Month: November 2018

For the past month, I’ve made a batch of applesauce on a Monday morning. I’m trying to figure out how to make enough to last us a bit, but at the rate the apples are coming in to the Farmer’s Market – some perfect and crisp, others just slightly overripe – it’s time to make sauce while the sun shines. Or something like that.

Ode to the Pink Lady

who needs pumpkin spice?
apples don’t – no camouflage
is necessary
even caramel* apples
are no match for fresh and crisp

(*My syllable count for a tanka may differ from yours, since for me, caramel has three syllables; I know for others, it has two.)

Weekends are, for some, a time of rest. Not so much for Tech Boy, who will indeed work all the hours God gives, and then steal some from the devil. When he works Sundays, I hang out in the office, since sunshine puddles nicely on the floor, just under my desk, and my footrest works well for a laptop or book stand. (There is photographic evidence of this, but… you don’t need to see me curled up like a cat on the floor in the sun, do you? No, you do not.)

Goals
all I want to do
is curl up in the sunshine
with a book in hand
it is this, my lofty goal
as Sunday sunbeams puddle

This morning I’m racing off to a church in Livermore to be with friends, and to sing. I love, love, love the connections and community made within groups of musicians. You don’t have to know each other well to harmonize.

a chorus of laughs
greets an off-key, clashing chord
“that didn’t go well!”
breathe, listen, and try again –
bless’d be those notes that bind us

This is the story of the Technicolor Dream Dress.

It’s a really short story.

Once upon a time, I was asked to attend a big work party for Tech Boy’s job, and tried to find a dress that would say that I was smart and gracious and well-educated and chill, and nice, and a good partner to my Person. Once upon a time, I thought The Right Dress could be the magic to speak all these things, things that would defuse questions like, “where did you meet?” or worse, “where did he find you?” or “I would never have pictured the two of you together,” questions and commentary for which there is really no appropriate response. Once I believed the Right Dress could turn “have you written anything I’ve read?” which means “should i make the effort to know you because you’ll be famous and make money?” into “Oh, a writer. Interesting.”

Dresses, however, are just clothes. Laying all of that at the thin and insubstantial hem of a mere dress was an insidious lie, and a little sneaky way of allowing the -isms to dissolve me, a way to attach moral authority and social privilege to appearance and race and gender.

identity crisis

once upon a time
i wore what i wanted to
played hard and scraped knees –
actions spoke louder than clothes.

now i am at sea
fallen in over my head
and ready to drown
now i bleat out plaintively
“is this ‘right?’ is this dress ‘me?'”

Once upon a time, I realized I will never find the perfect dress. And, after a few deep breaths, that will be all right.

We’ve made it this far! Only a few more days ’til the Midterm Election madness is OVAH! …and then, we start the next Presidential cycle… God Almighty, preserve us…

Okay, so today the Seven Sisters are not honestly repeating a poetic form – this is a new one for us. I’m punning on the repeating pattern of words in the anaphora, which I love. (Also, shout out to my sisters, none of whom are actually nuns, though the idea of a nice long dark dress and a contemplative lifestyle definitely has its merits just now!) Our theme was, loosely, grace in the face of loss. Gratitude, while letting go. The end of the season, the end of a day, these are losses in their own way. I have a poem about surrendering the cares of the day in my head but it didn’t get finished in time…

The anaphora poetic form is, in some respects, fairly simple. It’s not confined to syllables or pentameter – any style of prose or poem will do, as long as one uses the repetition of a word or phase. It worked for Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s part of the swinging cadence of sermons and political speeches (which we’re all paying avid attention to this month so we can VOTE, right? Right). So, on the surface, this was one of the easier challenges I could come up with for a very, very busy month.

Do you ever get the feeling that October is like kicking a ball downhill that only picks up speed in November? Most of us have snatched a moment here or there for poetry this month, but it’s not been a time to stop and smell the roses for many of us. Thus, today’s poem is… meant to recapture the last time we really could slow and observe things as we wanted to — childhood. I thought of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1929 “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” and this became a child’s autumn verse – celebrating the moon and the muck and the bugs in a new season, and all the adventures to be had evading bedtime, at the end of the day. If I’d thought about it, I could have finished the poem with the morning and giving up the loss of night time, but, oh well. I’m taking a page out of Laura’s book today, and combining the poem with an illustration.

I’m grateful this poem came to me, because everything else I came up with was really heavy and dark, and — no. Enough with that right now. This is a month of gratitude, and so I’m thankful for the opportunity to stop and hunker down in the weeds to see what treasures might be discovered.

Other discoveries this month are at Laura’s blog. Tricia’s poem – which she is probably still tweaking – is here. Liz is ,a href=”http://lizgartonscanlon.com/2018/11/poetry-project-november-2018/”>burying her lede. Andi joins us again this month, Kelly’s poem she composed on the fly while Sara’s traveling and will post later this month.

Happy month of gratitude. I’m thankful that Poetry Friday today is hosted over at the amazing and vote-centric Alphabet Soup by Jama-j, who is all things awesome.

I can begin this month’s song of gratitude with a shout-out to the tween clean-up team who again last night showed up to take the rest of our Halloween candy away. They arrived with tiny kids, and I would have said they were babysitting, except for the car cruising along quietly with them, as they went from house to house. Shout-out to the parents who drove their kids from another neighborhood to take my candy! I ♥ you all.

No, seriously, I love you. Don’t think you can leave me in a house with a bag of caramels unsupervised. Bad Things Will Happen. Trust me.

So, this is the month of gratitude and the first thing I’m really thankful for is that I’m getting Thanksgiving off! Yes! After HOW MANY YEARS of being the hostess – about fifteen years before we went to Scotland, and then, definitely, all six years since we’ve been back in the States – I’ve been on the hook, and I am DEEPLY GRATEFUL not to have to clean my house to the necessary level of scrutiny, overjoyed to just bring a couple of dishes and a centerpiece and not have to worry about all the sides, so, so glad to skip the anxiety and the stress, and to be able to get up and go if Predator strikes and I need a nap. My mother is no more energetic than I am this time of year – as a preschool director, she’s scheduling rehearsals for the Christmas show by late November – but two of my sisters are eager to take the hostessing on, and Mom’s just as happy not to have to drive to my house. Win-win-win-win. Thank God.

thanksgiving afternoon

the empty house waits
a nest of blankets, empty
doors and windows closed
on the couch, a book, open
knows the story will resume