Somehow January has flown by. I just realized that I haven’t managed to show up for Poetry Friday more than once. Yikes! That’s a trend I intend to break, so I’m showing up a day late to the gathering.
I love when Pádraig Ó Tuama reminds me to try out a pantoum (here). His formula always yields interesting results. He says to write 8 lines, number them and put them into this order: 1,2,3,4 2,5,4,6 5,7,6,8 7,3,8,1. Then he says, “As lines repeat, feel free to punk them up a bit.” So here’s my pantoum-ish poem:
New Year’s Day
I forgot to watch for the first bird I watch the snow fall instead The trees shiver, draped in winter white and we have eight blue birds at the feeder
I watch the snow fall Even inside, the air by the windows is cold While blue birds come and go from the feeder my pen stumbles and starts
The air by the windows remains cold As the moon descends, the sun peeks over the horizon My pen stumbles and starts The stack of firewood is getting low
The moon has disappeared: the sun peeks over the horizon The trees are graceful, draped in winter white The stack of firewood is getting low I forgot to watch for the first bird
Winter’s grip has been fierce in recent weeks. Most days the temperatures struggle to get into the twenties, and that’s not considering the wind-chill. Usually, I can lean into the beauty of winter, and take the cold days in stride, but the consistently below normal temperatures have been making that more challenging than usual. (I may have even complained once or twice.)
This past weekend my lovely, long December break was winding to a close, and I found myself chafing against the unrelenting cold and determined to get outside. I was yearning for an opportunity to do some early morning wandering, filled with fresh air and natural beauty. I knew that once school started back up, my opportunities would be much more limited. So, on Saturday night, the last “free” night, I made up my mind.
“I’m going to go look for snowy owls and walk on the beach tomorrow morning” I announced to my husband.
He looked at me askance. “What’s the temperature supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. Mid-high teens?” I paused and wondered if I should check the forecast more carefully. “You know what?” I said suddenly, defiantly, “I don’t care what the temperature is! I’m going!”
“Ok,” he said. “Wake me up early, and I’ll come with you.” (Wow! I guess we were both feeling a little bit claustrophobic!)
So, shortly after 7 on Sunday morning, bundled up as if heading into the tundra, we set out for the beach. We chose to head to one about an hour south, where snowy owls tend to visit. (Spoiler alert: we didn’t see any.)
When we arrived at the beach, it was snowing and other than a small cluster of birds, the beach was mostly deserted. Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind, but when we got out of the car, the cold slapped us in the face. I wondered if we’d made a mistake.
“Well,” I said, looking at Kurt, “if it’s too bad, we can just drive around.”
We pulled our hats down further and burrowed into our layers. I pulled my hood up over my hat and then tucked my fingers deep into my pockets, cradling two hand warmers . We walked down onto the beach, where the tide’s edge was marked with frozen slush. (You know it’s cold when salt water’s freezing! )
Thankfully, as we walked, we got a bit warmer. Well, a little bit.
Moving along the beach, we approached the flock of birds. Though, I’m not positive, I think they were sanderlings. They huddled along the shoreline, feet encased in bubbling surf, occasionally running a few feet ahead, but mostly standing still. Just looking at them made me even colder.
As we neared, they moved slightly away from us. They seemed a bit sluggish, decidedly less active than usual. One, slightly behind the others, hopped along toward the group, and something about its movement caught my eye.
“Oh, no,” I said, “Do you see that? I think something’s wrong with one of its legs. It looks like it’s only using one of them.”
“Well, a lot of them are only on one leg,” Kurt noted.
“Yeah, but this one only moved on one leg. Did you see it hopping?”
I struggled to catch sight of the bird again, amidst the others. From a distance, I still couldn’t be sure, but one leg looked different. Also, whenever this bird moved, it still hopped from place to place. The others scurried with both legs, and when they stopped, they’d tuck the other leg up, to keep it warm. We watched the birds for several minutes, and I took a few photos, but it was too cold to linger. We wandered away, moving further up the beach, and my attention drifting to other things.
Before long, we decided to call it quits. Our feet were cold, our cheeks vivid pink, and our noses were running. But, hey! We’d gotten some fresh air and we’d gotten outside. It felt like a victory!
Note: Later, when I got home, I was still thinking about that bird. I downloaded my pictures and when I zoomed in a bit, I could clearly see that the its leg was significantly impaired.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then. About endurance and survival. About how harsh life can be. It feels like there’s a message in there somewhere. I’m still waiting for it to land.
This month our Inklings challenge came from Catherine Flynn. She invited us to write a poem beginning with either “This is January” or “January.” My thoughts immediately turned to John Updike’s poem “January” and it’s first stanza, which eloquently sums up what our days are like during a Maine winter:
The days are short, The sun a spark, Hung thin between The dark and dark.
Inspired by this poem, I first tried writing some rhyming verses, but that fizzled out pretty quickly. Then, when I woke early on New Year’s Day, it was snowing. It was unexpected and oh, so lovely.
January
begins with the slow hush of snowfall dark skies brighten with lacy flakes tracing their earthbound migration
I’m hoping for many tranquil, peaceful moments for us all during this coming year.
Catherine is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at her blog, Reading to the Core, and you can read her response to the prompt there. If you want to see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below.
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tricia at her blog, The Miss Rumphius Effect. She’s sharing the Poetry Sisters’ most recent challenge, writing poems of peace, light or hope. By chance, my post fits right in with this challenge–a happy coincidence! Here’s my image poem to end the year. Something to ponder.
Duality
The light that kindles ice to sparkling heart is also the catalyst for its inevitable melting
My weekday morning book is entitled, “Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird. It’s a combination of memoir and scientific findings, and reminds me a bit of Katherine May’s “Wintering”, which I love. I find myself highlighting occasional phrases or passages. Recently, I was struck by these lines, and jotted them down in my notebook: “We spend a lot of time in life trying to make ourselves feel bigger–to project ourselves, occupy space, command attention, demand respect–so much so that we seem to have forgotten how comforting it can be to feel small and experience something greater than ourselves, something unfathomable, unconquerable and mysterious.”
I turned these words over and over in my mind. So often we think of being small in a negative sense. As being disempowered or vulnerable. To make someone feel small is to belittle or demean them. The idea that there is a flip side to this, that such a feeling might be positive, was intriguing to me.
Julia Baird goes on to write, “This sense of smallness seems to be a key to a true experience of awe.” She writes about how architects designed vast interiors in cathedrals to inspire “a sense of smallness, and consequently, awe.” She notes that researchers have tracked people’s reported experiences with awe and found that “on average, they encountered something that inspired awe every three days, such as ‘music played on a street corner at 2 am, individuals standing up to injustice, or autumnal leaves cascading from trees.'”
I mixed these ideas in my mind: feeling small, feeling awe.
Then, I went to the beach:
There is assuredly some comfort and peace to be found in feeling small.
I start every day with Wordle. It’s a guaranteed morning pleasure…and an occasional frustration. I extend the pleasure each morning by gathering up my guesses and trying to create poems from them. It’s a low-stakes and fun way to generate some poetry in my notebook. I find the combination of words can force me to make interesting and surprising connections I would never have considered otherwise. Here are a couple of recent efforts.
Wordle guesses: alter, spell, whelk, wield
To alter your world
emerge from the hypnotic spell of the in-and-out tide of the banal.
Spiral your shell into gorgeous intricacy, like a whelk wielding basic elements to create complex beauty.
Thoughts of the bunny hop led me back to happy childhood memories and a bit of a rabbit hole (ha!) on the internet. Enjoy!
This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Linda Mitchell at her blog, A Word Edgewise. She’s sharing a delightfully creative December mash-up! Be sure to check it out!
This month Heidi had our Inklings’ challenge and she invited us to “address an item of our clothing.” I debated about an ode to socks, as I am quite a fan, but swiftly opted toward more intimate apparel.
I played around with a variety of forms, trying to do justice to slips and half-slips.
How about a little terse verse? What do you call a slip with a bit of spandex? a hip grip
Ugh…that is not inspiring!
Maybe a limerick?
There once was a woman who tried with a whisper of fabric to hide any clinging or bulging that could be divulging her truest form to the outside.
That one sounded more like a girdle than a slip…which reminded me of my grandmother unfolding herself from the car after a long ride from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, bemoaning the pressure of her girdle. “You’ll see what it’s like someday,” she said to me. Despite her dire prediction, I never did… and she never witnessed them becoming an outer rather than inner garment in popular culture. But I digress…
Next, I played around with a Zeno for a while. Those one syllable requirements are tricky!
Half Slip
Hidden, provocative or prim, all anti-cling, silken glide. Whispered slither, fabrics slide. Modest so it’s seldom spied.
Finally, I remembered that Margaret Simon had shared a prompt from Joyce Sidman: address an inanimate object and give it a compliment, ask a question, and express a wish. The final few lines of that Zeno had me thinking…
To My Half-Slip
How easily you arbitrate between fabrics, settling disputes about chafing and cling. Cultural change pushed you toward becoming a fashion anachronism. How have you persevered, doing your job behind the scenes as a diligent defender of modesty, enhancer of graceful drape, and a transformer of transparent to opaque? You’re a hidden workhorse disguised as a whisper of silk! And though perhaps it’s ungracious of me, I do have one request– I truly wish you could resist the urge to give in, let go, and slip and show below my hem.
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Irene Latham at her blog, Live Your Poem, and offers more links to all sorts of poetry goodness. Be sure to stop by and check it out!
All day yesterday the school hallways buzzed with conjecture and conversation:
What’s the latest forecast?
Do you think we’ll have school tomorrow?
Oooh! It just changed to a Storm Warning! They’re calling for 6-9 inches now!
We have a new superintendent this year and were unsure what his snow day protocol/parameters might be. It created a lot of uncertainty and a certain level of anxiety. Our last superintendent hailed from Texas and tended to be generous doling out snow days, often doing so in advance. Had we gotten spoiled? Would this one be different?
Do you think he’ll let us know the night before?
Do we know if anyone briefed him about the two bus accidents on snowy days last year? (or was it three?)
I spent much of the day “forecast shopping”–aka trying to find the forecast that made a snow day appear most likely. I visited my apple weather app, Wunderground, NOAA, Snow Day Calculator, and the local forecast web sites. Again and again. And yet again. In the evening, my colleagues and I texted back and forth, weighing the odds, noting other schools that had already announced closures.
I fell asleep still not knowing what to expect, but feeling cautiously optimistic…
When I woke there was still no news, but shortly afterward, the call came in…
NO SCHOOL!
The day unfolded before me like a gift. Time immediately slipped into a slower track, and the urge to hurry drifted away. I filled the bird feeders and soon enough the birds arrived and the snow started falling. I watched as finches, chickadees, juncos, cardinals, bluejays, and masses of bluebirds settled in to feast. Sadly a flock of starlings came by as well–such beautiful gluttons! There were downy woodpeckers, titmice and house finches, too. As my eyes kept drifting to the window, I realized that I might be in trouble if I really wanted to get some work done. I was going to have to seriously consider my snow day plans so that I could both enjoy the day and take advantage of the extra time to get ahead on grading.
As I get older and more resistant to working at home, I’ve leaned into bribery. Whenever I have heavy grading to do, I typically buy myself an amazing treat from a local bakery. Almond tea cake with a raspberry glaze anyone? I set it on the table in front of me while I work. Then, I’m allowed to eat it when I’m done. It works really well, and I’m sure that says a lot about me!
So, knowing how effective this is, I created today’s plan:
remain in PJs all day
start up both wood stoves and get the house cozy warm
write a SOL post
make gingerbread (the butter’s already softening!)
score writing prompts (that we quickly rescheduled to complete yesterday in case there was a snow day today)
enjoy a fat slab of warm spicy gingerbread with a cappuccino
finish entering grades and reread/revise drafted comments or get some planning done for tomorrow (Could there be a delay for snowstorm clean up?!?)
read or start a puzzle or watch the birds or take pictures or space out by the wood stove or whatever captures my fancy!
consider opening the party-sized bag of Skinny Pop, but only if I’m not full of gingerbread
The rest of the day will be list-free. Whatever happens, happens. And whatever I’m doing, I’ll be doing in my pajamas…and that includes shoveling! I know that I’ll probably regret this day come June, but for now, I’m all in!
Yesterday afternoon was my first bone density scan. It was scheduled immediately after my annual mammogram. I mean, how much fun can you have in one afternoon, right? At any rate, I walked into the room clutching my thin, purple hospital top, tied to open in front, unsure what to expect.
“We’re just going to get a weight,” said the technician, stopping in front of a scale.
“Okay,” I said, taking off my shoes, wishing I hadn’t worn jeans.
I stepped on the scale and she recorded the number.
“Now a height, “ she said, “and then I have a few questions to ask.” She gestured toward a sort of measuring station. “Stand there.”
I dutifully stood with my back against the wall, and she moved a piece down until it rested on the crown of my head.
“Ok,” she said, “5 feet 4.5 inches.”
Wait! What!
I’d become accustomed to the half inch I’d lost somewhere through the years, but now there was another half inch gone!? What’s up with that!? My mind raced.
I think I was slouching. I’m sure I could have stood up straighter! Why didn’t she tell me to stand up my straightest? Should I ask her to measure again?
Meanwhile, I sat down and responded automatically to the questions she was posing.
“Do you take calcium supplements?” “No.”
“Do you take estrogen?” “No.”
Then after a slew of other questions, she asked, maybe in a fake friendly voice, (Was she trying to rub it in?!) “What is the tallest height you’ve ever been?”
I never expected that I would ever be asked that question. Ever.
In my head all I heard was, “I’m shrinking!” echoing over and over à la Margaret Hamilton.
It’s been a school year. All 55 days of it. I keep telling myself I’m growing as a teacher. I’m learning a lot. I tell myself that on repeat. (There’s some other looping self-talk going on, too, but I’m not going to share that right now.)
Trying to be proactive, I’ve been adding things to my weeknight schedule, deliberately creating some time out of the vortex of school. I noticed an upcoming event at the Portland Museum of Art and planned to attend, registering for a free one hour ekphrastic poetry class.
I called my daughter, Lydia, and asked if she wanted to meet for dinner and go to the museum beforehand. My husband opted to join us, and I looked forward to the event all week. A little breathing room.
Then I had one of the worst teaching days of my life. Enough said. I was desperate to escape into an evening out; however, by the end of that “terrible, horrible, no good very bad day”, I had no bandwidth for participating in a class. None. The idea of listening to someone talk about, well, anything, and then putting myself out there with some strangers was, in that moment, horrifying. It wasn’t an option.
So, after dinner, we walked over to the museum. I touched base with the volunteer at the desk to free up my space in the class in case someone else wanted to join. I, then, breathed a huge sigh of relief.
While Kurt wandered, Lydia and I decided to check out the erasure poetry center set up in the museum’s Great Hall. They had supplied printed pages and pencils. We reached through the crowded area to the materials, randomly selecting a page each, then settled in to create our poems. Here’s what I came up with:
When A Country Discards Empathy
no hint of human empty still and silent distance visible dissolving fidelity
Nix the comfort zone 