Dreams and poetry

Last Sunday morning I had a dream so vivid I woke to find myself raising my blanket up to let the dream cat next to my body and I was surprised (for ten or fifteen seconds) that no fur friend was there. But then I reoriented myself, rolled out of bed, shut the door, and headed into the kitchen. Most mornings I get up first, slink around the house while Jerry sleeps. I like to read at that time of day with a hot cup of coffee and only the sounds of the birds getting louder as dawn approaches. We have had a spate of freezing weather, which is good, as it has killed off something that shouldn’t be growing right now, a particular fungus with many names but the one I like best is “The Devil’s Dipstick”. When I showed this particular picture to Jerry he said, “That’s how every horror movie starts.” Followed by “You didn’t touch it did you?”

I’ve been reading poems (sorting poems) for the past two days getting ready for a reading this coming Sunday, I’ll be attending virtually in a hybrid event, there is an in-person reader and me coming live via Zoom. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this all works. For the past year or so I’ve been attending readings via Zoom or Facebook, or whatever platform allows, as a listener and a reader. It’s been fun. It has also offered the opportunity to see poets I wouldn’t be able to – a favorite reading was from poets in smaller towns in Ireland.

Another opportunity came about from a gallery here in Illinois, last year they asked for poets to respond to art this year the artists are responding to our poems. I can’t wait to see what happens. Mid-February the art goes up, right now this will be all be virtual as well as we can’t get the pandemic to end. Thank you, no mandate having anti-maskers and vaxxers and people who don’t get how science and illness work.

Anyway, here’s a poem I’m going to read Sunday (I hope):

Passing

The underside of the rainclouds
are the same silver gray of the cat
who died yesterday; the same glowing
gray of the pigeons along the railroad siding;
the same pewter that Lake Ewauna
has become today, as the White Pelicans
rotate in the wind, ready for landing.

Today’s breeze holds promise, the latest
snowfall is above the basin floor, and a field
planted early last week has slim green lines
teasing the soil. The calendar says late April
but the aspen are thin and bare, shocking white
when the sun hits; the daffodils four inches high
have tight yellow buds like fingers pointing west.

Today will bring every weather, and the tuxedoed tom
will sit on the stone monument built for his partner
and endure every shower, in sad mourning.
And I think of Mr. Burkemeister who debated
planting sweet peas the spring after his wife died,
who said they always bloomed on her birthday 

and wondered aloud how could he savor that day any longer.

                                                                        (Kiki 💕)

Time, in chunks

 

Yesterday morning a pair of Carolina wrens were in the lilac, belting out song. When I took the feeders out, they tried to stick around while I hung the suet, but I was just too close; they had to zip away. I was happy to hear the song, happy to see the pair. Later when I came back around the house to leave peanuts there was a new song and it wasn’t until the singer flew across the lawn I knew who it was: once again the wren. The morning was filled with a lot of sound, even a woodpecker got into things over behind my neighbor’s house. Snow was in the forecast so I expected a busy feeder day, as those that have plenty of food stuff (with no snow) will be on the lookout for something easy to obtain. Grackles, starlings and blackbirds probably; my fingers were crossed for snow and grackles.

I awoke this morning to just an inch of snow, it was still falling lightly. When at last I went out it was warmish and the snow was so very wet. It snowed for the next few hours but not much accumulation.

Our next door neighbor is out with his son building a snowman. Last year when it snowed his son was having none of it, but now he’s two and a half so the world (and he) have grown so much older. When Issac and Justine were small (just older and just younger than my neighbor’s son) we were living in Augsburg Germany. Our first winter there we had quite a lot of snow and we indulged in being out, building snow people and animals and exploring our neighborhood in its new clothes. Jerry was always concerned it was too cold to stay out, he isn’t from a place where snow was a given, he hadn’t spent every winter with snow, or cold, or how warm you get playing in the snow. We parceled the day into chunks: play, play, play go in for snacks and cocoa; repeat. Throw in lunch and a nap at some point, try to get back out again. Of course, daylight is sparse that far north in winter, so those chunks of time were perfect for two toddlers.

If I close my eyes, I can taste the snow as though it was flavored like the rest of Bavaria in sweet and sour and salty richness. I can hear the voices of Issac and Justine, their laughter and their insistence that they weren’t that cold and didn’t need cocoa quite yet, Mama. My heart cracks like ice, echoes in the cold, constricts and tries to beat in the darkness. Every molecule of the body that said, hold them, protect them does not go away, does not change back. But if I close my eyes too long I will never open them again when these memories are present. I must stay awake. Too much is coming. Dreams are no longer allowed.

 

 

Sorting things on a cold, cold day

This is a memory from two years ago. Old, sweet, smelly Comet. (And I add the last stanza of the poem)

How long has it been since we had no small animal being living with us? How long has it been since a slice of the day was not reserved for a fur thing with all their needs? Comet was twenty-one, very old; toothless, deaf, near blind, skinny and still fierce about life, until she wasn’t. According to one website she was one hundred in human years; others don’t register an age past nineteen years. She had her own room (at night) for the past few years because she wandered at night yowling. In Belgium it was the kitchen, in Berwyn she got a big room downstairs. In this house she had a suite, a bedroom and her own human bathroom where her litter box, food and water stayed. When we had human guests, she was moved to the spare room by my office. Every room was kept very warm as she was a furry little lady but just over five pounds.

Comet is the last cat of the five that lived with us. Comet, Sunspot, Kiki, Jackson and Phil. Phil was the youngest, Comet the oldest. She outlived them all, out of spite we think. (There have been murder rumors.) She tolerated the dogs, Red and Rusty. She moved eight times with us (funny how that happens). She was an indoor cat for twenty and a half years (the time she spent with us). She was not a mouser, chased down the hall by a mouse in Klamath Falls (all secrets are revealed eventually). She is the subject of many pictures, many poems, many musings. As an orange tabby female, she was rare, as a cat rescued and then living such a long life, as she did, she was rare. She was never sick, she never went to the vet except for checkups and to update to her vaccines.

Comet “Comeisina” Hope was adopted in Connecticut in 1999, when Issac and Justine were kids (sigh) and moved with us to Oregon as a young cat in 2002 living outside of Klamath Falls for many years. In 2013 she moved with her humans to Belgium. To the surprise of everyone, in 2017 she returned to America. In 2018 she arrived in O’Fallon and began her final reign. She enjoyed roast chicken, a spot of sunshine and a warm lap. She was a good cat, a good fur heart. She was well loved.

The frosty day won out

Friday evening I went out to take down the birdfeeders for the night. At that time the temperature was about 60 degrees and it was humid. Jerry and I had been out walking around 3:30 that afternoon and we felt overdressed in our hoodies. It was hot. It was December 31^st and it was uncomfortably warm. Saturday it rained all day but by late evening the rain had stopped, snow was a “might happen”; we got none of it. Sunday the wind chill was 7 degrees. This morning it was around 6 degrees, beautifully clear and when the sun rose the birds were in party mode. I spent some extra time getting the feeders out, placing peanuts in trees and on the deck, spreading some seeds at ground level, hanging another suet feeder, watching the gathering in the trees. The frosty day won out, I had to retreat. And I think the forsythia was a bit jealous at the attention I was giving the birds, just look what it did when I tried to get a picture of the Tufted Titmouse:

Here now a winter poem from another time.

Untitled

The hoarfrost blooms a thousand
ways across the andesite and juniper
stumps rise from the glacier that had been
my pasture. Beneath the drifts, small
animals are moving now, feet as soft
as wings If I look up, there are ten late stars
almost burning into oblivion, two eagles
spiraling in the chill.

At the pine, poised with one slight foot
raised, a doe, and last year’s twins,
wait for me to turn back toward
the house. New grass, covered in rime,
gray to dawn, will melt soon under the deer’s breath.
By the end of the day, their hoof prints
will become the only mark of this other life.

Glorious things

This morning dawned drizzly, foggy and bleak. The blackbirds were flying low, tree level, and so loud it was glorious. Speaking of glorious things, Jerry got me some new pajamas which are the most wonderfully weird things I’ve ever seen: disembodied heads, his and Phil’s, float around in a teal-ish blue background. I love them – PJ’s, man and cat.
 
Today is the day before the day that ends the year. My last day to run errands: birds need seeds and I needed my library books. Tomorrow the whole day is devoted to working on poetry. Well, my day will be devoted to poetry; we will take a walk at some point; there will be a nap and reading, lots of reading. Maybe an episode of Perry Mason, these are wild times we’re living in.
 
And now, a poem for no other reason than I told Justine I had a poem about a type of pasta, Garganelli, when we were in Columbus for Christmas, and she is making pasta today.
 
Buon appetito!

Garganelli

A man is making pasta, a volcano of flour
is filled with a dozen yolks sprinkled with salt.
He whisks these until every egg is broken and blended
into a smooth golden cream and then the sides
of the cone are folded into this center. Once
every dry ingredient has become moist he kneads
the mass smooth. He forms the dough into a ball,
cuts a third of it away and feeds it into a pasta press.
These he refeeds until he has a
saffron sheet that looks like fine cloth. From here
he works like a seamstress, cutting equilateral
squares no more than two inches per side.
The blend of sciences then become art 

as he takes a corner, spools it around a dowel
and then rolls it across a board
(called a comb) that creates grooved
tubes of pasta. And like that he has food.

Science, magic, precision. Mangiamo!

Image from Marcellina in Cucina

a Garganelli Board

The long winter night fills us

 

Celebration

There is a reason we save this time
of the year for celebration,
this time when we need sun or star or flame
to take us through the axis tip;
when we need snowfall and miracle
and warmth and song to carry us through
till spring. There is a reason
we search the sky, listening for wingbeat,
verse, the sound of doves hovering
in the shelter of pine. We look toward
one another, rather than away,
pull in toward the hearth
the sturdy chair, take the arms of one
so loved, we could not go on
without them, and in this
pause, we pull in the world.
The long winter night fills us:
a renewal, a radiance, a reason for waking.

~~M.E. Hope

Bring me chimes

Last night this sky ended the day. Swoon. Today, squirrel gangs were running up and down the trees, leaping branch to branch, down to fences and into yards. At least nine squirrels. (I think earlier a few had run across my roof.) There were two groups and at a certain point there was some sort of call and a standoff ensued, followed by lots of running along the neighbor’s new fence. I watched until the last squirrel disappeared into a Sweet Gum tree, three yards over. Earlier a squirrel had risked life and limb to look for a peanut in the lawn while a fifty or so starlings had decided the front lawn was theirs, every time they shifted into the air the squirrel ran to the tree and then back, and then bird flight and then back; I hope the calories were worth it.

It has been a rainy day and a thunderstorm moved through at one point. The birds scrambling about out my office window were covered in miniscule rain drops. Lovely little bits of light they periodically shook off as they dug through leaves. A good assortment of sparrows and finches and dark eyed junco, cardinals (of course), chickadees, the tufted titmouse couple (💓), doves and a few blue jays that needed to come by in case they were missing something.

So: it is rainy and warmish, but no wind today, no tornado brewing (or forecast), no snow either. Almost solstice. It was quiet today. It is quiet now. I tried to find a poem about quiet and found this anti-quiet poem.

Save me

Save me. Save me from this need for stillness,
this quiet house soaking into my skin.
Fill me with song, syllables of sound,
banging drums, birds eager to tell stories.

Tell the coyotes to bring their yellow eyes
and grey muzzles, to lift me on their cries,
let me howl until my voice matches theirs.
Save me. Find a way to open my stalled

and silent heart. Fill me with aspen and oak
leaves, the hallowed rush of pine needles
chanting in the night. Locust and poplar,
willow and birch quivering in breezes

filling the day with chorus and hymn. Save me.
Bring me chimes, horns, reeds singing
like love struck frogs, crickets trapped
by solstice, cats crazed with heat.

Open the hours, open the night, let the stars
clash and burn like July 6th firecrackers,
let the falling ice cascade outside my window
open your mouth and speak. Save me.

       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And from bell hooks, this ties in too.