Profusion, Succession of Joy

It seems each time I set out to write, a disaster has occurred which makes the writing and thoughts seem small. Today is no exception as I consider the morning walk through the wet forest led by contented dog and plenty of silence. A large part of all our minds are with those in Oklahoma, hoping for comfort where no aid can help, and aid provided where it can.

I considered. as I walked, the succession of spring we’ve seen in the places,where its arrival has been peaceful. First the bulbs power up, then the trees bloom: cherry, apple, peach, dogwood, many more. Lilacs made their fragrant entrance a week or so ago and still linger, and after the dull brown, gray and  white of winter, all colors are welcome.

But today’s surprises came right in the middle of crops of ferns that in themselves bring me joy. Quite primordial, the ferns rise from the forest floor undaunted with brackets, fuzzy spore bearing fronds and tight, dark fiddleheads. As I passed through these on the narrow path, however, from inside several patches of ferns sprung up three kinds of lovely wildwood flowers:  one, a white roseate crown with complicated, maroon tipped horn-like protrusions; another with dainty blue trumpets, and finally a 5 or so petal face also with complicated stamens and filaments coming forward. Without camera or phone to document the appearance, it was somewhat futile pawing through the Golden Guide to Wildflowers. Perhaps a trip to the library for a book about the locals flora will help.

Suffice for now to say: there can be profusion of joy in only a few flowers, and a succession of joy as Earth wakes. I also hope, and know you do, too, that the aftermath of her raw, destructive power will be softened somewhat  by the human kindness now needed so much.

“,,,my dear remains.”

The train has been full of life on this short spring day ride into town. Cries of babies, unusual at this commuting hour;  the lack of conductors and thus strings of people wandering in and out, up and down; busy students and all their gear;  a woman in front of me who is certainly having a Monday morning on Monday morning: her raspberry drink fell, spotting her leopard shoes and starting a viscous flow past my seat and beyond. Thank goodness for the extra paper towels I grabbed at the local breakfast stillpoint today.

This day also begins with a poetic moment from my email inbox which deserves metnion. The words above, penned by Ipswich poet Anne Bradstreet, are from a work no doubt chosen for ‘Poem-a-Day’ [i] with Mother’s Day in mind.  “Before the Birth of One of Her Children “ [ii] captures for us the risk and joy of motherhood. How would we compare the physical risks in the 1600s with the social, emotional , and worldly risks today?

Children are our best and “dearest” remains. Their very full lies draw out our breath and best hopes. We want a world to be a place where all children want to come home and, when they do, are always welcomed there. The loss of any one of them tears us apart and causes mourning far beyond the immediate circle of knowing.

I wonder if Mother’s Day is an appropriate moment to actually pray for the children of the mothers we seek to honor. Or perhaps the day after is the right one.

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[i] http://www.poets.org/index.php. Accessed May 13 2013.

[ii] http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23508

 

 

 

 

 

[1] http://www.poets.org/index.php. Accessed May 13 2013.

[1] http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23508

 

 

Poetry for the Masses?

As we pull into the high platform station today, I’m thinking about the morning ahead of all of us, and, oddly enough, poetry. April is National Poetry Month but the tragic events in the city to which I travel nearly every day have eclipsed all of our thought in recent days. We’ve put on shock and sadness which will wear for a while: certainly every time we recall those who’ve lost loved ones, and others who will struggle through painful rehabilitation learning, as our President said, “to live again.”

My offering today will be a small and random step, not even forward. Just over a week ago I threw John Ashbery’s new book, Quick Question[i] , into my backpack. It appeared to be a quick read, given the title, and I hoped it held poetry that would refresh one’s outlook, that can re-do the frame of an entire day.

I’ll leave it to the professionals to critique this particular work. Suffice to say Mr Ashbery is so well known, so well published that calling him “highly decorated” feels incomplete. He’s the author of more than 20 books, has won a Pulitzer Prize, and received a National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He’s won two Guggenheim Fellowships and has been both a Fullbright Scholar and a MacArthur Fellow. The list goes on.

But I confess that I’ve struggled with these poems. There’s not one I really understand. Strange phrases appear throughout them all, justifying what the dust jacket advertises: “elusiveness,” and “mysterious promise.” Examples:

“In all my years as a pedestrian serving juice to guests, it never occurred to me thoughtfully to imagine how a radish feels.” (first line of This Economy.) From the middle of Puff Piece, “ Well, Sarge, count me out. I’m heading for a clean-named place like Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o’-lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.” The ending of Bacon Grabbers: “I had to go to my sister-in-law’s for the long weekend. Does her address seem relevant? We had a laughing machine in the basement.”

Despite the facts that I serve juice, grew up near Wisconsin, and can almost imagine what a “laughing machine” might look like, I still, to use an old phrase, don’t “get” these poems. However, there is a line in the middle of one, in the middle of the book, that I will take forward. I liked it before this awful week and as I prepare to walk past the spot where a man died in the line of duty, it means something more. In Not Beyond All Conjecture Ashbery writes,

“…We live in a museum of helpful objects,

leaning toward the accomplishment of a small,

complicated task, like sailors in rigging.

Something no American has yet achieved.”

 Our living places are filled with helpful objects, I hope; objects that remind us of our past and pull us forward into the future. Recently we have honored those who have “leaned into the rigging,” who work toward many “small, complicated tasks.”As we watch, they, and others to come, will prove Ashbery’s last line untrue. Some brave Americans, and many others all around the world will, indeed, achieve.

 

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[i] Ashbery, John. Quick question: new poems. New York: Ecco, 2012.

“Filtered Sun”

The beginning of Patriot’s Day yesterday included these words in the weather forecast, and I wondered right then how “filtered sun” differed from “partly cloudy.” I wanted to write about this, and about the animals and birds I saw and heard on the dog walk, the view of the sea from the top, and the ever intriguing fungi in my garden. I’ve been digging out tree roots these fungi have been working on, roots from trees removed years ago yet ones that are still saturated with water. I even wanted to share how I laughed to myself as I walked into the woods with dog, having the thought of just far I was from, never mind running, even walking the Boston Marathon that was going on at that very hour. Most of us who live here let the race into our day in some fashion. But all that was before the day turned to darkness for so many, or perhaps for all of us.

The train ride in today, the next day,  is muted. Two flags on top of an office building are at half mast. The sun is bright but it feels fully cloudy in the soul, in the suspended parts of our selves where we have to parse the horror and suspend belief that such senseless and injurious things happen in the world in which we now live. Has it been this way for a while now?

We, in this car, will move out of the train and into our days, but parts of us will be heavy for those who are suffering. I hope our inadequate thoughts, prayers and invisible support will be of some comfort to them.  I am so grateful for those who will directly touch, aid, and assist them, and be instruments of justice and mercy. This will call for bravery in a time of great brokenness, and courage in the very tall specter of grief.

“From Sea to Shining Sea”

There’s a lightness in my step this morning despite my worries. For the first time in a long while, I’m wearing sneakers, not boots, and yes, it makes a difference. Padding into our “third place” for the morning brew, my driver daughter and I skipped (just a little bit) as we left the shop and headed into our days. As if on cue, the early train pulled into the station; I could run and make it. Happy Monday!

With breakfast in hand as we crossed Salem Harbor, I was captured by a silver ribbon of light gleaming across the water and out to sea. That refrain, “from sea to shining sea” sprung to mind before I could stop it, and for this Midwestern girl it’s automatic to reach into my mind and look west, across the plains toward the Continental Divide. See the network of rivers that drains from one “sea” to the other?

Some vistas shear themselves into our minds. Often they are fleeting views, like this one, and in a moment they vanish to become instead a train full of regular folks doing regular things. I wonder at the full life we all carry inside ourselves, however. Most of us have friends and family we hold very dear. We’re connected to colleagues, to neighbors, in some ways, to people around us we don’t even know. Sometimes it’s too much, and I live for a few days as a walking veil of tears. The pressure builds behind lids too thin to contain it. Whether from gratitude, or fear of loss; from what I call “grief practiced” but none-the-less real, the tears leak out at the most inconvenient times. Words, life, gratitude, sorrow for those in pain, for all animals and lands in distress, for grief to come and all grief past; all of it mounds up behind the eyes of the face, the eyes of the soul. I long to weep from “sea to shining sea,” yet the day pulls me on and I must follow, for now.

So I write.  My coach mates may think my eyes moist from squinting upon this water (true) or from choking on my morning brew (also true) if they notice me at all (most don’t). But I know, and now you do too, that though I might begin today heavy laden, longing for and needing that “good cry” as all mothers seem to say, it will suffice to have written it down and dabbed at the eyes. We would not weep if we did not love. Were we not to love, we wouldn’t live.

Two Gulls and a Tuesday Freewrite

As we head into the tunnel on the train this morning, I’m thinking of the richness that’s been around me for the last week. A touch of warm weather brought us to the annual burning of the Christmas tree and much brush on Holy Saturday, which this year felt part of the Great Triduum. Nature has been on good behavior for a week: the sun’s golden glow on the marsh weeds sets off the stark blue water. And there was time this morning, even in the rush out the door, to read an email tribute my husband received for one of his late colleagues. The simple words of honor and grief pulled us to hail this man’s living legacy. The weekend brought nervousness while awaiting test results for my brave 89 year old mother and the normal duties of home. Prior to all this, the routine tasks of going to, doing, and coming home from work provided a daily scaffold for us all.

How could I put all this living into a blog post, I wondered, as we pulled into the crowded station at the harbor. When I saw two white headed gulls perched on the concrete berm, seemingly talking together, and remembered those words my children often hear at their school, “Freewrite!”, the way forward seemed more clear.

Those gulls could have been lifted right from a movie set: picture two old men on a bench discussing the still-cold weather or construction across the way. Or they could be  pondering the tentative green shoots seen in the ground or the birdsong heard if the wind is right.  These gulls are just gulls, yes: messy, raucous, and pests some of the time. But they also are about their business on a spring day, just like the rest of us.

Never mind that the To Do list is long, that yesterday I got a parking ticket because I completely forgot to stuff money into the slot. It’s OK that I lost the too-big blazer in the house and am crammed into one too small. So what if today the commuters are still in parkas and seem pale around the edges? Most of our teams are out of the NCAA tournament, and some of us won’t know yet if the Red Sox won or lost the season opener. The point is that Spring IS coming. The gulls are discussing it, and we should be thankful. Salud, Spring!

“Sometimes You Just Have to Schedule a Pig-Roast”

This weekend actually provided an opportunity to chat with long time friends and “catch up.” The occasion was an induction ceremony for a fine young friend who recently earned Eagle Scout. After the candles, pins, remarks and well-deserved applause, some of us lingered over refreshments and shared our news, or non-news. And we wondered, as I often do, just why getting together has become so difficult, so  much more infrequent. Is there anything resembling a good reason?

We thought about our full time jobs, myriad part-time jobs, commutes, unpaid jobs, and family responsibilities. Many of our kids are in transitional phases or just starting out. We’re working more hours to pay off college loans. We might only see our neighbors in the local grocery store. I rest my case: the man who just climbed onto this very full train just announced to the entire car:  “I’ve got second part-time job working for a friend’s website!”  (Eh?)

But I liked what one friend put out there as a challenge: “Sometimes you just have to schedule a pig roast.” She may not be surprised to learn that I’ve actually been to a pig roast, and even a goat roast, way back in our Tucson days, courtesy of a favorite hunter-gatherer who still hunts in those arroyos. But the point is, she’s right. Sometimes we have to make the party the priority. To set the work and other demands aside and stoke the fire of friendships. We don’t want to grow old alone. We’re going there with a good group of friends, and it would be nice to tell them so.

The house will never be clean or completely fixed up. The dog may or may not bark. It might cold or the bugs might be out. But let’s not let much more time go by before we have some folks in, if not for pig, then at least for a ‘cuppa. It is  “good and right so to do!”