Inspired by an afternoon walk with my son. Weary of discussing the world and its problems, we lapsed into quiet commiseration… then, nearing end of the road, this sound, this airy, magical, musical quivering…
At the end of my road, over the street Where expanse of sky and fallow field meet I walk on in silence, until hearing The faintest vibration upon nearing
—a quickening
Made by a thousand—a million—small things Choir of minuscule cantors with wings Singing their song in darkness, unbidden Deep among long tangled grasses, hidden
—a quavering
Trilling celestial, ethereal sound Otherworldly pulse of the Earth, unbound Cadence of our own burgeoning story Life playing out in wild morning glory
—a quivering —a shivering
At the end of my road, over the street Where sky and field and infinity meet.
*******
–with gratitude for the poetic gathering on Poetry Fridays and to Bridget Magee for hosting today’s Roundup.
Someone I love just gave me this “Brew” cup and infuser ball along with loose black tea leaves mingled with cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, milk chocolate curls, and calendula petals… what’s not to love? I am sipping liquid Autumn.
In my online writing voyage, I’ve just come to a new port of call—Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog.
Those words, stories and magic, are all the passport I need to disembark and discover…
Today’s open invitation is writing about a favorite fall food, or one loved as a child.
My mind goes immediately to the breakfast cereal Count Chocula. I look for it at the beginning of every autumn now, but, if I recall correctly, it used to be available all year round when I was a child. I could be wrong. At any rate, I hadn’t seen it in decades when, maybe three years ago, it reappeared on grocery shelves as if by magic—poof! Voilà! —catapulting me, wide-eyed, open-jawed, straight back into childhood, to age 8? 9? 10?, hunkered over the cereal bowl, immersed in a book (for one cannot eat a bowl of cereal without a book, right? Isn’t it some unwritten law?). I wouldn’t stop at one bowl, see. Usually it was two. Maybe even three… suddenly my father is walking through the kitchen again, scowling: “First ketchup! You use way more than you should. Now this. Nobody needs to eat this much cereal…I’m buying three gallons of milk a week! For only two kids!”
What would he say if he could see how many boxes of Count Chocula I have, at this very moment, squirreled away my cabinet? Yikes!
Once this prompt got me walking around in Long Ago, savoring my Count Chocula, I began tasting other things… my mother’s peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses on top, slightly melted from the fresh-baked warmth. She made them when neighborhood kids gathered at our house to watch the annual airing of The Wizard of Oz on TV, in those pre-cable days. I think this was in fall… there was a chill outside. The grainy-crunch cookies with their soft-bottom chocolate caps, Dorothy, her comrades, her red ruby slippers (which I later went to see numerous times in the Smithsonian), dear Toto, Glinda in her iridescent bubble, the Emerald City, the music… all magic, all warmth… there’s no place like home in the living room with friends and family, taking a trip down the yellow brick road once a year.
I do not know why memory leads from that scene to school carnivals, the caramel apples and Crackerjacks that I did NOT like, the scent of hot buttery popcorn in the air, the delicious excitement of reaching my arm into a giant clown face with a cut-out mouth for a grab-bag full of little treasures…and onto Halloween, the shivery joy of putting on a costume and going out into the cold dark night with friends who looked funny, creepy, and spooky but never really scary, in a time and place where it was safe to go trick-or-treating from house to house to house…oh, and I never did like candy corn, although it’s pretty and fun to use as decorations, like for turkey beaks or tail feathers on tabletop arrangements at Thanksgiving.
—Thanksgiving.
My mother’s carrot cake.
Locally famous, the only carrot cake I’ve ever really liked. Everyone loved it. I have her recipe. I make it every Thanksgiving and again at Christmas. Her secret: carrots finely-grated to pulp and extra cinnamon.
—And there it is.
My favorite flavor of fall.
Cinnamon isn’t exactly a food in itself, but to me, it’s the essence of celebration in my mother’s cake, the aromatic allure of my new autumn spice latte tea, the crowning glory of hot apple cider, the thing behind my longing for pumpkin spice coffee at the first hint of coolness in the air, just as reds and golds begin tinging the leaves… interesting, isn’t it, this tree-connection. Cinnamon is, after all, bark. The dying of the leaves, the dying of the year, going out in a blaze of glory, cinnamon their royal embalming spice, rich, fragrant, preserving like memory, like immortality, like being a child at home, face pressed again the window soon to reflect candlelight, the holiness in holidays, flickering bright with hope and promise when the days grow short and dark…
My best-loved taste of fall.
Well, and Count Chocula.
—Yum.
*******
I’m joining an open community of writers over at Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog. If you write (or want to write) just for the magic of it, consider this your invitation to join us. #sosmagic
From the pen—um, keyboard, rather—of a favorite guest paw-thor who has his own category here on Lit Bits and Pieces…
Dear, Dear Readers,
It has been far too long since we last communed.
So much has changed.
Where to begin?
Nearly one year ago, my Him ushered Me to a new home with new—how shall I say it?— Beings. A new Her. And a little Her. And two dogs, imagine.
Well.
Predictions were made. It was said by Some that I wouldn’t be happy. That I wouldn’t adapt. That I might lash out, because, Some stated, it is the nature of My kind, for We cannot be trusted…
That is where Some make the fatal error, see.
They commit assumicide.
They do not walk in My paws. They do not see with My eyes, do not feel the rhythms of My heart.
Sure, I am—I confess—a bit of a worrier who needs a dab of reassurance here and there.
—Okay, okay, My Him says “constant” reassurance, but.
Nevertheless.
I have reached a place of peace. A higher state of being.
—Right? I know you’re asking how that’s even possible, with My obvious preexisting highness! But it is true.
This, Dear, Dear Readers, is My secret.
It isn’t found in chasing rabbits. Trust Me, there are too many to catch. More will come to taunt you tomorrow. Not worth it…
It isn’t in staying in the same comfortable place ad infinitum, but in trusting, even when it leads you to somewhere very different.
It is always, always in People, even a small One who moves quite erratically and unnervingly yet drapes Herself around Your neck whilst murmuring “I love you” (I think of Her as my living necklace. My medal of honor. I wear Her with pride. Even as I tolerate Her plunking on a ukulele in excruciating proximity. Whatever happened to lyres, I ask You—?).
It is in learning to tolerate—nay, make friends with!—creatures that breathe the same air and share the same space… it is easier than Some might think. In fact, when all the Two-Leggers are out, those dogs and I have free rein (I prefer ‘reign’) over the dwelling. My old crate, My old safe place, has been disassembled. I need it no more, for now I am never alone, and accordingly feel no need to be “destructive” (although I occasionally recall the flavor of a good book cover with much fondness. Alas.).
Above all, this higher state is achieved in spending every possible moment with The One You Love Best (in My case, Him) which I have done more than ever since last spring, these moments, these days, the joy of My existence.
I wish it to last forever and ever, Amen.
But for now I will simply bask in it for as long as I can, togetherness.
So, from My perch here on the new couch I’ve claimed as My own personal seat of dominion, right beside Him’s desk where He works, I leave you, Dear, Dear Readers, with My perfect picture of peace.
May such be upon you and yours as well.
Most Cordially,
HRH
(Henry Rollins Haley)
To sleep, perchance to dream… of more love to give on waking. Noble beast, Pit sublime, in his state of bliss.
Many thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge honoring writers, writing, perspective, and voice.
Old red barn testament to ingenuity the rust in your coat counterintuitively preserving against decay
Still standing today on your windswept plain amid long amber grasses continually bowing their homage
Like sun-cast gold at your feet despite encroaching shadows ever-shifting with clouds under the benevolent blue striated sky
A skeleton tree veils your face attempting to conceal the emptiness behind your window-eyes
You’ve no weathervane pointing heavenward with its rooster of betrayal —can you hear geese calling fly on fly on fly on
Old red barn vignette of yesterday rustic testimony never reduced —I will not think of you as desolate
*******
With special thanks to Margaret Simon for the prompt in “This Photo Wants to be a Poem,” her journalist friend Jan Risher for sharing the photo of the old barn, and to Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference for hosting today’s Poetry Friday Round-Up.
The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. – Matthew 19:14
For Spiritual Journey Thursday. A double etheree.
Now I wake, now I rise, wiping the sleep from my sleepy eyes. Time to eat, time to pray. Thank you, Lord, for this new day to live, to learn, to love, to play. In Your kingdom, where I have a place, remember Your little child saying grace.
Remember all Your children, needing grace when we’ve forgotten to seek Your face. Draw us back to that holy place in a child’s believing heart. O Lord, in the morning cast us not away— help us, we pray— You are great, You are good.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation… Psalm 51: 10-12
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation.Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray.My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. -Psalm 5:1-3
******* For more Spiritual Journey offerings, visit Reflections on the Teche – with gratitude to Margaret Simon for hosting.
In his poem “Tuesday, June 4th, 1991,” poet Billy Collins writes of an ordinary day that would be forgotten if not for sitting “empty-headed at the typewriter with a cup of coffee, light and sweet.”
He begins to record his feelings, his thoughts, his surroundings. His mind travels through history. He captures images, real and imagined, in his stanzas “as unalterably as they are seated in their chairs in the ontological rooms of the world.”
Ontology. The study of being. Certainly this is what writers, what poets, do. I’ve said I write to know that I have lived… recording people, places, images, emotions, ideas, pulling back layers of meaning, discovering connecting threads. Attempting to capture or recreate bits of my existence, whether it is or once was tangible, or just a fleeting, ethereal breath of a thing in the mind… yet still being.
Collins ends his poem with an image of the goddess Eos, or Aurora, slipping out of bed (as his own wife had, prior to his waking and sitting down to write this poem):
But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,
barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor. She will look in at me with her thin arms extended, offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.
As I sit here, now, at dawn, empty-headed at my laptop with a cup of coffee, feeling that I have nothing to offer today, Collins’ final lines whisper in my mind. They do not demand, or bang on the door, or tug. They do not pierce; they just stand, waiting, whispering. Aurora rises from the sound, from the mist, and I see her looking in at me, too. In the grayness there’s a flutter of her plain gown, of her long hair. I see those thin arms, one hand holding the birdsong and releasing it. I hear it, airy and new and alive again, as it is every morning.
And that small cup of light she’s offering.
I can almost see her earnest face, her pleading gray eyes: I brought it for you. It is yours. Please take it.
And I think, the day is new. What gifts will it bring? Unexpected little treasures that I don’t want to miss, just waiting… and what cup of light might I offer the day in return?
There’s only one thing to do. I know it as sure as I am sitting here.
I would write this as a letter but there is no point as you would not receive it, would not read it, would not respond, so I write it as verse instead because I want to talk to you and because poetry, like love, transcends.
It’s dark and gloomy today, steady rain tossing itself against the windows, not at all the crisp, bright day it was, that fall eighteen years ago.
The weather’s playing havoc with my Internet connection but then, so few things are connecting anymore as they should, in these dark and gloomy times —you can’t imagine, even though you lived your own.
One of my favorite stories about you: Little boy, running hard as you could down the old dirt road, bursting into the house, “Mother! Mother! I just heard on Grandma’s radio—President Roosevelt is dead!”
She couldn’t believe it, could she, but soon enough, everyone was wondering: What will happen to our country now? Who will lead us out of war? Is it ever going to end?Is there life beyond?
If you were here, would you recognize our country now? Eighteen years have come and gone (I think you’d love a GPS and texting, so much better than e-mail you’d just learned to use) in the interim of our lifetimes, this last one, an accordion of implosion.
Did I ever tell you I once had a dream that you and I were standing on a ridge looking out over a barren land, as if an apocalypse had occurred, leaving us as the only living things?
You tried to explain but I couldn’t make out the words, couldn’t understand, but I knew that you knew why and I wasn’t afraid, mostly just surprised and curious, looking over that desert wasteland —I ponder now: Is now what I was seeing then?
Although you aren’t here anymore to say, to lead by example of unfailing duty, to give insight and wisdom, and perhaps courage —I do wonder if you ever thought of yourself as courageous, despite your saying that a smart man would have gotten further in life.
No one is smart all the time and how I long to hear what you have to say, now more than ever, never mind that I am grown and my children are grown, for I find myself yearning, returning, to the arrow of the compass that you were.
If I could write the letter, I’d say I miss you, you’ve missed so much, the boys are well, you’d be so proud. I’d say I took a corner of your protective cloak and wrapped it over them for as long as I could, the way you did for me.
If I was granted a wish for changing one thing in the past, it would be for more carefree times like the day you raced me on the beach when I was little and I knew you let me win.
We only did it that once, you running between me and the tide, your shadow hopping over shells and disintegrating sand castles, dipping in small hollows, until you swept me up into your young arms, laughing there with blue eyes, blue sea, in the sunlight.
Yes, that’s what I’d wish, the freedom, the light, the salt, the joy, the time to play, for it was rare and I doubt if you’d even recall these momentsthat stay with me like an old photograph, fading, becoming fragile, curling up at the edges.
But I still hold on, gently, feeling the pulse of memory while seeking silences where I can sort the images and collate them in some semblance of order when I need it most, and when you seem most near.
These lines won’t bring you back and I don’t wish it, I just trust that my words, beating like memory, like the waves on the shore, will ripple on into infinity to the place where our circles coincide, where you still guide, running between me and the tide.
*******
Just a draft, on the anniversary of Daddy’s passing, September 25th. Shared for Poetry Friday with thanks to Jone Rush MacCulloch for the invitation to “bring poetry goodness to the world today.”
A friend sent me this photo after my recent pareidolia poem to a face in a cloud – pareidolia being the misperception of a stimulus as some familiar object, pattern, or meaning. It’s a normal phenomenon. The human brain’s visual system has a specialized mechanism for face recognition: the fusiform face area. We see, we interpret, we strive to make meaning, in more ways than we ever realize…
So: Do you see the wolf in this wood panel?
Imagine, then, seeing it in your house as a small child, every time you enter your bedroom…seems there could be a lesson here about our worst monsters existing only in our minds, but today the wolf has demanded a poem.
Far be it from me to argue…
Don’t really feel like playing Not sure I should be saying In case it hears me Because it skeers me That wolf beside my door. Don’t want to go to bed If a hundred times it’s said It’s waiting in the dark there To snarl and bite and bark there That wolf beside my door. What will it do as I go past? Even if I try it super fast? No one else knows why I sit in the floor and cry Except the wolf beside my door. Please, I want to say, Won’t you just go away? If you will let me rest I’ll do my very best Oh Wolf—give me my door! I hear his wild laughter Ringing ever after “Tell me, then, what for? You’re not a child any more,” Said the wolf who’s at my door.
With thanks to my friend for the photo and the idea, and to Two Writing Teachers for providing a word-playground for a Slice of Life to run and be free.
September in North Carolina means the return of the scuppernong grape.
It’s the state fruit. I first tasted scuppernongs as a child, standing with my grandfather under his arbor, thick leaves waving in the breeze, benevolent sun intermingling with cool shadow. The plain appearance of these grapes is misleading; the taste is divine. Richer than anything on Earth. Those thick, humble hulls contain ambrosia. And seeds; Granddaddy said just spit ’em out. It’s worth it.
Today’s his birthday. He’d be 114. As long as I live, he is, the scuppernong is, inextricable from September…
Every year, I await the return.
And savor it.
September, sovereign whose Crowning glory is not of gilt but of Unassuming mottled orbs, Pendulous bronze-green Pendants strung on knotted vine. Elysian fields, perhaps, this black earth where my Roots run deep, where my ancestors sleep. Noble edict, “Be fruitful and multiply,” Obeyed here to an extent only by divine design. North Carolina’s soil stirred, responded, produced— God alone infused the foretaste of heaven in its grapes.
With deepest thanks to the friends who know and bring me these offerings from their families’ old vines.
Thanks also to the inspirational Poetry Friday gathering at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme and to Matt for hosting.
I think about these words often, failure to thrive.
They’re an official cause of death. As on my mother-in-law’s certificate.
But I wonder: How can living to ninety-one be considered ‘failure to thrive’?
A coal-miner’s daughter who survived the Great Depression, widowed twice with young children each time, who maintained a beautiful home and a bountiful table frequently laden and ready for the arrival of her family. A voracious reader with a passion and ear for music, a grandmother generous with her love, time, and grace, a woman of great faith in God … her decline was slow and in the last days, she called out to deceased siblings and sang the hymns of her childhood.
—It doesn’t seem like failure to thrive to me. If anybody ever thrived, she did.
Oh, I understand it’s medical terminology for geriatric deterioration, encompassing decreased appetite leading to poor nutrition, muscle weakness, dementia; the human body can only take us so far.
But failure to thrive doesn’t happen only to the elderly. Most often it’s applied to babies who don’t gain weight, who don’t grow as they should, due to a host of contributing factors.
Both ends of the spectrum, then, isn’t it, failure to thrive. Its potential can frame the beginning of one’s life, and, even if that life should be long, the end.
Which for me begs the question of all that’s in between.
In how many ways do we fail to thrive? In the course of being alive, what are the “nutrients” each individual needs to live well? Thriving in this sense goes beyond the physical to the psychological, mental, emotional, spiritual… can there be holistic balance if one part is suffering, starving? Because I’m an educator, this line of thinking brings me to “the whole child”: What is impeding growth? What “learning diet” does this individual child need? In the academic realm, nourishment for flourishment can vary widely… but at the core of being human, one non-negotiable need is each other.
Relationships fail to thrive, do they not. Suffering ensues. A point of pain ripples outward, troubling the waters, sometimes over a great expanse… being alive, successfully, involves an array of coping mechanisms, the ability to adapt. The Venus flytrap comes to mind. Stuck in nutrient-poor soil, it compensates by eating meat, the unwary flies which land in its toothy leaf-blades. The businesslike science of staying alive. Gulp.
In terms of the human, the matter of thriving—growing, growing up, growing old—involves willing interdependence. Based on… love? Conscience? Overcoming fear? When my oldest son was in his early teens, he sighed: “I do not want to grow up.” (Of course he did; he’s now a husband, a father, and his daughter is the joy of his days).
But I understood his words and shivered.
Point being that of the baby, the child, the adult, the aged and infirm, which stands most able to impact the thriving of the human ecosystem… for better, for worse… with the power to discern, decide, desire, and do for one and all?
Yeah.
That’s us.
I think about these words often, failure to thrive.
lit bits and pieces 