Poems 62 and 63 (Pandemic Day 66)

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a House

A house covers up everybody's problems.

A person walking by can't see 

two people fighting in the kitchen.

A lot of people have lived in every house

What happened in that house

Forty years before?

--A murder committed in the kitchen,

A robbery in the basement.

When people built my house,

Did they mess up and maybe my house 

Will fall from under me tonight?

There are parts of my house 

That are not quite normal, like my bathroom, 

Right by the dining room, used to be for the maid.

--I wonder if anybody ever died in my house.

I wonder if they died in my room?

Outside my house, 

The tree is the biggest thing there.

The leaves die every fall.

And in the backyard,

Our rotting swing set lifts off the ground

Whenever you do.

My house is almost 100 years old.

It could have been a century ago 

When someone was sleeping in my room.

Out the back door and down the stairs,

The old garage sits,

Falling apart, day by day.

--And in the garage, there is an attic

Where no one ever goes.

It's possible that a dead body

Is up there, but we may

Never find out.

The garage is old and dying

Like the rest of this old house,

And slowly, the people who live in it, as well.

--Nick Day

Writing from Student Author Night, Barton Open School, Minneapolis, MN, 2005.

This is definitely a limited edition volume--available for one night only in 2005.  As I glance through it, I see names I remember of the students who passed through my doors, my face is full of smiles and my mind is full of questions.  Where are these students now, fifteen years later?  

Sadly, as I page through again, I see Samantha Hastings's name--one of our brightest and best who died in a car accident that also killed her father and seriously injured her younger sister.  I believe the poem in this booklet might have been the one that was included in her funeral handout.  I must include that poem too.  

Wow.  I thought this was going to be a quick and light-hearted posting for a Friday and now....

Nick's poem about ways of looking at a house has relevance for us now, as we spend more time homebound.  Is your home revealing secrets?  Are you hearing noises, uncovering mysteries or at least finding missing socks?  If your house has been talking to you in any ways, blatant or subtle, will you share that with me? 

And now...

Moonset 

I'll tell you how the moon set

     So silvery and white,

The Flowers waited tentatively

     For Sun's bright joyful light

The Stars put on a morning show

     Before they said Goodbye,

The Moon gave last its golden glow

     Then sank beneath the Sky.

I know my Moon is somewhere else

     She never really sets

Her beauty's there for all to see,

     For in your Heart she's kept. 

--Samantha Hastings

Poem 61 (Pandemic Day 65)

From: A Grateful Heart: 

Daily Blessings for the Evening Meal from Buddha to the Beatles

Empower me

              to be a bold participant,

              rather than a timid saint in waiting,

              in the difficult ordinariness of now;

              to exercise the authority of honesty,

              rather than to defer to power,

              or deceive to get it;

              to influence someone for justice,

              rather than impress anyone for gain;

              and, by grace, to find treasures

              of joy, or friendship, of peace

              hidden in the fields of the daily

              you give me to plow.

---Ted Loder

 A Grateful Heart: Daily Blessings for the Evening Meal from Buddha to the Beatles, Edited by M. J. Ryan, Conari Press, 1994.

For the last few years I have often woken up in the morning feeling troubled; an uneasy, uncertain feeling that gravity was disappearing, that pieces of the world that I thought were stable and sound were falling off into space... 

Throughout my life I have always leaned towards tolerance and acceptance of others; their personalities and actions were fascinating or enlightening or just merely different than my own, not alarming or threatening.  Quirks were fine with me; I have them, I liked and appreciated them in others.  But things had been changing in society for a while, it had still possible to ignore or overlook or step around those changes for years, but the last presidential election completely lifted the veil--some of the changes were ugly and unsettling, even dystopian. 

 1984 by George Orwell was meant to be an unnerving fiction, not a potential reality; the "Ministry of Truth" not meant to be an actual government functionary--but here we had "alternative facts" and "fake news" and vulgar tweets and uncouth insults and self-dealing, hyper-partisanship and nepotism and all the deadly sins of governance...and a substantial portion of the American public saying, "That's all OK with me."  And some of those people were people I loved and cared about.  How do we dance around these clashes of values and perspectives and definitions of truth and reality?  

Ted Loder's words are a blessing I have sought and a grace that I hope for; a restoration of gravity and peace at sunrise and sunset--I share that blessing with you.

Poem 60 (Pandemic Day 64)

IN BLACK EARTH, WISCONSIN

thistles take the hillside
a purple glory of furred spears
a fierce army of spiky weeds
we climb through them
your mother, two of her daughters, and me
a late walk in the long June light

in the barn the heart throb
of the milking machine continues
as your father and brother change
the iodide-dipped tubes
from one udder to the next
and the milk courses through the pipeline
to the cooling vat where it swirls
like a lost sea in a silver box

we are climbing to the grove of white birch trees
whose papery bark will shed
the heart-ringed initials of your sister
as the grief wears down

this farm bears milk and hay
and this mother woman walking beside us
has borne nine children
and one magic one is dead:

                                                        riding her bike
                                                        she was a glare of light
                                                        on the windshield of the car
                                                        that killed her

a year and a half has passed
and death is folded in among the dishtowels
hangs in the hall closet by the family photos
and like a ring of fine mist
above the dinner table

we stand on a hill looking at birch bark
poking among hundred-year-old graves
that have fallen into the grass
rubbing the moss off and feeling for the names
that the stone sheds
we are absorbing death like nitrates
fertilizing our growth

this can happen:

                                                    a glare of light
                                                    an empty place
                                                    wordlessly we finger her absence

already there are four grandchildren
the family grows thick as thistle

—Andrea Musher

Poems for Life: Famous People Select Their Favorite Poem and Say Why It Inspires Them, Compiled by the Grade V Classes of the Nightingale -Bamford School, Arcade Publishing, 1995.  (Proceeds from Poems for Life were donated to the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a division of the International Rescue Committee.)[Linked to written/audio text of the book]

This poem, the first in the book, was selected by Jane Alexander, (1939-) a remarkable author, Emmy and Tony award-winning actress and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts.  Her choice is an interesting one.  She selects a poem by Andrea Musher, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (who a few years later became the poet laureate of the city of Madison.) Ms. Alexander's career had been on the east coast and the west coast, but this poem set in the heartland somehow reached her and grabbed her attention.

The first lines began with a military air: thistles taking the hillside--a fierce army of spiky weeds...What battle awaits the women mounting the hill and why are the men carrying on with the normal tasks of the farm?  We learn soon enough that the battle is with grief, the unspeakable grief of the loss of a child.  That one will never be won, but life will continue--already there are four grandchildren.  The last word is the same as the first word--"thistle"--the prickly truth about life.

Poem 59 (Pandemic Day 63)

When I was teaching, we planned in 9-week blocks.  Teacher work days were scheduled for the end of the quarter, when all the assignments were (supposed to be) completed and the grades were tabulated.

In our global community, we have now completed 9 weeks of a declared pandemic; and yes, grades are being given, but there is no sense of conclusion or completeness...the possibilities of sickness and death and disruption stretch out before us. We know there will be new assignments, new lessons to learn and tests--many tests ahead of us; as individuals, communities and nations.  There are no clear guidelines or rubrics, no certainly about when we will be dismissed from this school of hard knocks and tough lessons.

I remember being in a school where our students faced significant obstacles to learning and we took the challenges day by day.  At the end of a particularly challenging week, after our students had left, our principal would get on the intercom and say, "you did a good job, the roof is still on and the building is still standing--go home and have a well-deserved break."  At the end of this pandemic, can we still say our roof is still on and our country is still standing?  Let's take it day by day, but remember why we are here.

Map

by J. Patrick Lewis

Brash canvas,

Bleeding borders,

Jasper Johns (1930-), Map, 1961,
In the collection of the  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Kindled calm,

This is oxymoronicamerica,

Forged out of iron and lace

By people strapping and raw

Who wrestled and pinned history

To the map.

Happy as a circus boy,

Spirited as an outlaw,

Rough as a gandy dance,

This continent of tinted steel
Spread an easel of colors
On fifty pieces of scissored history--
And painted itself a self.

Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art, Edited by Jan Greenberg, Harry N. Abrams, 2001.

One commonality of the books on my poetry shelves seems to be that a number of them capture the connection between poetry and the visual arts, such as this small volume.  Certainly poetry can be painting with words and art can be poetry on canvas. 

The editor invited distinguished American poets to choose a piece of American artwork to write about.  Forty-three poets accepted her request.  I liked this pairing of poem and painting, because they both ask us to look at something familiar and iconic, but not often closely examined.  The wall label of the painting reads thusly:

"Reflecting his choice of easily recognizable images, Johns said that he was interested in "the idea of knowing an image rather than just seeing it out of the corner of your eye." The map of the United States, in its ubiquity and iconicity is "seen and not looked at, not examined." Preserving the overall proportions of the country and the shape of its states, John's energetic application of paint subverts the conventions of cartography, as do the stenciled names of states, such as Colorado, which is repeated in several locations. Map invites close inspections because its content is both familiar and imaginary."
Text from the MoMA wall label.

I think back on 1961, when this painting was created and we were striving and lurching towards both peace and war;  towards civil liberties through civil unrest; our country was definitely scissored and yet we stayed connected.  I've lived through tumultuous times before but now I am more uncertain about the glue that holds us together.

Poem 58 (Pandemic Day 62)

And My Heart Soars

By Chief Dan George

The beauty of the trees,

the softness of the air,

the fragrance of the grass,

     speaks to me.

From a kayak in the Silver River,
Silver Springs, FL. Jan 9, 2019; J. Doolittle

The summit of the mountain,

the thunder of the sky,

the rhythm of the sea,

     speaks to me.

The faintness of the stars,

the freshness of the morning,

the dew drop on the flower,

     speaks to me.

The strength of fire,

the taste of salmon, 

the trail of the sun,

And the life that never goes away,

   They speak to me.

And my heart soars.

'Til All the Stars Have Fallen: A Collection of Poems for Children, Selected by David Booth, Viking, 1989.

When I saw that a poem by Chief Dan George was included in this beautiful volume of children's poetry, I knew that I had to chose it.  His performance in the 1970 epic movie, "Little Big Man" starring Dustin Hoffman left an indelible impression on me.  I just added that movie to my DVD queue in Netflix.   

I believe that Chief Dan actually could hear the mountains and the sea speak to him.  It is perhaps possible that the morning and the dew drops and the salmon will speak to us also; but that kind of patient attention and attunement to nature is not something that we are taught or often choose to practice. Their voices are muted and drowned out by the busyness of our lives. 

But now, as we approach the third month of sheltering, we still have the opportunity, perhaps even the duty to listen, really listen and allow our hearts to soar.

Poem 57 (Pandemic Day 61) Sunday, May 10, Mother's Day

For a Mother-To-Be

Nothing could have prepared
Your heart to open like this.

From beyond the skies and the stars
This echo arrived inside of you
And started to pulse with life
Each beat a tiny act of growth,
Traversing all our ancient shapes,
On its way home to itself.

Once it began, you were no longer your own.
A new, more courageous you, offering itself
In a new way to a presence you can sense
But you have not seen or known.

It has made you feel alone
In a way you never knew before;
Everyone else sees only from the outside
What you feel and feed
With every fiber of your being.

Never have you traveled farther inward
Where words and thoughts become half-light
unable to reach the fund of brightness
Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

Like some primeval moon,
Your soul brightens
The tides of essence
That flow to your child.

You know your life has changed forever,
For in all the days and years to come,
Distance will never be able to cut you off
From the one you now carry
For nine months under your heart.

May you be blessed with quiet confidence
That destiny will guide you and mind you.

May the emerging spirit of your child
Imbibe encouragement and joy
From the continuous music of your heart,
So that it can grow with ease,
Expectant of wonder and welcome
When its form is fully filled

And it makes it journey out
To see you and settle at last
Relieved and glad in your arms.


- John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, Doubleday, 2008.

Robin Citrin, connected to me by those complicated connections we call family ties, but much simpler by the bonds of friendship and common idealism, shared a lovely poem by O'Donohue a few weeks ago that was so fitting for this time in history, that I just had to find O'Donohue on my shelf and share one of his blessings on a special day.  

Robin has a son that is just as far away from her as my eldest son is from me (in Korea). Of course there are no distance limits on the extent of a mother's love.  Here's the poem she shared with me.  Happy Mother's Day to all of you who give out "mother love".

this is the time to be slow,
lie low to the wall
until the bitter weather passes.
try, as best you can, not to let
the wire brush of doubt
scrape from your heart
all sense of yourself
and your hesitant light.
if you remain generous,
time will come good;
and you will find your feet
again on fresh pastures of promise,
where the air will be kind
and blushed with beginning.
john o’donohue ~

http://www.johnodonohue.com/to-bless-the-space-between-us

Poem 56 (Pandemic Day 60)

Two People

She reads the paper,

while he turns on TV

she likes the mountains,

he craves the sea.

He'd rather drive,

she'll take the plane;

he waits for sunshine,

she walks in the rain.

He gulps down cold drinks,

she sips at hot;

he ask, "Why go?"

she asks, "Why not?"

In just about everything

they disagree,

but they love one another

and they both love me.

Illustration by John Nez

Eve Merriam, A Word or Two With You: New Rhymes for Young Readers,  Atheneum, 1981.

How comforting to imagine that people with differing habits, interests and propensities can still love one another and create a happy family.  How remarkable it would be if we could expand that beyond the couch and the home and into the world.

 I turned to works by Eve Merriam often as a teacher.  You could truly experience the joy that she felt in poetry as she played with words.  When I directed a choral reading choir of 2nd and 3rd graders, her poems were often chosen, because as... Merriam urged: "Whatever you do, find ways to read poetry. Eat it, drink it, enjoy it, and share it."

"As one who practiced what she preached, Merriam's poetry was particularly conducive to being read out loud. Her poems exemplify her fascination with language, as evidenced by her puns and word puzzles, her concentration on the eccentricities and idiosyncracies of the English language, and her broad use of poetic devices, such as onomatopoeia, inner rhyme, alliteration, assonance, metaphor, and so forth, in addition to traditional rhyming. "How to Eat a Poem," originally from Merriam's second children's poetry collection, It Doesn't Always Have to Rhyme, illustrates Merriam's use of metaphor, but it is also "a poem of the invitational mode," noted Zaidman. Accordingly, "How to Eat a Poem" includes the lines: "Don't be polite./ Bite in./ Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin./ It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are." Overall, Zaidman held that It Doesn't Always Have to Rhyme could serve "as an excellent minicourse in the elements of poetry" because it contains the distinctive poems "Metaphor," "Simile: Willow and Ginkgo," "Couplet Countdown," "Quatrain," "Learning on a Limerick," "Beware of Doggerel," "Onomatopoeia," and "A Cliche." Merriam also worked with the positioning of the words on the page, thus bringing the visual sense into her verse more fully." (from the Poetry Foundation; link attached to Eve Merriam's name above)