Poetry in Prose

A salute in prose to National Poetry Month, 30 days devoted to verse, to words dense and encapsulated. It ends today. 

There is, as far as I know, no National Essay Month, no time set aside for the genre I know best, the one which at its root means "to try."

The essay is the right genre for me, earnest scribbler that I am, and it is, I think, good for many of us. At the very least it's a genre most of us know. Who hasn't written a letter or report? Or proofread a college essay?

And so, on this last day of National Poetry Month,  I'm thinking of one of my favorite essays. Read it if you have time — it only takes three minutes — and tell me, is it not poetry in prose?

Suddenly Summer

We've gone from cool and rainy to humid and hot. Suddenly it is summer in Virginia. I don't mind. I love heat and humidity. But the body struggles to adjust. 

Yesterday I walked in the late afternoon, and my feet were dragging. Today I left early, strolling through the last vestiges of pre-dawn coolness that were lingering in the shady spots of my route. 

Back home now I can feel the heat starting to bear down. But the dappled shade of deck and yard promise several hours of al fresco pleasure. 

The Stacks

I read on today's Writers Almanac this quotation from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird: "Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search the library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it."

The library stacks ... I remember them well. Mine were at the old University of Kentucky library, where I went to research "bureaucracy, the fourth branch of government," my paper topic for a high school class, Advanced Government and International Relations, taught by Colonel Coleman. (I can't remember his first name; and was the Colonel a military term or a Kentucky honorific?)

He was an inspiring teacher, and I plunged into the research for that paper as if it were cool water on a hot summer day. It was refreshing, liberating. Hours flew by as I took notes on index cards. 

I made many trips to the library, then wrote the paper longhand and typed it up the old-fashioned way — on a typewriter with Wite Out at my side. It was more than 40 pages, and my friends never stopped ribbing me for the comment, in red ink, at the end: "A scholarly study," Colonel Coleman had scribbled. 

"Oh yeah, it was scholarly all right. It put him to sleep!" they laughed. 

Maybe it did. But it woke me up. 

Weight of our Words

Last night a few of us gathered to stuff folders for an upcoming writers conference. Though so much is done digitally these days, there often comes a point where the written word has a weight. Not just the weight of the words' meaning, but an actual, tangible poundage. 

I felt this keenly when I was a magazine writer and editor, and I feel it still whenever I look through my publications, purging some, labeling and storing others. 

Last night we sorted leaflets and tucked them into folders, created name tags and tent cards. By the end of the evening, we had a tidy set of printed materials — and some heavy boxes to lift.

Treasures from the Vault

I returned from Lexington with something I absolutely need no more of, and that would be books. 

But who could resist the Annie Dillard compilation (even though I have these books in other forms), the Bread Loaf anthology or This Trembling Land, by a Kentucky author whose father owned the farm where I rode horses as a young girl?

There's also a workbook (covered in a brown paper from a grocery bag) that dates back to my first-grade class. These are the kind of goodies that can still be found in what was once my parents' and is now my brother's home. I think of them as treasures from the vault.

Purple Pathway

A walk yesterday when I didn't feel like walking. A walk that healed and restored. It began at a trailhead I haven't frequented in months, meandered down a dirt trail, over a bridge, then passed a field of lavender flowers. 

I thought I knew all the patches of fetching spring blooms, but these had escaped my notice. They may have been weeds (wild grape hyacinth?), but who cares? They were shining in the late day sun, a purple pathway.

The flowers and the movement invigorated. The world looked brighter when I returned home.

Long River

This morning I'm thinking of friendship, especially friendship of long standing. People who go back years and how much they become a part of your life. 

I had time to contemplate this on the drive home yesterday, which was up into the mountains where it barely looked like spring, then down into the alleys where spring is in full flower.

Longtime friendship is like that, too, seasons and altitudes, peaks and valleys. Through them all, a long river of connection. 

Grounding

When I try to name it I come up short. Is it depth that I feel here in my hometown? Is it community? 

In so many ways, I don't know this place. Like any healthy city, it keeps growing and changing. And for most of my life, I've done my growing and changing somewhere else. 

But when I visit Lexington, when I stroll down Central Avenue or Ashland or South Hanover, I'm walking through layers of personal and family history.

If I lived here, these layers might weigh me down. But since I don't, they ground me. 

Sold Out at Singletary

In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky. 

The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.

Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night's performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote. 

Capturing Birds

Once upon a time, I wrote a book for parents, encouraging them to avoid the trap I'd fallen into, double-thinking my words and actions until I'd turned what used to be a joyous and natural activity — raising kids — into a highly fraught, expert-dominated procedure.

In one chapter I talk about what children bring to adults when they're allowed to remain children, not miniaturized adults, how they remind us of the way the world looks when we're just coming alive to it. 

I was reminded of this the other day when Isaiah asked his mother why his grandparents "capture birds."

We keep parakeets in a birdcage, you see, but to Isaiah, we are stalking the Northern Virginia landscape in search of parakeets. Every time I think of this, I smile. 

It's the child's mind trying to make sense of what he sees around him — and it's a joy to observe. 

(Two of our "inmates.")

Witnessing

Walking is witnessing, a way to be present in movement and in time. 

Yesterday's stroll took me from the oldest part of Reston to the newest, from a community center to a commercial plaza, from a small cafe to a bustling bakery.

And all along I'm thinking spring. The dogwood, the azalea, the first green of the oaks and poplars. How lovely it is to see it unfold along familiar paths, how grateful I was to witness its unfolding.

Flower Shopping

A trip to a garden shop yesterday put me much in mind of spring. Though it's cloudy and rainy today, yesterday it was warm and sunny, and the shop had everything, it seemed, except the one plant I was looking for.

That would be a climbing rose. This old-fashioned beauty is no longer in favor, it seems. All eyes are on the knockout rose, its flashy second (or third?) cousin. 

Knockouts are beautiful, and easier to grow than most other varieties, but long ago I fell in love with climbers and am stuck with the attraction now. In a few weeks I'll post a photo that will explain why. For now, though, a picture of some magenta phlox I spied on a walk the other day. They're perfect enough to be in a garden shop themselves.

With Its Diadem

I took an evening walk last night, one week after the eclipse. Without thinking I headed west, toward the setting sun. 

I think of our nearest star differently now, having seen it, well, naked is not exactly the word. Exposed isn't either. Transformed? Chastened? I won't use Emily Dickinson's phrase "without its diadem" because a corona is a diadem if ever I saw one.

It's more that the sun and I (and millions of other people) now have a special bond. We've been through something together. So when I watch it sink low in the sky and redden the horizon, I think of when the horizon reddened in every direction. I remember the cool air and the bird song and the glowing white ring.

It's nice to be reminded of all that.

(Photo: NASA)

The Credit Side

I first read Robinson Crusoe as a child. I can still see the book's binding, dark green spine with a mottled green-and-gold cover, and I still remember the joy of losing myself in the novel for hours at a time.

Here was a shipwrecked man on a desert island, abandoned and alone. Here was a man forced to build a life for himself from the ground up, to find or make food, shelter and clothing, outfitted only with his own strength and wits and what he could cobble from a sinking ship.

Back then, it all seemed like great fun, an extended version of fort-building in the woods. Now, I'm struck by the hopelessness of Crusoe's situation and the emotional adjustments he made to cope with it. At one point, having satisfied his immediate needs, he sits down and makes a list (with pen, ink and paper salvaged from the ship) of pros and cons, which he called good and evil, things like: I'm banished from human society but there is food here. Or, I have no clothes but it's so warm here I barely need any. Talk about looking on the bright side!

"Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarcely any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in the world, that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, 
and to set in the description of good and evil on the credit side of the account."
-- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

The ultimate Pollyanna statement, but not a bad idea to keep in mind.

(I realized only after posting that "Credit Side" is an interesting title for April 15th, Tax Day.)

To the Fox

To the fox, we are a meadow, a resting place. Our grass is not sprayed and coaxed to greenness. A few patches of plain earth make an appearance, as do clumps of weeds. We lack the hummus of the forest, but the randomness and vagaries of real life thrive in our backyard. 

The fox moved through earlier today, paused, as he usually does, taking in the scene. As I write these words, a plump squirrel, still as a statue, surveys the yard from the deck railing. Maybe he's feeling as the fox does, that he can enjoy himself among the dandelions and the stilt grass, that our yard is his castle.

Some neighbors leave peanuts for wildlife. We don't go that far. But we are lawn care minimalists, and for many animals, that is enough. 

The Bluebell Trail

The Kwanzan cherries are spreading their heavy arms, wowing us, as they always do, with their big-fisted blossoms. Dogwood are playing it closer to the vest, but they're almost peak bloom, too. 

I worried I'd missed the Virginia bluebells, but yesterday I scooted out for a late-morning hike on the Bluebell Trail that runs along the Potomac River. The flowers were primo, scattered fetchingly among the phlox and ferns with the river roaring in the distance. 

Moving through springtime beauty is one of the best ways to ingest it, to make it stick. Which is what I want to do now, to inhale the loveliness, to claim it as my own. But that, as we know, is not possible. Walking through and past the flowers reminds me that they, like all of us, are present only a short while. We make time to see them when they're here — and then let them go.

ISO Stairways

Walking in the suburbs is one thing. Taking the stairs is something else entirely — mostly because of how difficult they are to find.

They may lurk around several nondescript corners in a nondescript office building. They may be hidden behind an unlabeled door. They may be dark when you enter them, though hopefully lights will come on as you ascend. 

I once worked on the third floor of a 100-plus-year-old university building. It had a staircase to die for, broad, shallow, perfectly calibrated to the human footstep, with a curved wooden banister. I felt noble just ascending those stairs. They were the main show. There may have been an elevator somewhere, but it took a back seat. 

I know it's not practical, but what if every two- or three- or four-story building was retrofitted with such a grand staircase? What if elevators were harder to find. Wouldn't we all be better off? 

In the End

Back home now after two 12-hour drives that bookended a day of planetary splendor. First, I want to credit the supporting cast, the resplendent redbud trees that lined the highway and gave my weary eyes something to feast on, counteracting the white-line fever. 

And the clouds themselves, which provided a light show late Sunday as crepuscular rays slanted down to the flat, black, Indiana fields, already plowed, waiting to be planted.  The clouds that politely parted on Monday, letting the sun and moon steal the show. The clouds that returned Tuesday, making for a muted and pleasant drive east.

But it was Earth's star and satellite that stole the show. Our own sun, in a form I'd never seen before. Not blotted out but transformed, covered enough to let its true splendor shine forth "like shining from shook foil." 

Since Monday afternoon I've been trying to put the feeling into words. It was awe-inspiring, yes. Once-in-a-lifetime, yes again. Most of all, it was comforting. It was light winning out in the end. 

(Monday, April 8, 3:04 p.m.)

Total Eclipse

The temperature dropped.  Birds sang their roosting songs. And then, the sun went away. All that was left was a ring of fire. 

Our safety glasses came off, someone blasted "A Total Eclipse of the Heart," and for almost four minutes we gaped in amazement at the darkened world, the weird twilight, our hilltop transformed.

I looked up and around, to the left and the right, marveled at the 360-degree "sunset." I felt a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. And then, it was over. 

"This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt," wrote Annie Dillard in an essay called "Total Eclipse," "the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres, flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds."

I looked at my photos, none of which captured the corona, and there, glimmering in the lower right-hand corner of one, was a single white dot. It was the planet Venus — in the middle of an Indiana afternoon. 

Totality or Bust

The idea was growing all week, fed by accounts of those who'd experienced a total eclipse in 2017 or earlier. It's a lot different than 80 or 90 percent, they said. If you can drive to totality, do it.

And so we did, shoving off early Sunday, bound for Washington, Indiana, where the moon will completely block the sun — and where we have kind and accommodating relatives.

It's totality or bust. Now let's hope the clouds stay away. 

Wood Poppies!

As last week's rains were falling, the great engine of spring was whirring silently. I could see very little change out my office window, but plants were still prepping for a great leap forward. 

At first, the gold of the wood poppies blended with the yellow of the daffodils. But now the smaller flowers are coming into their own. They are filling the far backyard, the part that's wooded and wild. They are spreading a carpet of bloom.

I just saw a fox pause among the flowers, look around and trot on.  

(The wood poppies in bloom: all that's missing is the hammock.)

Wet and Dry

We're climbing out of what has been an unusually wet spring so far. Three days of rain ended late yesterday, with cloudy/ showery weather the week before.

Which means I'm glad to see cloud breaks this morning because they promise a long, outdoor walk this afternoon, instead of sodden strolls or indoor exercise. Come to think of it, I dreamed of hiking last night, proof positive of how much I've missed it.

As for the route, though, this is a day to stay on paved paths rather than dirt and gravel. It's good we have plenty of both around here.

(If paths were this dry, I'd go for a woods walk.)

Raking Words

A new hard-copy journal is always a cause for celebration. I go through several a year, and lately I've been using up the ones I have stowed away in my closet. 

The new one is not my usual basic black. It's royal blue with a whimsical drawing of a formally-attired man (a butler?) raking "leaves" from the bountiful library around him. The drawing is titled Autumn.

Did I buy it for myself? Probably not. If it was a gift, then, I have a couple of people in mind who might have given it me me. They both have a good sense of humor.

Meanwhile, I'm thrilling to the journal's smooth paper and magnetic-close cover. I'm four pages in; I have a lot of raking still to do.

("Autumn" © Benoit, licensed by Riley Illustration, published by teNeues Verlag)

Anywhere People

I'm making my way through Neil King Jr.'s American Ramble at a walking pace. I'm enjoying it so much that I don't want to rip through it, much as I would prolong a stroll on a perfect spring morning. 

King walked from Washington, D.C., to New York City in the spring of 2021 and wrote a book about what he found along the way. I'm more than two-thirds of the way through King's report — he's about to cross the Delaware — but I'm still musing over thoughts he had in Lancaster County. 

"There are today at heart two American stories: the story of those who stay, and the story of those who go. ... Some of us still wander from place to place, and many others of us don't. We have the Somewhere people, who are very much of a place and rooted there, and we have the Anywhere people, who have a faint sense of belonging wherever they are and if they ever had a place, they left it behind long ago."

What happens, I wonder, when the scales are tipped, and a society has too many Anywheres and not enough Somewheres? And can walkers turn Anywheres ... into Somewheres? 

No Rise, No Fooling

I've already heard about a couple of great April Fools pranks today. The one I pulled was accidental and happened a day early, when the Easter cake I baked and served turned out to be a sodden lump.

I just relived the process and realized my mistake: no baking powder... no fooling!

Some of the men in the family seemed to like the cake in its unrisen state, especially one of my sons-in-law, who took a few slices home, bless his heart. But others wisely stayed away. 

The cake still sits on the counter ... but the garbage can beckons. 

Happy April Fools Day — or something like that! 

(A photo of the cake from the first time I made it, when I remembered the baking powder.)