Love in the Country by William Stafford

We live like this: no one but
some of the owls awake, and of them
only near ones really awake.

In the rain yesterday, puddles
on the walk to the barn sounded their
quick little drinks.

The edge of the haymow, all
soaked in moonlight,
dreams out there like silver music.

Are there farms like this where
no one likes to live?
And the sky going everywhere?

While the earth breaks the soft horizon
eastward, we study how to deserve
what has already been given us.

Winifred the Horse

Winifred was a happy horse. She was loved and played with and adored by her children, and though they sometimes played too hard with her, yanking at her mane and tail, scratching at her wooden withers, she loved her children too.

Then one day her children grew up, as children do. She stayed in the attic, the garage, storage for years, waiting for her children to come back. One day their mother took her to the Goodwill where she waited again for a very long time, missing most of her mane and tale, grown dinged up and weathered over the years.

Many different children and mothers went past her, turning up their nose at her scratched wood and tatterly mane. Until one day a young mother and her little girl zu chose her to come home with them. The mother washed her, trimmed off the rest of her mane, and after a good polishing down with wood stain and a yarn mane and tail superglued on, Winnie was once again ready to play as  little zu's very first horsey.

And little zu and Winnie lived happily ever after

winnie

My life according to Ellen Bryant Voigt

Using only POEM titles from ONE POET, answer these questions

Describe yourself:  Southern Artifact

How do you feel: Dancing with Poets

Describe where you currently live:  Landscape, Dense with Trees

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:  The Waning Moon

Your favorite form of transportation: Song and Story

What's the weather like: Soft Cloud Passing

Favorite time of day: Nightshade

What is life to you: Preparation

Your relationship:  Long Marriage

Your fear:  High Winds Flare Up and the Old House Shudders

What is the best advice you have to give: Practice

If you could change your name, you would change it to:Amaryllis

My soul's present condition: The Happiness Poems

our bedroom

i finished painting and decorating the master bedroom this week. it was so wonderful to get to paint and make the room our own! we went with a dark gray blue, "distance" which didn't photograph very true to life, so here's a swatch of the color:

here's a view of the room from the doorway:

 we've never had a bedframe before either! we got this from sam's a few months ago

 bryan's mandolin, nightstand

a view of our closet

 our bedroom was a challenge to arrange because our windows are awkwardly placed--there's nowhere to put a bed that doesn't cover a window (unless you go all I Love Lucy and have to twin beds?)

my solution was to put the bed over one of the windows, which does lose some light, but uses the space better. I used a pretty tablecloth as curtains. ghetto maybe but i don't think it looks too bad!

i think this is the picture where you can really see the color accurately--the other photos look much more blue or green than it is in real life!

 the second challenge was where to put our dressers. the entire right side of the room has our closet--its a big closet but not deep, just long. so the only wall to put our dressers on is the one opposite the bed. my solution was to push them up together and try to create an eclectic mix-matched look. the mirror on top of the tall dresser is an antique that I propped up against the wall.

a silver tray we got as a wedding gift keeps all my girly stuff--jewelry, lotion, candle--in check.


~

i know you aren't supposed to paint a small room a dark color but bryan and i love the blue--soothing and a bit more sophisticated than our past master bedrooms. i'd like to eventually get a set of matching lamps for the nightstands and switch out the dark artwork for something white/lighter to balance out the white curtains, and i'd love to get an upholstered bench for the foot of the bed....but those things can wait for now!

a luminous green

as i sit feeding zuzu this morning, i notice out the sunroom window the shoots of new growth on our tallest magnolia are marked by a brighter green than the old. you can see that everywhere in our yard; the wife who lived here before me was a gardener and planted the right things so that something would always be blooming no matter the season.

i doubt i'll ever have such natural timing. in our sloping front yard you can see that luminous new green where the flowers have fallen away from the pink and white flowering bushes that i don't know the name for.

i don't think such growth is as evident in human beings. as much as life has changed in the past year, i look for the most part the same. not the same the same but similar.


last night was a long night. bryan moved to the guestroom around 2 because his rls was keeping us both up. zu woke up sometime in those murky hours completely soaked through--her jimmy-jams, her diaper, her cribsheets--and crying. i changed her automatically, without turning on the light, then held her. i love the heavy feeling of a sleeping baby against my chest. i kept her with me in our bed for a little while, something i rarely do, since she woke up everytime i tried to set her down. at some point she ended up in her bed, and i went back to sleep.

not so enjoyable in rapid succession, the occasional night up with the baby can be a pleasure, i'll admit. the weariness in the morning redeemed by the purpose behind it. the satisfying ache of motherhood.

when i couldn't breastfeed zu, it wasn't guilt over giving her formula that bothered me. she's healthy and happy as can be, formula-fed since 2 months old, so i don't feel like it hurt her in any way. the hard part for me was that i was naturally incapable of caring for my child.

you know those "motherwomen" (as Edna from the Awakening calls them). the women that have always always wanted children, that babysat, that the babies always smile at, that said their career goal was mother,  homemaker. i was never one of them. though i worked at a daycare and enjoyed children, i never thought much about having my own, not even a few years into marriage, before the baby bug bit. i was a little scared of them. i held a newborn baby carefully as a snake at the zoo.

then when i couldn't breastfeed i felt like it was nature's way of saying i wasn't meant to do this. that i have already been proven incapable of mothering. the weight of that failure. the elaborate post-partum hormones wouldn't let it go, for a long time. incapable, incapable. i held that word close.

even though what i was feeling and thinking wasn't truth, it felt like truth at the time, it felt inescapably real. the dark confusion after having a child is the one thing i am afraid of about having more.

i think there is an obsession in mothers, an obsession of capability. we measure ourselves with unfair measures, mostly against the yardstick of our friends, families, neighbors. like comparing your very best orange to her most complex math problem.

i've worn myself out on such comparisons the past few months and i would like to let them go now. to stop gauging my parenting by how i feed my baby, my beauty on how much i weigh, my motherhood by how much i'm home. by God's measurements i am utterly lacking but paid in full.

redeemed, how i love to proclaim it.

new growth and inexperience go hand in hand. i would like to take joy in my lack of expertise, the learning how to become a mother, the shaping constant shaping, clay on the wheel.

little zu's nursery

nurseries are by far the most fun to decorate. sometimes i like to think about what i'll do for zu's big girl room and other nurseries for other future (far in the theoretical future) babies. its just fun to plan those types of things. kids rooms aren't so serious as parents rooms. i like stuffed animals all over the place. i like lots of color and butterflies and silliness.

zu had quite a lovely little nursery at the farmhouse, her first home. it didn't exactly translate to our new home--we have carpet instead of hardwood and her new room is much bigger. and, since we aren't renting, i finally got to throw some paint up on the walls!

sidenote: its strange to me to think that when i decorated her first room, i hadn't even met her yet. and the next time i decorate her room, i'll know her even more. its really a privilege to parent.

so, i kept the nursery in tune with the rest of our home--i like smokey muted colors, so we went with Gothic Amethyst and i'm really happy with how it turned out:

that curtain is still one of my very favorite things in her room

"as soon as i saw you, i knew an adventure was going to happen"

we decided to use a wall stencil above her crib rather than the tapestry (which is now her curtain) that we had up before. we also took the bumper off her crib because she was climbing up on it to try to escape (!). when that started happening, i knew pulling on the curtain to escape would soon follow; and just to be safe, i went with no art hanging whatsoever above her crib, and melinda made us this stencil instead. it peels right off, so if i get sick of it i can change it up, but i really love it right now. i think the quote is appropriate!

doublesided classics and nancy drews--what i read when i was a girl

note: that is not a real goldfish. my mawmaw got it at crackerbarrel--it does however light up and wiggle around, its pretty neat. zu loves watching it

for reading bedtime stories

toychest and hooks for her hoodies

changing area

i've rearranged this room a lot the past few months. we had an extra bed in here but took it out since we never used it (zu sleeps through the night too well to need it--lucky us!--maybe for baby number 2 one day).
the changing area was the toughest to figure out. i used to change zu on her dresser but as she's gotten bigger and much wigglier i've not felt very comfortable doing that so we've started changing her on the floor. the problem is, we cloth diaper but use disposables for overnight and out on the town and we use disposable wipes (tried cloth wipes, not a fan).

which means we need a trashcan for clothdiapers (to be washed), a trashcan for disposables (to be tossed), a basket for cloth diaper covers and inserts, a basket for disposable wipes and diapers and diaper gear. whew! it looked really cluttered, even when i had everything tucked away in baskets.

then bryan's grandma gave us this antique cedar hope chest that is low to the ground, wide, and has a little rail along the back, so i feel much better about changing her there, and i can put all her changing gear out of the way in the corner. it satisfies the neatfreak in me and its nice to not have to get all the way down on the floor to change her each time.

Zuzu at 8 months

Favorite foods: orange babyfoods (carrots, squash, sweet potato, etc)

Favorite games: rocketship with daddy and exploring the house with mommy

Favorite places:  she particularly likes to go shopping. and at home she always likes to try to get to bryan's man cave--probably because there are so many nommy things there that mom won't let her have

Favorite toys: lamby! its her sleepy-time pet that she snuggles up to for every nap and bedtime

Favorite song: There Once was a Baby Elephant, an original tune written and performed by Mommy

Favorite times of day: mornings! she's always been a morning girl, just like me

~

New Developments:
is pulling up on furniture--easily getting to her knees and Sometimes getting all the way up to her feet. she's still crawling, turbo-charged-fast, and starting to babble--Da-Da-Da, Ma-Ma-Ma, and Na-Na-Na. she also likes to go "mmmmmm" sometimes happily sometimes not! Her motor skills are getting more refined--she uses her pinchy fingers to pick up small things and also to pinch ha~

the sunroom!

this is my favorite room in our house and i didn't do much to it besides hang a few pictures. skylights, windows all around, pretty french doors off the den. its my office, our breakfast area, and our library too. we spend a lot of time here.

my home office. i found that poster of my favorite album at a thriftstore for a buck! i have most of my poetry books at my work office but the things i'm currently reading are at home. and of course, my typewriter

 theres a little picnic basket between that we use for holding books and drinks. its a great place to write, overlooking the ravine and the trees. we do a lot of reading here

we eat out in the sunroom more often than in the dining room--its especially nice to have breakfast out there

thrifted bird art--a little blurry, but you get the idea

our kitchen!

BEFORE: beige on beige on beige.

it took 2 coats of base and 3 coats of red to paint over those dang roosters. you can't tell from this picture, but the tan part is actually wallpaper too. i liked the texture of it, so we decided to just paint over it rather than take it down.


AFTER! :

the red made a huge difference! bryan and i had always wanted a red kitchen, and it helped a lot with all the beigeness. we would eventually like to add some tile backsplash above the cabinets and i'd like to add some wall art to the wall you can't see (the one opposite the cork board with all our pictures/artwork).

but we're planning on living here a while, so that can wait! as for now, i love cooking here. the shape makes it easy to work in, i've got lots of counter space, and i like that it opens up to the den so i can be part of conversation.

Perspective

{ part of five minute friday @ the Gypsy Mamma }

~

one of my favorite games to play with zuzu is 'exploring the house'

i let her crawl, babygate-free, all around the house and i crawl after her. we stop to look at very interesting carpet fuzzes, very interesting furniture that can be pulled up on, very interesting kitty-cats.

i let her choose which rooms to go into. now we will explore mommy and daddy's room, the guest room, oh and the most fun, zuzu's room!

its fun to get down and look at things from her perspective.

so interested in the smallest things, the tiny minutia she can pick up with her pinchy fingers

(her pinchy fingers: thumb and index. she also uses these to pinch! especially when she's trying to pick up mommy's tattoo)

before we had zuzu, i wasn't sure if i wanted a girl. the idea of having a teenage daughter intimidates me. the hormones! oh my! i think of my teenage self. yikes.

we'll have different perspectives on things, sometimes, maybe a lot of times. i pray that as a parent God will help me to see her side of things--to be a mom of course not just a buddy, but still hear her side of things, try to understand her perspective.  i want to parent with Grace

home again

date nights! free babysitting!!

zu adores her aunt karen!

it was hot hot hot so we drank slurpees to the max

beautiful flowers from butterfly world

grammie loved getting to spend time with her baby zu!

and so did grandpa! zu found his beard 80% less scary than last time

zu's first trip to the beach. not a fan of the water, but fascinated by seashells

a few pictures from our vacation! we've been trying to get back into the swing of things today. grocery shopping, house cleaning, getting my to do list in order. ah the tyranny of the to do list! i love and hate it simultaneously. right now its intimidating the socks off me, if i were wearing socks (nope, barefoot, as i should be, its summer!).

so i wrote a poem instead. then i went out with kat for lunch. then i uploaded vacation pictures...

but the to do list will get done. i'm off work for the summer, so i can do it at my leisure.

sometimes i think that i take on too many challenges. is it good to always have some sort of challenge going on, stretching yourself? what about lounging around on the beach and doing nothing for a solid week? that felt good too. sometimes challenges get exhausting. sometimes the day is better spent frolicking in the park while the house stays dirty and the dinner uncooked.

maybe florida left me in a summer state of mind. 

lines from Do You Ever Dream Poor Court-Bankrupt Outwitted and Lost of Terrible Little Holes All Over Everything What Do Those Dreams Mean? by Anne Carson

Little holes that show where the rain hits.
             He was not wrong that sad anthropologist who told us
             the primary function of writing is to enslave human
                     beings.

from The Dream Songs (14) by John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring.  We must not say so.

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,

we ourselves flash and yearn,

and moreover my mother told me as a boy

(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored

means you have no

Inner Resources.’  I conclude now I have no

inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

People bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes

as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag

and somehow a dog

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving

behind: me, wag.

Winter Field by Joanna Klink

What better witness than this evening snow,

its steady blind quiet, its eventual

completeness, a talc smoothing every surface

through the lumen tricks of ice.

No one who comes here hastens to leave,

though the mineral winter makes a dull

math of cold inside the bones, a numbness

thinning into each fingertip and eye.

Faint injury traveling toward earth

in shifting silence, a softness in the weather

passing though us, dark moods of snows-

a sense of peace so deep we extend out

into the blackness of our lives, dread and failure,

and feel no hint of terror, only the premonition

of drift-design, the stars behind the snow

burning in ancient immanence over the field.

What lights a world gone blank with despair?

You were here once; you will be here again.

mother's day

what a year of joy! i'm blessed to be a mother ~

postcard from the beach

little zu didn't get the memo this morning--vacation means no waking up at 5 AM right? she's blowing raspberries on my arm as i type; that was the first thing we taught her, not sure how that happened! what does that say about our parenting, hmm...

we are having a great time at the beach. i've got about five hundred new freckles. zu saw the ocean for the first time (and was not a fan, though sand was nommy to the max). bryan and i collected seashells by the seashore. and swam swam swam, like edna in the awakening minus the nudity and drowning.

grammie grampa and aunt karen are loving all this baby-time. and zu doesn't mind being the very center of attention. 

on the agenda for today: the girls are going shopping, then everyone to the beach, then a party. monday: date night! in my new anthro dress (i have a stylish & sweet sister), to the irish pub and banyan tree.

A Long Commute by Laura Kasischke

Faith is a long commute. Lots
of time to change
the station on the radio, time
to relive the past, to consider

the future the way
the boy in the bus station
standing by the trashcan
the afternoon the bomb went off
must have had time to consider

his own hands carefully in his hand. The road

is narrow and it goes

straight through the gardens of Paradise. Lots

of soggy godhearts dripping
blood on their bloody vines. Behind me

a beautiful blind girl carries a Bible
home in a plastic bag, while

before me, an old
woman and her old mother
drive a Cadillac over
the flowers slowly.

Trust Me by Mary Ruefle

What can be discussed in words
I beg to state in brief:
A man has only one death:
it may be as light as goose down
or as heavy as a fatted hog.
Gingerly, the flowers open
and are crushed in the vat.
What's in your perfume?
The hills of Africa are in it,
and the cormorants with their mouths full of fish,
a bed of carnations, a swannery in Switzerland,
the citrine sun baking Nappa 
and a rhino whining at the moon.
An after-dinner argument is in it
and the ever-stronger doses of clap-trap
we are forced to take while still alive.
A whole aeroplane, wings and all,
and the lush spaghetti siphoned into lips
poised for a kiss.
Finish it, finish it. 

Purple Bathing Suit by Louise Gluck

I like watching you garden
with your back to me in  your purple bathing suit:
your back is my favorite part of you,
the part furthest away from your mouth.

You might give some thought to that mouth.
Also, to the way you weed, breaking
the grass off at ground level
when you should pull it by the roots.

How many times do I have to tell you
how the grass spreads, your little
pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which
by smoothing over the surface you have finally
fully obscured. Watching you

stare into space in the tidy
rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly
working hard while actually
doing the worst job possible, I think

you are a small irritating purple thing
and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth
because you are all that's wrong with my life
and I need you and I claim you.

Possessions by Claudia Emerson

I sent you a list of what I wanted, and you boxed it up carelessly, as though for the backs
            of strangers, or for the fire, the way you might

have handled a dead woman's possessions—when you could no longer bear to touch
            them, the clothes still fragrant, worn, still that reminiscent

of the body. Or perhaps your lover packed the many boxes herself, released from secret
            into fury, that sick of the scent of me

in the bed, that wary of her face caught in my mirror—something I said I didn't want,
            where I would not see myself again.

motherhood

“Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own.”  { M. Kelley

my first mother's day in a year where i was actually mothering and not just a mother (last year i was growing rounder and rounder as little zu became ready for the world) approaches and i've been thinking on how much things have changed this year.

i love being a mom. bryan and i want to add many many to our brood (we would like to have a "brood"). bryan is much more confident than me--in my flurried search for things to worry about (that i have no control over) i wonder how we'll handle Two (one day) how everything will work.

God blessed us with possibly the most easy going happy baby possible. she's always smiling, has slept through the night since 6 weeks, hasn't been sick once. my mom says that God gave us her first so we'll give her more grandbabies sooner than later.

the first two months were hard though, really hard! i don't think any amount of reading or babysitting or mental preparation can prepare you for how hard it is. for me, despite feeling great (besides morning sickness) my entire pregnancy, i had a lot of emotional trouble the first few months. in my foolish arrogance, i'd always assumed post-partum depression was made up (like i once thought ADHD was made up--i know. my goodness.) until i had it.

i think it was harder than it had to be though; i didn't want to really talk about it because i felt guilty about feeling that way--i was so happy about zuzu but not feeling so great about myself, and i worried that if i talked about it, people would think i didn't love my baby.

and even though bryan and i have a great relationship, he didn't know how to help me. i would talk some about the thoughts i was having and he wouldn't know how to fix it (because guys generally want to fix any problem you tell them about). i remember at one point sitting on our couch and telling me how i was feeling--worthless, a failure, inadequate, withdrawn--without going into too much detail, thoughts i never thought i'd have.

its crazy how i can look back and see that i was Not at all myself, not at all thinking straight, but at the time i felt like what i was feeling made perfect sense, i had no idea that what i was dealing with was all hormonal and temporary.  my family on my father's side has trouble with depression, so maybe its just something i was genetically prone to. i'd never had as much trouble with it before--some poetic malaise, some standard teenage sadness, such thoughts that anyone has at some point or other.

anyway, all that to say, after the first few months it went away and i was able to relax into the role of motherhood. i hope that it was just something i had to deal with the first time; that the second time around, whenever that may be, my hormones will be more level or, knowing that i have a tendency, i'll be better prepared and not sink into it so thoroughly.

these past few months, as zuzu grows and smiles and  has such irrepressable joy, looking back at those first few sad months was so long ago, a lifetime ago, or maybe something another person experienced. i honestly don't love to talk about the first few months very often...it brings up feelings i don't want to revisit, and so its a conversation i drop out of when it comes up among the church-moms and such.

God has been so faithful to me. i'm not a "born mother" (anyway, mothers aren't born, they're made--a quote  i read recently and thoroughly believe) and i have so much to learn. i'm thankful for the sweet girl God gave me and i hope to be a mother to many more little babies in the coming years. and these times feel even sweeter to me, like the sun coming out after rain.

my broken bones rejoice.

I Remember by Anne Sexton

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color--no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

Firstborn by Barbara Crooker

The sun came up, as it always does,
the next morning, its pale yolk
bleeding into the white room.
I remember how cold I was,
and how young, so thin,
my wedding ring rattled
on my finger. How the tea
the nurse brought
broke in waves on the rim
of the cup, spilled over
in the saucer; how nothing
could contain my tears.
Three days later, I left
in a wheelchair,
with nothing in my arms.
The center of this ring
is a zero. The horizon,
where the sun broke through,
is no longer a straight line,
but a circle. It all comes back
to you.

da-da-da-da-da-da-DA!

zuzu started babbling yesterday. da-da-da-da-da! is her favorite. my goal this summer: to change those da-das to ma-mas, ha!

we have had a great first weekend of summer. friday we finished bryan's man-cave--he works so hard and has done such a wonderful job watching our baby on my teaching days this semester, i really felt it was important to give him his own space, where he can practice music, work on heroclix mods (his hobby), read comic books, you know, boy things, without being disturbed. i still need to get a bit of furniture for it--i'm hoping to find a roughed up hobby-table and maybe a cushy chair--but for the most part its all manned up. its right off our sunroom, so its a quiet little corner of the house.

saturday we had some of our new friends over. they have a daughter zu's age, and it was really sweet watching them play together. i'm hoping we can get to know this couple better, and maybe even introduce them to other young families at our church sometime soon.

I feel like God has already begun to bless us with friendships since we've moved here. bryan makes friends so quickly, but for me it takes a long time. luckily, our church has other young couples our age with babies about zu's age, so small group is a built-in play-date and get-together with other moms.

sometimes i get nervous about meeting other moms..i worry that they'll think i'm weird or wrong in how i do things or they'll judge me as a bad mom--all paranoid thoughts, i guess!--but the moms i've met at our church have all been so kind and welcoming.

i know that Renee of a few years ago would have absolutely dreaded our monday night band practices (where the guys go off to practice while the ladies chat and watch babies--very old-timey sounding). i probably would've begged bryan "do i HAVE to go? maybe i am sick??" but now its often one of the highlights of my week. i don't know if its that i'm just more comfortable in my own skin then i used to be or that the families in that church are so inclusive or maybe a combination of those things.

either way, i'm enjoying the life God is building for us here.

excerpts from: The Deceased Hope the Farm Remains in the Family for Generations by Jenny Browne

1.
So ended the obituary.
So begin again with a parable.

In those days the habit was to call the older people Aunt or Uncle,
regardless of relationship. Uncle had a son who was highly educated. The
son happened to be home from college so Uncle started him planting
corn. The seed boxes on the planter hold about a gallon of corn seed each.
Uncle filled the boxes and left the sack of seed setting at the end of the
field. The son planted until about noon and never re-filled the seed boxes, which
should have been done three times by mid-morning. the men spent
all afternoon digging in the tracks, trying to figure out where the seed had
run out.

Or perhaps a photograph:

I'm not sure who the other woman is, but that's the one you're named for.

No, it's not really a hat. You call it a tea cozy, for a teapot. She was funny like that.

We spell yours differently, but you say it the same.

**

You might (V. suggests) want to try writing that in scenes.

The back room smelled like Louis L'Amour
paperbacks--even after

the farmer's eyes clouded and he switched
to cassette--Luck Strikes, weak coffee

cooling in Victory Seed Corn mug.

There are woman hands can snap a chicken neck in one twist.

There is town and town is
canned peaches,

       volunteer ditch lilies, orange-vested
prisoners picking up trash in the sun.

What does not change?
The davenport best for naps,

that screen door's quick temper
one question: how far, exactly,

he meant by walking distance?


3.
Mom calls to say cousin Marty's getting a new heart, and I spend the rest of the day
saying it possible: Marty's getting a new heart. A new heart. A new heart

Hey barista. Hey dry-cleaning. Hey sashimi, my cousin's getting a new
heart. He has exactly six hours to go get his new heart.

Marty and his brother Mike run rigs full of Amish hand-turned spindles,
NASCAR track rails, pork, corn, and soybeans all up and down Hwy 41.

Edamame? Uncle Joe laughs, I got you a whole field of edamame.

Corn silks turning just in time.

Up in the combine, Mike fell to his knees, weeping, gripping the cell
phone. Something wrong? No, nothing's wrong. The got Marty a heart.

Joe said the tops of Marty's ears were all pink when he got out of the
operating room. (I just
wrote operating ring, which seems fitting, better even.) Pink, Joe's own

eyes filling, like a baby.

5.
Parke County (1979)

Dear Ones All,

I hope the heirlooms, especially furniture, china and glass can be divided among you.
Rectangle (almost square) Walnut table.
Oval (spool) belonged to (I am not sure).
Pedestal table (Marion bought pieces from trash pile room of Masonic building)
Pink rose Havalin plates and cups bought by Ethel Carver for Mother out of first year salary
teaching at the country school "No 2 Wabash Township Parke County"
Odd Plates (one each to grand-children)
1 large glass dish with lids (always had apples in it)
Leaf pattern fan
Blue, red and white linens for when a small child (cold weather) went to visit
(I was wrapped in it to go home)
It is hard about my diamond ring, which your father bought and gave to me
Marion said it would buy a Ford if I wanted to sell it.
Somebody please take good care of it (a lovers gift).

There's a certain slant of light (258) by Emily Dickinson

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons – 
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes – 

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – 
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are – 

None may teach it – Any – 
'Tis the Seal Despair – 
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air – 

When it comes, the Landscape listens – 
Shadows – hold their breath – 
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death – 

Five Minute Friday: Real

{ I saw this on Erin's blog & loved this idea--the Gypsy Mama's five-minute-friday, writing unedited, un picked over, unprimped up, just whats on your heart. so here it is, in all its unedited glory...}

~

ok, a post in which i am real.

i think as a creative type people assume we are bleeding all over the page every chance we get. and yes...i write for fun quite a bit. i blog and journal and poetry and fiction it up all the time. but the writing i do in my journal is a lot different from what i do in my poetry or even on my blog.

its hard to turn off the instinct to revise. to turn that phrase, to make people see you a certain way.

this semester one of my assignments for my comp students was to write on how media affects you, and many of them choose to write about facebook--how people can so easily put on a persona like a new coat, can tell only the happy things.

at the same time, is it really a place for rants and pity parties? hmmm.

anyway, what is going on with me, for real, this very day:

i'm drinking a homemade frappachino and plotting my attack on the spare room ( its sort of a shed like hobby room, off the sunroom and leading out to the backyard). i'm going to make it into a man-room for bryan. he sure as heck deserves it--whenever people ask me how i made it this first semester of teaching, with a little baby, with five classes, i tell them that i am blessed to be married to a truly amazing husband.

who moved states away for me. who pours his life into ministry, at church and at home. who took the humble job of watching our babygirl the days that i teach. who believes in me entirely.

sometimes when i feel discouraged about my writing--like i'm spinning my wheels, like i'm kidding myself thinking it will ever go anywhere--i think about how i have these people in my life that believe in me so much. So much! my parents think i could be poet laureate tomorrow. if i called and said, "hey mom, i'm poet laureate" she would not be surprised, seriously. and my husband! who thinks i'm the next sylvia plath (minus the sadness).

still, sometimes its easy to get discouraged. i write and write and write, will it ever come to anything? but there's so much pleasure in the writing itself. i really do love to write. i think its what i was made for; i knew it, i knew it young.

i'm thankful for where God has us right now. sometimes, i'll admit, i have moments of panic; i think maybe i've done wrong to go back to work, to not stay at home like i thought i was supposed to.

but then i see how happy my baby girl is, staying with her daddy the three days a week. and i think about how i have this job i don't remotely deserve , a job i wasn't even trying to get, that was handed to me. how could that be anything but God?

~

pardon the rambly-ness--my mind doesn't go in a straight line

Strewn by Barbara Crooker

It'd been a long winter, rags of snow hanging on; then, at the end
of April, an icy nor'easter, powerful as a hurricane. But now
I've landed on the coast of Maine, visiting a friend who lives
two blocks from the ocean, and I can't believe my luck,
out this mild morning, race-walking along the strand.
Every dog within fifty miles is off-leash, running
for the sheer dopey joy of it. No one's in the water,
but walkers and shellers leave their tracks on the hardpack.
The flat sand shines as if varnished in a painting. Underfoot,
strewn, are broken bits and pieces, deep indigo mussels, whorls
of whelk, chips of purple and white wampum, hinges of quahog,
fragments of sand dollars. Nothing whole, everything
broken, washed up here, stranded. The light pours down, a rinse
of lemon on a cold plate. All of us, broken, some way
or other. All of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light.

5 Weeks by Brittney Corrigan

This is the week the heart starts
beating. Little bird, little lizard,

little princess pea. Small round
stairway of spine. Small cleft

body. Small ache in my belly.
Everything moves over--

my insides rearrange. The heart
starts beating. My insides rearrange.

~
{ from Literarymama

Nocturne by Suji Kwock-Kim

1.
If these are not the nights of empty hands,
if these are not the nights of dreams galloping
like gasoline fire over blue tar,
I wish you could see what I see
when I look at you,
wish I could give you the country
in my skull, invisible
as the horizon I followed to your eyes--
an ocean mounting within, the foam
and drone of bile-black waters washing us closer
and farther apart, always both at once,
murmur of umber, bloodwings beating in bone.

2.
You cannot see waves breaking against welted shoals,
but in the rocking of our chair, maybe you hear
the hissing of the sea, biting acetylene,
or cry of tern and gull. Maybe you hear
the uncaged water gasping against hasp and hull,
bracken churning, scalps flensed from brine.
In your shirt's rustling, I hear sailcloth in wind,
ropes lashed and pulling against the mast.
In our chair's rasp against pine boards, I hear
the creak of oarlocks, a broken skull scraped against keel.
I hear spume soaking a bowsprit crisped with salt,
as I rock into your torso, my human shore.

3.
Come nearer, nearer,
for I want to see what you see--
Light a lighthouse over these broken spars,
dress me in burlap and tackle,
play on a streel of eelgrass plucked from the troughs of the sea;
charm me with bladderwrack and sole, comfort me
with a severed branch of coral, a fistful of wet wings;
sing to me of splintered driftwood and rockweed, nights full of sulfur foam;
lead me through the narcotic dark to a bed
of coats, your stubbled face grazing my throat,
for I want to lie with your eyelids touching my lips when I sleep,
I want to feel the bones of your silence pressing against my own.

4.
I cannot see what you see, but I will paint you a world in green, the color you most love:
I will weave you a pillow of aloe and flowering lime,
cut you a bed of wild ginger, casuarina and bamboo;
I will make you a city where you may dance
on bridges and rooftops of air, where you may hear
green wind blowing across green water.
Because I can't know how long the shore we make together
will hold, let me lie against you
before the waves we are wash us from each other's arms,
before the stopless tide returns,
when we'll feel the indifference of the sea.

first adventure of the summer

this morning little zu and i went on our first adventure of the summer. when she woke up, i asked her "little zu, how would you like an adventure?" and she seemed very excited for an adventure:

so after first playtime and second nap, her daddy helped pack up the car with lots of babas and diapies and baby toys for our first adventure of the summer: a trip two hours north to see aunt lolo at college

little zu had not seen aunt lolo in quite some time and she was so happy at the prospect

after a sweet summery nap in the car, zuzu woke up to find herself at aunt lolo's dorm and scooped up for hugs and kisses from her aunt lolo

we had a fun girly day of shopping and icecream and roving around a college town.

such adventures will be a habit this summer

Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

The Big Poetry Giveaway: Winners!

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I've been participating in the Big Poetry Giveaway on Kelli Agodon's blog.

Today it is time to announce  - the winners! -

The winner of my chapbook, Where Nothing Can Grow is.....

Shawnte Orion

The winner of The Kingdom of Sons by Bonnie Bolling is....

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

~

Thank you everyone that entered and Congratulations to the winners! Expect some poetry in your mailbox soon!