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

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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.

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Ramon's Rapture

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"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.

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Poem: The Arrival

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The Arrival

On a smooth spring day
    they alighted
    like the wispy feet of a wren
    hugging the twig of my upper lip —

the descent of my mother’s pout-wrinkles
    there in the rear view mirror
    on me.

I thought perhaps I could perpetuate
    a smile
    from then
      on

spreading them
    as beautifully as a bird’s wing in flight
    across my face
    and no one
    would be the wiser.

Then it came to me

that we are given every feather
    for flight

though we tuck them in
    so deftly
       satinly
          shiningly

All the feathers
    there at birth!
    Even in the lentil bean
    in the womb
    all the feathers

for flying arcs
    across the face of the sun
    setting as he does
    taking with him
    the rays of our young smile

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Skin

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deer hide near the road where we bike

You lay your skin aside like a towel, to dry, until next time. You return to it and find it stiffly weathered, caked with rain and air.

What did you feel while it was hanging there, removed from your body? Did you notice how the rain seemed to tap on every cell of you, each drop on your moist flesh a pinprick?

The breeze was a flame, not a drink quenching your skin’s thirst for refreshment. Your eyes and ears remembered, longing to share the pleasure with your cheeks.

What did your lover’s fingertips feel like, unable to slide like the wind down your back, curling up and over sun-warmed peaks? Their touch burned and halted, antagonized, wounded.

What did you long for while your skin was off? You asked to hurt less, and feel more. To read pain in the news and heal with just your bare touch. You said that you would lie under boards of a stormed and crumpled house, waiting to be rescued, if only you could put your skin back on, and feel the weight, the darkness and mystery of what it is to be found, alive.

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Nouvelle 55: Four Directions - The Star

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"Four Directions" by stained glass artist Stratoz

My friend Stratoz invited me to write a Nouvelle 55 based upon one of his stunning stained glass pieces. This poem is the result. I feel drawn to connect Stratoz' piece with art by Marc Chagall and Carl Jung (who found in mandalas representations of the Self), two people whose souls exploded in creativity, as bright and wild as Stratoz' "Four Directions." This piece is a square mandala, when most manadalas are a circle (some with a square inside). Read Stratoz' post about the healing ways of mandalas here.

The story of Israel — of Jews, of Arabs— of the great conflicts that never end, was made more poignant for me this morning when I read that the large Arab population in the Galilee region of Israel is predominantly Druze. Some believe that the Druze people descended from the Tribe of Zebulun, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Oh that the tribes of the world could be joined as skillfully as Stratoz melds the living colors of his stained glass, and as Chagall did his stained glass, and as Jung did the colors of the unbreakable self.

The Star

prompted by Stratoz' "Four Directions"

Break the mirror.
Four-square hands
reunite in sacred sand.

Gather saturation,
arrowed imagination

east-ended by the sea
a sky-blue Galilee

in the colors of this dream.
Gate my red
leaf-paint the green

Bright my heart—
     good this art
circling the sacred soul apart.

Pull into light, my star—
Self, borne into near
and far

Lithograph, by Marc Chagall

"The Tribe of Zebulun"

from The Twelve Maquettes
Of Stained Glass Windows
For Jerusalem, 1964

found here

The Red Cross, Carl Jung's illustration from The Red Book

Nouvelle 55 is a flash fiction written in exactly 55 words, based on a piece of art. 

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Poem: This Tired Body

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We rode with 3,000 or so people in the Zoo-de-Mack from Boyne Highlands to Mackinaw City Saturday. Mackinaw City is where the Mackinaw Bridge crosses from the Lower Peninsula of Michigan into the Upper Peninsula. It was wonderful to ride and play with our son Peter and his girlfriend for the weekend, one of the last times before they move to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks. (I am trying not to think about that.)

This Tired Body

This tired body settles into stillness
as if it is trillium floating
on the forest floor that I biked past for hours
two days ago. It did not appear to be reaching

for sun, the layered white spread
of it lying in repose under hemlocks like tossed
handkerchiefs waiting to be picked
up and returned to the fainting ladies
who dropped them.

Today the memory of climbing, of coasting, of steadying on,
coalesces with the bed of silence inside,
gently tugging me back to myself, to the rest
only I can grant, the surrender to age,
to the uphill bodily climb
of what remains of my life.

If only the mind, and the heart
were all of what it takes to live
and this tired body
were as light as tissue
petals reaching, finding pockets of light
even in deepest shadow.

I pedaled 51 miles, a triumph,
and now I languish, a weary kind of human
who could coast toward a finish line, but I want instead
to find sun at the leafy edges of my fingernails, wind
in my gnatty eyelashes, to keep finding a heart in
steady, pedaling thumps, pushing on,
pointing toward the light inside this life.

trillium for miles

coasting downhill, ahhhh

 trillium covered the forest floor

Mackinaw Bridge

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Cow

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Cow

I love the trapezoid of your broad side:

Blank writing tablet in the grass.
Brown four-legged stool in snow.
Hand rest. Slice of bread, toasted.
Platter. Room divider. Steady wall
for shouldering, thinking. Wagon.
Tank standing or rumbling, peacefully.
Wardrobe, portmanteau, closet.
Leather travel chest. Longing.
Shield. Mother. Father.
Hooved bathtub. Man’s chest.
Bed. Melancholy. Repose.

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