Sabbath #139

This morning at the field, high humidity, then light drizzle. Sweat dripping down my back. I arrived home almost a week ago after being away for three weeks. It wasn’t easy to return to the every day after extraordinary time in Bodega Bay, San Anslemo and Bennington. Walking with the dramatic in landscape, love and literature. Returning to heat, the work of one on one, house cleaning, laundry and cooking. At the field I discover a bird nest. The grass,wet with morning dew. My shoes soaked after a few minutes. I thought, why am I not feeling joy in this moment? Where is gratitude for sharing my life with a loving man, a faithful dog, beautiful and loving children, brothers who care, a lovely house? I have everything I need. Less worries than ever. And then I think about the tragic deaths in the last two years: my former husband of 36 years and my father. And this month of July full of ceremony and remembrances. The house our family lived in, physically torn down. My neighbor of 27 years bought the property, tore down the house and used the existing deck to rebuild and expand. On July 4th there is to be a party and a dedication of the deck, named in my former deceased husband’s name. I want to say it was my house too.We all worked on that deck. It’s as if I or my children didn’t exist, never lived there. The endings were not pretty. No one really knows the truth. While there were several witnesses at different times, it was my lived life. The sacrifices. And my former husband never recovered from our separation and divorce. He was not well and he died from an untreated disease.  And on July 14 there is a ceremony to scatter his ashes. Two years after his death. My children made all the arrangements. Their father’s sister, their cousins and children will attend. I will be present too. And it is the anniversary of my father’s death on July 25th. My father loved me, but his loyalty was with my former husband. He made the match early. They were kindred spirits in the way  they thought and their way of being in the world. I was a romantic. Everything for love, everything for family. I was taught selflessness. I am in deep grief for all the losses. How does one make space for sorrow, sadness? Where can solace be found?

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/three-beards.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/three-beards.html

Sabbath #138

This morning bird call woke me before sunrise in Bennington Vermont. I desperately tried to return to sleep to no avail, the day ahead a busy one. Swirling around my mind, Donald Hall’s reading last night in the Carriage Barn on the campus at Bennington College, our June respite of rigor. His mention of  double solitude, my poem and chapbook with the same name sitting on the book shelf above me this minute, published nine years ago, it’s dedication, For Donald, my late former husband, my children’s father. And today Father’s Day. The poems in that book as I read them now foreshadow what came afterward, not his death but our divide, the truth barely showing. A love, yes. Our youth, yes. And hearing Donald Hall read Three Beards published this week in The New Yorker, all passing of time and events and people. Life passing. And just yesterday I wrote a poem after Jane Kenyon’s Briefly It Enters, Briefly Speaks…hers, I am a blossom pressed in a book, /found again after two hundred years… mine, I am an unmowed meadow, /  all clover and wild iris… Outside my window, the tree line, all green and lush from constant spring rains. The day beginning with scattered sun and more bird sing. Now I hear a crow in the distance along with others. History in a place, lives and literature. Constant and continuing. The inner and outer dialogues. Music, message and yes, irony. Lives saved by poetry. I whisper this poem or that one as I enter, pass through and leave. Today, my own Angle of Repose and Donald Hall’s Closing, each about people no longer with us: Donald McFerron and Liam Rector. Both fathers with living children. Mine: I cross the small hall that connects / our studies and ask to borrow / his book again. He thinks it’s strange / that I’v taken an interest in soil… His: ” Always be closing,” Liam told us -/ ABC of real estate, used cars, / and poetry. This morning I say, always be opening.

Sabbath # 135

Last week I moved my office furniture home. For the first time in many years all my belongings are in one location. I’m home. I’m living in one place.  As I write this I am aware that I am packing for three weeks away from home: one week in California, two in Vermont. And I’m packing light or attempting to pack light. I come home and leave. Return and leave. Mostly because my family lives three thousand miles away, opposite coasts. It’s difficult to bear the distance. Yesterday there were two performances, ballet recital and choir. All day I kept my phone near, waiting for images or calls. Several came throughout the day, silent scenes. I showed the pictures as they came in. One person said, “You miss so much living so far away.” Another,” Look at all you miss.” I stopped sharing the pictures. It’s difficult, feeling joyous about the events taking place and then overtaken with sadness about not being there. Witnessing through the good graces of my daughter and daughter-law who are kind to send pictures as events are in progress. Grateful for their efforts. Next Sunday, I will be with all of them. Look into their eyes. Smooth their hair. Give baths, read stories, play games. Take hikes. Kiss each one. Savor every gesture. Enough to carry me for another stretch of time when voices, images and a sparse few written words have to suffice.