Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • Writing: Wrestling With The Angel

      “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” – Mary Oliver

      You know those moments when you lie there knowing you’re going to be creaky and sore even before you get out of bed? That was me after a day of bathroom renovation work. Being tall, laying tile seems especially tough on the body. But hopefully worth it in the end. But this morning was the sore all over shuffle, and I quietly got myself hydrated and caffeinated as a nod to yesterday before focusing on today’s work. Monday. Lot to do this week. Lot to do today. But first the morning routine, more important than ever when you feel like a panini in a press.

      Writing every day has its rewards, but also it’s price. Time mostly, but also focus. There are mornings when I have a lot to do in the rest of my life and the last thing I want to do is write. But I write anyway to keep the streak alive and find once I’ve settled my mind to it the writing flows easily. So I sit here writing with the cat perched over my shoulder, tail whipping my head prodding me to pay attention, coffee cooling within reach, clock ticking in my head and so much to say. The writing flows despite the cat, despite the clock, despite the soreness. I’m giving power to the muse; I’ve committed to the ride.

      Blogging is a different form of writing than other writing, and I know I’m stalling on the project I have in my mind. I’ve developed the consistent effort of publishing every day, but there’s more to do. The muse laughs at me and says you’re not fully committed, just look at the schedule you’ve built for yourself around work and family and bathroom renovations! Come back to me when you’re serious about that writing project and then we’ll dance. And I nod my head, knowing the truth is out. The blogging continues, the project doesn’t, the other things in life tap on my shoulder saying time for us. And I write faster, knowing this dance is almost over for the day.

      Mary Oliver spotlighted the commitment needed to the craft:

      “He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist…

      The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work—who is thus responsible to the work.

      The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.” – Mary Oliver, Upstream, Selected Essays

      There it is; guilt. You either wrestle with the angel or you open the door to the rest of life to come in. It might seem like you’re all dancing together, but the muse likes to dance with you alone on the floor or not at all. I nod my regrets, say goodbye for now and welcome the Monday crowd. May we dance a bit longer next time?

    • Listening Differently

      “When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, “What is the sound of the waterfall?” “Silence,” he finally told me. The stillness I did not notice until the sound of water falling made apparent the silence I had been hearing long before.” – Jack Gilbert, Happening Apart From What’s Happening Around It

      When my children were younger and my career path meant something different, I didn’t listen as well. I was focused on other things, or perhaps distracted, or just trying to make sense of it all. I’m not sure an extra decade or two makes much of a difference in listening, but reading a poem early in the morning seems to help. The nest is empty now, but the walls still echo, and the kids are out there in the world. You know they’re out there; you can hear them in the silence. When you see them again the essence is the same, but they’ve changed and so have you. And that’s as it should be.

      When Bodhi was still with us back in those days of chaos, I’d get him stirred up by looking out the window and asking loudly “Who’s that?!” He’d pop up and run from window to window to see what he was missing, and not seeing it scratch at the door to be let out. He’d burst outside, bark his presence, realize he wasn’t missing out on anything after all and go pee on the lawn and go lie down. There are days when my writing feels like the Bodhi ritual. The thoughts have always been there, looking to break free and see the light of the world. Writing every day forces me, reluctantly at times, to let them see the light. And in the writing other thoughts grow, like a seedling breaking the ground and reaching ever upward. We all have so much to say, don’t we?

      Outside I hear my friend the Carolina Wrenn singing her now familiar song. Other birds are singing as well, and the feeder is busy with chatter and flurry. The sun has broken over the horizon and announces that it’s best to move on. The roar of things to do today grows louder in my head. I know this sound too, and push forward before the spell is broken once again. Too late; the roar of the waterfall has broken the silence.

    • Stubborn Gladness

      I woke up early today, looked out the window and saw an orange Waning Crescent moon rising through the trees. How do you go back to sleep after seeing something like that? I re-read this Jack Gilbert poem in the dark, debating the time, and finally got up to make something of the day.

      “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
      but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
      the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
      furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
      measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”

      There is no delight in listening to the outraged, but it seems that some people prefer it. The world can indeed be a ruthless furnace, but you can know that and work to make it less ruthless and get along quite well in this world.  I’m inclined to avoid the people shouting about the furnace from the pulpit, on social media or at the roundtable on your preferred flavor of 24 hour news.

      I’ll risk delight, thank you.  That’s not sticking your head in the sand, it’s choosing not to dwell on the misery.  There’s no doubt the world is teetering on the brink of chaos:  climate change, pandemics, the three amigos of Trump and Boris Johnson and Putin, scandals and scarcity and millionaire sports stars playing in other cities than the one you want them to play in.  But there’s also no doubt that the world is better in many ways than it’s ever been.  You think we have problems?  Read some detailed history from the 16th or 17th century.  We have it pretty easy by comparison.  The furnace of this world is ruthless, and deserves our attention.  But it’s so much better than it was 78 years ago, or 102 years ago, and can be better still.

      “If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
      we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
      We must admit that there will be music despite everything.”

      Fight the good fight, but don’t forget to dance too.  I think if people danced more they’d have less of an excuse to be angry all the time.  Go on, turn up the music and move.  You know you want to.  You can watch the news tomorrow, it’ll still be the same mind game horror show.  Or maybe skip it then too.

      “We stand at the prow again of a small ship
      anchored late at night in the tiny port
      looking over the tiny island…
      to hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
      comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
      all the years of sorrow that are to come.”
      – Jack Gilbert, A Brief For The Defense

      I’m not naive, I know that none of us get out of this alive. I know there is suffering and sadness and struggle in the world. Life isn’t fair and is often unjust. But, to make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil… no, I’ll take stubborn gladness, thank you. I’ll take solace in routine and purpose in pursuit, delight in the magic of being alive, and joy in music. The quiet magic of listening to the thump, plunk and squeak of oars in a dark harbor or watching a rising moon when the world is asleep. I’ll risk delight, despite everything. And you? Want to dance?

    • Giving Yourself Away

      “We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day. Harm and boon in the meetings…” – Jack Gilbert, Harm And Boon In The Meetings

      I’ve had a book of poetry by Jack Gilbert for a couple of years now, but never really felt the pull of the pages to immerse myself in it until now. He’s grieving in this poem, which is more apparent as it progresses beyond my quote, but I’m drawn to the analogy of wood reaching out to the flame. All relationships are this dance between giving yourself away and in consuming the other half of the relationship as they give themselves away. It’s this concept of what you and your partner bring to the relationship today, tomorrow and the next day. Some days you give well more than your 50%, sometimes you give a lot less, but the sum of the two gets you closer to 100%. Balance. Yin and Yang. Order and Chaos in a perfect unity.

      The damage happens when one partner is always being consumed while the other burns. We’ve all been on both sides of that, whether in a friendship, a job or a marriage. Those relationships either end when one half burns out of the other jumps to another fuel source. I’m no relationship coach, but I’m approaching 25 years of marriage of playing both the fire and the wood. That gives me some level of experience in the subject, if never truly expertise. There seems to be plenty of fuel left to keep our fire burning for whatever time we’re given, and it comes back to the lyrics of the song that started it all for us, pointing to this concept of the dance between fire and the wood:

      “Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true
      But you and I know what this world can do
      So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
      And I’ll wait for you
      If I should fall behind
      Wait for me”
      – Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      Maybe this should have been a Valentine’s Day post, but the reality is that the real work of relationships starts after the honeymoon, after the flowers and chocolates of Valentine’s Day, after the fire’s been burning for awhile. That’s when you know if you’re relationship is more than just tinder. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy. I keep coming back to this line, and recognizing myself and a lifetime of relationships in the words. We all offer ourselves to the world, and sometimes we’re burned badly. A fire does similar damage to a forest, but the forest often comes back stronger. A relationship is resilient when both sides recognize themselves in the fire and the wood – consumption and fuel – and each strives for balance in what they bring to it.

    • Between the Memorable

      “Our lives happen between the memorable.” – Jack Gilbert, Highlights And Interstices

      I don’t recall ever using the word interstices in a sentence before referencing Gilbert’s poem here, but it marries well with the quote I pulled from the poem. Interstices is the intervening space between things. So for every highlight in a life; graduation, marriage, birth of a child, bucket list trip, there’s the million seemingly mundane things that happen in between. The drive to and back from the game, not the game itself. The five minutes you’re sitting on rolled out paper in the doctor’s office, versus the time that you’re engaged with the doctor as you’re trying to diagnose why things aren’t quite right. Interstices is the break in the trees that lets that flicker of light shine in your face. It’s the stuff of life, yet the stuff in between the highlights.

      I’m sitting in a restaurant parking lot waiting for a breakfast appointment to show up. The calendar shows the appointment, and sometimes I’ll block off the drive time to ensure I give myself the time. But this waiting time is blank on my calendar. And yet it’s not blank space in my life. We’re reminded of the tenuous hold we have in life when that doctor informs you or someone in your family that not quite right is something worse. For all our talk of living in the moment, sometimes we forget about life between the memorable. Celebrate the highlights, but remember that the interstices are part of the sum and should be savored too.

    • Measuring Out Life in Coffee Spoons

      “Do I dare
      Disturb the universe?
      In a minute there is time
      For decisions and revisions which a
      minute will reverse.

      For I have known them all already,
      known them all:—
      Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
      I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
      I know the voices dying with a dying fall
      Beneath the music from a farther room.
      So how should I presume?” – T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

      I wonder if I would have enjoyed the company of T.S. Eliot.  I’m fairly sure I’d have hit it off with Mary Oliver, and with Robert Frost, but I don’t always click with old T.S.  But this poem, one of his most famous, offers that bold question; Do I dare disturb the universe?  and I smile, for I too feel like I’ve measured out my life with coffee spoons. Maybe there’s more to T.S. than I originally thought. The better question would be whether he’d enjoy my company? That has to be earned too: Want to be in the conversation? Have something to say.

      To write publicly is to answer the call.  Whether the universe chooses to pay attention or not is another story, but in chipping away at it one small measure at a time, we see more, and put more out there to be seen, we get better. Roosevelt’s man in the arena comes to mind. Be on the field doing it. Nothing else matters. Is there futility in the work? Perhaps, but the work offers its own path in the universe. I write knowing there’s so much more to it than this. This is showing up, it’s not poking the bear and disturbing the universe. Provocation requires more skin in the game. Blood and sweat mixing in the dirt. There’s more to do.

    • Something More

      “…I don’t believe

      only to the edge
      of what my eyes actually see
      in the kindness of the morning,
      do you?

      And my life,
      which is my body surely,
      is also something more—
      isn’t yours?”
      – Mary Oliver, from The Pinewoods

      Reading this, I thought of the familiar analogy of a stone dropped in a still pond and the ripples it creates. We aren’t our bodies but a sum of the actions and interactions we have with it over our time in it. The more we learn, the more we offer to the world, the bigger our ripple.  I think of people in my own life who offer a pretty large ripple, and I hope I’m doing the same. Mary Oliver offered an example of a tsunami with her work, and this excerpt from The Pinewoods demonstrates her keen awareness of her own something more.

      I think of living a larger life as well.  Something more involves more, and more meaningful, contribution over time. Acquired skills and knowledge enable a greater contribution.  Something more also means showing up and doing work that matters.  It’s the unseen, uncredited things you do for your family, friends or complete strangers that make a small or sometimes significant difference.  And it’s sacrificing the immediate gratification for the long term vision in daily actions.  What is your contribution?  What are you offering the world in this moment?  And how can you improve today?  I ask myself these questions every day, and sometimes I have the answer readily at hand.  Other days it’s more evasive.  But I do believe being present is a large part of the answer.

      My life, which is my body surely, is also something more – isn’t yours?  I’m watching people I care about age in different ways.  The body aging is a natural, if not always welcome, condition of being alive longer.  Something more when your older seems to be either left in your legacy of previous contributions or in your ongoing contribution.  As long as the mind is sharp, there’s no reason for contribution to stop.  If Stephen Hawking can leave such an incredible wave across the pond for centuries after learning he had a slow moving form of Lou Gehrig’s disease, then why shouldn’t someone who has full speech and much better, if slower than it once was, mobility not contribute as well?  I’m not elderly yet, but I’ll be damned if I just sit in the corner watching Wheel of Fortune when I get there.  I’ll be moving at a modified version of full speed as long as the mind and body allow, and if the body doesn’t allow, then my writing might accelerate even more.

      Don’t believe only to the edge of what your eyes actually see.

    • Fresh Snow

      “Let us hope

      it will always be like this,
      each of us going on
      in our inexplicable ways
      building the universe.”

      – Mary Oliver, Song of the Builders

      After warm temperatures melted most of the snow left over from 2019 and the beginning of this month, we’re being dusted with fresh snow this morning. It’s a reset on winter after unseasonably warm weather, which seems appropriate for me as I do my own pivot in strategy after meetings in New Jersey. We’ve finally, blessedly, put 2019 behind us, and look ahead to what needs to happen now.

      People focus on New Year’s Day as a natural pivot point, but really it’s just a change to a new calendar. Pivoting is a mental game – you know when you’re ready to make changes. For me the pivot happens when I’ve digested all available information, processed strategy and set a course for myself. All of the peaks and valleys of last year fade into institutional memory, or maybe muscle memory, and the new climb begins in earnest.  The question recently has been what am I building?, and the last few days have clarified that for me.  I can look back on 2019 proud of what I accomplished, but frustrated with what I didn’t.  Or I can shove it aside and focus on what I’m doing today and what needs to happen next.  The choice seems obvious.

      This morning, now, it’s time to put aside the appreciation for the symbolic change the snow brings. It serves another purpose in reminding me of the urgency of the task at hand.  It’s time to stop reflecting and thinking and planning.  Time to pull on the boots and gloves and go clear the driveway.  My version of the cricket moving grains of sand and admittedly a small first step in the long journey ahead.  But you’ve got to start somewhere, and this is as good a place as any.  The snow isn’t going to move itself.

    • Attention to Detail

      The funny thing about the first few days of a New Year is that I catch myself looking forward quite often.  There’s nothing wrong with looking forward, just as there’s nothing wrong with looking back towards where you’ve been, as long as you’re grounded in the present.  One of the things I love about Mary Oliver poems is her focus on the things in daily life that you might miss if you’re not paying attention.  Shell fragments on the beach become a story in a poem that makes me think of a walk on the beach in a different way.  The poet, teaching us how to see:

      “I go down to the edge of the sea.
      How everything shines in the morning light!
      The cusp of the whelk,
      the broken cupboard of the clam,
      the opened, blue mussels,
      moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
      and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
      dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
       moisture gone.
      It’s like a schoolhouse
      of little words,
      thousands of words.
      First you figure out what each one means by itself,
      the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
      full of moonlight.

      Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.”
      – Mary Oliver, Breakage

      The other day while leaving Cape Cod I was so caught up in getting things packed up to get to work that I missed an opportunity to go to the dump.  Now don’t get me wrong, going to the dump in and of itself is not my favorite activity.  But going to the dump with my favorite Navy pilot, well, that’s a different story.  But I was so focused on checking boxes and getting tasks done that I let him go off to bring the trash to the transfer station on his own, missing the chance to spend 30 minutes talking about nothing and everything.  Moments like that are available if you pay attention, and slip away when you don’t.  I’ll regret the lost opportunity, and have already forgotten what was so important for me to get done that I passed it up.

      We’re all a work in progress, sometimes things just fall into place and we’re focused on the things that matter most, and sometimes we’re looking the wrong way when the magic moment happens.  All we can do is keep chipping away at it, one small bit at a time.  I know I’m a much better human than I was ten years ago, and better still than I was twenty years ago.  Incremental progress isn’t as stunning as immediate transformation, but the Ebenezer Scrooge kind of overnight transformation isn’t the way most change happens.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear

      So I keep taking action, one step forward and sometimes two steps back.  But in general I see incremental improvement.  Learn from the mistakes, change our action next time if lucky enough to be offered a similar opportunity in the future.  Do those things now that matter most.  That starts with getting out of your own head and paying attention.  Begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

    • Cat

      I live with a cat

      Not very much like the other cat

      But rather

      Like a dog, in her way of

      playing fetch

      with elastic hair ties she retrieves

      She’s not very much

      a cat in that way