Month: August 2022

The cicada

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

Yesterday I tried to rescue a cicada that had fallen on the pavement in the bus loop at school.

I didn’t see it fall. I only saw it on its back, wildly fluttering its wings, unable to right itself.

As cicadas are huge insects, many of my colleagues preferred not to get near it.

But I have loved cicadas all my life. Their summer song, that choral buzzing swelling from the treetops, sends my spirit spiraling skyward. I find it among the most comforting of Earth’s songs.

And so I went and picked it up.

The cicada beat its wings in a frenzy, for a second clinging to my dress with its hook-legs.

I placed it, right side up, in the mulch at the roots of a crape myrtle.

It flipped over on its back again.

This is what cicadas do, what most insects do, when they are dying. Their legs can’t support them anymore.

I figured the creature would be gone by the time school dismissal was over. All I could do was provide a dignified passing for it in the mulch under the tree versus being flattened by the wheel of a bus.

But it was still alive, moving its legs a little, when time came for me to leave.

So I put it in a cup and brought it home.

It was still and silent for most of the ride, except for one episode of weak wing-beating against the cup.

I placed it, right side up, under some ivy in a planter on the back deck.

A couple of hours later, it was on its back again, still feebly moving a leg or two.

I don’t know how long it takes cicadas to die. I don’t know if they feel pain, anxiety, or fear. I know they live the greater part of their lives underground (up to 17 years, some of them) and their time above is short (a few weeks). I start listening for their song at the end of May, the month of my birth, and I hear the last strains sometime in September. Cyclical, symbolic creatures, cicadas. Across cultures and legends, they’re most often associated with immortality and resurrection.

Yet this one was dying. I couldn’t help it or save it. I couldn’t tell it how grateful I am for its kind, and it couldn’t care. I couldn’t give it peace.

In the end, it gave me peace to let it play out here at home with honor in the ivy-sheltered planter. As night drew near, dozens of other cicadas called from the trees…a fitting requiem for a fellow northern dusk-singing cicada.

Maybe it could hear. Maybe the song was a comfort, a blessing, a benediction.

It was for me.

My northern dusk-singing cicada

Ten months

/ Fran Haley / 4 Comments

My beautiful Micah, this is what you are like at ten months old:
noticing everything, babbling (na na na is, in fact, part of Franna)
mimicking, clapping, squealing, discovering your tongue
and crawling down the hall to see where I’ve gone
—I am right here, little beloved, rejoicing.

My beautiful Micah

Something sacred

/ Fran Haley / 3 Comments

Summer evening
after dinner
the three of us
are riding home
through the countryside

late-day sun
is amber-bright
when giant raindrops
begin to slap
against the windshield

Raining while the sun shines,
says my husband
from the passenger seat
(I’m in the back;
the boy is driving)
—there’s got to be a rainbow
around here somewhere

The boy makes the left turn
—There it is, he says

wide shimmering bands
hanging in the air
like a gossamer curtain
touching the road
right before us

breathless, we ride
right through it
to find another
and another
just ahead

so many rainbows
gleaming down through
the trees
over the fields

heaven’s glory bending
to caress the earth
a prismatic promise
poured out

all along
our way home

At the end of the rainbow. Mara ~earth light~. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

I didn’t get photos, alas, but the rainbows touching the road before us yesterday evening happened to be near the spot where my husband and I saw an eagle sitting majestically by the roadside back in early 2019. In this picture the background is dark whereas our scenery was vivid green in the amber-gold light of late day… but there’s an eagle, and the sojourning child carrying solace and security in the form of a teddy bear in a backpack speaks to me.

Something sacred is in this place.

The way of it

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

On the first required workday
before school begins
I drive the familiar backroads
once again

dew-drenched pastures
and old weatherboard barns
defy time
they are
their own world

then to my delight
a patch of tangled sunflowers
on the right
must have been growing here
all summer
I didn’t know
I think of Van Gogh
walking the rustic village
of Arles

up ahead, the pond
I scan it quickly
for the great blue heron
and there it is
at water’s edge
nearest the road
big and gray-blue
like a watercolor rendition
so perfect a pose

I feel light
like these are signs
that all will go well
with the work
lying before me

peace becomes strength
in my spirit
in my bones

on the second workday
I see it all again
even the heron

I can always face
the day ahead
whenever I see
the heron

I am so light
I could soar

then on the third day
without warning
orange signs on white gates
say the road is closed

I must detour

no passing the pond
no seeing heron
standing with elegiac grace
in the still water

although I know
it’s there

so on I fly
day after day
going out of my way
to get to where
I need to be

for now at least
I have the sunflowers

Vincent would say
it’s enough

keep painting the day
and the required work
beautiful
around the barriers
until they are gone

that is
the way of it

Coming home; the pond is just ahead but I can’t see it

Today years old poem

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

On the final day of the August Open Write at Ethical ELA, Scott McCloskey extends this intriguing invitation:

“Have you heard of the saying, ‘I was today years old when I found out about…’?  It’s what we say when we find out something surprising, something new that we’ve just learned…Think of the most recent (most interesting /startling) thing that you’ve learned…You could examine the fact.  Interrogate it.  Expand on it.  Or simply just share it with the rest of us.”

I return to the hummingbird.

Inside the Skull

When I was
ten or eleven years old
supermarket tabloids
ran story after story
of UFOs
and alien abductions.
I half-believed 
these ridiculously weird
narratives…
at today years old
I sit at my kitchen table
looking through the window
at a hummingbird
hovering in midair
like an otherworldly thing
looking right back at me.
I wonder what it’s thinking
this tiny iridescent creature
that mesmerizes me
takes over my brain
controls me for hours
compelling me to read
everything I can
about its kind
which is how I learn
a hummingbird’s tongue
is so long
that it coils
around and around
its tiny skull
and rests behind
its ever-bright
and curious eyes
-ridiculously
unbelievably
weird
I say to myself
as I lose all track
of time…

Resharing my photo of my hummingbird with her tongue extruded

Poem of perspective

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

On the the fourth day of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, Ann Burg invites poets to “Think of a moment in time— an historical moment or a personal one. Place yourself outside yourself — as a favorite tree, a flower, even an inanimate object who has witnessed this moment…”

The Upright Mahogany Howard
(c. 1920s)

I grow old
I sigh
I know you hear
my bones creaking
as you walk by
I have no mirror
but your eyes
and there I see
my beauty
is not faded
although
I’m scarred
and snaggle-toothed…
you may not realize
my proclivity
for touch-memory
but I tell you
that baby on your lap
presently pounding
my ivories 
has the feel of her
—one day,
she will play
and I will respond
living on and on
in the song
for the chords
never broken
vibrate once more
stirring the dust
of five generations
in my bones…
I am
your reliquary.

The piano was my grandmother’s most-prized possession. My grandfather bought it secondhand sometime during WWII. My grandmother intended to bequeath it to my aunt, who also played; my aunt contracted MS in her 50s and died before my grandmother. Grandma then offered it to me. I do not play, but my youngest son is an extraordinary pianist with a degree in worship music. His brother’s baby, my granddaughter Micah, ten months old, is already showing an affinity for music. She sat on my lap ‘playing’ Grandma’s piano last week, thoroughly enchanted.

Art into words poem

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

On Day Three of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, Margaret Simon invited participants to “transform art into words” by “choosing a work of art or creative practice and explore phrasing, spaces, and repetition.”

My mind immediately went to Van Gogh and the Immersive Experience I recently attended. The last two lines of my poem are Van Gogh’s own words, written in a letter to his brother, Theo, referencing other artists who were known for painting specific flowers: “You know that Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way.” My poem’s title comes from Van Gogh’s artist friend Gauguin, who loved Vincent’s sunflower paintings in a time when many artists thought they were too rustic a subject. Van Gogh, however, was fond of the flowers. Newly-invented pigments of yellow oil paint enabled him to experiment and innovate, creating the two series of seven paintings collectively known as Sunflowers. At his funeral, the flowers graced his casket; a friend later planted sunflowers on his grave. 

“Completely Vincent”
Van Gogh, painting sunflowers for Gauguin

Yellow
and yellow
thirty shades 
of yellow
new
alive
wilting
dying
returning
with faces
forever turning
toward the sun
light shining
in darkness
returning
returning thanks
for my friend
for the beauty
of these flowers
growing in
wild array 
by the paths
I walk 
day by day
I offer them
to you, 
my friend
can you see
in my oil-bouquet
all the shades
of gratitude
so much
I cannot even say
whether it’s still 
in me to pray
be that as it may
today
today
I have the sunflower
in a way

Grass poem

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

On the second day of the August Open Write at Ethical ELA, Margaret Simon shared “a photo that wants to be a poem.”

Here’s mine.

Release

I savor 
the secrets
of grass
in its returning
again and again
to a scarred surface.
I savor its growing
here in tangled profusion
with yellow foxtails
beckoning in the breeze
in the knowing
that when there comes
a mowing
the inner balm
ever-flowing
secretes itself
across the brokenness
releasing its sweetness
in the air.
What I savor
most of all
is breathing
the fragrance of grass 
healing itself.

Photo: Margaret Simon