To all a good night

Yesterday during our snow “storm”, at the coldest point of the day, the tree man, Bill, came by to talk to me about a tree at the corner of our house. He’d just gotten his mother home from a doctor’s appointment in Saint Louis and was running late or we would have missed the chill. I like his tree company and I find his crew hardworking and fun. I like that the first time he came for a broken branch on a pine in the backyard he brought his granddaughter who he was helping look after during the school closure(s). (I wrote one of my first pandemic poems about that visit.) And I really like to support a hometown business.

The tree is an ornamental pear variety filled right now with cherry size fruit. The birds love them because they’ve frozen and grown soft. The tree looks amazing but over hangs the roof (half its leaves are lining the rain gutters I’m pretty sure) and its roots are working their way toward the foundation. We talked solutions and options and possibilities. Next Jerry and I will talk possibilities and options and solutions; what would we put there if the tree needs to leave (tree-leave…tee hee).

I asked Bill if he’s been busy and he said it’s constant which is good all around. Then he pulled his long, mostly white beard up under his chin and said “Guess who I am?” And told me they’d gotten the Santa suit out of the closet and he had his first appearance scheduled that night for an Alzheimer’s home. He said throughout December he is a drop in Santa as needed throughout the community. As he left, and the snow skittering about, he got to his pickup door and said Merry Christmas and let out a warmup “Ho Ho HO!”

Tender light

The tree guy, Bill, and his granddaughter,
Eveline, are making their rounds.
She is eight and is being reminded
by Bill, keep six feet now. She’s
in his care during the pandemic
knowing it’s yard work only, a little
walking, some safe distance questions
from homeowners. I question her:
she’s in second grade, her favorite
class is math and yesterday she caught
two bluegills with Grampa Bill.
She’s shimmering like a dandelion,
full of tender light, she steps closer
until Grandpa tells her, six feet
honey, remember, and she dances
away. She’s the kind of girl who wants
to come close, share wonder, reach
for your hand. Soon, I think, soon.
As they leave, she waves and waves.

Kindness as creed

When I was younger, I thought I would never marry, I wanted to travel and write and write and travel. In high school I remember a class with Mr. Cosgrove, he had so many stories and we got him off topic so much (he also loved to have trivia battles rather than teach!) and I remember once he said, in answer to a question about marriage, he knew he wanted to spend everyday of the rest of his life with the woman he did marry; once he realized that he didn’t need anything else. That seemed a lofty thing though.

When I thought about love it was abstract and unknowable. And then I met someone who changed my mind. I thought about sharing a life with someone but didn’t see how this worked, (constantly recalling my father’s words when we argued about bedmaking (mine) “You don’t make your bed!” “I married someone to do it for me!”. It was so dismissive of my mother, his wife.

But then I remembered I did know of a partnership that seemed right, a model that made me feel like it was possible to, well, be in a partnership. I saw this model when I was 18; certain images stay with me, the passing of a hand over the loved one’s shoulder, a shared memory and laugh, genuine care and respect. Gentleness with each other. Kindness as creed. And I have been honored to be a part of this family, Dean asked me to be his daughter, happy to oblige. And Bette has been a teacher, mentor and friend. They have given me so much. Support. Cheer. Many a meal. Poetry. A place to rest so often.

And they are the quintessential married couple. They’ve had highs and lows like us all but always seem to look outward. Yes, we carry on, but how are you? I’m so happy to know them. I’m so happy to wish them a happy anniversary.

Next year we dance, next year we feast! I’ll bring the gooseberry pie. I love you both so very much.

Bette and Dean and Fiona.

Water returns to water, dreams return to sky

A little note from last week, a few days along the ocean, a few dreams.

The moon last night was a half globe of molten light. Over the water it lit a shimmering path toward the town, the city. The rushing waves caught every speck of light running up and back along the beach. All night they sang, gently mostly but at times an aria came high and loud. This morning a ribbon of scarlet and gold foretold the arrival of the sun. A trumpet of color, a herald of what was coming. It is cold out and breezy and yet people are at the edge of the water waiting; the way you wait for a late child or a lover long away. There is no pacing just a long (a longing) look toward the east.

Draw back the curtain

I had my alarm set for 3AM so I could see the eclipse, I was in the warm bed thinking and then, suddenly, it was 4AM and I trundled down the hall to my office drew back the curtain and pulled the blind and there it was like a sampled cookie. Jerry had wondered if I was going outside at three to see the moon, but I told him only if it was hiding behind a cloud. The forecast was for clear skies so I was certain one of the West facing windows would let me see the globe and shadow. The beauty was the huge wave of a cloud that was under it, after I’d gazed a bit with my binoculars, the cloud drifted up to cover the glow.

I was looking for a picture of the solar eclipse I had taken in Belgium but I couldn’t find it, perhaps never saved. But then the news of the day drifted in and it sort of didn’t matter anymore.

Here’s a poem from my chapbook, the title poem. Be safe, be kind.

The past is clean

There was only one black man
in our white county, and though
we knew that Selma and Johannesburg
were a universe away (and that we were not
oppressed beyond class and sex) none of us knew
the loneliness or caution of his life.
The notion that one may need to flee
at a given moment.

Our past was clean,
even our parents didn’t know
of the massacres, deep in the canyons.
It took years to clear up
the misunderstanding, that our ancestors
had not waved farewell and good luck
to Chief Joseph or that men from China
had not simply gone missing, and some-
where their gold waited to be found.

I know my uncle disappeared there,
left my cousins and a note; his brothers
sent to find him. I still don’t know
the mystery of that search.
He came back, packed the kids
and faded into Alaska’s coast.

Now my father simmers
in twenty-four years of silence.
No matter, I know now the history,
have hidden his ambiguity
like a third thumb. I have found
that the parallels he sees between
my life and what he imagined is as faulty
as our collected history. Still, like others,
in the barn, I keep a canvas bag that holds
a can of dried beans, some caked-flour,
and a jar of matches, safe from the rain.

Fly me to the moon

I went with Jerry to the VA yesterday, he asked about my book as we walked in, “You’re not bringing one of those books that will make people uncomfortable, are you?” I laughed, no it’s a memoir of an artist (a dissident artist, but innocuous all the same). But then we saw the man with the Fuck Biden mask and I took my sweater off happy I’d worn my Obama Hope t-shirt. Weird little things. Just this week a town in Missouri was named the population center of America. (“The calculation of a population center, released every 10 years after the decennial census is taken, identifies the average point where Americans live. If every person in the United States weighed exactly the same amount, the population center would be the point at which a flat, rigid map of the country would balance.” from The Hill) What’s interesting to me is that the sign welcoming you to the town has the flag of the United States and the Confederate Battle Flag (good old Missouri Compromise); the town was nearly destroyed in a Civil War battle in 1863; what was learned?

Speaking of things that live in shadow, there’s a lunar eclipse coming up this week. I was trying to remember when I last saw a good eclipse and it had to have been in Klamath Falls. A lovely full red moon, nice star shine to witness. I’m hoping our forecast holds and we’ll have clear skies, I always like to see some of the moon notched away. Here’s a poem I wrote about my last eclipse.

What umbra brought

In the moment of second night
when shadow finally swallows moon
the sky turns to myth, to time
before fire or name or death.

What umbra brought: fevered
chants, every voice quivered
as the sky boiled scarlet.

We still fall to the same superstition,
drop prostrate to darkness,
make bargains and promises
to the light. Never mind the science
that has mapped the brain,
the heavens, the heart. Night
is long and cold, full of unseen
creatures who thrive in gloom.

What gift is reason to dumb animals?

                                           Anti eclipse fireworks, Mons Belgium

Night things

Two planets and a portion of moon outside tonight; a swish of a cloud that looks a whale breaching. I wish the cloud would stay highlighted by the moon until some stars appear like plankton blanketing the sky: food for dreams. And it is cold out there. The feeders were emptied today and the weatherman mentioned the S-word. Mid November, this is what should be happening.

I spent a good portion of the day helping my cousin as she packs her apartment for a move. We both chuckle over the fact that she is moving to a town with the same name as the town I live, except in Missouri and about 50 miles from me. We did our whole cousin visit while packing, taking some things to her new place and then having lunch at a lovely small, local coffee house, Alpha & Omega, near her new place. We both have plenty of moving expertise so looking at items and then boxes and then getting it all packed is satisfying and fun.

Here's a little poem from long ago that mentions the moon/sleep/dreams/Phil:

Insomnia

Sleep exits in a roar of silence.

Somewhere in the house Phil,
my daughter’s twenty-pound cat,
is scratching his neck, the tink-tink
of the bell on his collar makes
the darkness larger. You gurgle
beside me in your dreams, a diver
steady on. I’ve been released
from slumber, so move pass
the other two cats and navigate
down the hall.

The crescent moon is bathed in mist.
Fog off Round Lake rises enough
to shade the pine, catch on
the barbed-wire. Something
is moving near the garden, something
squat and square, I watch for awhile
until it stills; in the faint light
it is now watching me. Phil
presses against my leg, moves
the curtain with his big head, growls
and hisses. Whatever is there, scoots
toward the house. If there are legs
they’re too short for definition.
Phil steps back, still growling
I reach for the outside light, think
better of it, return to the bedroom,
dive in beside you, hoping to drown.

Erik Muller, one poem

In May 2008 there was a poetry reading in Klamath Falls that featured five Oregon poets and pie. One of those poets was Erik Muller. I first met Erik through the Oregon Poetry Association; he was one of the poets who helped nudge me into being a poetry community organizer. Word was passed today that Erik has died. The world has lost a kind, wonderful man and a great poet. For today, here is a poem (originally published in Cloudbank #3, 2010) from Erik’s book Steps:

THIS SCAR

 
With a tool you might get
at Office Max to pry staples
from a cardboard box

my surgeon’s nurse bends
to her work, saying sorry
with each staple pulled

for I am no cardboard box
and the scar still raw
not yet hard and knobby.

Sorry, she repeats, while I watch
her hand moving down the row,
each pull a shrill pain,

the high note of a flute
just about inaudible.
I breathe out, OK.

Now as I look at the scar
as a possession not quite mine,
a fair prize affixed to me,

my tattoo, my piercing,
I think about the surgeon’s
hand inside the incision

removing what he expected
and found, then an officious
machine planting staples.

Happiness, my happiness,
it wraps around my life,
something he did not touch.

It can never be taken from me.
Nor can I ever say to you
as with this scar, See, here it is.

                                                            Photo courtesy Erik Muller