Look is a nosy word –
See, ‘l’ is leaning out,
While ‘o’s are eager, swiveling round
Like foxhounds on a hunting ground.
And ‘k’ uses its clout
To scrutinize, and scout.
Sight is a gift just now, as autumn puts on all its best for a show. The rain and unseasonably chilly weather early on has really prompted some trees to turn – I’ll have to take some pictures once it stops raining. What a gorgeous season – hope you’re getting out into it.
Sometimes it really comes clear how much human beings are creatures of habit. We have our habits and patterns of doing things. If those patterns disrupt, like dropping a rock into a pond, larger and larger disruptions shift outwards, changing the whole face of the pond.
Funerals and memorial services are a disruption. Yesterday I sat with people – still masked, but in a church, a first for me since March 2020 – who grieved not only the departed, but the past, and the cascading, immeasurable losses of the pandemic. It was like a scab had been ripped off – a lost child returned safe, after learning the world is huge and full of incomprehensible, unknowable things, wailing out remembered terror. Most of us were unprepared for the emotional backlash. We grieve being together, in some ways; grieved that some part of us would never return, and that we as a community would never be the same.
Today, I am thankful for… dams. For the bulwarks that we construct into our consciousness which allow us to move forward. For the blockades between the present and the past. For what walls we put between ourselves and our pain and fears, which allow us to carry on.
Barrier is a watchtower word –
‘B’ stands there, bristling, tall.
The ‘r’s tops curve like razor wire
Barred – no one climbs this wall.
You’ll never sneak up on the ‘i’
Which fiercely guards the -er
What’s on this side we classify
As not for amateurs!
It’s stupid to say I hate funerals; honestly, who likes them? Still, it feels like I’ve been to one every fifteen minutes in the last twenty-three months.
Nothing nice to say today; normally I don’t go to memorial services, because I think I remember loved ones better without – but, today I’m going, because it’s important to others, which is probably the reason most of us go. Today we’re remembering someone who forgot all of us before she left. We began to memorialize her long ago.
Dementia – Alzheimer’s – whatever you call it – is an expletive.
M sings a wordless hum,
Love crooning melody.
‘Y’ an arm that gathers close
What was loved and is lost to me.
Poetry Friday revealed that there’s a crowd of folks writing gratiku on Twitter and Instagram – gratitude + haiku = gratiku, and it’s a good practice just to pause and write something small this month. If you tag your post #gratiku or #gratitude, you’ll be rounded up with the rest.
Today is my day of rest; tomorrow I’m tossed back into funerals, meetings, more work on reframing the end of this novel (10 days to the deadline), and all the rest. Today I’m making a simple soup, munching an apple, and doing the absolute least. Today’s word may not seem particularly to inspire gratitude, but it does for me. No, really!
Compost is a common noun:
Composites: worms-plus-dirt.
‘C’ cradles food and breaks it down
‘Om’ noms waste like dessert
‘P’ reveals complexity
Life’s organisms, rife!
Decomposition guarantees
A right-now afterlife.
Poetry Friday is hosted today by Cousin Mary Lee, the Poetry Friday Calendar Maven, whose poem today refers to both percentages and rain. Of course, speaking of Autumn dimness yesterday brought me to that, too (to rain, not to percentages; it may be beyond me to make percentages very poetic). Actually, it brought me not quite to rain, yet, but it did bring me to petrichor… I acknowledge the many times I’ve written about the stuff. It just intrigues me – scientific studies about a smell! Petrichor is meant to be what flowed through the veins of the Greek gods. It’s a mysterious aerosolized oil kind of thing. Though we know so much, it remains a mysterious, delightful smell, which makes us even more grateful for the rain.
petrichor is a patchwork word
roughed out of cliff crags and compost –
the ‘peh’ is a pebble scraped along,
encountering ‘-tri-‘, the signpost
pointing to ‘-chor.’ A conductor’s chord
bids Earth in ensemble, inhale
and breathe a ‘rich’ scent smorgasbord —
a love song of briars and shale.
Happy Friday.
The thing about many old houses is that they have many old dark corners. Root cellars, basements, bottoms of gardens. This house just faces all the wrong directions to get any decent sun inside, even with solar tubes and skylights. Our small house is dwarfed in contrast to the tall trees in our and our neighbors’ yards, so afternoons in Autumn are a bit dim. Later, when the leaves are gone for good, a bit of sun will straggle through, but now we begin the season of gloom.
Not gonna lie, I kind of love it.
Shadowed is a shaded word,
A silhouette of night
Slipping from the s, the h
Cowers from the light.
‘A’ blazes bright – an open noun –
But downplayed by the ‘d,’
What’s left is ‘owed’ to dusk,
Bestows rank obscurity.
In our little house, when it gets colder than the 40’s at night, we reluctantly turn on the heat. We hold off on this decision as long as we can.
When we lived in the UK, we had oil heaters. They… ticked and hummed, as the oil heated and boiled in its metal housing. What forced air with its blowers and fans and filters and oil heaters, with their ticking and humming, have in common is that they’re both noise. Even when they’re really purpose-built for quiet, they’re never silent. And so I lie in bed, listening to them. It happens the first few weeks of every autumn.
Another side effect of the isolation/lockdown period of this pandemic is that I have stopped sleeping soundly. This is a common stress response for many, and it’s taking a long time to get that sleep-ability back.
I miss sleep. And I, probably like you, am deeply, deeply grateful when it comes.
Sleep is such a silent word –
(Speak softly! – Shh! Go slow!)
The ‘S’ is curled up tightly
The E’s snuggled in a row.
Sleep seduces us to snooze;
Leggy ‘L’ lists toward the ‘p’
Somnolent upon the sofa –
Hush, and let me get some zzz’s.
It might seem odd to play with the word “not” in this exercise on gratitude, but sometimes gratitude extends to being thankful not just for what we have… but what we don’t. Imagining the bullets dodged and Dire Fates avoided is easy in 2021. Giving thanks for the smaller choices that we made – or didn’t make – which led to new opportunity or a better outcome takes a little more thought. But, think of it – down to the granularity of right vs. left, stopped vs. went, took vs. gave. And say, “Thank you.”
N shapes with elbows a spiky negation
N-O – a familiar block in the road
T tweets “Time out!” in most any translation
Spoken in semaphore, sign, or Morse Code,
“Can’t make me! I Won’t!” Not for silver or gold.
Does anyone else share my that end of year time crunching down on them? My angst, as deadlines loom (planned, unplanned, and now somehow EARLIER), and all the things I promised people gladly that I would do, I now am feeling like I’m slap-dashing and barely getting done. Going through my head are the words, “Ugh! I do not have time to post every day in the month of November.”
“Even though I want to, I do not have time to write a poem every day for the month of November.”
“Even though it’s traditional for this time of year, I do not have time for gratiti…”
…wait, really?! This has been a year in which I’ve received a great deal. I’d better have some time for a gratitude project!
I’ve tried to do a gratitude poetry exercise yearly in November, but I don’t always succeed. Additionally, this year, though, I come with limited time, and, (as usual?) a very dubious attitude. Every year, I end the month feeling truly grateful for my life, and I expect the same this year, (even though I have a deadline this month). Here’s to the transformation.