Poetry Friday: Rain

Sometimes here in Asunción, as we're heading into a South American autumn, it rains all day and all night. The roof on the room where I teach is made of tin, and sometimes we just have to stop class and listen to the noise that drowns us out. "Drowns" is the right word, as I imagine the roof giving way and the water coming in and washing us all away.

One day I read "April Rain Song" with a group of students. I had misjudged my audience, and their main response was to giggle madly at the word "kiss." (I'll put a video of that poem at the end of my post.) And certainly the poem seems much too mild for the kind of rain we have here. Rather than "kiss," maybe we could say "batter." Instead of "a little sleep song" it's more like "a pounding cacophony." 

I went looking for rain poems that were more in tune with these rains. I searched "monsoon," but nothing seemed quite right. Then I found this one, "Rain Before Seven," by Vincent Starrett, published in Poetry Magazine in 1943. It's not talking about Paraguay, but it does capture that way that the rain erases everything else, and makes you think of oceans and the end of the world.

Here it is:

 

Rain Before Seven

Vincent Starrett

 

It was raining hard when I left my bed and stood

By the window overlooking the trees and street;

And the sound of the rain was the sound of the rain in flood:

There was only the sound of the rain in the steady beat.

 

I thought: there is rain like this on the farthest seas;

There is darkness over the earth, and rain must fall;

I heard its ceaseless drip in the leaves of trees.

And the busy race of water beside the wall.

 

I thought: at the very end it will be like this,

When the long last night comes on, and the only sound

Is the sound of the steadfast rain, its chuckling hiss

In the leaves of trees, its beat on the sodden ground.

 

But I thought: if I live a thousand years and a night

I shall not forget how the quick drops gleamed and shone

Like beads of fire on the leaves, and the secret light

Of a street lamp, waiting up for the laggard dawn.

And here's my haiku from yesterday's rainstorm:

On the soccer goal
Yellow birds in driving rain
Squawking, “Kiskadee!”

 

© Ruth Bowen Hersey

 Amy has this week's roundup at The Poem Farm.

Poetry Friday Roundup Is Here: The Week's Collection

Welcome to this week's Poetry Friday roundup!

 

For those of you who don't know, I moved to Asunción, Paraguay, with my husband in January after many years living in Haiti. When I signed up for today, months ago, I thought, "By March I'll be settled into my new home, ready to welcome guests. Perfect!" Well, of course, I'm far from settled in, though I'm headed in that direction. And while I can't say I'm fully at home yet, I am finding lots to love in this new place.

 

I think of this weekly roundup as a collection of what everyone has been reading, writing, and thinking about throughout the week. So today I have a haibun about a collection from last Saturday.

 

 

Morning Collection

My brother picked me up at 5:15. We met a friend and his son in the pre-dawn darkness and drove out into the wild. We were in search of birds, and did we ever find them! A hundred and three species, collected one by one as the morning progressed: small, hidden among branches, or enormous, flapping overhead: familiar, or brand new to me. We peered through our binoculars and camera lenses, locating colors and shapes. My brother and his friend spoke the names in Spanish and English, some in Guarani. They said the scientific names, too, in Latin. The words flocked in my mind, abundant and spectacular like the hundred and fifty Wood Storks rising on huge black and white wings against the sunrise.

Morning collection:
Spanish words, photos, bird list,
Mud on my new boots.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Leave your collectibles in the comments, and I will round them up the old-school way as the day progresses. I can't wait to see what you've brought to share! 

 

Collection from Thursday Evening

Linda has a review of Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's new book (which looks fabulous, by the way), plus a new star poem on her padlet. Thanks for getting here first, Linda, and for these treasures! 

Jama is sharing Diana Hendry's "What is the Pond Doing?" and gearing up for National Poetry Month with a collection of links to poetry projects people will be doing. Yay, it's almost NPM!

Michelle, like many of us, has her heart in Ukraine these days. She's sharing some art, and then an ekphrastic poem she wrote to go with it. 

Sally lives in the southern hemisphere as I do, and her post this week is decidedly summery, with bees and a swimming pool.

Laura's thinking of Ukraine too, and also reminding us that everyone belongs.

Matt is sharing about Poetry Out Loud and has a poem from the National Youth Poet Laureate.

Catherine has a bird-related post this week, too!

Laura S. is thinking about birds, too, plus she has a giveaway! 

It's past my bedtime here, and I haven't even visited all these links I just rounded up yet. I've been out on a night bike ride in glorious moon-drenched Asunción! I'll be by tomorrow, folks, and I'll keep rounding up links in the morning. Bye for now! 

Collection from Thursday Night

Good morning! Here are the links that came in overnight.

Karen has a poem about time. She's wondering about the poet, and reflecting on time herself.

Janice is watching, photographing, and writing about pronghorn sheep in Wyoming.

Ramona had a serendipitous find yesterday. Enjoy, Ramona! 

Tabatha has heard the mermaids singing, each to each, and she shares their song with us! 

Patricia knows what the world needs now...

Linda is sharing Lawrence Ferlinghetti and thinking about Ukraine.

Alan has some wonderful song lyrics for us today.

Carol is recovering from cataract surgery and still finding time to write every day. She wishes us a happy St. Patrick's Day, with a poem! 

Once again, I've made only the briefest of visits to these links, so I look forward to exploring them more later. But right now, I have to go to work. I'm on morning duty this week, greeting kids as they come on campus starting at 6:40 AM! I'm a morning person, and that's still early. Back later with more links! Have a wonderful Friday! 

Collection from Friday Morning

 

Irene has a chameleon poem today! I'm loving her current series. Head on over and take a look!

Marcie is thinking about collecting too, and she shares how she does it. Really interesting, and welcome, Marcie! I don't think we've met yet! 

Mary Lee has a review of a new book of poetry.

Margaret has been writing triolets with her student, Chloe. (I love Chloe posts.)

Christie has a moment that took her breath away.

Heidi is thinking about metrics.

Amy has a poem about a secret cloud.

Rose wrote a color poem about yellow. 

Collection from Friday Afternoon

 

Anastasia is booktalking Laura Purdie Salas' new book We Belong.

I'm home from work now, and Friday has a few hours left! Keep those links coming! I may even put in a Saturday Morning section if need be. 

 

 

Collection from Friday Night

Denise and her husband are painting a house, and it's not exactly fun! She wrote about it, and while I didn't read it until Saturday morning, up early to go out birding again, it did technically come in on Friday night.

 

I'm off to collect some more birds for my list, and I'll round up any Saturday links later. It's been fun, friends! Hope you have a wonderful week, and see you next Friday! 

Reading Update

Book #7 of the year was the 2022 Newbery winner, The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera. When I was going to have to wait 14 weeks to borrow it from the library on my Kindle, I broke down and bought it. I was glad I had; I enjoyed it very much. 

Book #8 was Everywhere Blue, by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz. This is a verse novel with a 12 year old protagonist, Maddie, whose older brother has disappeared. It feels to Maddie as though her family and the world are falling apart, and that's a feeling many readers her age may share. There's a realistic but hopeful outcome to her story. This book won the Cybils award for poetry this year.

Book #9 was The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey. I didn't predict the direction this novel about cloning was headed, and I certainly didn't get the deep metaphorical resonances revealed in an afterword that made me want to go read the whole thing again. 

Note: both of those last two books are available at very low prices on Kindle right now, as I'm writing this post. I have no idea how long the deals will last!

Book #10 was a graphic novel, When Stars are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson. It's about Somali brothers, one of them with an intellectual disability, living in a refugee camp in Kenya. Wow, what a memorable and excellent book, an unflinching look at what it's really like to grow up in a place like Dadaab, and yet -- somehow -- never give up hope. I read in the reviews that it's very brightly colored. My copy, borrowed from the library on my Kindle, was black and white, but the art still blew me away, along with the story. Highly recommended.

Poetry Friday: Thunderstorm

I'm a little bit overwhelmed these days, and not keeping up much online. There are so many new things to learn and so much work to do. I haven't even been around to read everyone's posts the past few weeks. And next week I'm hosting, so I need to get my act together!

This evening we had a summer thunderstorm here in Asunción, and I went looking for a thunderstorm poem. I found this one, by Judy Longley, published in Poetry magazine in 1999. It begins this way:

Thunderstorm the Day the War Ended

Arkansas, 1945

 

leaden heat explodes into quicksilver

a confetti parade the cottonwood flings

when the radio shrills     good news

chickens blossom like chrysanthemums

I love how this poem juxtaposes the ordinary summer evening with the aftermath of war. Even when it's over, it's not really over. Every stanza has some subtle reminder of that. The poem made me think of the terrible war going on now in Ukraine, and the ordinary lives disrupted by it. Click through to read the rest of the poem here.

This week's roundup is here.

 

Poetry Friday: Bicycles

 

It's been years since I've done any cycling. My husband rode in the Haiti years, but that was just a bit much for me. But now, in our new home, we are cycling together again. On a tandem. I'm in the middle of a very busy day, and have no time for more bicycling information right now. Maybe another time. But I didn't want to miss Poetry Friday today.

I was wondering last night whether Pablo Neruda wrote an ode to bicycles. Well, of course he did. Everything I found online uses the same translation, but nobody identifies who did it. This poem isn't in any of my three Neruda books.

Here are some lines from the middle:

A few bicycles

passed me by,

the only

insects

in

that dry

moment of summer,

silent,

swift,

translucent;

they 

barely stirred

the air.

Here's the rest, or you could look here for the text in Spanish and English.

 

Kathryn Apel has today's roundup! 

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Ashes

 

On the first Thursday of every month, a group of us join to blog about a spiritual topic. I'm hosting today, on the first Thursday of March, and since yesterday was Ash Wednesday, I chose the topic of Ashes. Feel free to join in and link to a post on your blog, whether you've ever posted with our group before or not! I'll round up the contributions as the day goes on.

For at least a thousand years, Christians have used ashes in their worship during Lent, and especially on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Ashes are associated with penitence and grief as far back as the Old Testament. And in the modern observance, it's common to burn the palms from Palm Sunday and save the ashes to use the next year on Ash Wednesday. I love the symbolism of that, the way our joys can turn to sorrows in the blink of an eye, and then back into joys just as unpredictably.

In the Ash Wednesday service, the ashes are placed on the worshiper's forehead, and the words spoken are, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." It's a reminder that you won't live forever, a reminder of frailty and impermanence. The ashes usher in the six weeks of Lent, when Christians prepare for Holy Week, the remembrance of Jesus' death on the cross on Good Friday, followed by His resurrection on Easter Sunday. Depending on where you were yesterday, you may have seen people going around with smudges on their foreheads, remnants of ashes. Maybe you had some of that on your own forehead. 

In Isaiah 61:3, we read: "…to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." The ashes aren't supposed to be a permanent adornment. There are seasons of ashes, and seasons of beauty. And there are seasons when the beauty and the ashes are all mixed up together, joy and grieving coexisting in our lives inextricably. Whether or not you mark Ash Wednesday by having ashes imposed on your forehead, you've experienced the ashes of life. Maybe you're experiencing them right now.

Back in 2018, I wrote this poem for Ash Wednesday:

 

Ashes

I’m here for the ashes.
I’m here for the dust,
for remembering that that is what I am,
and that that is where I will return.

I’m here for the ashes,
the remains of what I loved,
the palms from last year,
burned
and carefully preserved,
precious dust.
Those palms mattered
too much to toss their remains away.
They became today’s ashes.
And that’s why I’m here.

I’m here for the ashes,
for the reminder that though my flesh is solid now,
it will die.
The smudge on my forehead
will wash away,
but I will still be mortal,
corruptible,
headed for my expiration date.

I’m here for the ashes,
so smear them on me,
whispering as you do,
“Remember,
remember,
remember that you are dust.”
Precious dust,
but dust nonetheless,
a temple filled with the Holy Spirit
that one day will fall
silent
and
still.

I’ll leave with the ashes,
and through my day I’ll see others
with dusty marks on their faces,
as they too have been reminded
of what they are.
Beautiful and impermanent,
valuable and temporary,
glorious
and
needing to be
swept up
with a broom.

There are other places to get
roses and accolades,
work and fulfillment,
conversation and snacks,
but this is the only place I know
where they are imposing ashes today
so
that’s why I’m here.
For the ashes.

 

© Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

During Lent this year, I have a lot to rejoice over, and a lot to mourn. It's one of those very complicated seasons. And the ashes remind me that neither the highs or the lows last forever. They both pass, washed away and replaced by something we won't even see coming. And God's presence will be with us through all of it, guiding and sustaining, saving and preserving. 

Chris is reflecting on ashes. What stays? What goes? What effect does the fire have on us?

Margaret is remembering that although she is impermanent, she is also enough.

Ruth Ayres is learning lessons from a season of enforced stillness.

 

Maureen shares powerful thoughts on a "time of ashes," from seeing President Biden with that tell-tale smear on his forehead to dealing with death in her own life. 

Carol is thinking about Lenten seasons in the past, and how this year will be different.

 

Denise, like me, just made a move to a different country. She's thinking about the ashes in her new home. 

 

Karen said she almost skipped today. You'll agree with me that it's great that she didn't!

 

Poetry Friday: Birthday and QWP

Ever since I turned 50 a few years ago, I've been working on my QWP, my Quinquagenarian Writing Project. I keep a folder for each year with the drafts I've worked on. Looking back on this year's, as my birthday approaches, I've found (not at all to my surprise) that the numbers are down. In the months since my last birthday, many things have changed. My husband and I packed up the house where we'd lived for 20 years. We're in new jobs in a new school in a new country. It's a season of endings and beginnings, grieving and rejoicing, a season of learning a new language and culture, looking forward and also remembering. It's also a time of not writing a whole lot.

A lifetime ago, when I was 19, I tried on a yellow dress in a shop in Paris. I wrote a poem about that, and you can read it here. In the poem, I reflected on how a new dress can make you feel like a new person, and how our identities develop through the choices we make. And how I am somehow always the same old person.

This year, thinking again about some of those ideas, and looking to put at least one more piece in my QWP file before I start a new one after my birthday, I wrote this:

Esta Falda

Duolingo prompts me again and again
To repeat the words
“Esta falda es demasiado cara,”
This skirt is too expensive.

I feel I am unlikely to say this.
If I find the skirt too expensive,
I will say nothing.
I will simply sidle out of the store,
hoping to remain unnoticed.

But maybe the Spanish-speaking me
is a little bolder.
Maybe she feels she must express her views,
holding forth
on the appropriate price for a new skirt.
She’ll send back her meal
when it isn’t cooked to perfection.
She’ll speak up.
She’s not the sidling type.

She may even climb on a soapbox
on a South American street corner
and make speeches,
calling for justice for the downtrodden,
demanding reasonably priced skirts,
but also living wages for those who sew them.

I want to be that me,
so I repeat the words,
tentatively at first,
but soon with more assurance,
until my voice rings out:
Esta falda,
esta falda,
esta falda
es demasiado cara!

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Here's to a new me on this year's birthday, or at least a few improvements in the same old me. 

Tricia has today's roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect

Poetry Friday: Poems with Facts

I signed up weeks ago for a Crowdcast put on by the Alaska Quarterly Review on February 16th, but then I forgot about it and went to sleep, but fortunately they recorded it, and I got to watch it the next day. And now you can watch it too, here. It's Jane Hirshfield and Dorianne Laux talking about turning facts into poems. It's so good. (There's some salty language; not for children.) 

 

 

 

Laura Purdie Salas has today's roundup.  

Reading Update

In the first six weeks of this year, I've finished five books. I'm also including in my list one book that I'm pretty sure I read in the last week of 2021, but didn't add to my list yet.

Book 1 of 2022 was Kate Bowler's book Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved. Bowler did an academic study of the prosperity gospel movement in American Christianity, that idea that God blesses people who follow Him with material prosperity. After her diagnosis as a young woman with stage IV colon cancer, she had to confront the ideas she'd learned about and the way they differed from her own experience. In this memoir, she examines "Everything happens for a reason" and other clichés that people like to say when you're going through suffering. 

Book 2 was a reread, Out of Africa, by Karen Blixen. On the one hand, this is a story of colonialism and entitlement and cringey attitudes about race. But on the other, it's a story of going to a new place and making a home. It's as the second that I read it. There's this passage, quoted in the movie in Meryl Streep's Danish accent, "If I know a song of Africa, -- I thought, -- of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?" Blixen famously went to Africa with all her silver and china, and set up a beautiful home there where people loved to come visit. "To the great wanderers amongst my friends," she writes, "the farm owed its charm, I believe, to the fact that it was stationary and remained the same whenever they came to it. They had been over vast countries and had raised and broken their tents in many places, now they were pleased to round my drive that was steadfast as the orbit of a star. ... I had been on the farm longing to get away, and they came back to it longing for books and linen sheets and the cool atmosphere in a big shuttered room; by their campfires they had been meditating upon the joys of farm life." The downside, of course, of making such a haven is that eventually one has to pack it up. Blixen writes affectingly of selling her furniture, sitting in her nearly empty house on her crates of books, and saying goodbye to her property with her friend Ingrid: "We walked together from the one thing on the farm to the other, naming them as we passed them, one by one, as if we were taking mental stock of my loss, or as if Ingrid were, on my behalf, collecting material for a book of complaints to be laid before destiny." She adds, "by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all, for fate to get rid of." 

Book 3 was New Boy, by Tracy Chevalier. I am a big Chevalier fan, loving her books based on works of art, but I didn't much like this one, which is a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello, set in a sixth grade class. 

Book 4 was the latest Elizabeth George book, Something to Hide. This is the twenty-first Inspector Lynley novel, and as always my favorite part is the relationships of the police. I will always read a book in this series.

Book 5 was Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, by Tom Vanderbilt. I picked this because my OLW for the year is "BEGINNER." Vanderbilt argues convincingly for the merits of learning new things, even if you never get very good at them. "What I hope to encourage throughout this book," he writes, "is the preservation, even cultivation, of that spirit of the novice: the naïve optimism, the hypervigilant alertness that comes with novelty and insecurity, the willingness to look foolish, and the permission to ask obvious questions -- the unencumbered beginner's mind." Be a dilettante, he encourages his readers: that word is "derived from the Italian dilettare, which means 'to delight.'" He studies the mechanisms of learning (including infants learning to walk), the effects of learning on the aging brain, the role of feedback, how metacognition develops in the learner and whether it's better to learn on your own or with a teacher. Along the way, he becomes a beginning singer, surfer, swimmer, drawer, jeweler, and chess-player. I really loved this book! 

 

Book 6 is the one I think I read in December of last year, The Cat Man of Aleppo, by Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-Basha. This beautiful book, which won a Caldecott Honor last year, is the story of Alaa, who watches his city of Aleppo, Syria, falling apart, and still has the energy and verve to take care of the cats who roam the war-destroyed landscape. It's not a matter of people or cats in this true story; showing love has a ripple effect, sending goodness out through Aleppo to those who have suffered unspeakably.

Poetry Friday: Back to Work

We're back to work in person this week, and whew! "It's a lot," as my students in Haiti used to say. (Do my students in Paraguay say that, too? I really don't know yet.)

I've got some figuring out to do, in my classroom, in my library (yep, new job at my new job), in the grocery store, in life in general. But it feels as though things are mostly moving in the right direction. I'm learning more Spanish words. I know where all my classes are (kids stay put and teachers move, per Paraguay pandemic guidelines). 

Last week I posted a birthday poem, and this week I heard another one on the Slowdown podcast. It's a good reminder of two things: my birthday is coming up soon, and time is passing. Seize the days, even the overwhelming ones! 

It starts this way:

 

Birthday

by Kathleen Rooney

 

At first, birthdays were

reserved for kings and saints.

But it's rainbow sprinkles and

face painting for everybody

these days. 

And my favorite (if somewhat gloomy) lines from further down in the poem:  

The candles gutter; the candles

go out. Better to blow them

dark yourself.

 

Here's the whole thing. 

 

And here's Linda's roundup! I haven't made it around to everyone's post from last Friday, but maybe today...

Poetry Friday: Birthday Poem

I wrote my first poem of the year, my first poem since leaving Haiti, the first one in this new place. It was a birthday poem for a friend, so I won't share it here in public, but here's a birthday poem by Calef Brown. Click through to read the rest of it, the grandfather's opinion on this whole idea of using light bulbs instead of candles. It's appropriate in time of pandemic to avoid blowing on something everyone is going to eat, but on the whole I think I agree with the grandfather. Sometimes getting your wish involves a little mess.

Birthday Lights

By Calef Brown

 

Light bulbs on a birthday cake.

What a difference that would make!

     Plug it in and make a wish,

     then relax and flip a switch!

No more smoke

      or waxy mess

      to bother any birthday guests.

 

And here's the end. 

Elizabeth is hosting the Poetry Friday party here.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Heart

It's February already, and our SJT theme for February is "Heart." Linda Mitchell is hosting. Thanks, Linda! (Be sure to go check out what everyone else is writing today.)

 

The 2019 version of me posted this meditation on having an undivided heart, quoting the 2011 version of me. I'm not sure the 2022 version of me has much to add. I'm learning new lessons about tending my heart in a new place, without the trappings of my previous life, as my husband and I moved to a new country last month. I'm learning the new lessons, but I certainly haven't learned them yet.

 

Linda asks us "Where is your heart on this spiritual journey we all are on?" I think my heart is in a figuring it out mode. 

 

A metaphor I've been thinking about is my classroom in Haiti. It was my domain, a place where I'd worked for 15 years. My handwriting was on the white board, my curriculum in the files, my fingerprints on everything. I had Sharpies in every color and I knew right where they were. I had my books on the shelves and my bulletin board borders in the cupboard. 

 

Now I don't have a classroom yet. We're teaching online, and when we go back to school on Monday, the kids will stay put and the teachers will circulate. My handwriting isn't anywhere, except in my notebook and on the yellow legal pad sheets where I write the kids' names in a list every day, trying to learn them and take attendance at the same time. I couldn't locate a Sharpie if my life depended on it, in any color. My books - well, let's not talk about that too much, because I might cry. I do have a few here, but so many of them are given away, or else back on those shelves in Haiti for my replacement. 

And there you have it: my heart. From a place of belonging to a place of not-quite-there-yet. Figuring it out. Finding my way. 

But what hasn't changed, I remind myself, is that I am beloved by God. My heart is a dwelling place for Him. I'm not figuring anything out alone.

Slice of LIfe Tuesday: What's Saving Your Life Right Now?

"What's saving your life right now?" asks Modern Mrs. Darcy every year on the midpoint of winter, February 2nd. (You can see lots of people answering that question in the comments at that post, and here's Anne's February 2 post, with more of people's responses.) Where I live in Paraguay it's summer right now, so ask me this again in August. 

 

Even though it's not cold, and it's hard for me to imagine winter weather, today I had to say goodbye to my baby, who is all grown up now, as he flew back to the northern hemisphere. 

When we got home from the airport, it was still dark, and I felt bleak and sad. We don't know exactly when we'll see our children again, and it's hard to live so far from them. Moments with them are so precious now, because they are so rare. 

 

I sat on the stairs outside our apartment with my binoculars, and started a bird checklist. I could hear Great Kiskadees, narcissistically singing out their own names, "Kiskadee! Kiskadee!" I saw a couple of Tropical Kingbirds swooping past, enjoying themselves exuberantly as always. I heard some parrots - probably Turquoise-fronted Parrots. And I was off, checking species on eBird. After a while I went downstairs and walked around on the grass barefoot, looking and listening, just being where I was.

I can't control my children's lives any more than I can control the birds flying over me, but somehow just being where I am saves my life, again and again, taking a few minutes to focus on what I see and hear right here, remembering the way God cares for me and for my children.

Poetry Friday: On Beginnings

 This is a Naomi Shihab Nye poem about beginnings:

Irene has this week's roundup.

 

Slice of Life Tuesday: Same Old Same Old

This week you wouldn't know that we just moved over 3000 miles. This week you wouldn't know that our lives have changed completely: new culture, new language, new jobs. This week life seems pretty familiar.

Because we're starting the new semester online.

Once again I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed, staring at a computer screen. Sure, it's a different bed; this one is in South America. And sure, those middle schoolers peering at me from the little squares on my screen are new to me; I'm still trying to match the faces with the names, as I explain to them when I request that they turn on their cameras. 

 

The bird noises outside are different ones. This apartment in Asunción, Paraguay, is air-conditioned, unlike our house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (And we need it; it's supposed to be 108 some of the days this week.) The products in our fridge and our cupboard have Spanish writing on them. This really is a new place. But it feels all-too-familiar this week. 

Poetry Friday: You Are Here

I've posted this poem twice before (here and here), but it feels appropriate today again as I adjust to a new "Here." I love how it describes a specificity of landscape: "No two branches are the same to Wren." There are two possible wrens on my Likely Birds list here in Paraguay: a House Wren and a Thrush-like Wren. So even "Wren" in the poem is too generic. 

Lost
by David Wagoner

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.  
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

 

At an event the other day, a lady I had just met asked how my adjustment was going. I told her it was up and down. She told me a story about some indigenous people here in Paraguay who had been given a lift in a large truck. Some of them had never ridden in a motorized vehicle before. When they reached their destination, the group sat quietly under a tree, and when someone asked why they were not going about their business, they replied that they were waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies. That, she told me, was probably how I was feeling, and I should be patient with myself. The story was so perfect that I teared up.

I am thankful for trees and parks, even here in the city, places where I can stand still and learn the sights and sounds of my new home. Even during this heat wave in which we arrived (temperatures up around 108 degrees some days), we have been able to be outside. We even found a library in one park! I tried to talk with the librarian in Spanish and it was a bit of a debacle, but I have big plans to go back again and even check out a book. 

Tabatha has today's roundup.

Slice of Life Tuesday: New Year, New Birds

This morning it was 82 degrees at sunrise here in Asunción, Paraguay. It's supposed to get up to 106 today. I was out trying to identify some birds in the yard of the place we're staying temporarily. The air conditioning drowns out the sounds, and there are so many birds I don't recognize yet. After moving from a place where I knew every visitor to my yard, I am starting again with all new ones. "Be patient," I remind myself, thinking back to my early days of birding in Haiti, when I was operating in this same haze of ignorance. The difference is that the list of likely sightings here is so very much longer. 

This is my first Slice of Life posting of 2022, as I begin the year in a South American heatwave. Welcome to each new experience, each new bird.

Poetry Friday: Beginning Again

I haven't written any poems in Paraguay yet. I haven't written much of anything, just some text messages and a couple of emails. That's not so surprising, since I haven't even been here a week, but Wednesday was the twelfth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and I wrote nothing about that except a Facebook post. And also, I haven't written anything yet in 2022. Or since I left Haiti in the middle of December.

My OLW for the year is BEGINNER. I'm starting over in many ways, and apparently writing is one of them. But I did bring some raw materials with me, some baggage (oh, WAY too much literal baggage), and a whole bunch of words I already know in English (even though I don't know nearly enough yet in Spanish). One of the things I unpacked this week was my word magnet set given to me by my friend C. when she left Haiti last April after 10 years, wrapping up her life there in 48 hours. (I at least had six weeks to wrap up 25 years.) I've been thinking of these words, magnetized to the fridge and the kitchen cabinets in our temporary apartment (along with a metal frog from Haiti), as a metaphor for the materials I have to work with. 

My husband put some of them together to make a poem:

I'll write something again, sometime soon. I hope.

And in the meantime, here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Where the Map Begins

Jan Richardson shared this poem on Facebook yesterday in honor of Epiphany. (Her website is here.) It struck me especially because my OLW for 2022 is BEGINNER. What a great reminder that there is treasure here, at the beginning of the new year, and the beginning of so many new things in my life.

WHERE THE MAP BEGINS

A Blessing for Epiphany

This is not

any map you know.

Forget longitude.

Forget latitude.

Do not think

of distances

or of plotting

the most direct route.

Astrolabe, sextant, compass:

these will not help you here.

This is the map

that begins with a star.

This is the chart

that starts with fire,

with blazing,

with an ancient light

that has outlasted

generations, empires,

cultures, wars.

Look starward once,

then look away.

Close your eyes

and see how the map

begins to blossom

behind your lids,

how it constellates,

its lines stretching out

from where you stand.

You cannot see it all,

cannot divine the way

it will turn and spiral,

cannot perceive how

the road you walk

will lead you finally inside,

through the labyrinth

of your own heart

and belly

and lungs.

But step out

and you will know

what the wise who traveled

this path before you

knew:

the treasure in this map

is buried not at journey’s end

but at its beginning.

—Jan Richardson

from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Season

 

 

Carol Varsalona has today's roundup. 

Spiritual Journey Thursday: OLW

My One Little Word for 2021 was FLOURISHING. One thing I've learned from watching birds is that sometimes in order to flourish, you need to migrate. And in 2021, for many reasons, my husband and I made the decision to migrate. In October, we went to South America for a job interview. In November, I joined Duolingo and started learning Spanish. In December, after about six weeks of intense packing and bringing an end to 25 years of living in Haiti, we left. And in January, in a few days, we are moving to Paraguay.

So for 2022, my OLW is BEGINNER. I'm going to be a beginner this year in so many ways. I'll be learning a new language, a new culture. I'll have a new job. I'll be making new friends and setting up a new home. 

This new beginning is coming from a lot of endings, a lot of loss. I am grieving. But I don't want to get stuck in the ending. Instead, I want to look to the beginning and all the new possibilities that it brings. 

Beginnings aren't easy. I'm going to need a lot of grace and a lot of time. I need to be patient with myself and allow myself to make mistakes without getting discouraged. I need to recognize that there will be many emotions along the way. I need to remind myself that I don't have to know much yet; I have to listen and learn.

Here are some wise words from Henri Nouwen on being a beginner:

I've been reading about the concept of the Beginner's Mind. Here's a helpful article I found about how to have a Beginner's Mind. It closes by pointing out: 

"At the onset of a new experience, it’s impossible not to have the mindset of a beginner.

But as time moves along, these attitudes drift away. As knowledge and understanding root themselves in your mind, your aperture of consideration narrows.

Cultivating Beginner’s Mind is a way to reverse this limiting tendency.

Seeing things anew brings fresh perspective to old sights, and opens up a world of intrigue and possibility in every day.

The best part about beginner’s mind is that it’s always accessible. Every week, every day, and every moment is an opportunity to begin again."

 

In 2022, I'll be having many new experiences. I want to take this opportunity to be a BEGINNER, something not afforded to everyone, especially at my (not super young) age. In Paraguay back in October, I snapped this photo. There were renovations happening in the airport, and since I speak French, I was able to figure out the Spanish pretty easily. It means, "Very soon you will live a new experience." It seemed prophetic: I would be a BEGINNER. And I don't want to waste the chance. 

Margaret is roundup up everyone's OLW here. What's yours?

What I Read in 2021

 Last night I finished three more books:

Book #96 of the year was Praying God's Word Day by Day, by Beth Moore

Book #97 was Listening to Your Life, by Frederick Buechner

Book #98 was You Are the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen

Here's the rest of what I read this year:

Books 1-3

Books 4-10 

Books 11-17

Books 18-27 

Books 28-33

Books 34-39 

Books 40-41

Books 42-46 

Books 47-52

Books 53-65 

Books 66-71

Books 72-78 

Books 79-95

 

I'm so thankful I can download books for free on my Kindle from the library. Reading was, as always, a huge part of my year. Here's to more great books in 2022!

Poetry Friday: Cheekwood

It's been another rough year, but here's hoping that 2022 holds better things. Today I'm sharing some photos of some poetic things from a visit to Cheekwood in Nashville, Tennessee, with my husband and children. I took pictures of some words I saw, plus a sculpture from the sculpture garden called "Tree Poem." I've been to Cheekwood several times, with my husband while we were dating, and then with our children through the years, but I'd never been there in winter. It was still beautiful even with the leafless trees, and we saw and heard beautiful birds, including a bunch of Cedar Waxwings. And the time together was much-needed and wonderful. Since we get so much less time with our children now that they are all grown up and live in a different country from us, we savor every single moment even more than ever. Happy New Year, friends!

Carol is hosting today, and reminding us about trouble and suffering close to where she lives.

Reading Update

My concentration and time for reading have been limited, and also I've been waiting until I would have time to write proper reviews of what I have managed to read. I think a list is going to have to suffice.

Book #79 of 2021: Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey

Book #80: No Time Like the Present, by Fiona West

Book #81: Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder, by Kenn Kaufman

Book #82: The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Book #83: Leavings, by Wendell Berry

Book #84: Terrapin, by Wendell Berry

Book #85: The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams

Book #86: The Forest of Vanishing Stars, by Kristin Harmel

Book #87: Blush, by Jamie Brenner

Book #88: An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor

Book #89: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Book #90: Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Book #91: Ariadne, by Jennifer Saint

Book #92: The Winter Room, by Gary Paulsen

Book #93: No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) , by Kate Bowler

Book #94: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

Book #95: The Season of Almost, by Kate Bowler

Poetry Friday: Moving Out

My head is sort of spinning. I'm having Christmas in the US for the first time since 2010, and that year we spent it in Florida. So this is my first cold Christmas since 1996. I didn't post anything last week for Poetry Friday because it was my first full day in the States and there was a lot of the head-spinning. The biggest reason is that when we left Haiti, we left for good. We spent the last six weeks of our time there packing up our whole life. After 25 years of living there, we no longer do.

There are so many emotions, enough for many weeks of processing to come. In January I'll post about where our new home will be. My husband has taken a new job, and our adventures will continue. But I'm still in the grieving stage right now, grieving our life in Haiti, which has been challenging but also so beautiful.

Leaving the house where we had lived for twenty years and raised our children was very difficult. I will probably dream about it for a long time, maybe the rest of my life. It is by far the longest I have ever lived in one place. 

I chose Kate Coombs' poem "Grandma's House" to share with you today. It describes a mother and child leaving Grandma's house, now packed up and empty, unrecognizable as the home it used to be when Grandma lived there. The poem is in the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, one of my favorite resources for poetry to share with my students. I left my copy in my classroom in Haiti, but I also have it on my Kindle, so I can continue to use it in my new classroom. The most relevant line of this poem to my current situation is "nothing/ is the way it used to be." You can hear the poem read and watch a video to go with it here. 

Buffy Silverman has today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson!

This week my tropically raised son experienced his first snow since he left home for college. I'm sharing a snow poem today by Emily Dickinson, whose birthday this is, with an illustration sent by my son.

942

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?

 

Emily Dickinson

 

I don't think anybody's reposing under the snow in my son's photo, but it's certainly true that we have lost many people since this time last year, whether to COVID or other causes. The snow softens everything for a while. Happy birthday, Emily!

Today's roundup is here.

Poetry Friday: In Which I Write Nothing

Last night my writing group met over Zoom. It had been a long time -- I'm not even sure how long. "Have you written anything?" asked C, and I started to hang my head and say no, out of habit, and then I remembered, wait, yes I have!

"I've done two months of daily posts on my blog," I said proudly, starting to wonder if trying to post daily was why I have been feeling so stressed and overwhelmed lately. (Narrator's voice: "But it wasn't the daily posting that was the problem. In fact, the daily posting was one of the things keeping Ruth sane in a very trying period of her life.")

Today I fear I have nothing new to share with you, so I am going to link you to my two months of daily posting and call it good. In October I posted a daily bird poem (Birdtober). And in November I posted a daily gratitude haiku (Gratiku).

This week I wanted to write about mikans, a citrus fruit grown in the south of Haiti and usually everywhere at this time of year (that's the Japanese word -- long story...). Because of the gang activity on the roads between here and the south, though, this year we're not seeing many. My husband was given some for his birthday last week, and we enjoyed eating them so much. I even wrote a Gratiku about them here, but I want to write more. I read a Naomi Shihab Nye poem this week about onions and thought I could maybe use it as a mentor text. For now I'll just have to share her poem, because I haven't written mine yet. (Of course it is better now, as a vague cloud in my mind, than the actual finished poem will be!) 

Naomi Shihab Nye's poem begins:

When I think how far the onion has traveled

just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise

all small forgotten miracles...

You can read the whole thing here.

 

In December, we'll see if I can manage to write anything at all. I hope to share more on my blog in January about the craziness going on right now in my life, but for now suffice it to say that things are a bit chaotic.  It will have to be enough to read snippets of other people's work, and to try to notice at least some of the "small forgotten miracles" around me.

 

 Mikans on my breakfast table in Jacmel long ago...

The uber-creative Michelle Kogan has today's roundup.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Waiting with a Side of Hope

 

Christine Margocs, our host this month, has directed our attention to Advent, asking us to reflect on "Waiting...with a side of Hope." Such a perfect description for what we are doing during Advent. Not just waiting listlessly for something that may never come, but waiting with hope for something which the Bible calls "the evidence of things not seen."

 

I have been loving this song by Sara Groves (I'll put the lyrics later in the post) since it came out in 2019. I don't just listen to it during Advent, but all year round, because to me it epitomizes the way things have been here in Haiti for at least the last three years. We are waiting for things to get better, for gas to be available, for people who have been kidnapped to be released, for kidnapping to end, for the electricity to come on. The lyrics refer to "a truce in the fight," and we literally have that here, when the gangs declare un trêve so that people can buy gas, get earthquake relief to the south, or go to work or grocery shopping safely.

Recently, one of my eighth graders started asking me about Haitian politics over the last few decades. He named specific public figures and asked what they had done. I didn't think I was really the one to give him this particular education, as a visitor to his country (though I remembered many of the people and incidents he was asking about), but I encouraged him to talk to his parents about it. He did, and produced a piece of writing about how things had gotten to the current point. He started by saying that he has worries most kids his age don't have, because he wants so much for his country to be peaceful and to function well. But it was his ending that stayed with me. He admitted that things didn't look good, but, he said, he still has hope. 

We hope for things to get better. But we also hope for strength to endure. For faith to keep trusting that, as the song says, "the waiting is not vain." That some day, all things will be right. 

And in the meantime, we wait for "the light of the morning." And that comes every day, without fail.

We Wait

by Sara Groves

 

We wait for a story,
A stillness, a candle,
A light

We wait for forgiveness,
A sense of direction,
A sign

We wait for You
This month of endless night,
Prepare You room
For making all things right
We wait

We wait for
A break in the weather,
The traffic,
A line

We wait for
The light of the morning,
A truce in
The fight

We wait for You
This month of endless night
Prepare You room
For making all things right
We wait

We wait for You
This month of endless night
Prepare You room
Cathedrals made in time

We wait for peace
And goodwill to all men
We wait to see
The waiting is not vain
We wait

We wait
For You

Visit Christine to see what everyone else is posting about this topic!

Gratiku 2021

 

Here's the spot to access all the Gratiku from November 2021 in one place!

Day 1: Internet

Day 2: Black-and-white Warbler 

Day 3: Imperfection

Day 4: Haiti 

Day 5: Morning

Day 6: Heart 

Day 7: An extra hour of birding

Day 8: Distance learning 

Day 9: Enough for today

Day 10: Emotions 

Day 11: Friends

Day 12: Tea 

Day 13: House

Day 14: Papers 

Day 15: Communication after silence

Day 16: Teaching in person 

Day 17: Vitamin B12

Day 18: Sun 

Day 19: My children

Day 20: Black-crowned Palm-tanager 

Day 21: Healing

Day 22: Middle-schoolers 

Day 23: Listening

Day 24: Not listening 

Day 25: Thanksgiving 

Day 26: Poetry (plus I hosted the Poetry Friday roundup)

Day 27: Saturday 

Day 28: Husband 

Day 29: Freedom 

Day 30: Mikan