Today SOS-Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog invites us to write about a catchphrase…here’s one I use quite often…
When my colleagues have more questions than I have answers I say stay tuned
When my husband bemoans the day longing for simpler times I say stay tuned
When my children are anxious about their tomorrows I say stay tuned
When I sit staring, despairing, at an empty screen the Muse leans in close, whispering stay tuned
When sleep turns the knobs of my weary brain to receiving messages on a channel of dreams: stay tuned
When waking, I realize the story isn’t over. It’s a new beginning… stay tuned stay tuned
“Stay tuned” is an idiom meaning “keep listening” or “keep watching.” It originated in the days of dial-tuned radio receivers and eventually transitioned to television.
In my various morning readings I encountered plagues divine deliverance fulfilled prophecy epiphany and wounded trees weeping until their blood-sap crystallizes into fragrant resin ancient gift of kings
and in one passage, this line: It is almost too beautiful to believe
my mind is replaying all these things when I catch sight of you there perched on a wire against the eggshell sky —an owl! No, not in daylight —a hawk ancient bird of kings winter sun glinting on your snow-banded wings
Hawks have a number of symbolic meanings, such as associations with Egypt, pharaohs, divine power, and salvation from slavery…I’d just been reading about these in Exodus. I’d also been reading of the Magi.
Hawks, birds of keen vision, are also said to represent the ability to see meaning in ordinary experiences —if one is willing to become more observant.
where I can watch you hopping along, pulling worms these warm winter days
unseasonable but I’m glad on your behalf, keeping my distance
hoping predators do the same, until you’re healed and take to the skies
lucky bird, forgive my bad Shakespearean pun: you’re Robin the Plucked
for salvation comes in the most peculiar ways, begging the question
of mortality, the taking and the giving in daily living
these two days I’ve watched your grounded red breast gleaming by the old arbor
—today, no sighting, inexplicable sadness despite the wonder
of your survival and the part I got to play. Little Robin, plucked
to live life anew, here’s to taking flight on your wings and my prayers.
Robin the Plucked right after his rescue from the grille of my sister-in-law’s SUV. She’d driven down I-95 a few days after Christmas to visit us. Robin had some feathers askew from his ordeal but his wings weren’t dragging; my husband and I put him in our fenced backyard in hopes that nature would take its course, that he’d soon be fit enough to fly again (and that he’d want to). There are no words to adequately describe him enmeshed in that grille, very much alive and calling out, or for the sight of him immediately trying to run once we got him loose and laid him on the grass. I was amazed and elated to see him eating in the backyard with other birds that came and went the next day. I didn’t go near him again, as when I attempted it, he ran. I refused to distress him any more (heaven knows being trapped on the front of a car going 70 mph is enough for a lifetime). I joke that he’s my last good deed of 2021; I kept an eye on him all yesterday. On this first day of 2022, he is gone.
I keep watching, however.
One final observation, regarding the symbolism of robins: They’re tied to a number of legends and mostly positive connotations like spring and good luck (begging another question: Who’s the actually the bringer of luck here, Robin the Plucked or me?). But the perspective of Mother Teresa moves me most at present, as quoted in No Greater Love (Benenate & Durepos) on the legend of the robin and Christ’s crown of thorns: “Each of us should try and be that bird – the little robin. When we see someone in pain, we must ask ourselves: ‘What can I do to give them comfort?’”
Happy New Year and new life to you, Robin, wherever you are.
Every December I open the small cardboard box, remove the pin, and place it on my winter dress coat.
This is the fifteenth year.
The box is now timeworn but the little poinsettia still sparkles like it did the day I bought it. There it was, right by the checkout counter where I purchased black hose to wear to my grandmother’s funeral.
Not one poinsettia pin.
Three of them, just alike.
I bought them all.
I packed them for the journey to my grandparents’ hometown. The setting of so many idyllic childhood summers, so many holiday and birthday gatherings.
It happened to be her ninety-first birthday when the family gathered at the funeral home on that cold winter’s night.
She was born the day after Christmas. Used to chuckle about not having anything to look forward to the rest of the year, with her wedding anniversary, Christmas, and birthday all in December. But she loved the season more than anyone I’ve ever known. Sending and receiving cards. Baking. Cooking, cooking, cooking. Glass ornaments and colorful lights on the tree. Gifts in festive paper, old-fashioned hard candy in the candy dish. Collecting angel figurines and bells across the years. The aged, sepia-toned Nativity scene atop the piano. Going to church. Carols. Snowfall. Candles in the windowsills, shining in the night. Little children with wonderstruck expressions. She loved it all. She exuded holiday joy.
It was her season.
One of my favorite old photos was taken at Christmas when I was a baby: Granddaddy holds a new shotgun. Grandma holds a poinsettia. It’s their first Christmas as grandparents. Her face is radiant.
I would give her a poinsettia every Christmas in her later years. She would exclaim over each one: Oh, it’s just beautiful!
It had to be red, like her season. Like her name. Ruby. Deep red, precious. Bright as the cardinals that also enchanted her.
I knew she would leave at Christmastime. Seemed written in the stars.
And she did. The day before Christmas Eve.
The holiday was a blur. Arrangements were made. The visitation set for the twenty-sixth because there wasn’t time before Christmas Day.
I would speak at her service the following day. I would read Proverbs 31: Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies…
I would ask that her favorite Christmas song be played. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…the first song she taught me how to play on her chord organ, when I was around four or five. Her hands guided my fingers along the keys.
I would find the tiny old church of my happy childhood summers laden with red poinsettias. Christmas remnants. I would recall someone giving her a silk poinsettia after she went into the nursing home, and how she lovingly watered it…dementia erasing pieces of the mind, of memory, leaving fragments intact.
I arrived early for the visitation. There was something I needed to do.
Three poinsettia pins, just alike.
I wore one on my coat. I gave one to her last living child, my aunt, who met me at the casket. And I leaned in to pin the third one on the lapel of her suit.
She would be buried with her last poinsettia.
Merry Christmas and happy birthday, Grandma. Sleep in heavenly peace.
December comes again, and again I wear my pin. She is near. In the songs, in the lights, in the color, in the spirit, in the story. As undiminished as brilliant cardinals against the wintertime world.
Suppose you’re a special sort of Scarecrow with a Carved pumpkin head and a purple hat Adorned with pink roses, holding out your arms to Receive birds instead of repelling. Your reward for Embracing these winged messengers might be Canticles of cheer sung in your ear, Refrains of comfort and even celebration as October dies, again, reminding you, again, it’s only for a While.
The children’s eyes are windows to the skies sun-bright, moon and star-studded night, reflected wonderlight.
The children’s eyes are toy-wagon wheels absorbing, bearing, hauling so much more than playthings.
The children’s eyes are gates in a small walled garden which widen when they realize the stunning flora growing within —cultivate it, Children.
For in my own walled garden of memory lush greenery still grows not concealing but revealing what I now know to be healing.
All I’ve lived and seen eventually spills forth in story or verse above and through and over the old stone wall
for even in the moonless, star-obscured, darkest night, there is always a ribbon of light.
This, Children, is why I write.
Speaking of things I’ve seen…artwork on a concrete wall in Asheville, NC. The garden struck me as metaphor for writing, growing there in the brain.
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with thanks to Andy Schoenborn for the “eyes” and life experience poetry prompt on Ethical ELA this morning, to Two Writing Teachers for sustaining a community where teachers of writing flourish, and to the National Council of Teachers of English for designating October 20th as National Day on Writing.
and in honor of all the children who inspire me, every time I’ve come to your classrooms to teach writing.
Little seabird with only one foot Standing perfectly balanced at the shore You’re so calm, so still Despite wind-ruffled feathers
Standing perfectly balanced at the shore You’re a picture of grace Despite wind-ruffled feathers For you aren’t alone
You’re a picture of grace Safeguarded, transcending For you aren’t alone Flanked by faithful friends keeping watch
Safeguarded, transcending You’re so calm, so still Flanked by faithful friends keeping watch Little seabird, with only one foot.
As best I can determine, this is a laughing gull, already wearing winter plumage. I thought it was merely standing on one leg before realizing the other foot was gone. I have since learned that such sightings are common: many gulls lose feet and legs when they become entangled in fishing nets while hunting for food. What you cannot see in this close-up are two fellow gulls standing nearby, looking in different directions like bodyguards. I was struck by the poignant poise of this little shorebird and the proximity of the others. Gulls are symbols of adaptability, resourcefulness, community, survival, and strength. Maybe even uncommon grace.
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
a poem which began as I was driving to work through the darkness and fog that appeared on the first day of October…
October awakens in the night. She rises in silence, stirring white veils of fog within the world’s darkened bedchamber. She knows I am awake, too, watching, and that I am aware it was not as dark yesterday morning at this same time when September was still here. October gathers her black satin robes shimmering silver in the moonlight. She whispers of magic and I shiver just before the sun bursts forth like a famous artist with palette in tow- “There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in the blue, then you must put in the yellow and orange too, mustn’t you?” and suddenly everything is yellow and orange and blinding blue with flecks of scarlet and brown against the still-greencanvas. For all her dark mystery and the death-shroud she carries, October doesn’t speak of endings. She points instead -see that golden thread glittering there in her sleeve?- to celebrations just ahead. Ah, October. I see you disguising your smile as you creak open nature’s ancient alchemical doors, reverently usheringin the leaf-bejeweled holiness that I shall henceforth call the ‘fallidays’.
The quote, “There is no blue without yellow and without orange…” comes from Van Gogh, written in a letter to his brother. I have used it several times in poems. Seems especially fitting here for the colors of October, illuminated by the artist-sun.
across the street the first few spots of yellow dot the lush green abundance of trees despite the searing blueness of sky and bathwater-saturated Carolina air
lingering summer
yet in it I feel a tinge the tiniest tinge an almost imperceptible coolness
deep in the wooded shadows from a sun-patched limb, no doubt, a lone cicada takes up his rattle crescendo, decrescendo
they were late arriving this year but still here
driving to work along the winding backroads a darting from the left two gray squirrels, scampering in tandem right in front of me on the double yellow lines
I stop for them they stop for me
after a moment of squirrel contemplation one continues on across but the other, the other turns back with something in its mouth
not an acorn, something hanging pale-colored I’ve never seen the likes but instinctively know: that’s a baby squirrel
and on I drive, thinking of the old squirrel twins book my grandmother read to me so long ago
and of how I shall read it to my own granddaughter arriving in a few short weeks
the morning September sun shimmers rose-gold in my rearview mirror like promises steeped in time
I no longer dream of dying like I did when I was nine now, in my first tinge of autumn I dream of new babies born every night
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with thanks to Sarah Donovan at Ethical ELA for the inspiration to write poetry around moments of knowing “I am alive.”
Just outside my window an unexpected song so loud and full of joy I want to sing along
An unexpected song bright spirit, wild and free I want to sing along until you fly from me
Bright spirit, wild and free winging your doxology until you flyfrom me I’m clinging to your singing Winging your doxology so loud and full of joy I’m clinging to your singing just outside my window.
The Carolina wren is a little bird with a big voice. I’ve been trying for days to get a photo of this regular visitor perched on our birdhouse church. I finally managed it this morning. As wrens are a common symbol for artists, musicians, and poets, a poem seemed called for. The pantoum form beckoned,with the rhythms of its moving, repeated lines (per new line, in stanzas of four:1234 2546 5768 7381).
The wren also represents rebirth, immortality, and protection. It is considered a guide through dark times.
lit bits and pieces 