Birth mandala, baby poem, and a wee announcement

-

I wrote a poem for my friend, the Renaissance woman Dutchbaby, at her request for the occasion of a baby shower for a friend. Dutchbaby introduced me to the idea of birth mandalas, which take Carl Jung's concept of mandalas representing the Self, to the next level: an image for a mother to focus her imagination on the emerging identity of her baby. That's one of Jung's mandalas at the right, which I happened upon after writing the poem, with its image of paisley.

Dutchbaby colored a mandala, below (from online mandala coloring pages), in PhotoShop for her expecting friend, who has Swedish heritage. From it I feel my own connection with Sweden through Grandma Olive. The blue and yellow remind me of tole painting on a pitcher or a barn's peak, or in Carl Larsson's kitchen. Dutchbaby paired my poem with her mandala as a gift to the mom-to-be Saturday. (Bless this baby, oh universe.)

Dutchbaby did not know when she requested the poem that we have our own baby on the way. I am going to be a gramma! And so I offer this poem not only to a friend's friend, but also for my daughter Lesley, and the little poppy seed growing inside her to the great size of a kidney bean at this moment, with webbed feet, a bulging head, and joints in her/his knees. Imagine.

Don and I are over the moon, and no amount of exclamatory punctuation is enough for what I feel, so I used just the one, but picture exclam-infinity. (Bless this baby, oh universe.) How about this photo of them with my nephew's baby, Evangeline? (Bless Eva, too.)

The multi-bonus is that Lesley & Brian are moving to Michigan where he begins a teaching job in the fall (exclam-infinity). We will be close by when baby enters the world (due in January), no need for booking flights at just the right time to NYC. Just hop in the car and drive an hour and a half.

Our son Peter (right, with his sister on her 30th birthday this year) just moved to L.A. to join his band Lord Huron (all the band members are from Michigan). Such is life, the child who lived close moves far away, and the one who lived far away moves close. But we are incredibly excited for Peter and feel, well . . . expectant about this change for him.

Dutchbaby's mandala and my poem are below.

A note about koans (in the poem title): When Dutchbaby told me that the expectant mom said the baby was "sitting like Buddha" in her belly, I decided to shape the poem in koan-like questions. (The image of a sitting Buddha also made me think of paisley.) A koan is a question a Zen sage asks a pupil that does not have an answer from the reasoning mind. A famous koan is: What is the sound of one hand clapping? "The master is not looking for a specific answer but for evidence that the disciple has grasped the state of mind expressed by the kōan itself." More on koans here. Samples of koans at The Gateless Gate. If you listen carefully to the podcast of the poem, you can hear the birds that chirp incessantly outside my office window. Does a bird's song answer the heart's questions?

Koan-like Questions of a Mother to her Unborn Child

Is there something quieter than sleep?

      My whispers circle you like jasmine vine, the way

      my arms want to, when my palm will cup your head,

      my thumb in the shallow petal of your temple.

      Terrace.

Where is the pocket in the nightshirt of early morning?

      You didn’t notice just now that I turned over in bed, rolling

      first onto my right side, then onto my left.

      Leaves everywhere on blue-white cotton.

What shape are you?

      In my teardrop body you sleep, sucking your thumb —

      puzzle piece in the circle of your mouth.

      Paisley baby, paisley thumb,

      paisley me, paisley breast. Lace.

What is grace?

      I pull myself up, like a camel, into a sitting position,

      lean left, push off, grunt, rise, stand, and low into the sway

      of this me, your cradle, creaking at my hips.

      Caravanserai.

Do you remember it, that hymn from the old church

through the window as we slowly climbed the stair?

      Holding the bedpost, carved like an altar,

      my eyes closed, up from the organ

      in my chest the music — unnamed song

      through the vibrating reed of my watery throat.

      Repeat.

      Stained glass moon. Bosphorus.

Can you see me in the dark?

      My hand rests on the olive of your shoulder,

      or is that a heel? Hush, keep sleeping, don’t worry

      about positions. You are touching everything

      in any case.

      Mountain magnolia blossom.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here. (You can hear the birds outside my office window if you listen carefully.)

Poem notes: 

Caravanserai: the fortress-like hostelries for sojourners on the Silk Road.

Bosphorus: the body of water between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul; 'bosphorus' means 'throat' in Turkish; Lesley went to school on the European side, crossing the Bosphorus every morning and evening from and to our home on the Asian side.

-

-

Assistir Filme »

Poem: Morning Vanity

-

-

Morning Vanity

Sitting at my vanity, the lighted mirror
blinks on and hovers like a moon. The
chiaroscuro room is dark outside
the nimbus of light. A glazed vintage
dimestore bluebird seems to sleep
at my elbow, while outside the window,
birdsong hooks and whips morning awake.
What are we to them in our daily ritual
of rekindled radiance? My eyebrow brush
nudges an orderly code. Pastel blush roses
my cheeks that puff out like clouds. Off goes
the moon with a click. A lacquered kiss
with a licked finish, and the sun rises.

-

-

Assistir Filme »

Poem: The Mystery of an Unopened Box

-

-

I have moved a lot of times. After growing up in one Michigan town (we moved away for one year to a town north of that town when I was in fifth grade), I moved to Chicago for college. From Chicago to Oregon. Back to Michigan, then to California where the kids were born, and from there to Istanbul for three years. Then back to Michigan where we've been these 23 years. (We've also moved many times within Michigan since then, to four different houses in four different towns.)

This summer our children are both making big moves to different parts of the country from where they have been. For some reason this morning I saw their moves to new locales the way I see these boxes in my collection of boxes.

The poem may be oblique, I can't tell sometimes what will speak to you, and what will be silent. Why can't you just read my mind? and vice versa? (I do so thank you for reading.) There may be too many metaphors, and it could no doubt use more work. But I am posting it all the same, for something in its wandering fits the occasion of these moves for me, as I look back on my own moves and changes, realizing that I was always still me, myself, the becoming I, even when what arranged itself around me was in flux. Well, when aren't things in flux? And for that matter, when is a poem ever finished?

The Mystery of an Unopened Box

When you move
to a new location
you stare at it
as at an unopened box.

All your changes
up till now lie across
your body, the zebra
stripes of your life, each with
its corners and turns, feathery
edges, some

elongated tapers
with the elegance of fingers
across familiar string
and fret, others
squat and fat,
nubbed keloid regrets,
missing buttons
from your shirt.

Like your preaching
grandfather’s
eyebrows on your face, or
the flaring keyholes
of your mother’s nostrils,
it is still your

face, just as it is
your box after all
that you will open
even though there are
traces of us others
and your own past
contained in it. They are your

nostrils open to their key—
the fragrance of each
fear, every engineering
angel’s highwayed labyrinth
that rises and
drops again over the velvet
hills, where

hope
like a Joshua tree
waits, arms lifted
for rain
that will most definitely fall
as the sky opens
onto the dusty floor
of a desert valley.

 -

-

Assistir Filme »

Poem: Battle over the Meadow

-

-

Battle over the Meadow

You wouldn’t know it
but there is a battle
over the meadow

and if you have
emperor eyes
from thirty feet

you can see a spark
of red iridescently, and green
the color of a mallard’s

cravat, flashing
like tiny, distant epaulettes
of a Russian

officer under the almost
melancholy gaze
of Napoleon

across a field
assessing numbers, the
morning, the sun’s saber,

the black locust tree’s strategic
conversation with
robin about the worm,

the bottle-green line
of spider silk
crossed and recrossed

in the attack of the dragonflies
whose wings pulse and quiver
in the sun, shuttling

and defending their snatch
of gnats
and mosquitoes

whose air belongs to them
fleetingly
but deliciously, the morning

being so frangible
with almost
immortality

-

-

Assistir Filme »

The essentials you can't throw away

-

-

Jar of mayo, tub of Earth Balance, Thai dipping sauce, leftover brown rice, and so much other stuff that you wonder how it filled a fridge and why you needed it, stuff that enriches life but losing it does not take life away when it goes bad in a power outage — these dove into black trash bags last night. It just so happened that we cleaned out the powerless fridge 48 hours after losing power, and just about an hour before power was restored, which was a couple of days before it was expected by the power company.

While we camped out in our house without power or running water after high winds took out electric lines this week, I was unsettled. It took a couple of days to understand that although I was not unhappy or annoyed, I was strewn about inside, like the inside of a tent mid-vacation week.

I remember my ex-brother-in-law Hank whenever something got broken or ruined saying: No one died. Of course sometimes people do die. And then we cope differently. But these minor, no-death losses are the best ad hoc conferences, like pep rallies for the normal life we get lost in. I was knocked off-center for a couple of days, I had butterflies in my stomach. When I became aware of that, I got to thinking about what I need to do to get back to the center. Do I need running water and electricity for it?

Thoreau said:

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

So I ask myself, What are my essential riches (in the Thoreau sense)?

Solitude. Conversation with loved ones. A writing tablet and pen (or Microsoft Word). A few books of poetry. A window and a door, with Nature outside, even one leaf-bearing plant on a balcony.

And music.

Before the storm, several blog friends had posted about the death of Gil Scott-Heron, the guy that everyone had heard chanting and ranting “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Everyone except me. Right that moment, I wanted to ask all of you what your essential music is, what shaped you, what do you return to for comfort and soul centering? I wanted to ask you before one more minute was thrown into the past. As a preacher’s kid who thought it was oh-so-worldly when I received a radio for my twelfth birthday, on which I could listen to music from the pop charts, I missed a lot of great stuff that was played in different venues. My musical muse is Joni Mitchell, and she is far from shabby, even if the radio did play her song about being turned on like itself. But I missed Leonard Cohen, Gil Scott-Heron, Miles Davis, and so many other artists who play and sing the essential music of people's souls.

So, my post-ad hoc conference on the essentials of life leads me to confer with you wonderful folks. If you care to answer, what do you consider your essential music? Be specific please, and maybe not too prolific. Be easy on me. It could be you discovered it four decades ago, or last week, as I did Gil Scott-Heron. I will appreciate your response, and I will begin exploring, listening, choosing for myself and building a library rack for my iTunes turntable. I have the rest of my life to listen, however long or short that may be. As I evolve, maybe what will be essential to me ten years from now I haven't even heard of yet.

Postscript: I recognize that for some of you, this is like asking you to pick a wildflower from your meadow of uncountable flowers and tell me why it is your favorite. This is odd, and naïve, I feel how odd it is, like Music Essentials 101. It changes with the day and time. Ahhh, what I want is perhaps impossible to answer, to retrieve what I never had. Learning anything from lists may be a bad place to start. Suddenly I don't like my request. But I am going to leave it and see what comes of it. Maybe what will come of it is that this is not a good way to learn such things. Eh what?

How about this question: Today, what music does your soul long for?

-

-

Assistir Filme »

Half-masted, and there's a woman in the girls' bathroom

-

-

-

-

I've added these pics from our drive into town where we saw this.

It looks as though the top of the spruce tree

was broken off by wind and fell on the flag

that was up for Memorial Day, 

then the treetop was blown up against the house.

I'd say both the flag pole and the tree are "half-masted".

Power winds of 80 mph tore 100-year-old maple trees out of the ground or broke them at the base last evening while we were shopping at Trader Joe's an hour from home. The drive home was safe, but the fields, driveways and roads were littered with fifty-foot trees and branches. Anxiety built as we approached the farm, wondering what we would find. But thankfully just one maple branch lay on the driveway, and sticks around the yard.

Power is out, however, until late Wednesday Thursday, because apparently a power station was hit. So we have to find alternate ways to wash (we have a well, which uses an electric pump), cook and power up devices like cell phones, laptops and the internet air card. The bottom photo is where I took a sponge bath and washed my hair this morning after working at home in the garden and getting dirt in my finger and toenails: the girls' bathroom at Don's elementary school.

The happy list:

• No one in the state of Michigan was seriously injured in this rush of storms, though around 100,000 homes are without power.
• Our home was not damaged, and there was little to clean up.
• Having laptops so we could get online last evening and find out the estimated time to power restoration and be in touch with family and friends.
• Being clean and getting my hair washed before going back to work tomorrow (today's a holiday here: Memorial Day, a memorable one).
• There's power at work (yes, this is good, there is much to catch up on after spring term).
• It's finally getting warm today, in fact HOT, around 90°F (32°C), but ha, no AC
• Peter and Andrea are coming over to play corn hole to celebrate the holiday this afternoon, and they're bringing sushi; beer is chilling on ice in the cooler at home while I finish up this post at a fourth grader's desk.
• A camp stove with propane gas for meals the next couple of days.
• No doubt more will float in on the hot breeze . . . 

I hope you are safe and enjoying Memorial Day if you are in the U.S., and a normal Monday everywhere else.

-

-

Assistir Filme »

Ramon's Rapture

-

-

"Praising Prairie Dogs" by Anthony Falbo
used with permission of the artist

Squeals and laughter bounce on the air between the school and the schoolyard's bordering maples. Mr. M. presides over afternoon recess. His fourth graders dangle from monkey bars, swing on canvas swings, huddle in gossipy conversations, or play tag. Some kids in this grade are feeling the first tugs of the exhilarating and mysterious upswing of puberty. One of them, Ramon, stands by Mr. M., watching his classmates. He happens to be OCD, perhaps slightly autistic, and is loved by everyone in the class including Mr. M for his sweet, funloving nature. For example, he does not allow Mr. M.'s desk to remain chaotic, as it is wont to do on its own, and he teases Mr. M. with mock sternness when it begins to pile up with unfiled papers and miscellany. Then he proceeds to tidy it up, promising not to throw anything away.

Girls are running around the big fourth grade teacher and the tall fourth grade boy, playing tag, especially targeting the boys. Occasionally Ramon takes refuge from tag, of which he is usually the center. Sometimes he needs to escape that decisive touch. Sometimes he wants to be caught. At this moment, he stands by his teacher, "safe" from the maelstrom of arms, legs and whoops. A few girls break from tag to catch a breath and come up to discuss something serious with Mr. M. — a minor dispute needs settling. Ramon stands close behind them listening, his eyes closed, face slightly tilted toward the sky. Then off the girls run, captivated by the next chase.

As soon as the girls are clear Ramon says with his eyes still closed, "Mr. M., did you smell their hair?"

Mr. M. replies, "No, did it smell bad?"

Ramon moans out his answer, "Ohhhhhh" and hugs himself, swaying, his face upswung.

-

-

Assistir Filme »