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.

Just a Tuesday

 

Today was voting day here in O’Fallon, Illinois. Mayor, Alderman, City Clerk, School board members. We went over to Saint Nicholas, which is our normal precinct, and it took about five minutes to have our information found and then ballots filled out. The mayor is running for reelection and is unopposed, so either he’s doing a great job (I have no complaints) or no one cares or no one wants this job.  Jerry thinks it’s a combo of all three. Aside from that my day was filled with prepping the flower beds for the finishing touches, rocks and mulch. I was putting weed barrier down when the local nursery let me know they could deliver today if needed (yes! please) so Jerry and I moved about a ton and a half of rock before we voted. Nothing gets you ready for the democratic process than some good physical labor.

Tomorrow I get my second dose of vaccine. Kind of excited. Making some plans already, looking West. More than that I’ll cover in email with select friends and/or family. 😊

Here's today's poem followed by the prompt:

Another poem for Ursula
 
The cardinals are ransacking the feeder, fresh filled
with sunflower seeds. They torpedo in and their sounds
ring against the house, echoing into the open windows.
My blind cat sits, answers their tunes with a cry
her eyes turned toward them, but it is only the nerve
recalling how to zero in on wing-beat and song.
I write this new poem and hope that what is killing
                                              her finds calm; will ask for more words.
 
  
Today’s prompt
Write a short poem (rhyming not necessary) that  includes each of the following 5 words (anywhere and  n any order). Poems should not exceed 7 or 8 lines:
                                                          write, beat, nerve, sound, cry.

Half-heathen, half-jester

This fourth day of April was warm, almost 80 here today, luckily the humidity is low. The birds were showing out, the trees blooming, church bells were pealing and Jerry called me a heathen for finishing my last bit of landscaping,  requireing blocks and fast setting cement, on Easter. Like I care, like he hasn’t gone into hundreds of churches (hyperbole? maybe) and NOT been struck by lightning as we enter. Yes, I do have a tendency to view these “houses” of worship as missed opportunities. I want to ask my neighbor so badly if the extension on her church is to house people. But I won’t because I would be obligated to go to the other churches and ask what they do with their tremendous amounts of space. And my neighbor’s church (literally she’s the senior pastor) feeds people every week and they scrambled to make it all take away for the past year. 

It’s all in half-jest. Amen.

Today I found another poem from the MOOC and it made me think, my brother doesn’t show up in a lot of poems, and I’m almost certain this might have been one of the first; I’ll spend tomorrow pondering.

Excercise 5 

We shared endless days of catch in the field
beside the barn. The smack of ball to leather glove,
what sufficed for sibling love, witnessed only
by crowds of cattle and the bored stare of lambs.
 
I had a super arm, a deadly rocket swing
but, being a girl, I never had a chance
to charge the plate or lead a team.
 
He went onto summer Little League, then an All-
Star in Babe Ruth. Of all those hours we worked
at play this truth still holds me hard, I turned away
and those innings I never saw. I turned away
from the game and in that turn abandoned him.