Seven-Year-Olds Still Have Wings (A Monologue)

This is the result of my first venture into script. The class I took was Memoir to Monologue

[AT RISE: GRACE, a teacher, on a school playground in the rain. She’s holding a pink envelope.]

The last thing I want to do on a rainy Saturday in June, is go back to the school. But that’s what teachers do, right? They show up for their students, even when they’re tired, even when there are only 5 days left before summer break. It’s been a tough year. This rain, like tears of exhaustion…and today, grief.

I have to be honest with you, I barely knew you, what with quarantine, and masks, and as a movement specialist, I see 500 students a week. It takes me several months to learn everyone’s name, but I remembered your name right away; Lennox, such a unique name. Still, I only saw you twice a week at best before the pandemic. Maybe that’s why it was more important than ever for me to show up today. I feel guilty, like I neglected you, like I didn’t take the time, when I had the time, to know you. Like maybe I could have prevented…no, I can’t go there. There was nothing I could have done.

[GRACE fingers the pink envelope]

This? The PTA lady gave it to me. There’s a Painted Lady butterfly inside. I just wasn't ready, earlier today, to let her go. Lennox, it’s a Scottish name meaning “with many elm trees.” Elm is the liberty tree with interlocking grain used for wagon wheels, chairs, and coffins. How do I know that? I’m a teacher, I like to learn.

[GRACE chuckles]

I Googled it. Did you know that about your name? Do you feel the liberty of your name? I saw your liberty, your freedom, when you danced. I saw your light, I remember your light, not just the lightness of your hair, but of your feet when you skipped around my gym. I remember the lightness in your eyes and on your wings when you leaped.

[GRACE sighs quietly to herself]

Yeah, seven-year-olds still have wings. It’s a cool thing. Wings…I didn’t know that you LOVED butterflies. But now that I think about it, I saw it when you danced, the way you would flit and float. So, it’s fitting, today, that the PTA dedicated this butterfly garden, your garden with a release of Painted Lady butterflies. The flowers, the lupine, hollyhock, cosmos, sunflowers, they’re all just little starts right now, like you, in first grade, just starting, supple green stalks of limbs and the promise of blossoms…futures…blossoms in patches of dry dirt that nobody paid attention to before. They’ll pay attention next fall. The rain is a good thing today, watering those tender baby shoots, masking our tears. I forgot my raincoat, but I have my umbrella, the big one I take out for bus-duty when all of you are standing shivering and unprepared. Did I shelter you once with my extra-large umbrella? I don’t remember. There were a lot of people at the dedication: your mom, of course, and grandma, all the first grade and kindergarten teachers, oh, and girls from your Girl Scout troop who painted stepping stones for the garden. There was a lady who remembers you from the senior center that you used to visit. Quite the humanitarian, huh?

[GRACE pauses as if listening]

Oh, that means you are kind and thoughtful to other humans. She said you were a wonderful storyteller and brought many smiles to their faces. I learned a lot about you today–– not enough, though. There's still a lot I want to learn about you, Lennox, but for now, have a sublime summer. 

            [GRACE releases the Painted Lady butterfly from the envelope]  

  

Oneing

Today, the first Sunday of vacation, I still cannot rest in the scared, mother-womb darkness. Tomorrow is the first day of winter yet robins roost in the bare maple branches, not one or two, but 10 or more, waiting, annunciating the advent of...what? 

This Advent I signed up for a course with Matthew Fox and Mirabai Starr about Julian of Norwich.

The opening mediation was a Hebrew one, a call to "oneing" with the Creator: "Listen, oh you, who struggle with the infinite, ALL is one." That's a progressive translation for sure. The Arabic prayer, Shahada, the oneness of God, "La ilaha, illallah." While the literal translation is "only one God, Allah," not being a literalist, I hear this as God is One and one is God, panentheism, interrelational, nameless, formless intimacy with ALL. This is a call to enter the liminal mystery I so value. The unknown mystery we reside in daily now, the Thin Place, the white space we have been walking through as a result of the pandemic. Nothing is certain and very little in our control. We are called to surrender to the unio mystica, the flow, the oneing, the ecstasy of "union with reality."

This summer I hired a leadership coach who led me to design this intention for living, "How am I hyphenating the collective-self between known spaces and unknown graces into co-creative liberation and wholeness?" I am present daily with this intention purposefully phrased as a question and have found that the Covid upheaval, the racial protests, the political corruption, all of it has not been a surprise, nor has any of it diverted my flow. I feel companioned as a sister Anchorite with Julian. Radical recluse in my quarantined home, yet, one window open to people/students, to serve, and all those busy beehives, producing...and words of unity and love, liberation from God of retribution, wholeness acquired through recognition that through God we are what we are and we are ALL ONE.

Yesterday I made St Lucia Lussekatter (Swedish Saffron buns). They took all day to encourage the yeast, wait for two risings, knead and knead. I felt impatience in the time it took, having not made bread outside of a bread maker for years. The demand for patience, for waiting, for delayed gratification has been the primary challenge of 2020, with vacations cancelled, travel shut down, teaching plans rerouted, social gathering delayed. Our morning reading this vacation is Rockwell Kent's "Wilderness," about his Christmas in Alaska in 1918. We had planned to read it after our Alaska trip last summer, which was delayed until 2021. These delays and rerouting have actually sweetened the anticipation and will no doubt heighten the awe when the world opens up to a new day and I step more fully into a new way of being.

Our outdoor Christmas lights burnt out last night...the circuit blew and will not recharge...so now, we have some imposed darkness along a street of festive lights...I wait, like the robins, each day, for the wonder and awe of both the mirth and the mourning. It all matters. I write you this while listening to Gary Richardson's guitar meditations and hold thoughts of your being, your spirit, in my heart until we can safely meet again in person.

Garden Table Blessing

At the Garden Table

It is easy to bless the tomatoes

ripening on the vine

bite-size, grape-like

and ready to burst open

in my mouth

Communion



It’s easy to bless the basil

that wafts poetic at every picking

and brush against the water can.

Collard greens

with rainbow stems, easy

potatoes, brown eyes planted

as a science experiment

sprouted purple-white blossoms

with surprising yellow centers

who knew such a lumpy

bumpy mass of starch

would be one and the same

with these delicate stem-y appendages.

 

It is easy to bless all

in this little garden corner:

the maiden hair fern

operatic hibiscus

Mondo grass and morning robins

a concrete Buddha

accompanied by a ceramic, moss-covered rabbit

wind chimes and hummingbirds

even the invading blackberries

challenging the ivy

for ownership of the hillside



What about blessing the old patio furniture

that survived 15 years and 5 moves

or the Terracotta mask

purchased after a year of sobriety

spider webs, neighbors cat droppings

what about the Citronella candle

that chases away mosquitoes

What about the mosquitoes?

Bless the mosquitoes and begin.

Where Do Her Words Go?

“…We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider…”

Excerpt from Praise Song for the Day ~ Elizabeth Alexander



Where Do Her Words Go?


Do they merge with all the other words ~

smooth verbs at the cocktail hour,

bubbling, barbecue babble,

or do they whisper through the equinox ~

emerald-green dusky words

dissipating into starlight?



Where do her words go?

Do they course over a spiny mountain range,

nestle in juniper snags, bridge

like rainbows and trailing blackberries,

or are they slammed in car doors,

rushed along freeways of unknown destinations?



Do her words drift like puffs of Black cottonwood ~

summer snow that lands on the very one

who needs her words the most?

Or do they randomly swim

like those squiggly black lines

behind the closed eyes of the sunbather?



She feels responsible

for these words that come to her

on light-rays, sound and shock waves,

from nerve endings and heartbeats,

weighty little words to consider,

words wanting a wide embrace



Where do her words go?

On yellow freesia vibrations

to pollinate years from here?

Her words, quaint and queer,

are merely a stone’s throw in a river ~

who knows how far the ripples go?

Facilitating Change…Let Grace Come In  

“…through every vicissitude of heat and cold, calm and storm, up-heaving volcanoes and down-grinding glaciers, we see that everything in Nature called destruction must be creation — a change from beauty to beauty.” ~John Muir

Are destruction and creation all part of the same design system? I just finished reading The Only Kayak by Kim Heacox. He references Muir’s quote above and asks, “If the land can heal and begin anew, can we too...[and]…does that which nurtures us in turn deserve our nurturing?” I sit silently in my kayak, my cradle of resilience, stroking the surface of Sparks Lake in Southern Oregon, ready to receive the healing power of water. I listen to the soft slip-slap of the wake on my boat and wonder about reciprocity, about giving back to the water, about the ripple effect of my palm on this place.

I came here to release, to heal, regenerate after four wrestling months of quarantine, questions, passionate protests, and tragic loss. Let grace come in. I came here for Water’s wisdom, her ancient knowledge ~ the survival song of lilies rustling against the side of my boat. Let grace come in. I came here to hear the fledgling herons’ boisterous, prehistoric screech for Mother’s piscine supper of regurgitated carp. Let grace come in. The haunting coos of the Mourning dove, the chipper chicka-dee-dee-dees, and the Red-winged blackbirds’ conk-la-ree-ree-rees all harmonize with the heron and the lilies to create riffles of new song. Let grace come in.

My summer vacation officially started on June 20^th. I had hoped to kayak that first day of vacation, to catch up on my poetry writing, to hike, and explore more of the Pacific Northwest. Instead, I worked. We arts educators are all worried about our jobs next fall. So last week we scrambled to create (and push through to the powers that be) documents that reflected proactive plans for facile and creative transformation of teaching spaces and methods. Simultaneously, I engaged in a new leadership role with TLAN, began leadership coaching with Sea Change Design, and started this facilitation class. I continued to feel energized from the last trimester; I had remained strong, positive, and centered all through the transition to on-line learning — leading the way for arts integration, and facilitating discussions about re-structuring for next fall. But then, the Saturday before the last week of school, my Asst. Principal called. One of our 1^st graders had been murdered by her father, who then took his own life. Where is grace?

That news broke me ~ I trembled and sobbed with shock, grief, and anger, but then went right back to work. In my TLA facilitator role, I provided poetry and resources to my colleagues in addition to designing a virtual field day for students’ last week of school. Two weeks later, I tried to write my own grief poem amidst the cacophony that is my most inhospitable workspace (and my brain). I could not do it, all my reserves were spent, and I cried again from exhaustion, so much loss, and grief. Let grace come in.

 

“Nothing is lost, only forgotten…the land remembers us in an enduring embrace.” [1] During this quarantine, I had forgotten Nature’s power to heal and restore me. I had forgotten the importance of going outside, the value of my bare feet in the grass, the sun and rain on my skin, the lilacs and lavender, and thrum of hummingbirds dive-bombing the scarlet columbine. Let grace come in. Joy commented in the podcast that birds are singing more now. The robins wake me at 4:30 and I don’t really mind. Let grace come in. Ironically, in the last months while humans stayed indoors, the out-of-doors started to heal: flora and fauna thriving instead of just surviving, pollution began to clear around the world, an unintended, unimagined consequence of our quarantine. Let grace come in. By doing less, we gave more to Nature. Let grace come in. I really could not fully grasp the irony of that, but I knew that I had forgotten about the healing power of Nature for me. I knew I needed the enduring embrace of land and water. I closed my work computer and headed for Sparks Lake. Let grace come in. …

Awake Now

from a gloomy hibernation,

I notice columbine in bloom

and last year’s barren apple tree

bearing spurs. Anna’s hummingbird

flits merely feet away from me ~

her name is Joy.

 

She was, all winter, an always

presence of possibility,

but my eyes were closed, my mind shut

to her iridescent green crown,

ruby-throated chirping contrast

to my gray song.

 

 

Today, following a season

of black, I wear scarlet again,

the red that attracts her to me,

beating vehemently between

honeysuckle and apple trees.

The hummingbird

 

in crimson pursuit, reminds me

of my power to fly backward

or forward, or to just flutter

my wings in place, pollinating

and consuming all the honey

nectar of now.

---

[1] from Portland Nez Perce/Cherokee Educator and herbalist, Judy BlueHorse Skelton 

For Geraldine Pearson

“…There’s a poem in this place—in the heavy grace…” *

of the “do not resuscitate” notice

tacked to the mudroom door

at Blackberry Hill Farm —

a heavy grace in the stained country curtains

on the kitchen window, open for flies

to buzz in from the barn

and land on the breakfast, uneaten.

There is a poem in this place

where flies can dine freely on home-made pies

before dying on sticky strips hanging

above the kitchen table.

There is a poem in this place

where a lamb nestles at your feet

under that same kitchen table,

while another lamb is served for Easter dinner.

There is a poem of heavy grace in this place.



Death is daily and unsentimental

on Blackberry Hill. Foxes in the hen house,

cows stuck in the mud, bummer lambs

abandoned by ewes, and ponies neglected

by their driver who chose to die at home.

A heavy grace in vulnerable surrender —

a pastoral release to swollen, weakening limbs,

to broken branches, dried leaves, and lips

unkissed, and scars softening where breasts had been.

A release to humming out of key, love songs

from apple orchards in the 30s.



There’s a poem in this place and a heavy grace

in finger tips limply reaching out from the hospice bed,

eyes averted, the Oregon horse woman whispers,

“luv you guys” for the first and last time.

A heavy grace, an end to that grooming criticism

of who one should be. In death, there is poetry

and there is ice melting in the last crystal glass

of Hendrick’s gin. Tonic soothes and our chapter ends,

giving way to the cliché, trite, simple, surrender —

the poetry of loving one just for who one is,

or is that “whom”? Loving for the first and last time.

No goodbye, just a wisp of a hand hold, dry

skin on skin, fingerprint to fingerprint

an acknowledgement of this heavy grace.




*Excerpted from Amanda Gorman, In This Place (An American Lyric)

Lupine

Beleven Lupine

 

Belief, be-lieve, be leaves. I believe

you can eat the greens of Oregon Sorrel

like a Shamrock salad, and you won’t die.

I believe in bleeding heart blossoms,

the power of Salmonberries to make me smile

and ah the awe of a single raindrop

in a wide lupine cup. But I don’t believe

that skunk cabbage really stinks

(even though I know it does).

 

I believe in rolling rivers and peacock blue twilight.

I believe hoot owls are wiser than we.

I believe in the mystery of the silent moth

forever circling, circling, circling a flickering flame.

I believe in deathly attraction ~

loving hard, to the bone, then letting go.

I believe in the majesty of towering cedar

and that the knots in wooden fences

eventually all fall out, leaving peep holes

for the curious and the brave.

But I don’t believe in fences or pearly gates.

I do believe that death is just a simple part of life,

but I’m not so sure that Jesus died just for us

I believe in the blessed resurrection of trillium

every March, every year, after the woodland violets

and just before Solomon’s seal and I believe

in emerald lupine with regal purple stalks

and pods filled with seedy promise.

Beleven is a Dutch word meaning to experience, live, go through, or openly profess/practice a faith or conviction.

Morning on Bronze Pond

There they go, wild geese of peace —
making form of time

while wood ducks bob for breakfast feasts

there they go, wild geese of peace.

But the flicker’s staccato drumming will not cease

until I wake to the day’s rhythm and rhyme.

There they go, wild geese of peace —

making form of time.

What determines a morning end?
When hummingbirds beat frenzy into the day,

or when cattails burst and willows bend?

What determines a morning end?

When wood ducks, through reeds, weave and wend,

or the heron, on one leg, begins to sway?

What determines a morning end?

When hummingbirds beat frenzy into the day.

In 2017 I rented an apartment for a few months at the Caswell Gardens in Troutdale. Bronze Pond was surrounded by bronze sculptures. It was the best apartment ever. I wrote every morning out by the pond.