If the world should end in Ogallala

I have an older poem that starts “If the world should end in Ogallala…” partly because Ogallala always felt to me like a gateway town out there before you leave the West, West or before you reenter it. And I suppose at one time I could have seen myself living there. I’ve always been drawn to Nebraska, especially that portion around I-80 as you leave Wyoming. I stayed the night in Ogallala as I was driving home this past week. I’d gone out to Oregon on May 3rd and spent time with my Mom and visiting with family in various scenarios of out of doors or one or two people indoors. Then I a side trip to visit dear, dear friends before heading to Playa at Summer Lake to write and, as it turned out, sit quietly watching the amazing sky and listening. I pulled into Ogallala just as a storm did and watched a terrific rain wash away the dust and send people scrambling into the feed store behind the hotel.

If the world should end in Ogallala,
let me drift on the Platte

Ogallala was one of the stops for the pony express and you see signs about places to visit to learn more about this short-lived business venture. It made me think, in school we learned about the pony express and how mail was moved in this modern and quick way. I’m pretty sure this 18-month endeavor is taught more widely than slavery or the various genocides that have happened all over these United States of America. If you’re in certain states and school districts you may never hear about them, or never hear about them in ways that are straightforward and true.

If the world should end in Ogallala,
let me drift on the Platte
until I wash up away from you.

I need to go to a place a heart can relax, freeze-dried and still.
Where daylight presses down in two equal commodities
too much and not enough. All the extreme I can handle.

Of course, I spent a good portion of the drive thinking about the events of January 6, which are already being white-washed and turned into the myth of “nothing happened”, but it shouldn’t be surprising that the makers of this new myth are the same makers of the old myth and, in fact, are the keepers of lies and myths.

If the world should end in Ogallala,
let me drift on the Platte
until I wash up away from you.

I need to go to a place a heart can relax, freeze-dried and still.
Where daylight presses down in two equal commodities
too much and not enough. All the extreme I can handle.

I’ll leave you on the plains, where the hills rise like knuckles
at rest, and the horizon never moves closer than the promises we kept.

That sky and the art titled Black Rock Diamond by Rick Asay and Rebecca Davis (2014) on the lakebed just down from the pond. (That sky!)

Bright things are happening

I planted my lone raised bed today, well, I transplanted some sunflowers and then crazily overseeded cosmos from the seeds I harvested last year. I thought I had zinnia seeds to plant but then remembered I let the gold finches have them. I’m not planting anything in my neighbors raised beds as they are moving and the house is for sale; it’s just easier than playing what if. I’m sure if the beds aren’t touched tomatoes and cosmos and zinnias will come up on their own, so there is that. We’ll see. My neighbor said they’d be out of the house by June, (they rent) which is too bad. They won’t be trying to buy the house, which is too bad also, but the market here is so overheated and it’s out of their range. We’ve been very lucky with neighbors so far, everyone is quiet and friendly, but it always feels like that neighbor is just waiting to arrive put out the lawn jockey and the rebel flag and let their dog crap on your sidewalk and their teens scowl at you. (Have I just cursed us?)

 A poetry month prompt response:

The light is bright from the sliver of moon
this morning. We begin by following the old path
the one covered in stone before it turns to regular
suburbia: asphalt, concrete, non-native plants,
and lawns coiffed to perfection. Nothing newsworthy.
Behind the dark windows the days start the same
but those of us out here in the predawn are joining
in song with the ginger cardinal as she calls to beckon
the sun, read all about it she cries, bright things are happening.

Resetting the heart

I was at the library the other day actually browsing, which I haven’t done in a long, long time. (Maybe before Christmas I went to see what the Friends had for sale.) Our library has been open, with heavy restrictions, for a while but I get the majority of my books via interlibrary loan (get notified, step in, pickup, check out, done) or through Hoopla or Overdrive or Libby (all those wonderful apps that let me access so much). But this day I was actually on a mission looking for some things; double masked and keeping my distance I lingered. I found the three or four things I was hoping to find and then, because it is April, I went to look through the poetry books. I don’t know what happened or when, but that section has been weeded quite significantly. ☹ I know, I know if books don’t circulate, they have to move on, the library has finite space, but it always makes me sad (and mad at myself for not periodically upping the numbers and checking out ten or twenty at a time). I did find Entries (First Edition 1994, Pantheon Books), by Wendell Berry so nabbed it and as I was checking out downstairs it came up as “not found in the system” – I almost missed the alert – then I paused and thought, I’ll just go with it and when it comes back the record will be corrected. Having worked in the library though, I knew this is not how to do it. So, I waited the extra few minutes it took to allow it to be taken to the back (I love mystery of “the back” in any business) as it was readded to the catalog.

At least this book gets a new start, like resetting your heart after a hurt.

Speaking of heart resets, I was a guest at the SHAPE International Library YA Book Club today. My friend, and former colleague, Sophie, invited me as they were reading a book in verse called The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta. In the book the main character, Michael, reads a poem at an open mic” I come from”. (Here’s the author reading that poem.) So, I thought that would be a good jumping off point into a prompt.

I sent some more examples of poems in this type format and two of the members of the book club wrote poems of their own and read them. Very nice work too I have to say; I’m hoping they’ll send them to me as I’d love to read them again. It was a really fun morning, and one of the participants was someone (and her family!) I remember fondly from my time in the SHAPE community. We also talked poetry, poetry publishing, creating your own canon and not worrying too much about your audience, just write, write, write. 

Post 100, a litte more creative non-fiction

Hive Mind

The wasps took residence in the barn the year I was twelve. The first hot morning after school ended, we noticed them, hundreds around the barn door, where a baseball had cracked the siding, they moved in and out in deliberate and mad delirium. Dad said, “Leave them be, they’ll leave in Fall.” So, we went the back way into the barn, past the unused milking stanchions to the granary for chicken feed or oats for the hogs. This small room which had formerly been used for separating milk was the inside wall where the wasps lived. Here you could sit on the floor, press an ear to the roughhewn planks and listen to the furious rush of noise like a horse’s breath after a good run.

The insects worried the dogs, chased the cats and stung every one of us at least once that long summer. I was a repeated target, I felt, and had a handful of wasps’ stings after failing to check the underside of the gooseberry bush. Before reaching for a large bunch of the jade colored berries I had minded the thorns but ignored any other warning. When I dropped the fruit and saw the two black and yellow bodies, I stomped everything into a pulpy mash. My hand ached and itched long afterwards, and when volleyball practice started it seems the stingers punished me again every time, I slapped the ball.

But as the colder days and nights came, fewer and fewer wasps buzzed in our world.
Right before the first snow in the valley, long after the logging roads were frozen, Dad home from a day in the woods, pried off one piece of siding, pulled the nest out of the wall and burned it with his welding torch. As it began to flame three golden wasps crawled onto the ground and curled to miniscule question marks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thirty years later at my first house my husband and I patrol the yard, flip small paper nests off the house or power wash them from below the deck. We try to stop them from decorating the second story beneath the eaves, as well, but with cedar siding attacked by woodpeckers, the creatures find their way in. Until far into summer, when we must concede the back of the house to them, we feel in charge. Late September, as we sit inside, or prepare dinner, the wasps crash into windows or bounce off the outside walls, little soldiers looking for a breach.

My father told me little about swarming things. He was a logger, he allowed me to know timber, but not always trees. This seemed short sighted and there were times this lack of seeing the bigger picture limited me. I live in a town where I listen to people like I use to listen to the wasps through the barn wall. In Safeway I try to understand the language and signals they use. How this dance keeps the hive together. As my husband walks through the store people seldom respond to his greeting and then they turn to stare. A black man and a white woman still disturb some and it is those mad bodies I watch closely, never knowing what will stir them to swarm; I must see all the signals.

           

April is cruel

The two dogs, like twin rag dolls, loll
under the table, too large anymore
to be comfortable. Eventually they army-
man crawl and fall into a spot
of sunlight, head-to-head, shoulder
to shoulder, rump to rump, one’s tail
thrumming a brief hello as I walk by.
 
My children use to lounge this way
their small arms touching, one’s head
against the other’s shoulder as they read
or drew or shared some seed of laughter;
naming things in their secret language.
The spoon and ladle or lid transformed
egot, lipsoduckle, sploon.
 
At night we curled into stories, poems,
songs. Their bodies stretched on mine,
two lizards, two creamy cats, drawing
warmth, seeking the proximity of my heart.
 
I should have never slept.

Swirling of seeds*

   ** Say their names... 

From The Slowdown, this poem is called Wedding Poem and it is the sort of joyous glance at the gentleness of the world we need today. Peace and love, be safe, be kind. Here's a goldfinch that kissed a sunflower long in my yard last year. The link above the poem is from the website of Renée Ater, I highly recommend it.

Numbers

Today we became a fully vaccinated household. Both of us have had our second shot. Truthfully, I did not expect this day to happen until fall at the earliest. Even after President Biden was inaugurated and made his 100 million in 100 days, I thought (based on what we had seen prior) that he’d overpromised and that other factors would go forward to slow progress down. Not only are we vaccinated but those we love and look forward to seeing soon have had their first or second (or, in one case, one) shot.

During the Spanish Influenza of 1918-1919 it is estimated that 675,000 people died in the US. Right now, from COVID-19, we’re at (about) 564,000. Every day I watch the numbers of US vaccinated, those infected, hospitalized and deaths. Even when a low number like 256 deaths was reported the other day I said, that’s Lostine or Ukiah or Halfway. It’s Ellis Grove or Verona or St Johns. Little towns everywhere. People that have families and friends and had plans. It ripples and ripples and ripples.

Well.

Here’s a flowering tree I passed on my walk yesterday. Be safe, be kind, please get vaccinated.