Day's End

This morning, I was going to post a “Better late than never” prediction of who would win the Oscars.  So, in that spirit, why not?  I predict —Birdman!  But at the end of the day, a long day even before the four hour Oscar show began, I have something else to share.  After turning the television off and finding Andrew asleep on the couch —and it was an especially long day for him —I decided not to herd him out of the living room and instead tucked him in, turned off the light and said good night.  Yoshi was curled up at his feet, and that seemed the best way for Andrew’s day to end.

It was sixteen hours earlier that we had left the house for another fencing tournament, and Andrew fought hard for seven hours, losing to a nemesis teammate in the first foil event but persevering and earning a third place medal in the afternoon epee event.  He barely missed a chance to advance to the finals, and Andrew felt sure he would have won the whole thing if one director’s call had gone his way in the last bout.  So we drove home, feeling a little proud but also a little frustrated, quiet and tired.  And when we got home, Andrew went into his room without a word, but then, almost immediately he called out in a hushed tone , “Dad. Come here. I think Lana is dead.”

Hedgehogs, they told us, were expected to live no more than two or three years, but Lana was only seven months old.  We had some premonition, as she hadn’t touched her food from the day before, but before that, as recently as a day earlier, I had joked with Andrew about how she had no personality, always burrowing under the wood chips and saving her wheel exercise routine for the middle of the night.  Andrew had taken this from me for months, and often quietly defended Lana, but the other day he had answered, “Yeah, Dad, you’re right.  She doesn’t do much.”  And yet this afternoon, finding Lana unresponsive and no longer burrowed into the chips really hit Andrew hard.  

I texted his sister and asked her to call him with a cheer up call, and that helped a little. Meanwhile, I proceeded to make some dinner and wash the dishes.  On most days I would have called Andrew in to help with the chores, but I decided to let him be.  Later I told him we could replace Lana with another pet, maybe a less prickly, more friendly animal.  “You mean a second dog?” he asked.  He had been working this angle for months in fact.  No, I told him, that was not what I meant.

It is good, though, to have a dog in the house.  I still remember 1989, when Bruiser laid his muzzle on my knee after I had heard Dad had died.  Or 1987 when I watched Duncan breathe his last while the rest of the family was in Hawaii and I was home, tied to work and school.  Or 1980, when Walter Dog had run away from his transplanted farm home back to our house, reclaiming his spot on our front steps.  And now, 2015, I can add this: Yoshi curled up at Andrew’s feet, just when he needed him most.

Empathy

or, alternatively—a purple patch that Emily,

perhaps, with reams at her disposal, or naked

Thomas Stearns, with academic robes to set

the staging right, or Plath, with daily ways to

cut the quicksand with a knife, or brother Jon,

with bus-stop mallards that resonate, or any

soul who may not suffer, necessarily, outright,

still the same, imbues this canon after-flame.

And so, and so, I mole into your ranks. There’s

little here to martial me or any purple patch

pretender to inchoate or incandescent heights

when art is most at stake. I solely empathize

that parenting is taking place—our kids, their

queries outer space, our mutual meeting place

in ‘how was your day’ and ‘love you anyway,’

which qualify as art. Yon mallards fly with me.

Another Happy Birthday

Yes, Mom, happy birthday!

I don't have a new poem to offer, but I did recently brush up another old one, previously posted here last summer, that is timely I think.  Please, follow the link, or go to the reworked posting from July 16.

We are so often led to think of holding our faith in God the Father, which cause us to dutifully reflect on how our own father helped to shape our faith, but not enough is said about the image of God the mother - and if you think about it, the shepherd of straying lambs and the God who arrays the lilies and feeds the sparrows may be more motherly than fatherly.  Even as Dan’s poem restates that old Irish blessing, our faith rests not only in the God who holds us in the palm of his hands but also in the God who places what we need in the palm of our own hands.

So here’s to you, mom!  You have shaped and continue to shape our faith, from the days you held us close to the days we moved beyond the mother's hold, reminding us in so many everyday ways how God is with us.

February grace

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone, and Happy Birthday, Mom! We're enjoying 'Masopust' here in Roztoky, the tolerably pagan launch to Lent, but more than that we're making ornate lego castles and reading and playing games and instruments. It's ski holiday for Katerina, Em and me; the boys get that the first week of March. While I organize the 6th annual IBICUS workshop for visiting teachers--this year a record 180), I'll still enjoy days off on Monday and Tuesday. And tomorrow's Sabbath, now that Masopust has run its glut!

On the eve of your 76th, Mom, and countless years your progeny will enjoy, here's a birthday poem for you:

            Birthdays and Baptisms

That summer of ninety-two we went to plays:

Faust in Addison Trail, Mid-Summer’s Night

at Northwestern, The Grand Inquisitor within

a Frank Lloyd Wright; Jon and I travelled north

to Stratford—The Tempest and As You Like It,

as I recall—a venue you and Don drove us to

a decade earlier, while exploring the continent.

We added Ireland and England (Les Misérables),

relatives in Germany, the ghosts of Helsingør,

the mermaid Anne embraced. Family more

in Norway, and winding roads from Smom to

Trondheim; sunny skies for Førde’s folkdance,

romantic rains in Bergen, moose medallions

on Oslo’s wharf satisfied a long-lost hunger.

We had become young again. The tumult all

our friends had prayed us through had found

this season of grace, a promise of married life

for all of us anew. We walked and ran with

Bruiser, dear pup that Josh picked out (or up),

the patron saint for novels incomplete: maybe

someday he’ll still narrate End of My Leash.

More than twenty years had passed, Mother,

since you had taught English class, yet always

you evoked a need in us to rest and recreate

faith, hope, charity: these three. They neatly

fit the palm of any baby’s hand and guide the

going forth, eternally. We’ve been baptized—

even twice!—in the divinity you’ve raised.

Starry Night, Revisited

Another river view, and another reach back to an earlier poem - and another link to my daily blog effort of sweeping my past poetry into one place this year.  This one’s sentimental, sparked perhaps by what may be, this month or next, an imminent ending to my four year divorce.


Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous Starry Night painting shows a wild sky with swirling, pyrotechnic stars that cast a blue-gray glow on the town below it. It must be late at night, as there are no house lights and no people. This is the Starry, Starry Night of Don McLean’s song Vincent, reflecting how the artist “suffered for [his] sanity.” 

It is a powerful moment, but I prefer Van Gogh’s earlier astral painting: Starry Night over the Rhone.  The night is calmer, the stars are more balanced and the city is still awake with its own lights; a river flows across the canvas and there are exactly two people on the riverside, standing together and inviting us to take it all in.

Years ago, when I was one of two people, we bought a copy of this painting for our living room. My other is no longer with me; she is somewhere else, suffering for her own sanity now, and my days with her are forever in the past, but I still like keeping that painting on my wall...

Starry Night, Revisited

(enhanced, and with a borrowed refrain from 
Widow's Grove, by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan)


The sky above, the earth below
The city it stirs, the river it flows.
We walk at night that we may see
The stars and know we’re not alone,
  
That we may breathe a different air
And walk along a quiet shore,
Stand silent where the river laps
Up to our feet, 

Wondering where 
We were before.

   I followed you to the river
   That washes out to the sea.
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.

    ---

The earth is black, the sky is blue.
The river bends a mirrored view
Of city lights and stars familiar,
Heaven down and shore to shore.
  
We meet the night. We take the time
To be together, you and I,
Across the river, in between
The city and a giant sky.

   I followed you to the river
   That washes out to the sea.
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.
  
    ---
  
We breathe the sky and feel the earth
And find our place beneath the stars,
Your arm in mine and mine in yours.
The world is right and the night is ours.

   I followed you to the river
   That washes out to the sea.
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.
  
   Between city lights and stars at night,
   That's where I'll be.


also published in Confluence; originally from Calendrums, 2011; Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888; Widow's Grove by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, 2006

fully in 2015

Happy birthmonth, Mom! Good to Skype and get emails--keep 'em coming.

A couple routines have been happy features of my weekends: dog-walking, of course, running with fellow coaches around the neighboring village Unetice, taking in hockey games with the gamins, jamming with the new piano, and trying to pen a poem--partly to supply at least one for Lost Menagerie each month, partly because at 97 I'm upon that three-digit threshold of deciding which to revise and compile, partly because it's fun to make connections and share.

In class a couple weeks ago I played a clip of MLK's "street sweeper" speech--hopefully you'll be able to see it from your YouTube provider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlV_ODrEL0k

So that was on my mind when I thought about a launch to February poems. Also on my mind were fugues--somehow songs from Led Zeppelin's only double album begged the question if they were such, and, browsing for definition and stumbling upon fuga for flight, fugere to flee, fugare to chase. It was a delightful 'rabbit hole' to dive into: listening and reading and jotting some notes...

            Fugues

in my head and yours,

in Physical Graffiti that

hearkens back to Bach,

in ephemerality and

rather infinite hours

in this curtailed month

that feels like Fargo,

in the marches that lie

behind, fleeing or some-

times chasing. Once

in a while the artform

needs to chance new

rabbit holes, frozen they

may be; enter you and

me, faithfully forsworn.

Falling in takes no time.

Dr King, calling sweepers

to be like Michelangelo,

tethers pride to gravity:

the beatific low and high

are sides of the common

coin (God guide the life-

long flip). It’s a far way

to go—perhaps Dakota

miles—to fathom Man

and Woman and random

hosts in this menagerie,

to tap into a harmony,

in Feb     .        .                     .