Revisions: poems celebrating (?) our return from our cruise, yard work, and my 65th birthday (upcoming)

Coming Home

First, there is the mail,
a sea serpent of mail 
that slithered through the slot,
oozed across the foyer and
down the stairs
seeking the depths
where dwells the unspeakable
catalog.

The voicemail next:
importunate, insistent
robotic cheer--
politics, prescriptions,
sales, reminders
of missed opportunities
and appointments
preying on the guilty
conscience.

Last, the list
assembled on the plane:
the flotsam and jetsam 
generated by departure,
postponed calls, deferred bills,
the pieces you’d hoped 
would go away if you
closed your eyes
and lulled the inner voice
(your responsible self)
with dinners and music,
plied it with drinks
and seduced it with sun.

You were a world away:
you’re back now, Sisyphus,
and life goes on.


Squirrel and I

We are digging frantically
he and I
burying things in cold, cold dirt:
he, acorns; I, pansies.
He’ll forget, in winter’s blast,
exactly where he stashed them
will rummage and search
the beds in much the same fashion as I
forgetful, rummage for my keys.
I at least know where my pansies are.

And in spring, equally astonished,
we prize our little resurrections:
Pansy faces grin in surprise,
broken free
from frozen burial
and his unintentional seedlings smile 
sunward: incipient trees 
with promise
of autumn fruit.

Acorns and pansies.
The cycle of
life eternal.

Improbabilities

I should not have gone to college
should not have caught 
that glimpse of grad school, should
have been satisfied with
the bachelors and settled 
for less, for the job next door that,
expressing interest, was not interesting
enough 
to capture mine.

I should not have moved
away, away to horizons
new and blazing blue: 
Charlottesville, California,
Virginia, Washington,
should not have been
a scientist, wife, mom, or teacher,
techie, trainer, meeting
maven, director, writer,
poet.

I should not be this me at all,
but I am improbably all
these threads in a strange   
and wildly-woven fabric: 
wooly bumps and silky
slubs and jacquard patterns
warp and weft historically defined,
suspended on the loom,
still a work in progress.
Life.

I've been away, but I'm back now. Almost. In the interim, there has been a cruise. Aruba, Cartagena, Panama, Costa Rica, the Cayman Islands...then a drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Tampa--and at last, the flight back to reality, to home, to the everyday. I can't say I am sorry.  It's been a packed two weeks, and our return will be equally packed with all the stuff we put off till "after": after our trip to San Diego, after the kids got off to Scotland, after this trip. It seems our entire summer was fraught with 'after's this year, and I'm anxious to get back to  a normal scheduling process.

But, before we do that, I need to sort through the memory books for the past few weeks, and tabulate a few of the thanks I am feeling. What better time than November to take a hard look at all that we have, and compare our mountains to other people's more modest molehills?

At the risk of being shallow--and I often am--thank you for air-conditioning, for wheeled suitcases, for clean streets, for clean water, comfortable housing, for the ability to travel, for the good health that allows us to climb stairs, to walk easily, and to carry our own luggage. Thank you for eyes to see, and a brain to appreciate the history, the meaning, and the beauty of all we witness. Thank you for the neurons that make the pathways that connect experience with knowledge and that allow us to see wonders of nature and technology and achievement and be inspired.

The catalog of experiences this past month runs from butterflies to aloe vera, from forts to religion, from palm trees to divi-divis,  from emeralds to native crafts...we saw banana plantations and birds, iguanas and monkeys and sloths. And the Panama Canal, hewn with pick and shovel a hundred years ago, and still operating under  a century-old technology. Imagine that scene in 1914: imagine the awe and wonder of the connection of two oceans by the sheer determination and back-breaking efforts of an army of men who conquered not only land and sea, but disease and privation to fulfill a dream. Imagination: something else to be thankful for.  Experiencing  the canal crossing was a memory worth having.

As were all the others. The rain forest boat cruise--the prototype for Disney, only with real animals in real trees. The stories from our guides. The recitation of working hours and requirements. The beaches, the buildings, the images…it was an education and an inspiration.

And now, we are home--faced with an election and the myriad of after-trip errands and must-dos that inevitably follow absences. Somehow we landed in the middle of fall, after extending our summer with this trip. It's chilly, and we have engagements to keep and appointments to make and we need to get used to doing our own cooking, cleaning and entertainment again. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and Christmas hard on its heels. Time to focus; time to write and stop making random lists here, time to take a good look round, decide on a course of action, and then, pursue it.

It's good to be back.

Saying "Uncle"

(I am not a student of government; I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of what goes on in the higher (or lower) echelons here in Washington. This is just my gut reaction to the goings-on we've been subjected to in the past few weeks...)

Okay. I'll say it. "Uncle". That's what you say when you have had enough and just want the game to end, isn't it? I am tired--very tired--of this particular game. And discouraged and dispirited and despairing.

I grew up in what I believed to be the greatest nation on earth; we were the envy of the world in high ideals, ambition, and achievement. When other countries faltered, we were there to shore them up with our support, both physical and financial--and military, if it came to that. We were, if not the savior of the world, at least a force for good therein.

We have taken a beating. The years have not been kind. Today we find ourselves beset on every side. Instead of being the big brother the world could depend on for help, many countries find us to be interfering and pursuing our own interests at their expense. Perhaps we are, to some degree, but I still think the American people see themselves as being helpful, supportive, generous, and ready to defend the underdog. The world is growing up, though, and like rebellious teen-agers, countries are rejecting anyone who helped along the way. Us. We are now the bad guys, to be avoided and thwarted at any cost. We are the enemy (although we can still keep that disaster aid and financial support coming..)

And now, it's not just other countries who have decided to wallop us into submission: it's our own politicians. It is difficult to assign responsibility here, and I'm not sure I want to. I am a lifelong Democrat and a supporter of Obama and his hopes for America. His leadership makes me proud to say the pledge of allegiance, proud that we have an intelligent, articulate man in the White House--and proud that Americans were far enough removed from the trials of the '60s to actually elect a black man to our highest office.

Perhaps that was a pride that came too early. It seems that the divisive Congress now in session is unwilling to support President Obama in any program he espouses. I do not understand how this can be happening. I was taught in my civics classes in grade school that we the people have a government with three branches, which, with their system of checks and balances, prevent us all from going to hell in a hand basket. Congress initiates and passes laws; the executive branch approves (or alternatively, rejects) those laws; the judicial branch reviews and interprets them. And, with all three of these branches working in concert, we as citizens have an orderly and dependable government that is responsive to our changing needs. Change may depend upon the somewhat slow pace of the election cycle, but I have always trusted that the will of the people would prevail eventually. Our election process (and the representatives and the president and ultimately, the Supreme Court) is the primary tool of the people that ensures the orderly process of government and has made us the proverbial city on a hill that others have aspired to. Nowhere is it said that one branch or another could hijack the process and hold the citizenry hostage to accomplish its own agenda.

Our tools have been turned against us. Somehow Congress has lost the concept of collegiality and has turned into a kindergarten classroom of selfish children, who have forgotten why they are there. There appears to be a new mutant version of congressman that appeared around the last election: one who doesn't understand the job, who thinks that personal beliefs and/or prejudices supersede the oath of office, who repeatedly takes the short-sighted view of whatever issue, ignoring and/or not caring about the country at large in favor of pleasing a limited constituency as narrow-minded, self-serving and intransigent as he. The common good has fallen victim to personal advancement and self-aggrandizement.  Stubbornness and unwillingness to listen have sabotaged the discussion and compromise necessary for any form of legislative process. As a teacher, as a parent, I find myself wishing I could sit these children in their respective corners until they learn to 'play nicely' with one another. Or maybe clean up the mess they've made.


The idiocy and small-mindedness of the shutdown is only compounded by the arbitrariness of the actual  effects. The barricade of trails and monuments, the litanies of what's open, what's closed, the focus on Congressional perks that have not been cut off vs. the ones of the general public that have, the interviews of those who are impacted, the interviews of determined congressmen and the equally determined opposition, the inexplicable feeding of the divisiveness that is at the root of the problem.

If as much effort, as much print, as much airtime went into encouraging cooperation and compromise as has gone into undermining those attitudes, we might not be where we are.


The irony of all of this is that no one is winning--least of all the citizens who elected this gang. The politicians have their onscreen moments, the media have their proverbial field day, newspapers have plenty to write about and all the human interest stories that the public can stomach...but the public has smaller (or non-existent) paychecks, fewer benefits, even the loss of recreational facilities like our national parks. Our slowly-recovering economy is heading, lemming-like, for the cliff yet again--and no one seems to be listening to the Cassandras who are prophesying dire results. No one seems to be listening to anything anymore: not each other, not the warnings, not the bells that may be tolling the end of life as we Americans know it-- and have known it, for at least my lifetime. We are betrayed, and we are the betrayers. We have taken all our gifts and all our ideals and all our hopes for the future and turned them into a circus for the world to ridicule. We should be ashamed. I know I am.

Looking for My One Per Cent

One part in a hundred, that would be one per cent. Anyone would conclude that that is not much. A local art gallery is devoting an entire exhibition period to that theme, however. Choose and expand upon the concept of one per cent of anything. Now, since this is an art gallery, one would expect it to be a study of the minutiae of the visual world. Were I an artist, I would cut myself a little cardboard window and start looking at things: the heart of a flower, the end of a banana, the pebbled surface of a blackberry. Or, were I a photographic artist, I'd narrow my viewfinder down to locate texture and detail in a larger picture. I am reducing my field of vision.

But I am not that kind of artist. I am a writer and a poet and my work every day is to routinely seek the one per cent-- or even less. I zero in on a single facet of the life I have been given and examine it, hoping to use it to make sense of the rest, the enormous thunderstorm of thought and experience and sense information that rains in on me each day. Studying a single raindrop, I try to see the universe.

Regret and Rejoicing

There are times when I regret having given up our suburban quarter-acre: in spring, when the tulips and daffodils pop up in the woods behind the house and the dogwoods are dotting the woods with pink and white; sometimes, in the summer, when folks are hauling in fresh tomatoes from the garden (and even, maybe, the zucchini); in winter, when I used to go out and cut greens for the house--holly and ground pine and magnolia branches. I had a garden that I could count on--and, when I found a new plant that flourished there, I was delighted to have added it to the somewhat haphazard design I'd established.

But, in the fall...I am now so grateful for my 20x20 bricked-in patio. No leaves to rake, no mulch to spread, no lawn to mow, no acres (well, it always seemed like that) of frostbitten plants to slimily tangle around my fingers as I tried to clean up beds for the winter. In the fall, I can walk down to the river for my autumnal color fix. I can go to the nursery and replace my summer geraniums with chrysanthemums, and my pinks with pansies or ornamental cabbages. I can even (after a couple years of failure with assorted other plants there) water the sedums in the Wooly Pockets on my wall, stick in a couple mini-pumpkins and call them finished till Thanksgiving.

My various pots of spent lilies and other assorted perennials now host purple fall asters, and the foliage of my baby nandinas is turning bright red. The nameless shrubs that someone else trained into tree-shapes against the back wall are producing orange berries. (And no, they AREN'T pyracantha. I've questioned nursery people and have heard everything from euonymus to bittersweet--it's a mystery!) And all through this, I am within hearing distance of my fountain, burbling away in the middle of the patio, with the occasional bold bird swooping down for a drink or a splash. If my gate is open (and it is, so I can haul my hose back and forth) neighbors (walking dogs or themselves) almost always have a word or two to say about the flowers or the wreath on the door. Putting my 'garden' to bed is no longer a solitary chore--dirty, cold, and wet--but sort of an extended tidying up: an outside room that needs clutter-removal and sprucing up so that my winter windowscape will give me a lift instead of a dose of depression.

Today was the day. All that's left to do is a quick sweep of the bricks, and a wipe across the shed door to remove my dirty handprints. When the chrysanthemums and asters are done, I will cut them back, leaving my rosemary bushes in sole possession of the assorted pots and urns that surround the fountain. I will plant a few bulbs and protect them (somehow) from the depradations of the squirrels. But, for now, I will have a cup of tea--maybe outside in my rocking chair, with the fountain and birds for company.

Tomatoes!!!

Tomatoes

Globes, teardrops, kidney shapes, pears..

scarred, pleated, cracked with brown,

gold and green and mottled red,

striped and parti-colored,

that peculiar green tomato smell

(the smell of a summer garden)

rough, fuzzy stems,

yellow flowers;

sun and earth and seed and memory:

heirlooms.

**************

Brandywine, Marvel Stripe, Black Prince, Cherokee Purple, Flamme Orange, Green Zebra, Lemon Boy, Vintage Wine, White Beauty, Sun Gold, Beefsteak, Indigo Rose...If you thought that lovely romantic names were the exclusive province of roses and beautiful flowers, think again. Then add to scent and color the sense description of taste. It is tomato season.

A walk through your farmers’ market doesn’t do the tomato family justice. Beguiled by the smell of tomatoes, I’ve picked up the occasional beefsteak or even a nameless red tomato, and sliced it or fried it or layered it or basil-and-mozzarella-ed it without grasping the spectrum of flavor available. No more.

This week, we experienced a tomato tasting and lunch at our friends’ house in Palo Alto.  I have been an on-again, off-again gardener all my life, planting the occasional pepper plant or cherry tomato seedling. I do better with herbs. In small pots. But Ann and Allen’s garden shows what avid gardeners can do: assorted beans, berries, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers growing vertically, horizontally, and every way from upside down to sideways--in beds, in boxes, in pots, in the ground. Marvelous.

Even more marvelous was our sumptuous lunch: salad greens with a king’s bounty of various items from the garden; there was also hearty bread and smoked duck and olives and mozzarella--and raspberries for dessert.

City-dwellers that we are, we forget the taste of authenticity. Granted, the relatively recent farm-to-table movement seems to be working at whittling the distance between growers and consumers, but seeing farm-to-table reduced to backyard-to-table was inspiring, to say the least. Popping sugar-sweet cherry tomatoes (ahem--or Sungolds!) has to be a lot healthier than popping potato chips. Thanks, Ann. Maybe next year, I’ll work on a pot or two of edible beauty instead of those mundane flowers.

Summer Doldrums

How else can I explain the lack of output? I haven't written anything since my last poetry workshop at Chautauqua, in spite of resolutions to the contrary. I seem to have been adrift on a sea of ennui. But that luxury is about to end.

There is one week until we depart for San Diego. One week to prepare ourselves and the house for the onslaught of the granddaughters, who will be arriving before we return. There are rooms to clear, beds to make up, toys and books to rescue from closets, and plans to be made for their visit. And, since this visit is the last one before they depart with their parents for Dundee, Scotland for two years, there are a lot of other preparations to be made: storage space to secure, preparations for the transport and storage of their car, carseats to maneuver into back seats, and realignment of our Netflix queue to include the latest and greatest in kid TV.

And so, my current wish list includes a few days with tolerable levels of heat and humidity so that I can reclaim the sidewalk from the weeds that have staged a coup there. I'd like to cut back the plants on the patio so they can revive themselves in my absence with some new growth. I'd like a good rainy day or two to wash off the dust and give everything a good long drink of water. And I'd like the painter who painted my gate to come back and deal with the mess he made: the gate has blisters the size of my thumb that swell and deflate at random in various places. It looks diseased. Last time I let any painter other than Billy near my house!

But, so it goes. Before we know it, it will be fall. I don't know whether to be glad or not.