Poetry Friday: Birds and James Bond

This week our Poetry Friday host, Christie, has asked for poems about birds, so I wrote one about a bird in my yard.

Bird in the Bougainvillea

When I need to identify
the little yellow bird in the bougainvillea,
I turn to my Birds of the West Indies book,
written by James Bond.
Ian Fleming had this book on his shelf, too,
in his home in Jamaica.
When he was naming his super-spy,
the book caught his eye,
and the ordinariness of the name
made it perfect.

The ordinariness
of the little bird in the bougainvillea
makes me long to know it.
It was there poking around the fuchsia blossoms
before I noticed it
and it will still be there
when my attention is, inevitably,
distracted by something more urgent.

The little yellow bird
is called a bananaquit.
James Bond says it is common
in Central and South America,
and is sometimes known as
Banana Bird,
Yellowbreast,
Paw-paw Bird,
Sugar Bird,
Bessie Coban,
Yellow See-See,
Reinita.
Its song is “sibilant or wheezy,
such as zee-e-e-e-swees-te,
but sometimes a simple trill.”

A spy ought to blend in,
it seems to me,
not stand out with his martinis
and his flashy cars.
James Bond the ornithologist,
binoculars in hand,
puttering about in the garden,
would learn far more about
what was really going on
than James Bond the spy.

Here in Haiti,
where Audubon was born,
I snap a picture of the ordinary bananaquit
in the bougainvillea,
and give thanks
for people who pay attention
and birds that wheeze softly
among the leaves.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Honesty compels me to admit that I didn't identify the bird by looking in the bird book. I sent the photo above to my brother, who is a birder, and who lives in the bananaquit's zone too, and he identified it for me, and then I looked it up in the bird book.  I find it hard to look up birds in the book because I don't know where to start, which family the bird might come from. When I page through the descriptions, and even the pictures, nobody stands out; they just all look like birds. But now that I know this guy's name, I am seeing bananaquits everywhere, in just the same way that once you learn a new word, suddenly it's in everything you read. How strange it is to live in a place for twenty-two years, and be unable to name one of the most common birds there. There are always new things to learn, so many of them. I'm giving thanks for my brother, and James Bond, and my family, and my students, and my friends, and everyone who teaches me every day.

Here are some links with more information about the ornithologist James Bond and the bananaquit, plus an opportunity to hear the soft wheezing.

James Bond's Wikipedia page
Birds of the West Indies and the James Bond Canon
"The Real James Bond"
A photography exhibit about the two James Bonds and their love for birds (birds, get it, get it?)
The Audubon page about the bananaquit

I can't wait to see the bird poems others have today.  Check out the roundup here.

Reading Update

When I posted my last Reading Update, last month, I mentioned that I'd been in a reading slump. Then I proceeded to have a bit of an end-of-summer last hurrah. Here's what I've read since July 16th.

Book #52 of 2018 was The Punishment She Deserves, by Elizabeth George. I saw this at a bookstore while I was visiting my daughter, and immediately put it on hold at the library; I hadn't realized that Elizabeth George had a new novel (it came out in March). I always enjoy these books, particularly the relationships among the police officers, and this one was no exception.

Book #53 was The Language of Sparrows, by Rachel Phifer. This story touches on mental illness and suicide and religious persecution and unjust accusations; somehow it still manages to be a sweet, touching, believable book.

Book #54 was Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, by Mike Schmoker. Isn't it fascinating how when you are assigned to read something, you start out with a negative mindset?  Even when you're my age and love to read and learn? Yeah. In spite of that, though, I ended up finding this book a useful read. As the title suggests, it's not going to give you new ideas - they are the essentials - but it's a good reminder of what matters and how to teach.

Book #55 was Peony: A Novel of China, by Pearl S. Buck. I love being introduced to whole new worlds, and that's what this book did. It's about the Jewish community in China.

Book #56 was In Harm's Way: A View from the Epicenter of Liberia's Ebola Crisis, by Nancy D. Sheppard. Sheppard worked in a hospital in Liberia during the Ebola crisis, and was a colleague of the Americans who came down with the disease and were flown to Atlanta. This happened in 2012 and at the time was the subject of a great deal of breathless media coverage. This book gives a personal perspective on what happened and I enjoyed it.

Book #57 was an exciting one: the first draft of a novel by someone in my writing group! Shhhh...I'm not allowed to say more at this stage, but it was very entertaining!

Book #58 was Love and Ruin, by Paula McLain.  This is the story of Ernest Hemingway's third wife, Martha Gellhorn, a writer and war correspondent in her own right. I found out about this book when a friend posted this essay on Facebook.  I was fascinated and wanted to know more. I read a Martha Gellhorn book, The Weather in Africa, when I was a teenager, and before I had read any Hemingway.  I still prefer it to Hemingway, and I'd like to read more of Gellhorn's work.  Obviously with the word "Ruin" in the title, this doesn't have a happy ending; Hemingway had four wives. (McLain also wrote a book about his first wife, which I read in 2015, and one about Beryl Markham, which I read in 2017 and reviewed here.)

Book #59 was 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in my Head, Reduced Stress without Losing my Edge, and Found Self-Help that Actually Works, by Dan Harris.  I thought this book was really interesting, and enjoyed learning about Harris' journey from crazed, stressed-out broadcast journalist taking drugs and having a panic attack on the air to a calm, peaceful regular at meditation retreats.  I was fascinated to read about his sort-of Buddhist ideas; I say sort-of because he doesn't believe in the supernatural at all.  I thought most of the ideas and practices based on Buddhism were about a very clear, realistic and accurate view of how our minds actually do work.  I'd love for some friends to read this so we can talk about it.

Book #60 was a re-read, Shauna Niequist's Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, more Soulful Way of Living.  I'd been thinking about Niequist and wanted to read something of hers.  Here's a link to the time I participated in a blog tour for one of her books, Bread and Wine.  I've read all her books and liked them all. 

Obviously things are about to slow down in the reading department as the school year gets into full swing, but I'm glad to have had some extra time for books this summer. 

This post is linked to the August Quick List post at Modern Mrs. Darcy.

Ring

I had just sat down at my departure gate at the Fort Lauderdale airport when I noticed that my ring finger was bare. The ring I had worn every day for over half my life was gone. 

My flight was going to start boarding in minutes; there was nothing I could do right then. And anyway, where would I start looking? It could be at the motel where I’d stayed the night before, or in the taxi I’d taken that morning, or at the airline check-in desk where I’d repacked my one checked bag into two, or at the security gate where I’d unloaded and reloaded the contents of my carry-on. It could be on the floor at just about any point along the miles I had covered since leaving home the day before. 

As I handed over my boarding pass, found my seat on the plane, did the crossword puzzle in the magazine, my eyes kept returning to my bare finger. For 29 years I had rarely taken the ring off; occasionally to wash dishes, maybe, and for my two surgeries, but that’s about it. My finger looked strange, unrecognizable, without it. 

I thought about going to the pawn shop all those years ago with my mother-in-law to pick up the rings, in a transaction which upon reflection may have been a little bit unromantic. I thought about our wedding itself, that steamy August day when we gave each other those matching rings. I thought about my brand new husband losing his ring down the drain of our student apartment when we’d been married less than a month, and then breaking the silver replacement I got him a few years later. I thought about our decision that our rings were lovely images of our commitment, but that losing or breaking one wasn’t an omen of anything. Still, I couldn’t help feeling sad that I’d lost mine, that the hint of shine that had been on my finger all those years through better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health, was gone now. Somehow the fact that it had happened in the soulless Fort Lauderdale Airport made it seem worse. 

I’ve changed since I put on that ring for the first time. My finger is thinner, for one; I weigh less now than I did on my wedding day.  But there are other changes that aren’t visible; experience has made me sadder, more cynical. There have been losses and disappointments. Other experiences have been life-changing in joyful ways. I’m a mother now, for example; pregnancy swelled that ring finger for a while. I was heading away from one of my children as I sat on that plane and towards the other.

I finally arrived in the tiny student apartment where my daughter was spending the summer, and unpacked the goodies I’d brought from home for her. When I took everything out of my carry-on, to my delight, there was a glint of gold at the bottom of the bag. It must have fallen off during the TSA’s scrutiny of my belongings. It had been there in my bag all along: a happy ending.

If losing the ring isn’t an omen, you can’t turn finding it into one either. It’s just a piece of jewelry, no matter how deep the symbolism of the endless eternal circle, the true, pure gold. I let my sister-in-law wrap some thread around it for me so that it wouldn’t fall off my finger again. She said it was what high school girls do when they wear their boyfriends’ class rings that are too big for them. I like the idea of wearing my boyfriend’s ring, even though that boyfriend has been my husband for more years now than he wasn’t, and our daughter is the age I was when I got married to him, and we’re both gray-haired. Life has changed us. Not all the rings made it this far, but the marriage did. We’re still growing in love, making it work.  We're covering the miles, finding each other again and again.

Poetry Friday: Summer

Last week's back-to-school poem was for me; today's is one I always read with my students the first week.  Can you believe it?  It's time for another school year!

Summer

Summer is with it,

             she's wild,
             she likes
             bare legs and cutoffs
             and camping
             and hikes;
             she dives in deep water,
             she wades in a stream,
             she guzzles cold drinks
             and she drowns in ice cream;
             she runs barefoot,
             she picnics,
             she fishes,
             digs bait,
             she pitches a tent
             and she stays up too late
             while she counts out the stars,
             swats mosquitos and flies,
             hears crickets,
             smells pine trees,
             spies night-creature eyes;
             she rides bareback,
             goes sailing,
             plays tennis,
             climbs trees;
             she soaks in the sunshine;
             she gulps in a breeze;
             she tastes the warm air
             on the end of her tongue,

              and she falls asleep
              reading
              alone
              in the sun.

Myra Cohn Livingston 

Here's today's roundup. 

Poetry Friday: The Way It Is

Looking for a back-to-school poem for next week, I opened my copy of Teaching With Heart: Poetry That Speaks to the Courage to Teach, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner.  I picked this one, "The Way It Is," for the way that it sums up some of what I feel as I head into this new school year.  (Check out yesterday's post for some more of my thoughts on that.)

The Way It Is
William Stafford

There's a thread you follow.  It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

Today's roundup is at A Year of Reading. 

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: New Season

On the first Thursday of every month, a group of us post about spiritual growth, and this month's theme is, as our host, Pat puts it, "waiting for my favorite things of each season to return."

I've written here before about how, living in the tropics, my year is not as defined by seasons as it is for people further north and south.  But we're about to enter the next season, one that I've been entering nearly every year for my whole life: School.

(I took this photo on Sunday.  I don't know what kind of tree it is, but it's beautiful and seasonal.  Does anybody know?)

My parents have always been teachers, and once I started school myself when I was five, I really didn't have a break from it - school, college, graduate school, teaching - until I gave birth the first time and stayed home with my daughter. Even then, my husband was working at an educational institution, though at that time he was in an office and not teaching. When I stayed home with my son, several years later, my daughter was in school, and when the earthquake tore me from my job in 2010, my children kept going to school, and before too long I found a volunteer job in a school. The season of Back to School, the rhythms of classes and weekends, term and holiday, have always organized my world.

This year it's coming again. The summer was short, as it always is. The supplies are purchased, as they always are. I'm going back to the same classroom I've worked in for lots of years, to teach the same subjects.

Pat said she's waiting for her "favorite things," not that she's looking forward to anything new. The challenge is keeping it new every year, remembering that even though I've taught this book many times, it's the first time through for this seventh grade class. And even though I've opened and shut dozens of lockers hundreds of times, these seventh graders have never worked a combination lock before. My eighth graders I know already, but there will be new things for them, too: new books, new experiences, new emotions. I can't yawn and check out because I've been through it all before; they haven't, and they need guides for their first time to travel this way.

So, some of my favorite things in the season of School:

The new Dry-Erase markers, brightly colored to write the August dates on my white board.

The box of locks to be handed out to kids who think having a locker is an exciting development.

The new faces in the faculty meeting.  (I have mixed feelings about this, I confess. I know some of those people will become my friends, but I've just said goodbye to some others who became my friends and then moved on. It's not easy to open my heart again.)

The blank walls of my classroom, ready to be decorated again by me and by my kids.

The class lists: once my husband said that each class list is a holy document.  Each one of the names on that list belongs to an eternal soul, and who knows what awaits this year and into the future because of the combination of all of those eternal souls hanging out together in Room 23?

All of these things, and more, are coming up for me next week as I head back to meet with my colleagues and set up my room, and the week after, as my students arrive.  It's a new year, a new season, a new set of challenges which I will soon learn.

I wish summer could last a few more weeks, and yet I'm ready. I'm ready for my mind to be occupied with work that never stops stretching me. I know that even though it looks right now as though we can't possibly have everything in order in time, we will.

Do I have what it takes? At our last meeting back in May, an administrator gave us each a manila file folder which we were supposed to wear on our backs.  Our colleagues lined up behind us, and then we behind them, to write on the file folders: words of encouragement, preferably. Afterward, when I read the words, many of them made me smile and feel great.  "You survived seventh grade.  You are a hero." (Yeah, that's kind of true.) "You maintained my sanity through the way you humorously viewed teaching our students.  Middle School forever!"  (Yes!  That's why I'm here!) "Thank you for loving and appreciating middle schoolers as much as I do." (There's nothing like 'em, even on the days when they make you want to scream.) Other comments made me wonder if the writers really knew me.  Patience?  That word was there quite a few times. I know the impatience of my own heart, but I guess it's good that I at least give the impression of being a patient person - that's a start. One person used the word "serenity." Me, serene? Try intense, jumping out of my skin, as overly emotional as any middle schooler, though with many more years of experience at managing it. One person wrote about my resilience. "Your resilience is beautiful." That's one I want to be true, even though I sometimes doubt that it is. I've got many scars as I enter this, my - I stopped to count - twenty sixth year of teaching (I think I have that number right.  I know which year I began, but I get a little confused about how many of those baby years there were).

As I reread what my colleagues wrote two months ago, I reflect that God has given me what I need for this year - at least they think so. I've definitely done it all many times before. I'm ready to help the newcomers with a reminder that if it seems like the hardest thing they've ever done, that's because it is - but it will get easier, and they can do it. I'm cultivating patience and serenity and resilience, and I bet I'll get plenty of opportunities this year to continue that cultivation.

Here we go again, new season, old friend!

Be sure to visit Pat's blog to see what everyone else wrote about their spiritual journey. 

Poetry Friday: Summer Poem Swaps

I've never signed up for any of Tabatha's poem swaps before, mostly because I was very intimidated by what I saw of them on people's blogs.  In theory, all you have to do is to send a poem to the person whose address Tabatha sends you by the date she gives you, but in reality people go all out, and there are fabulous packages that fly back and forth.  But then I participated in a swap Margaret organized, just because I was so intrigued I couldn't help myself, and it was so much fun that I wanted to do another one. This summer I was going to be traveling, so I signed up for two of the swaps. At home we just get mail delivery once a week, and you'd think that would work fine and I'd just take the extra time to do something really special - instead, I don't do anything until the afternoon of the day the mail went in the morning, and then I realize I've missed it for another week and despair at what a loser I am. Being in the US I knew I'd have access to daily mail service and I'd have no excuses.

I wrote poems on postcards and sent them to the people I was assigned. As expected, it was fun and satisfying. It gave me a little extra boost to follow through on a vague poem idea and actually write something. I was happy.

Then I got home from my trip, and when I checked the mail I realized how right I had been to be intimidated. Oh my goodness! My two poem senders did indeed go all out. Take a look at what I got:

My first swap came from Linda Baie. Linda is such a generous Poetry Friday participant. Her comments always make it clear that she has thoroughly read and digested your post, and she always finds something positive to highlight. What a great teacher she must be! She's a wonderful poet, too, and I always enjoy reading her posts.

The package she sent contained a card in an envelope, a notebook, a book of poetry (can't wait to read it!), and the poem. Linda wrote me a golden shovel poem, and for the quotes to end the lines, she used my own words. And look at the bougainvillea photo! One thing every writer needs is readers, and this poetry swap from Linda makes me feel as though I have a reader in her.

Here's the poem. (Click on the photo to get a larger version that will be easier to read.) Isn't it amazing?  Thank you, Linda!

My second swap came from Tabatha Yeatts herself, the source of all this swapping. Tabatha's blog is called "The Opposite of Indifference," from Elie Wiesel's quote, "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference." Tabatha is never indifferent, and many of the poems she posts - her own and those by other people - meet Emily Dickinson's definition of poetry as something that blows off the top of your head.

Like Linda, Tabatha wrote a poem that she knew would have special resonance for me.  Back in April I posted about madeleine poems, an idea I got from Nancie Atwell.  She got the name and the concept from Marcel Proust, who in one of his novels has a character eat a madeleine cookie and then be transported back into the past by the sensations and memories the cookie gives him.  The rest of the novel is a flashback caused by the taste of that madeleine.  I used George Bilgere's poem "A Madeleine" as my mentor text and then turned the whole writing process into a minilesson for my students.  You can read that post here.

So Tabatha's package contained her own madeleine poem, with a note and a gorgeous drawing by her daughter.  She wrote about picking black raspberries as a child and about how eating black raspberry jam brings back that experience.  She commented "It was easy to write and very difficult as poetry and memories are." That right there is the opposite of indifference, folks.

Here's the poem:

BLACK RASPBERRY

a madeleine for Ruth

by Tabatha Yeatts

For me,

it's a black

raspberry jam,

a shade that might

be at the end of the

rainbow, a jiggly finale,

with a scent as rare as the

slide down to a pot of gold,

rare no matter how many

candy chemists hunch

over their test tubes

trying to recreate it.

Hold it to my nose

and I'm a child who's

twisted a black raspberry

from the bush which I roll gently

in my palm before depositing it

into a pail where I can still smell 

it and its kin as I move farther down

the hilly path, fighting the urge to grab the brambles 

to steady myself as pebbles shift under my feet,

already aware that harvesting treasure

means hazarding tumbles and thorns.

Sigh.

Even though these poetry swaps do intimidate me (even more now than before!), I think I will participate in more of them because there is so much delight in the giving and the receiving. 

Here's this week's roundup.

Tabatha is sharing the poem I sent her today.
And Margaret is sharing the one I sent her, too!

Poetry Friday: Vacation

Vacation
by Rita Dove

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls.

Here's the rest of Rita Dove's poem.

A couple of days ago, I got a newsletter from the Academy of American Poets entitled, "'I'm just here in my traveler's clothes': Poems for Vacation Travels."  I hadn't read any of the poems yet, and when I clicked on this one this morning, I was startled by how appropriate it was for my day yesterday.  I flew home from just over three weeks traveling by myself in the United States.  Dove describes the nowhere yet everywhere feeling of airports so well in this poem.  

Getting home is always a maelstrom of emotions.  You'd think I'd be prepared for it, after all these years of back and forth, and I sort of am, but each time it hits me a little differently.  I had been up since four AM, and the atmosphere was more oven-like than I had remembered.  There were visible signs of the recent riots - frequent piles of the remains of burned tires on the road home, for example.  And my house always looks different to me when I'm returning from the States: I see everything through American eyes for a few moments and think in some surprise, "This is where I live?  Huh."  

I decided to leave the luggage completely alone.  I ate a sandwich, took a shower, and went straight to bed.  Everything would look better in the morning, I reasoned, and you know what?  It does.   

Heidi has today's roundup. 

Reading Update

Book #46 of 2018 was The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate.  This is a middle grade novel about Ivan, a gorilla who lives in a low-budget zoo in a shopping mall.  It's a lovely story and perfect for the reading slump in which I found myself at the time.

Book #47 was Clara and Mr. Tiffany, by Susan Vreeland.  Clara Driscoll worked making Louis Comfort Tiffany's designs in the late nineteenth century.  This is the story of her life, both her personal life and, even more interestingly, her professional life at a time when women did not receive respect or recognition at work.  Driscoll has a series of disappointing romantic relationships, but her work colleagues and creative friends are the most important connections in her life.  Fascinating.  Book #49 was Life Studies, also by Susan Vreeland, a book of short stories about art. 

Book #48 was Finding Home: Third Culture Kids in the World, by Rachel Jones.  I have a chapter in this book.  (I thought it was pretty interesting.)  But the rest of it was good too! 

Rachel has collected a series of guest posts about TCKs that appeared on her blog a few years ago and updated them with new material such as interviews with the authors and discussion questions.  The strength of a book like this is that it contains many different voices, and I enjoyed reading it.

Book #50 was a reread, Susan Howatch's book Absolute Truths.  This is one of those books I keep returning to.  I wrote about it here in 2009, 2010, and 2015.  It's about aging, the way stories come full circle, Romans 8:28, and more.

Book #51 was a recommendation from a friend, and I finished it after leaving her house and mailed it to her when I was done.  It was Fiela's Child, by Dalene Matthee, and it covers many of the topics I like to read about: identity, cultural clashes, what home really means. 

This post is linked to July's edition of Modern Mrs. Darcy's Quick Lit.

Poetry Friday: Calling Yourself a Poet

Recently I heard a poet on a podcast say that he never calls himself a poet. He said a poet is what he wants to be more than anything, but he prefers to let other people use the word because he feels it's pretentious to use it himself. Who was the poet? I have no idea; I thought I could find the quote again and didn't write it down. I did learn, while hunting for the podcast, that there are many poets who feel sheepish about using the word; here's an article that discusses the idea.

To me, it's all right to use the word "poet" about yourself if you write poetry. You aren't saying you're a great poet or even a good one; you're simply saying that you write poetry. I do, so I'm a poet.  Just as I call myself a reader because I read and a mother because I have children and a walker because I walk, I call myself a poet because I write poetry.

Even so, it's nice when others think of me as a poet, and I had an experience like that last week.  A friend commented that something that had just happened was symbolic and then she added, "Ruth will probably write a poem about it." (You'll have to take my word for it that she didn't say this in a mocking way but sounded as though she'd actually like to read such a piece.) In fact I had already made a note in my head that this event would be a great topic for a poem. Later I took the note from my head and wrote it down on my phone, and it's a good thing because otherwise it might have gone the way of the quote from...whoever that guy was who doesn't call himself a poet.

I had gone with my friends that day to their cabin in the woods. I've spent time there every summer except one since 2011, and every year I've written poems about it and shared many with them.

Earlier this summer I listened to this podcast, an interview with Michael Longley. It has lots of great stuff in it, but one of the parts I enjoyed most was when he talked about going to his cabin, a place called Carrigskeewaun, where he's been going regularly since 1970.

Krista Tippett said, "I want to ask you also about the mystery of place. And so, Carrigskeewaun is a cottage in County Mayo that you and your wife and family have gone back to it, I believe, for over many years. And you said something wonderful about the beauty of going back to the same place over and over again, that you notice more and more. It’s not that you exhaust a place; that you go more deeply into it."

Longley responded, "Yes, it’s inexhaustible. Mind you, it is very beautiful, and it’s very remote. And we’ve been going there since 1970. And we carried our children through the river and through the channel, and now they come back over — such a compliment to my wife and me that the children want to spend time with us. And they come back, and they now bring their children, our grandchildren on their shoulders through this really quite tough terrain. Every time I leave, I think, 'Well, there can be no more Carrigskeewaun poems. I’ve exhausted it.' But there always are poems, and the place is inexhaustible. I mean, you know this — the phrase, 'Travel broadens the mind.' We do quite a bit of traveling. But I think it also shallows the mind. But going back to the same place in a devoted way and in a curious way is a huge part of my life. And I’ll be going there even when they have to push me in a wheelchair."

(Listen to the rest here.)

I've so enjoyed traveling this summer, back to places I've been many times. I didn't realize how much I needed some things to look at that were separate from my usual life in Haiti.  I love Haiti deeply, and it is home, but I needed a break, and I'm thankful I've been able to have one. (Plus you may have seen in the news that things have been sort of difficult there this summer. I don't take my privilege for granted. There are plenty of people in Haiti who needed a break this summer way more than I did and who didn't get it, but instead got trouble and a worsening of their already challenging lives.) Going somewhere new would have been great too (and I did do some of that), but it was wonderful to go to some familiar places, places I already love, inexhaustible places.

Here's a poem I wrote about the cabin in 2011.  It's about fall, a time I haven't ever been there, so I was just going from photos and descriptions and imagination.

Morning at the Cabin, September 2011

Mug of coffee in hand
He sits back on his rocking chair
And watches this day arrive.
He has a front row seat.
Each tree, each blade of grass
And each invasive cattail
Takes its place for the performance to begin.
He holds his breath.
Has anyone read this play?
Can anyone say what will happen next?
Perhaps a deer will enter,
Perhaps a squirrel.
Some leaves are reddening.
All the elements are in place
For a drama.
All that's needed is time to stare
And that, he has.
He takes a sip of his coffee.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

I wouldn't put that poem on the same level as anything that Michael Longley has written, but is it a poem?  Yep.  And did I write it?  I sure did.  So do I call myself a poet?  You bet I do.

There will be more poems from the cabin; it's inexhaustible. I came away with a whole list of ideas. They will give me memories and poems for the whole year.

Bonus: I wrote this post about the cabin in 2012.

Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: What is Home?

In 2012, I posted the Wislawa Szymborska poem "The Joy of Writing."  Here's the beginning of it:

THE JOY OF WRITING

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence — this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word “woods.”

(Read the rest here.)

Last month in the Poem-a-Day email from Poets.org, I read Maggie Smith's poem "Written Deer," responding to Szymborska's poem.   Click through to read the whole thing, but I'm mostly fixating on the last stanza, which ends like this:

What is home but a passage
I'm writing and underlining every time I read it.

I'm away from home right now, and that always makes me think more about home and what it is and isn't.  I like the idea that it's a passage I'm writing and underlining.  Maybe I'll write my own poem about that.  

In the meantime, check out the roundup here to see what other people have posted this week for Poetry Friday.  

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: Halfway Through

Doraine is hosting Spiritual Journey First Thursday this month, and she's asked us to reflect on the year so far, since we're now officially halfway through 2018. When I first saw the topic, I thought what a good one it was, but the more I think about it, the more I feel sad.

My OLW for 2018 is ENOUGH.  In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul wrote: "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me." In that spirit, let me boast that I'm very weak in the ENOUGH department at this moment, as I get ready to head southwards after two weeks with my daughter in the midwest. I am so blessed in my life, and I have so many reasons for gratitude, but the goodbyes kill me every time. When I'm here, I miss my husband and son at home, and when I'm there, I miss my daughter here, and there are always friends and family to miss wherever I am.  Several of my closest friends in Haiti have moved away during the past couple of years. The news doesn't help, as I watch families separated and think about tiny children not knowing where their parents are, not knowing when they will see them again. The world is a sad place sometimes. It seems that perhaps a better choice for an OLW this year would have been GOODBYE. 

Please don't tell me goodbyes bring hellos. I know that, but right now I'm not feeling it.  

 

I love the picture Sara Groves paints in this song, a place and time when everyone we love is together, where there are no goodbyes and no separations. In this life we get brief tastes of that, brief moments.  I'm trying to focus on every moment, every blessing, every piece of goodness in my life, to turn toward the hellos and find ways to make them be ENOUGH in this second half of 2018. But what I mostly need, and what I know will be ENOUGH for me, is God's grace, which has always been there, and will keep being there.  His power is made perfect in my weakness.

You can see what other people have written on this topic here. 

Poetry Friday: Bayou Song Blog Tour

Today I am honored to host the third stop on Margaret Simon's Blog Tour for her charming new book Bayou Song: Creative Explorations of the South Lousiana Landscape (you can see a list of the other stops on the Tour at the end of this post).  When I read the book, I had just listened to this podcast from On Being, so those two pieces of art, both about finding joy in nature, are intertwined in my thoughts.

Let me back up a little bit and tell you about one of the ideas in the podcast, and how it illuminated Margaret's book for me and made me appreciate even more the beautiful way it mixes nature, reading, and writing.

In the podcast, Krista Tippett interviews Michael McCarthy, the British author of The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy.  She starts out by sharing this quote from McCarthy: "The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us may well be the most serious business of all." He has a lot to say about crisis in the natural world, the way ecosystems are collapsing, habitats are disappearing, and there are just fewer creatures out there.  It would be easy to despair, and sometimes when we teach kids about nature we can do it in a negative way, focusing on words like "endangered."

Tippett says to McCarthy: "while statistics of decline and demise and the destruction of the natural world don’t mobilize action — they, in fact, dampen us — and so joy can have a quality of seriousness, and yet, be animating."

And he replies: "If we could mobilize this sort of love we have for the natural world — and the essence of it is the fact that the natural world is a part of us, and that if we lose it, we cannot be fully who we are. And if we were to realize that, which is hard, and if we were to realize it on a large scale, which is even harder, that might offer a defense of nature at the time when we are trashing it remorselessly."

As I was listening to this interview, I was thinking about how we can do this with children; how can we encourage them to love the natural world so much that they want to protect it, not out of fear and despair, but because it's so important to them?

When I read Margaret's book, I thought: this is how. 

In Bayou Song, Margaret doesn't write about the whole world. She writes about her tiny part of it, a part that she loves, a part on a bayou in Southern Louisiana. Using a variety of forms, she writes loving tributes to plants and animals that live where she does. Beautiful photography and drawings help the reader see Margaret's world even more clearly. And then each poem is accompanied by a prompt, so that we, following Margaret's lead, can look around closely at the nature in our world.  What lives where we do?  Let's pay attention, and let's write about it!

Here's an example of Margaret's writing, "Ode to a Toad."

Her note introduces the reader to Pablo Neruda and his odes to ordinary things. She suggests writing an ode, too. So I did. I looked around my part of our beautiful planet, a street in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Look what's in bloom right now!

Taking Margaret's poem as my mentor text, I wrote my own ode.  (The "conspicuous claws" reference comes from a little research I did, in which I learned that the word "delonix" comes from Latin for "conspicuous claws," a description of the petals of this tree.)


Ode to a Flamboyant Tree (Delonix regia, Royal poinciana)

You blare
your bright red jazz
through June’s steamy days.
You are all flourish
and ostentation.
Leaving subtlety
to others,
you make the most
of your conspicuous claws.
You accessorize your red
with glowing flashes
of yellow and white. 
Royal tree,
I curtsy to you as I walk by.
I watch you fan yourself
with your green fringes
and display your blossoms
to advantage.
Flamboyant you are
as you dance
with your castanets,
far into the night.

by Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


How can we encourage kids to care for nature? We can encourage them to love it, and we can do that by teaching them to pay attention to it, not as a grand abstraction but in the specific plants and animals around them. Margaret's poems and prompts will help me do that with my students next year.

Order your own copy of Margaret's book here.

Bayou Song Blog Tour

To read more exciting posts about Margaret Simon’s debut children’s poetry book, Bayou Song, follow this blog tour.

Friday, June 22: Michelle Kogan
Tuesday, June 26: Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
Friday, July 6: Kimberly Hutmacher at Kimberly Hutmacher Writes
Friday, July 13: Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
Tuesday, July 17: Laura Shovan
Tuesday, July 24 Amanda Potts at Persistence and Pedagogy
Friday, July 27: Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
Monday, July 30 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
Friday, Aug. 3 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work that Matters

Carol has today's roundup.

Poetry Friday - Some Photos I Took at the Library

I've been opening our school library once a week for the summer, since we don't have public libraries where we live, and I don't like thinking of the kids being bookless.  Here are some pictures I took on Tuesday, some of the library in general and some of a poetry book I found and enjoyed.

In the middle of all the mess in the news this week, it felt good to read some beautiful words.

Michelle has today's roundup.

Reading Update

I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, but here are the books I've finished since my last reading update.

Book #40 of the year was Imperfect: Poems About Mistakes, reviewed here. 

Book #41 was Debunking the Myths of Forgive-and-Forget, by Kay Bruner.  Bruner, a therapist, does a wonderful job of exploring the process of forgiveness, and what forgiveness means - and doesn't mean.

Book #42 was Ascent, by Roland Smith.  This is the third book in the Peak series, and in this one, Peak visits Myanmar. 

Book #43 was Charles Frazier's new novel, Varina.  This is the story of Jefferson Davis' wife Varina, and her life before, during, and after the Civil War.  I am a big Charles Frazier fan, and I've been eagerly anticipating this book since I first learned it was going to be coming out.  Frazier doesn't disappoint in his complex, sympathetic portrayal.

Book #44 was A Sky the Color of Chaos, by M. J. Fièvre, an atmospheric story of a childhood and adolescence in Haiti.

Book #45 was The Warm Place, by Nancy Farmer, a middle grade title about a giraffe, a chameleon, a rat, and assorted other characters in search of home. 

Poetry Friday: Self-Portraits

Rembrandt's Late Self-Portraits
by Elizabeth Jennings

You are confronted with yourself. Each year
The pouches fill, the skin is uglier.
You give it all unflinchingly. You stare
Into yourself, beyond. Your brush's care
Runs with self-knowledge. Here
Is a humility at one with craft.
There is no arrogance. Pride is apart
From this self-scrutiny. You make light drift
The way you want. Your face is bruised and hurt
But there is still love left.
Love of the art and others. To the last
Experiment went on. You stared beyond
Your age, the times. You also plucked the past
And tempered it. Self-portraits understand,
And old age can divest,
With truthful changes, us of fear of death.
Look, a new anguish. There, the bloated nose,
The sadness and the joy. To paint's to breathe,
And all the darknesses are dared. You chose
What each must reckon with.

Photo Source: nga.gov

At this link you can watch a video about the painting. (I embedded it here but couldn't figure out how to keep it from playing automatically, which is annoying.) The video talks about how Rembrandt was his own favorite model.  I'm not sure that I'd use "favorite" to talk about how I feel about myself as a model, but we're definitely stuck with ourselves as models for whatever art it is we're trying to make.  That face, those emotions, that history, those same issues that keep re-emerging year after year.  "You are confronted with yourself," as Elizabeth Jennings puts it.  "Your face is bruised and hurt/ But there is still love left."

Rembrandt was 53 when he painted this self-portrait.  The other day I saw on Facebook that someone had posted an article about a survey in which people were asked at what age old folks should stop wearing jeans.  The result: age 53.  So what I want to know now is: if I just have a few years left of wearing jeans, is it OK if I get myself a hat like Rembrandt's?  Will the Zeitgeist, which apparently now chooses my wardrobe, permit me that indulgence? If I could paint, I would then paint a self-portrait with a little worried line between my eyes, similar to his.  Since I can't paint, I can at least snap a selfie, trying to capture "the sadness and the joy." 

Karen Edmisten has the roundup today.

Poetry Friday: Goodbye

The beginning of the summer is the season of goodbyes. I should say it is one of the seasons of goodbyes, because there are goodbyes all year round, but at this time of year multiple people leave at once. (Here's an amazing blog post explaining the constant transitions of the expat world.)

Today I'm sharing three goodbye poems I've written in the past year. The first one is about my childhood, the second about my frustration with people saying "I'll always be with you," "I'll be in your heart" and other such phrases when they are leaving, and the third about a friend in my writing group who is leaving.

Pyjamas

When I was a child
I would always carefully fold my pyjamas
in the morning when I got dressed
and place them under my pillow.

When we stayed in a hotel
or a motel
or someone else’s home
I would do the same.

In this way I left pyjamas
in many US states
and a few countries,
under pillows far and wide.

I like to think it was because
I felt at home everywhere.
When I lay my head on a pillow
and slept and dreamed there
that place became part of my life.
Or perhaps I was storing pyjamas
in case I ever came back.

But those places weren’t part of my life,
any more than all those people
we met on our travels,
the ones who promised to write to me,
and never did.
And I almost never did come back.
At least until I had outgrown the pyjamas.

Now that I am grown
I still always put my pyjamas under my pillow
but when I am not at home,
I have learned to check there when I’m packing.

I have a better idea now of where I belong.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



Goodbye

He told me he’d always be there.

As
he backed out of the driveway
he was still promising he’d never leave me. 

His face got smaller and smaller
as
he called from the car window,
“I’m still with you!  I’ll always be with you!”

The taillights disappeared down the street
as
he wasn’t with me any more.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



Goodbye (after M.S. Merwin)

with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
 M.S. Merwin, "Thanks"

I am always waving goodbye,
goodbye to the moment,
goodbye to the day,
goodbye to my family,
goodbye to many friends,
and now
(inevitably)
goodbye to you.

There you go, walking away
to parts unknown,
(Florida? 
Georgia? 
Washington DC? 
Belgium?)
and I am still here
waving goodbye

Making a speech,
I am saying goodbye.

Carrying home a bag of books
from your apartment
and some Extra Virgin Olive Oil,
I am saying goodbye.

Taking the art down from your walls
so you can pack it,
I am saying goodbye.

Writing these lines,
I am saying goodbye.

Talking and laughing,
I am saying goodbye.

Meeting you,
I was already saying goodbye.

Goodbye,
goodbye my friend,
I call behind you,
thank you we are saying and waving,
dark though it is

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

Here's today's roundup.