Sabbatical

Sabbatical
Sabbatical!!

Monday, January 25, 2010

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun (WH Auden) and a few more

I have been grieving.  Yes, that's what this is.  I'm grieving for a dear poetry friend whose daughter died yesterday of lung cancer.  His daughter was 50 years old and leaves behind three children and a wonderful husband.  My friend was with her as she took her last breaths.  No one should watch their child die.  If it really has to be, well then let us all be there to witness every moment of life left.  It does seem incredible that the world doesn't even hiccup at the loss.  But I guess this is a good thing; time continues propelling us forward, smoothing our losses day by day.  So I've been looking  for poems that explore loss and grieving.  Take a look

When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.



Stop All The Clocks (WH Auden)



Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.







The Uses of Sorrow (Mary Oliver)

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
A box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
That this, too, was a gift.



AND

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
(Izuma Shikibu)




Sunday, January 17, 2010

Evening Hieroglyph (Li-Young Lee)

I was stumbling around in poetry books today unsure of what I was looking for.  I've just returned from visiting my sister in CT after she had microsurgery on a herniated disc.  We went into NYC and saw the musical, Hair, much to my delight.  This musical is still quite edgy and must have been incredibly controversial (to say nothing of downright lewd) in 1969.  I never really knew the story that united the songs I had played years ago.  Boy wants to break out of his parents confining world, wants peace and love and freedom and hair, but gets drafted, and unlike the others who burn their draft card, he goes to Vietnam (because his parents will be proud of him?, because he is trying to do good? be good?) and dies.  The music is great.  Audience up on stage at the end singing let the sun shine.  Really fun.  Hard to come home to such  a lousy day today.

So, I'm feeling a little unsure today--about the direction of the poem to include, about the direction of my work, life,--ok, just bloody unsure.  so here's a poem about ...unknowing.  I htink it is lovely.

Evening Hieroglyph (Li-Young Lee)


Birds keep changing places in the empty tree
like decimals or numberals reconfiguring


some word which, spoken, might sound the key
that rights the tumblers in the iron lock
that keeps the gate dividing me from me.


Late January.  The birds face all
one direction and flit
from branch to branch.


They raise no voice
against or for oncoming dark, no answer
to questions asked by one
whose entire being seems a quiestion


posed to himself, one no longer new
on earth, unknowing, and yet,
still not the next thing.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Tooth Fairy (Dorianne Laux)

This morning the sun was so bright, as it angled over the snow banks, it made them glisten--like they had been coated with a fine dusting of diamonds  I wish I put this much attention into the rest of my day, but I'm trying.  Today is Chip's birthday.  He calls it an unremarkable one (no 5 or 0 involved), but there are no unremarkable birthdays with Chip, that is for sure!   My wonderful sister-in-law said something to me  this morning that  resonates deeply with me.  She said that trying to stay in the moment, really being mindful of what is happening right now, can be very tricky--scary, overwhelming, exhilarating, all of the above.  Right now is a very spacious place and lots and lots can be going on at once--mentally, physically, every way.  She is quite a sage, I believe, and I am glad to call her my friend.  Perhaps this is some of the reason we don't stay in that moment easily.  I do think the space is there if we look for it.  What an interesting idea to think about.  I am going to put some effort into focusing on all the myriad feelings that are present at any particular time.  One of the exercises in the poetry workbook goes like this:  think about some moment or some experience in your life.  Run the tape of that moment in your head, then write down all the details you can rememer.  Then, write down the rest of the details you think of after you've begun to write them down (writing them down always seems to stimulate more memory).  Then you write a poem about it.  Here is an example that will stop you in your tracks.  Her ability to give you the details in just a few images is wonderful.  We don't need a lot of words to get so much information.  Think of the information we really have at our fingertips if we could just mine it!

try this:
The Tooth Fairy (Dorianne Laux)


They brushed a quarter with glue


and glitter, slipped in on bare


feet, and without waking me


painted rows of delicate gold


footprints on my sheets with a love


so quiet, I still can't hear it.






My mother must have been


a beauty then, sitting


at the kitchen table with him,


a warm breeze lifting her


embroidered curtains, waiting


for me to fall asleep.






It's harder to believe


the years that followed, the palms


curled into fists, a floor


of broken dishes, her chainsmoking


through long silences, him


punching holes in his walls.






I can still remember her print


dresses, his checkered Taxi, the day


I found her in the closet


with a paring knife, the night


he kicked my sister in the ribs.






He lives alone in Oregon now, dying


of a rare bone disease.


His face stippled gray, his ankles


clotted beneath wool socks.






She's a nurse on the graveyard shift,


Comes home mornings and calls me,


Drinks her dark beer and goes to bed.






And I still wonder how they did it, slipped


that quarter under my pillow, made those


perfect footprints...






Whenever I visit her, I ask again.


"I don't know," she says, rocking, closing


her eyes. "We were as surprised as you."


Thursday, January 7, 2010

The Surface (Jorie Graham)

This is day 4 of our try at caffeine, alcohol, sugar, meat-free eating.  The headache is lessening finally, and I've rediscovered how much I love vegetables--in soups, roasted, raw, any way.  Also, there are so many different grains I haven't even tried before....and I really like almond milk.  Did I say non-dairy?  This is my first week back at work, and I feel a little overwhelmed, but I'm settling in.  I think the caffeine withdrawal isn't helping, though.  I'm still trying to come to terms with 2009, but also tyring to move on and pay attention every day to 2010.  I feel good now, I'm trying to get back in shape, I want to live well right now.  We also have this looming loss as Will has signed on the bottom line (or we have!) and will be off to college in the fall.  This is a bigger deal than either of us is admitting to each other, but we also need to enjoy every minute we have with him not tainting the good times worrying about him leaving....easier said than done, but we'll keep trying.  The good news is that he is so ready--mature enough, full of the right values, eager and happy.  Parenting is such an amazing ride, isn't it?  rips your heart out, drops you to your knees, makes you laugh out loud, and keeps you believing in love.  nice.

Try this, I think it is beautiful:

The Surface


It has a hole in it.  Not only where I 
                                       concentrate.
The river still ribboning, twisting up,
                               into its re-
arrangements, chill enlightenments, right knotted
                                       quickenings
and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving
                               the messengers--
the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings,
                                         glassy
forgettings under the river of
my attention--
and the river of my attention laying itself down--
                                        bending,
reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy
                                        obstacles--
and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--
rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting
                                        permanences
of the cold
bed.
I say iridescent and I look down.
The leaves very still as they are carried.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Burning the Old Year (Naomi Shihab Nye)

Happy New Year!  I'm trying to decide what I feel about this new year and the loss of the last one.  For me, there is always something bittersweet about the loss of a year.  Do you remember when we couldn't wait for the next year?  I do, I do-- wanting to be a teenager, wanting to go to college, and on and on and on.  Now, I realize this year is the end of our family life as we've known it for so long--Will is off to college in the fall, and we will have to figure out how to be in this new space of three instead of four.  Last year wasn't the best for health and happiness around here so we should be happy to burn 2009 and move on, but.....there is always that but, things are always a bit more complicated, aren't they.  But  I am ever hopeful, dare I even say happy, and looking at these kids makes me sure that with all our "stuff", we have done all right. They are happy, thoughtful, loving and wise.  This seems like a good place to start a new year to me.

Try this:

Burning the Old Year

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE


Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   
lists of vegetables, partial poems.   
Orange swirling flame of days,   
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   
only the things I didn’t do   
crackle after the blazing dies.