Tall Tales from Kansas

I would have definitely welcomed you

Dottie sent me this poem today. It's a must share. Also, it seems just the thing to accompany these photos from my walk on the trails at Clinton Lake this week.  

How I go to the Woods
 by Mary Oliver

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of 
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unbearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.

I was alone on this walk, but you were with me in spirit sisters, and had you been in the near vicinity, I would have definitely welcomed you. 

the glue that keeps me together some days

Last night some of the Quails went out for dinner. Let me say that the Kimchee fries at Boru (75th and Wornall in Kansas City) are insanely delicious and I am sorry I did not get a photo of them. Go there and get some if you are local. Now back to the more important business of this post. We "unpacked our bags" with each other. In other words, we reflected on the hardness of the world on so many levels right now, chewed over our worries, and expressed gratitude for the gift of friendship. 

Below is another favorite poem that seems right for tonight along with the peonies from my table. Friendship, poetry, flowers, kindness it's the glue that keeps me together some days.

Kindness
    by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white
poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense
anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

 

Helpful links: Boru Asian Eatery

please let this be so

Today, when my 8:30 Zoom meeting was unexpectedly cancelled, and I found myself all dressed up with nowhere to go, sitting in front of this computer, I decided to clean up my mailbox that contained 4,897 pieces of mail. Shameful, I know. But while doing that I came across a good book recommendation that I hadn't acted on yet, and more importantly this poem (from the Writers Almanac), which is a description of my idea of heaven. Don't you just love the phrase, "... at the tag end of life ..."?

Future Plans 
    by Kate Barnes

When I am an old, old woman I may very well be
living all alone like many another before me
and I rather look forward to the day when I shall have
a tumbledown house on a hill top and behave
just as I wish to. No more need to be proud—
at the tag end of life one is at last allowed
to be answerable to no one. Then I shall wear
a shapeless felt hat clapped on over my white hair,
sneakers with holes for the toes, and a ragged dress.
My house shall be always in a deep-drifted mess,
my overgrown garden a jungle. I shall keep a crew
of cats and dogs, with perhaps a goat or two
for my agate-eyed familiars. And what delight
I shall take in the vagaries of day and night,
in the wind in the branches, in the rain on the roof!
I shall toss like an old leaf, weather-mad, without reproof.
I’ll wake when I please, and when I please I shall doze;
whatever I think, I shall say; and I suppose
that with such a habit of speech I’ll be let well alone
to mumble plain truth like an old dog with a bare bone.

the end end

Today there was this nugget of goodness in my inbox courtesy of POME from Mathew Ogle.

It Was the Animals

Today my brother brought over a piece of the ark
wrapped in a white plastic grocery bag.

He set the bag on my dining table, unknotted it,
peeled it away, revealing a foot-long fracture of wood.
He took a step back and gestured toward it
with his arms and open palms —

            It’s the ark, he said.
            You mean Noah’s ark? I asked.
            What other ark is there? he answered.

            Read the inscription, he told me,
            it tells what’s going to happen at the end.
            What end? I wanted to know.
            He laughed, What do you mean, “what end”?
            The end end.

Natalie Diaz (2014)

Can’t you just “see” the entire scene in your head when you read this? And, imagine a similar conversation with a sibling. Because really who cares what the inscription says about how it’s going to end, when your brother explains with great clarity “what end” he is talking about. In the way that only people who grew up together in the same home can get away with. 

where I lie reading, in pajamas, at 8:30pm

At Tall Tales Headquarters we are welcoming the weekend with a sunset, clouds, and poetry.

Today, on "poetry is not a luxury", which I follow on instagram, there was this. I shared it with my sisters, but feel you will enjoy it as well. 

It seems that when I love a poem, it's because something in me, recognizes in the words, a truth about myself. Even when it's something that seems as simple as bedtime. It is good to know I am in such excellent company. But seriously... "domestic as a plate" that is a line that deserves high praise. 

I bow to you Edna St. Vincent Millay, from my bed, where I lie reading, in pajamas, at 8:30 pm, feeling quite decadent.

diving into her work more deeply

Today there is this unusually beautiful bit of poetry, courtesy of Pome by Matthew Ogle.

Two-Headed Calf

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

Laura Gilpin

 

I want to see the world with Laura Gilpin's eyes. Instead I will settle for being glad to have found her and look forward to diving into her work more deeply. 

"trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment"

As a prelude to the weekend, tonight I present guidance, in the form of a poem, in the event that you are trying to think of how to spend your day.  This little nugget of goodness is from a book that caught my eye at Tecolate Book Shop in Montecito. I picked it up for the cover, but bought it because it was edited by James Crews.

On the way back to our place in Carpinteria, I opened the book randomly and asked Sister if she wanted to hear a poem. She said "yes". Here is what I read.

Any Morning 
    by William Stafford

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won't even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you an act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

 

The end.

 

"deal, sister, deal"

Some poems you can not say why you love, you just do, on so many levels that you can't put it into words. At least not without getting all awkward about it.  THIS one is not one of those. Here is exactly why I love it:
1. It is so descriptive I am certain I was there and an active participant
2. It made me think of playing pitch in college with my friends (below from our last trip in 2018), when we should have been studying. I emailed it to all of them this morning so they could also recall those moments
3. Because it is a celebration 
4. Reading it for the 4th time, I still smile

My Old Aunts Play Canasta in a Snow Storm
by Marjorie Saiser - from Lost in Seward County. © University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

I ride along in the backseat; the aunt who can drive
picks up each sister at her door, keeps the Pontiac
chugging in each driveway while one or the other
slips into her overshoes and steps out,
closing her door with a click, the wind

lifting the fringe of her white cotton scarf
as she comes down the sidewalk, still pulling on her
new polyester Christmas-stocking mittens.
We have no business to be out in such a storm,
she says, no business at all.

The wind takes her voice and swirls it
like snow across the windshield.
We're on to the next house, the next aunt,
the heater blowing to beat the band.

At the last house, we play canasta,
the deuces wild even as they were in childhood,
the wind blowing through the empty apple trees,
through the shadows of bumper crops. The cards

line up under my aunts' finger bones; eights and nines and aces
straggle and fall into place like well-behaved children.
My aunts shuffle and meld; they laugh like banshees,
as they did in that other kitchen in the 30's that
day Margaret draped a dishtowel over her face
to answer the door. We put her up to it, they say,
laughing; we pushed her. The man—whoever he was—
drove off in a huff while they laughed 'til they hiccupped,


laughing still—I'm one of the girls laughing him down the sidewalk
and into his car, we're rascals sure as farmyard dogs,
we're wild card-players; the snow thickens,
the coffee boils and perks, the wind is a red trey
because, as one or the other says,

We are getting up there in the years; we'll
have to quit sometime. But today,
today,
deal, sister, deal.

 

Snow Fall

Tonight it was 3 below zero on the car thermometer on the way home. That's without a wind chill factor. To say I am sick of the snow and cold would be an understatement. I am dreaming of sunshine and warm breezes. In the meantime how about a reflection on snow by May Sarton... whose way with words can make anything seem ok. Almost.

Snow Fall
by May Sarton

With no wind blowing
It sifts gently down,
Enclosing my world in
A cool white down,
A tenderness of snowing.

It falls and falls like sleep
Till wakeful eyes can close
On all the waste and loss
As peace comes in and flows,
Snow-dreaming what I keep.

Silence assumes the air
And the five senses all
Are wafted on the fall
To somewhere magical
Beyond hope and despair.

There is nothing to do
But drift now, more or less
On some great lovingness,
On something that does bless,
The silent, tender snow.

something pleasing that allows the mind to drift off in the proper direction

I just popped the last disc of The Night Fire, out of the CD player in my car and returned it to the library. It's another pairing of Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard solving crimes in their own way, which is never in synch with the system, but generally leads to them puzzling things out. When no one else seems able to, I might add. I was a little worried near the end that Michael Connelly was going to take things in a direction I didn't want him to. But he didn't. I don't want to say more about it and spoil things for you, so if you are a Harry Bosch fan, you will like it and I leave it at that. Mickey Haller (his half brother, the Lincoln Lawyer), makes an appearance too.

On the bedside table right now, I have this wonderful collection of poems, put together by James Crews. It's a fine way to close out the day. A simple (appearing!) reflection on some aspect of life that makes you pause and smile.

I know of no better way to close out the day. Something pleasing that allows the mind to drift off in the proper direction for a good rest. Very highly recommended.

reminders about what I have been given

If you already subscribe to American Life in Poetry and have therefore read edition #817 which features a marvelous bit of work by James Crews, I apologize for this re-telling. But I could not risk anyone missing it. It's from his collection titled "Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection" which I am going to buy right this second. 

Winter Morning 

When I can no longer say thank you
for this new day and the waking into it,
for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair
and the ticking of the space heater glowing
orange as it warms the floor near my feet,
I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again
by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me
and believes he deserves only safety
and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,
and watch the streetlights outside flashing
off one by one like old men blinking their
cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors
slamming car doors hard against the morning
and see the steaming coffee in their mugs
kissing chapped lips as they sip and
exhale each of their worries white into
the icy air around their faces—then I can
remember this one life is a gift each of us
was handed and told to open: Untie the bow
and tear off the paper, look inside
and be grateful for whatever you find
even if it is only the scent of a tangerine
that lingers on the fingers long after
you’ve finished peeling it.

 

I don't know about you, but I need reminders about what I have been given. And this one is especially eloquent. 

the world could use a little more Mary Oliver and a little less of others

Not that a reason is needed, but it seems to me the world could use a little more Mary Oliver and a little less of others. So there is this. 

When I am Among the Trees
          by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say they they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, "It's simple," they say, 
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

All photos from Lawrence Nature park - if you live in the vicinity and want to see it all for yourself.  Dottie, we are going here the next time you come to visit.   

to be sure you don't want to reconsider

When Saturday starts with a sky like this,

and then you head to the farmers market, jumping in the car at just the right time to hear this interview with Nate Marshall.

You can just stop right there and call it good. After you submit a request to your library to purchase his latest book of poetry, Finna. Which is exactly what I did, right after I mailed this link to both of my sisters so they could experience what had just caused me to pause with my hand over my heart in wonder. 

If you don't love poetry, that's ok. But listen to the first few minutes of the interview as Mr. Marshall reads "What Can be Said?" Just to be sure you don't want to reconsider. 

Thank you Ellen Bass

Let’s face it, sometimes people say dumb things. Whether we admit it or not, even the most "enlightened" among us have committed blunders similar to those described below. The thought of it makes me cringe. So the next time you are about to open up and say 'insert platitude here', instead say to yourself "French chocolates" and be comfortable with silence. Thank you Ellen Bass for the creative, evocative, humorous, on-point, reminder.

French Chocolates
by Ellen Bass

If you have your health, you have everything
is something that's said to cheer you up
when you come home early and find your lover
arched over a stranger in a scarlet thong.

Or it could be you lose your job at Happy Nails
because you can't stop smudging the stars
on those ten teeny American flags.

I don't begrudge you your extravagant vitality.
May it blossom like a cherry tree. May the petals
of your cardiovascular excellence
and the accordion polka of your lungs
sweeten the mornings of your loneliness.

But for the ill, for you with nerves that fire
like a rusted-out burner on an old barbecue,
with bones brittle as spun sugar,
with a migraine hammering like a blacksmith

in the flaming forge of your skull,
may you be spared from friends who say,
God doesn't give you more than you can handle
and ask what gifts being sick has brought you.

May they just keep their mouths shut
and give you French chocolates and daffodils
and maybe a small, original Matisse,
say, Open Window, Collioure, so you can look out
at the boats floating on the dappled pink water.

from a recent edition of The Writer's Almanac.

but I like it and therefore am pairing them.

Sometime in the last weeks, this little gem was featured on American Life in Poetry. It reminded me of my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Arthur, who taught us about drawing, making paper mâché puppets, and putting on a "Punch and Judy" production with them. It especially brought to mind the the time my pals and I saw him with a woman at the movie theatre.  We thought it was the most interesting/scandalous/funny thing we had ever seen in our entire lives (all 10/11 years of them we had lived so far).

I hope it triggers a similarly enjoyable memory in you, and even if it doesn't, the poem is still marvelous.

Fayetteville Junior High
By Fleda Brown from her University of Nebraska Press selected poems, The Woods are on Fire.

What happened was, when we weren’t looking
Mr. Selby married Miss Lewis.
We tried to think of it, tiptoed Mr. Selby,
twirling the edges of blackboard numbers
like the sweet-pea tendrils of his hair,
all his calculations secretly
yearning away from algebra, toward
Miss Lewis, legs like stone pillars
in the slick cave of the locker room,
checking off the showered, the breasted,
flat-chested. All this, another world
we never dreamed of inside the bells,
the changing of classes:
Selby and Lewis, emerging
from rooms 4 and 16, holding hands
like prisoners seeing the sky after all those years.
“Bertha,” he says. “Travis,” she says.
The drawbridge of the hypotenuse opens,
the free throw line skates forward,
the old chain of being transcended
in one good leap, worn floor creaking
strange as angels. In homeroom, the smell of
humans, rank, sprouting, yet this hope for us all.

 

This arrangement of lavender from my backyard, in a vase from sister purchased in Sweden, has not one single thing to do with this poem, but I like it and therefore am pairing them. 

it's purple persistence and vigorous nature

Before we get too far past December let me share this with you.  

From American Life in Poetry: Column 771

December
    by Sarah Freligh

On the fire escape, one
stupid petunia still blooms,
purple trumpet blowing
high notes at the sky long
after the rest of the band
has packed up
and gone home.

P.S. I know this is a thistle.  Not a petunia. And yet it's purple persistence, and vigorous nature, is the flower photo in my files that seemed best suited to the spirit of the poem.  

...as we anticipate with hope, the coming of a new year

If this is not a poem for NOW, as we anticipate with hope, the coming of a new year... well, I don't know what is.

We Are of a Tribe 
by Albert Rios
From American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
 
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
 
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
 
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
 
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
 
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
 
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
 
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
 
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.

"the king and queen of eyebrow"

I do not know why the selection from The Writers Almanac for Sunday, September 15, 2019 appealed to me so. But it did. It's posted below for you. The photo I have selected to go with it, has no shared thread with the poem. Except that I like it too, and since they have that in common, they are joined here for you.  

Cosmetic
by Jim Daniels

Last week my mother had eyebrows tattooed on.
She asks how they look. She’s legally blind—
I could tell her anything.

It’s been raining all day, shame’s mad swirl
circling the house. No more cigarettes, coffee.
No more booze. You’ve got to keep going, I tell her.

I could be Annie in her cute red curls. You can
bet your bottom dollar. Pretty soon I’ll be
tap-dancing on the coffee table, or up in my old room

crying. She’s fingering the earphones of her books-
on-tape machine. She’s been saving up things
to tell me. She ticks them off like the giant

grocery list graffitied to her fridge. I’ve collected
scraps of her old handwriting, the graceful swirls

of confidence. 75 years of good vision. She’s rounding
everything off into simple shapes. I’m staring

at the all-weather eyebrows. A cartoon looking
for the punch line. I run my finger over them.

She startles, then relaxes. It made her sneeze,
my father offers up from the kitchen

where he’s spending a lot more time. Your father
stopped saying ‘Bless you’ pretty fast.

Good. Great. Fantastic. Exquisite. The eyebrows
to top all eyebrows. The king and queen of eyebrow.

Listen to the rain, she says.
Just listen to it coming down.

 

Yes Yes Yes

Dottie shared this poem with me when we were on our Moss Sisters trip. I recommend printing it off and placing it someplace easily accessible. Then, when you are faced with a decision, let this philosophy guide you in making the proper choice.

God Says Yes to Me
    by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay
to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was
okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could
wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish 
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
and is it even okay if
I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I am telling you is 
Yes Yes Yes

P.S. I am going to suggest you keep it especially handy when looking at dessert menu's.  Particularly if you are at the Trillium Cafe in Mendocino and there is a peach tart among the selections.  

whether you have siblings or are an only child

When I came across the poem below by Billy Collins, it made me more grateful than I already am (if that is possible), to have 2 sisters and a brother.  Below, in all our glory, lined up on the couch at our house in Spain on June 10th 1966. Bangs freshly trimmed by Angie.  Dottie with perfect hair showing why mom permed our ends, me missing 2 front teeth, Mary Ann looking extremely serious, Ray in suit and tie.

Whether you have siblings or are an only child, you will enjoy the poem.  I feel certain.  

Only Child
by Billy Collins

I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.
Center of the universe,
I had the back of my parents' car
all to myself. I could look out one window
then slide over to the other window
without any quibbling over territorial rights,
and whenever I played a game
on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn.

Not until my parents entered their 90s
did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary,
who worked in a hospital
five minutes away from their house
and who would drop everything,
even a thermometer, whenever I called.
“Be there in a jiff” and “On my way!”
were two of her favorite expressions, and mine.

And now that the parents are dead,
I wish I could meet Mary for coffee
every now and then at that Italian place
with the blue awning where we would sit
and reminisce, even on rainy days.
I would gaze into her green eyes
and see my parents, my mother looking out
of Mary's right eye and my father staring out of her left,

which would remind me of what an odd duck
I was as a child, a little prince and a loner,
who would break off from his gang of friends
on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind.
And I would tell Mary about all that, too,
and never embarrass her by asking about
her nonexistence, and maybe we
would have another espresso and a pastry
and I would always pay the bill and walk her home.
 

...sometimes they lie

In the event that you missed this, I provide it here for your enjoyment. It sums up quite well how I (and maybe you?) feel about my work at times.  Work being a loose term for what I get paid to do, what I try to accomplish in terms of writing, painting, cooking... or anything I start out on that gets a mind of it's own and goes in a direction I didn't anticipate.  

The Other Poet
by Ellie Schoenfeld

The poet explains exactly
what her poems are doing on a variety of levels.
I am jealously impressed.
My poems go places
but send no postcards––I have no idea
what they are doing. They do
whatever they want to.
I give them curfews
but they wake me in the middle
of the night, they interrupt meetings
and other situations where I have no time
for them. They hang on me
when I am on the phone.
They do not keep my secrets
and sometimes they lie.
They can be sullen and withdrawn
or explosively obscene.
I think my poems have problems with authority,
conduct disorders, attention deficit.
The other poet is like the parent
with the bumper sticker about their honor student
while I am speeding along
to get to the correctional facility
before visiting hours are over.
I try to give my poems direction.
They tell me they have cleaned their rooms
but we both know it's not true.
After all these years of therapy
we still don't understand each other.
I write a poem and think
"What the hell is that?!"

 

roses are red, violets are blue

Happy hearts, flowers, candy, pink and red, streamers, ruffles, and chocolates to each of you.

With love, on every day, but especially on Valentines day.
I tried, and tried, and tried some more to come up with a great "Roses are red...." poem for the occasion.  
But I can not for the life of me get this one, from 3rd grade, out of my head. "Roses are red, violets are blue, your nose is shaped like a B-52". As a result, nothing else will come to me. Please don't let that stop you from sharing your best ones with all of us.  

"...art is not a mirror held up to reality..."

Current status of my inspiration board. Things I want to make, do, consider, delight in, and dream about.

From the Writers Almanac Sunday, "Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it".  Bertolt Brecht

time to explore, set the bar higher, and laugh

Today I realized that Mary Oliver died while we were in Palm Springs. Such a loss.  Thankfully she left us words that can continue to be pondered and marveled over (again and again).

Words like this nugget below that sums up why the tradition of Palm Springs Art Retreat continues.

"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."

Above are our journals laid out on the floor by the front door, where Pam and I felt the light was best, though Sister disagreed and tried to convince us (unsuccessfully) otherwise.  Those of you who know Pam and Mary Ann will easily be able to pick out whose pages are whose.  Bottom row from left to right: P, MA, MA. Middle row from left to right: MA, then mine. Top row left to right: MA, P, mine, P, mine.  Very tip top: P.

Favorite parts of creating with Pam and Sister include watching Pam use up paint and then make marks all around, seeing what emerges is bliss (above).  As is observing the lush rich color when Mary Ann gets out the gouache (below).

This is the time to just explore, set the bar higher, and laugh when the result is hilarious.

It is also time to jump up at dawn to watch the sun hit the mountains and appreciate a pool and hot tub in January when there is snow on the ground at home.

Stay tuned for episodes 2 and 3 to come.  Possibly 4. 

whispers of things we hope for

Before we get so far away from Thanksgiving, and talk of things we are grateful for, and whispers of things we hope for, let me share this little jewel from Matthew Ogle's Pome.  Along with one more photograph of our beautiful fall colors this year.  

little prayer

let ruin end here

let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion's cage
& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing
&  if not   let it be

Danez Smith (2017)

unless you insist on wings

A little mid-week poetry.  Courtesy of Matthew Ogle and Pome.

the angels have no wings
they come to you wearing
their own clothes

they have learned to love you
and will keep coming

unless you insist on wings

Lucille Clifton (2004)

 

Helpful links:

Pome

two playing peeling painted cats from the What-Not-Shoppe

I have greatly missed the daily dose of poetry I used to get from The Writers Almanac, and have searched for ways to replace it.  I liked the total randomness of it, as well as all the poets I was introduced to.  For you today, I have this bit from Pome by Mathew Ogle.  He sends a tiny poem to your inbox daily.  I am trying it on for size.  This one from Saturday definitely fit me.  

The First Rule
of Sinhalese
Architecture

Never build three doors
in a straight line

A devil might rush
through them
deep into your house,
into your life

Michael Ondaatje (1998)

If you are concerned about devils, and have three doors in a straight line, you can always adopt the strategy of surrounding your front door with giant rabbits holding special talismans, the St. Francis from your mom's garden, and two playing, peeling, concrete cats painted black from the "what not shoppe".  Something that would make a devil draw up and think twice before entering.  

 P.S.  If you want to get a tiny poem delivered to your inbox daily - go here to subscribe.

...when sky was earth

If you missed this, while rushing about in a hectic pace, over the last few weeks, I present it here.  Because it should not be missed.  I feel certain you will agree. 

SINGULARITY
by Marie Howe (after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money — 

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?

There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests

to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if 

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that 

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all — nothing

have good sentences in your ears

On the first day of 2018, let me throw in some wisdom to consider as you set about making resolutions, or not.  From Jane Kenyon, one of my very favorite poets. 

It resonated loudly with me when I read it.  A good "common sense" prescription to live by. 

Here's to good beginnings in this new year. 

I have put my bear on notice

I present today's edition of The Writers Almanac in case you missed it or are just not a regular listener.  It's worthy of a pre-holiday read. 

Bear In Mind

by John Martin

A bear is chasing me through a meadow
and I’m running as fast as I can but
he’s gaining on me—it seems
he’s always gaining on me.
I’m running and running but also
thinking I should just
turn around and say,
“Stop it! Stop chasing me. We both
know you aren’t going to catch me.
All you can ever do is chase me. So,
think about it—why bother?”

The bear does stop,
and he sits on his haunches and thinks,
or seems to think. And then
the bear says to me,
“I have to chase you, you know
that. Or you should. And, sure,
we both know I’ll never catch you.
So, why not give us both a break and
just stop thinking about me?”

But, with that said, he gets back on four feet,
sticks his long pink tongue out, licks down
both sides of his snout. Then he sighs, looks
behind himself, then at me and says, “Okay,
ready when you are.”

P.S. I have put my bear on notice that I will not be participating in any shenanigans or reindeer games this December.  And that includes chasing.  He sent a note back thanking me for giving him the month off to roll around in the woods and eat honey. 

I tried it raw, then seared and hot

I bought the bitter melon it looked so cool
an exotic food, it made me drool.

I tried it raw, then seared and hot
I sought to like it, but I could not.

The taste akin to old cold tar,
to soothe my mouth, a candy bar.

 

...in a field we could not reach

Sometimes a poem provides an explanation, an insight, a shared comfort that science can not.  This is one of those. 

My Father, Dying

by Joyce Sutphen

It was hard work, dying, harder
than anything he’d ever done.

Whatever brutal, bruising, back-
breaking chore he’d forced himself

to endure—it was nothing
compared to this. And it took

so long. When would the job
be over? Who would call him

home for supper? And it was
hard for us (his children)—

all of our lives we’d heard
my mother telling us to go out,

help your father, but this
was work we could not do.

He was way out beyond us,
in a field we could not reach.

 

From the Writers Almanac, June 1, 2017

these additions from Angie

Lies My Mother Told Me
by Elizabeth Thomas

If you keep eating raw spaghetti
         you’ll get pinworms,
         then I’ll have to make
         a necklace of garlic for you to wear
         each night while you sleep,
         until they go away.
If you’re mean to your younger brother, I’ll know
         because I have a special eye
         that spies on you when I’m not home.
         You cannot hide from it,
         so don’t try.
If you touch your “down there”
         any time other than when using the toilet,
         your hand will turn green and fall off.
If you keep crossing your eyes
         they will stay that way
         until the wind
         changes direction.
It is bad luck to kill a moth. Moths are
         the souls of our ancestors and it just
         might be Papa paying a visit.
If you kiss a boy on the mouth
         your lips will stick together
         and he’ll use the opportunity
         to suck out your brains.
If you ever lie to me
         God will know and
         rat you out.
         And sometimes
         God exaggerates.
         Trust me —
         you don’t want that
         to happen.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this selection from the Writers Almanac earlier in the week.  To this list, I would add these additions from Angie:
1.  Eating the crusts on your bread will make you whistle better 
2.  Don't crack your knuckles, it will make them really big and ugly
3.  Only married women are allowed to use tampons

I'll stop there.  

"...don't set me down as vainglorious"

I hope whatever you have planned for your weekend, will get you in the frame of mind Odgen Nash was in when he penned the little ditty below.   From the Writers Almanac earlier this week.  It seems the perfect thing to get the weekend started. 

No Doctors Today, Thank You
by Ogden Nash

They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful, well,
      today I feel euphorian,
Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetite of a Vic-
      torian.
Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,
Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle any
      swashes?
This is my euphorian day,
I will ring welkins and before anybody answers I will run away.
I will tame me a caribou
And bedeck it with marabou.
I will pen me my memoirs.
Ah youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!
I wasn’t much of a hand for the boudoirs,
I was generally to be found where the food was.
Does anybody want any flotsam?
I’ve gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam?
I can getsam.
I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,
I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.
I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces be-
      cause I am wearing moccasins,
And I practically know the difference between serums and anti-
      toccasins.
Kind people, don’t think me purse-proud, don’t set me down as
      vainglorious,
I’m just a little euphorious.

 

because it's that good

It was a red, white, and blue themed weekend around our house.   There were drives, movies, naps, cake, flowers, and flags.  Everything you need for the 4th of July. 

If all that wasn't enough, there was this on the Writers Almanac today.  Copied below for you convenience.  Because it's that good. 

Preface to Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

 

by the way the words are put together

From the Writers Almanac, February 13th, 2016.  Forgive me if you have already read this, it was too good not to share. 

In your next letter,
by Carrie Shipers

                                             please describe
the weather in great detail. If possible,
enclose a fist of snow or mud,

everything you know about the soil,
how tomato leaves rub green against
your skin and make you itch, how slow

the corn is growing on the hill.
Thank you for the photographs
of where the chicken coop once stood,

clouds that did not become tornadoes.
When I try to explain where I’m from,
people imagine corn bread, cast-iron,

cows drifting across grass. I interrupt
with barbed wire, wind, harvest air
that reeks of wheat and diesel.

I hope your sleep comes easy now
that you’ve surrendered the upstairs,
hope the sun still lets you drink

one bitter cup before its rise. I don’t miss
flannel shirts, radios with only
AM stations, but there’s a certain kind

of star I can’t see from where I am-
bright, clear, unconcerned. I need
your recipes for gravy, pie crust,

canned green beans. I’m sending you
the buttons I can’t sew back on.
Please put them in the jar beside your bed.

In your next letter, please send seeds
and feathers, a piece of bone or china
you plowed up last spring. Please

promise I'm missing the right things.

I can't say precisely what it was about this poem that struck a chord in me.  But I was touched all the same.  I think that's the way of all good poetry.  That even though they are not your lived experiences, you are put in touch with your own memories by the way the words are put together.  

what lies beyond the platform for each of you tonight

In case you missed it this morning, I present the poem for today from The Writers Almanac.  It was all I could do not to turn my car towards the train station instead of continuing on to work after I listened to it today.  

The Sound of a Train

by Faith Shearin

Even now, I hear one and I long to leave
without a suitcase or a plan; I want to step
onto the platform and reach for
the porter’s hand and buy a ticket
to some other life; I want to sit
in the big seats and watch fields
turn into rivers or cities. I want to eat
cake on the dining car’s
unsteady tablecloths, to sleep
while whole seasons
slip by. I want to be a passenger
again: a person who hears the name
of a place and stands up, a person
who steps into the steam of arrival.

I don't know what lies beyond the platform for each of you tonight.  I hope it's something beautiful.  Sweet dreams and happy weekend!  

the secret of life

My sister and I love to take public transportation in unfamiliar places.   When I read  yesterdays selection from the Writers Almanac it brought back lots of memories of our bus/tram/metro/train/ferry escapades over the years.  I include it below for your reading enjoyment.  

"Secret of Life" by Diana Der-Hovanessian

Once during the war
on a bus going to Portsmouth
a navy yard worker
told me the secret of life.

The secret of life, he said,
can never be passed down
one generation to the other.

The secret of life, he said,
is hunger.  It makes an open hand.

The secret of life is money.
But only the small coins.

The secret of life, he said,
is love.  You become what you lose.

The secret of life, he said,
is water.  The world will end
in a flood.

The secret of life, he said,
is circumstance.

If you catch the right bus
at the right time
you will sit next
to the secret teller

who will whisper it
in your ear.

aim at nothing, that's what you'll hit

My great Aunt Alice used to say "aim at nothing, that's what you'll hit".   She was a regular dispenser of common sense and came to mind immediately when I read todays Writers Almanac.  It's worth passing along.  

 

Excerpts from "How to be Perfect"

by Ron Padgett

Get some sleep.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.
Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass
ball collection.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if
you have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want.

After dinner, wash the dishes.

Calm down.

Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want
to.

Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.

Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do
anything to make it impossible.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not
possible, go to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.

Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel
even older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put ice on it immediately. If you bang
your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20
minutes. you will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and
gravity.

Do not inhale smoke.

Take a deep breath.

Do not smart off to a policeman.

Be good.

Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.

Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to
drink, say, "Water, please."

Take out the trash.

Love life.

Use exact change.

When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.