Writer's Island: Impulse

if you’re going to wake me…


the need for sleep ambushes
me at the oddest times, forcing
my eyes to strain open and my
limbs to sag. I am halfway through
a lesson plan, chalk in hand, words
like hundreds place or double digit
on my tongue, when they spill off and
spin into a yawn that threatens to
crack open my face.

my first impulse is to lie down on
the carpet, tell the students to count
my eyelashes while I sleep and multiply
them by infinity before they wake me. or I
might be walking from the car to the
office where my second job waits, its
papers filed tidily in drawers, and I know
if I stop walking for a mere second, let one
foot drag a millimeter behind the other, I will
lean into sleep against the warm brick wall,
my head lolling, the tea in my travel mug
making map stains on the sidewalk
of places I’d rather be.

Perhaps I have tick fever or narcolepsy or
chronic fatigue syndrome. perhaps I pricked
my finger on a cranky fairy’s spindle
or worse, perhaps I am simply worn down
by what passes for my life these days. work
is a four letter word that saps my strength and
gives me only a few coins in return, a pauper’s
portion spent before it’s fully earned. Send me
a tonic, a magic drink. better yet, send a dazzling
prince to kiss me awake before the thorn hedge
grows too high.




photo credit: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.logoi.com/pastimages/img/sleeping_beauty_2.jpg

Field Notes

I went walking with a naturalist through Bartholomew's Cobble last Sunday. We stopped often to write. Here's a poem from my field notes.



Remember that day,
the river drifting slowly south,
the trees just beginning to leaf,
looking like paler versions of their autumn selves?

You know how you have to
climb the earthen steps,
first down to the silver river,
then up to the leafy overlook,
and how, this time of year,
every miniscule blossom challenges
you to name it,
how the nose twitches at the smell of
disturbed leaf mulch
and damp earth,
how what passes for silence
is filled with bird song?

It was just that kind of day today,
a day of discovery,
of feeling the cool hand
of the sky on my cheek,
of seeing hillsides white with trillium,
and eco-rock gardens jumbled among the trees.
It was as if the trees were listening,
and the quiet leaves,
and the ears of the rocks were open,
and the twigs bent close to hear.

Then the wind spoke,
and the bluebird.
Into the silence came a breeze-borne song.
The boughs nodded,
the river chuckled to itself,
the rocks sighed and settled into
the earth's cupped hand,
and every twig unbent,
lifted by trembling, whispering leaves.

On the Other Side of Grief

I have been following a fellow blogger's arduous journey toward and through her father's last days. TICA details with such strength and compassion her bedside vigil and her dad's struggle with life and death choices. A few years ago, a close friend of mine lost someone she dearly loved. TICA's posts reminded me of this column I wrote of my friend's journey through grief.


Life on earth is at best a chancy thing. You cannot know the exact moment when you will leave the land of the living or if your dreams will die before they've been fully lived. One thing is certain—if a loved one leaves before you, whether by accident or design, you will travel to the strange land of grief and you will go alone. The winds of change will swirl about you, pick you up, transform you forever, and set you down in another place.

It is not only the departing who are changed by leaving. The living, the survivors, the ones left behind must become someone else in order to cope, to grow and finally emerge into a different life—the life without. It is a lonely walk through an unfamiliar land, this land without. Things that two did together one does now. There is nothing so empty as the other person's chair pushed up to the table, unless it's the stairwell that no longer echoes end of day greetings and eager footsteps, or the bed that suddenly seems vast and cold and too lonely on either side of the middle. There is nothing so quiet as a room with one person in it, the silence absolute after the death of conversation and shared confidences. There is nothing so solitary as a single plate on an empty table or a single towel hanging folded and desolate on its too wide bar, or a lone toothbrush standing solitary guard in its cup. There is nothing harder than being one when you have loved being two.

Someone dear to me recently lost someone dear to her. She was so happy, so loved, so alive while her loved one was with her. Now she looks and feels as though she's been struck down and in a sense, she has. Grief has her by the heart and for a time she must wrestle with it, pushing her way through the pain to unlock the reservoirs of strength and faith she accrued in happier days. I watch her struggle to come to terms with her loss, to find a place where she can lay her sorrow down long enough to eat, to sleep, to think of something other than what has befallen her.

She tells her story over and over, trying to make sense of it, to fit it in with her own picture of what her life is all about. Perhaps her peace will lie in the creation of a new picture, a new story, a tale that embraces this grief as a gift that, when opened, reveals all the words and colors she will need.



photo credit: Jean

Gone gardening...

Though prompts will tempt me and blogs will beg attention, the longer days are drawing me out of doors after work, shortening by hours my time for reading and writing. I’ll pop in on rainy days to catch up with you all, but when the sun is shining, here is…


Where You’ll Find Me

Bright green has clothed the naked bough,
The winter is behind me now.
I harrow deep, and deep I plow,
The moist and willing ground.

With every seed I bury deep,
I make a promise earth will keep;
Much more than what I plant, I’ll reap,
When harvest comes around.

I spend the fleeting daylight hours
Tending vegetables and flowers
I thank the sun and pray for showers—
My feet are garden-bound.

Doubt and Faith

For TOP's prompt: big chill, cold weather, late spring...



A month ago there were patches of
stubborn snow under the blackberry bushes
and the grass was still last year’s,

dead and brown. Now, though, oh now!
Every bare branch is budded, every
blade of grass new green, every breeze

a sigh from heaven. How could I have
doubted spring? The blackberry’s faith
is greater than mine.

What Flowers Know

This week's Writer’s Island prompt: triumph









The sun does not play favorites when it shines,
Nor is it merciless; it does not care.
Its fire was set by some mysterious hand,
Its warmth and light indifferent to despair.
The rain falls when it will, it does not heed
The needy prayers of beggars in the field.
The wind blows where it’s sent; the dormant seed
Grows only if its planted; then it yields.
Each living thing must find its way between,
Too much and not enough; a balance rare,
And all the while we ask a force unseen
To act as if it saw us and it cared.

The triumph of the bloom is that it knows—
It takes its rightful share and so it grows.

Imagine!

I recently spent two days celebrating with a wonderful friend as she turned 100. She was a schoolteacher, a farmer’s wife, a gardener and, when in her 30s, learned to pilot a small plane. She and her husband were married for 70 years. Lora still loves to fish, lives alone, reads and drives her car without the aid of glasses, will admit (reluctantly) to being a little hard of hearing, but is still sharp of mind and good of heart. Here’s a portrait of her for Totally Optional Prompt’s suggestion: write about a person.


Lora Remembers

100 years of mornings,
of sunrises that spilled liquid gold
down Vermont’s rugged hillsides;
dew that sparkled on a million
summer spider webs; a cow’s warm
breath on her hands and the warmer
milk; fishing the wily creeks and still
ponds at her father’s side;
running up the hill to school;
McGuffy’s First Reader and lunch in a blue
lard bucket; boarding as the teacher;
rain that turned dirt roads to mud;
riding a hay rake, a baler, a plow;
70 years of marriage, of cooking and
washing and mending, of quilting
and knitting and sewing;
driving a Model-T;
flying solo in a small plane;
barn raisings and song fests and gramophones
and new-fangled radios; television and jet planes
and a cruise to Alaska 85 years after
that first morning 100 years ago.

She remembers 100 years of evenings,
of listening to the nightjar whistle,
of scarlet sunsets and sparking fireflies;
dashing to the half-moon door in the
darkness; carrying a lantern up the cold
back stairs; woodstoves and hand pumps
and knee-deep snows; sugaring-off in spring;
summer nights so hot you slept on a blanket
on the lawn; darkness so pure you could
count the stars; nights of terror when fire
struck; nights of music and dancing, of kitchen junkets;
of family suppers; lonely nights, nights of weeping
and missing her man; nights of wondering, pondering
the future, the meaning of it all; nights of remembering
family and old friends gone on before—

100 years of living behind her. Now she looks ahead.