For today’s Open Write on Ethical ELA, participants are invited to write poems about “places we call home”.
Nothing pulls on the heart like home… I can almost hear the Beatles’ song “In My Life” playing in the background: “There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed…” The memory of these places, and the spirit of them, really are the theme song of our lives.
Of all the places I remember and could write about…have written about…I choose my home now. I have lived here the longest. I became a grandmother here. I have learned a lot more about savoring here. Usually I try to make my poem title do more work, but today, no other will do.
Home
In the first moments of pale-pink light the big brown rabbit comes from the woods to nibble away at the clover
in the ever-thickening branches of the crape myrtle my husband and planted years ago I can spot hummingbirds hiding among the leaves always alone never together
they dart, one by one to the kitchen-window feeder
silvery-green females perfect, pure ethereal as fairies
a male, ruby fire at his throat (brighter than the cardinal-flame landing over on the fence) impossible greens and turquoise shimmering on his back
unaware of his utter tininess he sometimes perches atop the feeder as if to say I am King of this Water-Mountain
a pair of doves feeds on the ground by the tree line then takes flight on pearly wings vanishing in the pines and sweetgums where their nest is secreted
robins, robins everywhere just last week a speckled fledgling on the back deck both parents in the grass chirping ground-control instructions
the mockingbird in the driveway strutting and stretching his banded wings as if he knows how legendary he is
a trill of finch-song from a nearby tree so plaintive I fear my heart may burst
and the bluebirds oh the bluebirds
if only I spoke green language I would explain that I removed their house from the back deck because it is about to be torn down
that I waited until their unexpected second brood flew out into the world
never imagining these parents would return to the empty rail corner a day or two later clearly so puzzled to find their house gone…
if I were the hermit wizard-woman of this semi-enchanted nook (as I sometimes pretend to be) I would have known what to do
but my unmagical self did my best: placing the birdhouse atop the old wooden arbor built by my oldest when he was a boy
well away from the impending deck destruction
and to my astonishment the bluebirds have followed their home
I do not yet know if more eggs have been laid in the house relocated to the arbor
but as evening draws and the pine-shadows fall across the arbor and the crape myrtle and the big brown rabbit back in the clover and the old dog’s grave and the old deck about to be made new
I ponder my length of time on this Earth and the continuous carving-out of home how it goes on and on
a path forever unfolding before me that I must follow
like the doe in the little clearing across the road pausing for one long moment with her two fawns before disappearing in the leafy green
One fawn has already been ushered across
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with thanks to Ethical ELA and Two Writing Teachers for the inviolable, invaluable writing spaces and the inspiration
On Day Two of July’s Open Write at Ethical ELA, host Mo Daly invites us to write a poem in Fibonacci sequence: six lines with syllables of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.
The Fibonacci sequence appears over and over in nature, from shells to flowers to trees to our own DNA.
Maybe that’s what led to thisdouble-reverse attempt…
Hey, Ancestors
composed after a trip to the home place
Come sit a spell on the porch. I want to know you. Tell me the stories of your life. I don’t mind your being a ghost. Just (if you please) try not to rock your chair too much.
And so it comes to pass, at long last, that I return to the site of my sun-kissed childhood summers.
My ancestral homeplace in eastern North Carolina. Literally the land of my fathers: My dad, my grandparents, my great-parents, my great-greats were all born within a small radius of a tiny town and crossroads that were old long before my appearance on this Earth.
Thus began my fascination with Time.
In the bend of a dirt road stood my grandparents’ home, where my father grew up. My youngest aunt was born here in the same room where her father, my Granddaddy, would die fifty-three years later at 92. He wanted to die at home. He did, peacefully and “full of days,” as the Scriptures say of Abraham, Isaac, and Job: After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days (Job 42:16-17).
Likewise, my grandparents saw four generations. They lived to see my children. Incidentally, Granddaddy had a brother named Job who died in the 1920s (he drowned, if I recall correctly; this is a coastal area).
So it was that I grew up on stories of the old days and ways, a little city girl mesmerized by my deep country roots. In my time the once-thriving community was already history; nature was reclaiming the unpainted houses, one by one. Some were still visible through the woods (an early memory: a cypress shingle roof in the treetops, if you looked just right) and others were in various stages of falling down with yards still mowed by descendants.
On this return journey a few weeks ago, I discovered that my grandmother’s homeplace from the early 1900s is being swallowed by the forest:
A terrible jolt, as I can remember it having a hedge, a lawn, a porch swing, a screen door. I remember the layout inside and my great-uncle living there, tending to a patch of sunflowers.
And I knew, prior to this journey, that my grandparents’ house, which stood on the corner a little farther on, is gone.
This story is a little different, however. Instead of the forest reaching its veiny green fingers to reclaim its own, a young couple has built a home right in the middle of what was once my grandfather’s garden. I can’t help thinking how Grandma would marvel at the beauty of this new house and its lovely landscaping.
All that remains here from the enchanted summers of my childhood half a century ago (and from time before me) is the pumphouse, one of Grandma’s crepe myrtles (now wistfully draped in Spanish moss, which never used to be in these parts), and the sidewalk that once led to the front porch of Granddaddy and Grandma’s home:
As a teenager I wrote a song about a sidewalk. Haven’t thought about it in ages:
Where does this lonely sidewalk lead? You think by now I’d know Footsteps into yesterday That’s where I want to go…
I had no idea, then, that only the sidewalk would remain in this place I loved so well, where I used to play outside in the sweltering bug-infested heat, where Grandma would sit at her piano in the evenings to have me sing old hymns with her as Granddaddy listened from his recliner, where I felt loved and wanted and sheltered and that I belonged…
The old dirt road remains, too, of course.
There was another dirt road branching off of it here in the shadows to the left; it once led, Grandma said, to a two-story antebellum house with a double balcony. I could hear admiration for that house in her voice. In my childhood the road was just two tracks through grass and thickets. The path faded more and more with every passing summer. Now you would never know it had ever been anything but woods.
From this vantage point, my grandparents’ yard is on the right, and to the immediate left is an old family cemetery. Not my family’s, although I walked it often with Grandma over the years. When I was a child, I was afraid ghosts would come out here at night. Grandma assured me they would not. She offered this dubious comfort: No need to fear the dead. Fear the living.
When I wondered at the graves of so many babies, she said people just didn’t know what to do for them when they were sick.
It’s clear how much the children were loved and mourned. This tiny cemetery remains painstakingly tended and strangely outside of time:
Hello again, baby Leafy Jean and big brother Leon Russell.
These siblings died a month apart in 1917. Grandma was born three months after Leon, almost a year to the day before Leafy, in the soon-to-be obscured homeplace just around the bend of the road.
Four-month-old twins Audrie and Aubrie died a week apart during that same summer.
The greater wonder, in its way, are the children who survived disease and mothers who died giving birth to them, which almost happened to Grandma: her mother delivered a stillborn baby three months before she was born. My grandmother was a twin. Grandma journaled this because I asked her to; in her writings, she says several women in the community who recently had babies helped nurse her while my great-grandmother was so ill that she “almost didn’t make it.”
—Why am I just now realizing that Grandma’s lost twin would have come around the same time as Leon Russell? Could his mother have been one of the women who preserved my newborn grandmother’s hungry life? if so …imagine saving someone else’s child and losing your own…
So many mysteries in this place. I’ve always felt the pull.
Over fifty years after I first walked this cemetery with my grandmother, I’m awed by the good condition of the headstones. I halfway expected them to be eroding into illegibility — after all, these people’s earthly homes have long since crumbled. No greater mystery than Time…
I cannot linger here, ruminating, for there’s another place to visit. Really just a good walk “around the horn” to the church, a journey I’ve made many times.
This was once the heart of the bustling farm community. The church was built on land given by my grandmother’s predecessors. Her father, mother, brothers, and other family are buried to the right of this crossroads.
Granddaddy and Grandma are buried in the churchyard, to the left.
Such a beautiful little resting place, presently bordered by a lush cornfield. An old live oak felled by a hurricane in recent years has been replaced by a new one nearby.
Grandma would be so pleased to see how well-tended everything is.
There’s even a new footbridge over the ditch at the churchyard, for easy access to the little community center across the road. This building stands where Grandma’s three-room grade school used to, she said in her journal.
Here’s where old and new converge most for me, where Time is most relevant and paradoxically elusive. The spirit of this place is old; my own memories are growing old.
My father as a teenager, in the churchyard
I am the keeper of memories older than mine.
But I came for the new.
I brought my granddaughter, you see.
All along the journey, I told her stories. Of the old days, the old ways.
I brought her to dig for fossils at the Museum in town (which is where the phosphate mining company sends its rejects now, instead of scattering treasures on the old dirt roads).
We found a bit of coral skeleton, shark’s teeth, and some bony things I’ve yet to identify:
Making new memories from the old… even from the ancient, from time before recorded time.
As we were leaving, I discovered that the old library in this old, old town looks the same as it did five decades ago when Grandma drove me to pick out books to read at her house in the summer. I halfway expected to see her coming out with the armful she had to help me carry…
And I think this is used to be, or is at least near, the butcher shop where Daddy worked as a teenager.
There’s so much more to be said about memory, legacy, endurance, overcoming, and family… about the whole spiritual journey of life. The greatest gift my grandparents gave me, beyond their unconditional love and their stories, is that of faith lived out. I learned long ago that eventually there comes a homecoming so bright, so glorious, that all the former shadows are forgotten.
I expect I’ll recognize my little corner of Heaven, having had such a foretaste here.
Until that time, I carry on in the footsteps before me, praying I walk even half as well.
My now, my tomorrows ❤
From Everlasting to Everlasting: A Prayer of Moses
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night…
Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! Psalm 90: 1-4;16-17
*******
with thanks to my Spiritual Journey friends who write on the first Thursday of each month and to host Carol Varsalona who posted this reflection and question for July:
Pause and praise God for His wondrous gifts! What are you rejoicing over this summer?
This spring, a pair of Eastern bluebirds raised a brood in a birdhouse on the back deck. From the windows I watched the whole process. I learned much from my avian teachers.
Bluebirds are curious; they want to know everything, including what humans are doing. When the finch nestlings died a couple months back, necessitating that I dispose of the nest, Mama and Papa Bluebird sat side-by-side on the fence, solemnly watching my every move. Bluebirds are all about family. Their fledglings stick around. When this first brood left the next, the parents became fiercely territorial. They attacked the kitchen bay window and cars in the driveway. No matter how far down the driveway my husband parks, they still take over his car; I even saw the father bluebird killing a worm on top of it one morning, like a mighty hunter on some holy mountain. I wondered if that worm was a meal for his children; the parents continue to feed them for a while after departing the nest.
Lesson One of Bluebirdology: protect your young at all costs.
Mama Bluebird takes over the hummingbird feeder, frequently looking in the kitchen window: What are those humans up to?
Papa Bluebird in all his blue glory, patrolling the fence.
The baby bluebirds are juveniles now, and over the last few weeks I’ve seen three or four them at any given time in the grass or lined up on the fence.
Lesson Two of Bluebirdology: Persevere.
One of the juveniles getting its own breakfast worm: Ta-daa!
What I find most remarkable is how the juveniles help to prepare for the next brood. I watched Papa Bluebird carry new nesting material into the birdhouse; in a moment, here came one of his children with a bit of straw.
Lesson Three of Bluebirdology: Teach your children well; survival is a community effort.
This weekend my seven-year-old granddaughter and I watched Mama Bird sitting on the fence watching us through the window, when out of the blue came Papa Bluebird. He landed beside his mate and fed her an insect in his beak. “They look like they’re kissing!” exclaimed my granddaughter.
They did. It was a sign, for sure…
I suspected, with the recent activity around the birdhouse, that new eggs were on the way. Here’s the thing: That birdhouse has only one little opening where the birds enter and exit. No way to peek in and verify anything or even to clean out a used nest.This is where the plot really thickens: My husband and I are about to embark on much-needed deck repairs. I needed to know: What’s in that birdhouse? If it is an active nest, by law we cannot disturb it. And if there are eggs… well, to me that makes it a sacred place. Not to be desecrated.
And so I bought a little endoscope and ran the wire camera into the birdhouse.
There are four bright blue eggs in a bed of pine straw.
I am not sure when they were laid. It could be a week or two from now before they hatch. Then it will be about three weeks before this next brood fledges and begins to fend for itself (I am imagining a whole army of bluebirds on the offense at that point, with Brood One still in the wings).
The deck repair will have to wait a bit, alas… not sure how I am going to explain this to my husband or our builder but I will take my chances with them over the bluebirds. In honor of life.
Heeding Lesson Four of Bluebirdology: There’s no place like home.
One of the juveniles still hanging around its natal home.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
Was there a childhood birthday when you woke up excited beyond description for what you hoped that day would bring? It was like that when I turned six. I couldn’t wait for my father to take me to the store where I’d pick out my first pet: a parakeet. I’d begged and begged for one. I was enchanted by birds then, and I am exponentially enchanted now, which is why I woke up so excited last Saturday.
It was to be a day filled with birds…more than I could even count, although I had to try.
World Migratory Bird Day, to be more precise, a global celebration occurring on the second Saturdays of May and October. As defined on the WMBD website: World Migratory Bird Day is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. It has a global outreach and is an effective tool to help raise global awareness of the threats faced by migratory birds, their ecological importance, and the need for international cooperation to conserve them.
In the common interest of science, conservation, and celebration, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology invites bird lovers around the world to count all birds seen or heard on Global Big Day and to enter this data in official checklists.
And so I joined Team eBird with my friend and fellow blogger-poet, Kim Johnson. She’s in Georgia, I’m in North Carolina, but we are birds of the same feather in countless ways, equally excited for this bird-counting day.
It began when I woke up to birdsong early Saturday morning. Lately it’s been a mockingbird, which, I’ve learned, is usually a male singing while the female incubates eggs.
This day, however, the dawn singer was a robin.
I threw on my robe and went outside to start my count as the earth swelled with bird chorus.
Here’s what Merlin Sound ID (a Cornell Lab app on my phone) told me I was hearing out front and on my back deck:
There are also some regular bird friends whose voices aren’t in this mix. Back in the house, a fluttering at the window…
My male ruby-throated hummingbird visits periodically throughout the day, and this day was no different; he arrived early and was off in a flash. I added him to my list.
Then there are my eastern bluebirds.
They’re a mated pair which nested in a birdhouse on the deck before Easter, attempting to be as furtive as possible, until the first week of May when they went stark raving territorial. The female flew and flew at the kitchen bay window. Both of them became obsessed with cars in the driveway; one morning I watched the male killing a worm on top of my son’s car. I am still not sure what prompted the sudden change in behavior, but I suspect their babies fledged and flew, resulting in fierce protectiveness of the habitat. All I can say with certainty is that these two birds believe they reign over the kingdom of my yard.
Because they do.
His Majesty
Her Royal Highness, taking over the hummingbird feeder
Never fear, Bluebirds Dear; I added you both to the list. And you don’t know it yet but I bought a “snake” camera to check your nest in the birdhouse, to see what exactly is in there. More on that later…
Other birds awaited on this Global Big Day. Off to the lake I went, in hopes of seeing eagles.
I didn’t see any. But I did see two great blue herons, separately, standing still as statues, as elegiac as poetry, in all their strange and ancient beauty.
They remind me that birds are the last living dinosaurs.
One of the two great blue herons
Over at the dam, a giant nest is protected by government fencing and two fake owls, which don’t seem to bother the two nesting ospreys at all.
One of the two ospreys
After duly noting the ospreys, I made a note to self: Get a good digital camera ASAP. The zoom on the phone can only do so much.
The trip to the lake yielded over thirty species of birds. In addition to those I noted at home, Merlin Sound ID picked up scarlet and summer tanagers, pine warblers, a Swainson’s thrush, Eastern phoebes, brown-headed cowbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, Eastern wood pee-wees, red-bellied woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers, Eastern towhees, chimney swifts, ovenbirds, and the American goldfinch.
Then a huge bird fell straight down from the sky and landed in the brush few feet in front of me.
A red-shouldered hawk. With its beak it grabbed a little snake I’d have never seen otherwise. And then the hawk ran—yes, ran!—into the woods.
I added the hawk to my list as I headed back to the car, exhausted but elated with my bird inventory. I was pretty much done.
But the hawk wasn’t done with me yet.
A little farther down the wooded path, a sudden loud “screaming” of birds— an unmistakable warning of danger, as the hawk sailed by to land on a low pine branch.
I stood as still as I could, videoing that bird for over two minutes while he cocked his head, observing me (does he have a checklist, too?). Smaller birds clamored all around the whole time; some were quite near the hawk, almost like groupies. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hawk long enough to see exactly what the other birds were; Merlin later told me “robins.” Really? I have read that robins are the birds whose warnings make all others take cover but I have never heard them so loud, in such stereo sound. I’d already counted robins, fortunately…then just like that, the hawk took off and the wild screams followed right after him…Elvis has left the building.
Wild.
The red-shouldered hawk, celebrity of the day
Back at home in the evening my family gathered ’round to celebrate my birthday… even more bird-wonder in this day!
Books on birds and birding
Books to share with my granddaughters, ages seven and eighteen months
Finch earrings from my son
I settled down to bed that evening, counting my years, counting my birds, counting the many blessings and love in my life….all in all, the happiest of birddays.
I opened one of the new books, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human, to read the opening sentence:
Imagine what might happen if birds studied us.
Imagine? There’s no need to imagine...
I know without question that they do.
His Majesty, looking in the window
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life story writing challenge to Kim Johnson, for always inspiring me to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for its amazing mission to all who help protect birds
and to birds, for all the awe and the lessons we need to learn about tending our Earth
with thanks to my Spiritual Journey writer-friends who gather on the first Thursday of each month, and to Chris Margocs for leading today with the theme of “Shall we dance?”
Today my heart dances. Even as I write these words, I am preparing to attend a chapel service in which my firstborn will be honored. He completed a Master of Divinity degree last December and the seminary faculty selects one graduate for the Pastoral Leadership award. My son was chosen.
Today, with the Spiritual Journey theme of Shall we dance, I recall Miriam, the sister of Moses. In Exodus 15:20-21 she led the women in a victory dance, echoing her brother’s song of praise to God for salvation from Pharaoh’s army in the miraculous parting of the Red Sea:
I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. (Exodus 15:1-2)
Today I think about the journey my husband and I have made. We’d been married less than two years when we rededicated our lives to God and my husband became a pastor. I was twenty-two; he was twenty-five. So much story to tell…all these years later, I stand in awe of the sustaining hand of God and His wondrous provision, grace, and mercy.
Our son named his firstborn daughter Micah, which means Who is like God? Answer: No one. And our little Micah, age eighteen months, loves nothing better than music and dancing. Except maybe food…
Today is a day of victory and praise for all that God has done, and continues to do, in the life of my family.
Today I dance…
I offer it in the form of a pantoum.
Dance, dance, dance! Who is like God? No one. No one. He is beside you, behind you, before you.
Who is like God? In the giving and forgiving He is beside you, behind you, before you. None of the sacrifices
in the giving and forgiving of all your beloveds —none of the sacrifices can do for you what God has done.
Of all your beloveds no one, no one can do for you what God has done— dance, dance, dance!
Last Friday I arrived at a hotel ballroom for a breakfast buffet in honor of educators and volunteers who had read aloud to children throughout the year. We had concluded a program built on developing positive relationships and instilling a love for reading in the kids.
There at a table, greeting folks upon arrival, sat the fox.
The Poetry Fox, to be precise.
A guy in a furry fox suit, typing away on an old-timey typewriter.
Turns out that if you gave the Poetry Fox a word, he would type a poem for you on the spot.
I nearly forgot the breakfast altogether; I had to stand in line for a poem.
Two women in front of me gave him the words daughter and twins (who are leaving the nest to go to college). Within two or three minutes, Poetry Fox tapped out each poem, stamped his “official” seal on the pages, and read them their poems.
I can hardly describe the looks on these women’s faces. Radiant. Smiling, slightly open-mouthed. Eyes wide, misting. The air about them even seemed to glow…
My turn.
“It’s National Poetry Month,” I said to the Fox.
“Indeed!” he replied with glee.
“As I love reading and writing poetry… that is the word I give you. Poetry.”
“Wow, no one’s ever asked me to write about the word poetry before,” said Poetry Fox. “I get creativity and inspiration but not poetry…okay, let’s go!”
He rolled a sheet of paper in the old typewriter and pecked away.
Here’s the poem:
In a word: awe. It’s my life-word anyway… those last lines, especially.
all language reveals itself as poetry the only language that ever means anything
The glow of this poem, and the wonder of the Poetry Fox whipping it out on the spot, stayed with me for the remainder of the day…to be honest, it hasn’t left yet.
Early the next morning I was still thinking about poetry being the only language that ever means anything when the sound of loud, melodic chirping echoed through the house. The finches nesting in my door wreath, feeding the hungry babies. In the beginning, before their eyes are open, the babies sense a presence and open their mouths in silent cries for food. They do not yet have voices. They do now. They chorus like tiny Oliver Twists: Food, glorious food! We’re anxious to try it…three banquets a day, our favourite diet! Except that they consume more than three banquets a day; Mama and Papa work hard to keep the babies fed.
I decided to chance a photo when the parents were out fetching… when I neared, speaking quietly so they could hear me coming, the babies fell silent at once. They do not know what I am, but they know I am not Mama or Papa with food and instinct tells them don’t make a sound.
I am happy to report that all are presently doing well (you can see all five baby beaks here):
The baby finches deepen my awe of language and poetry. They are language and poetry to me, with their musical chatter and even in the cessation of it. So tiny and new, but so infinitely wise.
Which brings me to my granddaughter, age eighteen months.
She came that afternoon to stay with my husband and me. We marvel at the new words she’s acquiring every single day, how she studies our faces for responses, how she mimics actions. She now says Grampa quite clearly, to my husband’s utter delight. I’ve tried and tried to get her to say Franna, but she only grins; is she teasing?
But on this afternoon, she stopped playing with her favorite musical toy to walk over to him where he sat in the recliner. Looking up at him, she patted his hand with her tiny one.
Grampa, she said. Grampa.
It was a holy moment. I don’t know how else to say it. She was naming him, claiming him. A sacred act. My eyes welled.
And before I knew it, she was standing before me where I sat on the couch, looking at up me with gleaming brown eyes.
She patted my hand.
Franna, she said.
Pure poetry.
The only language that ever means anything.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life writing share and Lionel Bart for the song “Food, Glorious Food” in the Broadway musical Oliver! and Poetry Fox and the finches and my beautiful Micah
National Poetry Month is winding down, and while I haven’t posted each day here on the blog, I’ve written a poem every day in April for VerseLove on Ethical ELA.
April 22nd was Earth Day. Host Emily Cohn invited poets to “remember an island: real, fictional, ancestral, or otherwise… Imagine or describe a world there.”
I have a favorite childhood memory about an island. I wrote a post about it seven years ago (Breakfast Island); this week I returned to it and condensed it into a poem.
Two takeaways: 1) Rewriting IS writing and 2) Less is more. I find the original post far too wordy now.
Here’s the revision.
*******
Island Gift
On a chilly gray dawn my family piles into my uncle’s motorboat
we are all together speeding over the Severn
the grown-ups have decided it would be fun to have breakfast on the beach
my uncle knows just the place a little island where people sometimes stop off
I shiver in the lifejacket until my teeth chatter
I am starving how long is this going to take?
turns out the island is only a mound of sand with a bit of scraggly brush In the middle
I walk the entire edge of it while the grown-ups are building the fire
the sun is up, golden, warming my cold skin
the gray Severn is now sparking blue
What is this island’s name? I ask my uncle as sausage links begin sizzling in a pan
It doesn’t have one I have never heard of a place not having a name
Why don’t the owners name it? No one really owns this island… it’s just a small place, here in the river I don’t know why this makes me want to cry
my uncle, turning the sausages, squints up at me: what is the matter? It should belong to somebody You’re right. I think it should be you. Congratulations! You now own an island my heart beats fast because I know, right now, that I want this island to be mine forever but
Do I have to pay for it? my uncle laughs loud and long
(I will remember this when the family isn’t a family anymore)
Since there’s no other owner it’s free
someone is frying apples the aroma rises like incense from an altar in thin blue smoke vanishing in the breeze
I tell the island I love it
it whispers that it loves me back
and I know for this one morning that I am the richest person on Earth
with thanks to fellow Slicer-poet Denise Krebs, who, upon realizing my Slice of Life Story Challenge posts have followed an abecedarian pattern, asked: “Will you do a post about the titles? Perhaps make an abecederian poem using the titles?”
I hadn’t thought of that. Is it possible? Would it even be worth reading?
As I have come to the end of the alphabet with five more posts to write and no plan… why not?
Here goes…
Auspices are favorable for my
barefoot baby ballerina on her toes, at present so like
crows, the absolute embodiment of Thought and Memory. It shows, in throes of
doggerel she tries to recite from her baby books, before she even knows words.
Eavesdropping at nap time, I hear her singing her own invented lullabies.
Focus on saving details of her story, I tell myself. Like the way she calls “Good boy” to the
graze academy of cows pastured behind the manse, and how proud she is of
herself in her little pink coat that shall NOT be removed, nay, all the livelong day.
I remember these from my own early story, memories flitting like tiny gray-cloaked
juncos in ancient winter grass:
koala life lessons from a book my grandmother read to me, in verse;
love notes in the cadence of her voice, ethereal rhythms falling on me like gentle
March snow. There was a book of birds tending their
nestlings as lovingly as Grandma tended me, slathering me in an
ode to menthol (Vick’s VapoRub) when I couldn’t breathe. I am well-wrapped in legacy.
Pursuing knowledge came early: Why is Granddaddy’s middle name St. Patrick?
Quotable Patrick, aka Granddaddy, with a sigh: I got no ideer. And he changed it—!
Remember these days, I say. Write now; who knows what the future holds? A long
sleep experiment poem unfolds. And so each day I am about
taking stock: my pile of good things grows to wealth untold. I play with words like
unfare while my mind time-travels to and fro, a
vagabond in search of a keeping-place, forever digging under the
wall on the writing. Oh, my baby ballerina and big sister nurture scientist/Jeopardy
X-ray expert/backseat prophet, someday you’ll each know how Franna prayed for
your one wild and precious life, filled to running over with awe and
zest—the whole A to Z gamut of my existence.
❤ My granddaughters ❤
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
and several fellow Slicers who made requests for particular postsalong the way
— now: What to write tomorrow?
Ah, but story is in the making every precious moment that we live.
an agreeable or piquant flavor imparted to something.
anything added to impart flavor, enhance one’s appreciation, etc.
piquancy; interest; charm.
liveliness or energy; animating spirit.
the peel, especially the thin outer peel, of a citrus fruit used for flavoring: lemon zest.
—Dictionary.com
I’ve been thinking about “zest” recently.
Truth be told: I needed a “z” word anyway for my post title today, as this is the 26th day of the March Slice of Life Story Challenge and I secretly decided to stick with the abecedarian approach that worked for me last year. “Ta-daaa,” as my sixteen-month-old granddaughter would say.
But there’s also the fact that I haven’t felt much zest for anything of late, having battled viral congestion for the last four weeks, in the midst of this already extremely challenge-riddled school year. One really cannot have zest for sleep, right? It’s an oxymoron. I did crave citrus, however, for one zest-ish connection. Last week I stocked up on clementines and three kinds of juice; nothing has been more restorative than drinking giant glasses of pure o.j. on ice throughout the day. Clearly I needed the vitamin C, for I am almost well now. That plus time…
It just so happens that I’ve been reading about zest being part of necessary human strengths as defined by positive psychology, which focuses on eudaimonia, Greek for “good spirit.” Turns out that zest, or enthusiasm, is linked to courage and other traits necessary for individual happiness, satisfaction, mental health, and living life well. It’s a relatively new and accordingly controversial domain of psychology… yet I hear a ring of truth in it.
Maybe I should say I can taste the truth in it.
Consider these phrases from the Dictionary.com definition of zest: keen relish, hearty enjoyment, gusto; anything added to enhance one’s appreciation; piquancy, interest, charm; liveliness or energy; animating spirit...
In short, a person must have positive experiences to look forward to (akin to hope) that bring true enjoyment. The very knowledge is energizing; so is the savoring of the experiences. In its own way, zest is the antidote to the inertia of despair. If we are zest-deficient, what can we do about it? It’s different for different folks…does it mean finding a new job or career, or being an agent of change where you are? Does it mean taking up skydiving, parasailing, horseback riding, or volunteering in a place where people are suffering? Is zest in itself an end goal, or does it forge a path to a different kind of fulfillment tied to purpose and value?
All food for thought. In the end, zest is a motivator for something intrinsically rewarding. There are people with a zest for cooking, gardening, sports, hiking, biking, singing, building, redecorating… the greatest connective tissue I see is energy. These are physical activities.
I think about writing. I love it. I work at it. I set a goal to write a meaningful post every day last year and I accomplished it. Yet I cannot say zest was often or even occasionally involved…which brings me to ask myself: Where is there zest in my life? Once upon a time, people might have jokingly mentioned the soap; remember the slogan “You’re not fully clean until you’re Zestfully clean”?
As soon as I ask, an image begins forming in my mind…
A birthday party a few years ago, with extended family. The guest of honor, turning sweet sixteen. Dark eyes sparkling, cheeks rosy from all the attention on this special day. She loves acting, her grandmother informed me. Wants to perform onstage.
She could have been me, years ago. I relished performing in plays at her age…I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. Zest!
It is not what happened for me, but as cake and ice cream was served, immense gratitude for the life and family I have flooded my soul.
Zest, by the way, is also linked to gratitude; a savoring, as I mentioned.
I took my plate of cake and ice cream, which I expected to be vanilla, but—oh!
“Is this lemon ice cream?” I asked. I knew it was. Unexpected and amazing. Not tart. Just sweet silken cream, with a breath of light lemon fragrance…
“Yes,” came the answer. “It’s homemade.”
I had to have the recipe. I thought immediately of two people for whom I wanted to make it: my daughter-in-law and my sister-in-law. They love lemon. I like it, say, in old-fashioned (real) lemonade, in my ice water, in pound cake…not so much in meringue pies. This ice cream, though, was divine.
And so I’ve made it several times since, usually as a topping for blueberry cobbler straight from the oven. Last time I made it was at the beach. My sister-in-law arranges for our families to vacation there each summer. She started doing this after her brother, my husband, had a massive heart attack and was almost taken from us. And so we celebrate togetherness and the good life (another translation of eudaimonia). I sat at the big wooden table in the upper room of the beach house while my nephew-in-law cooked dinner. Everyone was laughing and talking, we were hungry from having been in the sun all day, the ocean sparkled like diamonds beyond the windows, and there was a faint taste of salt on my lips as I grated the lemon rinds to make this ice cream.
Zest. For my family.
My sister-in-law took one spoonful and said, “That’s the best ice cream I’ve ever had in my life.”
It’s also the simplest…as the best things in life are.
No machines, needed, just a bit of work and a willing spirit, ready to share.
Of course this post would not be complete without the recipe…
A bit of zest for your day, friends, on the wings of wellness.
Lemon Ice Cream
1 pint whipping cream 1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons lemon zest 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
Combine whipping cream and sugar; stir until sugar dissolves
lit bits and pieces 