clutching at moments that are already gone?  What new wonders might I witness? What joy?

Good Friday

The unleavened bread rests on the red dish,

the little glasses await the wine.  On our table,

hyacinths heave their insistant fragrance

through the room.  Each year we mark

the day this way – no priests to bless this supper,

only us,  five people in a little house, a hand

of human hope and folly.  All this, the bread,

the wine, the hyacinths, the way sun declares

through faded curtains, and outside, daffodils

frilly and sun-drunk over the mess of last years garden,
the vibrant sparrow song so loud it woke me
through closed windows, the noise of three sons
sending up their holy rock and roll, the clack of keys,
my huband and I each striving to juggle dumb syllables
back to some semblance of the Word we all betray -

what does it mean, all this, about the tomb, the human,

flesh, blood, and whatever it is that keeps rising up

and saying, devour me now while there is time?

My Book!

I am thrilled to share the news that I have a book of poetry coming out this year.   In fact, I'm looking over a draft copy right now.  This is a goal I've been consciously working toward for several years.  As a writer, I see my role, usually, as the servant of the poem.  I'm not so much making the poem express what I want to say as helping the poem discover what it wants to say.  Implicit in this way of experiencing the writing process is the sense that poem wants to be read -- wants to be received, wants to give itself to someone who will enjoy it, who will love it, perhaps even need it.  My prayer for this book is that it will wing its way to the readers these poems are dreaming of.

Love this cover image.  "Ghosting" by Owen Rose

Fly, little poems, fly!

A Small Thing

It seems so strange sometimes to have devoted my creative life to poetry, something that is so very quiet and fills up so little space In our world.  It is strange indeed to puzzle over whether “a mirror” or “the mirror” sounds better, or means better, in a given line, or whether an article is needed at all.  It could almost be seen as a mental illness if looked at from the outside.  Why would someone sit for hours, crossing out then rewriting  then crossing out then rewriting the same phrase over and over – a phrase that few, if any, may ever read?

There is so much noise, so much language, so many vibrant, flickering images vying for our attention in our culture of non-stop electric advertainment. How can poetry survive, an art that will never demand attention, will never flash or explode or press itself into anyone’s senses, except through a willing imagination.  The poem lies on the page, or moves in the mouth, and waits to give its little portion of magic.  But it requires quiet and time, two things of which we have so little these days.

On bad days I feel that writing poetry is like phrenology  or exorcism – an activity that once felt full of meaning and importance but has been shown to be useless by modern science and technology.  But I can’t stop – and even on those bad days I remember what poetry can do, what it’s done for me, and I know it is still serves some vital need.

I named this blog Wing of Earth, Wing of Fire to describe two ways of perceiving that lift language and human experience into the realm of the sacred.  The wing of earth is our perception through the senses – the mysterious channels through which the natural world can enter us and transform us.  The wing of fire is the imagination, the capacity through which we can leave our limited experience and enter a kind of holy communion with other beings: our friends and neighbors, humans long dead or yet to be born, animals, plants, even stones and water, even the holy I AM.   

Poetry at its best opens a reader’s senses and imagination so that the barrier between the lonely little self and the gorgeous, scary, fierce, tender world begins to crumble.  A simpler way to say it:  a good poem reminds us to pay attention, and when we pay attention, the natural result is an awakening of love and compassion.  

It’s so small, a poem on a page, a voice speaking language meticulously weighed and lovingly chosen – yet poems teach so much about being human; they teach me to live awake in the world, and that is no small thing. 

A poem that has meant a lot to me over the years is Mary Oliver's “Messenger” from her wonderful book Thirst.

Messenger

By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world. 

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —    equal seekers of sweetness.  Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.  Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? 
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me 
   keep my mind on what matters, 
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.
which is mostly standing still and learning to be 
   astonished. 
The phoebe, the delphinium. 
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. 
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart 
   and these body-clothes, 
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy 
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, 
telling them all, over and over, how it is 
   that we live forever.

You Don't Get An Acceptance Letter to the School of Rock

Today on my Facebook feed, a friend posted about the acceptance letter her son had received from one of the colleges he applied to.  Lately, there’s a post about an acceptance letter every day, or a photo of an acceptance letter, or news of a scholarship. It’s fun to imagine my son’s friends, the children of my friends, embarking on their college careers, picking majors, making new friends, and discovering the joy of having your worldview challenged and changed by encounters with new ideas and new people.

                My son is a junior, so this is not the year for him to receive those letters.  Instead he’s been receiving glossy pamphlets and enticing come-ons from colleges, each promising wonderful opportunities for intellectual growth and doors flung open to marvelous careers.  There are pictures of beautiful young people walking on shady paths, or peering through microscopes, or reading picturesquely in the grass.  When they come, I just toss them in the recycling.  Sam doesn’t even look at them, and he won’t be one of those beautiful young students, because he’s not planning to go to college.

                This has been hard for me to accept.  I’ve taught at a small liberal arts college for my entire adult life, and I absolutely adored being a student in college and graduate school.   I loved every class I took except two, education and anthropology, one because the material was stupid, or seemed so to me at the time, and one because the teacher read his notes from an overhead projector.

How they made information boring in the olden days before Powerpoint.

For me, college was where I experienced the giddy joy of understanding the inner and outer worlds in new and deeper ways.  In college I began to wake up to the smallness of my life, and to the largeness of my responsibility as a citizen of the world.  It’s hard for me to imagine such a vital transformation happening without going to college.

                But Sam from a very young age resisted the idea that college was essential, and once he entered high school, the idea of purposely prolonging his time in school became deeply unappealing to him. I could write about the way his highly rigorous academic school has failed to meet his needs as a learner – and perhaps I will some day; but that’s really a pretty minor factor in Sam’s lack of interest in college.  It’s not really high school.  It’s him.

                He could go to college.  He tests extremely well.  He writes extremely well.  His grades are not bad, though not as good as they should be judging by his standardized test scores.  For a long time I have thought of him as an underachiever.  But that’s true only if I use his grades as the measure of achievement.  But to do that is to measure him by my experiences, passions and desires. His passion has never been for academic work, despite his capability, and measured according to his own priorities, he’s achieved plenty.

 He’s written so many songs since he was five years old that he can’t keep track of them all. He formed a band when he was in third grade that continues to play together.  He’s recorded an album and is planning a second.  He lines up gigs.  He arranges music and sings in three a capella groups.  He plays guitar in church.   Besides music, Sam’s priority is friendship, and Sam is a loyal and loving friend, a gentle soul who wants to make other people happy.  He’d rather skimp a little on homework and spend more time enjoying the company of other human beings.  He’s often said that the best thing he can imagine is writing a song that brings another person comfort and hope in a hard time. 

                He wants to devote himself to music when he’s done high school.  He wants time to make the band happen. He wants to get a job to earn money for the gear he needs to make the band happen.  He told me when he was twelve that he was going to be a rock star.  I sometimes think my job as a mother is to be the realist, the one who points out that hardly anybody gets to be a rock star and tells him he should have a back-up plan.  For several years I quietly insisted that he would be going to college, in spite of his almost total lack of interest.  You need a degree in case the music career doesn’t work out, I’d say, even though the greatest benefits I got from going to college had little to do with my career, and even though my post college career has not been at all lucrative. 

Early Days

                In fact, our family’s poor finances have given his decision to forgo college a certain practical appeal.  I have to admit to feeling some relief knowing we won’t be scrambling to pay the debilitating cost of tuition at even an “affordable” college.  Yet there is a little sting when I hear his friends discussing their college plans, when I hear other parents talking excitedly about their children’s academic achievements.  I imagine his high school graduation will have a strange anticlimactic feeling to it as he moves on not to the hallowed halls of a prestigious institution of higher learning, but to a low wage job and dreams of making it big.  I might feel embarrassed when I tell people what he’s doing, though I know I will also feel proud.  I still wonder, sometimes, if I should try to change his mind.

                But I’m done with that.  It’s not my job to say his dream isn’t realistic.  People can make a living in music, though often not a steady or regular income.  Some people even become rock stars.  And if rock stardom is not his destiny, he’ll learn that eventually, and discover some other path, a path that he chooses because it lights him up.  And who knows, that path may even, eventually, include college.  

You can check out Sam's music here: https://soundcloud.com/circusfiction/sets/the-maze

Street Art In Kathmandu

My brother has lived in Kathmandu for over ten years and has often mentioned the crowding, pollution and crushing poverty he encounters every day.  Recently he sent some photographs of street art, reflecting  on the life-affirming generosity of spirit that moves people to create art of all kinds..  Sometimes I feel mournful at the damage we humans do to our mother earth, but it's important to remember the things we do that bless and give delight. My brother writes:

         All around the city, huge, beautiful, bizarre and captivating murals are being created.  I caught one of the artists in the act and stopped to talk.  He said that they are not commissioned, that the government neither sanctions nor interferes with what they do, and they do it just because they love art.  It makes all the difference in this frankly filthy and chaotic city....In my mind, these artists are true heroes.

       I agree.  Thank you, street artists of Kathmandu, and thanks Kent for sharing these photos with me!

 

A Meeting Place For Dreamers

"If you are a dreamer, come in." This line had an immediate and intense effect on me when I first read it at eight years old.  It's the first line of "Invitation," the first poem in Shel Silverstein's wonderful book of poems for children, Where the Sidewalk Ends.  I'd been given the book for Christmas, and encountering its humorous, imaginative, magically anarchic poems and drawings was like stumbling upon a magic spring and realizing I'd been thirsty all my life.  I felt that invitation had been written with me in mind. Silverstein had created in the pages of his book a meeting place for people like me - people who felt  the largeness and gorgeousness and scariness and absurdity of the world on their skin and in their bellies; people who knew that rhymes and jokes, riddles and fairy stories were spells of transformation and doorways into joyous mystery.  In other words, it was a book for children, by a grownup who still knew the language.

Some of Shel Silverstein's lines have stayed with me long after childhood, and they still delight.  I'm going to re-read Where the Sidewalk Ends this week, and if you want to immerse yourself in a hilarious and enchanting world, I recommend you do the same.

You can read the full (yet quite short) text of "Invitation" here: http://www.lverose.com/littleones/order/poem.htm

Do you have a book from your childhood to recommend?

Something Fun

I thought I'd occasionally share some writing games here.  ("Games" sounds a lot more fun than "exercises," don't you think?) Sometimes these games lead to poems or essays or stories, but a lot of the time they spark the imagination and wake up the ear to some new music.

Here's one that's good if you can write one interesting sentence, or one boring sentence with some interesting words or pictures in it.  Basically you write a sentence, and in the next line you repeat at least one word from that sentence, and then in each line after that you repeat the same word and/or another word from the first sentence, so that every line contains at least one word from the first sentence.  I find that I often discover hidden meanings and potentials in the repeated words, and sometimes I learn something about life, the universe, and everything.  

I'll give you a few sentences to start with, though of course you can write your own.  1. My mother begins to weep. 2. I used to dream about water.  3. A spider never stops weaving. 4. We didn't understand yesterday.  You can see there is nothing special about those sentences, except they have at least one concrete noun in them.  That helps I think.  If you use this game and end up with some kind of something, send it to me.  I'd love to read it, and with your permission, share it here.

Here's something I wrote using this method.  I don't know if I'd call it a poem, but I learned something about doorways.

 Just Now

You are standing in a doorway.

Where you are standing

is a doorway. You are standing

because you are not moving

in or out or through.  But standing

is a kind of moving if everything

else is moving, and everything

is moving which is why

what you are doing is standing, just

for a moment and where you are doing it

is a doorway – a doorway

neither here nor there - a doorway

neither in nor out - a doorway

that opens to more doorways,

that open  to more doorways

and doorway doorway doorway

which is why you are standing in a doorway.

Welcome

Welcome to what?
A window.  A question.
Just me, opening a drawer
and lifting from underneath
t-shirts faded by washings,
jeans thin at the knee,
mismated cotton socks,
embarrassing underthings, a wing.
It's rumpled, unweildy,
but look, there's a gleam
in each crease. It's my wing,
but with only one I flopped
in loopy circles, skinned my knees
as I careened against
the weight of things.

Do you have a wing?
Look in the back of your closet,
or in the box under your bed.
Then meet me.  Where the sky
is most longing, I'll be waiting
to take your hand and leap.