Tag Archives: Poetry

Sunday Sweetness–Robert Frost

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

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.

journey

Paying Attention Is Praying

Here’s a poem that seems to fit with this week.  Another jewel from Mary Oliver.  Please treat yourself to some of her books.  I have “Thirst” on my night stand right now and I read a poem a day, like savoring a dark chocolate.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

mary oliver

There Must Be a Better Word for That

Today I spent the whole day dragged down and wrapped up in words like

governance
guidelines
script
apology
inconvenience
infection
deadline
remorse
exit
notify
meh
necessary
error message
 

My day was shaping up into a depressive haiku.

squirrelAbout 5:15, I gave up (or as I call it “threw my f*ck it flag) and left the office.  Walking back to my car, I passed a patch of tea olives and the scent tapped me on the shoulder. “Pardon me?  Miss?  The world is lovely and it’s right here.”  

A new word popped into my head:  waft.

I smiled…just a little.  The tense muscles around my face rearranged themselves gladly.  More words:  smirk, moue, whimsy.  

The sun pattering down through the oak canopy warmed my cheeks and I thought of another word:  dappled.  

A sleek squirrel scampered across the pebbled path.  We locked eyes–gazed–for a fleeting moment, then he was off.

I stopped there on the path and filled my mind with better words…

aroma
dawdle
meander
respite
breeze
soar
lilt
lark
arc
swoop
horizon
rooted
heady
 

Then I continued on my way.  Rejuvenated.  Replenished.  Refreshed.  Hopeful.  Satisfied.  

What’s the most beautiful word you know?  The most peaceful?  The word that makes you stand still?  The one that gets you going?

Avo’s Hummingbird

Female Green Crowned Hummingbird

By Charlesjsharp, via Wikimedia Commons

G cleaned our hummingbird feeder tonight and made fresh nectar for a tiny bird he has named “Buddy.”  A few weeks ago, G was out on the deck in the still of the morning when a little hummingbird flitted in and out of petunias in the flower boxes.  The two of them spent a peaceful few moments together.  G delighted that the hummingbird showed no fear as it came closer and closer to him.  

As bluebirds are special to me, hummingbirds are the bird that G shares with his Avo (the Portuguese word for grandfather).  When Avo retired to his little house in Carmo de Minas, he made a project of feeding the hummingbirds.  But one day, he forgot.  That afternoon, he took his walk two blocks over to the town square to sit under the shade trees and rest.  While he enjoyed the stillness, a little hummingbird flitted up to him.  It hung there, flying circles in the air before Avo’s face.  Avo laughed, hauled himself up off the bench and began his slow walk home to fill the feeder.  The hummingbird buzzed beside him all the way.

G’s grandmother, Vovo, died a few weeks ago, right around when Buddy showed up on the deck.  G and I are both rationalists, but when he told me about the hummingbird that wasn’t afraid of him, I said, “I think it was your grandfather, here to tell you that your grandmother isn’t suffering.”  We, the rationalists, let that thought be, let it hold itself up against all logic, just like the hummingbird.

I cannot think of hummingbirds without remembering this tiny jewel of a poem by Raymond Carver:

Hummingbird

For Tess

Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box.  When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

—Raymond Carver

 

When Raymond Carver wrote these lines to his beloved Tess Gallagher, he was dying slowly of an inoperable tumor.  He knew there would be a day when she would need to be reminded of how much, just how much, he loved her.  So he wrote the word “hummingbird.”

Peace to Avo and Vovo and all those who have flown before us.

The Sorrows of Your Changing Face

Old Woman Reading by Cornelis Kruseman, Amsterdam Museum

Old Woman Reading by Cornelis Kruseman, Amsterdam Museum

In 11th grade, our class studied British Literature, but we didn’t study it fast enough to suit me.  We dawdled through Chaucer (even in translation!).  We slogged through nasally BBC Radio records of “Macbeth” for a week straight.  Even the murders were boring.  I flipped ahead in the book to get to the more modern writers, the ones who had actually seen a telephone and motor cars.  The ones we wouldn’t have time to get to by the end of the year.  It was infuriating to me–how we always ran out of time in the school year and never got all the way through the end of the text book.  With every chalk dust diagram of sonnet rhyme schemes or droning exegesis of Wordsworth, I felt the chances of studying William Butler Yeats, Wilfred Owen, and Ted Hughes slipping into nothingness.  So I read ahead.

One poem by Yeats never left me.  I committed it to memory, or more rightly “learned it by heart” while sitting there in the windowless classroom filled with rows of desks and bored teenagers.

When You Are Old

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

I was sixteen years old, and I yearned for a day when I could look back on my moments of glad grace, when someone–anyone!–would have seen the soft look my eyes had and their shadows deep.  Even the last stanza, the sadness of a Love that has fled and hid his face among the stars–I even wanted that.  Something to miss at the end of my life.  I hadn’t had anything yet, so I couldn’t wait to have something to miss.

Yesterday was Richard’s birthday.  He would have been 47.  I meant to write this post for August 5th, and I’ve been feeling sad about that since I didn’t.  Like the English teacher who had good intentions of getting through the whole text book, but the year just ran out.

It’s fitting, because Richard hated his birthday and refused any fuss.  His mother making a Julia Child’s chocolate cake was the only ceremony he actually enjoyed.  He was happiest as a kid when camp coincided with his birthday because he wouldn’t tell anyone.  No cake from home, no cards, no nothing.  It befuddled me, but I did my best to honor his wishes.  For the four years we had together, we mostly did the anti-birthday party party.  We made a POINT of ignoring his birthday.  But yesterday was busy with packing up my family of five, leaving the beach and driving back home in time to make it to the “Meet the Teacher” night at elementary school then unpacking and laundry and sandwiches from the grocery for dinner.

On Sunday night, right at sunset, G kept the kids entertained at the pool while I took a walk down to the ocean with my glass of wine.  I walked out into the lapping waves of low tide and floated there.  Pelicans sailed over the flat water, headed towards the red lights of buoys on the sandbar.  I had the beach to myself and if I looked straight ahead, I could pretend that I was the only soul between here and everywhere.  I wished Richard a Happy Birthday then rolled my eyes at how he would have snorted at that.  I told him how I missed him.  How sorry I was that he missed out on getting to have kids.  I told him how hard it can be, with the training wheels and bloody noses and the why why why of it all.  I couldn’t even speak the words for how joyful it can be.  What it feels like to see my son say “Fee-two-un….BADASH!” and pretend to be a rocket.  How my heart swells when Vivi and I pedal a bike together and she tells me stories about lions as we ride.  The peace that comes when we are sleeping in a room all together.  

Well.  

Then a light blinking off in the distance reminded me of a star and this poem came to mind.  I stood in the waves and recited the words that I learned by heart almost thirty years ago.  

He taught me how to travel and how to feel like I had the right to an adventurous life.  He loved the pilgrim soul in me.  But he has paced among the mountains overhead and hid his face amid a cloud of stars.  

Looking back over my life, I feel like my first husband, Fartbuster, got to love my beauty with love false or true.  Then Richard came along to love my pilgrim soul.  G gets the sorrows of my changing face.  This is how weird it gets when you’re three husbands in–they all can start talking in your head at the same time.  

As I walked back up to the dunes and to my family and to the life I love, I took an inventory of the person I have become since I learned that poem and dreamed of being loved and having lost.  I am so different now–a grown woman, divorced, widowed, a mother–finding her way.  Would Richard even recognize the woman that I’ve become because of what I went through with watching him die?  Could we have made it with happy hearts through the skinned knees and training wheels and rocket rides?  He loved the pilgrim soul in me, but he never got to know the sorrows of my changing face.  

That is the thing about growing older.  I keep growing.