In the Fiftieth Week of the Quarantine

 

Art by Brian Tarr

Here's a poem from Mary Oliver:

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

Mary Oliver

Snowy Owl tangles with a hawk...Central Park  NYC  2021

Snowy Owl shows up in Central Park for the first time in 100 years

Weird Hearts for Valentines Day

 

I love the art of Christian Schloe.

Here are several of his works that feature hearts. Or in this case, Raspberries.

He calls this one "The Heartache."

Happy Valentines Day to all!

Winter and the Nuthatch

 

art by Cheryl Johnson

Here's a poem by Mary Oliver:

Winter and the Nuthatch

 

by Mary Oliver.

 

Once or twice and maybe again, who knows,

the timid nuthatch will come to me

if I stand still, with something good to eat in my hand.

The first time he did it

he landed smack on his belly, as though

his legs would not cooperate.

The next time he was bolder.

Then he became absolutely wild about those walnuts.

But there was a morning I came late and, guess what,

the nuthatch was flying into a stranger's hand.

To speak plainly, I felt betrayed.

I wanted to say: Mister,

that nuthatch and I have a relationship.

It took hours of standing in the snow

before he would drop from the tree and trust my fingers.

But I didn't say anything.

Nobody owns the sky or the trees.

Nobody owns the hearts of birds.

Still, being human and partial therefore to my own successes

though not resentful of others fashioning theirs

I'll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early.

 

 

I put it shining anywhere I please

 

art by Wendy Andrew

Here's a poem by Robert Frost:

The Freedom Of The Moon

 

By Robert Frost.

 

I've tried the new moon tilted in the air

Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster

As you might try a jewel in your hair.

I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster,

Alone, or in one ornament combining

With one first-water start almost shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.

By walking slowly on some evening later,

I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,

And brought it over glossy water, greater,

And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,

The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

 

Art by Emma Haworth

Old is a good age

 

Andrew Wyeth         Henriette    1967

I very much like this post by Garrison Keillor on Facebook the other day:

Old is a good age    by Garrison Keillor

Old is a good age. Most of your authorities have died off, the uncles who looked at you and shook their heads, your parents who had catalogued your fears and inabilities, the university professors who towered over you, the old bosses, and you’re free of their opinion. Death cleared the decks. Your own narcissism is mostly burned away, and you have a clearer sense of time. Not much left, so why waste it? The 80s can be rough and the 90s are no picnic. So enjoy your ice cream before it melts.

What I want to do is write. The writers who I was intimidated by are dead so the coast is clear. I feel more productive than ever, thanks to the pandemic. If the big publishers don’t want me, no problem. There are online platforms where a working writer can publish his work. I finished a novel, BOOM YEAR, yesterday and if I wanted, I could put it up for readers to download onto Kindle tomorrow. I’ve started on the next novel, the one with the 400-word first sentence. I have an afterlife novel in mind, first sentence of four words: I died on Tuesday. I want to write a book for some single-digit kids I know who are crazy readers. I want to write two columns a week.

The other beauty of being old is that you don’t care if you have five-thousand readers or fifty-thousand or whatever, just as it doesn’t matter if you have ten friends or a thousand. So why wait until fall for a New York publisher to put out the novel you’ve finished in February. And the publishing world is run by New York progressives who are all about diversity, which means that the author’s facial appearance is of crucial importance. Who needs it?

.

( even if it's only Wednesday)

Dreamer Month!

 

art by David Gentleman

 

February

by Jill Osier

 

Sometimes a flag quietly appears

and leads one to a camp in the snow.

 

Oh, I am sick. I fade, I fall,

I curse this month, all it wants

 

to be. Its lot is the same

each time, unthawed.

 

Yet it taunts.

Dreamer month!

 

Another is just as warm,

as firm, as close to sweat and sigh

 

as I was, and this month

knows it. This month

 

sits close-lipped

and wise before the fire.

 

Copyright © 2018 Jill Osier. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Winter 2018.

It seems again that it is time to learn

 

Art by Angie Livingstone

 

"Winter teaches us about detachment, numbness.  But it’s a way to get through.  From winter we learn silence and acceptance and the stillness thickens."
-  Gail Barison, The Winter Solstice of my Soul  

 

Mirror in February

The day dawns with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed – my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy-
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
To which, for the time being, I return.
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the awakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities,
And how should the flesh not quail that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young and not renewable, but man.

                                                 by   Thomas Kinsella

Snowy February

 We've had two snows in the last week; not nearly as much as they had north of us, but still...

Artist: Olga Kavsha

I've been delighting in the artwork on Snow wolf's Winter Nook, a page on Facebook.  So I will be sharing some of that artwork during these February days.

Here's a poem by Margaret Atwood:

February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here

should snip a few testicles. If we wise

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

 

Margaret Atwood, “February” from Morning in the Burned House. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: Morning in the Burned House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995)

Candlemas Day

 

"The beginning of February brings the celebration of the Celtic festival of Imbolc, which coincides with Brigid's Day and the Christian festival of Candlemas. Imbolc marks the coming of Spring, the warming of the earth and the still-hidden possibility of new growth. Brigid (Bree-heed) is associated with everlasting fire, and with the abundance of the natural world at springtime. She is also said to be the mid-wife of Christ, just as the season of Imbolc is thought of as the 'mid-wifing' of the year."  ( Simon Marshall)

 and a poem by the same Simon Marshall:

Candlemas Song

I was not there.
I did not dream my way
up prayer-worn Temple steps
as you did, Christ-Mother, that day.

I was not there.
I did not scan the gloom
or clutch a hand for courage
in the Temple waiting-room.

I was not there.
I did not hear the praise
which ancient ones sang of your child
at the midnight of their days.

I was not there.
I did not feel the sting
which bitter-sweet horizons
of your motherhood will bring.

But I am here.
And I would know a birth
to bring Divine Light’s love
into an aching, longing earth.

Yes, I am here.
And I would do my part.
O let a rising blade of Spring
strike fire into my heart.

St. Brigid

 

February 1 is the feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare.  She is honored by both Christians and Druids.

Here's a poem in her honor by the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney:

A Brigid's Girdle

(from The Spirit Level)

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table

Under magnolias in South Carolina

As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable

As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.

I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet

I'd had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird

And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small plinkings from a dulcimer

Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north

Where you faced the music and the ache of summer

And earth's foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop

In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle

I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop

(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),

Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle

To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring

As strange and lightsome and traditional

As the motions you go through going through the thing.

Soft handfuls of the fair white snow

 

Photo by Kimberly Higgins Crawford     Snow at Skaneateles  New York

Last day of January - and for me, this has been a very long January.   First real snowstorm, too.

Here's a poem by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, one that hearkens back to the Middle Ages:

January -

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 

For January I give you vests of skins,

And mighty fires in hall, and torches lit;

Chambers and happy beds with all things fit;

Smooth silken sheets, rough furry counterpanes;

And sweetmeats baked; and one that deftly spins

Warm arras; and Douay cloth, and store of it;

And on this merry manner still to twit

The wind, when most his mastery the wind wins.

Or issuing forth at seasons in the day,

Ye'll fling soft handfuls of the fair white snow

Among the damsels standing round, in play:

And when you all are tired and all aglow,

Indoors again the court shall hold its sway,

And the free Fellowship continue so.

Photo by Teresa Cero Thacker      Snow on red berries  Baltimore MD

Saturday of the forty-seventh week of the COVID Quarantine

 It's one of those times when I feel that I am talking into a void... not even talking well to myself.

We are expecting "significant snow" starting tomorrow and into the beginning of the week. I am ready for it!

Carolina Wren    photo by Robyn Allen

Here is a poem by Dylan Thomas, in the beginning of the first year of World War 1:

"In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root."

-  Dylan Thomas, January, 1939

Snowy Owl   Cape May January 2021

 

I listen going on

 

photo by Julie Zickefoose

Here's a poem by Richard Wilbur, one of my favorite poets:

Sirens

I never knew the road

From which the whole earth didn't call away,

With wild birds rounding the hill crowns,

Haling out of the heart an old dismay,

Or the shore somewhere pounding its slow code,

Or low-lighted towns

Seeming to tell me, stay.

Lands I have never seen

And shall not see, loves I will not forget

All I have missed, or slighted, or foregone

Call to me now. And weaken me. And yet

I would not walk a road without a scene.

I listen going on,

The richer for regret.

A very good day

 

Amanda Gorman's poem was breathtaking,  and here's another wonderful poem for this momentous occasion by Jericho Brown:

Inauguration

We were told that it is dangerous to touch
And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time

Of disease, our grandmothers
Whole. We imagine an impossible
America and call one another
A fool for doing so. Grown up from the ground,

Thrown out of the sea, fallen from the sky,
No matter how we’ve come, we’ve come a mighty
Long way. If I touch any of you, if I
Shake one hand, I am nearer another

Beginning. Can’t you feel it? The trouble
With me is I’m just like you. I don’t want
To be hopeful if it means I’ve got to be
Naïve. I’ve bent so low in my hunger,

My hair’s already been in the soup,
And when I speak it’s just beneath my self-
Imposed halo. You’ll forgive me if you can
Forgive yourself. I forgive you as you build

A museum of weapons we soon visit
Just to see what we once were. I forgive us
Our debts. We were told to wake up grateful,
So we try to fall asleep that way. Where, then,

Shall we put our pains when we want rest?
I don’t carry a knife, but I understand
The desperation of those who do,
Which is why I am recounting the facts

As calmly as I can. The year is new,
And we mean to use our imaginations.
One of us wants to raise George Stinney
From the dead. One of us wants a small vial

Of the sweat left on Sylvia Rivera’s
Headband. Some want to be the music made
Magical by Bill Withers’s stutter.
Others come with maps and magnifying

Glasses and graphite pencils to find
Locations beside the mind where we are not
Patrolled or surveilled or corralled or chained.
I, myself, have come to reclaim the teeth

In George Washington’s mouth and plant them
In the backyards of big houses that are not
In my name. My cousins want to share
A single bale of the cotton our mothers

Picked as children. I would love to live
In a country that lets me grow old.
I long. I long for that. We are otherwise
Easily satisfied. Where do we get

Tangerines for cheap? Can we make it
There on the Metro? How hot is the fire
Fairy blister of chocolate chipotle sauce,
And will you judge me if I taste it? But now,

We’ve put our hunger down for the time it takes
To come and reconcile ourselves to the land
Because it is holy, to the water
Because it swallowed our ancestors,

To the air because we are dumb enough
To decide on something as difficult
As love. If no one’s punishment leads to
My salvation, then accountability

Is what waits. It moves citizens, mends nations.
That’s for us to prove. That’s the deed to witness.
That’s the single item on the agenda
Read in Braille or by eye, ink drying like blood

Spilled this American hour of our lives.

---

Jericho Brown is a poet and the director of the creative-writing program at Emory University. He has written three collections of poetry, including “The Tradition,” which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was published by Copper Canyon Press.

We were told that it is dangerous to touch
And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time

Of disease, our grandmothers
Whole. We imagine an impossible
America and call one another
A fool for doing so. Grown up from the ground,

Thrown out of the sea, fallen from the sky,
No matter how we’ve come, we’ve come a mighty
Long way. If I touch any of you, if I
Shake one hand, I am nearer another

Beginning. Can’t you feel it? The trouble
With me is I’m just like you. I don’t want
To be hopeful if it means I’ve got to be
Naïve. I’ve bent so low in my hunger,

My hair’s already been in the soup,
And when I speak it’s just beneath my self-
Imposed halo. You’ll forgive me if you can
Forgive yourself. I forgive you as you build

A museum of weapons we soon visit
Just to see what we once were. I forgive us
Our debts. We were told to wake up grateful,
So we try to fall asleep that way. Where, then,

Shall we put our pains when we want rest?
I don’t carry a knife, but I understand
The desperation of those who do,
Which is why I am recounting the facts

As calmly as I can. The year is new,
And we mean to use our imaginations.
One of us wants to raise George Stinney
From the dead. One of us wants a small vial

Of the sweat left on Sylvia Rivera’s
Headband. Some want to be the music made
Magical by Bill Withers’s stutter.
Others come with maps and magnifying

Glasses and graphite pencils to find
Locations beside the mind where we are not
Patrolled or surveilled or corralled or chained.
I, myself, have come to reclaim the teeth

In George Washington’s mouth and plant them
In the backyards of big houses that are not
In my name. My cousins want to share
A single bale of the cotton our mothers

Picked as children. I would love to live
In a country that lets me grow old.
I long. I long for that. We are otherwise
Easily satisfied. Where do we get

Tangerines for cheap? Can we make it
There on the Metro? How hot is the fire
Fairy blister of chocolate chipotle sauce,
And will you judge me if I taste it? But now,

We’ve put our hunger down for the time it takes
To come and reconcile ourselves to the land
Because it is holy, to the water
Because it swallowed our ancestors,

To the air because we are dumb enough
To decide on something as difficult
As love. If no one’s punishment leads to
My salvation, then accountability

Is what waits. It moves citizens, mends nations.
That’s for us to prove. That’s the deed to witness.
That’s the single item on the agenda
Read in Braille or by eye, ink drying like blood

Spilled this American hour of our lives.

---

Jericho Brown is a poet and the director of the creative-writing program at Emory University. He has written three collections of poetry, including “The Tradition,” which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was published by Copper Canyon Press.

•