Se Hace Camino Al Andar

My mother reminded me that I have a blog… and indeed, I do. Hello! I’ve been a little preoccupied.

Stella Frances

Born in the wee hours of Sunday Morn

8 lbs, 7 oz

Birth story to come.

In case you were wondering, nope, no baby yet, so that doesn’t explain my lack of posting lately. But don’t worry, when it happens, you’ll be the first to know. Promise.

In the meantime, a poem from Margaret Atwood:

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

The Apple Trees at Olema
by Robert Hass
They are walking in the woods along the coast and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches. Blue-eyes, poppies, a scattering of lupine flecked the meadow, and an intricate, leopard-spotted leaf-green flower whose name they didn't know. Trout lily, he said; she said, adder's-tongue. She is shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring of the apple blossoms. He is exultant, as if some thing he felt were verified, and looks to her to mirror his response. If it is afternoon, a thing moon of my own dismay fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them. He could be knocking wildly at a closed door in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock. Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh of appetite in the cold white blossoms that had startled her. Now they seem tender and where she was repelled she takes the measure of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy as the tide, going out or coming in, at sunset. The light catching in the spray that spumes up on the reef is the color of the lesser finch they notice now flashing dull gold in the light above the field. They admire the bird together, it draws them closer, and they start to walk again. A small boy wanders corridors of a hotel that way. Behind one door, a maid. Behind another one, a man in striped pajamas shaving. He holds the number of his room close to the center of his mind gravely and delicately, as if it were the key, and then he wanders among strangers all he wants.

My thoughts went immediately to Adam and Eve but the last six lines threw me for a loop! And it’s that sort of thing that makes me read and re-read a poem. What is the connection between the last six lines and all the previous lines before it? The key lies in “that way.” What way? The same way the two lovers walk among the apple trees, so the boy does through the hotel. But what way is that? I’ll leave you with that thought, and if you feel so inclined, drop your brilliant two cents in the comments.

I wrote two poems today, thanks to two different prompts on  iAnthology, the National Writing Project ning.

Here’s poem number 1, in response to: “Write a poem, short or long, deep or shallow, smart or silly.  Just something with verses (or not) a chorus (or not).”

{observed}

a lonely fat lady walking across
the desolate parking lot of
a dunkin donuts on route 2A
under the glare of lamps
that illuminate the encroaching darkness
of a spring night.

And poem #2, a book binding poem, a form of found poetry.

The odyssey to
a Coney Island of the mind,
a kaddish for
a Paradise lost.
A house of light,
in leaves of grass,
writing down the bones.

A blogger I follow, whose due date was one week ahead of mine, had her baby yesterday. A friend of mine who is due two weeks AFTER me is showing signs of impending labor. Needless to say, it’s driving me a bit batshit insane.

When we moved, my nesting jones were satisfied by the unpacking and organizing of the new apartment, then there was a lull as we got settled into a routine. Now that we’re pushing ever closer to the due date, I’m anxious to take care of little things that will make our lives easier once the new babe arrives.

Today, Alice will go out with Daddy so I can start on the immediate things that are bugging me (cleaning the bathroom and pulling out the newborn clothes for laundering, sorting and putting away.)  The kitchen projects, I plan to spread out over this week, as I need to buy some jars and freezer storage containers.

{Some other things I’d like to do: check out my local salvation army for kids’ clothes and linens that can be upcycled, start a quilt, re-organize our mess of a utility closet so that it can hold our linens, and  turn one side of Alice’s playkitchen into a chalkboard or whiteboard. Come May, the farmer’s market will re-open and I’ll begin a canning/preserving project!}

Thanks to a late evening nap yesterday, I was up later than usual. I spent the midnight hour discovering (and re-discovering) blogs that I’ve absolutely fallen in love with.

Are So Happy

RummeyBears

Che and Fidel

Have a great Saturday!

Reading today’s poem from PoemFlow, I was overwhelmed by the sense of melancholy I used to feel sometimes, growing up in my small hometown and small city, especially on rainy days. I used to sit at my bedroom window and listen to Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey. Melodramatic, I know but fitting in the throes of adolescent angst.

Oh, my. Today’s poem from PoemFlow made my heart twinge. I don’t really miss my old neighborhood (except for the people!), per se, but I do find myself longing for the days I spent hanging out downtown, as a college student and as young, single professional. There was something magical about those days, something very NEW YORK, that indescribable essence that captures all your senses and haunts your daydreams.

(Rabi, at Wockerjabby, has shared a great poem today and with it, a lovely recollection of how the poem entered her conscious.  Go read.)

Happy National Poetry Month! April first is upon us, so let’s kick off the month with today’s offering from Poem Flow, The Burial of the Dead, from TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. (Click the More link to read the rest of the poem, and my tips for teaching a difficult text!)

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar kine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

(more…)