Auld Lang Syne

It's Robert Burns' Day in Scotland and elsewhere as fans of the poet raise their glasses to toast the man and his verse, preferably at a Burns Supper, where haggis is eaten, strong drink is quaffed, and songs are sung (some of them not suitable for mixed company). 

I saw little of Burns at the Writers' Museum in Edinburgh. His room was being renovated. Instead, I looked at the exhibits of his compatriots, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. 

But today's festivities are a perfect excuse to write about Scotland, look through photos of the place, and honor one of the most famous of Burns's poems, Auld Lang Syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

Ripeness

Before the flurry of preparation begins, I search for a poem to serve as grace before the meal. Or if not, to sum up gratitude for my eyes only. This one does: 

Ripeness

Jane Hirshfield

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,

the pear,

but also the dried brown strands

of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.

And however sharply
you are tested --
this sorrow, that great love --
it too will leave on that clean knife.

Fort Word (en)

In the beginning was the Word, and the word was a Fort,

a peninsula, open to the sea.

Pilgrims seeking vistas and space

scale battlements, walk gunnery lines,

marvel at the madrona, her red skins shining.

We climb steps for inlet and strait, 

whitecaps, a lighthouse on the point. 

Wandering trails.

Reading verses in the vault.

Looking west to spy a mountain range

we didn’t know was there. 

In a place designed for war

we find peace. 

(A salute to all veterans, especially my father  — and all those who served at Fort Worden.)

Stop Time?

Speaking of buttercups ... spring unspooled slowly through the month of March. Daffodils that bloomed in late February were still with us this time last week. 

But in the last few days the season hit fast forward. Our dogwood and Kwanzan cherry were barely leafing out on Monday; now they're in full flower. Temperatures above 85 degrees will do that to a plant.

I'm hoping that today's burst of cool air has stopped time enough to preserve "nature's first green," which is gold. It's been gold for weeks now. I hope, against all evidence to the contrary, that it will stay. 

(A hyacinth blooms in February.)

Up in a Tree

Oh, how I love to climb up in a tree

Up in the air so blue

I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a guy could do

Scaling the trunk and sawing the branch

Till I can see all 'round

Hoping I'm belted and harnessed all right

So they'll catch me if I fall down!

Till I get back to the Earth again

Back where the chipper chips

The homeowners cheer when I'm in the clear

Don't they know, I never slip?!

(With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson.) 

Poems through the Pandemic

In this morning's newspaper I read about a Covid-19 newsletter in Portsmouth, Maine, which carries, amidst the grim statistics and prognoses ... a poem. Once a week every Sunday Portsmouth residents can find something else to focus on besides numbers and test results.

The poems are supplied by Portsmouth's poet laureate, the 12th to serve in the role and one of several in the state of Maine. Here's one she wrote after she learned of the passing of a fellow poet:

Today I find the mask useful

along with sunglasses

to hide my tear streaked face,

not wanting to scare the barista

who has enough to deal with

behind his own mask. 

In general, writers weigh in later, sometimes years after a historical event.  Poetry is different, I think, and in this case it's helpful that poets are commenting in real time. 

Sunday's Rhyme

Monday last was frantic-paced

Tuesday slowed, was still a race.

Wednesday came and went so fast

And Thursday zoomed by in a blast.

Friday to-dos meant more working.

Saturday had no time for shirking.

So now we have the Sabbath Day...

I hope to slow down, fi-nal-lay!

(With apologies to the nursery rhyme.)  

Cold Air, Cut Grass

If the aroma of cut grass is the soul of summer, then how do you describe the way it smells on a cold April afternoon? To me there has always been something both melancholic and hopeful about the scent.

It's the promise of warmth, not the actuality. But it's also freshness without qualification; when it's young and hungry, when its juices flow freely.

To catch a whiff of a freshly mown lawn on a brisk spring day is to imagine all the delights that lie in store. But it's also to imagine how quickly they can wither.

It is the seasonal reverse but the poetic equivalent of what Gerard Manley Hopkins describes in Spring and Fall:

It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

A Diller A Dollar

I miss reading Mother Goose rhymes to little people, but this morning it was almost like I was reading one to myself.

Into my mind, unprompted, came these words:

A diller, a dollar, a 10 o'clock scholar
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at 10 o'clock,
But now you come at noon.

I know why this nursery rhyme suddenly came to mind.  It's the first day of my vacation, and I slept from 11 p.m. till 9 a.m.

The feeling, like the nursery rhyme, is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. And, like both, it is much fun.

Fallen Petals

In a slight twist on "March winds and April showers," we're in the midst of an April wind that follows on the heels of an April shower.

That has meant that the April flowers, in this case the lovely pink rose-like blooms of the Kwanzan cherry, are no longer attached to the tree but strewn about the grass.

This is the way of the world, is it not? And has anyone expressed this more simply and more beautifully than Robert Frost?

"So leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay." 

Smile Lines

It's the last day of a soggy July, and I'm reminding myself that if we have to have extreme weather, better excess moisture than excess heat. People in northern California wouldn't mind some rain about now, as they struggle with temps of 110 and a fire so intense that it's creating its own winds and tornadoes.

Compared with that, I can easily find something nice to say about the frequent showers and thundershowers, the coziness they impart on a rainy Saturday afternoon. How they nurture the young trees we planted this spring. How little watering there is to do.

Of course, if I really could choose, I'd prefer ample rains that fall at night and leave the days sunny and clear. But since I can't, I'm remembering lines from a Robert Frost poem about reconciling the choices we can't make. They always make me smile.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Haiku Day + One

Late Tuesday I learned

The day's syllabic net worth,

April 17th.

This year's Haiku Day

Was almost done when a text

Knocked me flat with joy:

"Metal birds stirring

Orange claws puncture the night sky

Sunrise at Reagan."

Thank you, Ms. Abo,

My own firstborn, Suzanne E,

Keep writing poems!

Poetry Month

Trees have budded and bowed, petals littering the grass. Their golds are green now and shade has returned to the land. Oak tree catkins drape themselves on the azaleas and maple seeds helicopter down.

Nature seems ready to burst with all this growth and all this gladness. It needs an outlet. It needs a poem. Even this one:

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Happy National Poetry Month!

The Vibration

Some lines of poetry pop up often in my interior monologue. These are from high school, when I first read Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology."

"The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you."

The poem is about Fiddler Jones, whose crops languished while he played music at every party and dance. He ended up with a "broken fiddle, a broken laugh, a thousand memories and not a single regret." It is the epitaph of one who chose the artistic life, or one, I should say, whose artistic life was  chosen for him:

"And if the people find you can fiddle
Why fiddle you must for all your life."

Such is not my fate. No one is dragging me away from press releases to write the Great American Essay. But I do wake up with internal music, a vague but pulsing beat. It says hurry up, get in, get busy. And on days that propel me from bed directly to the office — without even a quiet moment to sip tea and write my post in a dark, quiet living room — this is how I feel: that the earth has kept some vibration going while I was asleep and  when it grew too strong it woke me up.

The vibration is not artistry calling. It is duty calling. I have been reduced to to-do's. How to change the vibration? That's what I'm wondering now.

This Feather Floating

This hour along the valley this light at the end

of summer lengthening before it begins to go

W.S. Merwin, Seasons

I read these lines this morning and find in them some consolation for the days that are passing, that are spinning us so surely into fall.

For how better to face the next turn than to capture what is fleeting, to pin it down on the page?

this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating
       in the air this house of half a life or so

In memory of the poet Maxine Kumin, who died eight days ago, and of St. Valentine's Day:

After Love

Afterward, the compromise.

Bodies resume their boundaries.

 

These legs, for instance, mine.

Your arms take you back in.

 

Spoons of our fingers, lips

admit their ownership.

 

The bedding yawns, a door

blows aimlessly ajar

 

and overhead, a plane

singsongs coming down.

 

Nothing is changed, except

there was a moment when

 

the wolf, the mongering wolf

who stands outside the self

 

lay lightly down, and slept.

Maxine Kumin, “After Love” from Selected Poems, 1960-1990. Copyright © 1970 by Maxine Kumin.

Morning Fog

After several days that started as cold and hard as a stone, brittle light at morning, we begin today with soft fog and crow-call.

It reminds me of a Thomas Hardy poem:

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;

Although reading the poem more closely, I realize that today's weather is what Hardy doesn't like, as  he says in his second stanza:

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;

I've not been out in this weather yet, but for for atmospheric backdrop while sitting inside with a cup of tea, it can't be beat.

The Encounter

I saw him on the path to the Franklin Farm Meadow, a placid paved trail adjoining a napkin-sized playground. Fat and sleek, he sat munching grass, completely oblivious of the human two feet away.

His jaws worked each mouthful as he hungrily tore into each new tuft. This was one hungry guy — though from the looks of him he hadn't missed too many meals.

Groundhogs are always bigger than I think they're going to be. Good-sized and galumphing. But this one wasn't budging. He had found a tasty patch of fescue and was going to eat it all or else.

After a few minutes I delicately eased by the guy — and that's when he sprang into action. He snapped around and assumed an attack position, crouched, teeth bared. I spoke to him quietly, told him I wasn't after his grass, just on a run.

When I turned back to look at him, he had gone back to his dinner.

A wild thing, observed.

(I'm fresh out of groundhog photos, but this is near where I saw him.)

Seize the Day

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands along the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A.E. Housman

I kept thinking of these words yesterday, of how beauty is bounded by time, how all things precious are. And so this seasonal ritual is not just spectacle, not just renewal, it is reminder.

The blossoms are fleeting; they, like us, will come and go. But we're here, and they're here.

There's nothing left to do but seize the day.

Is Poetry Dead?

This morning's Washington Post tipped me off to a literary kerfuffle that has recently been playing out in its pages and online. An op-ed by Alexandra Petri, "Is Poetry Dead?," has 375 comments and counting. I didn't read all of them — only enough to convince me that no, it is not!

Petri's piece seems to have been inspired by Richard Blanco's inaugural poem and the fact that Blanco "has overcome numerous obstacles, struggled against opposition both internal and external — in order to excel in poetry, a field that may very well be obsolete."

Petri raises valid points, criticizing not just poetry and poets, but a culture that has turned poetry from a romantic, individual act to a heavily workshopped, grant-driven endeavor.

But she certainly touched a nerve.

With rants and reasoning, 375 people took the time to defend the art form, many of them in posts that used the art form itself.

"Poetry turns darkness into light," wrote one.

Another quoted William Carlos Williams, from "Asphodel":

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.