The two faced god of Not-Yet

Not-Yet by Jane Hirshfield from Lives of the Heart (Harper Collins)
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch –
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-

Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.

Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings
One face looks into the past, one into the future

I imagine the god of Not-Yet is a cousin of the Roman god Janus.  The two-faced family resemblance is certainly there, but instead of looking into opposite directions, both of Not-Yet's faces look into the future.

One is as Hirshfield describes-- the Not-Yet face that sees our future and in reminding us that we are not-yet-lost, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-dead, and reminds us that we should embrace our lives while we still can.

The other face, though, looks at the things we haven't accomplished yet, the not-yets that we use as excuses, that keep us from embracing the present-- not yet rich, not yet successful, not yet thin, not yet partnered, not yet patient, not yet forgiving, not yet healthy, not yet whole, not yet holy. 

That's the god of Not-Yet who has overstayed his welcome.  The one I won't be inviting to stay. 

A little Sweetness, Always for Valentine's Day

Sweetness, Always by Pablo Neruda trans. by Alastair Reid from Extravagaria
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Why such harsh machinery?
Why, to write down the stuff
and people of every day,
must poems be dressed up in gold,
or in old and fearful stone?

I want verses of felt or feather
which scarcely weigh, mild verses
with the intimacy of beds
where people have loved and dreamed.
I want poems stained
by hands and everydayness.

Verses of pastry which melt
into milk and sugar in the mouth,
air and water to drink,
the bites and kisses of love.
I long for eatable sonnets,
poems of honey and flour.

Vanity keeps prodding us
to lift ourselves skyward
or to make deep and useless
tunnels underground.
So we forget the joyous
love-needs of our bodies.
We forget about pastries.
We are not feeding the world.

In Madras a long time since,
I saw a sugary pyramid,
a tower of confectionery -
one level after another,
and in the construction, rubies,
and other blushing delights,
medieval and yellow.

Someone dirtied his hands
to cook up so much sweetness.

Brother poets from here
and there, from earth and sky,
from Medellin, from Veracruz,
Abyssinia, Antofagasta,
do you know the recipe for honeycombs?

Let’s forget about all that stone.

Let your poetry fill up
the equinoctial pastry shop
our mouths long to devour -
all the children’s mouths
and the poor adults’ also.
Don’t go on without seeing,
relishing, understanding
all these hearts of sugar.

Don’t be afraid of sweetness.

With or without us,
sweetness will go on living
and is infinitely alive,
forever being revived,
for it’s in a man’s mouth,
whether he’s eating or singing,
that sweetness has its place.


When I sat down to post this morning I imagined it would be an impossible task to find a poem that would suit for Valentine's Day and Lent.  And then I came across this poem by Pablo Neruda. 

It may seem like an indulgent poem for Lent with all this luscious imagery. . . melt-in-your-mouth verses and honeyed poems, the desire for sweetness always.  But Neruda reminds us that we are all fragile, mortal.  Hearts of sugar may break and inevitably will melt away but the sweetness, "with or without us/sweetness will go on living/and is infinitely alive/forever being revived." 


So the questions I'm thinking about today is where am I finding this sweetness in my life right now?  And how can I give some sweetness back in return?

Two Pie Poems for Julia's 100th

Key Lime Pie by Mary Rose O’Reilly

Commas of lime in sugar and milk,
suspension, mild on the tongue
as memory of being filled,
or if you never were full before,
now is the moment --
be born again,
trailing, for all I care,
Augustine, Ambrose, all of those guys --
Aquinas, sit here, eat this pie.

Each one's longing to feel
a belly round with surfeit sur·feit 
v. sur·feit·ed, sur·feit·ing, sur·feits

v.tr.
To feed or supply to excess, satiety, or disgust.

v.intr. Archaic
To overindulge.

n.
1.
a. ,
figuring out at last
one of the why's we came for:
key lime pie Key lime pie is a dessert made of key lime juice, egg yolks, and sweetened condensed milk in a pie crust. The pie is topped with meringue, then baked until the meringue is a golden brown.^[1] Some key lime pies use other types of whipped toppings or none at all. .

Tumble with me, Augustine,
out of the pear tree of self-hate.
Here is a Buddha-pie your African grin
can barely take in. Here is a radical
homecoming pie. Aquinas,
it runs down your chin.

You will never again
have to be clever or even good.
Taste the green skin of logos
wanting to kiss your tongue.
You are undone, like a child
gone feral feral

untamed; often used in the sense of having escaped from domesticity and run wild.  to smell grass,
murmuring here it is,
all I have longed for
at last, at last.


The Poet's Occasional Alternative by Grace PaleyI was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along


Writing this afternoon has been a struggle.  Maybe it's because it was already mid-afternoon before I sat down at my desk today.  I've gotten used to putting in my two hours, pen in hand/laptop at fingertips, the first thing in the morning and today an early appointment shifted my writing time so I'm feeling off kilter.  Or perhaps it's because I'm at a difficult point in both of the projects on which I'm working and I'm avoiding tackling the down and dirty writing that is required to move them forward. 

Avis de Voto and Julia Child

I'm blaming Julia Child though.  I think it's her fault I've put what little creative energy I could summon into planning and preparing dinner for this evening.  Although I read this morning that it's the 100th anniversary of her birth (I even bought the Kindle deal of the day, As Always, a collection of the letters between Julia and her pen-pal friend Avis) the thought slipped my mind, or at least I thought it had.  But now that I've stuffed a beef tenderloin and wrapped it like a carnivore Christmas present in bacon and twine, peeled potatoes to mash with a healthy dose of horseradish, and assembled the makings of pesto to go with the summer squash and heirloom tomatoes from the farmers' market, I think perhaps the spirit of Julia somehow wiggled her way into my schedule. 

So the best I can offer you today are these poems about pie-- both invitations to put aside guilt, striving, longing, the desire for approval, and indulge in the sweetness of life.  Hopefully you'll find some time to do just that today, if not for yourself, in Julia's honor. 

I think she'd like that.

"Life itself is the proper binge."
~ Julia Child

Bees

BEES

by Jane Hirshfield from The Lives of the Heart (Harper Perennial)

In every instant, two gates.
One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.

But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?

I'm not quite sure why I picked this poem for today, other than today seems to be a day where I am thinking about the next few days (Good Friday and Easter in particular) and how I feel called to mark those days in a way that feels meaningful and authentic to my experience while at the same time remembering and respecting the tradition in which I was raised. 

Maybe it's because Good Friday and Easter have come to symbolize horror and ecstasy, hell and paradise, death and life, that I turned to this poem today.  And maybe it's because I don't feel like going through either gate this year.  I just want to be open to the holy moment that comes from hearing the bees and tasting the thick honey of this good life.

What are the faint cries you're hearing and where are they leading you?