my cousin's america

Detail of Marc Chagall's America Windows, Art Institute of Chicago

on that late summer thursday in my cousin's america
midwest, illinois, land of state sovereignty, national
unity, after chicago, after art and people-watching
in millenium, the set changes to the fox river
i walk to the end of the path in st. charles, my toes
nearly touching the pudding mud, bite into
an apple, study a sign explaining non-point source
pollution—it seeks the lowest spot, the spot where
i stand, the entire riverbank. they say they will bring
the lost prairie back, since strip malls are rootless there's no
drinking the rot and wreck of runoff, clean the river
with angelica, aster, black-eyed susan, snakeroot,
blazing star, prairie clover, tall grass, wheat grass. how about it:
straight talk this time, no double talk, no song and dance.

i seize on this, my non-routine, this minute
compared to yesterday's minute and the minute that's coming
at me with the current's rush. look there, there: coasting—coasting—
wheeling in a chevron backlit by sky unspooling, the wild
geese land in a world-web much like ours: feed, fly, mate
talk, sleep. an earthbound journey dreaming itself, dreaming
the next stop on the map. press on the brakes, slow
the vehicle to let you pass, an almost identical story
to the one i tell of my america, only in maine it's wild
turkeys i try to save. together we multitask
alert to impending disaster, we fluff our feathers
train our beady little eyes on the arrival of what we call hope:
a timely procurement of our next meal.

insert poem here

it's that time of year again—the academy of american poets poem in your pocket day is TODAY.

discover a poem, fold it up, put the wonder of it in your pocket—or at least put it somewhere where it might be conveyed—and carry around a little inspiration, a little mystery, a little memory, a little experience. read and reread. feel the pull of an imaginative journey offering, perhaps, a secret, and always pleasure. whatever you do, don't forget to share it.

here's a poem by mary oliver that's in this, my virtual pocket....and in my real one, too.



~Mary Oliver~

ONE OR TWO THINGS 

Don't bother me.
I've just
been born.


The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes


for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.


The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening


to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,


which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.


One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning—some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.


But to lift the hoof!
For that you need an idea.

in the calm before

maybe '13 is gonna be like '69, '78, '97—it's gonna blow out there! that's how the real old timers talk when a blizzard's coming. the new old timers on the news concur. they're reading the maps, the models and the almanacs, the tea leaves and the crystal balls. once they stop peering, straining their eyes, they offer up a prediction. they tell us to stay home. don't move.

in '78 i broke the law. i didn't stay home, didn't hunker down. classes canceled, i drove my vw to maine after the governor of massachusetts declared a driving ban. the worst was over but the snow kept coming. when i stopped at forbidden intersections and inched forward past towering man-made mountains of white powder on my way to the interstate, i imagined the scream of police sirens, but there was no one out there to catch me. not a soul.

put away the devices of our own devising. cameras, cell phones, laptops won't help us now. wind remakes shorelines, alters the course of rivers, wipes fishing ports off the charts. while the waters rise, networks succumb, bullets fly, people wash laundry, children grow. life separates, split by commas, into one thing after another.

in the calm before, we say we wish this day would never end. please don't let it end. the way the light bends through the smudged window and the snow sticks in the tall pines and the dog turns circles in her bed before she settles, and you, you drink a cup of coffee that's already getting cold.

the way that it is heartbreaking. we want to gather it up and press it, amber-like: small pieces suspended, preserved for a million years, an adornment, a crucible of illumination, tawny blare slashing through it, slashing through us. we edge around corners becoming the apparatus of our own survival, don't you see?

payment, please

one day it's warm, the next day it's cold. a little bit of rain, then a dusting of snow. the grass is green, the trees are naked. i have to stop to let three wild turkeys cross the road while en route to my annual mammogram appointment.

i pull into the parking lot of the new medical building in yarmouth. the macadam in this lot was rolled out black and slick onto a farmer's derelict field. a red barn still stands as proof of the old ways, a beacon hailing from more than a hundred years ago in the middle of tall, withered grass. without the barn, i would have no idea that this had been land that produced, that made something out of nothing. the farmer's acreage still produces, only now it produces housing developments, a gas station, and the medical office i am about to go into. the red barn is in good condition, obviously loved by someone. a smidgen of pastureland remains, clinging to the old barn like a child afraid to let go of its parent.

have you noticed there is no photo to go along with my story today? the powers that be at blogger have informed me that i am out of luck, i am at the end of the road, that i have run out of space.* odd thing is, i never knew i had space to begin with, let alone that i could run out of it. they are demanding payment for photo storage. don't quite know what i'll do next.

my medieval torture session over, i harbor gloomy thoughts as i exit, maneuvering along the pavement of the parking area under dismal gray skies.



*has anyone else been told they are out of space and will have to pay up to post their photos? one blogger i know has been doing this a lot longer than i have and has always posted photos, too. she received no such notice.

connecting the dots

If you sit down at set of sun

And count the acts that you have done,

And, counting, find

One self-denying deed, one word

That eased the heart of him who heard,

One glance most kind

That fell like sunshine where it went—

Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,

You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay—

If, through it all

You've nothing done that you can trace

That brought sunshine to one face—

No act most small

That helped some soul and nothing cost—

then count that day as worst than lost.

—George Eliot, Count That Day Lost

walk with me, if you would, through the old, narrow cobblestoned streets of the centro storico—historic center—of rome.

look here, along via giulia, where aristocrats lived, as well as famous artists who created great works for some of rome's palaces and cathedrals—men like raphael, cellini and borromini—for a close-up view of renaissance urban planning. what mankind accomplishes! the year 1508: this street would be the longest (1 km) and straightest rome had ever seen.

look up. michelangelo's arco dei farnese. the arch was supposed to connect the palazzo farnese with the villa farnesina directly opposite across the tiber river, but that feat of grandeur never happened. maybe the money ran out. who knows. now there is only this lovely, ivy-covered section of michelangelo's impressive design spanning the street above our heads.

further along via giulia, a stone face mounted on a wall, also from the renaissance—as is so much in old rome—the interesting fontana del mascheroni, fountain of the mask. the chin and lower lip are stained a sick green like a verdant vomitus from the mouth where water spews out. they say the fountain flowed with wine in the old days when via giulia was known for its street parties.

see that heap of clothes on the park bench in the piazza benedetto cairoli on via arenula (benedetto was once prime minister of italy)? in front of another burbling fountain? it's a man. men sometimes sleep here during the day, sometimes at night. when it rains they disappear. the unmistakable odor of urine permeates the exterior of a shed in the corner of the park.

on the ponte sant' angelo, be sure to notice a head-to-toe bronze metallic statue man sitting with a bronze umbrella over his head. another guy with a large brimmed hat is spray painted entirely black. unmoving. they really look like real statues. human statues in this city of statues. i saw them yesterday near the forum on the via dei fori imperiali.

don't miss the man—it's always men, never women—who plays "drums" on many various-sized plastic pots and buckets. he's quite good. the sign beside his money jar reads donations for a real set of drums.

in the campo de' fiori square, location of rome's oldest outdoor produce market (since 1869—it was previously used for public executions), observe a talented musician who strolls among the market vendors and serenades the tourists with his guitar. after a few songs he walks toward the ristorante tables and around the scurrying waiters to where tourists sit with their cups of espresso and glasses of wine. he smiles and holds out a cup of his own. i offer a few coins—grazie, grazie—and smile right back at him.

humanity in a foreign city. foreign, but the same. linked points of humankind—everybody, anybody, me, you, him, her, them—connected to one another under the same setting sun.

there once was a wall

bayham abbey, united kingdom. june, 2011.

a long, long time ago the roof tumbled down, as did most of the walls—not all at once, of course, but gradually—after the place was dismantled, abandoned, and left to decay. but because it was set in such an idyllic spot, people cleaned up the debris and—with great foresight—left the ruin in its natural state to be enjoyed by those who might find their way to the abbey one day in the future.

wild rabbits were among the first to arrive. they made themselves at home—witness the many rabbit holes!—and multiplied in what became a well-tended park surrounding the abbey.

they were the only other visible life forms besides myself, my husband—who i no longer actually saw, as he had disappeared into the ruins—and the young man minding the gift shop and collecting the entrance fee. at first i didn't notice them—the wild rabbits blended in perfectly with the browns and grays of tree trunks and rocks and woody bush stalks and ordinary dirt that were fixed at rabbit level around where the abbey stood. i picked out one of the descendants of the original rabbits and as i watched it, it watched me, its head in constant motion bobbing in the grass, its eyes simultaneously on me and the sweet green vegetation comprising its late afternoon snack. this went on for some time—we were both equally patient.

while the rabbit grazed, i leaned against a wall and enjoyed my reverie in the sunshine.

sanctuary—i sensed it under the dome of the sky. the remains of the walls that once surrounded a house of worship now surrounded me. within the pewless wreck, little hints of glory and joy. i shaded my eyes against the sun and scanned upwards. i imagined a choir loft filled with chanting trees—evensong in leafsong—as hymns of summer wind strained through outstretched branches. i read words of praise in a book, the book of crustose, lichen etched over blocks of stone. once, inside of what had been whole walls, a long-vanished altar had proudly claimed a spot on this earth. years later, opportunistic roots dug into ancient slabs of rock—rocks with a determined faith that, even in decay, held fast. once an altar stood where animals now deposited their own offerings.

the rabbit stopped nibbling choice shoots of grass. suddenly, it turned and fled.

as i walked under archways and lingered in the outlined shells of former workrooms, i saw the shadows of hooded monks laboring, baking their daily bread, brewing the daily beer. i wasn't inclined to compare the shambles i observed with exalted spaces boasting fine stained glass, paintings, and statuary, hundreds of flickering candles illuminating precious gold and silver, cold inlaid marble floors, perfectly white altar cloths and heavy chalices filled with blood-red wine.

i had no need for the established trappings of respectability—no. i was satisfied being a congregant in a broken place, a place that had been humbled and brought down. it was here, that spirit of peace—that unchangeable old thing—and remained with me in the land of crumbling rocks and snakelike roots and countless creatures. it held me the way nothing else could.


~ when i got home from italy over the weekend i was glad to find the house exactly where i'd left it—that beast, hurricane sandy, hadn't blown it down while i was away (although, sadly, on the jersey shore houses were blown to smithereens). except for a lot of sticks and oak leaves littering the yard, there was no evidence a monster storm had streaked through here. the power didn't even go out in our neighborhood like it usually does. (jim, our electrician, joked a bit after he finished installing a generator for us. he said the generator was probably the best insurance against power outages.) with travel on my mind, i wrote this piece about a previous jaunt before i left on this most recent one.

hungry women

what i put before you today—which, it turns out, is not actually today but the day i started scribbling hungry women in my head on the way to the grocery store and then finished up at home later—are some thoughts about eating (always a good thing, right? if the food is decent and satisfying, or you're hungry, or both?) and the silent, not-so-silent, always lurking, subject-of-many-jokes "battle" between men and women (i'll let you decide if that's a good thing or not).

a praying mantis, specifically that one up there on a window in new jersey, got me thinking about food and battlefronts (of sorts). ed and i were having a peaceful breakfast at an inn overlooking a marina on the navesink river when he noticed the large beastie. she was not in her usual "praying" position, but stretched out and taking what i will call a rest (do bugs rest or are they always working, patient opportunists keeping an eye out for their next meal?) halfway down the floor-to-ceiling window. because she was interesting and good looking—i do so love a good looking insect—i took her picture and then promptly forgot about her.

later that night at a wedding reception we attended, they were toasting the bride and groom and the matron-of-honor asked the groom to put his hand on top of the bride's hand. then, as part of her toast, she announced with unwavering conviction—rather too seriously, i might add, as if it was not meant as a joke at all—that this was the last time he would ever have the upper hand in their marriage. her remark got a lot of laughs. personally i thought it was an immensely tired and worn out load of......syllables. but maybe i was just nit-picking; my expectation for originality was too high and my sense of humor too low. i quickly forgot about the toast and the joke and, as it was late and my stomach was growling, enjoyed the delicious wedding feast.

the always hungry—imagine a sixteen-crickets-a-day kind of voracious—pious lady mantis who never, it seems, can get enough to eat, will participate in a lovely and tender courting ritual with a potential mate which includes dancing in circles and serious antennae stroking. occasionally (meaning not as often as the australian redback spider), if her mate doesn't get away fast enough after the act of mating is complete, the praying mantis will ambush him. it will happen so quickly he'll never see it coming. the female will turn around and snap off the male's head and proceed to devour him.

it would seem that sordid tales of sex and violence and who has dominion over whom in this world—a sorting out of who actually "wears the pants" and has the power in a family or a society or whatever—started in the vicinity of the insect kingdom and rapidly moved up the food chain into our neighborhood at the very top. (i am reminded of this fact by some of the movies ed and i watch—yes, the truth is we have game of thrones at the top of our netflix queue.)

i will take some small comfort at this point. i am positive—maybe 95% positive?—that humans, for once, are not to blame. men and women who thrive on sex and violence in reality or who watch it on HBO are not to blame for how low we can sink. humans didn't start the power struggle. no they didn't. it's the fault of the big green one—and others like her—as she sits on a fat, juicy leaf and lures her man with provocative flicks of her antennae, smug in the certainty that she will snag him and he will taste sublime.

what happens to my bones

the ledges near portland head light. august 2012.

Soul. The word rebounded with me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anyone actually know? Sometimes I pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person—a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person's experiences—a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piercings of beauty we've ever known. —Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

what happens to my bones, my eyelids, my nails, my feet, my sinews, my lungs.

what happens when the remains of my existence are tipped by familiar hands

into the sea—this is what i have requested, this is where i believe
i belong, in the place where it all began—what happens then.

a question?—it is beyond that. a method, a transaction in my mind,

negotiating between what's a beginning and what's an ending-that's-not-an-ending.
white ash like coarse beach sand, calcium phosphates and sodium and potassium
momentarily suspended, scattered, adrift in the soft memory of an awakening

rivers    beating    crimson    body    rhythm    remarkably like this sudden peace

percolating salt spray, the grains becoming smaller and smaller, infinitesimal like
iodine, a journey of light and heat.

i am i    am   always am.

a simplified rarefied form, turned
churned, being delivered—there is no reaching, no

yearning. in this landscape sandpipers walk over me, crabs pluck at me

rocks and wind and water and sky are in me, under me, beside me,
through me. i am being reworked by the sculptor, carved into forms
like folding breath, distant thunder, remembered scent, the strata of time

blue, white, yellow, orange, red slipped into a small forever

calling forth this love, this ecstasy ablaze
in fiery display. countless pinholes of light

blinking in, then one by one, blinking out.

go on and catch that little thing

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray in, 

places where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.  —John Muir

i don't know why it is, why some little, hardly noticeable, almost insignificant—although not to me—things in the natural world astonish and startle me, so much so that they actually can, at times, startle me silly. (what kind of an expression is that, startle me silly? it's ridiculous, that's what it is, but it's also accurate. when you feel silly you get all ticklish and giddy and wound up, don't you? now add a startle. that is my point exactly.)

in general, i don't think i startle much, or easily—i am not by nature a jumpy person—but if i turn my head or change direction, or if i bend down and this thing suddenly appears on the periphery of my vision, i realize with some surprise there is something i've not seen before, and it happens. it is when i am faced with a novel situation, say, i come across a place where light is striking an object just so, or something in nature seems different, like seeing a living creature where i least expect to find one, where i've previously never stumbled upon one, that i get that feeling of wow.

my garden. early august. early in the day. day lilies explode in every hue. an ordinary day. an extraordinary amount of weeds. bend down. pull up some of those impertinent weeds. then, on my way back to an upright position, there is this—my own sharp involuntary intake of breath. i am caught unaware and i can only muster a sense of delicious discovery because of—can you believe it?—a tiny wood frog. he's lovely and he seems so fragile, shyly peeking out from within the yellow throat of a tall, extra large peach colored lily.

maybe the simple scenario above is boring enough to prompt many people to yawn and fall asleep. maybe it's beyond boring. (i can understand that. after all, i didn't discover a mountain lion in my backyard.) maybe this type of thing happens a lot, is nothing new. but it's new to me. i have never witnessed a frog nestled inside a flower before.

at this point in my life i could easily fall into a deep well of cynicism—a nasty election season could also help nudge me right over the edge—and say i know all about this crazy world. i could say there is nothing left under the moon and sun that moves me, that surprises me. i've seen it all, done it all, there's nothing new and nothing really changes—it's all just life endlessly repeating itself.

but i don't fall; i don't even stumble. for some reason, i don't trip. i stand firmly on two feet and catch this small precious thing—a common, ordinary wood frog!—out of the corner of my eye. i stand there gawking like a nitwit and try to memorize the moment i first saw his small tan face.

because of the likes of him, i am still able to be made woozy—yes, even silly—with astonishment. i am happy with the discovery that there are things that continue to move me, get to me, that blaze with beauty inside a darkening world. it's such a little thing, but i get the message—there are a few surprises yet to be uncovered on this harassed old earth.

the lovely warts

the day started out like any other day—phone calls, emails, dirty dishes, weedy flower beds, a dog patiently waiting to be fed—but then it turned, veered in a different direction, and left me face to face with the biggest, grandaddy-est eastern american toad i have ever seen. his (?) body length alone—i measured—was nearly four inches and—oh my—did he have fantastic bumps and warts. i was curious as to which bumps were warts and which bumps were, well, just bumps. his skin was dry and densely patterned with them, sprinkled with wonderful camouflage—an assortment of raised, large, small, brown, white, and black dots. to my mind he was indeed a splendid piece of living art. (after a quickie consultation with google i still do not have a definitive answer about how one identifies a genuine wart from that imposter, the generic bump.)

crouched low against the foundation in corner of the deck beside a planter (a large circle cut out of the decking into which a three foot deep concrete cylinder was inserted, ending up a few inches below the level of the deck and filled with soil, compost and flowers) this cute toad sat motionless, even with me leaning down and thrusting a camera in his face. 

i confess i have left the planter somewhat overgrown but, as it turns out, this neglect was a good thing because it probably provided a nice habitat for him—and who knows who else—and since i rarely remove the dead leaves and stalks from the container, but merely cut them up and leave them to rot into mulch, he may have hidden out in there for years.  

in this warm, dry, sheltered spot, the toad sat absolutely still. he blended in well with the patch of chipping paint between the edge of the planter and the house, but he wasn't moving at all. i wondered, was the chubby guy okay? suddenly i experienced a slight panic as i tried to recall where and when the exterminator had sprayed the foundation to get rid of carpenter ants. i don't normally use chemicals anywhere and it makes me cringe when an ant infestation necessitates the use of pesticides. i held my breath as i stroked him gently on his side with my finger. he blinked and turned his head. i withdrew my finger and exhaled—phew, thankfully he was alive and well.

judging by his size, the toad was old—old for a toad anyway—and to have reached such a grand old age i guessed that, in addition to requiring a place to call home, he must also eat rather well. i picked him up and held him on the palm of my hand. i stared into his golden and black jewel-like eyes for a moment and then gently placed him back on the deck. a tasty supply of mouth-watering spiders, moths, centipedes, flies, worms, and slugs reside in and around the planter, allowing the residents of the area to become fat and content.

i studied the patch of skin where the toad had sat on the palm of my hand. did it feel itchy or tingly or irritated? did i notice anything odd? no—there was no evidence of warts or bumps or anything sprouting on my palm. what is it about toads and warts? why the loathing, the fear? i don't pretend to understand a toad's skin, the purpose of it, and yet there must be a purpose, a reason, besides the obvious one, for it to have developed the way it has. i don't find a toad's flesh at all revolting—in fact, i like it. ah, but there is humor at work here, humor, as well as practicality, built into those bumps, into the very workings of the cosmos, is there not?

why are some people utterly freaked out by warts on toads, convinced there is a connection between a toad's lovely warts and the icky kind people get? toads do occasionally secrete a mild toxin which may cause minor skin irritation—but never warts—in some people, and of course we know getting warts from toads and frogs is an old wives tale. and yet, toads, and toad warts, still remain unpleasant for a lot of people to look at. we view them as disgusting; they make us uncomfortable.

there it is: humans are frequently made upset, uncomfortable and uneasy by what is harmless, inconsequential, and unimportant to this existence.

i imagined that beautiful old toad sizing me up, getting a good look at me while i was getting a good look at him. would he be critical of me—turn his head away in disgust—if i had a piece of spinach lodged between my teeth, or if he saw a fleck of mascara smeared under my eye, or discerned a small, hardly noticeable, pimple on my forehead?

retreat

this day is a maine day—an achingly perfect maine day. if perfection is a thing that's possible, that's achievable, if—at least to some small degree—it is, then this is it, this is as close as it gets. on a day like this day, the sun is always shining and the wind is always blowing a steady beat, but softly, gently. each breath of air is sweet and deep and never enough. sails are full, lives are full.

no tourist mobs on this day, but i do hear faint, indiscernible chatter that sounds like the steady rasping call of an unidentifiable shorebird insistently seeking its mate from across the water. in reality it is only cap'n fish's tour guide, chattering on and on about local facts and fictions as the boat cruise winds down and the small vessel returns to pier 1 in boothbay.

on a day like this day it is easy for me to withdraw into sounds and sensations, to be alone with my thoughts even while in the company of other people. i do that; i retreat sometimes. i am not ignoring the friends i am with—i explore, walk over the rocks, admire the rugosa roses, laugh with these danes on holiday, take some pictures, drink some wine, show them how to get at the meat of the very first lobster they've ever tasted—i am a part of the ongoing conversation, but i am also in my own world. i can do that, and i like it there.

retreating into a small interior oasis of being doesn't cause me to become oblivious to the things around me. quite the opposite—i am actually much more keenly aware of everything. how is that possible? i don't know. maybe it is because i am deliberately focusing on the small details of what is oftentimes overlooked—layers of bark on a tree, a lone lobster buoy bobbing near the shore, sharp mountain pine needle tips, a jagged crack in granite—that seizing the big obvious parts takes less effort.

before we meet up with the people we have come to see, we drive along the water where the road hugs the rocky shore. we pull over and go out on the rocks for a few minutes. the tide is coming in. there are no signs to warn me that this is private property because it is not. this land was made for all of us to enjoy—a window on the water for everyone. on the other side of the road the big houses stand tall and proud, with broad porches, gray, salt-weathered shingles, bright white trim, and thick velvety lawns that lead down to the winding road. these homes, like so many others with million dollar views of the coast, are occupied a mere few weeks in the summer and are not rented out. they are private, period. i think to myself, if i owned one of these i would lose myself upon the shore. no one would be able to find me.

we drive on. further along the narrow street there is an aptly named place called retreat; it's more to my liking—not a big house but a cozy bungalow—but the address, 55 grand view avenue, strikes me as inaccurate. it doesn't fit. the road is more of a curving lane than an avenue, and the view is lovely, but this is maine and i don't think grand sums it up the way it should be summed up. grand is the wrong adjective; it sounds too puffed-up. like an overused sobriquet, how many grands and greats can there be—roads and islands and towns and lakes (although i'm sure the folks in the big houses think grand is just fine)—in the state of maine? what is truly grand, what deserves to be called this? something rich in detail and scope, vast, mind-boggling on an almost unimaginable level. someplace like the grand canyon is aptly named; it is truly grand.

i decide to take a peek; i walk closer toward the little hideaway. the tiny building—gray, modest, plain—sits directly on the water. this bungalow, hidden on the ledges under the pines facing the water's edge where the sun sparkles and gems ride the waves, where rugosa roses and mountain pine shrubs thrive in the salt spray, is exquisitely simple. the view, although breathtaking, and painfully beautiful, is not grand. grand is for people from away—technically, i am one of those, not having been born on maine soil, but i believe i have the heart of a real mainer—but not for mainers. true maine is a land of hardy, gruff, sea-faring and farming folk and skilled artisans and crafts people, people who make their living from what the earth has to offer.

old maine, the genuine article, the highly sought after original, is a place of simple, natural pleasures. it is not lofty and full of itself. it is salt water, seagulls, spruce trees, lakes, rivers, mountains, fields, silence. but change is already here; it has been for a long time, and more is on the way. and yet, if you look hard enough you may be able to find a small piece of what came before, of what once was—and what still can be—the pleasurable lure of retreat in the real maine.

cracked

last may i was in massachusetts at the house on the hill where my parents live. the house is situated above what i like to call our golden pond—that's beck pond on a map—the place where i grew up and still, to some extent, consider home.

the weather was pleasant and sunny but not yet warm enough for swimming. my dad, a fit and healthy eighty year-old, was busy preparing lunch while i visited with my mother. over the last few years my mother's health has been steadily deteriorating, slowly diminishing under the silently prowling brain thief that is alzheimer's disease. speech is cumbersome for her—her ability to express even the simplest of thoughts is disappearing, and the few words she does manage to say are arrived at only after a great struggle. but on that day we were, in our own figure-it-out-as-we-go-along fashion, "conversing", with me holding her hand and guessing—do you mean this, mom? or this? no? how about this?—and filling in her blanks, trying to get the answers right like i was taking a bizarre multiple choice exam.

after lunch, my father and i made my mother comfortable on a chaise lounge on the patio overlooking the pond—she walks with difficulty and staircases are treacherous for her—and went down the stairs to the water, with my mother in our sight the whole time. we came back up and walked by the vegetable garden, checked to see if my mother needed anything, and continued around the other side of the house past my parents' beautiful stonewalls and up a long stone staircase—all built by my father (my mother helped) using stones they found on their property. (when you need rocks for a landscaping project it helps to live in new england where backyards can be full of them.)

it was then that my father pointed out the nest.

a large robin's nest filled with four gorgeously blue eggs.

but it struck me that something was wrong, horribly wrong.

i couldn't believe what i saw.

why—oh tell me why?—would a bird build its nest on the ground? i've seen nests built quite low in trees and bushes, but never on the ground, and this one was next to the foundation with no bushes or plants or anything to camouflage it, no protection whatsoever from predators.

when i looked at that nest, so utterly, hopelessly, exposed in a corner by the chimney, i was overcome with sadness, a deeper sadness than the situation called for. after all, birds and animals die all the time—nature is cruel, nature is unsympathetic. that's life. those are the facts. i knew that, knew it well. i thought get a grip; get over it. but in that moment i couldn't. i was hit hard by what i believed was the nonexistent future of the tiny lives contained within those shells; i was overcome by inexplicable and somewhat irrational emotion. i just wanted to be able to do something to fix things, to make things right, and yet there was absolutely nothing i could do, no way to change the outcome fate had in store for the baby birds.

a few weeks passed. one day i was on the phone with my father and suddenly i thought of the robin's eggs. i asked him if, by some miracle, the babies had hatched without incident. of course, i already knew the answer, but i waited for him to tell me exactly what happened.

there was not much to tell—events unfolded quickly. turns out, it didn't take long for what some people might call a bad luck disaster, and others might call a good luck opportunity—depending on whose side you're on—to come skulking along. the possibility of life for those unhatched-lings, which had been in doubt from the start, was like a dream—like something longed for, hoped for—with the dream coming to an abrupt end about a week after i left massachusetts. when hungry bellies demand sustenance and the brain yells go find food, what choice does any creature have?

my father informed me that the interior of the nest was in shambles—of the four eggs only three were left, and those were cracked wide open, their warm, wet interiors sucked dry, signaling fullness and contentment for a crow or a bluejay, a raccoon or a skunk. (he never did find the remains of the fourth egg.) not such a tragic situation, really—lives given up so other lives could manage to make it through another day. that's the way it goes.

i felt nothing after he told me the news—my emotional overdrive had been spent when i saw the nest.

actually, that's inaccurate. i no longer felt emotion for the ransacked nest, but i did experience an emotional response after i hung up the phone. i thought about my mother. it occurred to me that she had no idea about what had happened, no idea how events played themselves out after the nest's discovery. the story of the nest and its contents remained with her for a short time and then was lost—it became part of the realm of mystery—unless she was reminded of its existence.

in her world, facts such as these don't matter—they are completely useless to her. the facts remain for me and my father to decipher—we alone can break into them and get at them, allowing them to signal the beginning of another chunk of time, another chunk of reality different than hers, one where life has a before and after. we've become sharply aware of our own lives: it's as if we're in a kind of passage and, in order for us to avoid losing our way in this brittle existence, we need to know where we've been to help us figure out where we're going.

~  i took the photo of the nest on the day i saw it last year. my father was kind enough to save it for me after it was raided so now it's one of the nests i put on the christmas tree every year. the nest reminds me of a year of changes, and it always leads me to bittersweet thoughts of my mother.

this missive: pulverized scabs

when abigail got down on her knees with her head bowed low, it could easily have been assumed—given the circumstances—that she was about to pray, that she was yet another whispering supplicant begging for a merciful god to save her children from a deadly epidemic. but the fact of the matter was she was on her knees searching—the praying would come later—bending over the floorboards muttering about the piece of thread she had inadvertently dropped—and the physician urgently needed—for the planned inoculation against smallpox in her boston household.

abigail adams made the decision in favor of inoculation on her own; her husband, john, was on a diplomatic mission overseas and already inoculated. besides, she knew he believed in its benefits. his wife was determined to take the risk of having herself and their four children deliberately infected in the hope of causing a mild case, rather than wait in fear for the disease to attack with its full fury.

by candlelight, after the children were tucked safely in bed, she inked pages and pages to john, unburdening her soul of doubts and fears and daily dramas, sometimes adding her dry humor or a quip about the shortages they suffered in 1776—god grant that we all may go comfortably thro the distemper, the phisick part is bad enough i know[....] a little india herb would have been mighty agreeable (suggesting john should place an order and get the damn tea home in a hurry)—until her hand ached and she put down her quill. her nights continued to be sleepless.

such a simple thing, and yet how frightening, this new medical procedure called inoculation: drag a piece of thread through the pulverized scabs and pus from the sores of an infected person, make a tiny incision in one who is healthy, and dip the bacteria-laden thread into it. done. wait for the arrival of pocks.

fat dispatches—paper covered with the sometimes blotchy markings of her dense script—held abigail's hopes and dreams and insecurities—and, at times, her deep loneliness and despair; they contained the passionate expression of her copious thoughts which ranged across the war and the children and the news of scabs and fever, but also other endless details from the management of her home and farm: the buying and selling of livestock, hiring help, construction projects, purchasing seed and equipment, planting and harvesting, drought and flood. details, details.

in past centuries, these missives were bound and sealed with wax and came to rest in the belly of a ship's wooden hull, sailing months upon the sea in the hopes of landing safely in europe or some other distant place.

i don't have a quill—but i have a keyboard. as i write i wonder what would abigail make of a keyboard? what would she think of my online missives—of all our online missives? would she think oh how i could have written! and exclaim oh, how wonderful! to have my thoughts and my news passed on fresh, not dreadfully outdated, by using this unimaginably timely mechanism, and to know that one's words will not be lost to the bottom of the sea but will be read and understood and that someone, hopefully, will find they matter and be glad to read them.

our words—the many, many viewpoints describing the funny, sad, reflective, exuberant, poignant, interesting, happy, thoughtful, crazy, introspective slices of our own lives—don't encounter the old dangers of mail delivery that awaited ships sailing on the high seas, or the perils pony express riders ran into crossing the great plains and the high sierra, or even the small problems of the modern day postman or UPS employee who must also brave weather and, occasionally, barking—and quite possibly biting—dogs.

in our century, words are mostly safe. in this, our unusual correspondence, the written tradition lives on and our "letters" journey free and easy, zinging across incredible distances through cyberspace where, in fact, there is no such thing as distance. instead of sinking or burning or being lost forever in a snowy mountain pass, our missives are transmitted instantaneously for the whole world to see. the snippets of our lives—the rendering of these astonishing pieces of minutiae, these bits of pulverized scabs—remain intact.

hit the orange rectangle and it's done.

you see? isn't that something? this missive—and yours, too—has already arrived.

swirling in a petri dish

that's what it feels like some days, an experiment. i'm talking about this existence where we put one foot in front of the other and take tiny baby steps, trying to reach out and figure out how to move along, sometimes barely muddling along, and do the best we can.

who am i? i started out as a daughter—someone's child—then became a friend, a sister (also cousin, niece, granddaughter....), a lover, a wife, a mother. now i am on the verge, on the very cusp, of something brand new, too.

do i define myself by my relationships or do i define myself by what i do? am i a fireman, a nurse, a business manager, a pilot, a teacher, a lawyer, a shopgirl, a student, a bureaucrat, a writer, an artist? (a list like this reminds me of that game of jumprope we girls used to play as children where we sang out doctor, lawyer, indian chief, hobo, bozo, millionaire, thief.....or something like that, and the word we were saying when we tripped on the rope described with a single word the entirety of who our husband would be.)

i look through the glass and into the dish. what's in there? who's in there? who is struggling to get out? describe her. at this stage in my life i am finally realizing i am all these things and many, many more—they are the chunks that form the foundation of me.

when those sections of ourselves—of me, of you, of us—that ultimately combine into the whole swirl around—oftentimes blindly—they encounter trouble and hurt and frustration and failure, but also great joy. i guess what i'm trying to say is we never know where we'll end up or how much we'll stumble and fall trying to get here, there or anywhere, but the point is we're all doing it together, we're in this thing together. we humans are always falling down and getting up again, we're peeking over the top of the dish ready to pop out any minute and move on, hopefully not looking back too much, but rather focused mostly on forward. onward. completion.

i am in constant motion, cruising from being a daughter to a friend to a mother to a neighbor to a wife and now—oh happy day—almost a grandmother. one more description of me to add to my long, developing list, a compilation of the fabulous, thrilling mix, the experiment that is life here on earth.

the color of morning

what color is 9 o'clock on a sunny weekday morning?

is it a sea blue sky? a rich brown dirt? a shimmery green hummingbird? or an indifferent gray sidewalk like the sidewalk that will soon support my feet as i walk up the little hill to sherman's book shop on main street in freeport?

yet in order to step on the gray sidewalk i first must slide out of the car, close the door, press the lock button on my key and hear the all's locked up safe and secure beep. that's when i turn and notice a man in his late twenties (or early thirties? i can never tell, i can never estimate anyone's age well. is that because it's not on my radar screen, it's not important to me?) jogging toward me.

in the millisecond it takes for me to glance at him and note his uncertain age, my brain registers that he is a complete stranger—does he live here and i just don't know him, or is he visiting friends, or is he staying in a hotel or a b&b in town?—and that he is asian, of average height and build, and is wearing shorts, t-shirt, sneakers. that's all i think there is.

as he runs past me on his way up the hill he turns his head and looks me in the eye. he's a good-looking guy.

he smiles and says "beautiful morning, isn't it?"

this beautiful morning reminds me of atlanta's friendly streets last september, and also of the pathways winding around phillips exeter academy where students habitually nod and greet and offer thoughtful recognition of fellow students, faculty and strangers in their midst by using their eyes as well as their voices.

i respond "yes, it certainly is."

by the time i put my keys in my handbag and arrive on the sidewalk he turns a corner and is gone.

what color is 9 o'clock on a sunny weekday morning?

i now see that it is the color of the wide, wide world and honest words and a smile on a stranger's face.

is that a poem in your pocket or....?

i scrounge around in notebooks, folders, tote bags and handbags (why on earth do i have so many tote bags and handbags, way more than i do shoes or hats? time to donate to goodwill), and check what's inside the covers of books—bits and scraps of paper with poetry written on them tucked inside books with pages and pages of poetry. what is all this? i should learn how to file like a normal person)—as i look for a printed poem that i might have stashed—hoarding poems like a squirrel hoards nuts—in there.

i need one poem to mark the day. but the problem is finding just one—and only one—the right one, out of dozens.

today is the day to ask is that a poem in your pocket or.....?

the whole month of april is national poetry month and today, the 26th day of april 2012, is poem in your pocket day—any poem, write your own or print out someone else's, be it a famous poet or one written by a friend. you put the poem in your pocket and during the day you share it with co-workers, wives, husbands, kids, friends. think of all the poems being carried around today like fun little packages that, once unfolded, contain meaningful gifts. it's like christmas in april.

the problem is, which poem do i put in my pocket?

do i need to photocopy one of evie's or billy's or arthur's?

home again or victoria's secret by billy collins? the shapes of leaves or at the equinox by arthur sze? canvas and mirror by evie shockley? what was told, that by jalal al-din rumi? before air-conditioning by frederick seidel? horsetail by richard wilbur? green farmhouse chairs by donald hall? no ideas but in things by jessica greenbaum? try to praise the mutilated world by adam zagajewski? getting it right by matthew dickman? my lie by jen mcclanaghan?

okay. i picked one; no, make that two (if there is a third that'll be my secret since i'm way over the limit and i'm not playing by the rules as it is): taking off emily dickinson's clothes by billy collins and poem by douglas goetsch.

so just do it—pick a poem and put it in your pocket today, and even tomorrow. and even the day after that. poems are very good for you. full of nutritious stuff.

poetry is the news

as we near the end of april and the end of national poetry month—it's been a great month of reading poetry, in addition to 30 days' worth of other good reading, too—here is a thought about poetry from billy collins:


~ Poetry doesn't need to keep up with the news; poetry is the news. And the news is very simple: life is beautiful and you are going to die. Read all about it.



the rain stops.

the sun entices.

today we passed drought—earth choking,
cracked, mean—
and arrived at a nicer stop
called wave-a-wand green.

what i am seeing
this morning through the windowpane
seems, to me at least, like magic
as if while i traveled the hours
my eyes closed, i dozed
and when i opened them again
i suddenly discovered
a treasure trove of emeralds—
bright, weighty, priceless, yet
every last one of them

free.

the dancers

                                              When i have talked for an hour i feel lousy—

                                              Not so when i have danced for an hour:

                                              The dancers inherit the party

                                              While the talkers wear themselves out and

                                                              sit in corners alone, and glower.

—the dancers inherit the party by ian hamilton findlay

there are times when i feel talk is exhausting. in a way, that's a ridiculous thing for me to say because, basically, i like to talk. i am, i think, a good conversationalist—i like animated discussions, i like dialogue that flows back and forth. but, sometimes, isn't silence refreshing? not complete silence, but silence with a little music playing in the background; a silence where words cease to be important because they are unnecessary. my only desire is a gesture, a nod or a wink, and the chair legs scrape along the wood and i am standing, ready to be led to a wide dance floor, gliding past color and light and shadow in a quiet world of my own making; and i move and sway and turn with a small thing called bliss sitting on my shoulder.

spasm

2 am and i can't sleep. i can't summon one little dream to take my mind and set it down in a faraway land and let it go exploring. i tiptoe out of the bedroom, careful not to disturb my soundly-sleeping husband, turn on a light in the family-room-minus-a-family—sometimes it doesn't seem worthy of the name family room unless all six, almost seven, and maybe someday soon, eight of us, plus dogs, are gathered here—and sit down. lille gets out of her warm bed and joins me.

so it's just me and lille and my aching neck. oh, yeah, i forgot to mention that's one of the reasons i can't sleep. i did something to strain my neck—starting with a muscle spasm, maybe from a lot of lifting and leaning with shovels and rakes and watering cans and pots of dirt?—and the muscles ache to the point that i can't move my head from side to side or up and down, opening my mouth hurts, sneezing shoots burning streaks out from the damaged spot, and my head feels like a bowling ball perched on a twig that's about ready to snap.

but never mind that. my biggest frustration tonight is that i can't peck away on my laptop to pass the time and get my mind off things because typing hurts my neck, too. so i gather a few sheets of lined notebook paper, get three big pillows and a book to put under the paper, and scratch out these words trying—trying so hard—to get comfortable while keeping my neck motionless with all of the above stuff piled on my lap.

it doesn't take long. i think i am doing better when, suddenly, here it comes again. that spasm.

spasm: definition: a sudden, involuntary contraction of a muscle or a sudden burst of energy or activity or emotion.

i'm having one.

out of the corner of my eye i see her on her favorite wicker lounge chair on the porch. she stretches and luxuriates in the rays of warm bright light that soothe her arthritic legs. and there, by the sink, reflected in her silver metal bowl that i rinsed after her last breakfast of chicken and rice. and again, in the golden tumbleweed balls of her soft fur that remain huddled and unmoving in the four corners of this family room. and, finally, in her red collar which lies unsnapped, solitary, uninhabited, on the coffee table.

waves of grief reach me, sending quiet teardrops sliding over the curve of my cheeks. since i still can't sleep i take my lille hund—danish for little dog—outside, and together we hear the barred owls call who cooks for you? trying to find each other in the night. we also seem to be searching, lille and i, seeking a missing part of ourselves in the dark. i imagine we find her—her thick, yellowed-ivory colored fur, those big, brown eyes and blonde lashes, and the sensitive silky ears always alert for any movement, be it the rustle of leaves or the opening of the treat bag.

as she stood on the grass during her last days with us, i watched her carefully. time was running out. lizzi seemed to linger a little longer before she hobbled back into the house, taking a longer look around, her nose twitching, pulling in the air, extracting one more deep scent. was she thinking it's been a good life, this short time i've spent here on earth, or am i just anthropomorphizing?

it was a good life.

in the end, i have no doubt in my mind—i can tell you this: she knew.

crossing the road

i slow down and pull over when i see them. they are sauntering—an everything's cool, no worries, just grazin' and gobblin' and enjoying the day saunter—across the field toward me. i roll down my window, grab my camera, take a couple pictures. this time there are six hens, zero toms. but it's spring and love is in the air so you know the toms are somewhere nearby ready to pick a good fight.

i allow the group of ladies—sleek copper-bronze-black-with-dabs-of-bluish-reddish dames with alluringly wattled heads and necks held high—who, out of necessity, have picked up their pace, to cross the road in front of my car.

but i don't drive away after they have made it safely to the other side.

the hens hold my attention. i watch them and wonder about them. once they're across i wish i could follow them and see where they go and what they do when they enter the woods. what are their turkey lives like? they seem "happy." do they know it? what is happy to them? a full belly and a warm bed? (not too unlike us) they shine. they strut. they glow with confidence because they know they look good (ah, such magnificent wattling)—just like some women.

and the wild turkey toms are exactly like some men. they, too, strut their stuff and think the women will simply fall all over themselves trying to get noticed. and they're right. some will fall all over themselves, some won't. some women will get noticed, some won't. it's a macho attitude, and also a somewhat understandable survival attitude at work, one that says i've got to pass on my fab genes in a hurry. all hens—and women, too—have known those kinds of toms at some time or another.

i don't think it's too much of a stretch of the imagination to realize that a few similarities exist in a wild turkey's life and and our own lives. we both start out wild—we begin life as wild animals—all squishy bodily fluids and functions, noisy grunts and emissions. but we become tame and the turkeys don't, and then it mostly comes down to this matter of survival, this urge to reproduce, for some of us, and for all of them. the male thinks to himself i want her to notice me—he has his reasons—and she has her own reasons for wanting to be noticed by him.

aren't we all part of this grand game, this grand show, that's been performed, over and over again, for thousands of years? sometimes i wonder, is it partially the game that keeps us feeling alive?

for thousands of years males and females have danced around each other, surveyed each other, looked into each others' eyes. what do men see? what do women see? what do we think we see? do we only see what we want to see?

questions nag at us. is he thinking what i'm thinking? what will he do? what should i do? what do we really want? whose move is it anyway? all this in an effort to feel life deeply and get a lot out of it and in the end be able to say we lived it to its fullest. (sorry that last bit sounds sort of like a lame greeting card or a corny song but i hope you get what i'm trying to say.)

and so it goes.

i drive a half mile down the road and as the car reaches the top of a rise near an old farm—a small farm, but a real one, and even better than that, an organic one, one where they raise a few cows and chickens that actually roam the fields and see the light of day, breathe the fresh outdoor air, and where they grow a few local crops without throwing chemicals in the pastureland—i spot quite a gathering along a knoll. at least a dozen hens, and this time there's a tom, too, grazing. the hens seem rather relaxed but the tom is not taking any rests; he couldn't be less relaxed.

that's because he's hard at work, teasing and showing off, trying to get the hens to please come out and play and—here he has my sympathy—any second he knows he may have to deal with the blood-thirsty competition moving in. he moves back and forth. i hear grunts and gobbles as he repeatedly opens and closes and shakes his glorious tail feathers trying to get a response to his brilliant display.

but, you know, there isn't any. the females keep picking at the ground and ignore him. (in the end the tom will win, though. the hens will change their minds and become receptive to him very soon, as nesting time is almost here.)

the game they play amuses me. (i am easily amused—in fact, i love to be amused.)

as i continue to observe life i have come to the realization that the more i think i have things figured out in this here cosmos, the more i have to acknowledge that i don't. for human beings the reality remains that there isn't such a thing as stirring the pot and making a nice reduction out of traits or problems or whatever—peoples' traits and issues and experiences and motivations cannot simply be boiled down and made easily understandable.

our true identities will always present a somewhat complicated puzzle—like the puzzles with 1000 tiny, similarly cut pieces that all look like they might fit but have to be rearranged a lot, and then the dog comes along and eats a piece and messes up the nice arrangement—even to ourselves.