Mary Oliver Monday - The Summer Day for a perfect summer day

THE SUMMER DAY by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One (Beacon Press)
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Sometimes it's a good idea to hold on to a thing, to keep the obvious tucked away until the time isn't merely good, rather, exquisitely perfect, to make your oblation.  Then, you can pull out what has been saved with a flourish and cry, "Voila!" turning something ubiquitous into something magical.

In as many times as I've posted a Mary Oliver poem on this blog, I've shied away from "The Summer Day,"  preferring to offer poems that are less well known and definitely less well quoted.  But something about this morning's clear blue sky, the breeze ruffling the grass, the sound of the cicadas in the maple tree outside my bedroom window, and the work I have to do the rest of the day made me realize it is indeed the perfect day for "The Summer Day."

Voila!  I give you the magic of Mary Oliver.

A particular eastern tiger swallow tail
visiting my wildflower garden

The magic for me this morning comes in hearing something new in a poem that I've read a gazillion
times before.  As with many people, I'm often left pondering the punch of the poem's last lines.  What captured my attention today though were the stepping stones of the first lines, that movement from the universal (literally) to the particularity of one specific grasshopper.

So, rather than viewing little details as distractions that lead me away from the picture work I have to do today, the invitation to me is to see in the particulars the opportunity to pay attention.  Quite a challenge for an Enneagram 7 and a Myers Briggs INFP but I'll give it a go, because who am I to argue with a Mary Oliver poem?

A Poem for Earth Day

'Nature' Is What We See by Emily Dickinson
'Nature' is what we see--
The Hill-- the Afternoon--
Squirrel--Eclipse--the Bumble bee--
Nay--Nature is Heaven--
Nature is what we hear--
The Boblink--the Sea--
Thunder--the Cricket--
Nay--Nature is Harmony--
Natures is what we know--
Yet have no art to say--
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

This weekend I spent part of each day playing in the dirt-- planting poppies, herbs and a rose bush, sowing seeds in the wildflower and butterfly garden, digging up and moving rogue lilies to place where they can actually get some sun and blossom.  While my hands were busy digging, my eyes and ears were open. 

If nature is what I saw while I was engaged in this work of co-creating, it's the broken robin's egg under the flowering pink dogwood, sprouts of lily of the valley poking up through the mud, a rabbit pulling up dried grass to make a nest by the front porch, the blue and yellow blossoms of forget-me-nots.

If nature is what I heard, it was the chatter and creaks of a pair of rusty blackbirds warning me away from their nest in my neighbor's yard, the rustle of wind blowing through the new leaves on the maple trees, the buzz of a bumble bee hovering over fragrant white alyssum.

I read Emily Dickinson's poem as an invitation to attentiveness, an encouragement to be in the present moment, an act which, for me, often leads to gratitude.  When I go out for a walk later this afternoon I'll again have my eyes and ears open and come back with a different litany of what nature is. 

So on this Earth Day, I invite you to join Emily and I looking and listening, in considering what nature is for you . . .

Ebb and Flow and Noticing the Turning Point

The Spring Sea Rising by Yosa Buson
The spring sea rising
and falling, rising
and falling all day.


The idea of ebb and flow has been on my mind a lot lately.  Those rhythms of nature that are echoed in our lives . . . abundance and scarcity, busyness and stillness, coming and going, sound and silence. 

Beside the sea I look out the window as I write and try to pay attention to when the tide is rising and receding but never quite catch that time of turning.  It's often the same way with my life.  I don't notice the waves creeping in until the water is around my ankles.  Part of this practice of paying attention is trying to be aware of when those sea changes are happening so I can consciously decide whether or not to stand and let them wash over me or move to higher ground. 

The Spaces of Hope by Ivan V. Lalic from The Passionate Measure (Anvil Press Poetry)
I have experienced the spaces of hope,
The spaces of a moderate mercy. Experienced
The places which suddenly set
Into a random form: a lilac garden,
A street in Florence, a morning room,
A sea smeared with silver before the storm,
Or a starless night lit only
By a book on the table. The spaces of hope
Are in time, not linked into
A system of miracles, nor into a unity;
They merely exist. As in Kanfanar,
At the station; wind in a wild vine
A quarter-century ago: one space of hope.
Another, set somewhere in the future,
Is already destroying the void around it,
Unclear but real. Probable.

In the spaces of hope light grows,
Free of charge, and voices are clearer,
Death has a beautiful shadow, the lilac blooms later,
But for that it looks like its first-ever flower.


Today's poem has me thinking about how lightly and carelessly I use the word hope.  I hope it doesn't rain today.  I hope I can find a parking space near the coffee shop.  I hope Netflix gets new seasons of Lewis or Vera soon.  Those types of hopes would be better expressed as "It would be nice if"s. 

A space of hope is more like a moment of grace, a breaking through of light, wholly unexpected, a gift for our soul which we've done nothing to earn other than simply being aware enough to notice it.

What to do, what to do . . .

The washing never gets done . . .  by Jaan Kaplinski from Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books)
The washing never gets done.
The furnace never gets heated.
Books never get read.
Life is never completed.
Life is like a ball which one must continually
Catch and hit so that it won't fall.
When the fence is repaired at one end,
It collapses at the other. The roof leaks,
The kitchen door won't close, there are cracks in the foundation,
The torn knees of children's pants...
One can't keep everything in mind. The wonder is
That beside all this one can notice
The spring which is so full of everything
Continuing in all directions--into evening clouds,
Into the redwing's song and into every
Drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow,
As far as the eye can see, into the dusk.


I sat down at my desk this morning with the intention of writing this blog post then updating my "To Do" list.  Normally, the first two items I'd include on my litany of tasks would read
                                                
                                                  1.  Update to do list
                                                  2.  Write blog post for today

I always put "update to do list" as the first thing on my to do list.  That way, when the list is complete I can take a bright fuchsia Sharpie and draw a deliberate line through it.  It makes me feel that I've accomplished at least a little something that day.

Now, after reading the Kaplinski poem, I'm re-thinking my list. 

What if, instead of just including the work that takes place primarily in lap top windows, I consider including the things from the world outside my window-- stepping outside to throw out a handful of birdseed before the weather turns,  noticing how the tinny aroma of impending snow has driven away last week's loamy scent of spring, smiling as I catch a glimpse a neighbor with a perpetual spring in his step bop to the bus stop. 

At the end of the day, how many more things could I write down and cross off as being accomplished if I simply expand my vision of  "To Do?"

A Poem for the End of the Day

The Inner History of a Day by John O'Donohue

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

 

Since I'm posting today's poem just under the wire, I decided to offer a poem for the end of the day.  I love the phrase "the eucharist of the ordinary," those everyday moments brimming with presence that we may overlook when they occur but notice later.  Something to ponder before falling asleep . . .

Old Holy Teachers and Old Holy Ways

THE TREES by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)
Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again.

Here are maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
  to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
  until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
  to pronounce a new year.

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
  advancement!
But I think
  it would do us good if we would think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

The trees, the trees, just holding on
  to the old, holy ways.

This weekend at the  seventeenth anniversary celebration for the Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage I led a session on poetry as prayer.  As we read a few haiku and reflected on the lessons we saw in the autumn landscape, several people spoke about the insight they gleaned from trees. 

Evergreens in the midst of a decaying garden are a reminder of the constant nature of divine love.  The burnishing of leaves that is brought about by a decrease in sunlight illustrates how dark as well as light is necessary in our lives.  And how ironic it is that so many of us rejoice in the changing of green leaves into the brilliant foliage of fall, yet change in our own lives is so often viewed as something to be lamented or feared.

As for my reflections, I thought about how the cherry tree in my neighbor's yard has long been bare, while our dogwoods are a brilliant red and the maples are just beginning to fade to a pale yellow green.  All get the same light, the same water, are planted in the same basic soil, yet each embraces autumn in its own time, in its own way. 

Celtic spirituality points to nature as the first book of divine revelation.  I think this is part of the old holy way that Mary Oliver mentions. Trees are more than decorations in our landscape -- they are messengers, preachers, teachers, and perhaps even sacraments, offering us a glimpse of grace if we pay attention.

Carpe Libris - What I Did and Didn't Read This Summer

It's been a while since I've written a Carpe Libris post.  After my summer reading list post I'm almost ashamed to admit that about 90% of the books on my summer shelf are still sitting there gathering dust-- sorry Virginia Woolf and Julian Barnes, maybe next year.

That doesn't mean I didn't read this summer.  I did.  A lot. 

And it doesn't mean that I haven't been reading this autumn.  I've just given up on the idea of a seasonal reading list, although I am saving the Russians for winter . . . I'm hoping I can knock out Anna Karenina with one significant snowstorm and a lot of tea.  Until then, here are a few of the books that I've been reading lately. 

This is Water by David Foster Wallace
I don't know if it's exactly fair to call this a book, but since this is my blog and I make the rules here, I'm going to do so.  I've probably read more about DFW than read things by him.  Although I remember reading a couple essays by him in The Atlantic, in my mind he's always been tainted-- guilt by association from all the times he's been exhaled in the same breath with Jonathan Franzen.  I then came across an article about DFW that made me want to read words he actually wrote.  I put Infinite Jest on hold through my local library and while I waited my turn in the queue, I downloaded This is Water:  Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, the transcript of a graduation address he gave in 2005 at Kenyon College. 

Wowza!  You can find copies of the speech for free on-line but this was something I wanted to have available to read and re-read, to carry with me (at least whenever I have my Android tablet in my purse) like a touchstone, maybe even to use with our Centering Prayer gathering.  Yes, that's right.  You heard me.  One of these nights the Centering Prayer gathering at Washington National Cathedral will be using David Foster Wallace as our text for discussion . . . because DFW articulates the human condition and our need to connect to something outside of and larger than ourselves in words and images as profound as gorgeous and true as any mystic or spiritual teacher, past or present.  Here's one example:

But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will    actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as    not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

I have to confess, that makes me cry every time I read it.  I feel like he could have been inside my head poking around when he wrote this essay.  And maybe it's knowing his fate that makes it seem more imperative for me to pay attention. 

The Child in Time, Enduring Love, and The Comfort of Strangers A Trio by Ian McEwan

On one of the recent episodes of "A Good Read" on the BBC Books and Authors podcast, The Comfort of Strangers was chosen as a good read by one of the guests.  It sparked a heated debate about whether or not a book can be deemed good if there are no redeeming aspects to the story, the characters are unlikable, the setting depressing, etc.  And while all of that is true about the book (McEwan managed to make Venice seem depressing and seedy even to me, who loves La Serenissima like no other place in the world) I think I come down on the side of it being a good read, as I do with the other two novels I read by him this past month. 

I know I've read McEwan in the past but I don't think I read him really paying much attention to his artistry as a writer.  He's a bit of an enigma to me.  For one thing, none of these three novels was exactly uplifting.  Although there was some redemption at the end of The Child in Time, reading a story of a man who's life has collapsed after his toddler was snatched from him in a grocery store line was painful.  Likewise, don't be deceived by the pretty cover and alluring title of Enduring Love, where a balloon accident triggers a case of obsession that slowly chips away at the lives of those involved.  As for The Comfort of Strangers, a few pages in I suspected it wasn't going to end well.  If this book had a soundtrack, the screeching violins warning of impending doom would have been playing softly in the background from chapter one and by the middle of the book would be deafening.  Yet just as the characters in McEwan's novels can't (or don't) change their fate, I can't put these books down.  Another thing that fascinates me is his lack of dialogue.  As a writer who has always developed characters through dialogue, the lack of actual conversation was at first unsettling, then distracting and now it intrigues me.  I think with McEwan I read him as much for what I can learn about writing as for the stories themselves, which may explain why he'll stay on my reading list for the fall.  On Chesil Beach anyone?

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
I was a relatively late convert to the charms of Chief Inspector Gamache and his side kick, Jean-Guy Beauvoir but in a way I'm happy about that as it meant once I made the discovery I could read the next book in the series straight away.  That it is, until recently.  I had to wait months for the The Beautiful Mystery to come out, and worth the wait it was. 

Penny's mysteries are smart and her characters are complex (and likable, Ian McEwan take note).  So what if I sabotage my diet as I end up craving Tim Horton's but settle for an inferior donut and coffee every time I read one of her books?  It is well worth indulging Penny's tasty plots and delicious writing.    In fact, there were few, if any, coffee runs by Beauvoir in this book although in hindsight I realize what a brilliant writer she is when it comes to food because she had me craving monastery food-- vegetarian soups, good bread, cheese and fresh butter.  (It doesn't hurt that most of my experiences with monastery food have been at Holy Cross in West Park, NY where the chef was trained at the Culinary Institute of America and the meals are this foodie's idea of heaven.)

Maybe it's those small, well written details of daily life that add to the richness of Penny's writing.  While the mystery itself-- who killed a monk in a remote monastery and the complexities of investigating the crime where obedience and silence are vows upheld by the insular community-- is the story on the surface, where Penny excels is in exploring what lies beneath.  The motivations for actions and reactions, the choices her characters have made, what their values are, these are all things that make Gamache and Beauvoir multi-dimensional characters in whose lives I feel invested.  Even after the mystery is solved, it seemed almost anti-climatic because what really concerned me was what happens next in the relationship between Beauvoir and Gamache.  So here I am again, waiting for the next installment in the series. 


So what have you been reading?

An Inside Out Kind of Morning

THE OLD POETS OF CHINA by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early (Beacon Press)
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.


It's one of those days where I feel like I'm wearing my skin inside out and everything is irritating me-- the frenetic Schumann violin piece on the radio that scrambled my energy like a sous chef beating an omelet, the keyboard of my lap top which seems to extend just a quarter inch too far so I can't find a comfortable place for my wrists, the apple I cut up for breakfast that developed a thin layer of slimy juice on it in the trip from the kitchen to my desk.  Even the work I have to do that had me energized last week seems like a nuisance today, little biting flies buzzing around the corner of my mind as I try to get in my two hours of morning writing.

Before Schumann got me riled up, I already knew I was having an off day.  It took perusing five books and countless on-line collections of Mary Oliver's poetry before I found a poem that elicited more than an, "Eh," from me this morning.  The one I finally chose got a, "Hmmm," which I figured was the best I could muster today.  The "hmmm" came as I was thinking about the world and its busyness.  Does it really come after me or is it just there and I react to it, accept its invitation, sometimes even seek it out?

Maybe the mountain wasn't the important thing for the old poets, but the mist that covered them with a soft grey blanket of obscurity so all they could do was snuggle up to what was right in front of them and enjoy the present moment. 

Bird Migration, Squirrel Reaction, and How They Both Relate to Centering Prayer and Meditation

MINDFUL by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early (Beacon Press)
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for—
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?


Today was a day I woke early, although I stayed in bed until the light began to creep into the room.  While the darkness dissipated and shadows took on solid forms, I listened to the sounds coming through my open bedroom window.  I once heard that you can tell the temperature by how fast a cricket chirps.  This morning I listened as the sound of early commuters on Connecticut Avenue gradually silenced the slow stridation of cricket song in the pre-dawn chill and when I heard the trash and recycling trucks making their rounds, I finally roused myself out of bed.

Usually I'm so focused on looking for or at things that delight me that I don't pay attention to sounds.  But at this time of year, the sounds are what draw me to my window-- the footfall of an unknown animal creeping across the backyard in the middle of the night, rain drops rustling the burnished  leaves of the dogwood tree, the birds who take a mid-migration break like a busload of tourists on their journey south, foraging for food and using the facilities in the avian rest stop that is my yard. 

Last week it was a flock of grackles that swooped in, blanketing the trees and the grass with their iridescent bodies.  If I hadn't heard their shrieks and squawks I would have missed the ensuing scene when the black squirrel who likes to sit in the hollow of the maple tree scrambled down to chase them away.  He'd scurry up to a bird and chatter at it until it flew out of his reach whereupon he'd turn his attention to the next closest invader. 

Resist no bird, retain no bird,
react to no bird, return to your sacred word.

I was amused at the futility of the squirrel's actions until this morning when I was journaling about the congruence between writing and meditation.  I was in the midst of what I felt was a really good flow in my morning pages.  But as soon as I had that thought, the flock of thoughts came flying in, squawking and making a mess.  I tried to chase them away but that just created more noise and distraction.  The same thing happens to me sometimes during my centering prayer.  I sit down to meditate and think to myself, "I'm doing really well here . . ." which is an invitation for the thoughts to come and the chatter to begin. 

I've written about monkey or puppy mind before on this blog.  Maybe I need to start a bestiary for meditation and add bird thoughts and squirrel reaction to the compendium.  For now though, I'm going to go do my twenty minute sit and if the noisy bird thoughts do come, I'll try to remind myself if I can just stay in the cozy hollow of silence and presence, they'll eventually fly away.   

Superficially Autumn, Deeply Liminal

SONG FOR AUTUMN by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume II  (Beacon Press) In the deep fall

don’t you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep

inside their bodies? And don’t you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow? The pond

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially,

the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

 

Okay so technically it's not deep fall, although it is superficially fall here in the mid-Atlantic states.  For the past month the red tinge has crept from the tips to the base of the leaves on the dogwood tree in my yard while the cherry in our neighbors' yard is embarrassingly bare.  Maybe all the crazy storms we had this summer made its leaves want to jump ship and feel the comfort of the earth early this year. 

I've welcomed the early taste of autumn myself, with open arms and open windows.  I fall asleep to the song of the crickets and wake up snuggled underneath the comforter after nights of fairy-tale like dreams that have drifted in past the curtains on the back of the north wind.  I put sweaters on in the morning and drink a cup of tea or coffee with cinnamon in it to warm me up but by the afternoon I stand in front of the open freezer in my shirt sleeves to get ice for my water.

Autumn is my favorite season and it can't get here for good soon enough for me.  Yet yesterday at my favorite farmers' market I was  reminded of what a liminal time of year this is, an epilogue to summer and prologue to autumn at the same time.  Produce tables were laden with cucumbers, zucchini and peppers as well as kale, beets, and apples.  A smattering of melons and tomatoes were holding on as the winter squash and broccoli jostled for table space at a few booths.  I bought kale and acorn squash to make the first white bean and winter squash stew of the season and tomatoes and basil for a farewell to summer caprese salad.

Many people I know have remarked that this summer was over in the blink of an eye and I feel the same way.  I have a hard time remembering what activity filled my days from June - August, nor can I recall the sensations that usually signal summer-- the smell of newly mown grass, the taste of a ripe tomato warmed by the sun, the heat rising from the pavement scorching the soles of my bare feet.  Maybe I didn't actually experience these things this year.  Did I go outside barefoot?  Was my window open on every other Tuesday morning when the grass was cut? Perhaps not but more likely I just wasn't paying attention.  And as much as I love autumn, that realization is enough to make me want to hold on tightly to these last few threads of summer in the hope I can follow them back to some recollection of the past couple months.  

Liminal times are like open doorways that invite me to a particular kind of mindfulness where I am aware that I'm moving from one way of being to another.  One foot is in the past and one foot is in the future, and in the midst of the two is the present.  I can put my weight on one foot or another, superficially living in the past or the future, but true balance comes only when I live deeply in the moment. 

 

Monday or How Billy Collins taught me it was okay to look out my window . . .

MONDAY by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (Random House)

Jane Austen may not have been a poet but she did
write at this table by the window every morning,
and probably spent some time looking outside.

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.   

My favorite window is the one by my bed that looks out onto the back yard.  I tend to wake up the first time as the milky light of morning pours into dawn, so I get up and look to see what birds are breakfasting there.  The robins of early spring have now been joined by common place birds I think I know the names of but am not quite sure-- are they wrens or are they sparrows?  I recognized the mourning dove when I saw her yesterday.  And the grackles last week.  Occasionally an odd bird turns up that sends me leafing through my Audubon guide.  I'm still awaiting the return of last year's sap sucker who never managed to venture into a tree to be true to his name, but preferred to forage in the grass.   

A view of the wildflower garden from my window

Later in the morning, after a cup of tea and before I move to my desk, I survey the wildflower garden to see what's in bloom.  Again, I'm not a very well informed naturalist.  I don't know the names of all the plants but I can identify the columbines in an array of purples and blues.  They lord over the salvia and foxglove, and I can almost hear them bragging about their abundant blossoms as they sway and swagger in the breeze.  In a few weeks they'll be quieted by the wild echinacea that takes over the garden and then I'll start looking for the goldfinches who land on the stalks, pluck the petals off the flowers and feast on the seeds.

As I pass the window throughout the day I'll look outside some more.  Is that a rabbit or a clump of brown leaves under the forsythia bush on the hill?  Is it going to rain soon or can I sneak outside for a quick walk?  What is that squirrel up to, hunkered down in the hollow of the maple tree?

Before I rearranged my work space, the small table cum desk that barely held my lap top was in front of a big window that looks out into my side yard and my neighbor's back yard.  I used to find myself endlessly sitting and staring out the window when I "should" have been working.  I used to think of this wool gathering as a manifestation of one or more of my character flaws . . . procrastination, laziness, acedia . . . I could go on but I won't.  

Then I read the Billy Collins poem above and realized that looking out of the window is not an avoidance of work, rather it is part of my work as a writer. The practice of seeing, noticing, observing comes before the work of sharpening the pencils or turning on the computer.  Just as a chef has to chop the vegetables for the mis en place, I have to gather the elements I need to create.  The images, colors, sounds, textures that I see out my window may go into what I cook up on the page on any given day, but most importantly the task of looking out the window provides me with the most  important ingredient I feel I can include in my writing:  gratitude.


BTW - How great is that line, "in every section of the tangerine earth"-- perfection!

David Whyte Wednesday - Everything is Waiting for You

EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
by David Whyte from Everything is Waiting for You (Many Rivers Press)

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.


"Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity."  I love that line.  The invitation to pay attention to the ordinary things of our lives, and see in them invitation, wisdom, joy, the extraordinary. . . all those things that exist in each of us as well.

How will you ease into the conversation today?  Be alert to the familiar?

Mary Oliver Monday - Morning Poem

MORNING POEM
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One  (Beacon Press)

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


I'm usually one of those people who, as Mary Oliver describes in this poem, happily swims through the day.  Lately, however, I feel like I've been trudging, stumbling, lumbering along the path.  My imagination isn't flitting around from idea to idea like a sprightly sparrow or curious magpie; it's either pulling apart the past or looming over the future like a bird of prey. 

I try to remind myself to listen for what the beast inside me is shouting it wants and needs, to look for the prayers heard and answered.  The world isn't just created every morning, it's created every minute. 


How are you daring to be happy?  Daring to pray? 

Billy Collins Sunday - This Little Piggy Went to Market

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET      
by Billy Collins from Ballistics (Random House)

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe -- this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here --
I am even wondering why it's called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one to ruin the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

When I woke up this morning and realized that April Fool's Day coincided with Billy Collins Sunday, I decided it was the perfect day for  a poem that contains the phrase "beautiful nonsense."
Although some nursery rhymes are thinly veiled political jibes or lessons in history, This Little Piggy is purely a nonsense rhyme written to delight children. 

Allowing ourselves to be delighted, to revel in beauty and nonsense, to put aside our critical thinking caps that  make us wonder why a pig would eat roast beef (and the one who didn't have any?  was it by choice?  was she a vegetarian sow?,  to be in the moment so we can be present and grateful for the things that make us go, "wee!"-- good aspirations for this April Fool's Sunday.

Billy Collins Sunday - Nostalgia

NOSTALGIA
by Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House)

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Nostalgia seems to be a trending theme in popular culture lately.  Mad Men and Great Gatsby inspired dresses strolled down the runways in New York and Paris at last month's Fashion Weeks.  Little House on the Prairie era skills such as canning, carpentry, and spinning are all the rage among hipsters.  And the film the"The Artist" and and the transatlantic Downton Abbey craze, had viewers riveted to big and small screens alike. 

One of my friends wrote about her yearning for "drawing room evenings" on her lovely blog.   The idea of retiring to the drawing room after dinner for cards and conversation seems so much more edifying than my routine of late-- an episode of Midsomer Murders via Netflix on demand and a game of Monopoly on my Android tablet.

But even without the distractions of television and the internet, I wonder if I'd be any more present to the present?  Would a Gaskell novel and a game of Whist in the evenings somehow make me more mindful?  Is nostalgia truly a yearning for a simpler, more attentive life?  Or would I just carry the same habit of inattention into the drawing room?  Although I must say, I do think dressing for dinner would make all the difference in the world. . .

When/how do you feel nostalgic?

The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves

THE STARS NOW REARRANGE THEMSELVES . . .

by Dana Gioia from Daily Horoscope (Graywolf Press)

The stars now rearrange themselves above you

but to no effect. Tonight,

only for tonight, their powers lapse,

and you must look toward earth. There will be

no comets now, no pointing star

to lead where you know you must go.

Look for smaller signs instead, the fine

disturbances of ordered things when suddenly

the rhythms of your expectation break

and in a moment's pause another world

reveals itself behind the ordinary.

And one small detail out of place will be

enough to let you know: a missing ring,

a breath, a footfall or a sudden breeze,

a crack of light beneath a darkened door.


It's been a bit hard to look to earth lately when the skies have been so full of wonder-- Venus shining brightly in a cloudless night sky, the succulent full moon of earlier this week, news of solar flares and the anticipation of what that phenomenon may bring. 

I appreciate big, bold, loud, clear signs-- guiding stars, parting clouds, light streaming from heaven, the neon advertisements of the universe that flash, "Pay attention."  But for every flashy sign, there are countless whispers, gentle nudges, cracks of light peeking through that I tend to over look. 

I love Dana Gioia's  line about the rhythm of our expectations breaking and another world being visible in that moment.  Loud signs may clamor for our attention, but the whispers that cause us to pause for a moment may also provide us a glimpse of the extraordinary.

What is whispering to you today? 

At Least

AT LEAST

by Raymond Carver from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (Vintage Books)

I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the Strait from every
seafaring country in the world—
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat that plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them take a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy—I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what's going to happen.


Chances are very slim that I'll ever be up and at my desk before sunrise.  As I wrote yesterday, I may wake up with the sun, but I like that time in bed in the morning before I start my day.  However, like Raymond Carver, I would like to be able to wake up one day, make my cup of tea, open the blinds to my bedroom windows, sit at my desk and just wait to see what happens. 

It's not that I can't or don't see what happens outside my window during the course of the day now--the machine gun chatter of squirrels waging territorial battle for squatting rights on the backyard fence, the burgundy buds that have started to stain the tips of tree branches, a parade of unknown neighbors marching to and from the bus stop.  I can see all these things, and more, if I really pay attention.  Too often, though, I just don't.  My focus is elsewhere.  The world around me is a blur-- broad strokes of color in an impressionist painting that give me a sense of my surroundings but not the details, the particularity. 

As I thought about this, the phrase, "The devil is in the details," came to mind so I looked it up.  It turns out that the original saying was "God is in the detail," or, if Gustave Flaubert is the author of the phrase as some suggest, "Le bon Dieu est dans le détail."  (The good God is in the detail.)   When I go through my day without really seeing the details, I miss a glimpse of the holy, the sacred that is manifest in the world around me.  Surely I don't have to get out of bed before sunrise to do this-- I simply have to open my eyes and see.

What have you seen today?

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention - Mary Oliver Monday

WHEN THE ROSES SPEAK, I PAY ATTENTION
by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)

"As long as we are able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagant.  Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground.  This
is our unalterable task, joyfully."

And they went on, "Listen,
the heart-shackles are not as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness."

Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.

Friday I came home from the grocery store with bags full of produce and an arm full of scarlet tinged yellow roses and fiery red ranunculus (or is that ranunulae?).  I put them in my favorite Roseville vase and placed them on my dresser.  Every time I passed by that afternoon, I'd pause to rearrange a stem or admire the way the flowers were slowly unfolding.  By bedtime however, the ranunculus were dark, droopy, and closing in on themselves.  I went to bed planning to get up Saturday morning and throw them away (after all, I had dropped them in the parking lot so maybe my klutziness contributed to their early demise) but as the sun rose, I discovered their red heads were wide awake, greeting the morning with their abundant layers of petals wide open once again.

In looking up how to correctly spell ranunculus this morning, I learned that buttercups are part of this family of flora.  When I was little, my friends and I used to pick buttercups, holding them under our chins to see if the color reflected on our skin, supposedly a sign you liked butter.  I always thought it was kind of a stupid test.  I didn't need a flower to confirm my love for butter as my mother often told the tale of me, as a toddler,  sucking the butter off a piece of toast and hand the soggy bit of bread back to her pleading, "More."  I didn't need to hear what the ranunculus were saying to me back then, but this weekend I paid attention as they spoke of when to be open, flourishing, flashy, and when to turn inward, rest, and retreat.  The roses in my bouquet, haven't had much to say to me yet but I'm listening. . .

What is speaking to you and what are you paying attention to today?

A New Look and Landscape

[I decided I wanted a new landscape for the blog so thus the changes to the design and color scheme.  Now on to your regularly scheduled poem . . .]

LANDSCAPE

by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems, Volume One (Beacon Press)

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that

they have no tongues, could lecture

all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience?  Isn’t it clear

the black oaks along the path are standing

as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around

the pond, thinking:  if the doors of my heart

ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now

the crows break off from the rest of the darkness

and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like

their lives to be, and imagined

their strong, thick wings.

Mary Oliver is another poet who notices things.  Her poems are practices in mindfulness-- lessons in how the landscape around her sheds light on the landscape of her soul.  Her starting point is a state of attentiveness. Billy Collins reminds us that one day we will die, so now is the time to pay attention, Mary Oliver reminds us that when we stop paying attention, we cease being alive.  Open eyes and open hearts are our natural state of being.  Like the crows, however, some nights I find myself thinking that I'd like to be more mindful, more attentive, more awake . . . and hopefully in the morning I am. 

What lessons are you learning from the landscape around you?

What is keeping the doors of your heart open in this moment?