New Year's Eve Day

I've been struggling to write and revise poems for days, and falling back to procrastination and listening to podcasts about "Breaking Bad"  and  going to the kitchen and baking ( more productive than the podcasts).

And then today my Facebook/Poet friend April Lindner posted this poem by Richard Wilbur:

Year's End by Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.


- Richard Wilbur


What can I write after that?


I'm listening to a tape I recorded off the radio some years ago on New Year's Eve day, from the wonderful radio show "Songs for Aging Children."  Here's one from Neil Young:

Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were
Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were

Old man look at my life
Twenty four and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two

Love lost, such a cost
Give me things that don't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
The whole day through

Ah, one look in my eyes
And you can tell that's true

Lullabies, look in your eyes
Run around the same old town
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I'm all alone at last
Rolling home to you

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
The whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
And you can tell that's true

Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were
Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were

and this one from Paul Simon:


Old friends, old friends,
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.

Can you imagine us years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears

Time it was and what a time it was,
A time of innocence, a time of confidences,
Long ago it must be,
I have a photograph,
Preserve your memories,
They’re all that’s left you...

Some Books I Ditched this year

I got this idea from Sarah Sloat's  ( blog: The Rain in My Purse) post about her abandoned books.

I don't even remember all of them...  but in no particular order, here are the ones I do remember:

Dean Koontz   The Darkest Evening of the Year... haven't read any of his books for a while, though I loved the Golden Retriever in Watchers. This book also has a wonderful Golden Retriever, but the rest of the characters... well, after about 100 pages I could tell that the bad guys were just going to get worse and worse.  So I left it.

Gillian Flynn    Dark Places... I read  Gone Girl, and have talked about it in an earlier entry. I tried this one and just couldn't get into it.  I don't like the extreme self-consciousness of the narrator.

Neil Gaiman     Good Omens... I loved The Graveyard Book, but I left this one after about 50 pages. Just didn't grab me.

Hilary Mantel    Wolf Hall...  I was really looking forward to reading this, but I just was not engaged by it; left it after about 50 pages.

Barbara Kingsolver     Flight Behavior...  I loved The Poisonwood Bible  and  Prodigal Summer, and I know I will love this one when I really read it... but just couldn't get into it this year.

Claire Messud    The Woman Upstairs...  tried and gave up.  Didn't like the characterizations.

Jessica Anya Blau    Drinking Closer to Home...  very picaresque... too much so for me.

Paul Harding     Tinkers... heard wonderful things about this book from readers whose opinion I look to, but still couldn't get into it.  Found it slow.

Mary Karr      Lit...  way too much backstory for me.

John Elder Robison     Look Me in the Eye- My Life with Asperger's... really wanted to like this, but didn't. 

I know there were more. Sorry I didn't keep a list.  I'd borrow them from the library --- most of them downloaded onto my ipod --- and return them without much of a second thought.  Too many others to read and love.   Most of them I have already talked about here.

"Does it always snow like this here?"

I'm quoting one of my first year students as he handed in his final exam on December 11. He's from North Carolina.  I told him it is different each year. We've had more snow this December than we've had for a while in the weeks before the solstice.

December 8, snow and ice...December 9, sleet... December 10, snow... December 14, snow... December 17, snow...

 

never a blizzard on these days, fortunately; some of the profs couldn't get to school to administer their exams, but my friend Jim Grinder drove me over and picked me up later. The show must go on!

Then, the sun came out and it was dazzling:

 and Sister Jean took this one of our courtyard:

Snowy Owls in Maryland!

 

photo by Diane McAllister

 It's called an irruption.  This time, it's an irruption of Snowy Owls.  I'm quoting from reporter Tim Prudente in the Capital Gazette:

"A scarcity of tundra food, mainly lemmings, is driving these owls south from the Arctic where they breed, said Jessie Barry, a researcher at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a world leader in the study of birds.

“There’s typically a snowy owl invasion every three to five years,” she said. “This year we’re seeing a particularly intense invasion. There are thousands of birds on the move.”

One unconfirmed sighting, years ago, was of a snowy owl devouring a gull atop a Glen Burnie light post.

These Arctic owls have appeared in ancient cave paintings and Harry Potter films. Recently, a snowy owl was seen sitting atop a farmer’s tractor in Prince Frederick in Calvert County.

A snowy owl was also reported at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore. Others were reported just north of Tilghman Island, at Dulles International Airport, and at Hart-Miller Island State Park in Baltimore County.

And Anne Arundel?

“We’ll see one. I would bet money on it,” said Tyler Bell, a researcher at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater. “The most likely place is Sandy Point. They seem to like beaches.”

In fact, snowy owls prefer open landscapes resembling the tundra, such as beaches and farms. The owls hunt mice, rats and ducks.

On the tundra, they’ve been reported to attack wolves.

So birders are warned to keep their distance while enjoying the sight. Snowy owls are a protected species.

“There’s something magical about seeing a snowy owl,” Barry said. “Just the fact that it’s all white. It feels out of place down here.”

Haas founded Facebook pages, MD Birding and Anne Arundel Birding, to collect sightings from local birders. He took a detour home from work on Wednesday.

He arrived near dusk at North Point State Park in Baltimore County. There, perched on a tree, above a marsh, sat a snowy owl. A young male, it was spotted, preening itself and opening its mouth — offering the appearance of smile.

Perhaps it had just dined on a duck.

“This is just the beginning of the invasion,” Haas said."

Since then, one has arrived in Frederick County, just about ten miles south of my home.  Here's a photo from  Nikki DeBraccio  on the Facebook page MD Birding:

 
I'm very excited about this, and hope to see this owl myself.  I've never seen one in the wild.
Right now, it is snowing heavily, and I will probably have to wait until tomorrow to venture out in search of this bird.

Calm before the Storm

I took this photo from my bedroom window at dusk yesterday; dusk comes at 4:30 these days. Today we are expecting our share of this very bad weather that the west and midwest and south have been suffering: snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Already, at 8:47AM, the sky is grey  and the world seems more quiet.

Advent Calendar

Painting by David Hollington

Here's a wonderful poem by Rowan Williams:



 He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone,
and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the solf shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, word-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
Decwember sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.


Rowan Williams

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

© Rowan Williams

- See more at: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2280/advent-calendar-a-poem-by-dr-rowan-williams#sthash.vqD6zEZB.dpuf

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

© Rowan Williams

- See more at: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2280/advent-calendar-a-poem-by-dr-rowan-williams#sthash.vqD6zEZB.dpuf

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas, way too soon in my book

Today I drove to Baltimore and spent the day visiting some friends, going to a "Farewell/Open House" and buying my Christmas cards from the All Saints Monastery in Catonsville.  Actually , I drove all over... off the Beltway into Catonsville and out the the Monastery, then up Ingleside Avenue and Forest Park Avenue, over to our house in Windsor Hills, then out Garrison Boulevard and Belvedere and Northern Parkway, over to York Road to Ryan's Daughter ( a pub and restaurant), then home, via Lake Avenue, Falls Road,  up through the Green Spring Valley, to Glyndon, then back via Westminster.
Why the detail?  Because I was amazed at the number of cars I saw with Christmas trees trussed up and tied to their roofs, like large moose.  I was glad to see so many people still using real trees... but so early! Tomorrow is the first of December!  Not only that, the yards of so many are already decked out with Christmas lights and those terrible inflated snowmen and reindeer.

It hit me that in this country, Christmas begins immediately after Thanksgiving, and certainly by the first of December.  I guess this has been going on for some time, and I've only just noticed.

What an old codger I am getting to be.  I don't expect to see all this until at least the fifteenth of the month.  In my childhood, my parents ( my mother, really - my dad was not into Christmas decorating at all) put the tree up and decorated it with me about the 17th of December.

But really, tomorrow is the First Sunday of Advent.  If we were really purists, we wouldn't decorate until the 24th, and then keep celebrating until at least the sixth of January... even until the second of February.    But we don't.

I confess that I am now listening to my favorite Christmas music, for I love this music and will listen to it every day until about the sixth of January, glad to have a month or more to listen to it. 

Apparently this commercialization has been a concern for quite some time.I found this poem by the British poet John Betjeman, from 1955:

Advent 1955 by John Betjeman

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound -
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out 'Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.'

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there -
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They'd sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
'The time draws near the birth of Christ'.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

So it was happening in England , too.  And here's a photo of a mall in Berlin, Germany:

The Betjeman poem I really love is this one, which was also probably written in the mid-fifties:

Christmas by John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine. 

Publication news

 Williams Reservoir --- photo by Russell Joseph Reynolds

I'm feeling more upbeat than I was yesterday, primarily because I had a wonderful afternoon in the company of six Higgins cousins from three generations, and the wives of the older three.  These are re-connections after many years, and I am so warmed by them.

In other news, 

I have been writing, and also, sending poems out. Many rejections, but these acceptances, many of which one can read online. A number of these are poems from my first and second books; glad for them to get more exposure.

 

* My poem "An Active and Personal Devil" will appear in the December issue of Commonthought Magazine, a print journal out of Cambridge Massachusetts.

* I am "Poet of the Week"  for the week of December 2 on the website  Poetry Superhighway:

http://PoetrySuperHighway.com

 

* Just received word this morning that my poem "If Memory Serves Me" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by  Walking is Still Honest press.

 

* I have two poems in the November issue of W.I.S.H.( Walking is still honest!)

 

http://walkingishonestpoetrypress.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/2-poems-by-anne-higgins/

*Also, poems here:

http://www. poetrystorehouse.com/2013/11/23/anne-higgins-poems/

*Also, Anthology 29, an Anthology of Religious Prose and Poetry, has included five of my poems. The whole anthology is online at ISSUU: http://issuu.com/ericmwathi/docs/secondissue

*Also, my interview is up on Molly Spencer's blog "the stanza" . It's about my book which was published last May. http://wp.me/p1fwUY-1cy.

*Also, my poem "Thin Skinned" was published in June in Turbulence, a print journal in the UK.

*Also,my poem "Georgia O'Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder" was published at Little Eagle's RE/VERSE .
http://littleeaglereverse.blogspot.com/

*Also,I have a poem in this anthology of poems about Alzheimer's, FORGETTING HOME, edited by Anna Evans.http://barefootmuse.com/forgetting.htm



* Also,I'm going to read my poetry on the evening of February 20. at 7:30, in the auditorium of the Takoma Park community center, 7500 Maple Avenue, TP, MD 20912.

Maybe you could come!

The Day after Thanksgiving

I love this photo of a Wild Turkey feasting at someone's backyard feeding station.  It came from Project Feederwatch:

Truly, a noble bird, as Benjamin Franklin said.

And here is one in flight - photo by Russell Joseph Reynolds:

They are huge birds.  I saw one stuffed ( not with dressing!) with wings extended,and mounted in a local brewery recently.  The wingspan must have been six feet.

Thanksgiving and the Facebook photos of some of my former students, or young relatives, or younger colleagues, and their families around the table, make me happy for them, but also make me feel my losses.

I’m teaching Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter again… second time.  I like talking with/to the first year students about it.  Clearly there are ideas they have never had; for example, wondering how their parents feel about their departure from home to go to college…and, even more, the good possibility that they will never live in their home towns again ( as they did in their first eighteen years).

 Different passages strike me this year. For example, in the passage where Hannah talks about her daughter Margaret’s wedding:

“Ghosts attend such events… You know the ghosts are there when you see as they see, not as they saw , but as they see.You feel them with you, not as they were but as they are. I never shed a tear that day, but all day long I saw Margaret as her father and her grandfather saw her. I loved her that day with my love but also with theirs.”

I felt that way at my cousin Jared’s funeral recently. 

At another place, after her husband dies, she reflects:

“Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead, he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is, alive still in your love. Death is a sort of lens, though I used to think of it as a wall or a shut door. It changes things and makes them clear.”

Lately I’ve been thinking of all the friends and family members who have “passed on.”  The image keeps being of them on a boat, moving out into the ocean… or in some way receding from my sight.  I’ve been feeling sad lately, but somehow these words help me. 

Fifty years ago today

For those like me who were living and old enough to understand, this was an unforgettable day,
the Pearl Harbor and  9/11/01  of my generation.

I was fifteen years old, and at Bishop Shanahan High School,we were all in the auditorium at an assembly - the National Honor Society induction ceremony. I was on stage being inducted (aside: I lasted in the NHS only until the end of that year, having earned such a low grade in Geometry that I was drummed out) Anyway... Father Nugent (the principal) went to the podium and announced that Kennedy had been shot. I remember that my first thought was "Now, that is a sick joke!" Talk about denial! So we all went back to our classrooms ( homerooms?) and a little later, the announcement came over the P.A. that the president was dead. I remember seeing some of the teachers crying.

A poet-friend, Sam Gwynn, posted this today:

The Day Kennedy Died
By Leon Stokesbury

Suppose on the day Kennedy died you had
a vision. But this was no inner movie
with a plot or anything like it. Not
even very visual when you get down
to admitting what actually occurred.
About two-thirds of the way through 4th period
Senior Civics, fifteen minutes before
the longed-for lunchtime, suppose you stood up
for no good reason-no reason at all really-
and announced, as you never had before,
to the class in general and to yourself
as well, “Something. Something is happening.
I see. Something coming. I can see. I…”

And that was all. You stood there: blank.
The class roared. Even Phyllis Hoffpaur, girl
most worshipped by you from afar that year,
turned a vaguely pastel shade of red
and smiled, and Richard Head, your best friend,
Dick Head to the chosen few, pulled you down
to your desk whispering, “Jesus, Man! Jesus
Christ!” Then you went numb. You did not know
for sure what had occurred. But less than one hour
later, when Stella (despised) Vandenburg, teacher
of twelfth grade English, came sashaying
into the auditorium, informing, left and right,
as many digesting members of the student body
as she could of what she had just heard,
several students began to glance at you,
remembering what you’d said. A few pointed,
whispering to their confederates, and on that
disturbing day they slinked away in the halls.
Even Dick Head did not know what to say.

In 5th period Advanced Math, Principal
Crawford played the radio over the intercom
and the school dropped deeper into history.
For the rest of that day, everyone slinked away-
except for the one moment Phyllis Hoffpaur
stared hard, the look on her face asking,
assuming you would know, “Will it be ok?”

And you did not know. No one knew.
Everyone staggered back to their houses
that evening aimless and lost, not knowing,
certainly sensing something had been
changed forever. Silsbee High forever!
That is our claim! Never, no never!
Will we lose our fame! you often sang.
But this was to be the class of 1964,
afraid of the future at last, who would select,
as the class song, Terry Stafford’s Suspicion.
And this was November—even in Texas
the month of failings, month of sorrows
--from which we saw no turning.
It would be a slow two-months slide until
the manic beginnings of the British Invasion,
three months before Clay’s ascension to the throne,
but all you saw walking home that afternoon
were the gangs of gray leaves clotting the curbs
and culverts, the odors of winter forever
in the air: cold, damp, bleak, dead, dull:
dragging you toward the solstice like a tide.