CAMP FIRE WOMEN
My friend Julie is a Fire Keeper.
Sometimes all night she watches,
holds the flame at the center
of the world. It is her sacred way.
And mine? To search the forest,
to gather the wood: This for kindling,
this for tinder, this for cleansing,
this for a long and steady burn.
tough sleeve bag wave half fire
l.
WHAT WE CARRY
Each of us carries a bag, a tough bag,
filled with the weight of our times and years.
Each of us is half-dead these days. We wave
to one another across the firewall.
We wave, and blink our eyes. For each is still
alive, one sleeve rolled up, scrubbing along
however we can, lugging our bags,
bearing our bit of the impossible load.
ANOTHER ZUIHITSU because I have to write something
1.
It’s as if someone is deliberately making things so bad that nobody can stand it. Almost enough to make me believe in the Beast, the AntiChrist, or something like that.
2.
We hoard dark roasted coffee beans in little brown bags in the freezer. I think I have enough now.
3.
I’ve been trying not to look at the news every hour, but I can’t help it. It’s the only way I can participate, living here, in this little green bowl.
4.
Chipmunks live under the front steps. They scurry out to get food, scurry back in for fear of hawks and weasels and our dog. But they’re never safe from weasels.
5.
A very satisfying conputer game: drag random clusters of jewels into rows and columns on a board laid out in squares. When I place a cluster, I hear a lovely “click.” When I complete a row or column, I hear a very satisfying “ping.” I can’t stop playing this game even though it makes my neck sore.
6.
I had to get coffee beans out of the freezer last night. They were so hard that I couldn’t grind them till this morning. I know that some people don’t like to freeze beans, and some people say one should grind the beans right before brewing, but I don’t care.
7.
I have painted a piece of cardboard with a color called “Tea Room”—one of those small samples of paint available for a dollar at the paint store. When the paint was dry, I drew square tiles with a black marker and installed it in the cardboard box castle we made to illustrate fairy tales for the grandchildren.
8.
The Great Crested Flycatcher sits on a high perch to hunt for insects. If she misses an insect on her first pass, she pursues it in the air. Unless her nestlings object, she offers the whole insect, wings and all. If they do object, she pummels the insect until the offending wings break off.
9.
Many twigs, new-leafed, blew off the trees last night in the wind. When I walked the dog down the driveway early this morniung, I picked them up—at least, most of them—and tossed them back among the trees so they wouldn’t have to dry and turn to dust on the driveway stones.
soil
flight
farther
tingle
ZUIHITSU for a day when there should be no words
1
After the scanty rainfall yesterday (or was it the day before?), I planted beans. Six rows of black beans. I crawled along on my hands and knees to set them in the furrows and cover them with soil. As I patted the soil in place, I left my handprints to show that I’d been there.
2.
On our morning walk, the dog and I noticed a red-tailed hawk watching us from a power line. As we approached, she took flight and landed in a dead elm tree beside the newly cut hayfield on the other side of the road.
3.
Most days, I walk a bit farther than four miles. Today I was cold and wanted to get home to start the laundry. When the washing is all in the machine, perhaps I’ll vacuum the rug. That seems about all I can manage these days: walks and housework.
4.
Tomorrow—no—the next day—tomorrow is Tuesday—my husband and I will sit in my study and wait for the computer tingle that signals our son’s weekly call. It will be good to see the children. The three-year old tries to touch us through the screen. She has skin like a bisque doll, and enormous blue eyes. There are so many things she will never have to know.
REHEARSAL
It was all rehearsal: ways to dampen
anxiety. Yoga, Qigong, prayer.
meditation. Long walks. Gardening. Art.
Old household skills: bread and soup and cookies
and soap. Getting along with others. I
recall how the Brits kept going during
the blitz, my aunts and uncles in Poland
after the war. You’ve had the dream, I think.
You’re in a play, about to go onstage,
but you don’t remember your lines or worse
never learned them, or worst of all you’ve never
even seen this play, and the director says,
“It’s theater, for Chrissake. Fake it. Make
something up! The curtain’s rising. You’re on.”
THE END OF POETRY MONTH
~a manifesto, or possibly just a rant
People who write poems do it ALL THE TIME.
Even when they aren’t writing.
When they’re walking, eating,
sitting in the coffee shop staring out the window.
When they’re watching movies,
running errands,
drinking with friends.
ALL THE TIME.
And once a year,
in the cruelest month,
you haul them out,
put them on display,
act like you care.
THEY ARE NOT LIKE A DISEASE
requiring an awareness month.
You do not pay them a thing
and they do not ask you to.
Maybe they should.
Maybe they should
go on strike.
In April.
No bookstore readings,
no interviews.
No new poems.
The extremists among them might
knock poetry books from library shelves,
might stand on street corners.
Their placards might read
NOT POETRY MONTH
HAVE YOU NOTICED?
RESPONSE: A WOMEN’S PANTOUM
This was put together from a collection of emails exchanged by a group of older women after the synagogue shooting.
Let us be rivulets forming in the rain—
not a road that horrors walk upon.
We melt, we sink, our face slides off our bones.
We have no words, only tears and silent prayer.
We cannot become the road the horrors walk upon.
Remember: the magnitude of solidarity is a resurrection of massacred faith.
There are no words, only tears and silent prayer
for that temple, the store, the church, another school.
Solidarity is a kind of resurrection of faith
in rain on the windows and little girls playing
around a temple, a grocery store, a church, a school.
Let us not collapse to the ground. Look—
rain on the windows and little girls playing,
yellow chrysanthemums in the grey light.
We must not collapse to the ground;
we must move vibrant through this year of dying.
Yellow chrysanthemums shine in the gray light,
a flock of crows flies against the gray sky,
vibrant, through the dying of the year
the way a leaf is picked up by the wind.
A flock of crows against the gray sky
melts and sinks. We rise on our bones
the way leaves are picked up by the wind,
the way rivulets form in the rain.
PROMISE
We keep showing you:
The little frogs, the birds.
Islands and mountains,
drowned rivers,
fertile fields.
Brown leaves out of season.
Trees move so slowly.
Don’t let dread freeze you;
ice is deadly as heat.
Keep moving.
Stay together.
Stamp your feet.
And promise us
you’ll save something:
one sparrow,
one sapling.
One patch
of hallowed ground.
From 2015.
THE STORYTELLER
Oh, the wildness of the teller in her cave of bone!
She finds dragons in stumps, faces in every carpet—
how will she make it cohere?
Was it once upon a time, or ever after?
Snakes and bears are real enough,
and mirrors trying to reflect what’s fair.
She searches her fallible senses
entwined with shadowed remembrances
and pieces a pattern, a dream, a tale— something
that might be true, or that someone might believe.
The smell of whisky, the texture of satin,
a whisper behind a half-closed door—
A PROVERB
Proverbs 31 King James Version (KJV)
10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
This woman is worth her weight in rubies, all right—
she rises while it is yet night and makes the coffee,
feeds the cats and gives them medicines.
No matter how cold, she takes the dog out in the snow.
She sits then, or tries to, while her husband sleeps,
and she attempts to write and meditate.
The white cat climbs on her desk past the candle
trying to catch his tail on fire, and settles down
on her lap. The dog yelps to go out again
because the rabbits have come to feed.
Her children—her child, really, since she has
just the one—does not rise up to call her blessed.
No one rises up before she does, to call her
blessed, or anything else, for that matter.
January 20, 2018
The Spring St. Poets have decided to use prompts as a way of getting ready for a reading we’re doing in late February. This one is rather raw, to put it mildly.
