Glenda Burgess's Blog, page 38
July 13, 2011
Wishes
We had, each of us, a set of wishes.
The number changed. And what we wished -
that changed also. Because
we had, all of us, such different dreams.
The wishes were different, the hopes all different.
And the disasters and catastrophes, always different.
In great waves they left the earth,
even the one that is always wasted.
- from "Fable," Louise Gluck
The idea of this poem in its full context is that all wishes differ but one - the wish to live, or to re-live what is done. And how we know in our bodies the unlikely truth of such a wish. It is never granted. And in our hunger for endless life, as the poet writes, the dark nights grow sweet. And once the wish is released, silent. I visit this poem by Louise Gluck often, finding in the tender way she describes human prayers - wild with heartache, urgent and detailed, fantastical, occasionally selfless - this essential, shared final utterance: To live.
That Gluck titled her poem "Fable," is open to many interpretations. Does she speak to the archetypal power of the Other whom our words are directed? Mock the nature of prayers, or wishes? Evoke myth, drawn from our hearts, or the childish innocence from which we wish? I do not know. But without question there is tenderness and compassion in the poet's voice. For you and me. For humans who without proof or reason, wish through difficult nights.
I have of late been consumed with an incessant prayer. A wish, as Gluck might say. One topic, one need, one prayer, one hope. It rises in my thoughts first thing each morning, and is the last ebb of my tired consciousness. I have fallen asleep in the midst of this prayer. Taken up the thread the following dawn. I am a mother caught in fear. Unable to shape the universe, I ask for a greater power to do so. Mine is a prayer of intervention. A wish. And as certain I am that I cannot not pray, I am equally uncertain prayer has a point. Why? Why do our wishes, as the poet says, arise from us, "in great waves they left the earth"?
Perhaps this is just who we are - humans living fables of our own conjecture. Perhaps this exposes the paradigm of our vulnerability. Or perhaps wishing is the answer to our psychological need for story, for a meaning to the end, for a rhyme to the tale. I don't know. But I woke up this morning, in prayer.
The number changed. And what we wished -
that changed also. Because
we had, all of us, such different dreams.
The wishes were different, the hopes all different.
And the disasters and catastrophes, always different.
In great waves they left the earth,
even the one that is always wasted.
- from "Fable," Louise Gluck
The idea of this poem in its full context is that all wishes differ but one - the wish to live, or to re-live what is done. And how we know in our bodies the unlikely truth of such a wish. It is never granted. And in our hunger for endless life, as the poet writes, the dark nights grow sweet. And once the wish is released, silent. I visit this poem by Louise Gluck often, finding in the tender way she describes human prayers - wild with heartache, urgent and detailed, fantastical, occasionally selfless - this essential, shared final utterance: To live.
That Gluck titled her poem "Fable," is open to many interpretations. Does she speak to the archetypal power of the Other whom our words are directed? Mock the nature of prayers, or wishes? Evoke myth, drawn from our hearts, or the childish innocence from which we wish? I do not know. But without question there is tenderness and compassion in the poet's voice. For you and me. For humans who without proof or reason, wish through difficult nights.
I have of late been consumed with an incessant prayer. A wish, as Gluck might say. One topic, one need, one prayer, one hope. It rises in my thoughts first thing each morning, and is the last ebb of my tired consciousness. I have fallen asleep in the midst of this prayer. Taken up the thread the following dawn. I am a mother caught in fear. Unable to shape the universe, I ask for a greater power to do so. Mine is a prayer of intervention. A wish. And as certain I am that I cannot not pray, I am equally uncertain prayer has a point. Why? Why do our wishes, as the poet says, arise from us, "in great waves they left the earth"?
Perhaps this is just who we are - humans living fables of our own conjecture. Perhaps this exposes the paradigm of our vulnerability. Or perhaps wishing is the answer to our psychological need for story, for a meaning to the end, for a rhyme to the tale. I don't know. But I woke up this morning, in prayer.
July 10, 2011
The Truth of Today
IT'S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY (26)
It's all I have to bring today
It's all I have to bring today
July 7, 2011
A Noble Word
Creativity is a noble word, like justice, compassion, or humaneness. Creativity is a basic component of right living, for it is nothing less than a special loving attitude, a love of learning, a love of action, a love of self, a love of others. I affirm - simply, surely, unequivocally- that I am a creative person.
- Eric Maisel
The idea that creativity is a component of living, of right living, is startling to me. I suppose I have thought of creativity as an approach to life - as in "he or she is so creative" - as though one might also comment how a person behaves in a reasoned, analytical, or spontaneous way. But if creativity is in fact an attitude that has all the aspects from action to love of others contained in its meaning, then the word opens up to us all. Not just the Jackson Pollocks, William Faulkners, or Cole Porters of the planet, but to all of us. Of any age. Lead foot dancers to tone deaf shower serenades. Creativity radiates life. We create instinctively and for unlimited reasons and audiences - for the self, the universe. We create because we live.
My son, who has of late lived within a focused, structured and directed environment with scarce time for the spontaneous creative, has begun to draw again. Pulled out an empty notebook, unearthed a black fine tip calligrapher's pen. Discovered, as he used to as a child, the pleasure in sketching. Spooling deeply tamped energy into daydreams on a page, releasing the pent-up in the psyche. Letting the possible find itself in the undirected line. Wholeness reconnected. I know I often spend time on these pages speaking of intention, of the mystery of any given day. But I'd like to crack open this idea of the organic creative. See what's inside. The cook, the warrior, the musician, the builder, the dancer - any one of us. Creativity as active loving? The opening of the self? If creativity is, as Maisel writes, a basic component of living and a loving attitude, perhaps joy lies in the nature of intention. Engaging the action of creativity.
More than a noble word, creativity is a very human word.
- Eric Maisel
The idea that creativity is a component of living, of right living, is startling to me. I suppose I have thought of creativity as an approach to life - as in "he or she is so creative" - as though one might also comment how a person behaves in a reasoned, analytical, or spontaneous way. But if creativity is in fact an attitude that has all the aspects from action to love of others contained in its meaning, then the word opens up to us all. Not just the Jackson Pollocks, William Faulkners, or Cole Porters of the planet, but to all of us. Of any age. Lead foot dancers to tone deaf shower serenades. Creativity radiates life. We create instinctively and for unlimited reasons and audiences - for the self, the universe. We create because we live.
My son, who has of late lived within a focused, structured and directed environment with scarce time for the spontaneous creative, has begun to draw again. Pulled out an empty notebook, unearthed a black fine tip calligrapher's pen. Discovered, as he used to as a child, the pleasure in sketching. Spooling deeply tamped energy into daydreams on a page, releasing the pent-up in the psyche. Letting the possible find itself in the undirected line. Wholeness reconnected. I know I often spend time on these pages speaking of intention, of the mystery of any given day. But I'd like to crack open this idea of the organic creative. See what's inside. The cook, the warrior, the musician, the builder, the dancer - any one of us. Creativity as active loving? The opening of the self? If creativity is, as Maisel writes, a basic component of living and a loving attitude, perhaps joy lies in the nature of intention. Engaging the action of creativity.
More than a noble word, creativity is a very human word.
July 5, 2011
July Grace
JULY
Heat.
Hard blue skies
and solitude
cape the lost years.
Absence of grace,
of summer sweetness
borne to blackened limbs
of winter trees.
Love,
fruit of patience.
Tart,
running juices down my chin
I eat of you, discover you.
Feed my heart
at the root of you.
In broken rough
the green limn of grace.
In grace
an answer to the years.
In you, July.
- Glenda Burgess
July, month of memories. Of birthdays, deaths, anniversaries, meetings and goodbyes. I wonder, does the power of memory deepen in the lengthening shadow cast from event to day of recollection? Perhaps the emotional punch of reminiscence arises from some scorched earth of the heart. A yellow line drawn around an experience etched into our souls, until finally the outline alone remains, a crime scene of a sort. Memory, minus catalyst, absent object, naked of touch.
A curious thing, when memory marks anniversary. We revisit importance, dip our toes in familiar waters. Feel again the tide of our lives pull against the shore of an important date, a significant choice, an unforgettable intimacy. Anniversaries become the old sofas of our souls. We lie on our backs in cushions shaped to our weight, at rest in the imprint of our loves, our years. Birthdays mark the new, the continuing, the next triumphant lap around the bend. Deaths, the last exit. But anniversaries linger in the then and now. They have certain beauty.
It seems memory is a koan. A wisdom teaching. Somewhere in the unassailable cause is an unfolding effect. In that tenuous blossom between moment and recollection lies some truth to be found, how we live and how we relive. Why regret, why fondness, why wonder? Why does night not obliterate day like the thousand passing suns of dark space? Love is the fruit of patience. Grace gives new green.
To July. To the book of friends and loves here and gone. To the tart taste of memory.
Heat.
Hard blue skies
and solitude
cape the lost years.
Absence of grace,
of summer sweetness
borne to blackened limbs
of winter trees.
Love,
fruit of patience.
Tart,
running juices down my chin
I eat of you, discover you.
Feed my heart
at the root of you.
In broken rough
the green limn of grace.
In grace
an answer to the years.
In you, July.
- Glenda Burgess
July, month of memories. Of birthdays, deaths, anniversaries, meetings and goodbyes. I wonder, does the power of memory deepen in the lengthening shadow cast from event to day of recollection? Perhaps the emotional punch of reminiscence arises from some scorched earth of the heart. A yellow line drawn around an experience etched into our souls, until finally the outline alone remains, a crime scene of a sort. Memory, minus catalyst, absent object, naked of touch.
A curious thing, when memory marks anniversary. We revisit importance, dip our toes in familiar waters. Feel again the tide of our lives pull against the shore of an important date, a significant choice, an unforgettable intimacy. Anniversaries become the old sofas of our souls. We lie on our backs in cushions shaped to our weight, at rest in the imprint of our loves, our years. Birthdays mark the new, the continuing, the next triumphant lap around the bend. Deaths, the last exit. But anniversaries linger in the then and now. They have certain beauty.
It seems memory is a koan. A wisdom teaching. Somewhere in the unassailable cause is an unfolding effect. In that tenuous blossom between moment and recollection lies some truth to be found, how we live and how we relive. Why regret, why fondness, why wonder? Why does night not obliterate day like the thousand passing suns of dark space? Love is the fruit of patience. Grace gives new green.
To July. To the book of friends and loves here and gone. To the tart taste of memory.
July 4, 2011
Sky Party
Shaken awake as children in northern Maine
to see the soundless sky flare red and green
we stood barefooted rubbing bleary eyes
and wondered of the meaning for our short lives
of such a wild display. Would there be another
day?
- from "Aurora," Katrina Roberts
The unexpected, the natural wonder. The manmade, the party in the sky. Fireworks mimic the auroras, the auroras speak of the beauty of deep space. Last night the sparklers and dazzling blossoms of pyrotechnic awe celebrating our nation's Independence Day rocketed skyward to hymns of American liberty and grace. Impressive, yes. But in reflection this morning I thought of the northern auroras: mysterious, the pleasure in the unexpected. We go through our days with our routines, chores to tick off, meetings and deadlines, kids sports, bills to pay. What happens when the skies above us suddenly tilt in a carousel of color and take our eyes upward? We pause. We think, as the poet writes, "of the meaning for our short lives."
I think the unexpected in nature has a way of reminding us to not make assumptions about life, about our presence in the world, about the outcome of any given moment. The auroras, that playful free wheeling dazzle of nature across the dark skies, is no human creation. An atmospheric display independent of human sustenance or survival. The auroras are exuberance, nature belting songs to the stars mindless of the stories we humans give our world. The amazing, the freakish and unexpected. The world awry, the night in a wash of electric color. Would there be another day?
This day I shall try to live without assumptions. See what crosses my sky that is not of me and my organized hours but of nature. Pleasure in the surprise of existence.
to see the soundless sky flare red and green
we stood barefooted rubbing bleary eyes
and wondered of the meaning for our short lives
of such a wild display. Would there be another
day?
- from "Aurora," Katrina Roberts
The unexpected, the natural wonder. The manmade, the party in the sky. Fireworks mimic the auroras, the auroras speak of the beauty of deep space. Last night the sparklers and dazzling blossoms of pyrotechnic awe celebrating our nation's Independence Day rocketed skyward to hymns of American liberty and grace. Impressive, yes. But in reflection this morning I thought of the northern auroras: mysterious, the pleasure in the unexpected. We go through our days with our routines, chores to tick off, meetings and deadlines, kids sports, bills to pay. What happens when the skies above us suddenly tilt in a carousel of color and take our eyes upward? We pause. We think, as the poet writes, "of the meaning for our short lives."
I think the unexpected in nature has a way of reminding us to not make assumptions about life, about our presence in the world, about the outcome of any given moment. The auroras, that playful free wheeling dazzle of nature across the dark skies, is no human creation. An atmospheric display independent of human sustenance or survival. The auroras are exuberance, nature belting songs to the stars mindless of the stories we humans give our world. The amazing, the freakish and unexpected. The world awry, the night in a wash of electric color. Would there be another day?
This day I shall try to live without assumptions. See what crosses my sky that is not of me and my organized hours but of nature. Pleasure in the surprise of existence.
June 28, 2011
Risk
FRIGATE
The anesthetist said sometimes this happens. It felt
like forever. We leaned in over your body to see what
your face might reveal. What your eyes were seeing
beneath closed lids, we'll never know and you won't tell.
Since we had urged you into surgery we felt responsible.
The ash pallor of skin, how shallow the breath
that curled from your lips and each fine line of sweat
beading high across your cheeks. Once years ago, when
you spoke, we leaned toward the fire. And they sped over
water in a frigate...we remember you saying, though
what we heard was "forget." Smoke hung in our sweaters
and hair all the next day and for the week after. Finally
you came to to peer at our stricken faces lining the shore
of your bed; splattered our shoes. I'm back, you said, hello.
- Katrina Roberts
Consider the actual fragility of life, of this precisely patterned web of intention we weave called "living." Now and then the fabric of the self comes unmoored and drifts. I have watched the spider's silken thread surf the sunlight on an unseen breeze, riding the nothing until the gossamer catches, tears, holds fast. To what? A twig, a leaf, a bit of solid organic something that is now a fresh stake, a new attempt at presence.
Not to fall too far into the esoteric or fanciful, but are we not in fact that spider web? Our lives arc through the uncertainties, tiny trapeze artists far in the azure sky. We imagine our safety nets will hold. Our elaborate constructions - legacies, careers, generations, memories, poems in the bottom of scotch glasses - all things that glimmer in the last light. We live within a kind of mental engineering, as though designing sky scrapers in our minds. Towers of ambition and steel accomplishment, shining glass reflections of accumulation and regret. When I read Katrina Robert's poem I hesitated on the reminder of the uncertainty of consciousness. This shore of separation we flirt with as we skim the waters - alive and damaged by life and struggling with life. And back, and gone. The threads break and the web floats. And perhaps it is the awareness of the drift that guides us to the next anchor. I have no answers here, but I do know that it is the risk of that leap from the trapeze bar that begins the roll through space, free. And it is the catch that ends the plunge.
From the open sea we guide in the travelers; rope our crafts back in snug at the dock. Journey's end. Until then, our lives, entwined in our memories as Roberts so eloquently put it, are balanced in the wordplay of "frigate" and "forget." Ships built for journeys. Risk. Hello. I'm back.
The anesthetist said sometimes this happens. It felt
like forever. We leaned in over your body to see what
your face might reveal. What your eyes were seeing
beneath closed lids, we'll never know and you won't tell.
Since we had urged you into surgery we felt responsible.
The ash pallor of skin, how shallow the breath
that curled from your lips and each fine line of sweat
beading high across your cheeks. Once years ago, when
you spoke, we leaned toward the fire. And they sped over
water in a frigate...we remember you saying, though
what we heard was "forget." Smoke hung in our sweaters
and hair all the next day and for the week after. Finally
you came to to peer at our stricken faces lining the shore
of your bed; splattered our shoes. I'm back, you said, hello.
- Katrina Roberts
Consider the actual fragility of life, of this precisely patterned web of intention we weave called "living." Now and then the fabric of the self comes unmoored and drifts. I have watched the spider's silken thread surf the sunlight on an unseen breeze, riding the nothing until the gossamer catches, tears, holds fast. To what? A twig, a leaf, a bit of solid organic something that is now a fresh stake, a new attempt at presence.
Not to fall too far into the esoteric or fanciful, but are we not in fact that spider web? Our lives arc through the uncertainties, tiny trapeze artists far in the azure sky. We imagine our safety nets will hold. Our elaborate constructions - legacies, careers, generations, memories, poems in the bottom of scotch glasses - all things that glimmer in the last light. We live within a kind of mental engineering, as though designing sky scrapers in our minds. Towers of ambition and steel accomplishment, shining glass reflections of accumulation and regret. When I read Katrina Robert's poem I hesitated on the reminder of the uncertainty of consciousness. This shore of separation we flirt with as we skim the waters - alive and damaged by life and struggling with life. And back, and gone. The threads break and the web floats. And perhaps it is the awareness of the drift that guides us to the next anchor. I have no answers here, but I do know that it is the risk of that leap from the trapeze bar that begins the roll through space, free. And it is the catch that ends the plunge.
From the open sea we guide in the travelers; rope our crafts back in snug at the dock. Journey's end. Until then, our lives, entwined in our memories as Roberts so eloquently put it, are balanced in the wordplay of "frigate" and "forget." Ships built for journeys. Risk. Hello. I'm back.
June 26, 2011
Continuation
It's today: all of yesterday dropped away
among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.
Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;
no one can stop the river of the dawn.
- from "Love Sonnet, XLIX," Pablo Neruda
One constant in the world is the measured, dispassionate passage of time. To the soldier, the performer or athlete, the passage of moments may condense into intense vibration: a harmonic in which the entirety of time, of focus and effort, seem to occur in a perpetual present. To the pacing father outside the delivery OR, the student in the last sections of a test, the woman or man waiting for the phone to ring, seconds lengthen and flatten like a twist of ribbon. However the beats of seconds are experienced, they mark and are gone. As Neruda writes so exquisitely, "no one can stop the river of the dawn."
If we really understand and accept this constant loss and influx of time, the inevitable scarcity followed by endless abundance, we find in the apex between the two balance. Without the future there is no possibility of desire, of loss, hence no worry or fear. In the irretrievable past, hesitations languish and nostalgia evaporates like smoke along with regret. We exist in the clear droplet of the possible - the moment we are aware. With all of its realities amongst the shadows of past and possibility. What does this really mean? That in the fullness of Now lies the completeness of living. If we cast our eyes forward, we live in the imaginary. If we cast our hearts back, we live in the lost.
In this way time is the ultimate friend. The firm hand on the elbow; the river guide. Neither tarry nor rush, we slip through existence in the company of time. The passage of time is finite and infinite. We begin mid-stream, and we exit the same. The leaf that falls in at the river bend and drifts out at the shallows. I find time's immutable present tense immensely reassuring. This moment, this now, is real. One after another, discrete pearls of experience.
What will you do with your today?
among the fingers of the light and the sleeping eyes.
Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps;
no one can stop the river of the dawn.
- from "Love Sonnet, XLIX," Pablo Neruda
One constant in the world is the measured, dispassionate passage of time. To the soldier, the performer or athlete, the passage of moments may condense into intense vibration: a harmonic in which the entirety of time, of focus and effort, seem to occur in a perpetual present. To the pacing father outside the delivery OR, the student in the last sections of a test, the woman or man waiting for the phone to ring, seconds lengthen and flatten like a twist of ribbon. However the beats of seconds are experienced, they mark and are gone. As Neruda writes so exquisitely, "no one can stop the river of the dawn."
If we really understand and accept this constant loss and influx of time, the inevitable scarcity followed by endless abundance, we find in the apex between the two balance. Without the future there is no possibility of desire, of loss, hence no worry or fear. In the irretrievable past, hesitations languish and nostalgia evaporates like smoke along with regret. We exist in the clear droplet of the possible - the moment we are aware. With all of its realities amongst the shadows of past and possibility. What does this really mean? That in the fullness of Now lies the completeness of living. If we cast our eyes forward, we live in the imaginary. If we cast our hearts back, we live in the lost.
In this way time is the ultimate friend. The firm hand on the elbow; the river guide. Neither tarry nor rush, we slip through existence in the company of time. The passage of time is finite and infinite. We begin mid-stream, and we exit the same. The leaf that falls in at the river bend and drifts out at the shallows. I find time's immutable present tense immensely reassuring. This moment, this now, is real. One after another, discrete pearls of experience.
What will you do with your today?
June 21, 2011
Summer Solstice
THE SUMMER TREE
In all the summer glut of green,
Serrated leaves, a dark and shifty screen,
Catalpa flowers, unseasonal surprise,
To tense the landscape up for drowsy eyes.
We come alive beholding points of white,
Among the leaves, immense rosettes alight.
The blessing of pure form that opens space
And makes us stop and look in sudden peace.
- May Sarton
Summer Solstice arrived with yesterday's twilight. The apex in the lengthening of daylight, the full face of one hemisphere of Earth basking in the sun. My dearest friend Cynthia, a Zen Buddhist priest, honors the solstice in a sacred way. She tunes in to the wisdom of nature. Ancient pagan rituals welcomed in the change of seasons, recognizing in the constancy of nature a primal truth which outlasts the brief presence of human lives. We speak with the earth, we honor her ways, we acknowledge our lives are embedded in the wisdom of natural rhythms.
The solstice and the equinox mark turning points in the ebb and flow of light. An equinox is the time at which the day and night come into balance, when there is exactly the same number of daylight hours as there are nighttime hours. The sun crosses Earth's equator during an equinox, which accounts for the balance in light. There are two equinoxes every year. One marks the first day of spring while the other marks the first day of autumn.
"Solstice" however, literally means "sun stands still." The solstice marks the end of the day's increase or decrease in daylight hours, depending on the time of year. The Winter Solstice marks the first day of winter, and is the day with the least amount of daylight hours. The Summer Solstice marks the first day of summer, the day with the greatest number of daylight hours. A hemisphere's nearest pole is pointing toward the sun at the Summer Solstice and away from it at the Winter Solstice.
For me personally, the equinox, the point of balance, is the most meaningful transition in the psychology of my life. I am a woman born on the cusp of two astrological signs, born on the 22nd of September - the autumnal equinox. Basking in the last of summer, embracing the fall. The twin equinoxes of autumn and spring are moments of illumination poised between the the past and the future. The 21st ends a cycle and the 22nd begins the new. My husband passed on the 22nd. A special person in my life was born in that same month, also on the 22nd. My life is as linked to the equinox and the calender date of the 22nd as the constellations in their rotations above us in dark space.
Summer Solstice is a dazzling culmination of energy, Light has opened itself, blooming. The moment is now. Now to dance, now to love, now to work, now to play. Embrace the gifts of your summer.
In all the summer glut of green,
Serrated leaves, a dark and shifty screen,
Catalpa flowers, unseasonal surprise,
To tense the landscape up for drowsy eyes.
We come alive beholding points of white,
Among the leaves, immense rosettes alight.
The blessing of pure form that opens space
And makes us stop and look in sudden peace.
- May Sarton
Summer Solstice arrived with yesterday's twilight. The apex in the lengthening of daylight, the full face of one hemisphere of Earth basking in the sun. My dearest friend Cynthia, a Zen Buddhist priest, honors the solstice in a sacred way. She tunes in to the wisdom of nature. Ancient pagan rituals welcomed in the change of seasons, recognizing in the constancy of nature a primal truth which outlasts the brief presence of human lives. We speak with the earth, we honor her ways, we acknowledge our lives are embedded in the wisdom of natural rhythms.
The solstice and the equinox mark turning points in the ebb and flow of light. An equinox is the time at which the day and night come into balance, when there is exactly the same number of daylight hours as there are nighttime hours. The sun crosses Earth's equator during an equinox, which accounts for the balance in light. There are two equinoxes every year. One marks the first day of spring while the other marks the first day of autumn.
"Solstice" however, literally means "sun stands still." The solstice marks the end of the day's increase or decrease in daylight hours, depending on the time of year. The Winter Solstice marks the first day of winter, and is the day with the least amount of daylight hours. The Summer Solstice marks the first day of summer, the day with the greatest number of daylight hours. A hemisphere's nearest pole is pointing toward the sun at the Summer Solstice and away from it at the Winter Solstice.
For me personally, the equinox, the point of balance, is the most meaningful transition in the psychology of my life. I am a woman born on the cusp of two astrological signs, born on the 22nd of September - the autumnal equinox. Basking in the last of summer, embracing the fall. The twin equinoxes of autumn and spring are moments of illumination poised between the the past and the future. The 21st ends a cycle and the 22nd begins the new. My husband passed on the 22nd. A special person in my life was born in that same month, also on the 22nd. My life is as linked to the equinox and the calender date of the 22nd as the constellations in their rotations above us in dark space.
Summer Solstice is a dazzling culmination of energy, Light has opened itself, blooming. The moment is now. Now to dance, now to love, now to work, now to play. Embrace the gifts of your summer.
June 19, 2011
Lost Fathers
my lost father
see where he moves
he leaves a wake of tears
see in the path of his going
the banners of regret
see just above him the cloud
of welcome see him rise
see him enter the company
of husbands fathers sons
- Lucille Clifton
Father's Day is a national day of commemoration created by a young woman in Spokane in 1910 in honor of her father, who raised her on his own after his wife's untimely death. I spent part of the day yesterday thinking of my own father, Thomas. Dead at 45, a career AF officer and fatherless himself, having lost his own dad in combat in WWII, my dad was an introverted, scientific man. He cooked. He liked Hank Williams, he had migraines. He liked to tinker. My father worked with his hands on projects of his own design, and he liked the wilderness, he was an Eagle Scout. He never said much, but he had a gentle smile. He was a quiet, withdrawn man as he grew older. Some of that a result of the harsh life of the military service and secretive work in cryptography during the cold war. Some of that the companionship of vodka. And there was the widening gulf between my parents as we grew to be a family of six, all the while moving every other year of my childhood. The oldest, I find it comforting to think of the things he and I did together - the hikes through the national forests, the projects we worked on, his large hands patiently steadying mine. The pained moment in the car, just the two of us my senior year of high school, our family destroyed by divorce, when he turned to me and said, "You can be anything you want to be, Glenda." I am saddest that my siblings have no memories at all of him, such is the scarring destruction of life post-divorce.
And then there are my own children. Also fatherless, Ken dying of cancer in their very early preteen years. And yet their world is full of men who have come into their lives as powerful and caring mentors. Friends, music teachers, college masters, family men, military commanders, professors. When they celebrate Father's Day they feel the core of love they grew from, for their childhood had a vivid bright sun of love. There are no forgotten memories of their dad, but a roadmap to what a father's love was and can be. I see my son growing into the kind of man his father was - strong, committed, fun and compassionate. And I see my daughter wanting to love men principled and with character like her father. The legacy is different from my father to theirs, yet our memories occupy the same place in the heart.
As you think about your own father and what that legacy of love may be, remember also what it is not. What you take forward into your own family life and leave behind. What your children will learn based on their heritage of grandfathers and fathers. We are a chain of memories woven into the generations. Nurturing plaited into a rope of commitment and strength. Celebrate the love, and let time erase the rest.
see where he moves
he leaves a wake of tears
see in the path of his going
the banners of regret
see just above him the cloud
of welcome see him rise
see him enter the company
of husbands fathers sons
- Lucille Clifton
Father's Day is a national day of commemoration created by a young woman in Spokane in 1910 in honor of her father, who raised her on his own after his wife's untimely death. I spent part of the day yesterday thinking of my own father, Thomas. Dead at 45, a career AF officer and fatherless himself, having lost his own dad in combat in WWII, my dad was an introverted, scientific man. He cooked. He liked Hank Williams, he had migraines. He liked to tinker. My father worked with his hands on projects of his own design, and he liked the wilderness, he was an Eagle Scout. He never said much, but he had a gentle smile. He was a quiet, withdrawn man as he grew older. Some of that a result of the harsh life of the military service and secretive work in cryptography during the cold war. Some of that the companionship of vodka. And there was the widening gulf between my parents as we grew to be a family of six, all the while moving every other year of my childhood. The oldest, I find it comforting to think of the things he and I did together - the hikes through the national forests, the projects we worked on, his large hands patiently steadying mine. The pained moment in the car, just the two of us my senior year of high school, our family destroyed by divorce, when he turned to me and said, "You can be anything you want to be, Glenda." I am saddest that my siblings have no memories at all of him, such is the scarring destruction of life post-divorce.
And then there are my own children. Also fatherless, Ken dying of cancer in their very early preteen years. And yet their world is full of men who have come into their lives as powerful and caring mentors. Friends, music teachers, college masters, family men, military commanders, professors. When they celebrate Father's Day they feel the core of love they grew from, for their childhood had a vivid bright sun of love. There are no forgotten memories of their dad, but a roadmap to what a father's love was and can be. I see my son growing into the kind of man his father was - strong, committed, fun and compassionate. And I see my daughter wanting to love men principled and with character like her father. The legacy is different from my father to theirs, yet our memories occupy the same place in the heart.
As you think about your own father and what that legacy of love may be, remember also what it is not. What you take forward into your own family life and leave behind. What your children will learn based on their heritage of grandfathers and fathers. We are a chain of memories woven into the generations. Nurturing plaited into a rope of commitment and strength. Celebrate the love, and let time erase the rest.
June 14, 2011
Salt and the Chipped Cup
SALT
And so the ritual begins at breakfast
again, where you don't want to love
the person you love. You spread jam
on the bread. You stare hard at the juice.
Your chin sets for the day.
You read the newspaper, grunting
with concern but you keep silent,
unwilling, afraid you'll forgive
if you gaze up at his eyes so instead
you look at his hands. He sips coffee in that
same way. Fingers skilled and not unkind,
touching and embracing the chipped cup,
elbow lifted up and out. Sweet, you think,
but no. You won't give up your anger.
The only part of you still burning. No,
as old as you are you must save yourself.
It's hot and bright in the kitchen.
Between you is too raw,
too far from the thing you once were.
Between you, on the table,
on a yellow plate, surrender is waiting -
you salt it and you eat it.
- Bonnie Bolling
I was taken by the love extant within the contained, unspoken fierceness of this poem. The very real sacrifice of the self to togetherness. Here is the core of tenderness nested in the prickliness of disagreement. The pettiness of the rebuff. And yet also the innocence in which love sees the beloved. The way in which we forgive and surrender, again and again. And still the self burns, hot and bright.
A poet that can take a moment from any relationship and make it universal, speak to the tenderness in anger, the solace in hot unbreachable retreat, speak of the self that defies togetherness and the binding of time, the complex meaning of all things from salt to chipped cups... These are the poets that inhabit our lives. Whose words offer more than expressions of observation or direction. Ordinary words that paint pictures from emotion, give wings to what moves us, grounds what crackles with heat.
Salt, as it turns out, is my favorite spice. I relish the deliciousness, the bite. Sea salt in a little dish beside the chipped cup.
And so the ritual begins at breakfast
again, where you don't want to love
the person you love. You spread jam
on the bread. You stare hard at the juice.
Your chin sets for the day.
You read the newspaper, grunting
with concern but you keep silent,
unwilling, afraid you'll forgive
if you gaze up at his eyes so instead
you look at his hands. He sips coffee in that
same way. Fingers skilled and not unkind,
touching and embracing the chipped cup,
elbow lifted up and out. Sweet, you think,
but no. You won't give up your anger.
The only part of you still burning. No,
as old as you are you must save yourself.
It's hot and bright in the kitchen.
Between you is too raw,
too far from the thing you once were.
Between you, on the table,
on a yellow plate, surrender is waiting -
you salt it and you eat it.
- Bonnie Bolling
I was taken by the love extant within the contained, unspoken fierceness of this poem. The very real sacrifice of the self to togetherness. Here is the core of tenderness nested in the prickliness of disagreement. The pettiness of the rebuff. And yet also the innocence in which love sees the beloved. The way in which we forgive and surrender, again and again. And still the self burns, hot and bright.
A poet that can take a moment from any relationship and make it universal, speak to the tenderness in anger, the solace in hot unbreachable retreat, speak of the self that defies togetherness and the binding of time, the complex meaning of all things from salt to chipped cups... These are the poets that inhabit our lives. Whose words offer more than expressions of observation or direction. Ordinary words that paint pictures from emotion, give wings to what moves us, grounds what crackles with heat.
Salt, as it turns out, is my favorite spice. I relish the deliciousness, the bite. Sea salt in a little dish beside the chipped cup.
