Saving my Life

Thelma, Louise, and Calamity Lynn head West

2011-12-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

I have just returned from a 2700 mile drive from Cleveland to Vancouver, British Columbia, and believe it or not, I didn't want it to end. Ok, picture 2 old friends, Louise-Betsy and Thelma-Lissa, who have essentially raised their kids together and get called sisters alot, along with Betsy's wonderful mother in law, Calamity Lynn, deciding to radically welcome ADVENTURE.

Around the Thanksgiving table this year, the discussion turned to how to get Alex's car from Cleveland to where he is playing junior hockey in Langley, Brithish Columbia. Alex is Betsy's 19 year old son, my godson, and Lynn's grandson. I'm afraid it was I who might have said, "Let's drive!" Before we knew it, a plan was forming and Lynn was in too. Why not, I ask you? When was the last time you saw a prairie dog in his natural surroundings, cold as they were? Looked in wonder at the badlands as they rippled the vast, flat landscape into my mother's favorite ribbon candy? How about walked around the first national park, Devil's Tower? Ate lunch in Montana with a view that took your breath away? Cackled with two gas station attendants in Wallace, Wyoming at 6am as they took apart the mayor for his shabby decorating of the town tree? Chatted with Ranger Butch as he described the 1500 Minuteman missiles silo-ed all over the Western States during the Cold War? Drove blithely over the Snoqualmie Pass gazing at the scenery without realizing that we had made it over? When, I ask you?

Not only did we have perfect, clear, sunny weather essentially every minute of the 4 day drive, we found ourselves being warmly welcomed at every single place we chose to stop. Talk about radical welcome! I heard this phrase used at church on Sunday. My dear friend and minister, Pastor Beal, used this term in her sermon about the birth of Jesus as a radical welcome to us all. I liked the phrase a great deal. We travelers felt the world embrace us and welcome us everywhere we went. What a beautiful country this is, too, even in the cold. Maybe that's why there were no lines at any national site. We laughed and realized that everything is free at this time of year (ie: boarded up), and there are no crowds; in fact, there often was not another breathing human within miles! You should try Northern Idaho in December.....magnificent! We also found our way to a Louisiana BBQ joint in a snow squall in Wyoming....you just never know what you'll find until you dive in and welcome the adventure.

Thelma, Louise, and Calamity Lynn are already thinking about their next radical adventure. Maybe the lower route to Zion, etc...or maybe the Lewis and Clark trail.....hmmmm, so many options. If anyone is interested, I kept a very brief travel-blog during the trip. the Day 4 blog is right below this one; the first three days somehow got stuck to the right on the blog under the year 2000. I can only wonder how that happened!
How about some poetry. I feel as if this wonderful wanderlust i've been feeling and and the vast open, starry skies I've been seeing require a bit of the good Vermonter, Robert Frost. How about two from the bard:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
As it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh,I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Choose Something Like a Star

Oh star (the fairest one in sight)
we grant your loftiness the right
to some obscurity of cloud--
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell us something in the end.
As steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from it's sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks from us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Day 4

2011-12-02T17:41:00.003-08:00

Left at mile marker 2230 and bid a fond farewell to Wallace. Actually, we loved Wallace. On our way out (at 5am), we stopped at a gas station run by two women who were laughing hysterically when I walked in about how pathetically their grand evergreen was decorated with Christmas lights....and they were right. We pulled out in the dark and just as the day began to lighten, we pulled into Coeur D'Alene to see the huge, beautiful lake. As Betsy said, Coeur D'Alene means, roughly translated mind you, "those scuzzy Indian traders" --too bad because the words are quite lovely. Here's what the lake looks like:

This is a very upscale place, and as we pulled into the visitor's parking across from the lake, we saw something like 30 trees intricately decorated with tiny white lights. Ms. Calamity said, "Wallace, eat your heart out!". Yup.

So, we pulled out of town and found ourselves in the glorious state of WASHINGTON!!! We drove through Spokane and over the Columbia River:

and farther and then, we began to see signs for the Snoqualmie pass. But again, the weather was perfect and we were through the pass before we even realized we had started! Thank goodness the chains stayed in the car! How lucky were we. And then we stopped off at Snoqualmie Falls ( where The show Twin Peaks was shot) and looked at the fabulous falls ( hard to see with all the spray).

Then we were on the way to Seattle and then heading up 405 and then 5 and all the way to the border. Here, we had a little snafu as Betsy forgot to say that the car was staying in Canada. When he figured this out, I think he was a little unclear about us, and he made us go inside and talk to an agent there. The guy inside turned out to be vey nice, and in about 15 minutes fate getting on the road, we arrived:

Yahoo! 2700 miles later, here we are with Mount Rainier peaking his lovely head over the pines in the backyard.....NICE.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Coeur D'alene

Ms. Reddy's woods and Dharma (Billy Collins), Bless Their Hearts (Richard Newman), and Remember (Joy Harjo)

2011-11-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Good morning, everyone! I have been doing a lot of walking, walking, walking with the pup. Yesterday, Sunday, I took the pup out to my dad’s old school and walked our typical walk through deep woods then a shorter hop out into an old orchard and back across the expanse of playing fields. This is a lovely loop, no matter what the time or weather. The woods look different every time—the light slants differently, the leaf cover is thinner, the colors have a narrower palette, etc. But this day, I wasn’t able to free my busy mind or to practice my breathing so that I am fully alert, listening, watching, and not doing too much thinking about anything but what’s right in front of me. Actually, I failed miserably. I fell into the age old argument I have with myself about what I’ve given up, what I haven’t accomplished, etc, etc, etc. Anyone know this conversation? It goes a bit like this: If I had stayed on the track I was on, I would be this, that, and the other thing, full of accolades and initials and articles after my name, and I would be receiving unparalleled admiration (and even a touch of jealousy) from friends and colleagues alike. I would have been much more than I am now had I just stayed put and continued my climb up the ladder. Yup, that’s the essence of it. The other side goes more like this: I moved off the traditional ladder initially because I got sick, but I didn’t jump right back on because in truth, it didn’t quite fit or fulfill me. I have actually become more, and learned much more, than I would have because of the difficult, wrenching fall off this beloved ladder, and because of all the work I’ve put in to understand who I am and how I want to use the rest of my life. While I believe the latter whole-heartedly most of the time, I still sometimes find myself caught up in the old argument again. At least now, I feel as if I take two steps forward for each step back, and not the reverse, but I clearly have not thrown off this old cloak of expectation and guilt for good. I will continue to work on it.

After emerging sweaty and frustrated from this argument and finding the adorable puppy again, I found myself humming. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was humming. But when I felt that flash of recognition, I doubled over in a fit of laughter. The dog thought I had completely lost it and took off after a chipmunk. There I was in the middle of the woods cracking myself up. This, my friends, is a very useful tool to have in your toolbag. Laughter is a wonderful thing, especially when you can crack yourself up all by yourself. It was Helen Reddy singing in my ear…..remember? One line of the song kept rebounding….”But I’m still an embryo, with a long, long way to go……”. Ok, I found the whole experience both deeply disturbing, and wildly funny. Of course Helen swoops in at this particular moment of vulnerability! Let’s do it together:

“Oh yes I am wise

But it’s wisdom born of pain

Yes, I’ve paid the price

But look how much I gained

If I have to, I can do anything.

I am strong (strong) I am invincible (invincible)

I am woman”

Good heavens, Helen Reddy. Never liked her or the song until yesterday, but ok, I get the message already. I am strong, I am invincible, I am Wissie! I am still laughing. So, how about some poetry?

Dharma (Billy Collins)

The way the dog trots out the front door

every morning

without a hat or an umbrella,

without any money

or the keys to her doghouse

never fails to fill the saucer of my heart

with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example

of a life without encumbrance—

Thoreau in his curtainless hut

with a single plate, a single spoon?

Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world

with nothing but her brown coat

and her modest blue collar,

following only her wet nose,

the twin portals of her steady breathing,

followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside

every morning

and eat all his food

what a model of self-containment she

would be,

what a paragon of earthly detachment.

If only she were not so eager

for a rub behind the ears,

so acrobatic in her welcomes,

if only I were not her god.

Bless Their Hearts (Richard Newman)

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it’s OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

Remember (Joy Harjo)

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.

Puppies, Peru, and Faces of Braga (David Whyte) and Two Countries (Naomi Shihab Nye)

2011-10-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

I am several posts behind, and sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by what I haven’t written. But here I sit with our new 15-week old puppy out cold in my lap, while I watch the first Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring) for the 75,000^th time….it is soooo good. But that niggling feeling I get when I haven’t written for awhile is now manifesting as crushing chest pain, so I’ll write, I'll write.

I have been saved lately; isn’t that something? I’ve been saved by a puppy and a remarkable trip to sacred, energy-filled Peru for 10 glorious, fellowship-filled, mountain-spirit-embodied, open-hearted, chakra-gardened days. Oh, and did I mention the incredible, energetic orgy of color that hit our retinas everywhere we turned, and the most delicious, organic, vegetarian food in abundance waiting for us at every meal...it was heaven, I tell you.

So recently, life had turned a bit less than joyous. We’d lost an incredible character who loved us in my mother-in-law, Nancy, awhile back, but her absence has become truly palpable for all of us. We’d lost our dear, dear doggie, we’d had to say goodbye again to our lovely college boy after a wonderful summer home, we had begun anticipating that our youngest would be flying the coop too as we head into the maelstrom of college searching, and finally I’ve been a bit sad that my last chemo treatment “didn’t do all we hoped it would.” After 6 months of slowly losing energy and the ability to bend my fingers without pain due to this drug, I seem not to have benefitted much from all the drama. Oh well…. I am now able to flex all my fingers and my energy level has improved on a non-chemo, 6-month hormone shot regimen. Let me just make this aside here, as this new treatment makes me want to kiss the nurses who stand on either side of my backside and drive large needles full of viscous fluid into both buttock cheeks simultaneously. They just don’t seem to understand that they really can’t hurt me with this stuff. In fact, stick the needles in my eyeballs; I won’t flinch. Not having my hands and feet in ice as the darn chemo infuses has been a miracle….and I can take a bath again without being coated in an itchy rash. Joy! Ah, the little things are so important.

All in all though, we have all felt a bit broken-hearted. So what do we do? We rescue a puppy, completely forgetting the possibility of enjoying the new freedom we might have gained from not having a dog. Oh no, the kids and I needed a puppy, so we found one. In our excitement, we had all forgotten the enormous amount of work required to care for one. But she is sooooooo adorable, and she is trying so hard to please us, and I get to nurture another small creature.

So, to Peru. I knew the group I have often travelled with was going to Peru, but I had no intention of going….too far away, too much hassle. But when an opening occurred, and with it an opportunity (and easy use of frequent flyer miles), I jumped at the chance, and I’m so glad I did. Peru was an amazing success. Our group bonded easily and with support and energy enough for everyone. Our altitude medications worked, along with the coca leaves, leaving most of us feeling well enough to acclimatize on the streets of Cuzco where we found color, a cathedral with a painting of the last supper featuring guinea pigs as the dinner entree, alpaca everything you ever thought you wanted, and smiles and warmth and vendors with names like Jimmie Carter and Mercedes Benz (maybe next time!). We met our wonderful guide, Gabriella, whose sense of spirituality and sacred space in addition to her deep knowledge of the region made the week a joy. We made our way to the Sacred Valley and our eco-lodge, the Willka T’ika, and found a place that changed something in all of us, I think. We spent a week deep in chakra gardens built around an 800 year old Licuma tree. We had incredible vegetarian food grown on the premises and served beautifully and with such love. Every night it got quite cold as the sun vanished behind the mountains, and every night we found a hot-water bottle in our beds and every morning a basket of fresh herbs to make tea with……and so much more. I took two evening baths under the Southern Hemispheric wash of stars while I soaked in every herb and flower on the premises and thanked my lucky stars for being alive and being right where I was.

One day we wound our way up to a school that the Willka T’ika and Carol’s foundation support, what a highlight for us all. We were greeted by children in a cacophony of colors holding flowers for us. They sang, we sang, and we all laughed. There is a word, ayni, that means open-hearted in the native language, and almost everyone we met exuded it. There was joy, joy in being alive, joy in loving the world (the world of three levels--spirit, here and now, ancestors), and joy in giving of what you have. What a world this word creates, and we all felt its pull. The next day we were off to Machu Picchu. We had to awake at the crack of dawn, get on a bus into Urubamba, get on a train, and as we watched, the scenery changed into wilder vegetation, snow-capped peaks and the Urubamba river cascading by the train-tracks….amazing. And then we were there, and what a place there was. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but I didn’t expect to feel quite so much. As you finally get up to the ruins of MP on a scary, switch-back-laden bus ride, you round a corner, and there, bursting out of the mountains is that picture of MP that everyone has seen, but it is so breath-taking to be there. Not only that, there is some sort of subtle, humming energy thrumming around the place that is hard to miss, especially with Gabriella around to help us feel and understand it. The level of sophistication of the builders (no mortar, just perfect, interlacing stones), the positioning of windows, doors, and temples (everything lining up with celestial occurrences or directions or mountains, etc), and the sacredness of many places within the ruins is quite overwhelming. We were lucky enough to have another day to explore and climb and experience the ruins in the early morning with very few people around. There is a place in the women’s temple where a stone condor sits on the ground with her wings of stone suspended behind her. Something about this particular place really felt sacred to me, here was a sacred space where something important occurred, some rite of passage, or birthing or who knows, but something happened here; you can feel it. In fact, this place made me want to run off the cliff flapping my wings and soar my condor-self off into the clouds. Good thing I didn’t; it was pretty scary way up there.

So I have talked too much, but I am fiercely holding onto a bit of that Peruvian energy here in rainy Cleveland. Bella is by my side, requiring a lot of us, but giving a lot too. I am going to work very hard at remembering and embodying “ayni”. I want my world, my tribe, my place to be full of it! How about some poetry?

for everyone and you wonderful Peru fellow-travelers, here's the David Whyte poem written out, and another by another favorite poet, Naomi Nye:

The Faces of Braga (David Whyte)

In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence.

While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, “Will you step through?”

And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.

We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word,

See faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.

Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers

We have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountains.

Cared in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve throught delight of the carver’s hand.

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core.

We would smile too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

Feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration

To merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver’s hands.

Two Countries (Naomi Shihab Nye)

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

A big loss for us, Percy (Mary Oliver), Lucky (Anna Kamienska)

2011-08-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a week in Massachusetts with my mother and my sister, and I am in mourning. We lost our 11 year old Weimaraner, Greta, the day I went to pick up my sister and drive East. For those of you who were not familiar with Ms. Greta, she was a most remarkable dog. Even as a baby, she had a brush with illness that should have killed her, and then throughout her long and eventful life, she had at least 4 more significant episodes with illness, toxic exposure, or trauma that should have killed her, but only seemed to make her wobbly for a few days or weeks, and then there she was again. We grew so used to her remarkable healing powers, that we all just assumed that she would always get better.

Thank goodness my son was here this summer. He and the dog grew up together and shared a bed until Will went off to college last year. Now a weimaraner grows into a big dog--short hair, velvet ears, with a coat the color of warm cocoa with flecks of silver, and bony! The boy would grow to be quite large as well. Every morning, I would find them with both heads on Will's pillow and two rapidly enlarging, bony bodies intertwined. How they slept like that, i have no idea, nor do i understand why I never took a picture......

And the sound she made when she was happy is still banging around in my brain. She howled her greeting every morning while lying upside down with her feet in the air awaiting the belly rub, and every time someone she loved came home. The song was doubly long and emotional when that someone had been gone more than a day. The sound made us laugh every time we heard it. Why I never thought to record it, just once, I cannot imagine. It was such a constant in our lives.

She was such a constant. She was always there when our lives turned topsy-turvy with kids becoming teens and having the audacity to pull away and even leave, husbands falling out, illnesses, parents dying, etc, etc,etc. She was a steady presence when life threw us off balance. And when we had to deal with my cancer returning to make new trouble, there she was on the bed next to me. There she was when I had to do that chemo thing again and felt lousy, there she was when I struggled to be civil to my family as i felt more and more tired from more and more treatments, there she was, there she was, there she was. I am afraid that I imbued her with meaning that could never really be true.--that if she could survive this insult, so could I, if she could endure treatment without complaining, maybe I could too, and I even let myself think that if she decided that she would not die, maybe i could manage that too.... I know, it was silly, but there it is. I believe that the lesson for me in all of this is to just be thankful for her, for all of her, for all the time i had with her.

But finally, finally she did not rebound from the large tumor in her belly that had been there quite awhile. When the beautiful beast put her head in my lap and groaned, I knew, we all knew, something was different. This time she was suffering. Thankfully, Will was here to sleep with her that night and give her narcotics to ease her pain, and to finally recognize that she was not going to get better. Then the beautiful, sobbing boy wrapped the lovely dog in a blanket and with my husband's help, carried her into the vet's office. Our vets were magnificent, and they knew her well and reinforced the need to put her out of her suffering, and then she was gone. ( I have to say that we received a letter from the vet as well as from a specialist who had seen Greta once some months back. Wouldn't it be magnificent if all of our healthcare was as caring and thoughtful as this veterinary care!)

How lucky we were to have known the love of this dog for so long. And how many remarkable lessons have we all learned from this little blue-eyed puppy who became such a part of all of us. I know I will grieve for my dear friend and constant companion for some time, but I also know that she would want us to get going and find another dog to help us heal and love again. So dear Greta, we all hope you are somewhere where you can feel our love and how the breeze lifts your wonderful ears as you run and sing and eat again!

thank you for all of it

Percy (three) (Mary Oliver) (note: Percy is Ms. Oliver's dog)

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

Funny (Anna Kamienska)

What's it like to be a human
the bird asked

I myself don't know
it's being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity
being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity
being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful
being a needle of frost
and a handful of heat
breathing in the air
and choking wordlessly
it's being on fire
with a nest made of ashes
eating bread
while filling up on hunger
it's dying without love
it's loving through death

That's funny said the bird
and flew effortlessly up into the air

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith (Mary Oliver), God Says Yes To Me (Kaylin Haught), Yes (William Stafford)

2011-06-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't written for too long, but here I go. Yesterday I finally went to my beloved yoga, pilates, aerobics class (ok, fusion yoga), and there in front of me were my beautiful daughter- a long, cool drink of water in her yoga garb, my son-muscled, tousled, gorgeous and laughing at himself, his lovely girlfriend who is equally as stunning, and behind them, us. We are a motley crew of aging men and women still hoping to make it through the class without passing out or throwing up.

I haven't been to this class for awhile, but I used to go several times a week and feel so good about myself. I could do it, I was toning up, and there was just enough yoga to feel myself begin to relax and breathe a little. Lately, I've been slogging through life and treatment and feeling a bit off balance. One of the first things to go was this class. So imagine, there I am with my two friends next to me and the gorgeous three (TGT) in front by the mirrors (gasp, no mirrors for us). Our stunning leader uses wonderfully fun, current music during the fast pieces (lady gaga is a favorite) and often some country music during the yoga pieces, and we are often laughing at the music as much as ourselves. I sometimes have a different response, however. She used to play a country song about a father talking to his daughter who wants to get going on her life a bit faster than he thinks she should. The bloody song uses this refrain over and over, "you're going to miss this". Know this one? Ok, so I'm often weeping while trying to chaturanga without slipping all over the place.....I suspect this is very disturbing to those around me.

Yesterday, however, I was so excited to be there with my friends and TGT. But I was unsure whether i could do any of it as I'm feeling a bit tired these days, but otherwise ok. So off we go, weights up, legs flying, then a yoga section, then a fast section, then yoga again. We are holding plank (forever), then turning to hold ourselves in side plank, arms up, top leg up, and just here it happens. I am struggling, but doing it, and then .....I am smiling, I am saying thank you, thank you for letting my body still move like this, oh thank you for those kids, thank you for this day, thank you for the woman next to me who just smiled when I put my foot on her tush by mistake....just thank you for all of it, every beautiful piece of it, even through disease and death and police action and teenagers. Through all of it! Isn't this what it is all about? We all have stuff, this much I've learned. My family is no different than any other --our stuff just tends to be a bit ....dramatic. So there is the lesson for me. I must continue to thank my stuff every day for teaching me gratitude--deep, tear-welling, body rocking gratitude for every moment--even during those moments when I want too much to fling these undeserving, disrespectful, purely icky teenagers out a high window. No one said this was anything but a process...

Enjoy some poetry and have a great couple of weeks. The Stafford poem came from church this am.
For all you Clevelanders, Nancy Gilkeson's memorial service is this Thursday at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls at 2pm

Cheers!

Yes (William Stafford)
It could happen anytime, tornado
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out--no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

God Says Yes To Me (Kaylin Haught)
I asked God if it is ok to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was ok 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 ok if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
Who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Little Summer Poem Touching on the Subject of Faith ( Mary Oliver)
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything--
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening the damp powers,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker--
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing--
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness of the banyan feet--
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees
And the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Nancy and Let Evening Come (Jane Kenyon), Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)

2011-05-02T08:00:00.001-07:00

Tonight, I would like to say a fond farewell to my mother-in-law, Nancy. While I have known her for a quarter century, many people who may see this have known her for much, much longer, as she had a rich and vast array of friends who loved her dearly. I want to speak only about her last few weeks, however, as I found them remarkable and transforming and worthy of many more pages than I will write here. Truly, i know i speak for her daughters and her son when i say that she saved some of her very best living for last.

We were quite concerned that her very difficult cancer diagnosis might well lead to a very difficult end, but like many, many times in the past, Nancy had a surprise for all of us. With her daughters firmly camped at her side, she spent three weeks showing us all how to be open, vulnerable, scared, funny, sad, repentant, feisty, and loving as she came to terms with the inevitability of her death. Even when she couldn't swallow her own secretions....even then, she found ways to laugh at herself often, to delight in the love of her children, and to charm everyone who came near her. Not once did she ever utter a word of complaint. To those of us in her room during the last few days of her life, her struggle to understand just how to "let go" was so.... Nancy. She needed to talk it through, out loud, and this process was so open and honest, and so woven through with laughter and stories and tears, that we felt we were bearing witness to something quite miraculous.

She talked herself and us through her death, and the experience was transformative for us all. Leave it to Nancy, all 60-some pounds of her, to transform herself and heal her children in those final few, remarkable days. And she died on Easter morning, no less, as if we could have forgotten! So here's to Nancy! May she rest in peace and be surrounded by love. She certainly was so surrounded here. I will never forget the end of her life; she surprised and delighted and taught us all, and I'm sure she planned it just this way. Rest easy and go with God, Granny-Nanny! We love you.

Here are three wonderful poems that are fitting for this post. I am very sure that Nancy was much more than a visitor on this earth, the Kenyon poem I find so soothing and lovely and comforting, and the Tennyson is a classic and yes, send me out to sea when it is time.

Let Evening Come (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.

Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Sunset and evening star
   And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
   When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
   Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
   Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
   And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
   When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
   The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
   When I have crossed the bar.

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 his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-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 a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's 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.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Istanbul (Billy Collins) and Long Winter (Tim Nolan)

2011-04-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

Seriously, who forgets to go to chemotherapy? really, this doesn't happen. Most people think about there next chemo alot, dread it, work on screwing up their courage to sit in the seat again, but they REMEMBER. I came home from Boston partly to get my chemo,.....and I forgot. I really did. So, I called the nurse and told her that I forgot to report to my chemo chair. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and then she said,"...What?" I repeated myself, although I think I had been very clear the first time. I decided to embellish just a little to fill the silence. "I just got back from Turkey and watching my son play lacrosse in Maine, and my sisters-in-law are here as my mother-in-law is very I'll, and I haven't really unpacked from either trip as things have been a bit busy at home. in fact, I'm not sure I have yet uncovered my teenager from somewhere under her piles of detritus on the third floor." And so on.
There was a longer pause.

And here I am now, sitting in my chemo chair gazing out on a gorgeous day, only a few days late. What a whirlwind the last weeks have been--full of incredible sights, sounds, sisterehood, spirituality, and sadness. Turkey was such a surprise! Gazing up at the arches in the Blue Mosque, eating pepper paste and pomegranate juice and eggplant, browsing the spice market, entranced by the whirling dervishes, and standing with Paul in spirit at Ephesis and Pergamom and Sardis and Corinth in Greece. Amazing, remarkable, renewing, restoring, and all I could have hoped for and more. Love the pilgrim thing! Really focusing on the "why" of what we were doing and seeing and being very intentional as we learned and moved from site to site made the trip feel very diffent from a vacation trip, and much better.

Also seeing the boy dressed in his Bates uniform and playing NESCAC lacrosse AND working hard and loving his first year in college has been a gift....and I am supposed to go back for one more game next Tuesday.

What about some poetry. I did send some of my trip members this poem by Billy Collins called, "Istanbul". It really captures the city's ancientness and those roman baths, I think. Then, a little ode to spring. Enjoy

Istanbul (Billy Collins)
Istanbul by Billy Collins

It was a pleasure to enter by a side street
in the center of the city
a bathhouse said to be 300 years old,
old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale
and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.

And it was a pleasure to drink
cold wine by a low wood fire
before being directed to a small room in an upper gallery,
a room with a carpet and a narrow bed
where I folded my clothes into a pile
then came back down, naked
except for a gauzy striped cloth tucked around my waist.

It was an odd and eye-opening sensation
to be led by a man with close-cropped hair
and spaces between his teeth
into a steamy marble rotunda
and to lie there alone on the smooth marble
watching the droplets fall through the beams
of natural light in the high dome
and later to hear the song I sang –
‘She Thinks I Still Care’ – echo up into the ceiling.

I felt like the last of the sultans
when the man returned and began to scrub me –
to lather and douse me, scour and shampoo me,
and splash my drenched body
with fresh warm water scooped from a marble basin.

But it was not until he sudsed me
behind my ears and between my toes
that I felt myself filling with gratitude
the way a cloud fills with rain,
the way a glass pipe slowly fills with smoke.

In silence I thanked the man
who scrubbed the bottoms of my feet.
I thanked the history of the Turkish bath
and the long chain of bathmen standing unshaven,
arms folded, waiting for the next customer
to come through the swinging doors of frosted glass.

I thanked everyone whose job
it ever was to lay hands on the skin of strangers,
and I gave general thanks that I was lying
facedown in a warm puddle of soap
and not a warm puddle of blood
in some corner of this incomprehensible city.

As one bucket after another
of warm water was poured over my lowered head,
I stopped thinking of who and what to thank
and rode out on a boat of joy,
a blue boat of marble and soap,

rode out to the entrance of the harbour
where I raised a finger of good-bye
then felt the boat begin to rise and fall
as it met the roll of the incoming waves,
bearing my body, my clean, blessed body out to sea.

Long Winter (Tim Nolan)
So much I've forgotten
the grass

the birds
the close insects

the shoot—the drip—
the spray of the sprinkler

freckles—strawberries—
the heat of the Sun

the impossible
humidity

the flush of your face
so much

the high noon
the high grass

the patio ice cubes
the barbeque

the buzz of them—
the insects

the weeds—the dear
weeds—that grow

like alien life forms—
all Dr. Suessy and odd—

here we go again¬—
we are turning around

again—this will all
happen over again—

and again—it will—

Turkey, Greece and Go to the Limits of Your Longing, Back From the Fields, The Moment

2011-03-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

I'm on a threshold, right now, as I mentally and physically pack my bags for our pilgrimage to Turkey and Greece on Friday. I've been hungry for this trip, for its preparation, for the people I've met through this wonderful little church who have streched my mind and challenged me to dig deep to find my gifts and goals, and I'm hungry to get going!

Maybe I feel just a little time pressed too...maybe, but I have a deep feeling that my years of agitation, of stewing in my own juices, of feeling that there is so very much more, but not having a clue what this "more" is or how to pursue it has reached a threshold. I love how Rilke puts this feeling of longing, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror...". And so, I am perched upon this threshold, one hand on the handle, one foot here, and one foot just about to find the unknown ancient Roman road on the other side. I go holding a sense of possibility and wonder, and gently holding open the opportunity for deeper experience and growth. Who knows? Hopefully I will blog throughout, so I'll report back in words and pictures, but this feels like a beginning for me, and I'm eager for it.

What about a little poetry? I will include the whole Rilke poem thanks to Clover and two others that have come my way lately. I love the idea of walking through ancient, foreign lands and having some of that land come back with me--mentally and physically (Back from the Fields). And I love the stillness in the third that I don't feel just now, but I am going to cultivate tomorrow!

Go To the Limits of Your Longing (R. Rilke)

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Back from the Fields (Peter Everwine)
Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,
looking for God knows what.
Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.
Something to fill an empty spot.
Maybe a luminous angel
or a country girl with a secret dark.
He came back empty-handed,
or so I thought.
Now I find them:
thistles, goatheads,
the barbed weeds
all those with hooks or horns
the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones
those wearing lantern jaws,
old ones in beards, leapers
in silk leggings, the multiple
pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those
with juices and saps
like the fingers of thieves
nation after nation of grasses
that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds
and grab handholds 
in whatever lean place.
It’s been a good day.

The Moment
by Marie Howe 

Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment

when,   nothing 

happens 

no what-have-I-to-do-today-list 


maybe   half a moment 

the rush of traffic stops. 

The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be 

slows to silence, 

the white cotton curtains hanging still.

The Poet with His Face in His Hands (Mary Oliver) and The Winged Energy of Delight (Rainier Maria Rilke)

2011-02-27T20:15:00.000-08:00

I parked my car and walked through last Friday's blizzard, across the street and between the buildings and into the medical school. The place was quiet, as for the first time in my memory, the university and medical school were closed due to weather; therefore, all non-essential personnel were not required to be at work. Friday, I was entirely non-essential, but I had a doctor's appointment and then my second round of chemo scheduled, so I continued to walk through the building and out the other side into the parking garage toward more essential personnel. From here, I walked outside and across the street to the entrance to the hospital. All in all, this is about a 10 minute walk. I walked in, got onto an elevator to the 6th floor cancer center, and hopped directly into the registration queue. Here's the thing. Whether you are at the front or the end of the line, you will wait until one of the unhappy employees looks up and invites you forward. I have been doing this for years now, and I am slowly losing my "good patient-ness". I wonder why we still don't understand that the patient is the client here. Really, how hard should it be to say, "I'll be right with you", I wonder? Oh well, I really don't understand it, but there it is. I move from there to the waiting room where I sit and wait for the MA to come out and yell, "McKinley!". You know, it is hard enough to ride up to the 6th floor and just get out of the elevator, but this, this really burns me. I am very proud of myself, however, because I actually told the MA that I found it really hard to be referred to this way and could she please consider using both the first name and the last, or saying "Ms McKinley", or PERHAPS ACTUALLY SAYING "LISSA" OR "DOCTOR MCKINLEY", since I have been a patient in this cancer center for 14 years. You know, if I feel this way, consider how the unempowered, system-naive new cancer patient must feel in this setting.

Ok, I say all this because when I actually get into a room and interact with the nurses, nurse practitioners, and doctors, I have the best team and absolutely world class care--every time, every year, always. But the initial interface is often not easy for me. Anyway, there I am in a room finding out how I'm doing and whether my dose of drug will be lowered a bit to avoid the 2 weeks of mouth sores, and the nurse comes in to tell me that my mother-in-law is in the next room because her blood counts were low after starting radiation therapy for a very difficult, new cancer diagnosis. I finish my visit and walk back out into the waiting room on my way to the treatment side of the cancer center. Sitting in the waiting room is my mother-in-law looking little and a little lost. I had been told that she was ok, but that she would be getting a blood transfusion before going home to help her regain her energy and breath. So, what's the first thing I say to her when I see her in the waiting room? I say, "Nancy, I'll see you on the other side." Ok, perhaps the words were ill-chosen, but I just meant the other side of the cancer center! She says she'll see me there, and I walk to the treatment side and am put in a room to wait for an IV and a series of infusions. You never know who will be your room-mate here, but this time, I am put in a room with a lovely woman getting chemo for a new diagnosis of breast cancer. We're a dime a dozen up here, that's for sure. We both talk, we both wait, I try not to scare her and I avoid telling her much of my history. she tells me how much she likes my hair. I tell her how much I like her scarf, and how exciting it sounds to be almost done with chemo and getting back to her life. She is lovely, and very much looking forward to getting back to teaching disabled kids in inner-city Cleveland.

So as we wait some more, a lovely nurse I have known for years slips an IV into my vein and starts the first infusion. Then she gets me juice and a cup of soup and ice packs for my hands and feet to help stop the hand/foot symptoms. She also suggests that I eat ice chips throughout the infusion to help prevent the mouth sores. All this ice makes for a very chilly several hours! After the first of the short infusions before the main infusion, I wander the treatment rooms trying to find my mother-in-law. I find her asleep in a chair in a busy treatment room getting the first of two units of blood. Again, she looks so little in the big chair. she awakens and says she is doing ok, but she isn't quite clear about why she needs the blood. While I'm not either, we talk a little about what the potential causes might be and we agree to meet again in another hour or so. I wander back to get my final fruit punch-colored infusion and a new room-mate. This time, two guys come in . The patient is a man in his 30's with I don't know what cancer, but he's having a terrible side effect of pain in his eyes, and he is unable to look at the light or open one eye. His brother has accompanied him and sits in the corner and begins to knit. I recognize that the patient is in significant pain and I don't engage him after saying hello, but I talk some to the knitter. He is a new knitter, and I am an old one, so we have a language to share anyway. He is funny and kind, and over time, the patient begins to interject and joke a bit. I loved watching the brothers kid each other and obviously care about each other.

And now here comes my lovely husband. He is a physician in this hospital and knows everyone here (unlike me-- a physician in an affiliated hospital). I try to imagine what he must be dealing with at the moment. I can really only imagine his pain as he has his mother with a terminal cancer in one room and his wife getting chemo in another. How surreal is this situation anyway? We agree that his mother really is the one who needs his company right now, and I agree to call him when i'm done. And I sit back and think about how completely weird our lives are, and yet how remarkably normal most of the time. I think this is living at the edge; I certainly feel on the edge sometimes. Actually, sometimes I think we are standing on one leg, wobbling over the abyss. Seems to me we have a choice here, or maybe it isn't really a choice at all. We can either figure out how to embrace the situation and move forward, or we can just fall over. Not much of a choice, anyway. I vote for the first option. From this edgy vantage point, I thank my lucky stars for every single day, and that's not such a bad perspective.to have. What about a poem or two after this long and rambling note. I am being just a little lazy and picking two that have winged their way to me over the internet lately. Enjoy!

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

~ Mary Oliver ~

The Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

For a New Beginning.....again

2011-01-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

All,

I had all good intentions to write from my newest chemotherapy chair yesterday, but I didn't get a chair! They put me in a single room in a bed--a sign that didn't feel very good, but I went with it. Lying down or even sitting up, I couldn't really see down into the street to report on the state of the new cancer center as I have in the past. Just know that the steam engine has done her work and has packed it in....too bad; she was fun to watch. Anyway, I was given all sorts of pre-meds to help me not react to the new liposomal delivery system of this old drug (no longer reported to give you hair loss or nausea and vomiting--this is very good). The only problem is that I slept through the whole 3 hour ordeal and came home to sleep most of the day and into the night. I don't think I really need the IV benadryl next time, but sleep is not a bad thing....I just didn't get to use the quiet time up on the 6th floor to read and write while my wonderful nurse brings me chicken soup every few hours. Oh dear, I sound as if I almost enjoy it, and that isn't quite right. I do appreciate the quiet and the care, however.

I'm really skipping over what happened initially, and I need to tell it. Perhaps a year and a half ago when I had come back to the infusion center in the cancer center to begin my last chemotherapy after not having chemotherapy since 1997, I glanced into the first room on my right. I have since learned that this is an unhealthy behavior and I try not to look into other rooms too much. But I did it then, and I recognized the tall man sitting by the bed of an Ill-appearing woman. I had met this woman when our kids were in summer camp together as she had no hair at the time either (1997, I guess). We shared very similar cancer stories and we stayed in touch a little over the years. I had no idea she was ill again until I saw them there. The husband came to greet me and told me she was dying. I came in and said hello and held her hand as she told me what was going on. I said something hopefully comforting and kissed her goodbye. She never came back to the hospital as she died a few days later. Ok, I was a bit overcome by that visit, especially with starting chemotherapy again and having just seen its potential ending point. Guess what room they put me in yesterday? That one. I walked in and burst into tears. How silly but how real the emotion and fear felt. Then I was handed a cup of soup, and the nurse took one look at me and remembered the incident (i guess it was memorable as I am always trying to be a good patient, not make waves etc. As i ran down the hall weeping in despair, someone might have noticed.....)! We didn't move rooms, but I felt much better after we talked a little. Continuity of care is a wonderful thing. And, I feel fine this morning. How about a poem or four. Most of these came my way over the internet. I love John O'Donohue for his refreshing view of life, I love the tender care of a woman cutting a man's hair (like a chemo nurse handing a patient a cup of soup), and I love the joy of deep noticing of Picasso paintings.....see what you think

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~

Picasso (Tim Nolan)

How can we believe he did it—
every day—for all those years?

We remember how the musicians
gathered for him—and the prostitutes

arranged themselves the way he wanted—
and even the helmeted monkeys

with their little toy car cerebella—
posed—and the fish on the plate—

remained after he ate the fish—
Bones—What do we do with this

life?—except announce: Joy.
Joy. Joy—from the lead—

to the oil—to the stretch of bright
canvas—stretched—to the end of it all.

For My Wife Cutting My Hair (Bruce Guernsey)

You move around me expertly like the good, round
Italian barber I went to in Florence,
years before we met, his scissors
a razor he sharpened on a belt.

But at first when you were learning, I feared
for my neck, saw my ears like sliced fruit
on the newspapered floor. Taking us back in time,
you cleverly clipped my head in a flat-top.

The years in between were styles no one had ever seen,
or should see again: when the wind rose
half my hair floated off in feathers,
the other half bristling, brief as a brush.

In the chair, almost asleep, I hear the bright
scissors dancing. Hear you hum, full-breasted as Aida,
carefully trimming the white from my temples,
so no one, not even I, will know.

Perhaps...

Perhaps these thoughts of ours
will never find an audience
Perhaps the mistaken road
will end in a mistake
Perhaps the lamps we light one at a time
will be blown out, one at a time
Perhaps the candles of our lives will gutter out
without lighting a fire to warm us.

Perhaps when all the tears have been shed
the earth will be more fertile
Perhaps when we sing praises to the sun
the sun will praise us in return
Perhaps these heavy burdens
will strengthen our philosophy
Perhaps when we weep for those in misery
we must be silent about miseries of our own

Perhaps
Because of our irresistible sense of mission
We have no choice

~ Shu Ting ~

Lovely Evening, Annunciation (Denise Levertov) and the Voyage (Tony Hoagland)

2010-12-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Here I am in my cozy kitchen with 9 Lessons and Carols from King's College playing next to me and everyone either asleep or out and about, and it is still. Ah, what a lovely, lucky, profound morning here. Last night we took our kids and their significant others to dinner, a show (A Christmas Carol) and then back to our house to hang out by the tree and the fire. Watching our two young adults with their arms around the wonderful people they love was surprising and remarkable and delightful. I didn't know what this would feel like, but I felt a bit like the Grinch with my heart expanding a few sizes as I watched them all. Then we played dice, and their real personalities surfaced! A fun, happy, loving evening for all of us....how lucky we are! I wish it were so for everyone across the globe. Let us all work and pray for such an outcome! How about a poem or two. The first is a remarkable poem by Denise Levertov who converted to Catholicism late in her life. She was inspired by an ancient line about Mary, "Hail space for the uncontained God." Ok, it is a great line! The second is one that came winging its way across the internet into my email, and Tony Hoagland is a master, i think.
Cheers to all

Annunciation

by Denise Levertov

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.                   Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.                  The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.                                            God waited.
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

          ____________________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?                   Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.             More often
those moments     when roads of light and storm     open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
         ______________________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,                          only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.                   Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.

Voyage (Tony Hoagland)

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

Elizabeth Edwards and Optimism (Jane Hirshfield) and Signs (Hazel Collister Hutchison)

2010-12-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

Boy, I am wrestling with my feelings after just hearing that Elizabeth Edwards died today. I considered her a kindred spirit, a cancer buddy, a hopeful and resilient woman.... hopefully just as I am. I was standing in the kitchen making brisket (ok, I've never made brisket before, but Katie made me do it), and out of the blue came the announcement on the radio. I panicked. I ran to the radio and turned it up; I lost it just a little. I cried. Katie looked at me and asked what was wrong, and I had to tell her that a brave woman, someone who made everyone feel as if they knew her, had disease just like mine and had died. I hadn't even known she was sick. I felt so vulnerable and sad and scared; the immediacy of my reaction surprised me a little. I hadn't really realized how much I identified with her. I rolled over in bed and cracked a rib a year before she did, and I am not the one who's dead. Hmmmmm. In fact she and I actually chatted just a little about our situations at a conference several years ago; she did indeed have a wonderful way of making everyone feel as if they knew her well. Funny, I have been feeling pretty together, full of hair and hope, and most of the time able to exercise and feel normal. I don't feel so normal right now. But I don't feel alone, either. There are so many of us out there dealing with something hard--illness, divorce, unrest, poverty, war, loss of employment, aging parents, many things combined, whatever. You know, I think it is most of us. Maybe it is the season, but there is both sadness and hope in the air. Elizabeth Edwards, you were a role model and an inspiration to me, and I mourn your death and hope you meet your young son again who died years ago. For all of us still here struggling with our own burdens, may we find a way to take time out to relax, to focus on what we can be grateful for, and to feel the hope and wonder of this divine season. How about a few poems. The first is something I believe I have shared before, but it is wonderful, and it is in tribute to Mrs. Edward's resilience and spirit. The second is by a wonderful poet from Cleveland who's book has Marc Chagall illustrations-- called "Toward Daybreak".

Optimism (Jane Hirshfield)

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Signs (Hazel Collister Hutchison)

If it is a new star

Not still and very far,

It is the one,

If a glory makes the ground

Articulate,

Yearning up to light and sound,

Do not wait.

It may be a dark king

Bids you go

Or angels shining in a ring,

You will know.

And be sure to keep away

From walls of a house.

Look for mystery in hay,

Wonder in cows.

Cheers to all

Happy Thanksgiving and Perhaps the World Ends Here (Joy Harjo) and Family Reunion (Maxine Kumin)

2010-11-25T05:46:00.000-08:00

Good morning and happy Thanksgiving to all. I am sitting in the study on a cold, rainy morning, and everything is quiet except the wind. All the beds in the house are filled for the first time in months; even the dog went back to sleep after I slipped out of bed. And here I am, feeling the pull of the page. Last night, both kids went off to a hip hop concert downtown, and as usual, I worried when I hadn't heard them come in by midnight. Something woke me, and I got up to use the bathroom at about 1am, and there they were. Both of my beautiful teens sitting on Will's bed laughing at something on the computer while curled up on top of each other. Did I say that the dog was curled up there too? Nice scene, that's for sure. And I know how much the boy watches out for his lovely, skimpily-clad sister at concerts like this. I realize how much I miss him when he's at college at times like this, but here's the other thing. Watching him mature in between our glimpses of him is a glorious thing. He told me that he has to read a great deal more in college than in high school, and that he is beginning to enjoy it. "Mom, I'm really learning things!" Ok, that was a little late in coming, but I'll take it. Anyway, just looking at them and seeing how much they love each other is so wonderful. After all the crap they've been through with their teetering parents, they have come through the fire with grace and wisdom. Haleluia. Today is a great day for rejoicing and feeling grateful. Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few pieces to savor:

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Family Reunion

by Maxine W. Kumin

The week in August you come home,

adult, professional, aloof,

we roast and carve the fatted calf

—in our case home-grown pig, the chine

garlicked and crisped, the applesauce

hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine.

Nothing is cost-effective here.

The peas, the beets, the lettuces

hand sown, are raised to stand apart.

The electric fence ticks like the slow heart

of something we fed and bedded for a year,

then killed with kindness’s one bullet

and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering.

In winter we lure the birds with suet,

thaw lungs and kidneys for the cat.

Darlings, it’s all a circle from the ring

of wire that keeps the raccoons from the corn

to the gouged pine table that we lounge around,

distressed before any of you was born.

Benign and dozy from our gluttonies,

the candles down to stubs, defenses down,

love leaking out unguarded the way

juice dribbles from the fence when grounded

by grass stalks or a forgotten hoe,

how eloquent, how beautiful you seem!

Wearing our gestures, how wise you grow,

ballooning to overfill our space,

the almost-parents of your parents now.

So briefly having you back to measure us

is harder than having let you go.

Cheers!

Thanksgiving and Camas Lillies

2010-11-09T15:05:00.001-08:00

All, I've been blogging (though intermittently) long enough to feel increasing tension if I don't sit down and write. Sitting here now, I feel embraced by a loving page; how nice. I have had quite a week last week. In fact, I think it might just be one of the best weeks I've ever had. I have had the good fortune to be part of a leadership group at my new fab church, and we meet every Sunday night for several hours. After spending a weekend with this group, I feel a strong bond growing with this wonderful group as we tread over territories of faith and doubt and the like. Also, I had two birthday parties last week. Even though my birthday is at the end of September, I found myself upside down in an aerial yoga class with the gals and then at dinner with others; turning 50 has been remarkably full of fun so far. Ok, have you ever been upside down in a large red sling trying to speak to your inner ears so you keep down the nausea and look....mmm...not idiotic? We raised a glass afterwards and a friend had brought a larger-than-life cut-out of my father, the headmaster, and we put him in a sling too...with a glass of wine! A few days later, we had a small dinner, and I felt loved and cared for and free enough to dance with abandon at the end of the evening.....hmm. For all these things and many more, I feel incredible gratitude. There was my husband of many years struggling through a remarkable poem his sister wrote.....for me! There was my college room-mate and soul sister reciting Katherine Hepburn in Much Ado about Nothing, for me (hey nonny, nonny), etc, etc, etc. wow. Gratitude and thanksgiving. Unfortunately, there is also much suffering among dear friends these days, too--suffering and remarkable strength. I'm learning that these are often intertwined--hope and loss, suffering and strength, light and dark. Perhaps we need some dark to truly see the light. hmmm. Well, on to some poetry I really like

Thanksgiving (Lynn Ungar)

I have been trying to read

the script cut in these hills—

a language carved in the shimmer of stubble

and the solid lines of soil, spoken

in the thud of apples falling

and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak

as they gather in the fallen grain,

the blackbirds sing it over their shoulders in parting,

and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript

where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue

I believe it might sound like a lullaby,

or the simplest grace at table.

across the gathering stillness

simply this: “For all that we have received,

dear God, make us truly grateful.”.

Camas Lilies (Lynn Ungar)

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground bulbs
for flour, how the settler’s hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything,
leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I’m through
with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake.
Of course, your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

Sometimes (Sheenagh Pugh) and The Thing is (Ellen Bass)

2010-10-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

My son is back from college for a few days, and I am so happy to see his smiling face...or his sleeping face, anyway. His boyish enthusiasm and joie de vivre are just so lovely to be around, even the dog has been beside herself with joy since he walked through the door. You should see a standoffish Weimaraner show joy. It is very, very funny. So, things are good around here. The standoffish 16 year old has found her way down the steps of her 3rd floor lair and into Will's sphere again, and they are so loving and funny together. I think all of us have missed these scenes that used to happen every day. But, but, but, he feels very connected to home--much more connected since living away for awhile. I also see the 16yo coming out of her shell a bit and finding her own voice...and it can be very loud! What else has been going on? Well, I have spent an intense weekend with 10 people I didn't know very well delving into some big questions that could only be answered by our Apples to Apples Junior games. We laughed, we cried, we got to know each other better. I love the idea of working with a group of people to understand what it is that i believe, where I think I am going, and perhaps discerning a bit better what else i might put my energies toward. And finally, over the last two weeks, two very close friends have been diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes I feel as if I should be doing this work of helping people through the cancer process, but I'm also tired of the process. I wish this were NOT happening, and I'm angry that this diagnosis feels so common and puts such good people through such anxiety and fear. The irony of my position as a ray of hope is not lost on me, but it still feels so good to help someone else wade through these very murky waters. So, how about some poetry that might lift us up a little. The first comes from one of Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac collections, and the second was sent by a friend. See what you think:

Sometimes (Sheenagh Pugh)

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost, green thrives, the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

The Thing Is (Ellen Bass)

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

In the Middle (Barbara Crooker) and Sky in September (WS Merwin)

2010-09-29T21:10:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here in a huge, sterile hotel outside of Chicago on the eve of my 50th birthday feeling just a little sorry for myself as I begin a four day board recertification course. Ok, it was my poor planning, amidst other things, that is mostly to blame for this slightly depressing scenario, but at least I won't have a lot of distractions....AND, my wonderful friend here in Chicago is strapping on her purple party shoes and taking me out on Friday to celebrate! So, I have a remarkable opportunity here to contemplate how I feel about turning 50 without many interruptions, as the sun goes down on this beautiful fall day. Guess what? I feel pretty good. I find that a bit remarkable, but true. Our son is thriving and blissfully happy at college (hopefully he is going to class..), so we are hard-pressed to be too sad. He even communicates occasionally and he will be home now and again. The girl left behind has taken to her third floor hideout, and we are being diligent parents and trying to put the spotlight on her a little more than she would like. What we find, as we begin to see her without her brother around, is an incredibly funny, intelligent, thoughtful young woman with a biting wit who makes us want to either fling her out the nearest window or howl with laughter. She is exhausting, but well worth the effort. Chip and I have found joy in our new patio and in each other as we all come out from under the big personality of our son and the constant presence of his many large friends. Chip is well and improving slowly but constantly from his back surgery, and I am feeling pretty good, managing the new oral drug regimen with just blisters on my feet on week 2 and a bit of foot pain--but somehow I feel more able to handle it, even if I can't walk too well for a short time. My waist line is certainly suffering a bit, but I don't seem to be. Maybe 50 is ok. Maybe I can believe the wonderful pastor of my fab new church when she emailed me and said that 50 is the biblical year of Jubilee when all debts are cancelled, the past is forgiven, and liberation lies ahead. Now how about that! Liberation! Maybe I should stop telling my husband that I want my own house... Bottom line here is that this stage seems to be ok. Maybe a few more aches and pains, but maybe a little more ability to take time to appreciate what's right in front of me--a devoted, adorable husband, a remarkable, infuriating, fascinating, hilarious 16 year old, a wonderful old nutcase of a dog who has been with me through all the thick and thin (at this point, it is a little hard to know if it was our thick or her thin), and a wonderful group of friends and family that keep us laughing. I have babbled on a bit too long tonight, as I have few responsibilities in this hotel, but how about a few poems. A dear friend sent me the first poem about time and aging, and the second wonderful poem about September light is from our new poet laureate. Check them out.
Cheers

In The Middle (Barbara Crooker)

of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
Struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
Has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
To get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
The chimes don't ring. One day you look at the window,
Green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
And a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
Our parents gone,it happened so fast. We must learn
Again now to love, between morning's quick coffee
And evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
Mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
Twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
His tame is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, uging
Us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
Sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
Of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up,
In love, running out of time.

Sky in September (WS Merwin)

In spite of the months of knowing
And the years
Autumn comes with astonishment
Light held up in a glass
The terrible news in a haze
Caught breath in the warm leaves

In spite of the gathered dust and the vast moon
The day comes with a color
Its words cannot touch
So it is when I see you
After the years when the ailanthus leaves
Drifted unnoticed
Down the gray wall

They have disappeared and nothing is missing
After their rocking and clinging
They have vanished with the thieves and shuffles
And the words of the dealers
Taking nothing
They have fallen like scales from the eyes
And at last we are hearer together
Light of autumn
Clear morning in the only time

Fall (Edward Hirsch) and At Blackwater Pond (Mary Oliver)

2010-09-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are back from taking our son to college for the first time, back from a week basking in the glory of being waterside in Maine, back from paper plates full of the tenderest lobsters, back from rocky coasts disappearing into Vermont hills, back to a house turned upside down with one child gone and another moving upstairs leaving a swath of destruction in her wake! We really thought we would feel so unbearably sad when we dropped him off, but the reality was quite different. When we finally, finally arrived (after 900 miles or so), the boy was so excited, so happy, so READY, that we could do nothing but laugh, share his excitement, hug him and skedaddle. Now we are home and it still feels ok....so far. I am sure that his absence will make itself a nice little hole in our hearts, but for now, he is so delighted with his new found home, that it just feels right. Maybe I have figured one thing out--here it is: our bond with this boy has not been severed by his absence. In fact, perhaps we're even more aware of it now that it feels so precious. Anyway, we are doing fine so far. Oh, and I wanted to recap a part of our trip home because it was just the perfect ending of a glorious week. we spent our last night on the road at the house of a dear friend in Rochester, NY. Now I was born in Rochester because my father was the headmaster of a little co-ed private school there called Harley School. This was his first headmastership, and I was just a little thing when we lived there and I have little memory of the place (dad was there from 1959-1963). Anyway, our host told us that Harley School was about a minute down the road, so in the morning, Chip and I walked into the school (which was not yet in session), and asked whether they had pictures of old headmasters on the wall somewhere. The woman said that they certainly did, and then she asked me why I wanted to know. We told her about dad and how much my parents had loved Harley, that I had never been here, and how much we just wanted to see his picture and look around a little. Well, people came out of the woodwork to welcome us, give us a tour, meet the headmaster, and shower us with t-shirts and sweatshirts and bags with Harley emblazoned all over them! This was one of the sweetest 45 minutes I have ever spent. There is just something about a school....and perhaps something about an old headmaster too..... lovely all around. Well, I'm feeling a little sad that summer is drawing to a close, I am always struck by how much I love the subtle change in the light and the air and the smell as autumn comes. There is something exciting about this time--I will miss football games, but I will revel in Will's new love for all things Maine, and I'll know that he is experiencing a crisp, gorgeous, full-throttle Maine fall.....lucky boy! Now we can focus on the other kid, even though she is hoping that we won't! Too bad honey, here we come, and the third floor won't stop us! Here are a couple of poems that capture something of my favorite season. enjoy! FALL (Edward Hirsch)

Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season Changes its tense in the long-haired maples That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition With the final remaining cardinals) and then Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground. At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees In a season of odd, dusky congruences&dash;a scarlet tanager And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance, A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything Changes and moves in the split second between summer's Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment Pulling out of the station according to schedule, Another moment arriving on the next platform. It Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away From their branches and gather slowly at our feet, Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving Around us even as its colorful weather moves us, Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets. And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

AT BLACKWATER POND (Mary Oliver)
At. Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

Let Evening Come (Jane Kenyon) and When I Am Asked (Lisel Mueller)

2010-08-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have taken too long to return to my blog, but here goes. I learned very recently about the death of a dear college friend's husband. My friend had been keeping a blog about her family's journey through cancer's diagnosis, treatments, and weights since April, and I went back and read much of her writings. In addition to the great sadness she and her family were feeling, there was something else vividly reflected in these writings. I believe I would have known who the writer was even if the names had been removed, even if I hadn't talked to this person in many, many years. I remember meeting her in college and wondering if she could truly be as upbeat, energetic, and fun as she sounded. I learned over the 4 years of her depths as well. Her writing sings such a beautiful song of praise-- to John, to her teenage children, to their lives together, to dear friends, to life. It is truly remarkable. I am awed and inspired and deeply saddened, but I am also full of hope for them. I think a strong marriage and a close family takes work and nurture and love and more work; but on the flip side, they are rare jewels; things of great beauty and strength. It is so clear in my friend's writing that she had a remarkable marriage, and that she has a family that loves each other fiercely and will support and comfort each other and hold John's memory close. I have been searching around for some pieces that might lend some solace. Here are a few that move me.

Let Evening Come (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.

When I Am Asked (Lisel Mueller)

When I am asked

how I began writing poems,

I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,

a brilliant June day,

everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench

in a lovingly planted garden,

but the day lilies were as deaf

as the ears of drunken sleepers

and the roses curved inward.

Nothing was black or broken

and not a leaf fell

and the sun blared endless commercials

for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench

ringed with the ingenue faces

of pink and white inpatiens

and placed my grief

in the mouth of language,

the only thing that would grieve with me.

Perhaps the World Ends Here (Joy Harjo) and Cherry Tomatoes (Sandra Beasley)

2010-07-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Oh my, has it really been a month since my last post? Anyway, so much has been going on, I'm not sure where to start, but start I will. Well, again the theme of loss seems to loom, but not without a good smattering of good things too. Chip had back surgery three weeks ago, and is now up and walking, which is a significant improvement on the hunched over, painful gait he had for the 6 months prior. My foot is recovering from bunion surgery and a first joint fusion, and after 6 weeks, I am beginning to walk. What, I ask you, was I thnking? I spent a week at the CSU Imagination Writer's Workshop trying to learn something about poetry. I think I did, but it wasn't always without pain. But, the workshop leader was wonderful and helpful and encouraging. So, here we are. And just last week, my wonderful, hilarious, incredibly sharp-witted college roommate came to town last weekend. She and her sister brought her aging parents back here where they lived for most of their adult years before departing for Chicago. Unfortunately, her father is suffering a bit of short-term memory loss, and he hadn't been back here for many, many years.

Do you know what it feels like to be suddenly caught in a moment where you are no longer participating in what is going on around you, but observing every detail and recognizing that this is a perfect moment, that things could not be any better than they are right now? Well, I had one of those moments last Sunday. Betsy, her sister, her parents, our old landlords and an old friend were having dinner in our old landlords' wonderful carriage house, and there it was. A moment of such joy that these incredible people were together laughing and talking and sharing as if they had not been separated by years, and years and years. We stumbled over our future landlords just before we were married. We had no idea that my room-mate had been born in their house, that they knew my dear friend Betsy from birth, that we would become life long friends of theirs and drink their wine for the next 23 years of our married life, etc, etc, etc, connection, connection, connection. Life is a wonderful thing when it gives us these moments even amidst painful backs, changing therapies, sore feet, evil demon teenagers, a dog with a tumor, aging parents, and perpetually green tomatoes. Time for some poems! The first from a poet I love about connections, and the kitchen table. The second is one from my workshop leader, Sandra Beasley. See what you think.

Perhaps the World Ends Here (Joy Harjo)

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,
we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the
table so it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe
at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what
it means to be human. We make men at it,
we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts
of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor
falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back
together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella
in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate
the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared
our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.
We pray of suffering and remorse.
We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
while we are laughing and crying,
eating of the last sweet bite.

CHERRY TOMATOES

Little bastards of vine.
Little demons by the pint.
Red eggs that never hatch,
just collapse and rot. When

My mom told me to gather
their grubby bodies
into my skirt, I’d cry. You
and your father, she’d chide –

the way, each time I kicked
and wailed against sailing,
my dad shook his head, saidYou and your mother.

Now, a city girl, I ease one
loose from its siblings,
from its clear plastic coffin,
place it on my tongue.

Just to try. The smooth
surface resists, resists,
and erupts in my mouth:
seeds, juice, acid, blood

of a perfect household.
The way, when I finally
went sailing, my stomach
was rocked from inside

out. Little boat, big sea.
Handful of skinned sunsets.

cheers to all!

Lissa

Designed to Fly (Ellen Waterston) and Wait (CK Williams)

2010-06-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

So summer is here, and we have all been feeling the sweet languor of it. Especially me, I think, since I still can't do much of anything with this boot on my de-bunioned foot. Will has been working a little and hanging with his buddies as they enjoy each other and the bittersweetness of their last summer before college. I can almost watch him mature in front of me. He went off to a friend's house tonight, and I was sorry to see him go. I must have shown it as he sent me a text asking me if I wanted him to come back home and hang out. Ok, what does one say to all that goodness? I said no, of course, but how nice for him to offer. Katie too has been away in Tanzania having a wonderful time doing good works, so it has been quite here. All of this is soon to change as the new medical school class comes in at the end of next week and all the craziness starts again. But for another few days, there is still some lovely peace around here. We have put a new patio on the back of our house, and I realize that we have an entirely new room and a brand new view into the back yard. We have never been able to do this, and even in the inner ring suburbs, we have a deep, wooded lot with so many wonderful trees whose leaves make constant music that is lovely and loud. A mating pair of cardinals claim our yard as their territory, and I have begun to recognize their call and response. And many days in the last several weeks, a deer has been lying at the very back of the yard, just lying there in the sun. Our wonderful dog is getting old, and her cataracts must be significant as she didn't even see her or smell her somehow. Finally, as I was sitting on the patio on Sunday, a huge owl flew right by me and perched in the huge evergreen in the yard and stayed there for several hours. Wow, a back yard full of grace, how lovely! Now if I could just slow the time down a little and lean in to all of this for a few more....years...but no! That I cannot do, and I will enjoy the new excitement of the students, but I could wait another month. Oh well. I'll enjoy it all anyway. Here are a few poems I have come across recently and really like. see what you think:

Designed to Fly (Ellen Waterston)

After ten hours of trying
the instructor undid
my fingers, peeled
them one by one
off the joystick.
"You don't need
to hold the plane
in the air," he advised.
"It's designed to fly.
A hint of aileron,
a touch of rudder,
is all that is required."

I looked at him
like I'd seen God.
Those props and struts
he mentioned, they too,
I realized, all contrived.
I grew dizzy
from the elevation
from looking so far
down at the surmise:
the airspeed of faith
underlies everything.
Lives are designed
to fly.

Wait (CK Williams)

Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax—

not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely,

time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail,

one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore,

another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was

for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly.

It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you,

relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw.

Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you,

you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me,

my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring,

trying to heave itself back to its other way with you.

But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran

as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you?

Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds?

Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it,

a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I,

not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve?

Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am,

how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all.

Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over

the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn,

to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"?

We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

When a Woman Feels Alone (May Sarton) and Lovely Early Summer

2010-06-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well, the day has finally come and gone. Our myriad, often complicated connections to University School are forever changed as Will takes off his US tie for the very last time. How could we possibly be sad when the graduates were so joyous with their cigars and hugs and wonderful friends and family all around? I ask you, does it get any better than this? Maybe, just maybe if they'd been able to win the State Championship game the day before....but even that couldn't stop the flow of good cheer-- no, delight--that poured out of Will and all his friends as they said goodbye to high school. We all had a wonderful time too just watching the love fest! Also, having my sister there was wonderful too; she too has had a long, complicated history with US. But I think we both felt some closure and joy being on those grounds we know so well with a boy who so audibly and visibly loved it there.

So, I've had some time to think, as I recuperate from toe surgery (and have to sit around and wait to be driven places-yuck). Now that all the excitement is done, KT is off on a trip to Africa with her school, Will is off working or hanging with the boys, and Chip is being Chip and working until he drops, and I seem to have some quiet time to write and think and begin to enter the silence around this lovely place in this lovely early summer time. Maybe I'm just getting older, but I think I need more quiet time now than I ever have before--maybe it's age, maybe I just understand more about what I need and want--I'm not sure of the reason, really. But silence is something powerful, I think. My wonderful writing group and teacher are exploring the theme of silence without me this session, but I love the topic, and I've tried to keep up with the writing. Silence can be incredibly noisy sometimes, depending on how one might define "noise". most of the noise I struggle with is my own inner noise--you know, "you aren't a poet, you can't put two words together, time to do the laundry, how old are you?", you know what I mean. Well, I'm working on controlling my noise, as I work on wrapping my arms around how I change my relationship with my son when I'm not waking him up every morning and sitting down and talking to him every night. And how do I embrace getting older and beginning to bump up against this large birthday that is looming. The loss around all of this still feels imminent, but maybe not, maybe we adapt and enjoy watching the growth happen, I don't know...but I have some time to think and write about it. If I come up with anything pithy, I'll pass it on.
Try this lovely poem by May Sarton

When a Woman Feels Alone (May Sarton)

‘When a woman feels alone, when the room
is full of daemons,” the Nootka tribe
Tells us, ‘The Old Woman will be there.”
She has come to me over three thousand miles
And what does she have to tell me, troubled
“by phantoms in the night”?
Is she really here?
What is the saving word from so deep in the past.
From as deep as the ancient root of the redwood,
From as deep as the primal bed of the ocean,
From as deep as a woman’s heart sprung open
Again through a hard birth or a hard death?
Here under the shock of love, I am open
To you, Primal spirit, one with rock and wave,
One with survivors of flood and fire,
Who have rebuilt their homes a million times,
Who have lost their children and borne them again.
The words I hear are strength, laughter, endurance.
Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself.
There in the rootbed of fertility,
World without end, as the legend tells it.
Under the words you are my silence.

To My Son at Eighteen, Optimism and The Envoy

2010-06-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

I was going to talk about the poetry and caregiving conference I went to at Duke, and the wonderful reading and master class with Jane Hirshfield, (who I think is wonderful by the way), but I think I have to talk about something else, too. Will found this picture in plain sight in our study, and put it on his senior page. I hadn't really looked at it in many, many years. I know Chip, my husband, took it and has always loved it, but I hadn't looked at it--really LOOKED at it-- in years. You know how it is, the picture goes on the bookcase and we never see it again. In these few days before high school is done and we all start a different way of relating every day to our son as he goes away to college, I can't seem to take my eyes away from it. I guess it justt captures that breathtaking (or so I think) bond between mother and child so well.

Oh, the boys are still in the championship race! They have a very big game tomorrow that is in no way a guarantee.....but, if they win, they are on to the State Championship on Saturday just before graduation on Sunday. Very exciting around here! Hope for a little sun...or at least no rain!!

I have included three poems. Two from Jane Hirshfield that I love--"Optimism", and "The Envoy", and one of mine that I am working on about that picture. I think Jane H's poems also capture a great deal of what I'm feeling these days. Both the feeling that some huge emotion keeps raising its head that I can't always name, as I contemplate Will's leaving, and my hope to be resilient through all of this and able to embrace all this resinous, unretractable change! Enjoy!

To My Son at Eighteen

I didn’t think I knew how to hope

for the man you have become

when this picture was taken.

Then I looked at it again,

all these years later.

We are both so young here,

You’re must be two, I’m in my

early thirties, and I’m holding you

naked against me, your thumb

as usual, in your mouth,

your heart to mine.

We are framed by grey stairs rising

above us, a palm trunk at your back,

a beam of the stairs at mine.

The lush Florida world stays

slightly out of focus behind us,

soft light except on my shoulder

away from the camera,

a patch of brightness drawing the eye

into the circle our bodies make.

The white of your baseball cap

turned backwards on your head

and my white shirt parallel

again the rising steps,

and focus the scene on our

faces, inches apart.

My hair touching yours,

colors matching perfectly,

we seem to whisper the world

to each other;

our silent language loud.

In the intervening wash of years,

Time has tumbled us like white water

over pebbles, flinging us forward,

driving us into a rock or two,

releasing us changed and gleaming,

But in this photo we are anchored

forever in this mute moment

together.

As I look, I can see the man you are now

so clearly in your boy eyes.

I can feel your goodness and wisdom,

even pain in the heft of your body,

and somehow you’ve always known mine.

As if we knew then what we know now.

As if we have always been telling each other,

that through it all,

I am here.

Optimism (Jane Hirshfield)

The Envoy (Jane Hirshfield)

One day in that room, a small rat.
Two days later, a snake.

Who, seeing me enter,
whipped the long stripe of his
body under the bed,
then curled like a docile house-pet.

I don't know how either came or left.
Later, the flashlight found nothing.

For a year I watched
as something -- terror? happiness? grief? --
entered and then left my body.

No knowing how it came in.
Not knowing how it went out.

It hung where words could not reach it.
It slept where light could not go.
Its scent was neither snake nor rat,
neither sensualist nor ascetic.

There are openings in our lives
of which we know nothing.

Through them
the belled herds travel at will,
long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

The spectacular moment -- The World as It Is (Carolyn Miller) and Crossing the Loch (Kathleen Jamie)

2010-05-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

I know, I've been a little slow the last few weeks. But, I'm feeling really good. Several talks are done, medical school graduation was seamless and lovely, I am going to a poetry and care-giving conference at Duke this weekend and taking my daughter to see some schools near Duke, and, and , AND........

this lax mom is ECSTATIC about Will's team beating a division 1 team (they are a division below this based on school size, etc) that they have never beaten, ever before--today, just now, wow. Yes, it was 50 and raining. Yes, the crazy lax parents were out there with layers on screaming their hearts out. I had on, just in case you wanted to know, two long-sleeved t-shirts, one fleece US vest, one US football sweatshirt with Gilkeson on it, a black and maroon wool US baseball cap, and finally, the US lacrosse windbreaker--all pilfered out of Will's closet an hour before the game. I looked good.

Ok, so we were down most of the game--by 2 goals, 3, 1, 2. Half-time comes and goes and the Preppers pick it up a little. We're a goal down and we're deep into the third period. We score to tie the game! Ok, the fans are jumping up and down (all 30 parents and a smattering of die-hard girlfriends and the occasional god-parent). Ugh, they score again: 9 to 10-- fourth period with 4 minutes to go. Well, the boys had a flawless 4 minutes and scored three more times to pull it out, and Will had the last two goals!! The crowd went wild!!

This was a huge win and now they're on to the state championships. I was following my advice in a talk I gave on resilience, and being in the moment, being present. And it was one of those spectacular moments we'll all remember. How much fun is that, I ask you?? Ok, I'm going on too long. I have been collecting a few good poems that are really all about a particular moment in time and focusing on this particular time or event; detailing it, being present to it, making it present for us. see what you think. I'll report back about the state tournament over the next two weeks.

The World as It is (Carolyn Miller)

No ladders, no descending angels, no voice
out of the whirlwind, no rending
of the veil, or chariot in the sky—only
water rising and falling in breathing springs
and seeping up through limestone, aquifers filling
and flowing over, russet stands of prairie grass
and dark pupils of black-eyed Susans. Only
the fixed and wandering stars: Orion rising sideways,
Jupiter traversing the southwest like a great firefly,
Venus trembling and faceted in the west—and the moon,
appearing suddenly over your shoulder, brimming
and ovoid, ripe with light, lifting slowly, deliberately,
wobbling slightly, while far below, the faithful sea
rises up and follows.

Crossing the Loch (Kathleen Jamie)

Remember how we rowed toward the cottage
on the sickle-shaped bay,
that one night after the pub
loosed us through its swinging doors
and we pushed across the shingle
till water lipped the sides
as though the loch mouthed 'boat'?

I forgot who rowed. Our jokes hushed.
The oars' splash, creak, and the spill
of the loch reached long into the night.
Out in the race I was scared:
the cold shawl of breeze,
and hunched hills; what the water held
of deadheads, ticking nuclear hulls.

Who rowed, and who kept their peace?
Who hauled salt-air and stars
deep into their lungs, were not reassured;
and who first noticed the loch's
phosphorescence, so, like a twittering nest
washed from the rushes, an astonished
small boat of saints, we watched water shine
on our fingers and oars,
the magic dart of our bow wave?
It was surely foolhardy, such a broad loch, a tide,
but we live—and even have children
to women and men we had yet to meet
that night we set out, calling our own
the sky and salt-water, wounded hills
dark-starred by blaeberries, the glimmering anklets
we wore in the shallows
as we shipped oars and jumped,
to draw the boat safe, high at the cottage shore.

Waving Goodbye (Wesley McNair) and Yes (ee cummings) to it all

2010-05-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

Really, does it get any better than this? A perfect night, the girl who holds your heart, all your buddies together all night, your senior prom. I think back on it, and I don't have quite the same memory. In fact, I cringe when I think of the creamsicle-colored, polyester gown my mother made me wear.... Oh well, I spent about an hour with all the other parents (boys' and girls') taking pictures and truly just watching the parade of these beautiful kids having such a wonderful time being together. Many of Will's buddies had on their crazy lacrosse rings, which are about the size of a bread box, requiring that the boys hold their fingers apart all night, but no matter. They look cool!

All the parents stayed behind after the kids left, and I think we all felt the acute weight of these kids in our lives, and how much we will feel their absence. For me, a great deal of this feeling comes from this vast web of people he has woven into our lives---friends, girlfriend, sister who so loves the girlfriend, girlfriend's brother who loves the boyfriend, girlfriend's parents, friends' parents--this whole cast of characters and connections are such a part of our lives and will be sorely missed. There we all were watching the kids drive off wondering where the last 18 years went. Actually, I found the evening so comforting because we were ALL feeling the same way. So, we turned on the Kentucky derby and had a drink and laughed.....so incredibly therapeutic. I highly recommend it under similar circumstances. This poem is a little sad, but mostly bittersweet; which is just what I'm feeling--sadness, and in the same moment, gratitude, deep thanks, and excitement about what's coming......... I also include a lovely piece I think I may have sent over 2 years ago about gratitude. (This was hit home again today at this wonderful little church in the bulletin. I KNEW I liked this place.)

Waving Goodbye

by Wesley McNair

Why, when we say goodbye
at the end of an evening, do we deny
we are saying it at all, as in We'll
be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in,
somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,
telling us the same things, go on disappearing
beyond the porch light into the space
which except for a moment here or there
is always between us, no matter what we do.
Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens
when the space gets too large
for words – a gesture so innocent
and lonely, it could make a person weep
for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown
voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel
patting and stroking the growing distance
between their nameless ship and the port
they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always
remember, and just as urgently, Always
remember me. It is loneliness, too,
that makes the neighbor down the road lift
two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes
day after day on his way to work in the hello
that turns into goodbye? What can our own raised
fingers to for him, locked in his masculine
purposes and speeding away inside the glass?
How can our waving wipe away the reflex
so deep in the woman next door to smile
and wave on her way into her house with the mail,
we'll never know if she is happy
or sad or lost? It can't. Yet in that moment
before she and all the others and we ourselves
turn back to our disparate lives, how
extraordinary it is that we make this small flag
with our hands to show the closeness we wish for
in spite of what pulls us apart again
and again: the porch light snapping off,
the car picking its way down the road through the dark.

And by e.e. cummings:

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

On Poetry

2010-04-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about including something about poetry in a couple of talks I am giving in May. As I consider this idea, I have been reading and rereading poetry. Really, I use this excuse to spend lots of time exploring all these poetry books and websites and generally not doing the things I should be doing. like matching socks. Actually, my mother-in-law has let me down lately by not coming over to match socks every Wednesday. What could be holding her up, I wonder? What could possibly be more rewarding? I've become quite used to having piles of perfectly matched socks waiting for me when I get home.....I'll have to get her moving on this again. I mean come on, now that she has decided to get completely well after a long stay in the hospital and rehab, it is time for her to pick up her duties, I think.

In the meantime, I'm considering why I have found poetry so helpful in so many parts of my life. I believe it has enabled me to become so very much more reflective, and to take time to allow meaning to bubble up to the surface and shine forth. I am often surprised at what I have learned while writing or reading poetry. I guess this is particularly so when I actually try to write. At work, we have been reading and discussing what it is that the act of writing can do to help students learn about themselves and their reactions, and to grow and even change. I see first hand the power of reflection and meaning making for me. I have begun to collect a bunch of poems about poetry by different authors. I go back to these to help me put words to the feeling that there is something quite special about poetry; every author sings poetry's praises it in their own unique way. Ok, I think Katie and her friend have a little poetry going on in this picture, too. See what you think of some of these poems:

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry (Pablo Neruda)

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . .

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .

This Was Once a Love Poem
by Jane Hirshfield

This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.

It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.

Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.

Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.

IT spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.

The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.

Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them—one, then another—
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.

Bittersweet

2010-04-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm just a tiny bit anxious about our son graduating from high school in June. First of all,he goes to the school my father essentially built during his 25 year tenure as headmaster. I am a bit overwhelmed by the idea that my connection with this school is about to end too. This connection has been part of me since my dad became headmaster in 1963 when I was 3. Hmmmm, there is so much here, and so much that is going to change...and I feel tremendous loss already. Not only about this boy, but about dad, this school, the past, oh dear! And I can barely look at this beautiful boy without feeling so many conflicting things--I'm so proud of the person he is, I'm delighted that he is happy, confident, intelligent, kind, and full of love, thrilled that he is so ready for the next step, and so sure we'll miss him terribly!. I want to hold onto him hard, but I will let him go. We aren't exactly ready, but Will, being the talker and feeler that he is, also acknowledges how bittersweet this is for him as well.

Two packages came today. Both have pairs of white bucks in them; these are the shoes that my father wore every day to work( white bucks, crew cut, the whole package...see picture above!). Will wants to wear a pair to graduate in; to pay tribute to his grandfather and to acknowledge that he is the McKinley House prefect this year. Again, the layers of meaning in this gesture are many. I know everyone goes through this, and I am excited about Will's next steps, but our lives will feel a little empty for awhile without his big presence. So, here we are....can we really be here already? I thought I might just put a couple of pieces of my own up tonight to pay homage to Will, to RPM (my dad), and finally to US (I gave the graduation address in 2005 as the McKinley/Hawley years came to a close, and just talked of my myriad connections to US, especially my connection as a parent)..

I watch them amazed

They are both so beautiful.

He well-muscled, seventeen, tousled hair, that smile.

She tall as he, a slim beauty with long blonde hair,

a knock out at fourteen.

They are mine but even more,

they are each other’s.

He has loved her out loud even unborn,

my stethoscope in his ears, dancing to her heartbeat.

In those black Batman boots, he sang to her and

offered his favorite toy when she arrived.

All these years have slipped like

shuffled cards through my hands,

and here he is needing her advice on colleges,

making sure his girlfriend gets the nod.

Oh she teased him so;

making him jump through hoops to love her,

but she has watched his every move,

making him laugh, helping him write.

Needing him, she has grown

into this graceful beauty he loves to defend.

What finer reward of parenting than this?

Their love as sure a thing as Spring’s arrival,

as divine.

Love Song for my Father

Walking the great gray dog,

loving how her velvet ears stream out behind her

as she lopes away and blends perfectly

with the dun world of Cleveland March,

I feel him moving with us in these woods.

I feel him in this pocket of breeze

lifting, moving just those leaves and branches

near us, like a wave as we move,

touching my face and arms.

And suddenly I am there again and he says,

Why do you love me?

as he lies in the dark, fighting with his pain,

in the big bed with the cinnamon gum

all over the back of the headboard.

What a question to ask your daughter!

It surprises me, and I open my mouth to speak,

but somehow my words are swept from me,

unspoken. What a thing not to know.

What do I say now, now that you and your pain are gone?

That I forgive you for all you weren’t?

That I finally recognize more of what you were?

I wish you had shared more of you with us,

your daughters, who tried so hard

to be swept up into your enormous,

educating-boys, gifted life.

Your question was an offering

to me, an opening.

I know who I am, can you accept me, love me now?

But I stood thickly, didn’t I,

knee deep in anger and impotence,

letting this chance fall like water through my fingers.

With words, we shared illness, though.

For the first time, you wrote me letters –

Dear Cancer, love Vascular Compromise,

Dear Chemotherapy, love Aortic Bifemoral Bypass,

Dear Strength, love Patience,

Dear Metastases, Love Pain,

Dear Grief, love Loss.

As I stand looking at the school

you built, I feel you stirring in me.

I marveled as you clung by your bloody fingertips

to life, your jagged pain cutting you to ribbons.

But as I bear witness to my own disease,

I understand this fierceness,

this wild aliveness you gave me.

I feel your words working in me too,

your love of language, the way you worked

a room when you opened your mouth.

So I open my mouth to these woods,

and I say I love you out loud.

I shout it out over the lake,

I reverberate it through halls of timeless boys.

We have loved each other imperfectly,

unevenly, but time works you around me

a little closer each time I’m here.

The beautiful dog comes when she hears me yell,

her love so simple somehow.

University School Graduation Address given 6/3/05

Good morning Class of 2005! -- and good morning to your parents, faculty and friends. I’m delighted to be here. But I have to tell you that I have an eerie feeling that I was also destined to be standing here before you, right here, right now, addressing Dr. Hawley’s last graduating Class.

Now you may find this curious as you have never heard my name or seen my face before, AND I’m a girl, but as you may have heard in Dr. Hawley’s introduction, I have many connections to US.

In fact, I have so many connections that I thank my lucky stars I wasn’t born a boy, because if I had actually gone to school here too….well, as a physician, I can say that this situation might not have been compatible with life—too much US-ness. The truth is that this place has woven itself firmly into my DNA whether I have wanted it too or not.

I grew up here—literally. My father became the 5th headmaster of University School in 1963 when I was 3 years old. He reigned supreme for the next 25 years—until I was 28—when Dr. Hawley took over. Now these years are very formative years in a lifetime. During this time, my mother was the lower school librarian and reading specialist, and I have had the great good fortune to call the Hawleys friends since I was 8. And there are many more connections that I’ll talk about,

But before I do, seniors, I want to tell you about a little research I did in my office. I polled the office staff and some of the medical students I work with, and not a single one of them could remember who had given their high school graduation address or what the talk had been about. I’m not sure whether this makes me feel good up here, but at least I know what I’m up against. So, to make things simpler, I’m going to focus on just 1 word, and that word is foundation.

And I’m going to do this by telling you some stories:

My very first memory of US is walking over the wooded grounds of what would become this upper school campus with my father who was, and still is I might add, larger than life. I’m 7, and I remember that walking with Dad was a bit like walking next to Paul Bunyon. There he was striding over the rocks and through the forest as I scrabbled over rocks behind him. I remember him stopping and turning to me and saying” Lis, what do you see?” And I looked around and said something like, “a forest?” He said, “I see a school, do you see it?” Well, I have to admit that I was focusing more on the salamanders at my feet, but there was no denying his incredible excitement about this place, about education. This new property would be his foundation for educating boys.

Now I’m 11 years old, and it’s Saturday and I’m sitting in the conference room outside of the headmaster’s office upstairs. I’m folding a stack of hundreds of letters to upper school parents and putting them into envelopes. I’ve been hired with the promise of a ride in that convertible and ice cream if I get everything done, and I’m eager to spend time with Dad, so I agree.

But this is a dull task and a long one. What I remember is gradually beginning to pay attention to the conversation I’m overhearing. Dad has a record playing—It’s a Princeton Nasoons recording that a graduate has sent him. Over this I hear two very distinct voices, Dad’s and the new, young teacher whom dad really likes, a guy named Hawley. They are talking, loudly, back and forth, and laughing, for hours. Now what is so remarkable about this scene is that it is repeated many times until I realized that there are other things to do on a Saturday afternoon or dad hires some very needed help.

But until then, I went many Saturdays to that conference room. Each time the scene is the same. I clearly don’t remember everything about what was said, but I do remember the essence. I remember the excitement they shared. They were debating, and pushing each other, pounding fists, and laughing—a lot--, and I remember understanding at some point that these guys were working……they were loving what they were doing, and what they were doing was remarkable. They were developing innovative curriculum and programming that would challenge and stretch boys so that they took chances and failed sometimes, but felt supported enough to get back up and do something they didn’t think they could. They were developing an environment in which boys could build a foundation of scholarship that was unsurpassed, and that’s what each of these men committed their lives to doing, and this epoch has spanning the last 42 years. That’s a long time!

Ok, now I’m 15, and I am in the passenger seat of the old blue US truck fitted with a snow plow, and Dad is driving. Believe it or not, we are plowing the long upper school driveway at some crazy hour in the morning on a school day, and it’s freezing. Clearly Dad has not yet hired the help he needs, but the truth is he loves doing this. I’m sleepy, but I’m company as my older sister has rebelled and refused all things US, and here we are again talking about this school and boys and education.

I’m not exactly sure if dad ever really recognized that he had two girls, but that’s really a different talk. You do understand at this point that I couldn’t get away from it—from these discussions of education and boys. I mean being the headmaster’s daughter was just not always all that fabulous. All right seniors, would you date the headmaster’s daughter? I don’t think so. I began to rebel a little myself having grown somewhat tired of talking about educating boys. I went away to college, and there was Peace. I still heard about US when I talked to mom and dad, but mostly all was quiet.

Then I decide that I really have to be a doctor, and that Case is the place I must go, so back I come to Cleveland, just a little worried about returning to the whole

thing, as dad is still the headmaster . And what do I do? I literally knock over a fine US graduate with a wonderful foundation of his own as I’m getting off the elevator in my third year of medical school, and I end up marrying the guy –something that I had secretly sworn never to do.

Not only that, I spend many hours with his father who was the University School psychiatrist hired by my father who speaks tirelessly about learning and boys. And then I meet Ibby Gilkeson, my husband Chip’s grandmother, who happens to be a pioneer of early childhood education and a consultant at US for primary curriculum until she was at least 80. And she can talk of nothing but the early education of boys. Once again, I’m completely surrounded. I’m surrounded by people I love who have spent so much of their lives making US the place to educate boys.

And then what happens? I have a BOY! And at first, I think I’m not ready for this much US-ness, and Will goes to our local public school. But when that stops working for him, we send him across that checkered hall at the

lower school. Now you understand that his first steps into the lower school take him right under the portraitly nose of his grandfather. I was a little worried as I walked him into the building that first day, but I knew he would be ok when he turned around and broke into a big grin as he pointed to that portrait and said, “Mom, I know that guy”.

Fairly soon he realized that his heritage might not always be a blessing. Especially when he got into trouble with a teacher my Dad had hired who told him, “Will, I expect more from you”. Will came home fuming, calling it all so unfair, and then he hung his head and told me that he really liked this teacher, and that the teacher was right. This is what it’s about, isn’t it? Will stepped up and worked hard for this teacher. He was learning to build his very own foundation of scholarship.

And he has thrived here, and it is through him that I have my most important perspective on US-as a parent. Now I know that the road to seats you occupy today isn’t always an easy one. My son has had his struggles just getting through 7^th grade. But it is through Will that I finally understand what Dad, Dr. Hawley, my mom, my husband Chip, Dr. Bob, and Ibby Gilkeson and so many others have been talking about: That this US education is so very formative. In this incredible environment you have worked very hard to lay down a solid foundation on which you now can build whatever you want.

My wonderful husband said to me early on in our relationship, “Lis, he said, I went to Princeton and my classes were nothing like Dr. Hawley’s philosophy class. I got three Ds in a row and that had never happened to me before!” and he pulled out a paper he still had from that class with more red pen on it than typing and the D- circled at the bottom. There are some words at the bottom that say something like, “Chip, you are capable of so much more than this”. And you know what? He knew it was true, and he worked like he had never worked for this inspiring teacher, headmaster, writer who knew what he was capable of.

And that’s what each of you takes from here. The knowledge that you were pushed and pulled and stretched – in whatever direction or directions it may have been, in the classroom on the athletic field, wherever, and that you have succeeded in building a foundation of excellence. And when college gets hard or you feel overwhelmed, you know you can count on it. This foundation will always be there, it will never go away, and you have it when you need it. What a gift.

And what a gift I’ve been given—to know this place and the people who have lead it so spectacularly and loved it for so long. And how lucky am I to be standing here talking to you today. It’s been such a pleasure. As my father would say, “Well done, gentlemen, and good luck!”

A Blessing of Spring (James Wright, Reginald Gibbons, Ted Kooser)

2010-04-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

Spring! How wonderful, isn't it? I even woke my kids up this morning and we all went off to celebrate Easter at a new church. Now this is really something for me. I have been attending the same church, off and on, since I was in the children's choir at about age 10. I have been a confirmation sponsor for several of my friend's children--one a very articulate, well-reasoned atheist. For the last many years, I have found that the services talk less and less to me, and recently, i have been searching for something.....else. I don't know if I have yet found it, but I love the two ministers of this new place. They work together every service. They are funny, open, intelligent, thoughtful, and acknowledge that they don't have all the answers. Ok, I like this.....a lot. We even picked up my mother this morning. Looking next to me at my 18 and 15 year olds paying some attention, laughing, feeling some of the message, and even singing....well, this is a new thing for us all. We all even chimed in for a quick rendition of the Alleluia chorus. Maybe this was a little over the top, but we were rocking it in the moment. So Spring is feeling really good, and really needed around here. The snow is gone, green is in, and there are even trees in full blossom. There is resurrection all around us today, so let's have a few Spring poems to carry this forward a little. Happy Spring everyone! I know I've sent "A Blessing" before, but it is so wonderful, I'm sending it again. Check out the others, too.

A Blessing
by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

In cold spring air
by Reginald Gibbons

In cold spring air the white wisp- visible breath of a blackbird singing— we don’t know to un- wrap these blind- folds we keep thinking we are seeing through

Late February

by Ted Kooser

The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn's fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;
by five o'clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.

Last Night as I Lay Sleeping and the Black Madonna

2010-03-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am sorry to be a week late with this blog post, but we have just returned from a Florida spring break with six (count them, six) 18yo boys, two 15yo girls, my friend Judi and me....what were we thinking??? We had a lovely time, but I would not say it was exactly relaxing....until the boys returned for lacrosse practice and the husbands came down. Then, we could put up our feet and feel the sunshine.

While in Florida, I re-read The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. I did this because while I was in Mexico, we had begun to talk about the Black Madonna (or Our Lady of Chains, the Virgin of Guadalupe and many other names). The image of a dark-skinned Mary who stands for all of us who are enchained is an age old story. I am no expert here, but the images are everywhere, and her lore is deep all over the world. I love the imagery in the book. Here, the Black Madonna is a masthead taken from an old ship that sits in the beekeeper sisters' house. Worshipers touch her painted heart, and her story is that she was chained and moved to other locations, but always escaped her chains and ended up back where she was being worshiped. In the book, she is coated with honey to worship her, and then washed reverently. I am really drawn to this figure of the divine feminine; she is described as both fierce and infinitely compassionate. As Clarissa Picola Estes said, she was strong; "she had calluses on her hands." She cannot unchain us, but she can provide us love and safety as we begin our own processes of removing our chains, whatever they are. Love it , and I am in the market for a fabulous masthead, if anyone knows where such a thing might be found! Enjoy these few poems that touch on this topic.

Last Night As I Lay Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was a spring breaking out in my heart.

I said, "Along what secret aqueduct are you coming to me

Oh water, water of a new life that I have never drunk."

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was a beehive here in my heart.

And the golden bees were making white combs

and sweet honey from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was a fiery sun here in my heart.

It was fiery because it gave warmth as if from a hearth

And it was sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was God here in my heart.

God, is my soul asleep?

Have those beehives who labor by night stopped, and

the water wheel of thought, is it dry?

The cup's empty, wheeling out carrying only shadows?

No! My soul is not asleep! My soul is not asleep!

It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches, its clear eyes open,

far off things, and listens, and listens

at the shores of the great silence.

It listens at the shores of the great silence. ~

Antonio Machado ~(translations by Robert Bly)

Mary as Dark Godess

I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter.

I am she whose wedding is great,

And I have not taken a husband. . .

I am shameless;

I am ashamed. . . .

I am godless, And I am one whose God is great

Thunder, Perfect Mind

Gnostic Poem

Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(I have only included the last few lines, as it is quite long)

Guadalupe is a girl gang leader in heaven.
I know for a fact that she is Pachuca
and wears the sign of la Loca on her hand,
drives a four on the floor with a bonnet
and blue dot tail lights.
And, I pray to her, mio Dio, Dio mio,
because she is the strongest woman I know.
a
aand finally,

For Elizabeth Bishop
BY SANDRA MCPHERSON
The child I left your class to have
Later had a habit of sleeping
With her arms around a globe
She’d unscrewed, dropped, and dented.
I always felt she could possess it,
The pink countries and the mauve
And the ocean which got to keep its blue.
Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach,
Which you had never had to do, you took
A bare-walled room, alone, its northern
Windowscapes as gray as walls.
To decorate, you’d only brought a black madonna.
I thought you must have skipped summer that year,
Southern winter, southern spring, then north
For winter over again. Still, it pleased you
To take credit for introducing us,
And later to bring our daughter a small flipbook
Of partners dancing, and a ring
With a secret whistle. —All are
Broken now like her globe, but she remembers
Them as I recall the black madonna
Facing you across the room so that
In a way you had the dark fertile life
You were always giving gifts to.
Your smaller admirer off to school,
I take the globe and roll it away: where
On it now is someone like you?

Ordinary things like throwing a ball or looking at clouds (David Baker)

2010-03-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

Today is cool and wet and gray here...such an ordinary Cleveland March day. I've been struggling with a nasty cold all week, and I am faced today with so many ordinary tasks, like weeks worth of teenagers' laundry, both rotting food and nothing to eat, TVs that have somehow not been fixed since I discovered their problems, the rug upon which the dog did things she shouldn't have is still a mess, I haven't mailed a few things, there are so many bills--you get the picture. This is an ordinary woe on an ordinary, bleak day; I am feeling a bit bleak about the whole scenario. Now the good news, of course, is that there is nothing awful happening. Kids are in Columbus at a State hockey championship, the dog is no longer ill, the sick relative is much improved, my mother is embracing life at 86, and I still have that Mexico blue water in my mind. Maybe ordinary isn't so bad, but I do wonder during March why we live here (Ok, I wonder this same thing during December, January, and February too). So how about a few really interesting poems about ordinary things. I really like this guy, David Baker. I stumbled on him from Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry series. he teaches English at Denison (ok, why didn't my son go there??) and he is the poetry editor of the Kenyon Review. See what you think.

Old Man Throwing a Ball

He is tight at first, stiff, stands there atilt

tossing the green fluff tennis ball down

the side alley, but soon he’s limber,

he’s letting it fly and the black lab

lops back each time. These are the true lovers,

this dog, this man, and when the dog stops

to pee, the old guy hurries him back, then

hurls the ball farther away. Now his mother

dodders out, she’s old as the sky, wheeling

her green tank with its sweet vein, breath.

She tips down the path he’s made for her,

grass rippling but trim, soft underfoot,

to survey the yard, every inch of it

in fine blossom, set-stone, pruned miniature,

split rails docked along the front walk,

antique watering cans down-spread—up

huffs the dog again with his mouthy ball—

so flowers seem to spill out, red geraniums,

grand blue asters, and something I have

no name for, wild elsewhere in our world

but here a thing to tend. To call for, and it comes.

Never-Ending Birds (David Baker)

That’s us pointing to the clouds. Those are clouds

of birds, now we see, one whole cloud of birds.

There we are, pointing out the car windows.

October. Gray-blue-white olio of birds.

Never-ending birds, you called the first time—

years we say it, the three of us, any

two of us, one of those just endearments.

Apt clarities. Kiss on the lips of hope.

I have another house. Now you have two.

That’s us pointing with our delible whorls

into the faraway, the true-born blue-

white unfeathering cloud of another year.

Another sheet of their never ending.

There’s your mother wetting back your wild curl.

I’m your father. That’s us three, pointing up.

Dear girl. They will not—it’s we who do—end.

Resilience at 50 -- of Messengers and Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

2010-03-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

I've just been to a special birthday celebration for a friend, and I was contemplating the large number of years she has lived. We've lived quite a long time, I'll say out loud, and there are some significant things to celebrate here. As I mentioned last week, I had a chance to think about limits as they pertain to yoga, and I've had several weeks to let that percolate into the gray matter a bit. Everyone I know who is almost 50 or over has had to confront, at some time or another, a limit. We've all had to deal with some issue or other that limits us in some way--a joint, a disease, an ending, a significant change....

As I thought about what I might say to my dear friend who has worked so hard and come head-on against her limits in many ways, I realized that her scars have taught her so much. Perhaps this is the whole point. We all have issues we bang our heads against, or that flatten us for awhile, and we either learn to stand again and find some resilience, or we are in trouble. What are these components of resilience, I wonder? Clearly, it is easier to be resilient if we have each other, spouses, significant others, dear friends, hope. But there is more to it, I think. I don't know the answers, I just have some hunches. I've seen incredible resilience in many survivors I work with, and I've seen the reverse. For me, having poetry in my life has given me a new way of being resilient. I can feel pain and hopelessness and worry for the future in so many poems, and I find new ways of understanding and dealing with these issues by submerging myself in the poems-- soaking up their pain, their way of seeing, their ability to feel gratitude, their ability to move forward. And, thank goodness, I can try my hand at telling a story of resilience, and this is always illuminating for me. I know my friend knows what I mean, as she begins to pick up her paintbrushes again. She has become very wise. For all of her struggles and recovery, I am very grateful; I know she is too. Wisdom, resilience, gratitude....these are things I would really like to have in my life as I age. May all of us have them! Try these two from Mary Oliver and don't forget to hear her speak in April here in Cleveland.

Messenger

By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.