Category Archives: poetry

all the ingredients are here (poem)

love, nature, poetry, work

This poem that Maria posted last week strikes a chord with me; I keep reading it over and over.

Isle of Skye (photo by Pippin)

MESSENGER

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

~ Mary Oliver, born in 1935, American poet

(I saw it here.)

Grief in its corner

grief, poetry, quotes

Maria posted this poem recently. I am putting it here for the sake of my friend Mrs. Bread and anyone else who is dealing with a loss. Whatever person or gift or intangible that has been taken from us, the reality of it needs to be faced and known in the light of the goodness of God — even in the presence of God. May all our hurts bring us to Him, and may we experience the comfort St. Paul writes about in II Corinthians:

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

TALKING TO GRIEF
 
Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
 
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.
 
You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house as your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.
 
~ Denise Levertov (1923-1977), English-born American poet

Gardeners and Bells

my garden, poetry, reality, , ,
I prefer to write about beautiful things, so I don’t want to tell about the mess I made this evening of staking a tomato plant about two months too late. It is a robust Juliet cherry with branches 2-3 feet long that had started to send down roots where they were sprawled on the damp ground. I gathered up the legginess as best I could with gardener’s tape, around three splintery stakes. In spite of the chaotic result, I expect there will be fruit, thanks to the rain and sunshine that falls on the gardens of the just and the unjust, the diligent and the lazy.
Beautiful tomatoes from the past

A few days ago I ran across Leonard Cohen’s verse (below) that has been singing itself in my head ever since, making me notice many ways that our earthly lives fall short of the ideal, often in more significant places than the garden. We fail to do our best, others fail to love us, the banks and the corporations do us wrong — we populate this list day by day.

It’s an aspect of reality that can only be denied at the risk of one’s sanity. The humbling we experience when contemplating the “streets filled with broken hearts” and other destruction that Bob Dylan sings about in “Everything is Broken” is the best start toward mental and spiritual health.

 Then the Gardener, the Physician of our souls, the Light of the World, can do His work, and give us grace to keep working at repairing the bad jobs we’ve made. He also gives us Himself as the rejoicing of our hearts — and nothing is more Real than that.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
    –from “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

Not long ago and not whimsical

books, history, poetry, quotes, ,

When I am confined to bed with a malady that makes my head feel like an overgrown cabbage, why not read the novel about Poland that has been waiting on my TBR list for at least a year? It’s a book that won several minor awards, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN prize in 2010.

A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True exceeded my expectations; I don’t remember what I read on someone’s blog that got me interested, but when the book arrived and I saw the fanciful flowery cover with notes using the words “whimsical” and “romance” on the same page, I’m afraid I unconsciously relegated it to a genre of Light Reading.

But a story of Poland from the 1930’s to about 1990 is painfully full of war, tyrants, secret police, lies and alcoholism. Wives and mothers can’t even mention their men who went missing years ago; their grandchildren grapple with the generational ripples of all the wounds and deaths and separations both social and physical. I had to look up the word whimsical just now to make sure of my understanding, and no, the author Brigid Pasulka never gave the impression that she was trying to be “playful, erratic or fantastical” with her subject.

The opening chapter that tells about an upright young man named Pigeon might make you think it’s all light and charming, and perhaps to some reviewers the idea of such a hero with old-fashioned morals seems like a fairy tale. He is a shining example of the classic Pole who has Golden Hands that can make or fix anything. And he loves Anielica, a sweet girl who will soon suffer much with and for him, including the long postponement of their wedding — but that turns out to be the least of their sorrows.

The novel alternates chapters about teenagers growing up during the war years with those about their granddaughter in the late 20th century. Her life, also, is nearly wrecked by many of the same old misfortunes as well as some newer ones, like drug-dealing boyfriends. Funny moments and comic aspects pepper her story, as they did her grandparents’. Being able to appreciate the comedy is one way to deal with the heartache; that doesn’t make the story a piece of humor.

The book was just serious enough and just long enough to keep me turning the pages and to distract me from my painful head, and I did not predict the ending that lifted me out of the general bleakness that was trying to smother the characters all the way through. The Polish people had several years of trying to survive and even fight against the Nazis, and then could barely catch their breath before the Soviets took over and they had to quickly shift gears and learn how to cope with a slightly different oppression, the effects of which stretched long into the future.

Through it all the protagonists in this story, the grandparents and the parents and grandchildren, fight to stay together and to protect one another. Bribes and lies and dreadful compromises at times appear to be daily necessities, but the characters’ love and perseverance keep them from the despair that lurks around the corners of their houses like a traitorous neighbor. The moral quandaries that they experience are neither explored in depth nor treated flippantly.

The author, I read on the cover, spent a year in Poland learning the language and the culture of her ancestors. She uses often untranslated Polish words lavishly throughout the story, and they aren’t always easily deciphered versions of English words, so I was frequently left wondering what I was missing, not having a Polish dictionary handy. Nor did I want to look up the many references to obscure events in Polish history which the characters mentioned. But those are my only complaints.

In the middle of meditating on the history and people of Poland (and after rising from my sickbed) I read this poem that Maria posted last week, by a Pole who would have grown up during the Soviet era. The images the writer conjures up, of a field mouse, a tree, “A grass blade trampled by a stampede of incomprehensible events,” lined up very well with the impression I got from this debut novel, of a brave people surviving by means of the virtues of their humanity, which is the grace of God.