tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-332184932024-03-06T22:04:26.416-08:00YourFireAntYourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-31160657236040760202012-08-17T10:18:00.008-07:002016-04-04T08:40:38.201-07:00<b>How it Happens </b> <br /><br />A poetry workshop taught by a friend sounded interesting so I signed up. There were writing exercises that were really hard, but it was a class where you could actually learn how to write a poem, rather than just work on the stuff you were already doing. In the last exercise we were to take from at least three different other artistic media (painting, song, sculpture, story, dance, film, etc.) and incorporate them into a poem that we would write. So I took these:<br /><br /><i>I sit here thinking I should write in dread of stepping outside the room to find nothing exists.</i> <br /><br /> --David Ignatow <br /><br /><br />"Dance me to the end of love....." <br /><br />--Leonard Cohen, "I'm Your Man"<br /><br /><br />"No names!.....no names!" <br /><br />---"Last Tango in Paris"<br /><br /><br />"The crib notes we sneak through time are written in disappearing ink." <br /> --Andre Aciman, <i>Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere</i><br /><br /><br /> We were about to do our final dance. <br />It involved leaning down, and taking a mouthful of dirt. <br /><br /> I looked at you. You had already begun. <br /><br /> And you were crying. <br /><br /> --Bruce Bennett, "The Final Dance", from <i>Straw into Gold</i> <br /><br /><br /> In the meantime I was doing one of the previous exercises (in which we describe in NON-POETIC prose a thing or two, and then from that take words and make them into a poem. And then the teacher collects a copy of each poem and, anonymously, each student revises it to be given back to the original writer at the next session) with a friend via e.mail. Well, I had spent so much time on the exercise with the friend that I took the revised-by-me poem, which by that time was pretty much all mine, and used it for the exercise in taking from other artists, and turned out a poem called "Dancing for Sleep". And if you would like to see it, I'll send it to you. <br /><br /> "If you can play it, it ain't stealin' " (Dizzy Gillespie)YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-50444828113061725622011-05-29T11:53:00.000-07:002011-11-08T08:12:37.250-08:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">New chapbook</span><br /><br /><br />You can get <span style="font-style:italic;">Itching, itching<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span> by clicking <a href="http://www.finishinglinepress.com">here:</a><br /><br /><br />Click on "Bookstore" at the top, then fill in "Gilman" in the search box, and enter.<br /><br /><br />Enjoy!YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-84695932530119667202010-12-13T12:31:00.000-08:002010-12-13T13:00:47.411-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlaQycwktW9BJp1D2a0WWERPBScwr4KSO8hfBycU4rjb5T3Y3u1-HyzhMND0WQ3jycB2tfn-Nr-AwTk9t_09RiXFZ8B4g1wcd6asL6ViOubj87nwkp_Rz3C1lH8XMQCKnKGMMD7w/s1600/Market+006.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlaQycwktW9BJp1D2a0WWERPBScwr4KSO8hfBycU4rjb5T3Y3u1-HyzhMND0WQ3jycB2tfn-Nr-AwTk9t_09RiXFZ8B4g1wcd6asL6ViOubj87nwkp_Rz3C1lH8XMQCKnKGMMD7w/s320/Market+006.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5550269128773024754" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">today's list</span><br /><br />bliss blouse<br /><br />eyes twirly<br /><br />finger saliva<br /><br />bing cherry<br /><br />la di da day<br /><br />dark house<br /><br />you dumb boxer<br /><br />swooning bassoon<br /><br />jampacked arm<br /><br />solo flight bag<br /><br />no sugar pants<br /><br />glimmer pole<br /><br />ice box bingo<br /><br />manic movie<br /><br />fiddle brain<br /><br />bungled kiss<br /><br />ripped-out wall<br /><br />blank eyes<br /><br />no exit here<br /><br />mine to keep<br /><br />slender thread<br /><br />berry blond<br /><br />fawning ruffles<br /><br />driving nude<br /><br />bells on toes<br /><br />marzipan swan<br /><br />clam shack pack<br /><br />winning loser<br /><br />dopehead wrinkles<br /><br />falling over<br /><br />notime boyfriend<br /><br />camisole mud<br /><br />eating plywood<br /><br />wet blanket makeout<br /><br />finding the mens room<br /><br />don't know jack<br /><br />big ones<br /><br />apple fool<br /><br />brink of heaven<br /><br />no salt window<br /><br />funny bunny<br /><br />ground bread<br /><br />spraycan blue<br /><br />candy horse<br /><br />whisper train<br /><br />pollen sieve<br /><br />buckram bound<br /><br />rainy <span style="font-style:italic;">plink</span><br /><br />towhead sun<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Thanks, Lucy!</span><a href="http://box-elder.blogspot.com"></a>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-26561867861259494252010-08-05T09:54:00.000-07:002010-08-07T11:12:58.666-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ejLTCEtURiU661PT1Z20uIp0na4L_BgtNCUM3g3ToKZ27qssOv9J5qfEnEeEB51rhW6ANOZSi7CL3YYvvctEh5W_JVfI9UkuTF6yQ_aXPRgtjxohYFEiZA5NidtrKOIu781MWA/s1600/Niles@home+012.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ejLTCEtURiU661PT1Z20uIp0na4L_BgtNCUM3g3ToKZ27qssOv9J5qfEnEeEB51rhW6ANOZSi7CL3YYvvctEh5W_JVfI9UkuTF6yQ_aXPRgtjxohYFEiZA5NidtrKOIu781MWA/s320/Niles@home+012.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502334315175086738" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">When your letter came</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I reached for a knife, my apartment so muggy I had to struggle for space in the air. Moisture bickering with skin and cloth all night had kept me awake, and now my legs were stuck to the chair, the soles of my feet to the tacky wood floor. Perspiration's insatiable quest for purchase in armpits, back of my knees, all down inside my shirt was ongoing. I'd woken to its sense of humor which included a sheen the entire length of my body, the sheets underneath a swamp, twisted and damp from my efforts to woo elusive Morpheus all night in a moon-filled room.<br /><br />Slitting open the envelope, I read that your lemon trees had been plucked by thieves in the night. Alas, I knew how much you looked forward to those lemons each summer, the tartness just sweet enough to be eaten right off the tree. I was glad to hear you were fine with the theft of lemons just at their peak, but the sun garden view of life portrayed in lines squiggled across the pages, my vision blurred with sleeplessness. On my way to the desk to write back I stumbled in the murk of residual tiredness. Already daybreak's gradual light brought with it a breath-sucking humidity, my flip-flops clacked stickily against bare soles, and outside the cicadas had set up a hissy rhythm with their tiny backleg maracas.<br /><br />Struggling into an already dank tank top and shorts, awash in sweat like a murderer lying to cops, I went out hoping no one else in the neighborhood was up, and walked the streets until breakfast despite rivulets zigzagging my skin and sogging my clothes. And as I walked I planned a response to you there on the west coast laid out in your hammock and hat with nothing but hands grasping breeze. I wanted to say how much I missed you in this heat, how the days seemed to fold up into pockets of lethargy followed by bursts of cleaning. How your handwriting's a lot like his. <br /><br />Later on, I squirmed in my chair at the desk,writing, skirt adhered to varnished wood, and suddenly he was there. Like those whispery sounds heard in closets, the flashes in peripheral vision as I round a corner, faint muttering late at night. His passing leaves a little <span style="font-style:italic;">phumpf</span> on edges and corners, that glows in the dark, that makes me fill up and strangle with grief for nothing. For awhile I used to arrange little tableaux of things left behind, a ring or wisp of scent, his comb with one broken tooth .too good to toss. Then I noticed the times with him I remembered had begun to take on new significance, to take up room, to solidify. I was reluctant to embrace such a loss of broad memory, and so on my knees in that big closet off the front room, I systematically went through boxes, picture frames, packets of letters, old clothes, and whatnot, pulling out every last scrap. I boxed them up for the trash, and carried them into the front hall. <br /><br />Then tore up the letter to you, and began again. And hoped the reply I wanted would float in through the screen on the air of predawn streets, and that by the time this saline wash now blooming from my every pore, this flushing and frizzing and prickling, subsided the words would've written themselves into a proper reply. Because my insomnia-battered muscles and aching head were just not up to the task of connecting the dots for you, reminiscing over days in the past when we had all the time in the world for distance like this. <br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-47993084771265654592010-04-19T07:59:00.000-07:002010-08-06T09:31:45.247-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">The Elusive Potato Salad</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6pue2IZ7kNrY_9oyooizSr0H5xW51MOEOhGrudoARCMYqDo_MnNaIyCDXTGMBis7HnXvEWA79yU8dwiEVwsPjUyVZc6hd-hfdx3236JR9srsKDsOifDp7EVpddA8ZAnAqJ7mLig/s1600/Elusive.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6pue2IZ7kNrY_9oyooizSr0H5xW51MOEOhGrudoARCMYqDo_MnNaIyCDXTGMBis7HnXvEWA79yU8dwiEVwsPjUyVZc6hd-hfdx3236JR9srsKDsOifDp7EVpddA8ZAnAqJ7mLig/s320/Elusive.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461863600326640002" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-59277026799565898822009-12-21T09:09:00.000-08:002011-05-03T06:00:21.225-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNLFeMQx1zLSFd_Vl9sWPlc7CUROxbbA3skQ56nXz2pZxer2dbOsNh7sW_bItpKjqvpe83Yh_zf961aWd7xaj1pPLq4sxS6ou6B1NUCCkRNNzs_uxFT8WWoKJKkR5zNNrQGVlNPA/s1600-h/people2009+019.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNLFeMQx1zLSFd_Vl9sWPlc7CUROxbbA3skQ56nXz2pZxer2dbOsNh7sW_bItpKjqvpe83Yh_zf961aWd7xaj1pPLq4sxS6ou6B1NUCCkRNNzs_uxFT8WWoKJKkR5zNNrQGVlNPA/s320/people2009+019.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417744919707911010" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">To my brother, who left without saying goodbye</span><br /><br /><br />What did it sound like when you fell? How loud the <span style="font-style:italic;">thud</span> that reverberated off the gym walls all the rest of that night must have been. When you hit the floor, already dead they said, the force broke your nose, spattered blood across your face and soaked your mustache. <br /><br />In the hospital, your throat was still warm, but no amount of rubbing could warm your feet again. Your face was burdened with a bunch of stuff they used to try to revive you, but you, winsome imp, flash in the fire, fleet-footed brother of my heart, were gone. <br /><br />What were you thinking when that stuttering heartbeat took your breath away, and started to take you down? The second they said you might've had to suffer before falling so fast you didn't try to catch yourself. Did you have time to bid your life farewell or even wince? Did you have a second's lucid shock?<br /><br />When our "baby" brother called, I cursed unblinking death for taking you so outrageously. Then hung up and tore the phone out of the wall, opened the kitchen window and hurled it into the yard. <br /><br />You were my polestar, my confidant, friend of a lifetime. I never had to speak the love you knew was there. And you always knew without a word the whimsy and the humor in my mind. How interested and wide-eyed as a child you went at life. How passionately you advised, and coached, and taught, and listened. I never got around to sending that poem draft you asked to see. I thought there'd be time at Christmas. I thought there would still be time.<br /><br />What I wouldn't give now for one more hour of you.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-56465458348110832182009-05-29T08:46:00.001-07:002011-05-03T06:03:11.809-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIglIfepGWJvY10faNmuqrf-mIS21Sa1BQ1GYXFzHF7rrT-ESExoSU_QOVpPFDDSCkxWKMOdEfE6i7psVj4aSjjYh3MDlD9RAubeoa3vEqiohc75SQ05Jhd0Fbh_22mQuoXT9Qdg/s1600-h/post+002.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIglIfepGWJvY10faNmuqrf-mIS21Sa1BQ1GYXFzHF7rrT-ESExoSU_QOVpPFDDSCkxWKMOdEfE6i7psVj4aSjjYh3MDlD9RAubeoa3vEqiohc75SQ05Jhd0Fbh_22mQuoXT9Qdg/s320/post+002.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5341274796085270786" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ORCAlN0nez0j_RsArwv1s87FI-jWnGSanVtmu-DQIXsImAxCglhUbY6xJPO7Qdd74tMeJ3Eqt0oAH4_LxQHfLJTu8IZopH3C3-jcsducddkY8hzbRxVUO_nqpbLwSQTq9Ri5Zw/s1600-h/post+005.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ORCAlN0nez0j_RsArwv1s87FI-jWnGSanVtmu-DQIXsImAxCglhUbY6xJPO7Qdd74tMeJ3Eqt0oAH4_LxQHfLJTu8IZopH3C3-jcsducddkY8hzbRxVUO_nqpbLwSQTq9Ri5Zw/s320/post+005.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5341273093564405906" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Listen</span><br /><br />On Sunday, the Gallows Hill Writers presented a reading at a new restaurant in town. One of them was so nervous she didn't notice her own parents in the front row. We all tried to reassure her, but in the end, it was the performance itself that worked. <br /><br />You get up on that stage and hope there's light on your page (and not in your eyes), and if there's some kind of lectern...all the better. I usually wear glasses too, even though I've printed out the poems in large type. Before I start I spend a few minutes looking out at the people in the room. Once I'm reading, the poems take on a life of their own, pulling the audience along with them.<br /><br />I move with my voice, speaking at the rate of my heartbeat, and hope that the poems draw enough attention that I slip through the half hour unmarked. I've known musicians all my life, and many have said they play to meet people, to speak without being interrupted. <br /><br />And for protection. The swirl of lines that permeates the air in the room protects you from small talk's awkwardness. People can start right in asking me what the hell a <span style="font-style:italic;">boletto</span> is, or how I ever thought of licking a horsefly off my arm while clinging to a galloping mare. I'm spared the whattayadoforadayjob and have-you-been-here-long preliminaries. We can get right down to chasing after sound. I thrive on the anonymity of rhythm and riff that sparkles through conversation, the humor that warms it, the undertow of knowing .enriched with syllables of pure joy. <br /><br />And I'm glad to meet you. I could listen to your juicy iambs all night long.<br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-76855494954483432452009-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:002009-06-19T12:54:19.529-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Cooking Burdock in a Thaw</span><br /><br />The streets steamed all night, blurring carlight and moon, and dogs barked a level path through the neighborhood. At dawn I shut the window against chill that by then had settled on every surface. Washed out and rough with sleeplessness, I prowled my house in the gray air. Fumbling in the kitchen, weeping and blowing my nose, I thought I heard the the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea. Still I haven't heard from you, and what the morning brings is saturated in that blue.<br /><br />You forgot to take the old leather boots when you left and I put them on every morning just to remember you. The cat curls up by them in the afternoon if they're in sun. I ache and feel a thirst no amount of winter-cold water can quench. The day is night, and night is on the blink<br /><br />My shirt is frayed and rinsed to paleness, and cold air billows the sleeves as I tread the creaking floor boards and <span style="font-style:italic;">scurff</span> the old bokhara rug I trashpicked from across the street last fall. The air in my house barely moves, a whisper in the room like pampas grass on the moon. I sing under my breath a song that's a hand on my tongue fingering saliva out, that clogs my throat like caramel shedding sugar. That last day, we walked to the gallery where your painting was just taken down while you explained why. I heard in the spaces between sentences the loneliness that had come in with you. Before you, I didn't have that. And now that you're not here, I have the loneliness you brought me.<br /><br />In the kitchen I brushed dirt off a bundle of burdock root, then cut it into pieces, put it to soak in water with a splash of vinegar. I filled a kettle and put it on to boil. The early train from Chicago whistled in the west, mourning the miles gone, the days, the nights. It pulled at my throat making me answer, and answer. How that jiggle and rock always stuns me, the motion jerking and lulling and going. <br /><br /> I emptied the pan of soaking burdock; then filled it with half the boiled water. While it soaked a half-hour I picked up several lines off the floor, a poem unfinished in the glow of morning, hair in the corners, dust all around, birds at the feeder. And when words came, they pierced like steel guitar in a song about leaving. Fresh frost surfaces fooled me into light again. <br /><br />Then I dumped out the tepid water of a second rinse, and filled the pot of burdock chunks for cooking, the half hour needed just enough to start a murmur, a full boil of gratitude, with morning's plain white sky opaque and still, day's long miracle still to come. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-7378164334139060882008-10-23T13:38:00.000-07:002009-06-19T13:02:55.829-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Clover drying, sweet woodruff</span><br /><br />Thanks for your letter, darling, I wrote to the niece in Big City That Never Sleeps, I'm impressed by the beauty of your language and the depth of your feeling. She's grieving. The end of her first love affair. She told me that food tastes like dust, the walls of her house close in till she has to run outdoors to breathe. She howls like a dog at the incredible offense of someone ceasing to love her. I tell her she's <span style="font-style:italic;">encroyable</span>, and grip the phone helplessly, trying to force the logic of intensity onto a situation nobody knows anything about. But there's no good way to do it, not even a bad way.<br /><br />Loss powders me with its dust, a moth flapping against the screen, <span style="font-style:italic;">schwush</span> of leaves, eddy just before the water falls. Night comes on quickly these days, there's no air inside as we close windows to the cold. I write letters, try to finish poems, shoot rolls of film, write songs and sing them. Loud. Clean my house, even the clean parts. Cook. Fill the house with the smell of nutmeg. Roasting meat. Frying onions. Chocolate syrup heating in a pan to be poured over white chocolate ice cream. Homemade lemon curd. <br /><br />Tonight I cooked a pan of applesauce from the new macintosh apples in bushels everywhere, just enough cinnamon to color the juice, a drizzle of maple syrup to take off the edge. It's cooling in a white dog dish in the other room (dish no longer needed by the dog, I have commandeered it for my own use). Later I'll mix a few dollops of it into plain yoghurt and swirl it around for a late supper.<br /><br />Earlier the westering sun sky painted the walls of this 5-sided room where I work. The few katydids left have lost some of their voice as cold stiffens everything with its arrival. I walk out back to toss apple skins and egg shells into the compost box, hoping it lures our neighborhood skunk for a last visit, or the coyote who has learned to sneak along the edges to avoid light from the house.<br /><br />I try to lay to rest once and for all something that cannot be laid to rest once and for all. My house smells of drying red clover and sweet woodruff. Like a humidor for expensive cigars, a little bit of hot cinnamon, burnt rice. The branches of an overgrown forsythia scrabble against screens, and mockingbirds on a last romp through the neighborhood call out their cascade of fooling-around imitations.<br /><br />Finishing a poem is like trying to land a plane. The desired quiet touching down collides with an ultimate updraft of feeling, and in the background, the flying glass, foaming bleeding wounds, and shards lying all over the floor soaking up moon on its way to full. I bellow to the smoke trick with mirrors thing that everyone targets for their rage and fury and whining, and as always get nothing back.<br /><br />Dear child, you will learn how awful it is to live in the vividness of your heart. You'll thank your stars for it, even while pressing hard against chest and belly to shore up the shreds and tatters, the blazing heat and mess left behind after love has ebbed away. You'll go again and again to the place of falling off, you'll thrive and even prosper. I know you will. I know.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-17419611818079236242008-10-08T07:05:00.000-07:002009-06-19T13:06:49.255-07:00<strong>Any minute he might walk in</strong><br /><br /><br />For me, the on/off world with him was never any vivider than that last afternoon. Or at least the one I <span style="font-style:italic;">think</span> was the last. I might've gone to the window to watch him down the street to his car in the soft yellow morning....October, when warmth is married to liquid in a way that heats you all the way in, marinating skin and ribs and heart in that golden haze.<br /><br />It happens in the commonest of ways. One day the person just isn't there anymore. Nothing was said, or done. He went out the door into the same city as you, and you never saw him again.<br /><br />When he didn't come back right away I didn't even wonder for several hours more. And then days went by. Weeks. I imagined that the phone rang and rang inside the empty rooms of my house while I was at work. Knowing that he'd call when things were right again, I didn't bother to catch up with him. Probably, I'd already lost him then.<br /><br />I let go too soon and he went scudding along the edges of my life where he was always apt to be. And even after he moved across the country and started up a life with people I didn't know, still I believed that I'd see him again sometime. Any minute he might walk in the door, call up from a booth in the midwest, drop a line. <br />For a long time I found in my sleep that I was still living in the long-ago months when he was with me, and would wake with the thought that he'd be waiting in the hall when I came out of class that afternoon.<br /><br />And even after he had walked on out the door that last morning, I didn't change anything. I left the lampshade cocked, socks balled under the bed, his towel damp from the shower dangling over the edge. <br /><br />Tonight I washed my hair in a steamy shower to get relief from the ache of weeping from news of his death. I went outside to hang the towel, and the air was thick with mist and something like the smell of beets cooking in very little water. The sky hung low, and the now-faint katydid sound was steady, full of night. It happened at the house of a friend down south. She came home from work and found him in a chair, naked, a faded turquoise beach towel dropped to the floor beside him.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-27109983526939498292008-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:002008-08-06T08:37:55.912-07:00<strong>Where?</strong><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCyG-AaKQFWhz3L3oVi8Z0ZLzMh0kELS3GF6uJ1Qet1mGsE7iDLzMrwQk11avR3Q1ugIIsEy3IPUQklRzGBgHu2E07PHRZGYdflN_goosipN5YOw1FMHWHrUyewsrtOFnkggG3PA/s1600-h/new+phots--July2008+016.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCyG-AaKQFWhz3L3oVi8Z0ZLzMh0kELS3GF6uJ1Qet1mGsE7iDLzMrwQk11avR3Q1ugIIsEy3IPUQklRzGBgHu2E07PHRZGYdflN_goosipN5YOw1FMHWHrUyewsrtOFnkggG3PA/s320/new+phots--July2008+016.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231427378788076466" /></a>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-16572729659618905972008-08-06T08:27:00.000-07:002008-08-06T08:38:44.174-07:00<strong>Sugar Ray</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh9xbDp0eOD7TaKX8QkqqFJhyphenhyphenCBNeAZUppABLPMtlBGtnza8_RwyM82HZpB2yiUA0DUwID9pMNoueDre1NKfA98ObrLax37IawLyIutypsEU_ygGVs02nGZYjQrPndEQW6HnnlWA/s1600-h/new+phots--July2008+020.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh9xbDp0eOD7TaKX8QkqqFJhyphenhyphenCBNeAZUppABLPMtlBGtnza8_RwyM82HZpB2yiUA0DUwID9pMNoueDre1NKfA98ObrLax37IawLyIutypsEU_ygGVs02nGZYjQrPndEQW6HnnlWA/s320/new+phots--July2008+020.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231426948938266930" /></a>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-49029885600328709192008-07-12T06:25:00.001-07:002012-03-08T12:43:27.974-08:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Get Lost</span><br /><br />Spending time with dogs turns me into a nosy snuffling creature susceptible to everything around me. Sugar Ray the lopsided boxer and I went for an early morning walk in a half wild area near home. The place makes no sense. You can't get from one part to another efficiently, it's a lousy shortcut, has no paving or signs or even places to sit dryly. No swings, no slides. The paths are narrow and twisting, worn into existence by whoever has walked through. It has woods, pond, brook, fields, lawns, and boggy areas. There's nothing to do there.<br /><br />We went early to have the place to ourselves and avoid the day's heat, but even so we met half a dozen others, not all of them with dogs. And redwing blackbirds in full voice happily challenged the tensile strength of reeds at the pond's edge. Bullfrogs made their rubberband thwipping sound. Herons galumphed through mud seeking breakfast. A circling of hawks overhead floated in air currents.<br /><br />We walked for an hour, then stopped under a willow for awhile. Moths and butterflies fluttered aimlessly, flies and grasshoppers zipped past now and then. Someone walking through grass close by <span style="font-style:italic;">skush skush skushed </span> into a distant whisper. I let go of the leash and the dog sloped off down toward the pond. With a two-part sigh he dropped into the shade of a grove of maples, his nose an inch from my foot. The air hissed, moisture molecules swirled before my eyes, intensifying the smell of dirt, stone, leaf mold. Quiet set in, and I lolled, blinded by green. <br /><br />Eighty degrees already at 7:00 a.m. and moisture rising out of the ground saturated clothes, skin, hair. The place was full of green blood. My belly rumbled emptily, and I put my face in the grass, sniffing, wallowing, licking at rough edges. Plaintain, chicory, gentians of several shades and sizes, cattail grass and white sweet clover all giving off dew. In this part of the country grapevines take over in the summer, blanketing everything in their path, making it look like the cover of R.E.M.'s "Murmur" album. I savored the smell of broken grass blades, stems leaking into mashed-down fern, spores puffing up the air, a glassed-in heat saturated with chlorophyll, bug iridescence, pollen, I succumbed.<br /><br />I lay there so long I felt leaves begin to grow inside my mouth, a net of silver fret my vision. The dog scooched over, touched his wet nose to my bare thigh. I hummed low in my throat, moving in a face-down shimmy as sweat got the better of cloth in the rising heat. The buzzing over the pond grew louder as we sank lower, lazing in a green light reverie. Then I rolled over and looked up through veins and spines of maple, knew the deep awful peacefulness of nothing, and nowhere to go. No clocks or maps, no mealtimes, entertainments, or love affairs. Nobody could possibly come up to how those oaks and locusts in the wet yellow air spread me out and buttered the landscape with my waning powers of volition. The day inched forward busily, but Sugar Ray and I stayed still until the keys of stone underfoot that seem to turn up wherever I lie on the ground to do <span style="font-style:italic;">any</span>thing roused me from oblivion.<br /><br />Afterwards, sipping coffee in the sunny kitchen, still in the nowhere fugue I walked back in, I wished that I could fly, and live in ponds, make a whole day of flitting gracefully between trees in a clump, with rabbits and ground hogs deep in, the sounds a loon makes over water, far from other humans, deep down where darkness thickens as it sinks, in the mysterious passages and uneven ground of the place I long for day and night, the quiet heartbreaking sense of belonging that I seek everywhere always. Always.<br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-67066999030493520112008-05-14T09:58:00.000-07:002008-06-05T15:19:24.521-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">The Physics of Street Walkin</span>g<br /><br />In the early hours of a June evening, I find myself wandering the streets of Maritime Town, weeping. The air so good I could eat it, loss batting its feathery wings inside my ribcage. I came here to get out of my life for a time, and I've fallen in love. The sea, the fogs the sounds of wood on rope, on metal. <em>Thunks</em> in the fog, the <em>creeee</em> of sea birds, little peeps when distressed osprey wants you to move off a bit. The people I've met here over the years, the dogs and cats. Streets in The City an hour away. Bookstores. Music. Sea. <br /><br />All this has gone in deep, and tonight, just a few days before my departure I am walking through town in a fog so thick I can't see more than a few feet ahead. I've come here every spring for 13 years; it is my second home. I've been to people's houses here, to their summer cottages, church suppers, funerals. I've been invited to a writer's group, to give readings of my own work in Large Nearby City. <br /><br />I come in May because "there's no one here" then. At night the only place open is a cafe on the main street, run by a Scottish couple where the live music can be anything from <em>a </em><em>capello</em> voice to didgeredoo, guitar, taber, and dulcimer. The people of this town are shy, and it's hard to live here. The people who stay on year after year have a "something" that I'm drawn to, and most come from somewhere else. Tonight the lights from the windows of Simple Times Cafe bleed into the murk as I walk toward them after having covered most of the streets. <br /><br />My hips are sore [this old part of town is built on a steep slope, running south from the harbor] from uneven pavement and hills. The fog has condensed all over my windbreaker and hair and skin. There is a small group gathered around the singer/songwriter from Toronto this night, and the front doors are wide open. If I go in the proprietor will come over and sit with me. He'll pour tea into my cup and ask me if I'd like to try his new chocolate cake, or leek soup, or gingerbread, or whatever he has made that day. The room will take me in and surround me with the warmth of laughter, singing and low conversation. <br /><br />But I walk past without going in, because I'm not one for goodbyes. For me, life is a continuous length of material with different patterns and weavings and colors. And time spent here is a continuation of everything else I do, even the train ride, the arrival back home and return to work. Even a memory, suddenly dropped into a day or evening, of a small place somewhere else in my landscape that belongs to me as surely as my fingers and feet do, and that whenever I need to go there I can, no matter what time of the day or night, no matter what I've done and said and become in the meantime, and when I do it'll be picking up the conversation where I left off. And I will be at home, as at home as I am anywhere. <blockquote></blockquote>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-63440537257531520242008-01-31T09:17:00.000-08:002008-02-01T06:08:46.596-08:00<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span><span><span><br />In A City Like No Other with Jo(e)<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span>We came to this city to step out of our lives for a few days and be anybody. <a href="http://writingasjoe.blogspot.com">Jo(e)</a> arrived first, spent a day and a night trolling the upper east side of town for thrills with her sister, then headed over to the conference we had used as a prompt for this foray out of daily routine. She dropped off her things on the bed by the window, and headed out to meet up with strangers and eat supper.<br /><br />When I got here I immediately stripped off the too many layers [it's 50 effin' degrees here] of clothes I'd worn on the train, and became Deevil van Zandt for the night, dashing out to have supper with a stranger of my own. Later, back at the room, Jo(e) and I finally coincided. The first thing she said was "get up on that [tiny] table by the window and we'll shoot the photo there with you looking like one of those Aphrodite statues on a pedestal. Gamely, I got up on the flimsy wobbly thing, but of course my head grazed the ceiling, throwing off the proportions.<br /><br />Did I mention that Jo(e) became Fran Lebowitz the minute she stepped off the train, without the tuxedo and cigarette, but with the camera dangling from her neck. She specializes in nude shots, and tells potential models it is some arcane tradition from her early years. People fall for this all the time, apparently (just scroll through her Flickr files).<br /><br />This morning, we went out to hunt up some breakfast, and wound up in a deli with tables in the window. Jo(e) munched her bagel with peanut butter and commented on the passing scene: People don't seem to wear warm enough clothing here!......look at that woman there....she's got 4-inch high heels on her shoes!.....how can she walk in them???.... And what is with all the black????<br /><br />I commented on her own grown-up clothes-- herringbone blazer with very clean brown shirt, hiking boots, jeans. Conference Mode, she calls it. Very nice, and she fits right in. Nobody would ever know....<br /><br />Look up there, Deevil! A man in his office, talking on the phone! Yes, I see him. As I was saying.... very sophisticated look, Jo(e).....Look over there! and she pointed out many more interesting things as we walked the streets, aggressively jaywalking and swearing at rude drivers who couldn't resist honking their horns, pointing out novelties (like two running fountains in the same block, in <span style="font-style: italic;">January</span>), shivering in our too sparse clothes, having been lured by the overly warm room into shedding longjohns, scarves and gloves, against our better judgement.<br /><br />After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel and conference. The schedule is dense with events and sessions, at least 2 dozen for every hour & a half time slot. Who can choose from among all those. The Book Fair itself is an exercise in satiation. New books of poetry and flyers, bowls of chocolate, raffle tickets, representatives from publishers and presses all over the country, lists to add your name to, contests, knowledgeable people behind the tables eager to answer your questions, give you things, say your name, solicit your poems, and talk about writing.<br /><br />And everywhere there are people. All kinds. Interesting and colorful and loud, confident and pushy and brash, fun to be with, hard to get away from, amusing and kind. The city itself is a personality. One I've missed, I realized last night walking through streets that were once as familiar to me as the inside of my mouth. I don't know exactly how long it's been since I've come here, but I do remember who I was with. And how long he's been dead, and how long before that it had been since we'd said goodbye at the Train Station at the Center of the World not knowing it would be the last time.<br /><br /><br /><br />.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></span></span>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-34949226365324082882008-01-03T08:17:00.000-08:002008-01-04T08:05:10.330-08:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Niece<br /></span><span><br /><span>I stopped in a cafe near my office and asked her to make me a tuna sandwich to watch her move. Gentle and graceful, she quietly took out the things needed for the sandwich, slicing off of a fresh loaf, opening a container, giving a little sniff. As she reached for a knife, I remembered the days of watching her on the parallel bars in a stuffy gym loud with kids, during the annual recital of her tumbling class.<br /><br />She has always danced, at least in my eyes. Even seeing her walk along a sidewalk on her way to class or to her car, tilted forward slightly like her grandmother, I see her dancing. Swaying, fluttering her hands like the ends of branches, fingertips touching down, alighting on things. Like a sparrow on a windowledge, jittery with the cold but excited to be doing things. Turning this way and that, seeing from all angles, lifting off, gone.<br /><br />Rachel reached up to the extra large box of plastic wrap, pulled out a sheet long enough to wrap the sandwich and corn chips, and yanked downward in a deft swoop. Holding what appeared to be a shining piece of air between her hands, she brought them around the sandwich, patting down, then brought it over to me. Want a bag, she asked, knowing I'd probably say no. Her good upbringing and good bones on display behind the counter. All the down-to-earth capable hands in her family background, reaching back to the grandmother of my grandmother's grandmother there in the room holding out my lunch sweetly, confidently, unbearably full of grace.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-29202147199361671092007-11-08T13:29:00.000-08:002007-11-30T07:01:04.872-08:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stay in the Room<br /><br /></span>You get to the hard edge of the song and it's embarrassing how wet with grief you are, and at the same time lonely, and on fire with longing. It's a bitch. You want to get up and go to bed, nap all afternoon, see a movie. There's laundry in the other room, and the dishes from breakfast. And lunch. And then, well . . . . that line in the fourth verse, it just won't come right.<br /><br />I told my niece the other day that I know a poem is right when I blush to the roots of my hair. Poetry is not nice. It oysters all over the room, leaving prints, slime, gashes, echoing in the stairwell, reminding you, pulling out stuff you haven't looked at in years. Uh oh. Gads. Not that again.<br /><br />And going to readings? Same thing. Last night during Big Tall Poet's reading I was suddenly ready. It felt like all my cells opened their arms and let the music wash in like ocean. What was it I scribbled on a scrap in my pocket? The lines arrive upon me like the slow beginning of a turn. I was so caught up in the song and the rhythm of Big Poet's voice that when Poet-Painter Friend who had come with me whispered something, it sounded like "I've got two offices full of panties at the moment..." What?!<br /><br />Paintings. Now what the hell was running through the air in that room? I heard somewhere once that a good poem makes you vulnerable to your own joy and exuberance. Like a good friend does. And what are friends for but to surround you. Just that. Nothing else.<br /><br />And my unfinished poem at home on the table, with troubled lines all through it. I'd fled it to go to the reading. The second reader gave us a chapter out of his book. One paragraph stuck, about some kid wanting to be outside in the first rain of the monsoon season more than he wanted to argue and kiss with his girl. He said: We don't write letters anymore... And immediately I fumbled for a pen in my pocket, scribbled some notes for a letter. Just for that, I wanted to holler out. JUST for <span style="font-style: italic;">THAT</span>!<br /><br />And Tall Poet's Voice rumbled on like going over one of those old plank bridges in a van. It made me thirsty, and the palms of my hands itch. And after he was done I drank down the whole bottle of water they'd given him, bought his album and one of his books, stole away into the night, and began letting down my guard.<br /><br />"Look out for my [joy and exuberance]; it's in your neighborhood.." (some Neil Young lines, tweaked for my own purposes...) Words are spells. I walked home spell-bound, dazzled, the tectonic plates of my body shifting. When I give a reading, I sneak up on the audience completely naked inside, and bullet my words across the seats so that sparkle can sift slowly down onto the people who came to hear. They come because they want to be held. And reminded. Poked in the sore places until their eyes are a mush.<br /><br />I went home to my poem, heavy at heart even though sand was shifting somewhere in my body, a door that'd just slammed shut stopped reverberating all down the hallway and another softly opened a crack, letting in prickly new air.<br /><br />Trudging in the door I saw the pages still on the table. I sat down to them, and reached inside my coat, pulled out a scrap of paper and read: Stay in the room with it. Stay with it until you can let it go. And tears began to soak my cheeks, glistening in the low yellow light.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-51125553316524747142007-10-30T13:51:00.000-07:002007-11-07T09:55:21.304-08:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Last Dance</span><br /><br />Prowling the house at midnight I can't sleep so I walk the rooms. Huge and full of windows, a house I once called home, now mostly empty and for sale. A coating of dust dulls the polished floors, and my pacing leaves prints. By the light of a half moon, my wool-socked feet muffling the sound, I touch things as I pass--odd pieces of furniture, a chipped place in the dining room wall, glass doorknobs, a phone on the wall in my mother's office.<br /><br />Seven years ago, after they'd found a tumor in her belly, when she was in remission, her body weight up to 90 pounds, my mother lay on her bed one Sunday afternoon sewing neckties for Christmas presents. She stitched with her mouth full of pins, fussing over the maroon silk, deftly tacking and folding with small knobby hands that arthritis had distorted over the years. I lay across the foot of the bed on my stomach, head over the edge looking down. She told me she was going to bake Christmas cookies later, and asked me what kinds I'd like. That was only a couple weeks after my brother had carried her out of the car, into the house, and up the stairs to her bed, so weak she couldn't sit up in a wheelchair. I murmured something about the frosted fruit bars she'd made every year since I could remember, and was pierced with the realization that they might be the last cookies of hers I'd ever eat.<br /><br />As it turned out, that the was the beginning of a year of last things. I walk the October-dry floors this night and list these things. Last roses opening along the path to the front door, tended year after year, each bloom a joy to her. Last burnt sugar cake for my birthday, gritty from eggshell in the batter in her absend-mindedness. Last leaves turning red and gold in October, month of both her wedding anniversaries. Last Christmas. That dreaded holiday that presses like a too-tight sweater, a table laden with too many sweets and everyone wanting you to try just a little. (A pang of remorse and relief at once over that one.)<br /><br /><br />After I left her that day, and walked the short distance up the street to my house, it occurred to me that I had finally met and begun to appreciate my mother as a person, after years of awkward encounters and participation in family gatherings. She and I did much better living our separate lives, the invisible bond between us undisturbed by daily contact. Knowing she was there was enough for me. For her too, I think. Over the years we'd been forced by circumstance, such as my father's death at 49, into situations of great intimacy and knowledge of each other, and we both needed room to escape.<br /><br />But during that last year with my mother I suddenly wanted to know her better, to press her deep into memory. Not the mother of my childhood and growing up, the mother maddened by grief at the loss of the love of her life. Or not only that mother. I wanted to know the woman who lay on her bed sewing neckties in the face of death. The woman slowly shrinking down to the vital essence of pleasure and grit. The hopeful planning for holidays, the daily treats--wheat thins with almond butter, caramel chocolate swirl ice cream, deep red plum jam on toast in the mornings.<br /><br />In the hospital during daily radiation treatments, while hooked up to a plastic bag of saline fluid, and catheterized, my mother planned her last ball gown. She imagined the trip to the Catskills in October to attend an annual ballroom dance competition she'd won prizes at every one of the previous thirty years. Propped up on pillows, she figured out who would drive, and where everyone would sit. She asked my brother's wife to help her cut the deep purple velvet, combining favorite features of three different patterns as was her wont, and sewed it on a 50-year old Singer in the other room. My sister-in-law had never before made a dress from a pattern that was largely imaginary, but she started in, gamely ripping out and resewing under my mother's watchful eye.<br /><br />By the time they finished the dress my mother had gained five more pounds, but still she had to fill out the top of the bodice with kleenex. On a brilliant blue and gold day in the middle of October, my brother made a pallet for her in the back of his van, stuffing luggage and pillows around the edges, and drove her to The Pines for a weekend of dance and renewal of friendship. Her husband wept the whole way, but did his best, helping her out of the car, into the wheelchair, rolling her into the auditorium the night of the opening ceremony. She told me later that the other dancers stood when she came in the room, applauding and weeping for nearly 10 minutes. Her years of winning the prize, of sparkling gowns and flashing movements in the spotlight were over. But the tiny woman in purple velvet and rhinestones in a wheelchair up on the dais had brought the room to its knees.<br /><br />I walked the empty rooms until a trace of brightness in the east began to bring trees into clarity. I'm finally sleepy. My mother's been dead for 5 years but I feel her presence still, and I'm filled with her light, her grace and her courage every day of my life. I'll never forget the emaciated woman in a purple gown, too much rouge on her cheeks for the cancer-pale skin, gripping the arms of a wheelchair in the dazzling lights of a ballroom filled with dancers in sparkling gowns, speaking into a microphone brought down low for her, telling a roomful of people how glad she was to be alive.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-25615650352780188272007-09-11T11:01:00.000-07:002007-09-11T11:24:49.818-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chest </span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span> I found it nearly impossible to write this because every time I started the area bounded by ribs, clavicles, spine, and shoulder blades would fill up with floury dough set to rise in a back pantry in the sun.<br /><br />When my kid brother had a heart attack at 40, my father's hand reached out across 30 years, and squeezed my own heart inside the pickets of my ribs.<br /><br /> Spring, with its dust and wind, its rubbish and birds and reddening branches, makes restlessness rise up that only walking for hours will ease.<br /><br />Trying to remember when I first knew that my father was vulnerable because of a heart attack at 38, I came across a dried up sweetpea blossom between the pages of a notebook mostly empty.<br /><br /> Walking in the neighborhood when it starts to get warm, around Easter, I pick violets and slip them down my front. By the time I arrive home, I'm sweaty and the scent inside my shirt makes my mouth water.<br /><br />The day I heard of my father's death my chest and stomach filled up with grief and I couldn't eat or weep for three days.<br /><br /> Hearing a train whistle in the distance is for me like somebody blowing a saxophone in all four chambers of my heart.<br /><br />My grandmother found great joy in a sunny day with good wind spent hanging out laundry, a roll of peppermint lifesavers, a long visit with our family of six kids where there was always chaos, squabbling, and heartache. I didn't know until long after her death that she spent the last 15 years of her life going from relative to relative, living in motels in between.<br /><br /> The damp stone smell inside churches makes me both anxious and thirsty, reminding me of the Saturday nights my father took us to St. Vincent's for Confession, and afterward a lecture in the car.<br /><br />Samuel Barber's <span style="font-style: italic;">Adagio for Strings </span>playing in the room while a man weeps bent over the casket of his 42 year old son, stroking him, soaking his light gray suit, his folded hands.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-1161790949484195822006-10-25T08:38:00.000-07:002015-07-10T07:37:52.447-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Today the world: Meditating on an Empty Stomach</span><br /><br />Sitting still with spine erect and calves folded under, I canvass my skin for itches. They're there all the time, scientists say; you just don't always notice them. I know this to be true. Meditation introduces you to your inner workings--the little twinges and gurgles in your belly, each itch and tickle along nerve lines and veins, bone ache, muscle stab, heartbeat. Sending fiery energy up your spine wakes you up momentarily, but it doesn't last.<br /><br />Concentration on counting your breaths, timing the outward flow to take twice as long as the inrush, or staring at lightness in the midst of darkness, rolling eyes, clenching and relaxing muscles, silent whistling . . . . these all work for a time. Then the stillness demons come rushing back. Go away, I shout mentally, I'm doing this to get rid of you. But they stay. And my spine begins to tingle, the knots in the wood floor to move about, and all around me other people are sitting perfectly still, doing the time, holding on quietly.<br /><br />My nose tickles again. The itch has travelled from left armpit over across to right shoulder now. I need to blow my nose. How much longer? Ah. Suami has looked at the clock. He usually does that 346 counts before it's time. I begin to count. I concentrate on counting as s-l-o-w-l-y as I can. I labor over each number, drawing out the sound between my teeth like background skat. I'm halfway to two hundred now and there's fire boiling up both arms past the elbow, on to the shoulders, neck, face, out the top of my head. I'm burning up. I need to take off some of these layers of cloth. Help! When can we get a drink of water!? When will it end? How many more minutes.... CLONG! The striking of the bell makes me jump out of my skin.<br /><br />Where was I that I lost track of the silencing of breath, the settling of my jerky mind, the dismissal of all worries and hilarity, flicking them off like so many fruit flies in my face. Now it's time to chant. Great. That's the last thing we do before GETTING UP OFF THE FLOOR. H'rayyy! I'm almost done. I feel great, and capable, grateful for arms and legs and feet and .... Oh no! Suami is asking me to see him after. Cripes. I knew it. My breathing was too loud, I wiggled and shifted and he saw it. The itches probably caused more movement than I thought. The creeping of flesh, the growling stomach, the pains in my hamstrings, the weight of the world....<br /><br /><br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-1157727619413390252006-09-08T07:42:00.000-07:002012-01-18T08:12:48.333-08:00Mr. Wolfie<br /><br /><br /><em>"Teresa, I had hoped to bring Shadow to see you again but he passed away during emergency surgery last night. He wanted you to know that you are his favorite aunt and that all dogs do go to heaven. He also wanted to thank you for taking the "Mr. Wolfie" photo which shows him at his regal best."<br /></em><br />When one of my dogs dies I am at a loss what to do. The grief is so sharp my stomach hurts, but there is no adequate focus for it. The message I got yesterday, about the death of a dear friend's dog made me burst into tears at my desk, then walk around all day in shock. It wasn't my dog, but I'd known him nearly all of his 16-year life.<br /><br />At home I shuffled through the hundreds of photographs of this wonderful creature, and found the one we called "Mr. Wolfie". It shows the dog looking up at the camera, his head slightly tilted, smiling, a good bit of tongue hanging out, and the eager and interested look he always had in his eyes. A loving life look.<br /><br />I've never had a dog of my own but over the past 30 or so years I've looked after many dogs while their humans went on vacations or business trips, and these dogs are as much "mine" as any I might live with. When one of them is in trouble I worry along with the rest of his family, and when one of them dies, I grieve.<br /><br />The death of a pet makes us think about death in a whole different way. We must let go of him in ways we tend not to with humans. For one thing, there are no possessions or "papers" left behind. All that stuff you bought for your dog over the years, that you thought he wanted, well he only used it or played with it to humor you, because basically all he needed was you. All he cared about was you. All he lived for was you. And when he dies, you will be all that's left.<br /><br />In some traditions, keeping reminders of the one who died is considered unhealthy, and personal effects are burned or given away. I think this is a good idea. I find that my memory of a person is far stronger and deeper than my response to seeing something that belonged to the one who died, whether a photograph, a jacket, some bobby pins in a drawer, or a well-used chewybone.<br /><br />But a smell. It can ambush you, can make you weak with sadness in the space of a second. Coming across a clump of hair of a deceased dog a few years ago under a bed I hadn't vacuumed under in awhile, I pressed it to my nose and in seconds he was there. A scent I'd know blindfolded in a crowd. When my mother died 10 years ago, I took a hairband from her deathbed, breathed in the scent of her on it, then put it into a small kitchen canister. I have it somewhere in a closet, saved for the day when I might need it, might need her presence more strongly than it already is in my life. But I haven't opened that can since the day she died. For awhile I thought it was because I hadn't needed it, and then after years passed, I almost forgot about it. Now, today, one day after dear old Shadow's death, I am thinking about the can.<br /><br />It's not likely I'll go home this afternoon and open it up to see if the smell's still there, but what <em>will </em>I do with it? It's sat there all this time, undisturbed. I haven't opened it, and I don't want to know if the smell's no longer in there. All this time my memory of her has gotten deeper and more detailed, helped along by imagination and the telling of family stories. She's in poems and pieces I've written and published, and the older I get the more I look like her. What more could I possibly need?<br /><br />Today I'm grateful for the life of my friend's dog. The story of how he came into our lives is already forming, its details brightening, the sound of his voice punctuating the sentences. The ways that he took us for granted and showed us things. The trust that only a dog would dare to have, the endless good-hearted patience with us. The care he took in accommodating us in our moods and shortcomings. The many laughs he provided, his cleverness. The way that he always was there. The love.<br /><br />The love.<br /><br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-1156444360098992332006-08-24T11:02:00.000-07:002008-12-24T09:14:18.234-08:00Sweetness and My Father's Voice<br /><br />I used to make lemon pie for my father. He said its sweetness was light on the tongue and the tang lasted all the way down his throat. It was his favorite. In a double boiler I'd stir five egg yolks and an overflowing cup of sugar, some butter, a little cornflour and the outer rind grated off two lemons. As it thickened, I'd squeeze the juice out of the fruit itself, pulp and seeds and all, flicking out the larger pieces as I stirred. I made the crust beforehand and baked it some. When the sauce was thick enough I poured it into the crust and let it sit while I made a meringue. He liked lots of meringue so I put several egg whites in a steel bowl and beat them till they were frothy and white, standing up in plurps as I pulled the spoon away. Then I added a spoonful of clear vinegar, some vanilla, and sugar until it was shiny. I heaped it up on the nearly cooled pie into a sort of mountain, spiraling around with a spatula, finishing off with a loop, and baked it just enough to crisp the meringue beige with little golden beads here and there, like sweat.<br /><br />My father sometimes had a piece later on after supper, if there was any left. He savored it in a way I find myself doing, licking off both sides of the spoon after each bite, running my tongue over the inside of my teeth. When he read to us in the evenings, with me in his lap, the lowest sound of his voice came about at my left shoulder. The up and down rhythm, deep sounds inside his ribs, heart beat and rough wool sweater against my cheek, his breath coffee-scented. He used to change his voice for each of the characters in a book, talking in a way that was almost singing. Leaning in to the sound of his voice, I let myself flow along with it, as if it was coming from me. Out of my eyes perhaps, or my thoughts. I liked the sound even more than the story, and sat very still, letting it go through me like a pulse.<br /><br />I was a daydreamer. And I procrastinated, often ending up struggling with geometry homework at midnight, trying to be quiet in the room where two younger sisters also slept. The night sounds included the creak of front stairs as my father took them two at a time up to my room to catch me still awake long after lights-out. He delivered the lecture in emphatic whispers, his hand grasping my arm to make sure I heard every word. As if I could avoid that voice. The sharp smell of lemon on his breath mixed with black coffee, faint scent of tobacco in the gabardine shirt he wore. The whispered admonitions ominous, full of a future without him because of his weak heart. He told me there would come a time when I wouldn't have him around to guide me, when I'd have to go on alone. Flooded with sadness I could barely hear his words. Even now the taste of sweetened lemons brings back those midnight lectures in a flash.<br /><br />My father's punishments were often softened by a treat later on, a walk up the street to Wittig's for a strawberry sundae, just the two of us. The evening warm, elms rustling overhead, neighborhood quiet in those days of not many cars. We'd sit in a booth across from each other, enjoying the ice cream in silence. Then he would talk to me. And I'd fall into his voice, missing most of the words, fidgeting, running my fingers along the edge of my hem, the slip edge too, its slippery softness. He wanted me to grow into his favorite woman, a big bloom of a dark pink rose. I nodded as I listened but in my mind I was miles away. Even at 11 and 12 years old I knew there was more to life than he was telling me. But his voice went in my ears and stayed. I loved and ignored it. I miss it even now, forty years after his death. I'd give anything to hear those deep thrilling tones again. The sinuous in and out rhythm that tugs at heart and belly, the softness in the grip of anger or passion, the sadness. The sweetness that went down deep and made me clear my throat whenever I heard it. Like I do every time I taste lemon meringue pie.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-1156431593885787072006-08-24T07:25:00.000-07:002006-10-30T05:43:47.790-08:00Kitchen Floor<br /><br />The creaky-bed-slat noise of geese overhead late at night draws me out into the back yard. It's a sound that makes me restless. The <em>shwush</em> of<br />wind in the linden where I sit at a battered wooden table, the shapes of things distorted by a nearly full moon.<br /><br />As a child whenever that geese sound woke me at night I'd go downstairs and lie on the kitchen floor. Between counter and table there was a south-facing window, and the moon made a rectangle of light big enough for me to lie in. It was dark red linoleum over soft wood planks, and if I fell asleep there my mother'd rouse me when she came in to make breakfast by singing her morning song. This was an annoying little rhyme she made up that, when repeated enough times drove even the soundest sleeper [my big brother] out of bed.<br /><br />After waxing, our kitchen floor was like satin. It was my sister's job. She'd start by clearing everything out and piling the chairs in the dining room. Swishing sudsy water over the floor with a mop got the dirt off. Then came rinsing with several buckets of clean water. When it was dry, she got down on hands and knees with a can of liquid wax and a cloth. Sometimes she waxed herself into the southwest corner, from which it was impossible to hop across to any of the three doors, and sat there till the wax dried. I'm sure she did it on purpose.<br /><br />Today I made a sauce of the dozens of tomatoes that ripened all at once. I'm a messy cook, and the floor and work tops of my kitchen had juice and scraps all over when I was done. Because of these habits, my mother never let me cook in her kitchen. Now, I feel like I'm getting away with something every time I cook. This time of year is heavy with harvest, and even in our small city garden we feel the abundance. This morning I took in three bunches of oregano to dry, and chopped some into the sauce, along with two dozen cloves of garlic, olive oil, cilantro, a grated carrot, shiny red linoleum, soft light in the room, the moon.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33218493.post-1156341350757199752006-08-23T06:54:00.000-07:002009-02-23T08:25:14.220-08:00Revision with Fruit Flies<br /><br />Now, as for last night. It began to thunder and storm shortly after we sat down at the table for poetry workshop. The Good Twin had brought us each a large peach that you could smell right through the skin. Damn Moon Poet took out his pocket knife and sliced right into his, wolfed the whole thing, skin and all, licked his fingers, and wiped off his knife. Good Twin cut hers in half, ate some, and left the rest turned cut-side down on a saucer for later. The storm boiled up into a froth suddenly blowing yews against the house as rain charged the windows. DamnMoonPoet had brought 5 poems, and read each out loud in his own voice of thunder. I bit into my peach like an apple. In seconds, there was juice on both hands, on the table, my lap, the chair, and the floor. BigFastPeachEater DamnMoonPoet went in the kitchen for a rag.<br /><br />The third stanza of one of mine was giving me trouble, the rhythm three beats in excess, the margins hairy with notes, so I tossed it aside for later,and gnawed the rest of the yellow meat off the pit. Then I licked off fingers, hands, and as far up my arms as I could get, till my mouth tasted of salted peach. The wind blew papers and napkins off the table and the lights went out. We lit candles and continued working until Good Twin's date arrived to take her home. By then the rain had stopped, thunder died away, and katydids'd crept back out and filled the night with their din. My friends slipped in pools of rainwater on the freshly-painted porch on their way out. The night was now still as glass.<br /><br />I left the pages on the table, all crossed out and scribbled on, but with final drafts peering out between the lines, and went to bed hungry. Next morning when I went in to clear away the dishes, there was GoodTwin's peach still in the saucer, slumped down with ripeness, and a bevy of fruit flies hovering.<br /><br />On the page with the troublesome line the flies had homed in on a spot where peach juice had dripped onto three words in a row in the middle of the awkward stanza, which, when removed, fixed the beat, evened the ragged edge, and finished the poem while I slept.<br />.YourFireAnthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03428838843235292696noreply@blogger.com2