Tag Archives: poetry

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Last Year, This Year and What Else Can I Say?

I am so good at pushing the wrong button and the wrong time!  And I am so good at procrastination.

2011 ended and 2012, started with a trip to my favorite poetry workshop in San Miguel de Allende. Took a car, then a plane, then a bus, then another bus and then a taxi much of which I had to do in my get-along Spanish. Nine hours of travel and I’m finally in the old-school style hotel, signing things. My friend Jennifer Clement, who created this wonderful week of poetry, walks in the lobby, “I have wormsalt!”

“Wormsalt, Jennifer?” I have not been in the lobby more than five minutes. She is in black velvet with candlelight hair, pulled softly to the back, with curls. I have not seen her in a years time.

“Yes! Wormsalt for the mescal!”  I took one of the plastic Dixie cups from her hand, touched my finger in what looked like damp sand, licked my finger and knocked back the liquor. My whole body smiled.

“Wow! You tossed that back!”

Nodding: “Well I’ve been traveling about ten hours at this point.” I tried the wormsalt again. . .it reminded me of swimming in the Atlantic and licking my lips when I came out of the water. “How’d you know I was here?” I asked Jennifer.

“Oh, I told them I wanted to know the second you arrived. We’re up on the patio, come get another drink! Then we’ll go to dinner and then fireworks at the Jardin!” Off she went to rejoin the small party and I went to my room. Changed into something more festive with salt and smokey mescal still on my tongue.  One year started and the new one began as I made my way back to the hotel, smiling at strangers, fireworks over head.

Nice, sweet, delicious memory. Woven into this week are moments of absolute confusion, chronic pain and old buttons. Woven into this week are threads like silk that shine and lay soft in my heart. New friends, skulking about the former home to the nuns. . . a midnight cloister walk. . . poems and readings and good food. I went home exhausted. A cluttered brain and somewhat defeated.

I had spent 2o11 ‘working’ on myself. I worked hard at work. I wanted so much to have 2012 be new. But I was stuck. . . and felt entirely alone with my confusion of who I am. Who am I now?

And the year brought me to Boston and my husband got to know our grandson. And then I helped the ‘kids’ pack up and move to a place near Boulder.  I drove with my son from Austin to Boulder and it was sweet. . . he was loving every inch of the thousand mile drive.  A drive, and week or so there, I was done. All done. Done in. It was sad and huge awareness that I don’t have the physical reserves that I had BC.  This came at 52, when I had always thought I’d have that awareness at 62.

The summer I had my sister here, my home, for six weeks. She was lost and needed quiet to figure out what’s best for her. As sisters we squabbled a little but mostly we drank red wine and laughed and poked around thrift stores.  Then after my adventure in moving, my other sister (by marriage) came for five days. She and I rearrange furniture and danced at night with my husband’s band.

This year, I found a choir. I found singing, my first and forever love, and oh god it was hard. Like Mexico hard, confusion and in articulation.  Wanting to belong and scared to death of belonging then to be rejected. . . but I went. I went and showed up. Every Wednesday night, choir then dancing at my favorite bar in Austin, Donn’s Depot.  I would leave choir mentally exhausted. . .just as I had been in my workshops in Mexico.

And then it got better.  This feeling of belonging filled me without the fear.  I could belong somewhere on Wednesday nights and that was great. And the pastor of this church wore clogs and quoted poetry in sermons. I can listen. I could follow.

Before 2012 ended, somewhere around Thanksgiving I realized I was happy in my own skin for the first time in what seems years. I am not the person I was before . . .I could not return to the past but in letting go, fully, I found a me.

In this finding are friends, steadfast and true. Some new, some old dear friends. In the kitchen my husband holding me saying: “I miss your laugh” early in the year and then “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had” later in the year.   A year when I felt like a family again with my son and daughter-in-law and grandson.

And, here I am, mid-way through the first month of 2013, focused on what I am and what fills my life with work and work with life. Cliche, perhaps. I still have a high-maintenance body I deal with every day. I get muddled and stuck. . . but I no longer judge myself for this and won’t hang with those who do.  But the best part is , I have a sense of potential in my life, sense of wonder. And how I have missed this. How I have longed to feel like this.

What else can I say?

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In Memorium: For David Duncan

This year started with mescal and worm-salt. It started with poetry and song. I recovered my singing voice in a warm, welcoming group. My first friend was Molly, an petite alto with a great smile and deep faith. She shared her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis and I told her my story because being a care-giver is harder than having the disease for I’ve walked both sides of the cancer treatment street.

I love Molly. I love her David. And for the past few weeks, I’ve been saying this poem in my mind because there is nothing can do. There is a helplessness we all feel in the presence of horrible disease, the times I want to DO something, the only thing I can do is pray, meditate, hold in my mind that no matter the sequence of events: this too shall pass.

That all who’s lives are touched by the disease that will take whatever it can, it cannot take memories, cannot take love, cannot take true friends, cannot take our spirits. Some of us survive the horrible treatments, even watch our bodies slip and fail only to return. Some of us pass to the next path. We all overcome cancer. WE all overcome and find comfort in unexpected ways.

LET EVENING COME
By Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

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Confessions of a Transplant: True Cop Story

This whole story begins because I made a promise to myself to get more exercise even though it’s still hot but I needed a destination. A drive-by encounter with a friend who is running her snow-cone stand gave me this motivation.

So Friday I walked distance long enough and hot enough. In her ‘box’ she and I visited and caught up on grandchildren between customers. Background note for my northern readers: these snow cones are not crunched up ice it is ice shaved so fine it’s like perfect snowball snow but if you had to shovel this kind of snow, it would just suck.

Now, back to 95 degrees and I’m sipping something my friend handed me, wasn’t sure what it was but it was kind of like ice-tea over snow. A young couple came up, you know those people who are attractive and self-possessed, with social graces. They made a point of telling my friend this was their favorite snow-cone trailer and they go out of their way to get there.

I was feeling chatty I made a comment, she asked a question and then I found out they spent their honeymoon in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. . . apparently Thailand is over-rated, Angkor Wat was all they really saw of Cambodia but Viet Nam was amazing. Another question and then conversation ensued about the use of dash vs a parenthetical expression or when can one actually use a dash.

The well toned good looking new husband turns out went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. . . BA in Arts and Letters. “Wait, you have a degree from Wesleyan and you’re asking this question? What do you do?”

“I’m a cop.”

“Really, Austin Police? You’re kidding.” And his wife say, yup, he’s a cop who has a degree in arts and letters. Now here I was thinking: this feels almost like a joke. So we’re sipping snow, she had cream on her pina colada flavored and I am thinking I need to try that.

The young husband says: “So have you read much French or Russian literature?” I am at a corner of busy and high traffic, the trailer on the far corner of a large parking lot for a Tex-Mex restaurant, rush hour has more and more cars on the boulevard, and he says: “Have you actually read ‘Proust” and finished it?” He slurps a spoon of red snow and all I can do is laugh our loud.

Proust. “In all honesty, no, I haven’t,” I finally reply, “Great sentences though and I love madelines”. He admitted to the fact he keeps trying. We both have read Victor Hugo and talked about how bawdy the Medieval writers could be. (My mind going: you’re an Austin cop!) And then we talked about Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Tolstoy. I told him about the newer translations by a married couple.

He said he was going to try “War & Peace” to which I told him I refuse to read that but I am giving “Ulysses” a try. And then they were done with the snow in the Texas heat and took off in their modest dusty vehicle.

I did not ask the questions I wanted to: Why a cop? Why Texas? I grew up not many miles from where they attended university as did my husband. But these two are my son’s age and could have followed a more traditional path, what used to be a path to upper-middle class homes in towns with good public schools. A path of a year in Europe immersed in a language and culture, or law school.

I wanted to but I have many younger friends who took that path and are in serious debt. I didn’t ask his wife what she did, maybe they live here because she’s a doctoral student. But I didn’t ask because when I blurted in my oh so graceful way: “Wait. You’re a cop asking me about parenthetical expressions?” and his wife looked at him and said, “Yup! Degree in Arts and Letters and he’s a cop,” her expression both amused and proud.

After they left, I tried another new food. . .snow cone with peach syrup topped with cream. Oh yum. Austin at it’s best.

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Organized thoughts of my Unorthodox Faith (1)

My sister was here for a good long visit this summer. Part of the visit was to give her space to sort through some serious life-stuff and part of the visit was to be with me. And it could be said that our relationship is life-stuff but we’re on the up-side of stuff.

My sister identifies herself as born-again Christian, socially conservative, hippy-Mom and former physical therapist. While she was here she showed me a book that she was re-reading, Christy by Catharine Marshall. I remembered the book around the house when we were much younger but I didn’t know that it was a book that gave shape and words to her own faith.

The following poem is the price of writing that helped shape my own faith. It is not one of the world’s great poems but to an eleven year old who was in love with the obvious music of older poems, it had a great impact for it was an echo from the little Catholic church we were raised in: “do unto others”. . .”faith without works”. . .”love thy neighbor”.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said
“What writest thou?” —The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

I know now this Abou is probably Arabic, and/or Muslim.  I rather like that in fact. Years after that poem was just a part of my mind, I worked for a couple of years in a Jewish deli where I came to know the holidays and customs of that faith. (I also picked up a bit of Yiddish.)  Time in anonymous meetings lifted me out of dogma and into a self-defined faith.

What we have together as sisters is a faith in each other and a deep understanding of who we once were, and where we are going. Perhaps this is a by-product of being in our 50′s but I know it’s more for we have had very hard times. We’ve gone long time without speaking and when we did it was difficult.  Today, we laugh and dance and sip wine watching food shows. ;lkio

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Fractals: The Beauty of Knowing

I know what I can’t do.

I cannot stop a train wreck.
I cannot stop a drunk from drinking.
I cannot stop the earth and I do not want to get off.
I cannot stop worrying about my son, no matter his age.
I cannot stop loving my husband — I don’t know where it began.
I cannot stop seeing beauty everywhere I look.
I cannot become the person you think I’m supposed to be.
I cannot become a person who believes in goodness.
I cannot become a person whose fear becomes hate.
I cannot become a person untouched by disease.
I cannot become a person who says: this faith is the faith.

I cannot stop the girl with the pink guitar from living on the streets.
I cannot give her enough money to feed her addictions.
I did give her the pint of ice cream I bought for whatever reason one buys ice-cream at ten o’clock on a Monday night.
I did give it without hesitation — knowing and not knowing
there but for the grace of god, go I.

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Fractal: Mooning

One of the things I really like about living in Central Texas, and sitting on my deck (sipping something) is I can see the earth move, how the moon is a constant in the arc — no matter the phase.

It can be eclipsed but it is there. Lunatic.

Some see a rabbit in the moon. I hiked to the alter of the Rabbit God, in Tepotzotlan with my husband, years ago now, my sea-level lungs sucking air all the way, as abulitas just walked by me, saying sweet encouraging things in Spanish. Oh but how a smile can be endless. And then climbing this iron ladder, there I was, feral black cats greeting us, and the valley below, we sat. Bought tortillas to feed the cats. . .endless valley, beauty close up and distant. Fractal.

Some see a man in the moon. Some feel the energy from a moonstone gem.

When I was in grad school, I was driving home and came face to face with a huge, pale orange moon rising. I had to stop. I’d never seen the moon with such enormity. I could have driven right into it, wanted to. . .lunatic.

And then I continued to drive, said to myself: “Well there’s one good reason to live here!”

“I’m in love with the man in the moon
We’re going to be married next June
Behind a dark cloud
Where no one’s allowed
I’m in love with the man in the moon”

I hear my mother’s voice.

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Confessions of a Transplant: If there is water, I am home.

Home is where you know it is.

 

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I will listen until the trills fade and the light is old.

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Transplant: Fractal as Snow (?)

Return

Airmail and Mexican postage
I placed the letter beneath
your pillow and lost

you as dreams wandered
into suenos and caminos
meandered in the subjunctive

how I wanted to climb
into your voice, have you hear
the sky throwing snow

drifts up to the back door
and I shoveled, dug out
the car, a way to the mailbox

a labyrinth in the front yard
each shovel full and tossed
until my arms no longer felt

your absence and my ache
moved from my chest
to shoulders and hip bones