Lessons

The Education of a Poet

Her pencil poised, she's ready to create,
Then listens to her mind's perverse debate
On whether what she does serves any use;
And that is all she needs for an excuse
To spend all afternoon and half the night
Enjoying poems other people write.

--Leslie Monsour

This poem was sent in response to one of my poems. I have a concern that I will spend the rest of my life reading the story of others rather than writing my own. This past week I've had several opportunities to stand up for myself, which I don't do on a regular basis. I expressed my point of view and feelings at a board meeting. I held my ground in a theological discussion (yet another blasting of my sexual orientation using the Word of God), and I refused to accept mistreatment of me no matter what the 'excuse' or rationale. I've spend so much of my life concerned with what other people think of me. I can't continue to do that and do my art, follow my path, be the unique being I am. I must trust that what I am called to do does serve others, powerfully sometimes, mildly other times. I am getting closer to drastically shifting my life so I can live my life closer to my call.

The Between Spaces

I inhabit the 'tween
like the Goldfinch
on water's edge
struggling in winter
to keep a float
through my dreams ~
to sing anything of note
to utter anything at all.
Others wing round me
and stalks of dried thistle
rattle my sleep ~
wake me before I am
ready.
If only life
could just be
poetry
and I could
just be.

In the Dog Park

Brothers stand on a hill
Gray haired and tired
as they watch their labadors
wrestle and play.

Each remembers youth,
smiles, but says nothing
to the other.
What have we forgotten?

Longing to Be-long

Hafiz, the Sufi poet, says:

Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.


I turn on the television as soon as I get home. Sounds of CSI preferable to the silence (I think). My companions on sitcoms, who share a nightly meal with me, more real than the passing of lives in my day (I think). I lent a book to a friend, tagged with my impressions; she returns it, marked with hers. I relish the vague moment of intimacy with her that I never get to have as our lives rush by each other. I see myself standing on a suburban sidewalk at dusk, gazing in windows at families preparing dinner, snuggling around the blue light of the television, and I long to belong (I think). "Something missing in my heart tonight."

My need (I think) is for human intimacy. I think I want a child, a partner, and intentional community, and I will feel full again. Yet, I have blood family, I have extended family, I have good and faithful friends, and I know that one person, one community alone cannot season me to wholeness, to doneness. And yet the sense of exile has been with me all my life. Recently, I've begun to recognize that the exile is self-imposed. What I am learning (I think) is that we belong because we were born...Justification by Grace. AND belonging is be-longing; be in the longing, the cutting loneliness that draws us, drives us into connection and community and intimacy that is our call to living.

And, do I think too much?

Hope Shall Bloom

On Saturday, May 20th, four separate choirs joined together in a musical fundraising event in support of Hurricane survivors in the Gulf Coast. We raised $2500 in that event. Below is one of the poems I read that evening. It was written several summers ago (2003), when the war was so fresh on my mind:

Hope Over the Willamette

On the riverbank, a sienna night,
the symphony explodes in black and white.
It's an 1812 Overture. And we hesitate
in the patriotic.

A raging red Mars enters our sky
while the war still simmers, shock of the world,
in a cauldron of gray. And yet
a single goose sails by.

A bold gift, innocence begun? And the moon
rises on the largo like a New World arrival,
still wet from birth
and teary-eyed wonder.

The Mystery of Happiness

"What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?" ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa. As the philosophical one, the contemplative one, am I subject to sadness, always? Most of the time? Honore de Balzac said, "All happiness depends on courage and work." I've been courageous and I've worked hard, but the moments of happiness are fleeting. The bliss of being brief as the thrill I feel in the moment when a hummingbird thrums curiously between me and the alluring red honeysuckle only a yard away. Rare. I take the risk to leave a job that doesn't fulfill me, to step out of easy partnerships; I work for poetry not money; I work to live authentically, and yet the endorphins of happiness continue to skip over me. How much should I continue to seek and how much should I determine to settle? I am drenched in moodiness.

Pay Attention

I just returned from a retreat with my Spiritual Direction class. We've been talking about what it means to live in the presence of G-d, especially if one adheres to the idea of justification by grace rather than by works (you are loved unconditionally for who you are not for what you do). One of the primary practices, or disciplines is to pay attention on the Way. I was reminded of this poem I wrote back in 2003 when I first began this study of Christianity. I was coming more from a Buddhist bent. The poem is in response to one of TS Eliot's poems.

P.S./T.S.

Pay attention
on pathways moist with rain
and fallen cedar boughs,
kiss the soil with bruised knees

between breath and breathless

Pay attention
poised, on the edge,
ready or not,
in earthy sacredness

for this is your kin-dom

Pay attention
to the full length of your spine
surrendered on blankets of peace,
effortless in trust

for life can be very long

Pay attention
to hazel and blue, lover's eyes
and robins' eggs
hidden in nests of tomorrow

for this life in the presence

Pay attention
to footsteps on forgiving ground
walk below weighted clouds, which wash you clean
present, connected, insecure, but whole

for this is the Way of today

Beleven Lupine

 Be-lieve
Belief
Be love
Be life
I believe
in the power of Salmon Berry blossoms
to make me smile.
I believe
you can eat the greens of the Oregon Sorrel,
like a Shamrock salad, and you won’t die.
I believe
in Bleeding Hearts and the blessed resurrection
of Trillium every spring ~ oh those priestesses of the forest.
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 a flickering flame, until…
I believe in deathly attraction ~
in loving hard to the bone then letting go.
I believe
that the knots in wooden fences eventually all fall out
leaving peep holes for the curious and the brave.
I don’t believe in fences
or pearly gates.
I believe in death as a simple part of life.
although I’m not so sure that Christ died just for us.
I believe in the majesty of towering cedar.
I believe in the beloved.
Belief
Be light
Be true
I believe in prayers from open hearts
scarred and throbbing along the Way.
Which way?
Every Way.
Every day
I believe
in the kelly green gift of spring.

Making a Change

THE change, actually, and it's making me, not me making it. You know the one ~ remember that year your mom rampaged through the house ripping off her clothes like some crazed Gypsy Rose Lee. Night sweats were the beginning for me. I get so soaking wet that I'm considering wearing pajamas made from Bounty, "the quicker picker upper." I've always had the mood swings and I live alone so they don't really get documented nor does anyone bare the brunt (except maybe Buddy the cat). In fact, the moodiness is actually lessening in intensity, for which I am quite grateful. What bothers me the most is the weight gain. Even my armpits have a roll now. I used to be so proud of my flat, nearly inverted stomach area; now I can claim a muffin top, you know, that sweet rolling cap that flows over the stressed waist band of your too tight jeans.

I took my first NIA class this week. It is a combination of dance, martial arts and aerobics. For those reading this who don't know me, a bit of background: I was a professional modern dancer for 15 years, studied at one of the best college dance programs in the nation, performed in the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, even acquired an eating disorder in order to maintain the svelte tool of my trade. I worked out 6-8 hours a day six days a week with dance classes, rehearsals, running 8 miles, pumping iron, swimming, yoga, you name it. I retired ten years ago and have altered my work out to watching aerobic videos, sitting on the couch, eating a bag of chips. So a NIA class, I thought would be a good transition back into my body. I remembered the moves and in my head I found myself tracking the list of corrections: release the spine but hold the shoulders down, lift up through the pyrimadalis muscle and the rectus abdominus to hold center, lengthen the sartoris muscle and remember that thumb that keeps sticking out when I have unnecessary tension in the hands, hips aligned, lower back lengthened, foot arched without curling the toes, face muscles (zygomaticus) pulled back for an open, easeful look on my face and follow the line of energy with my eyes and my soul.

Well, I remembered the list, but my body couldn't track it and I tripped, I tripped over my own feet with a movement I used to do every day for 15 years. Can I blame it on the change?

Etched in Stone

Barry Lopez writes in an article about artist Rick Bartow, "It is legitimate to call the artist a carrier, a runner. He or she brings forward a story known from an earlier time. He changes nothing, adds nothing, but by the medicine he has been given, by his gift, he inflects the story."

She struggles with what to write on the sympathy card to the parents of dying twins. No Hallmark sentiment could possibly suffice. She waits for words, maybe too long, until one morning the tiny infant poem comes to her:
"Too rare
for anywhere
but their
ancient Celtic home."
She knows these girls from an earlier time, knows their Irish heritage, and knows this is all she should say. They aren't her words, really, but her responsibility to relay, her medicine, her simple gift to give. On April 12th, 2006 Eleanor Peck Hamilton and Rowan Quinn Hamilton return home (as their father writes). The memorial service is held on April 15th, the day between Good (God) Friday and Easter. Her friend brings her the program for the service. Those words, that just came to her so clearly, were on the front of the program. She is told that these will be the words that will go on the twins' grave marker; etched in stone. She's told by another friend that it isn't called a head stone or tombstone anymore (some aren't even stone anymore). What is she to understand of this? She is stunned.

"He (the artist) ensures that in his time it (the medicine) will lodge unforgettably in the memory of the listener."

Later, the mother writes a thank you note, "When I first read your beautiful poem I wept and thought how agonizingly apt it was for my beautiful elfin children...my changelings, my babies. You have given us the most beautiful fitting and romantic epitaph and I am grateful from the bottom of my heart." The medicine worked, so simply, with only the effort of listening to the spirit and passing it on.

"An artist arranges his life to take care of his medicine. He seeks out the medicine people, the doctors who can help him see (a bear, a tree, his father's brother)."

She has sought to arrange her life to honor the gift she was given, leaving her secure day job, committing to daily meditation and an open heart. Practice, practice, practice. But when the money ran out, she got scared, took another day job, and has little energy left to listen and record. She sees a fox on a spring ski adventure and knows the fox has something to tell her: feminine magic of camouflage, shapeshifting mistress of the between times, the thin places as they call it in Celtic Christianity. She knows the fox could jolt her awake into a "flash of pure epiphany...a diamond light," and yet she puts on her sunglasses and goes back to her job until tragedy strikes and she has no choice but to be still and listen. What is she to understand of this? The importance of her medicine, the need, the purity and aptness of it all. Does she say? Thank you? You're welcome? Does she tell anyone else about these words etched in stone? What does she feel? Pride? Humility? Embarrassment? Gratitude? Loving relief? Shock and awe, and all? She doesn't know. Does she just get on with her life until the next time? Perhaps she learns more from the twins' death then from their living. Perhaps her fear and need for security is a wicked distraction.

"He reminds himself it is not the medicine person who is great. It's that he or she knows how to participate more stongly in the mystery to which the artist has devoted himself. The artist needs guidance to reveal what happens when, for that brief period, he goes inside, when he steps further into life than most of us can manage. He wants to make as few mistakes as possible with his medicine."

The lesson in death, there really isn't that much time. Don't waste it on what she thinks others expect of her. Risk. Go deep. Abide in the 'tween spaces where so few wish to go alone. Walk the thin places, every time she is called, with a humble heart, grateful she has been given this gift~a gift no lesser or greater than anyone else's, but belonging uniquely to her. Let the words be etched in stone, words the twins gave her to comfort their grieving family. If she lives the good medicine, devoted, she will have lived well.

More Death. Damn it.

"It's the little things that get to me," Ruth sighed as her grieving body released oh so slightly into my embrace. We don't know each other very well, but death is a commonality that connects us all. I thought Ruth should have a witness to the little things in her marriage that she misses now that Greg is gone. "Like what?" I asked. "Every morning he would greet me with, 'So nice to see you today. Would you like some tea?' and I miss having someone being so glad to see me every single day for all those years." Tears brimmed at her lower lids, but never fell. "I appreciate all the meals you all bring. I'm not usually like this, I mean, I have food in the cabinets and the freezer, but something all made up, made with love..." More tears waiting on the edge. "You're allowed to need. That's why we are in community," I assure her. This Sunday she adandones her lone spot in church and sits in Sherry and DeAnn's pew, leaning in, just ever so slightly.

Trillium

Trillium

Trinity of forest floors, remind me
as I cling, in this spring of uncertainty,
my desire to claim, possess as mine,
heightened by daily news and little sign
of peace. I seek your lesson, wood lily ~

Rife and wild, you are ever meant to be
white wake robin, shaded, yes. Sheltered, but free
from harsh winds and warring lives entwined
trinity of forest floors, remind me ~

If I pluck violet-veined petals, nestled in ivy,
to vase as mine, for seven years I will not see
your flower, in patches of promise, divine
golden centers of hope in precarious times.
Behold, but not hold any blossom too tightly.
Trinity of forest floors, remind me.

Spelling Errors

Some typos and spelling errors I really appreciate. A student wrote about "realationships." I like it. I want it ~ a real relationship, not a flirtation that goes nowhere, an affair lacking commitment, an emotionally superficial connection. I'm ready for the real thing in real time, the good, the bad, the ugly, the exquisitely real.

A Foundation

Monday, the day after Easter, we broke ground for our Grace Academy cob bench (made from clay, sand, and straw). The middle school students designed the bench with clay models. The expectation was that the bench would artistically represent the history of the neighborhood, the untold stories and unsung heroes of Sullivan's Gulch. It needed to fish-tail around to accommodate two views, one of their public art mural and one of the future intersection project on the opposite corner. Finally, we asked the students to consider representing our interdependence of humanity, the confluence of community, of the past and our future dreams. They designed a two tier, semi-circle bench inlaid with handmade tiles representing the unsung heroes. A double spiral column (like the double helix of our DNA) supports a living roof. The ground breaking ceremony included a wish or hope from each student as s/he placed a rock around the periphery. "I hope people like our bench." "I wish this bench will draw the community together." "I hope we are remembered." We were all handed an egg (filled with confetti) to crack on our heads in celebration. Brightly colored paper and egg shells scattered on the cold ground. Renewal. Spring. New life. Promise of Easter scattered on the cold ground. As the director, I made the first dig into the turf. I need a new foundation.

The next day, with a foot deep hole in the ground, it was time to put down the urbanite foundation. I took the noon shift, pleased to move with the pace of stone, slowly, deliberating on the puzzle before us. Each randomly cut piece needed to fit evenly with the others...no rocking, precarious base ~ a perpetual, underlying support that integrated with the earth and offered us all a resting place. I need a resting place. Tuesday was sunny and warm. Sweat dripped from my forehead and ran down my face like salty tears. I took time to examine each empty spot, each possible piece of urbanite. I took my time placing each stone as if the success of our entire future was dependent on my choice. A symbolic circle of stone, I stood inside. I stood outside. We poured sand between the three layers of stone...filling the crevices with desert. I have wheelbarrow level bruises on my thighs from carting urbanite to the site ~ laying the stone, not rolling it away. A sturdy foundation. Starting over. In the beginning. A new song.

Rebirth, Resurrection, Reincarnation: What's the Dif?

Three days after the twin's death, Easter. I can't help but anticipate a resurrection. I never believed there would be a second coming of Christ as foretold in the hyperbolic predictions of Revelations...too mythological for my reality. Yet, humans use myth to explain the inexplicable and right about now I could really use a viable explanation for the death of Eleanor and Quinn. This Good Friday we, in our faith community, all wrestle on God's Friday, this soggy gray northwest day as the heavens rain down on us in torrents of tears (speaking of mythological hyperbole), we all wrestle with the grim reality of mortality and the ineffable hope of resurrection.

One of my students responded to an essay question on whether or not justice was one-sided or depended on everyone agreeing with his argument that our concept of justice is based on our belief in an afterlife. His hypothesis was that those who believed in an afterlife are less concerned about mortality and less caught up in seeking justice for this lifetime...hmmm? In contrast then wouldn't the exisistentialists be more concerned with justice in the here and now because their won't be a judgment day, an opportunity for salvation in an afterlife? What about the first 1000 years of Christianity where the belief was that we're all simply dead, right now, until the second coming? What about the rapture rage? What about the belief that you live in judgment of your deeds in this life in order to be saved in the next? Obviously the debate over judgment, mortality, and the afterlife is beyond the scope of an SAT Review Essay, but clearly, our decisions about how we choose to live in this lifetime are based on our beliefs about what's next, if anything, and what part does judgment (our own, societies, God's or the gods and goddesses) play along the Way.

Says the Reverend Susan Leo, "Good Friday is the day we can really know that God is with us when our lives are too hard to bear. Good Friday is the day that we lose everything, so that on Easter morning, we can receive God's gift of everything. Be not afraid. It's real life."

I believe I am supposed to find new life every day, every day a rebirth, a resurrection. I don't expect an empty tomb drama each day, a glowing visage packed with metaphor for how I should live my life. That's been done. I'm not going to get anymore signs until I believe the ones that are already here and have come before. Reincarnation is the reality, resurrection, the hope, and rebirth the promise of forgiveness if we trust and believe that our lives (our tombs of living) are simultaneously empty and full. Death and renewal, an unavoidable cycle occurring every second of every day. That's real life.

1:30 a.m.

Buddy the cat and I step out on the kitchen deck, looking for the cold, post mid-night, full moon. That moon, infamous 2006 Passover moon, is muted by northwest clouds and shaggy birch tree branches. The night is too cold for me. I don't understand life. I don't understand death,
and I cannot sleep.

Walking into the Future (Stafford Reports Back)

Of course there is more room to roam if you roam alone.
(We have reached this place.)

Risk walking in your own footsteps (If there is trust,
we make no mistakes.)

What is the secret for walking in the new?
(Our feet are trying to remember. Stay out of their way.)

-Wendy (2003)

Once, with tribute to Angela Pozzi

Once tossed overboard I sea things:

one marooned
yet now festooned
immersed in a watery escape

one sunken soul
risen through sea plumes
and cadmium rooms

I sea things
in the tiny tide pools
of each of our days

Death on My Mind

Every Wednesday morning the garbage truck rumbles by on NE 54th Street with such magnitude that the vibrations rattle the ceramic art work on the SW wall of my bedroom, hundreds of yards away, and wakes me up. The art work is an Annie Quigley original ceramic plate purchased for me by my first partner, Sandy Frascati, who died of cancer two summers ago. From now, to 23 years ago every Wed. morning. From garbage to artwork, every Wed. morning. The rippling vibration of our lives. From Quigley to Frascati to now. "We cannot know the impact of our presence." (Do I need to quote myself from my own poetry?)

I am, of course, reminded of the ripples of a stone's throw, the impact of the life and death of others on the life and death of me. The ripple of the twin's lives on mine with the forever understanding that we are loved just for being. Quinn and Eleanor showed me that in two weeks, that which I couldn't learn in 45 years. The ripple of Sandy's life and death on me, my first love, estranged for 20 years and still I felt her impending death one year before I got the word. Was it the Quigley? I have a matching Annie Quigley lamp base, light for reading (which Sandy loved to do)...both pieces are a summer sky blue glaze, dull with heat ~ Salt Lake City, 1980's lesbian lavender and muted pink marble stripes are neatly layered in diagonals half-way across the diameter. What I like most about the design is the quarter inch slash through the tidy geometry, destroying the order of the piece, saying, "Just when you think you have it all figured out. Guess what? You don't!"

This ceramic plate rattles against my convent white bedroom wall every Wednesday morning even though I can't remember why I loved Sandy. Even though I never knew Annie Quigley, and don't know if she is dead, too. So much has passed in 23 years, Sandy, Sweetpea, loves lost, careers, Eleanor, Quinn, families of choice, lost and still I wake, every Wednesday morning, to the rattle of the Quigley plate.

Passing Over on Passover

Eleanor and Quinn Hamilton, with metaphorical irony, passed away today, passed over this afternoon, April 12th, 2006, the eve of the first day of Passover. Pesach is a holiday of gratitude and thanksgiving. How can it be? This is the time to donate to the poor, to invite guests to share in celebration. Tonight, our grieving community all sit in our separate houses under the same full moon and indigo twilight, celebrating the same loss of two short lives. How can it be? Legend is that Elijah the Prophet dresses like a beggar to see if people will invite him in for dinner this night and show they are really ready for the coming of the Messiah.

Some of us sit around a Seder table, wondering why, trying to explain death to our children. Some of us sit miles away, candles lit in reverence, waiting for Friday when we will fly home to be with family and funerals. Some of us sit Shiva, of sorts, with the mother, the father, the brother. Some of us spend the night wrapped in a lover's arms, grateful for a shoulder to absorb our tears. Some of us sit alone. Me, I sit outside in the cool quiet night, with a bottle of Barefoot Cellars Premium Red Wine (one glass for Elijah) and a carton of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream, not knowing how to celebrate, how to keep the angel of death away from me.

We celebrate this holiday to commemorate the freeing of the Jews from bondage in Egypt. Sacrifice a lamb, a sweet, innocent, baby lamb, and dot the blood over the doors of Jewish homes. The angel of death will pass over. "This night is different from all other nights because once we were slaves," withstanding bitterness, sweetened by the hope of freedom. Tonight we wonder about hope. How can it be? Angels of death. Twin angels with brief lives. Bitterness touches my tongue and dulls the moon. "Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who has kept us alive and well so that we can celebrate this special time." This night of loss...lives short lived. I raise my glass, silhouetted in moonlight, no tears, no time. How can it be? Are we ready now for the coming of the Messiah? Are we empty enough now for our salvation?