Being Poetry

Trusting – I’ve spent some time this week in the greenhouse, puttering away with the seedlings therein, as well as some lovely flowers that I’ve potted but don’t dare put out in the variable weather just yet. The radishes, mustard and arugula are bounding forward, and now they are joined by tomato, zucchini, trout’s back lettuce and several other salad green varieties. Inside the house basil, kale (two varieties), broccoli (two varieties), and cauliflower (two varieties) are looking robust and hale. I put my trust that given the right conditions, healthy soil, water, air, warmth and sunlight, most seeds will flourish. We just need to be mindful to give our plants (and ourselves, our loved ones and the world around us) the best possible conditions for growth.

Grateful – All around me are miracles. Little ones every day. May I be as sensible as the leaf that unfolds into them.

Inspired – “I wouldn’t be surprised if poetry – poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs – is how the world works. The world isn’t logical; it’s a song.”  ― David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries

dancing trees waiting for spring

Trusting – We are drawn to subjects that represent the crossroads of what the world needs to hear and what we need to understand. Such subjects become the metaphor through which we make sense of our lives. Think back to the books you took out of the library when you were young. The subjects that you looked up in the encyclopedia. What drew you? Trust in those deep-seated interests. Consider how they may be the binding thread in your creative work.

Grateful – The world is filled with story. We get to be part of different stories each day, each moment. The stories braid around each other to create something new, something wholly our own. Many things can be taken away from us, our homes, our health, our individual freedoms, but no one can take away our stories.

Inspired – I’m reading Terry Tempest Williams’s new book When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice. The book examines Williams’s relationship with her mother, with nature, and with her own creative work. It’s a meditative book, resonant  like a finely crafted string instrument or the scent of rain on evening wind.

From her website:

Terry Tempest Williams’s mother told her: “I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.” It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them.

“They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.” What did Williams’s mother mean by that? In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother’s journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question “What does it mean to have a voice?”

Trusting – This week, I gave out copies of The Things They Carried as part of  World Book Night. I still have some in a box in my car. I’ve been more of an opportunistic giver than a systematic giver. I gave a copy to a young man who was waiting for a ride outside the gas station. Another went to an older man who was waiting behind me the line at the post office. Two have been given away to individuals outside of a local bakery. One was left in the bakery with the words “Free – Take me home – I’ll change your life” scrawled on the front cover. I gave one to a young man who sat playing video games on his computer for an hour in the communal space at the college (I figured he might need something else to do with his time). Today I gave one to a lady who was sitting on a log at the beach. I trust that Tim O’Brien’s great book which on the outside is about the Vietnam War but on the inside is about the power of stories to heal will find it’s way into the hands of someone who needs it. Or, if I’m lucky many someones.

Grateful – Books – I give them away, I write them, I read them with wild abandon, I love to talk about them with friends and even strangers, I cherish them and the impact they’ve had on my life. I will never ever be able to thank my father enough for the love of reading that he instilled in me when I was a little girl. Every night, we would sit together in the big white naugahyde chair (why yes, that was the late sixties/early seventies) and read. First my father reading to me. Then me picking out words. Finally, me reading to my father. Thanks Dad, for every book I’ve read since that first one that I read curled up beside you.

Inspired – Why yes, I did indeed spend a delightful lunchtime at a friends house with many other poetry-beholden women. And yes, we ate amazing food crafted by caring hands, read poems to each other and talked about what we loved, what confused us, what art meant. And even if at the end, I felt overwhelmed and even a bit dizzy, all those ideas! those fabulous strong women! the poetry layered on chocolate layered on laughter! Oh my, I have been inspired to put the pencil to the page.

And finally, I completely agree with Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

Trusting – This week, I was less than perfect. Oh heck, every week, I’m less than perfect. But this week, I left my flashers on and drained my car battery. The next morning I had two appointments stacked together, and I made neither of them. When I turned my key in the ignition and heard nothing, not even a click, I flushed deeply, embarrassment flooding into a sort of horror. I try to never let anyone down. I imagined a flustered teacher and a classroom of waiting students. I imagined my boss sitting at the café waiting for me. Then I got out of my car and walked back in the house. I contacted everyone that I wasn’t going to be able to meet, and then I sat for awhile and read. I spent an entire day at home and I’m trusting in the fact that I actually NEEDED to do that. I drank tea, caught up on work, wrote and read, and snuggled with my dogs in the sun. Trust in the fact that it’s okay to be less than perfect, and it’s perfectly okay to be sustained by a sunny day with no place to go (or ability to go there).

Grateful – I live in a place where poets and writers in all stages of their vocation chose to join together to share. We share writing exercises, cookies, issues of Poetry magazine, kind words, honest critique, ideas, books, passion. Sometimes in the evening when I open my notebook, I think of the others all within ten miles or so from me who may also be investing words with energy. I hear their literary hearts beating, a low and comforting sound as I begin to put words to page.

Inspired – Sun. What can I say? I am drunk on its loveliness and part of me has always wanted to be green and unfurling.