Sabbath # 98

This morning, a pink sunrise after returning from three days across from the bay, across the sound to the Atlantic. It was the house of brothers and dogs. Four brothers and at times, seven dogs in one house, a large house. The first season after our father’s death. We mentioned him very little. What I noticed most was how kind everyone was to our new puppy, everyone except my older brother who says himself he is not a nice person. I said to him, “be nice,” and he said, “I’m not nice.” Odd that his dog, the smallest, is also the meanest of the pack and doesn’t really mingle. Okay, I said to myself. And this morning I read, You live as truth. And yes, he lives his truth. In contrast, my other three brothers are loving and considerate. They love to cook and we sampled their specialties: Steamed oysters, peanut soup, Brussels sprouts cooked in garlic and balsamic vinegar, shrimp and scallops. My youngest brother prepared fried eggs, bacon and toast twice for my husband after making the coffee early each morning. Although it was unspoken, it was important that we were together this Thanksgiving, our first as orphans. Although, I dare say, we have felt orphaned for quite sometime, as we really lost our father when our mother died eighteen years ago. In July,  his physical failing and passing. So now we have each other and our children, the cousins who except for three were missing from this gathering because of moving from San Rafael to San Anselmo, surfing on the North Shore and saving leave time for emergencies. It is a family spread from coast to coast. And today I’m back at my desk in this small town on the Eastern Shore with the creek at the end of the street. My husband has left for church where he preaches twice on Sunday. This Sunday his manuscript in his head and heart. He grew up without brothers. Only one older sister, one daughter, no sons. He helped bury our father. He says the blessings. He doesn’t surf. He listens. And speaks only when he is confident about what he has to contribute. He holds his own counsel. But if asked, he will say what he thinks, reluctantly. Departing, I embrace each brother. Hold the embrace. They hold too. I say, I love you. Each in turn says, I love you. My brothers, not without their particulars are good men, devoted men, hard working men, caring men like the man I married a year and half ago.

Poem in Connotation Press

Sabbath #7

Sabbath 92#

Early this morning I walked slowly taking in the sunrise, dewy grass, a slight breeze and the red maple leaves scattered below the small tree in the center of the yard. I found myself talking out loud like I did when walking each morning on the beach several years ago, addressing the ocean.  No ocean to address now.  I find myself talking to the trees: a pecan, a few pines. And the open sky, blue this morning. I’m back to begging for accepting the world as it is and realizing my focus needs to narrow. Stafford’s holding on to the thread. I never let go. I just forget what is my hand. I forget. I have three windows in my study and the morning light warms my forehead and the left side of my face. Jack Gilbert died this week. He published one book once every ten years. How can we live without his new poems? This morning I reach to my shelf for his books. Reading random lines: From a distance they are uninmportant/ standing by the sea.  Another: For the heart’s sweet seasons. And another: Is the clarity, the simplicity, an arriving/ or an emptying out? If the heart persists in waiting, does it begin to lesson?  I realize I have not spoken about his death since Tuesday. I haven’t remembered out loud the last time I saw him at Bennington with Linda Gregg and how he spoke loudly at Liam. And the hurt, even though we understood, Liam felt after the outburst. Liam,also dead now. We were in Tishman Hall. And now close to tears reading his poems. This is the first Thanksgiving since my father died. Thanksgiving was my mother’s holiday. She made her stuffing the night before: butter, onions, celery, white bread crumbled between her thumb and two fingers. She never sautéed the onions and celery. Simple. Her death years before my father’s. I’m sick of lament. In moments like these I’m still wanting to go home. I don’t even know what that means any more. Going home to what? Where? Poetry sustains me. It holds me together.Under the dentist’s bill: A Thousand Mornings Mary Oliver’s new book. Stacked under a folder of poems: The Poet’s Book of Psalms and Ticket’s For a Prayer Wheel by Annie Dillard. And this week two of my poems entered the ethernet world of the cannon. It has to be enough. These words, words placed in a particular order. That and the love surrounding me from all sides. Like the thread in my  hand, I forget I can open my heart to receive what is offered. The sun moves across the room. The puppy has finally settled down, napping on the rug beside my desk. Stillness. Nothing stirring except sadness. And grains of gratitude. For Jack: Goodness is a triumph. And so it is/ with love. Love is not the part, we are born with that flowers/ a little and wanes as we/ grow up. We cobble love together/ from this and those of our machinery/until there is suddenly an apparition/ that never existed before. And for love. It is true. I am piecing together some extraordinary love sewn from various threads of what remains, held loosely in my hand.

Sabbath #91

I woke early, as always,  but can no longer linger in a dream state. Our puppy must be taken out and I have Sunday morning duty. This morning he was still on the old time, sunrise. We walked to the front yard and he lingered here and there, smelling what I suspect were new rabbit tracks. I turned slightly west after looking at the sunrise and looked up at the steeple of the Presbyterian Church next door and witnessed the very white, the part that holds the cross, being illuminated, a pale pink. The vision lasted thirty seconds at most. I thought : conversion, a message. Yesterday, I was on my knees again with discontent, displeasure.

Friends in the North still suffer from the storm and yesterday I was cranky all day, unable to maintain any sense of peace. I’m reading a Psalm a week, reflections, translations and then writing midrash related to those reflections. I’m also using The Artist’s Rule: nurturing your creative soul with monastic wisdom by Christine Painter as guide. It marries my desires: a life of letters with a contemplative bent. This book gathers my favorite references. Guides and validates the way I attempt to live my life. I say attempt because the process is always evolving as I am, day by day, sometimes minute by minute.

I’m open to conversion, divine or otherwise.  My discontent yesterday, I suspect has everything to do with those poems piled on my table next to my desk. They have been ordered and reorder at least three times into books. Now, they  wait again for new order, yet another rendition… the collected and uncollected as Jason Shinder used to say. And on the other table, across the room, Three Ridges, a collaborative effort with my husband that began when we were friends, six years ago this very day. We hiked up The Appalachian Trail, he taking photos, while  I stopped to write haiku. Our Fall season. With record cold temperatures. We were so excited to begin we ignored the weather. A full moon and at night the temperature falling drastically. We survived the night by putting one tent over another, sleeping side by side with no romantic notions, only staying warm. That was our beginning. Only artistic intentions. The project now still incomplete.

I took butter and let it stand until it reached room temperature. Added the unsalted peanut butter and sugars. One egg and vanilla. Flour, salt and soda. Creamed. Rolled the dough in raw sugar. Baked at 400 degrees for ten minutes. Ate one cookie, still warm from the oven. I love the slant of that particular bowl. How it holds the dough while I mix by hand. This bowl, I used when my children were young. A young mother making bread, rolls, cookies almost daily. Yesterday, with one hand holding the bowl, the other stirring, I remembered. My conversion years ago. A maker:  cookies, poems. And books in the making.