Hearth & Home

I dreamed of a boy
in a fireplace.

Curled inside
its cold recess,

he slept the sleep
of the innocent

while I stood outside,
powerless.

But the flames
wouldn't spark

and the boy slept on,
fetus-like.

Perhaps he dreamed
of a birthday cake

or of a woman watching
the darkness at play.

Perhaps he was a smoke
signal from my troubled brain.


For at times, it seems
too sick a fate

to be a parent on
this cold, dark stage.

Where every lick
of what if
can venture nearer 
upon
this matchstick life.

Ascension

Did his failures follow him
into the ground

and, given lead,
did they lime him down?  

Or did the bitterness rise to
where he last dragged his eyes?

Like a blue balloon.

Like some endless, white flag. 

Dearest

He died on a Tuesday, but it was Friday before she got the email.

Subject: Sad News

She dwelled on the other names in the dean's send list: 

Jacob Hershel. 

Emma Wallace. 

Owen Mather. 

Her brain kicked at them, but they had the spongy resiliency of youth. Her eyes slid past the rest, falling off the screen into her lap.

Thirty-six years. 

It had been thirty-six years since her stint as Max’s research assistant. It shouldn’t surprise her that he was dead. She was old enough now. 

--passed away after an extended illness--

Yet it wouldn't stick.

She made herself available to the information, and it just wouldn't stick.

The problem was that she hadn’t experienced the world as anything less over the last three days. This seemed a proof enough. Surely she would have felt something had Max been dead. She would have sensed it, if only in hindsight. 

She wouldn’t have gotten her hair done in a universe bereft of Max Jamison. 

She wouldn’t be folding her hands like that. 

--survived by his beloved wife, Jean, and their two children, Rebecca and Joshua. A service will be held--

A scholarship will be endowed--

His legacy lives on in the many--

She stood and went to her bedroom. 

In a shoebox beneath her bed, she kept the few things he’d given her. There was the time he’d insisted on adding her name to a journal article he’d authored: Ignobling the Noble Gases. Months later, he’d cooked up a pink crystal in the shape of a snowflake, before presenting it to her in a petri dish in the lab. To deflect her euphoria, she had teased him about its potential toxicity. For an instant, he had looked hurt and she had felt so very sorry. 

Setting the things aside, she reached for the letter.  

Dearest--

She let the paper drop to the floor and brought the envelope to her mouth. Closing her eyes, she brushed the flap of the broken seal across her lips.

Nothing. 

So she did it again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again. 

Thirty Days of Poetry

I decided to write and post a daily poem for 30 consecutive days for the following reasons:

1. I'd fallen out of love with writing. It had become another pressure, instead of a happy wandering. I've been wrangling with the same novel for three years, and I thought it had beaten me. I didn't even care that it had beaten me, particularly, but I did care that I didn't seem to care.

Poetry is the purest form of writing for me. If it couldn't pull me back, then maybe I wasn't really a writer anymore.

2. I use my slowness as an excuse not to write. Writing can feel like digging to me. Or rather, the process of editing and revision feels that way, which often segues into paralysis. I usually tackle writing--even poetry--from the left side of my brain because it feels safer. I fall too much in love with an idea, a construction. I don't trust my instincts. I make things complicated because I'm drawn to metaphor and puzzles (not to mention second-guessing myself), forgetting that simplicity is the poet's most sincere and transparent friend.

Being forced to pen and reshape a poem every day seemed like a good way of combatting this tendency to fuss things up, if for no other reason than I wouldn't have the time to be as clever as I might wish.

3. Winter. This is my worst time of year for being withdrawn and contemplative. Anyone can write a poem a day in the springtime; they practically float from the trees. To push them out during the darkest stretch of winter seemed especially challenging, but also like a good way of channeling some of that introspection and making me appreciate that bleakness can still be beautiful, especially with so much love and good fortune at my side.

4. Photos. I am no great photographer, but I had a collection of photos I hadn't used on the blog before (in addition to some that I had) that I had forgotten all about. I really enjoyed taking my camera out when I was blogging more often, and I wanted to reclaim that habit by pairing each new poem with a new or old photo.


So those were my reasons. (Actually, in no way did I reason this all out before impulsively making the decision to do it. But we can all pretend.)

And how did the experiment go?

1. I did fall in love with writing again. I also hated it again. I'm pretty sure this is normal. I'm pretty sure I've always felt this way, no matter my tendency to romanticize the past.

Writing a poem a day is no great feat. A lot of people do this without any fanfare. But for me, it was hard. Yet maybe not as hard as I expected? I tried not to place ridiculous amounts of pressure on myself. There were only a handful of days in which I struggled to come up with an idea or finish by a particular time. Overall, I surprised myself. Which is always good.

2. I did not overcome my tendency to complicate things, nor did I always present my ideas in a clear, transparent light. The rough drafts came easy. But I'm still doing a lot of tinkering. The time constraint led me to post a lot of poems I wasn't particularly happy with. I tried to pretend I didn't mind. Then I tinkered some more the next day.

I still struggle with expressing myself without embarrassment or regret.

Room to grow, for sure.

3. Winter is my bitch now.

Okay, but seriously: some of these poems could use more cowbell spring.

4. My camera is feeling well-loved again. Mission accomplished.

(Random spider pic)

I suppose I should make a good charge at finishing that novel now. I'm not sure what's causing the delay. I was sort of hoping this poetry diversion would offer some enlightenment on the subject.

I think it's the distance between my vision and the execution. I want it to be perfect, and it's not. The pursuit of perfection is not only the enemy of the good, but sometimes, the authentic. I can't stand my own contrivances, yet what is a novel but an author's contrived manipulations of character and plot? What is revision but the endless second-guessing of your gut instincts, the very thing I'm trying to be more accepting of in myself?  I get tangled up in such silliness.

But that's likely another blog post.

Thank you for reading any part of this month's output. I really do appreciate your kindness and support.

30.

From mountaintop
to mountaintop

we embark on the path
of survival,

searching for the guru
who will grant us eternal arrival.

Instead, we scramble upwards
to enjoy the view

momentarily,
before we start in wondering

how the next summit's vista
could be better.

But time's face will slowly condense
into a single, fixed point

where contour lines grow infinite,
and we'll see our mountains

for the ring they've carved,
with an ego-sized crater

keeping the middle,
cradling all that we have sown.

So when I step
on my shadow's heels

and my feet shuffle off
the eroding ledge,

I hope I will wish
for dandelion wisps,

and nothing more,
to greet me in the valley.

29.

Son 

You are a piece
of non-fiction
I take for a poem

when it's just
you and I

and you're showing
me something
you think is awesome

because you want me
to agree it's awesome

because you think it,
because it is.

And you know what?

It is awesome.
Thank you.

And these blocks
you've started stacking
around your 8-year-old
emerging person
are not enough now
(or ever, Buster)
to keep me at bay,

as I gather you close
and kiss you defenseless
while you're looking
at your thing
and I am looking
at you

because truth
is a passion
passed down
and returned,
a toy way better
if played together

--a heart with wings--

some crazy awesome.

28.

If I could pick up
all the heads-up
Lincoln pennies

from every
sidewalk
parking lot
food court
truck stop
farmer's market
wishing fountain
Walmart
in America

and invest them all
in the man with the
cardboard diploma:

WW II Veteran
17 years sober
Will work for food

then I might put
more faith
in superstition

and give his
"God Bless You"
greater currency

27.

With my head
on your shoulder

I watch
the moon
and the stars
and the clouds
take flight

through a fogged-up windshield

on the eve of Earth's
existential
what-if

we ride our pocket
of brightness

listening to
a music
of corduroy
and nylon

holding our breaths
as the wheels lift
and dip

to the whims
of a country byway

across spacetime's
extended grace

26.

In our other world,
you blur the lines
and make me forget
what day it is

with your eyes
and your fingers
and your breath
mixed with mine

like the paints
of a canvas
draining back
to the palette

a beautiful mess
of reciprocated Pollock,
crimson drips and
violet blossom
and colors we never
thought to invent

without the shape
of our love
running off
the edges

to be caught
in the cross
of this lovesick
gaze

25.

Every night,
in the field by her house
she dined with the moon
as her only companion

excepting the nights
when the moon was new
or the sky cloud-smothered
and then the rain
became her soup
and her eyes turned
dull and starless.

But when her friend
was at his fattest,
the food did flow
and it was difficult to say
where her skin began
and where the moonlight ended.

She ate for two
during Harvest Moon
to keep from feeling lonely,
because for all his brightness,
her mate was tongueless,
and the land he lit
was desolate-cold.

Until this year,
this month,
this phase,
this day,
this holy,
white-washed
hour--

When over the hill
there came a person,
half-starved by his search
for love and knowledge,
as near to bitter as
the cloves he gnashed.

They were not young--
did you think they would be?--
for one shouldn't put youth
in such Gothic settings,
as the young and beautiful
are not keen on solitude
or so likely to don the eccentric's hat.

But both were beautiful
in the then and there,
gobsmacked and moonstruck
and dumb with shyness,
each sore afraid,
separated by nothing
but a table's bounty.

He spoke.
She smiled.

He spoke again

while the moon laid low
'round his head
like a lantern, a halo,
a shimmering egg.

Her smile cracked,
breaking up the crickets'
one-note sonata.
She patted the seat next to her.
He took the hint.

And once they'd finally
finished their feast
and upon the moment
when the man did reach
to bring her lips toward his,

all the moonlight she'd swallowed
in the harvest of years
bloomed from the kiss
as lilies-of-the-valley.

And from that day on,
they took their meals
beneath a yellow sun
(or a yellower umbrella)
and the lilies were their children,
playing at their feet

tossing in a sea
of their tranquil dreams,
while the moon looked on
from a wider berth,
perpetually full,
sated.