Are we bloggers going to do another poetry fest in honor of St. Brigid? Her day is less than a week away, and I’ve had an old poem rattling around in my brain lately, so I figure I’ll beat the crowds and post it a few days early.
Another year of losses, of big questions that elbow their way into the room and refuse to leave. A young man who grew up down the street and went to school with my kids was stabbed to death at a party this weekend. Two young men charged with his murder had a brother killed in Iraq at the beginning of the war.
What happens to kids? What makes one succumb while another one thrives? I don’t understand it, and all my pat answers, fears and suspicions merely mask the fact that I simply don’t know. I can’t keep my kids safe now that they’re grown, and the more beautifully they blossom the more I am aware of how fragile our hold is on this life we cherish.
Recently an old, dear friend of mine took off on an extended midlife journey. He sold or stored his possessions, left his practice, untied the mooring lines which kept him here in the Bay Area, and let the current take him without knowing whether it would bring him back.
Having dinner with him and a few other friends shortly before he left, I was reminded of this poem. I used to give a copy of this to everyone I knew who was going through a rite of passage, whether adolescent or adult, and before my friend left I sent him a copy, too.
The past few days I have been searching through old journals and notebooks looking for notes on an event I went to years ago. I haven’t found the prize yet, but in the process of not finding what I was looking for I did find some other interesting stuff.
Back in 1990 I was taking a poetry class in the evenings, and I worked on those assignments in the same notebook that I used for recording meeting minutes, jotting down ideas for articles, and writing songs. Somewhere in the middle of all that I found the following, dated July 12, 1990. I have no recollection of writing it, but I think I was in the middle of writing a song that wasn’t cooperating, so this came out instead.
Okay, well I guess I am now collecting poems having to do with dreams. I spent some time this evening browsing through a friend’s poetry collection, and came up with this beauty that I had to share. I don’t know whether Reya is doing her Poetry for Brigid blog this year, but here’s my first contribution anyway.
Back when Bowen and Lyra were about 5 and 3, I was a frustrated songwriter. I had several under my belt from years past, but not as many recent ones as I would have liked. There were two or three half-finished songs I was trying to pull together, and somehow I thought it was a failure on my part that I couldn’t find the time with two little kids to finish them. When I did take time from everything else to work on my songs I found I had nothing to say, or rather was too full of things I didn’t know how to say. Not understanding the cause or the cure, I called it writer’s block.
It happened again recently, that most rarefied of dreams: I am performing a beautiful new song spontaneously as I compose it. The dream wakes me up, and on waking I remember part of the haunting melody and lyrics, and am able to transcribe them.
Let us all bow down to Black Oak Books in Berkeley, where on a chance foray this afternoon I came up for air clutching gold in my stubborn hand. And the gold reads like this:
O wild angels of the open hills
Before all legends and before all tears:
O voyagers of where the evening falls
In the vast [...]
Some years ago, my wise friend Cybele gave me a sacred challenge: to meditate on the Wild and the Domestic, and write a poem about each. Cybele has a well-deserved reputation for going right to the soul’s questions, and offering challenges which bring that material to light. Her challenge to me was no exception.
I was introduced to this poem years ago and loved it. Last week, browsing in a used book store, I found it again and immediately bought the book of poems it was in: Praise, by Robert Haas. I used to use his line about longing and distance as my email signature. Ross and I took [...]
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