Poem Sunday

This was shared with me on Facebook, of all places,  by my longtime friend Nicole.  It is haunting and it is beautiful. 


High Water Mark
by David Shumate

It's hard to believe, but at one point the water rose to this
level. No one had seen anything like it. People on rooftops.
Cows and coffins floating through the streets. Prisoners
carrying invalids from their rooms. The barkeeper consoling
the preacher. A coon hound who showed up a month later
forty miles downstream. And all that mud it left behind. You
never forget times like those. They become part of who you
are. You describe them to your grandchildren. But they think
it's just another tale in which animals talk and people live
forever. I know it's not the kind of thing you ought to say...
But I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die.
It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and
drift downstream and see where I end up.

Poem Sunday

I love poetry - how a lot can be said in a few words, how the perfect combination of words, often unexpected, can express complex situations simply or simple situations complexly.  I have lots of favorites.  I'd like to share some of them.  The following was discovered only this week:

won't you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me 
what i have shaped into 
a kind of life? i had no model. 
born in babylon 
both nonwhite and woman 
what did i see to be except myself? 
i made it up 
here on this bridge between 
starshine and clay, 
my one hand holding tight 
my other hand; come celebrate 
with me that everyday 
something has tried to kill me 
and has failed. 
—Lucille Clifton 

Never's

Never before had I noticed how tall he was,
standing next to my brother
at the deli counter
as he ordered his coffee
and my roast beef on white - hold the mustard.

In the profile of his jaw
was a cool confidence I never knew
he had
because I hadn't ever looked.

But as he slid the money across the counter
and I ate the first meal
he ever bought for me,
I savored my time
with this man I was just now discovering,
deciding then that a roast beef sandwich
had never before tasted
so good.

Little Fish

Steven had beautiful eyes.
Big black ones with long dark lashes
that matched the thick wisps on his head.
A perpetual river from his nose led to a mouth
full of shy grin.
The victim of teasing about
everything and nothing.

The four of us,
little girls on a big block,
spent hours on the swing set beneath
the branches of the chestnut tree
that shed its nuts with spiked husks,
and I only remember him
once or twice in all of those young summers,
standing along the dividing fence,
the rhubarb growing up and out of the garden
by his feet - was the radio's tune what lured him
out to us? sharks teasing him about
everything and nothing
because everyone did.

But I still remember those
beautiful eyes and that shy grin
and how awful I felt
but didn't know how to say sorry,
hoping he didn't believe me
whatever it was I said.

Champion

The ice hung in daggers

from the eave of the garage,

creating a gauntlet to those who walked below,

and despite reason

I inched treacherously close,

mesmerized by its sheen like clean glass

And finding one fallen, hidden in the bed of snow,

I brandished it like a crystal sword

as I controlled nature

until it escaped between my fingers,

soaking my gloves.

The Work of Women

I never liked cooking until I made my first soup.
This work of women to feed hungry mouths
was no desire of mine to claim,
but I resigned myself
with the leftovers of a celebration
not to be wasted.

Not until the onions stained my fingers with
pungence and the amber stock
became a means of sustenance to satisfy life
did I feel the power that this
potion of nutriment could have
in turning me into a woman.

The Painter's Audience

Mr. Ott down the street
painted statues in his garage.
Religious ones.
Gave face-lifts to faded colors.
And the Virgin shined mournfully beautiful,
her red lips haunting,
while beside her on both sides
was her son,
His arms frozen,
outstretched with pierced palms out.
Two effigies - of both the suffering and the salvation

Through the fumes of acrylic spray
I felt reverence,
close to the sacred somehow
in that paint splattered
garage down the alley
where the shirtless smoking man worked,
and I stood in awe at Their feet,
waiting, half hoping
They would speak to me.
But scared that they would,
I pedaled away
pondering what it meant
to truly believe.

Pockets Full

I collect stones.
Mostly flat and smoothed
on the beaches where they've
been tumbled from
who knows where.

I like to imagine them
drifting from a distant shore
where someone else
stood in a salty breeze
with a pocketful like me,
compelled to pick them up
to study the messages of
time and long-suffering
they carry

and that only we who reach for them
can read.

April is National Poetry Month

About a year ago, I eagerly anticipated hearing back if I won anything from the poetry contest I entered -I was really just hoping to make the top 50 and have the chance to be published.  I entered three poems and then waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Nothing happened.  I couldn't post what I had entered because the contest rules prohibit previously posted work, including what has been shown on a blog.  Alas, I did not stun the judges with my mad writing skills.  But I am grateful to my friend Tasha who pushed me to enter to begin with and then for reminding me through her blog that it is NPM.  I have started teaching my poetry unit to my 9th graders, and am looking around for some inspiration to start writing myself again.  Between Tasha adding poems and commentary to her blog every other day and the endearing - if not sometimes grumblingly labored - writing of my students, I am hopping that I can add to my own arsenal of poetic musings.  While I may not be up to par to be published in Writers Digest magazine, I started writing before I knew about them and I hope I will always take the risk of trying and failing at things I truly love to do.  Here is one of the poems that I submitted.

"Birth"

The nest clung to a rotting board
in a dark corner of the garage
among rusty tools and buckets and drop cloths.

It stuck there like a pimple on the wood,
an intricate orb.
Its density was breached by a tiny hole
out of which hundreds of spiderlings flowed,
like water from a burst dam, that began as a
trickle until the wall of darkness
could contain them no more and out they erupted
into the light -

diminutive in their size, frightening in their numbers
had I not seen them for those few moments
as infants
in the first breaths of life.

Reconnecting

I'm an insecure friend. This makes me appear to be an uncaring friend, when really I sometimes feel paralyzed with caring a lot but not knowing what to do to be a good one and even concern that what I've thought of isn't good enough. So often I do nothing instead. Distance - physical or emotional - leads me to fall out of touch with a lot of people, sometimes when they live in the same space as me, when that is the last thing I want. I remember even as a child being aware of my friendship faults and insecurities. The good news is that I have some friends who haven't given up on me. The good news is that I was able to reconnect with someone through the lost domain of emailing that I thought I had lost but maybe I haven't. Here is my ode (not the John Keats kind) to finding old and lost friends:

"Building Words"

They say writing letters is an art

rapidly being lost to time and movements of quickness.

And I believe the ambiguous ‘them’ when the telephone

imposes spaces of stressed urgency to fill, reminding us both

of absence and

distance

and of the loudness of silence when words can’t

satisfy the

passage

of

time –

the quiet ending in a lonely void.

But the lost art has led to

the science of a foundedness of you

and for now letter by letter suffices as we repave bridges

that had been weather worn from disuse, reconnecting

through words carefully chosen and common, with

no immediacy of tied tongues, building

one on top of the next to reconstruct

what could become something

that looks like

friendship.

Dabbling with ink

This weekend I attended for the fourth time the creative writing conference put on for teachers every year by SUU and had a ball. The conference centers on ways for teachers to incorporate creative writing into the classroom. I center on having an excuse to listen to professional writers who teach at major universities and getting to do my own writitng. Yesterday there were two writers that were particularly interesting to listen to: Simone Di Piero from Stanford Univ (poetry) and Alison Deming from the Univ of Az (creative nonfiction). Today we got to hear Nola Lodge from the U of U, an Oneida Indian from right outside of my hometown of Green Bay, WI, who discussed reacing American Indian students through creative writing.

I've been in a writing black-hole since December when I submitted some poems to a writing competition. I felt like they were the best poems I'd ever written, and not being picked (though I knew it would be a long shot anyway) as even a top 50 finalist was, I guess, more discouraging than I expected it would be. I didn't lose sleep or shed tears or anything, but I haven't written anything since. Until yesterday. And I only wrote what was asked from all 30 of us attending the conference. But it felt good. I'm not done with the creative nonfiction piece yet (which I will share), but here is the poem. Interestingly enough, Mr. Di Piero didn't seem to like it that much. But it didin't faze me like I thought it would. I told myself in the shaking moments before I volunteered myself that he was the published expert and it was an opportunity to find out what I could do better. But Danielle Dubrasky, who was my peotry teacher at SUU and who puts the conference together, and who was Di Piero's student at Stanford, did. Rejection from one, validation from another. I hate Emily Dickenson. Others say she is the best America has to offer. So what does it mean? I can't easily do tricks with words the way others, including the college students sitting behind me, can. But I have something to say. You may or may not like it, but saying it is the important part. What do you have to say? If you started a poem with the same first two lines as mine (the assignment all in attendance were given), how would your poem turn out?

Odysseus told his men

to plug their ears with wax,

keeping for himself

the song worth dying for.

I would have done it,

resented him for asking

because he would have known I

would be the one to concede,

my ears stuffed dumly,

sitting on the wooden deck waiting.

I would hate him right then

for my future later

without that song,

telling myself I could

remember better,

deserve more those notes

though my resolve to stand

tied alone

would have jumped before

we had lost sight of the shore.

I did it...

I entered three poems into a contest this morning.  The entry deadline isn't until the 17th (I know - I didn't wait until the last possible second!!!!!) so assuming I am in the top 50, I won't know anything for a while anyway.  Wish me luck!

Scratching the itch

Tasha, the other tall English teacher at Cedar High, and I are on a mission - we have the writing bug and want to (at least attempt) to get published someday. Tasha and I attended a creative writing conference at SUU about a month ago. The itch began. About two weeks after that, Tasha invited a high school friend who is now a published novelist (Allison Condie) to speak with her class. The itch got itchier. We've both enjoyed writing for a while now, but for some reason it has evolved into something serious and focused. While Tasha is a fiction writer and I am on the poetry end, we have agreed to share our stuff with each other and to submit it to contests. I have thought about doing this before but made all sorts of excuses why I shouldln't until last week when Tasha walked into my classroom and handed me submission guidelines to a contest and TOLD me she expected me to get ready because I only had two months left. That is the best thing she could have done because I am pretty darn good at self-doubt, if I do say so myself, and would have talked myself out of anything I would have found on my own. There is a goal now, and it is so much easier to do it when you do it with someone else! (Like working out, or so I hear...). I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the push, Tasha!!!

Oh, and there is a strange phenomena in the English department - we dress the same all the time!!! Kid you not, at least two times a week there are at least two of us with the same outfit on, as demonstrated by Tasha and I in this picture...great minds - and the English department has the greatest minds at the school - think alike!

Check out 'Carrier' on PBS

Starting this Sunday on PBS, a documentary mini-series will premier called Carrier. It will highlight the experiences, deployment, and lives of members of the Navy stationed on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. My brother, though no longer on the Nimitz, was stationed there for almost two years. At first when I (and I would assume others in my family) told Mark about it, he didn't seem that excited as he was not on the carrier at the time of major filming. But this week, after seeing the half hour preview of it on iTunes (where it can be downloaded for free) he called me excited, telling me to download it, and that he knew, had worked with, or had seen many of those people who were profiled in the episode. He began to tell me about how much he missed it, that it was a family, and even that he wishes he were back on it to be on another deployment seeing the world. I think he is now starting to see what a special opportunity it was to serve there, though initially his family seemed more impressed by it than he was. My sisters and I were fortunate enough to be present at my brother's deployment to the Persian Gulf in April of 2007. Not to be too dramatic, but it was one of the most profound experiences in my life. I have been thinking a lot about this in the days since my brother's phone call and just wanted to share some things I had written not long after his deployment in '07.

"Send Off"

From where I stand,
white lines salute
from the edge of a floating fortress
of black steel that is

taking you away
from port
and me.





"Consequences"

He tries to tell me
not to worry -
I'm being silly-
while bombs and anthrax shots
are mentioned in the next breath
that uses a foreign vocabulary
of acronyms and
job descriptions that
alienate outsiders from
understanding
and him from grasping
my distress,

Another consequence of war.


"Leaving Home"

Why is it that at some point
young men need to leave home?
They set out to work
their hands needing to be doing something,
their eyes needing to see,
their feet aching to take them to
where they are allowed to be.

And then duty calls.
And whether or not their hearts want
to continue,
their hands haven't done enough,
their eyes want to see more,
and their feet can't yet stop moving.

And at home we must be patient
for our men to return
and hope
that they know that until then
we will be here
waiting.