Pack three lunches at
midnight. Smile to think of them
crunching fresh carrots.
Pick up this and that
Put it there and here and there
Then do it again.
Peek in dark bedroom
Pull covers up to his chin
Tuck Hulk in tight too
Tag Archives: Poetry
Sunday Sweetness–“Start the Day In Happiness, In Kindness”
Here’s a beautiful sunny day kind of poem by Mary Oliver, read by the author:
Want more of her work? Follow this link:
Want to read a classic Baddest Mother Ever story about kindness? How about:
Saturday Snort – The Sexiest Old White Men of American Literature
I’m probably going to English Major Hell for this one, but here goes…
OK, no more jokes about Poe. I shall poke fun at him nevermore.
Man, wouldn’t it be cool if T.S. Eliot was the surprise guest at next year’s Super Bowl halftime show? Maybe doing a duet with One Direction.
We always see pictures of Samuel Clemens in a white suit…so OF COURSE he wears tighty whities! Mystery solved.
If you like funny stories about underwear, check out this classic Baddest Mother Ever post:
To Call Myself Beloved
The last poem in Raymond Carver’s collection A New Path to the Waterfall is called “Late Fragment.” Legend has it that his wife, Tess Gallagher, found it scribbled on a scrap of paper in the pocket of his bathrobe a few weeks after he died from brain cancer.
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to
feel myself
Beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver screwed up most of his life with alcohol, but he spent the last eleven years of his brief time on this earth sober, successful, and happily married. Then he died from brain cancer anyway. That’s how life goes, right? No promises. No deals. No rest for the wicked and only the good die young.
As I grow older and my heart gets tougher, those two words–even so?–resonate. They are the acknowledgement of all that has come before, the good and the bad, the fair and the shitty: “Did you get what you wanted from this life, even considering all that has happened to you and where you are right now and whether you deserve this fate?” Carver accepts it all with two simple words: I did.
Oh, when I read this poem for the first time, I thought I knew a thing or two about life. I was 21 and completely enthralled by a man who was totally out of my reach. He loaned me this book–he liked to lend me books and ideas and I lived to borrow them, mostly because they had been imprinted with his approval. So when this poem worked its way into my tender and untried heart, I skipped right to those last words: to feel myself/Beloved on the earth. Being beloved is the point of life, right?
Nope.
The longer I live, the more I realize that the heart of this poem, this last fragment from the crumbling mind of a bruised genius is the line just above that: To call myself beloved.
It’s not about the even so and whether it will ever be balanced out.
It’s not just about being beloved while on the earth.
The work of this life is to call myself beloved.
Sunday Sweetness–Things To Desire
I have this poem on an old creased piece of notepaper, written out for me in my friend Mike’s very distinctive handwriting. It’s one of my most precious possessions. He sent it to me when we were new friends, long before I was heartbroken or frustrated or jaded. Long before I had known abiding love, great accomplishment, quiet peace. I come back to it every so often for a reminder of his kind gift and our long friendship. I love him because he reminds me to be gentle with myself and to strive to be happy.
I hope you are a peace today. Be cheerful.
Cherry Blossoms
I remember one Easter when my nephews were small–they grabbed handfuls of cherry blossoms that had fallen from the trees in Nana and Papa’s yard. Jackson and Grant flung the pale pink petals in the air so they floated down to dust baby Jake’s head. We all laughed as the boys sang, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” while Jake squealed with joy. That’s been a dozen years ago and I still remember the sound of their laughter and the astonishment I felt at loving these small, new people so keenly.
Isn’t it holy to live in a moment and know that you will remember it for the rest of your life? Cherry blossoms remind me to look up. We are alive, beneath the cherry blossoms.
Cherish
Here’s one thing I love about having a space for writing: I am surrounded by my books, which are filled with ideas, and that comes in handy at times like RIGHT NOW when I really feel a desperate urge to write but cannot think of a damn thing I want to say. Every spine of every volume reminds me that all writers have a moment (or year) when they get stuck. Misery loves company and these writers are good company because they made it through.
I reached over just now and picked up a slim gray book of poems by Raymond Carver called “A New Path to the Waterfall.” I bought this copy for myself in the spring of 1990. A professor of mine, on whom I had a huge crush, had loaned me his copy earlier in the year because he thought I might like it. I did. I loved it and I loved him and that’s OK to confess now because I’m 45 and it feels sweet, not embarrassing, to remember that time when he and I would talk about books and painting and the ways of the world. I was 21 and really looking to have my heart broken a few times. Just to check, I googled him and his smile still made my tired old heart go pitter pat.
One thing that drew me to this book of poems when I was 21 was the tragic story of Carver’s life. He died in 1988 from lung cancer at the age of 50. But he was supposed to have died 10 years before that. Carver tried his best to drink himself to death but managed to get clean at 40. He called the rest of his life “gravy” (and there’s a poem by that name, too). In that last best 10 years, he made a life with Tess Gallagher, a fellow writer. When they learned that he was dying, they married so they could call each other husband and wife.
Well. That rings a bell. These poems that I loved when I was a heartsick 21 year old girl mean even more to me now that I also know what it is like to promise “til Death do us part” when Death is practically a guest at the wedding.
So here is a lovely poem, written by Ray in the days between his marriage and his death. After he died, Tess gathered all these last poems and assembled “A New Path to the Waterfall.” His gifts to her; her gift to him.
Cherish
From the window I see her bend to the roses
holding close to the bloom so as not to
prick her fingers. With the other hand she clips, pauses and
clips, more alone in the world
than I had known. She won’t
look up, not now. She’s alone
with roses and with something else I can only think, not
say. I know the names of those bushes
given for our late wedding: Love, Honor, Cherish—
this last the rose she holds out to me suddenly, having
entered the house between glances. I press
my nose to it, draw the sweetness in, let it cling—scent
of promise, of treasure. My hand on her wrist to bring her close,
her eyes green as river-moss. Saying it then, against
what comes: wife, while I can, while my breath, each hurried petal
can still find her.
Sunday Sweetness–Robert Frost
Another day to get it right, to make things better. Another day to love myself.
This quote from Robert Frost reminded me of a piece I wrote last summer at the beach: “The Sorrows of Your Changing Face.” It all goes on.
There Is This
New Year’s Eve finds me wistful. Contemplative. To be honest, I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve much. There’s such expectation that it will Be. Big. Fun. I never seem to be able to be present, even when I’m all dressed in sequins and have a glass of champagne in my hand. That plodding moment when we count down to an exact moment on the clock…then we find that the exact second passes and the one after it is just another second in the billions we live and no more “new” than the one before it.
Years are created by humans. The changing of one to the next? Sometimes leaves me feeling anticlimactic.
Or maybe it’s the cold medicine. I dunno.
I remember one New Year’s Eve in particular, the last one I celebrated with Richard, six months before he was diagnosed with leukemia. We had just bought a house and moved in together. He had finished up a grueling semester of teaching. Instead of going somewhere new on our traditional trip between Christmas and New Year’s, we decided to go somewhere familiar instead. We returned to The Reefs in Bermuda for a week of pink sand and drinks in the hot tub. Ahhhhh.
It should have been relaxing, but I had a Plan.
We had the love. We had the respect. We had the house. We had the commitments. According to my plan, it was time to get Married, by jinkies. And what better place to expect a proposal than on a pink sand beach at midnight on New Year’s Eve? I had it all planned out. In MY mind. I bought the black velvet dress with the sequins scattered across the shoulders. I bought the beautifully ridiculous shoes. We dined and we drank champagne. We danced on the veranda to “At Last.” We wore silly hats.
And instead of being present for all that fun, I was wrapped up in a big ball of resentment because the hours kept ticking by and he hadn’t asked me to marry him even though this was the PERFECT setting and….GAH. He was blowing it!
My mood improved after midnight when I finally let my plan go. And got out of those stupid shoes. We put on sweats and walked down to the beach. He smoked a Cuban cigar and I drank a last glass of champagne. Not such a bad night after all, there under the stars and by the sea–once I got out of what was supposed to be and looked around at what was.
A gray-haired man in a tuxedo came down to the beach all alone. He carried one gold balloon close to his chest. We wished him a happy new year. He returned the wish. He held up the balloon, shrugged, then he started to cry. “I lost my brother, David, eleven years ago. Damn AIDS. I promised him that I’d always remember him and send him a balloon whenever there was a good party that he had to miss. Seems silly, right?” I put my hand on his arm as the ocean wind thumped the gold balloon against his chest. Not silly at all.
The three of us stood there close together while he told us about David. He held the balloon aloft and said, “Happy New Year, David! I love you.” As he let it go and we watched the balloon sail heavenward, I raised my glass and Richard lifted his cigar. I gave the man a long hug and he returned to the hotel.
I’ve been thinking about that night today. About David and the gold balloon. About Richard, who did ask me to marry him, but not that night. How we live so much of our lives outside of the present, in memory or in plans. It all reminded me of this poem by Barbara Ras, which I give to you now as a New Year’s wish:
You Can’t Have It All
by Barbara Ras
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.
__________________________
May you live in the New Year, and what’s left of the one we already have. May you breathe deep and know that you are loved, the second before midnight and the second after it.
The Journey
I know some of you are being brave and bold RIGHT NOW. You are saving your own lives. Bravery doesn’t always come in historic gestures. You might be starting a new job like Karen. Getting your own place like Annabel. Finishing up that first semester of college like Auburn. Fighting for your life like Kristina. Mothering an infant like Jackie. Finding your way in the dark like…you know who you are. Choosing to live another sober day. Choosing to live.
Choose to live, again, today. Save the only life you can save.
Here’s some advice from Mary Oliver.