Hilton Head, South Carolina, 2011
For Alexander there was no Far East,
because he thought the Asian continent
ended with India.
Free Cathay at least
did not contribute to his discontent.
But Newton, who had grasped all space, was more serene.
To him it seemed that he’d but played
With a few shells and pebbles on the shore
Of that profundity he had not made.
- Richard Wilbur
The painter Harlan Hubbard said
that he was painting Heaven when
the places he painted merely were
the Campbell or the Trimble County
banks of the Ohio, or farms
and hills where he had worked or roamed:
a house’s gable and roofline
rising from a fold in the hills,
trees bearing snow, two shanty boats
at dawn, immortal light upon
the flowing river in its bends.
And these were Heavenly because
he never saw them clear enough
to satisfy his love, his need
to see them all again, again.
Wendell Berry, Leavings
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Yesterday was Elizabeth’s birthday. In her honor, last night I reread some of Shel Silverstein’s poems, including a couple of Elly’s favorites. Here are a couple of ones we especially like. The first is “Whatif” from A Light in the Attic and the second is “Spaghetti” from Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Whatif
Last night while I lay thinking here,
Some whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old whatif song:
Whatif I’m dumb in school?
Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there’s poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don’t grow taller?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won’t bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems swell, and then
The nighttime whatifs strike again!
Spaghetti
Spaghetti, spaghetti, all over the place,
Up to my elbows—up to my face,
Over the carpet and under the chairs,
Into the hammock and wound round the stairs,
Filling the bathtub and covering the desk,
Making the sofa a mad mushy mess.
The party is ruined, I’m terribly worried,
The guests have all left (unless they’re all buried).
I told them, “Bring presents.” I said, “Throw confetti.”
I guess they heard wrong
‘Cause they all threw spaghetti!
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by Judyth Hill —
Wage Peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in 3 languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.
- Annie Farnsworth
I see you again and again
tumbling out of the sky,
in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt.
At first I thought you were debris
from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall
or fuselage but then I realized
that people were leaping.
I know who you are, I know
there’s more to you than just this image
on the news, this ragdoll plummeting—
I know you were someone’s lover, husband,
daddy. Last night you read stories
to your children, tucked them in, then curled into sleep
next to your wife. Perhaps there was small
sleepy talk of the future. Then,
before your morning coffee had cooled
you’d come to this; a choice between fire
or falling.
How feeble these words, billowing
in this aftermath, how ineffectual
this utterance of sorrow. We can see plainly
it’s hopeless, even as the words trail from our mouths
—but we can’t help ourselves—how I wish
we could trade them for something
that could really have caught you.
Saturday felt like summer and Sunday felt like fall. Contemplating the end of another summer, and the changing season upon us, here’s a phone picture from dinner on the lake, showing “the dimming of the day”. And here’s a poem from Mary Oliver that asks, “what is your plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
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?
– Thomas Lynch
It came to him that he could nearly count
How many Octobers he had left to him
In increments of ten or, say, eleven
Thus: sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five.
He couldn’t see himself at ninety-six –
Humanity’s advances notwithstanding
In health-care, self-help, or new-age regimens –
What with his habits and family history,
The end, he thought, is nearer than you think.
The future, thus confined to its contingencies,
The present moment opens like a gift:
The balding month, the grey week, the blue morning,
The hour’s routine, the minute’s passing glance –
All seem like godsends now. And what to make of this?
At the end the word that comes to him is Thanks.
A few months ago, I was given a book of poems written by Wistawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1996. Here is one I like, especially the concluding lines: “and whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done”. The poem, “Life-While-You-Wait”, recognizes the improvisational character of our lives.
Life While-You-Wait
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.
I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
Just what this play’s all about.
Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me even more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.
Words and impulses you can’t take back,
Stars you’ll never get counted,
Your character like a raincoat you button on the run -
The pitful results of all this unexpectedness.
If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
Or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
Since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).
You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
Taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
Will become forever what I’ve done.
The following is a beautiful poem from Mary Oliver. I especially like the recognition that the place wherever we stand is already a place of blessing.
——-
It was early,
which has always been my hour
to be looking
at the world
and of course,
even in the darkness,
to begin listening to it,
especially
under the pines
where the owl lives
and sometimes calls out
as I walk by,
as he did
on this morning.
So many gifts!
What do they mean?
In the marshes
where the pink light
was just arriving
the mink
with his bristle tail
was stalking
the soft-eared mice,
and in the pines
the cones were heavy
each one
ordained to open.
Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.
Little mink, let me watch you.
Little mice, run and run.
Dear pine cone, let me hold you
as you open.
Speaking of Dr. Janusz Korczak, this morning I came across a poem written as a tribute to his bravery. It comes from Wladyslaw Szlengel who is remembered as “the poet of the ghetto.” He died in the Warsaw Uprising in April 1943.
On this battlefield where death does not sanctify,
In this nightmare dance in the night,
There was one proud soldier,
Janusz Korczak, the guardian of the Orphans.
Do you hear, you neighbors behind the wall,
Who watch us die through the bars of our cage?
Janus Korzcak died
So that we, too, could have our honor.
A journal of reflections on things seen and unseen, wimsical and wise, ordinary and odd, magical and mundane
