From slate blue to lavender*

From a MOOC I took once, I didn't remember the poem but I remember this process: And in fact it is something I should use more. Happy Poetry Month day three!

Exercise 2: M.E. Hope _ Repurposings_reduce/reuse/recycle

Some of these are darlings that have been cut over the decades, some are things that reoccur. Here are lines cannablized (repurposed) from other work followed by the draft of something new.

1) Like ether my warm breath
    on his neck pulled me to quick sleep
    sanctuary so wholly mine;
    his heart against my palm.
 
2) …and like a lost dog
    3,000 miles from home
    they come back,
    thin and bloody and just as familiar.
 
3) They scuffle across
    the floor & settle near his feet
    like subservient dogs.
 
4) The lamb shed was built 40 years before we arrived
     and through its thick walls, cradling sawdust, little passed;
     sound lay muffled on its dirt floor like a hostage.
 
5)  I am like the bee outside
     your hothouse window
     humming with patience
     for you to slide the pane.
 
6) where his steps are muffled
    in moon dust.

***Ex 2 Poem***

Memories like summer wasps tap at my window.
There are certain days of the year when a slant
of light, golden or olive green, will plant me
on a hay trailer at sunset. Sweat rills through alfalfa
dust on my arms and circles my neck, and for half
a second I’m there: the air, scented by cut hay
and gasoline, cools. The mountain rotates color
*from slate blue to lavender. A whistle sounds
from town as the mill marks shift change.

Our lamb shed was built forty years before we came
and through the thick walls cradling sawdust
little passed; sound lay muffled on the dirt floor
like a hostage. And here is memory again
caught up in the heavy dark, the accumulated
odor of straw and animal piss, ammonia and soured
milk, sheep drying after a snow storm or summer
rain. The iodine used for disinfectant stains time.
We slept here in lambing season, rotating shifts
each falling into the set up bunk, to the other’s
perfume. Even now, forty more years on, I catch a whiff,
Baby Love or Herbal Essence, and I am following my sisters (still).

But the hardest memory, the one that plays at the edge
like that lost dog, is of my father. Though he is gone from me
he exists, just like the old farm. Before sleep,
before dreams are allowed to collude with thought
I think of him, how when I was four he would hold me
tuck my head under his chin and like ether my breath
lulled me to sleep, a sanctuary wholly mine,
his heart tapping on my open palm.

The way it is

This morning I had a number of errands to run, I was glad it is Spring Break and quite cold, that keeps people in first thing in the morning. But after turning off my street I saw a dog running in the road. This is one thing I’ve rarely seen here, a dog out on its own. Last summer we had a young dog run up to us on Quail Run, luckily a woman we know, I was in love with her ancient dog Willie, told us the dog lived one street over and belonged to the daughters of the man who lived there. So, an easy return.

This dog looked familiar and then I realized it was, Joy, the black and white sheltie that lives behind us. I was immediately concerned as I’ve never seen her not on a leash. She’s always with one member of the family. I pulled over and tried to get her to come, but she headed toward home, so I followed a couple of blocks and then heard her person say Joy! Come! I got back to my car and drove over to their house. Joy was just trying something new, lighting out for the territories! Of course, the husband and wife were relieved, I was glad it was just a runaway and no one was down (they are older). They have three dogs right now as they are looking after their son’s two little mixed poodle cuties while he and his family are out of the country for six months. I did note that when I was out this afternoon checking the plants around the house, I saw Joy on a very long tether.

In cat news, my next-door neighbor believes he’s been adopted by the cat that lives down the block. He’s not really pleased, but he’s also intrigued as she brought a mole and left it on his front step. So, not thrilled to have the cat hang out, but he’s been working on getting rid of the moles for a while; and his almost two-year-old son loves the cat: conundrum. (Which would be a great name for a cat.)

And it’s poetry month, day two. I’m getting some words emailed to me from Center for the Humanities at Washington University as part of their Life/Lines poetry project. Today’s words were: burgundy, river, doorway, footstep and decision. Here’s my poem:


The way it is

The river is a doorway, a place where the burgundy-sided
trout sleep, silently waving in the shadows. Boaters dip
their oars like footsteps along the liquid trail which glows green
and gold: sunlight, snake grass, yellow headed flowers
that only grow here. This decision wasn’t made
but became the way it is.

Day here, an Egret watches her reflection, still
except for the water’s tell, the vee pulsing around her leg.

It's Poetry Month!

 

Here's a poem from Poetry Month 2005 :

My daughter wanted a poem about our cat but the poem turned another way

Snow is swirling around the basin this day. Three grey does come out of the slough & stand in the neighbor’s field nibbling sage as we drive past; the yearling steers rest heads down, tails to the wind ignoring the deer that seem to ignore the flurries. I imagine that we seem like the deer in our day to day roving, oblivious to the looks that come at us – a white woman with a black man – in a town where the echoes of internment camps and Indian wars still flavor unrealized slurs – “he’s working on Indian time”;” it’s a Jap cabin”; “don’t try to Jew me down”; “Oh, yes, he’s that Chinaman” – ask if they know what they say has meaning beyond metaphor, simile, injustice, lie. Somehow we ignore the ignorant and meet each storm head on; let the cattle turn away, stampede from the coming thunder.

~~M. E. Hope

Day after day I hear doors shut*

It is the end of March. A year of pandemic lifestyle changes. Poetry Month is coming up. I’m revamping the look of the flower beds out front, a new edge and rock to fill between plants vice mulch. I’ve pruned the shrubbery back, moved some bulbs to a pot, found the Hostas and marked their space. The weather in perfect for outdoor work, sunny and a little breeze. I dug up some of the Mondo Grass which has grown so tight came out in giant bricks of sod. I’m hoping I can separate some and transplant. I cleaned the raised beds this weekend, added some topsoil and will turn in a little fertilizer soon. I’ve been calculating how much mulch I need around the house for areas not getting rock. All of these activities come in a week where I have three appointments that can’t be shifted, so I’m also calculating how much I can get done between days. Next week I’ll get my second dose of COVID vaccine. Jerry gets his (second) the week after and then we enter the two week “after that” period. Then we see what happens. I won’t stop wearing a mask. I may never stop wearing a mask, readying for the next pandemic and the anonymity is spectacular, though it really is just the gloss over what comes from just being a female of my age; that’s probably enough.

I think of this distinction often. Invisibility, the “not seen” and then there is the not-not seen. The invisibility of a graying woman is a nuisance. The always in the open and watched and ignored that my love gets is (for me) heart wrenching. I remember reading an essay once by a white poet about her daughter of mixed race and her saying her daughter will never be able to go into the world as she has. And it was one of those shaken awoke again moments. Of course. How many times during the week do we repeat to each other (and mention one of our friends that we owe money for the saying) I’m surprised that you’re surprised over some new slight or injustice. Then, too, we have a Dave Chappell quote we like when things really get going, from Mr. Chappell’s opening on Saturday Night Live November 2020. What kind of a man would do that (referring to 45 and his ilk)? A white man. I use that one a lot, I think of that one a lot. I worry for my family, I worry for my friends, I still worry for the Palestinian woman in Connecticut, who after September 11th, was afraid to take her children to the library.

The interesting thing about being invisible is what you can see and hear under perfect cover.

*Invisibility by Renato Rosaldo

Lost at the Big Box Building Supply Store

Though I wasn’t really lost I did have specific things I was searching for and in this particular store you can order a house that will be delivered for you to assemble (à la Sears Modern Homes or Wardway Homes from Montgomery Wards) or buy a gallon of milk. Sometimes direction is needed.

Menards Garden Section, retaining walls and paving stones
 
I appreciate the young man, Alec, who steps off his forklift
to help me at the building store. About the age of my son,
an easy smile and can I help you? The yard is dusty and growing
hot and we search the alleys for the stone I want.
He says it’s here I know and so I follow asking how’s your day,
noting that he too is lost in this search. When he apologizes
for not finding it, when he turns to go (to find someone else) I tell him to stay safe,
have a nice day and thanks, again. And on turning I’m right in front
of what I was looking for, so I call It was right here!
And I thank him again for his help. And he smiles and waves. 

Talking to a stranger in those few minutes
(though less and less I understand this)
is also what I was looking for.

Lessons for the human heart

Periodically I like to fly around the earth and look at things. Google Earth and Google Street view has made this a lot of fun. Much of my curiosity comes from an interest in maps and later Geographic Information System (GIS) imagery. When I worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) the imagery we used for mapping was bought from contractors who flew certain areas as requested. Google was using some of those same images. Now, of course, Google uses contracted planes and satellites to capture the imagery and create their maps; these are updated fairly regularly as I found my raised bed sunflower garden from last summer is on the current Earth view. Street view isn’t updated as often. The imagery for the front of my house is from June 2013.

Being able to access these images, and the ability to drop in on a street, has been quite helpful as well. I was working on a poem one day and thought, what was the name of the street that ran behind our apartment building in Formia, Italy? A few minutes later I was there outside the apartment on Largo Enirco Berlinguer. By walking down to the next street, I was able to fine the name and stand outside a small park where my children used to play.

This afternoon, after a busy morning in and out of the rain, I laid down with Ursula [side note 1: she’s gained a pound in the past two months] to nap, but I got very, very distracted after looking at a couple of places I fly over a lot. I thought, hey, Mom told me that the house they sold in Wallowa burned and I wondered if this view was available. It is not. But, after flying in and over I dropped into street view. [Side note 2: the other day I was reading some information about how on Google Earth you rarely see people in the imagery from above. And I did some tests one Naples Italy and then the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis. You can’t see people (well, mostly) because of the way they overlay the imagery, interesting stuff.] So, here I am on a rainy afternoon with a purring cat, scrolling across the world to Wallowa Oregon and finding the house where my parents lived until June 2019. I ticked the little person on Google Earth and drop to street view; there they are, my mother and father working in the yard. This image tells me it is from April 2012; it made me laugh. What are the odds you’d capture the two of them (and the dog!). Or that someone would look for something else and find someone who was missing in plain sight all those years?

     Anatomy Lesson

 
I should have known how the heart works
not the medically technical – valves and chambers
structure of the heart wall, but the chutes
and ladders, the twister version
how one falls down into the echo
how hard it can be to un-hear and crawl out.
 
At the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry you could
enter into a heart as though a confessional
stand in the left atrium and listen to the hushed
lubb/dubb of synthetic rhythm, lose yourself
to the chambered beat. The plastic wall glowed
like bubble gum or a fiery dawn. At times
the heart is furious, on fire, racing to
catch the mind – or mouth – a slow neighbor
calling “No!”.
 
I wonder if the lesson on how to live
with the intricate clichés of the heart happened
on a day I was absent from class.
Maybe that Spring when the snow melted
early and I ran flying a kite followed
by new lambs, all of us jumping and bleating.
I paid more attention to my steps than that
caged muscle in my chest. How did I miss
knowing this fragile thing? Forget cholesterol
and clogging fat, this fist that beats, stalls, breaks
and stops … how do we survive at all?
 

Why light a way

Ursula

She doesn’t see the light and yet I still share it with her:
a large owl shaped vase bursting with colors, a string of bulbs
the perfect size to fill its belly and create bright eyes
that look at me tenderly without sorrow or pity.
Why light a way for a blind cat that is dying?
 
It’s all I can do today.
 
She walks into the room and quietly
waits for me to speak so she can move forward.
Her eyes still searching, her tail raises and she purrs.
She cuddles on my lap this is how I know she is changed:
not a lap cat, not a cuddler.
 
I hold her until I know she is done
her nature is to be solo and I place
her on a chair. She curls
into sleep, runs through dreams;

misses every wall.

~~M.E. Hope