18 May 2018

Under the Whitehurst Freeway in the rain

It smells

(Oddly)

Of grilled meat, and 

(Fittingly)

Of the inside of taxi cabs 

Before there was Uber.

17 May 2018

Today
There are no words

For anybody but me.

I managed to sprain my finger yesterday

Without even noticing

This morning it is stiff and hard to bend

As I wipe up tiny clear thorns of glass

The remains of the Mason jar my son dropped in the kitchen

While he was trying to help.

The jar shattered and flew

Already gritty floors suddenly studded with glassy shards

Hiding, barely catching the light

Waiting to hobble us after breakfast.

And the boy is big now, almost half my weight

Too tall and broad to pick up

And spin around in my arms

Too big, maybe, for me to make everything

Alright.

Hope

I'm hoping and praying today for an old friend's safe return to her family. Yesterday on the Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor read this poem, written by Jack Gilbert. Hoping is hard.

Horses At Midnight Without A Moon

by Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

"Horses At Midnight Without A Moon" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005

Green week: 1

Whenever I think of green, one of my favorite colors (and forces), I think of this e.e. cummings poem, number 41 from his 1940 book 50 Poems:

up into the silence the green

silence with a white earth in it

you will(kiss me) go

out into the morning the young

morning with a warm world in it

(kiss me)you will go

on into the sunlight the fine

sunlight with a firm day in it

you will go(kiss me

down into your memory and

a memory and memory

i)kiss me(will go)

It's almost like a meditation, isn't it? All of the words so simply apt. I'm participating in shining egg's green week this week, so this morning after we rode I went tromping up the 'mountain' to look for signs of spring. We haven't quite reached the spring moment where everything is suddenly green and new all 'round, as in the poem. That green cathedral moment happens for Virginia sometime in late March or early April.

But I love the little green orb of plant life above, pushing bravely through the dead mulchy field. And even though they're green for much of the year in this part of the world, I love the way the twining honeysuckle vines below seemed to be climbing and greening at the very moment that I took the photo. I actually saw this vine on our ride this morning, from the back of a horse. It took no small amount of climbing to snap a photo minus the horse. We also saw another sign of spring on our ride this morning. Not my favorite (green) kind. A mama coyote sat on top of a little hill just below us and followed our little pack (2 horses, 2 women, one dog) with her eyes. The spring is the worst time for coyotes around here. They're a fairly new phenomenon this far east and north, but I guess that's what global warming will bring us. The horses seemed unfazed, but I was worried about my completely docile dog. Gillian said that she had read that coyotes usually have very large litters, sometimes as many as 11 or 12 pups, so I guess Mama Coyote had a lot to protect. More green tomorrow.

PS: Thanks to all of you who left kind comments on my post about my grandmother a couple of weeks ago. They were much appreciated.

Poetry Tuesday: Autumn Grasses

Autumn Grasses in Moonlight, Shibata Zeshin (Japanese, 1807–1891) Two-panel folding screen; ink, lacquer, and silver leaf on paper

Autumn Grasses
Copyright Margaret Gibson, 2003

In fields of bush clover and hay-scent grass
the autumn moon takes refuge
The cricket's song is gold

Zeshin's loneliness taught him this

Who is coming?
What will come to pass, and pass?

Neither bruise nor sweetness nor cool air
not-knowing
knows the way

And the moon?
Who among us does not wander, and flare
and bow to the ground?

Who does not savor, and stand open
if only in secret

taking heart in the ripening of the moon?

I don't know a lot about poet Margaret Gibson, but I chose this poem today because its tones (and the mysterious tones of the painting from which it draws inspiration) so perfectly convey the way that I feel as we slip into autumn, with winter just ahead.

On Saturday morning around 5 am as I was getting ready for hunting, the moon was so bright and near-full here that I didn't need a flashlight. But it also held that secret, slightly frightening edge, "ripening" in the autumn sky.

Somehow in the spring the moon seems soft and not as present. In the summer and fall we have the harvest moon, sometimes romantic, but warm and welcoming. In the winter, though, that moon takes on a different cast. Bright and grey behind clouds, the moon can be downright eerie shining on a winter landscape of sparkling fields of ice. In the winter the moon is lonely and cold and perfectly at home. The ice queen surveying (and shaping) her slick kingdom.

We're not quite there yet, but soon the end of autumn will come and the cricket's gold song will set and we will watch the cold silver moon of winter rise.

Poetry Tuesday: Hymns as Shared Poetry

Let All Things Now Living
Words: Katherine K. Davis, born 1892
Music: “The Ash Grove”, a traditional Welsh melody

Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving
To God the creator triumphantly raise.
Who fashioned and made us, protected and stayed us,
Who still guides us on to the end of our days.
God's banners are o'er us, His light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth in the night.
Till shadows have vanished and darkness is banished
As forward we travel from light into light.

His law he enforces, the stars in their courses
And sun in its orbit obediently shine;
The hills and the mountains, the rivers and fountains,
The deeps of the ocean proclaim him divine.
We too should be voicing our love and rejoicing;
With glad adoration a Song let us raise
Till all things now living unite in thanksgiving:
"To God in the highest, Hosanna and praise!"

This was one of the hymns that we sang at our wedding. The tune is simple, and you would probably recognize it even if you aren’t Christian. I especially like the last line of the first stanza-verse. ‘As forward we travel from light into light’—what a great way to think about our time on the earth and with the people who join us on our travels in this life. We have come from good and light, from the love of our parents. And we strive to spend our living time moving forward, in the light and to the light, in good and upstanding ways.

The lyrics written here on the page seem a little dated and patriarchal (in the traditional Christian way that God is He), but there is something transformative about singing with a group of people in a church. The slow, carrying music. The men who just mouth the words because they’re too embarrassed to sing, and the women who belt it out in the pew behind you. The little children just learning to read whose parents follow under the words with a guiding finger, and the older folks who know every word without looking at the book. Singing this poem in unison is an act of restoration and clarity, even in a room full of people who annoy you day-to-day. As long as they sing along (or pretend to), we’re all making something beautiful together.

On the anniversary of a day when so much hate was spewed on our country, it helps me to remember moments when I have felt such love.

Poetry Tuesday: Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

These are naked or resurrection lillies, in my grandmother's garden, after the rain (thank God for the rain!). Looking a little worse for the wear, but still so beautiful and fragile.

Today's poem is in Mary Oliver's book Why I Wake Early. I don't know a lot about Oliver, except that, like many of my favorite poets, she expresses great joy found in nature. This poem actually reminds me a lot of some of my favorite bloggers, who find inspiration in the day-to-day changing of the world around them and the way that they navigate those changes. Shari at the glass doorknob immediately comes to mind, probably because I love watching her experience a place where I once lived and experienced much joy in the natural (Durham and surrounding counties, NC).

But without further ado, here is this week's poem:

*

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?
-Mary Oliver

There are things you can't reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree--
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

*

I love the idea of starting each day with my arms open, ready to receive what the day (and the world) has to show me. And ready to give with those same open arms.

As an aside, I've been listening to the Bowerbirds' album Hymns For A Dark Horse almost non-stop this week. It's great for a rainy, close summer day. See you tomorrow, hopefully with a project!

Poetry Tuesday

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes


(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)


how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing-- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?


(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)



E.E. Cummings, from XAIPE, 1950



This is one of my favorite poems. It goes at least part of the way toward describing the enormity that I feel when I'm faced with the sheer, giant beauty of the natural world. And many of Cummings' poems express the way I see the universal nature of our world, our country, our communities.



It's a little like this: I'm sure there has been a moment in your life when you wished there existed a stronger word for 'love'-- when you had to say to someone, "No, I mean it, I really love you," and then even that sentiment wasn't enough. In my reading, Cummings' unconventional wordings and punctuations try to extend our language, to help the words make the kind of sense that punches you in the gut. (For instance, don't trees "leap... greenly" up to the sky?)



As I stood at the top of the town of Vezelay in France's Burgundy region and prepared to take the photo above, the sun came from behind a cloud and illuminated only part of the valley below. And I could believe that the sun was born again that day and that moment, both through the clouds and around the planet, as it is every day somewhere. We looked at the line where the sky disappears around the curve of the land, and I thought of this poem.



It happens often. I mean, how many leaves are on the tree outside your window? Can you even count them all? At the beach, how many grains of sand do you touch as you build a sandcastle? And how many cells make up your body? It's all around us, and it's infinite. The world. And your life.



As Julia Child said famously, "Life itself is the proper binge." There's too much: too much to see, too much to do, too much to feel on this earth for us to stumble through, unwitting. So open the ears of your ears and the eyes of your eyes to the world all around you.



(I'm not sure I expressed myself as clearly as I would have liked to do-- and this is perhaps where you start making fun of me and my naive optimism and wide-eyed innocence. But, dear Reader, you must forgive me-- I was (clearly!) an English major.)