Two poems (and not even one title between them)

The heart is rich of its own imagination—
that of the gardener who, looking
through seed catalogues in January, can already
taste the summer’s fresh peas. Up on the top
floor, the skull’s brand of imagination
is concerned with schedules and supplies,
matters temporal and spatial, whatever it is
in dreams that is quantifiable. Not so
the heart, that red muscle, that fluttering sparrow—
it sends out whispers and shivers that ripple
beneath the skin, it labours at feeding the senses,
as though it were the only living thing
to have heeded the commandment:
o taste and see


***



As sure as weeds, come summer’s end,
come the blackberries, and then—
the blackberry jam, then the poems
about blackberries.

Things we wish for: that summer wouldn’t
curl and shrink, then blow away.
That we could pick every last blasted
berry on the bush, and damn the barbs
and scars.

That things would last as long
as we think we need them for.

Hence, the boiling black, the sweetness
spread on good bread on a dreary November
morning. Hence, one more poem

about ripeness, about plenty,
about the wide, golden curve
before darkness.

Thanksgiving

Thanks be to God for this day off. For staying in bed until nine with my warm soft cat while cones dropped from the trees onto the roof, loudly, thumped and rolled, making a sort of Morse code I didn’t get. The ground was thick with frost first thing today, though I didn’t need to look out the window to know, for even before I opened my eyes I felt the wintry cold on my face, as only the thinnest and half-assedly insulated defence stands between me and the cold—but such wonders lie outside of these windows, cold stars and cold moonlight, that it would never occur to me to unroll the bamboo shades that have been rolled up tight the whole time I’ve lived here, even though this would make the place a darn sight warmer. I don’t care. I’ve warm blankets and a warm and cuddly cat.

Thanks be to God for Thomas Merton, who I was reading again this morning—I am forever reading Merton—may his soul rest, dead nearly forty years now, maybe he’s calmed down a bit. Occurs to me I could be entirely satisfied with a writing career consisting solely of copying down favourite passages of his—just this morning: "For my part, my name is that sky, those fenceposts, and those cedar trees"; "The silly, hopeless passion to give myself away to any beauty eats out my heart"; "This is the secret of the psalms. Our identity is hidden in them."* But, to paraphrase the rabbinical story, on the last day when God calls me forth to tally up my accounts, He won’t ask, "Why weren’t you Merton?" He’ll ask, "Why weren’t you Fanny?" I shall labour here below to make certain he need not ask that question. Or, at least, to be sure I have a damn good answer.

Thanks be to God for books, in general. "Admire the world for never ending on you." (Who said that? My mind is a vast lost & found of quotes, unattached to any owner, like drawers full of sunglasses and kids’ plastic coin purses with nothing but bingo chips in them. Who will claim them?) Whenever someone inhales sharply in horror upon hearing that I’ve never read such-and-such an author (take your pick: Faulkner, Dickens, Proust, PD James) I shrug calmly and say that if I’d already read everything out there worth reading, then they might as well shoot me now. I take great comfort in the fact that the world of good books will never end on me (this is indeed a miracle of God, considering the amount of crap that pullulates out there—and I’m an authority on crap. Remember, I work in a public library.) In the last few days I have fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with two authors I didn’t even know existed as recently as two weeks ago. The first wrote a novel so exquisite, so smart and funny (and I mean the laugh-out-loud-and–snort kind of funny,) so utterly delicious that I want both to forgo eating and sleeping and do nothing but read it, and to read not another word of it because if I do one thing will surely lead to another and then I will be finished reading it and never will I get to read it for the first time again, ever. Remember those packets of candy you got as a kid, that popped and rocked and fizzed and exploded in your mouth? That’s what this writing is like. But I will not provide the title of the book nor the author here (have I learned nothing in retail?) because some of you faithful should receive the book for Christmas and I don’t want to wreck the surprise, and I don’t want you to go and buy it yourself. You may ask me personally, and I may or may not tell, accordingly (maybe you’re getting socks or an orange from me this holiday season.)

The other love of my life at the moment is Andrew Hudgins who, for me—along with Jane Kenyon for the chick side of things—defines what Christian poetry should be like in these last days. And so you’ll forgive me for previously gushing about a book and withholding any information that may lead you to identify it (okay, I’ll say one thing: it talks about baseball) here is a link to a poem that if you read it now will make your whole day—never mind, your whole week worthwhile, no matter how badly you’ve screwed it up, no matter how much you planned to get done and haven’t and now have not a hope and hell of doing, it being Friday afternoon and all.
(And thanks be to the donor of literary lifeblood who suggested these books. May I be so worthy as to one day repay you.)

*Excerpted from "Day Unto Day," an chunk of The Sign of Jonas found in A Thomas Merton Reader.

From the "In Progress" file

TWO FIELDS AWAY

Bad weather can’t keep a good woman down.
Sometimes the rowdiest elements give rise
to the most insistent need for a walk.
So I went. Decked out in rubber, with
that sweet smugness of being the only
one out in it.

Greedy wind and fat rain, then nagging
drizzle. Wind so raw it ripped
and tore away at the clouds
revealing ragged strips of sunlight, yet
no part of the landscape was less beautiful
for being so abused. Au contraire.

I walked the way I always walk—across the road,
past the pond, through the forest and out and up
and through again, then across the top edge
of the field, down the lenght of it, then home.
From that last downward stretch the trees looked
menacing in their torment, as though they were
a dark, advancing army—yet I knew how peaceful
it had just been, just beneath.

Then the rainbow touched down
and stood across the field from me, where I had
just emerged from the forest—a bright lovechild
of discordant weather.
I knew it would be gone
before I got there. I didn’t care.
I knew I was a fool operating on
illusion. I didn’t care. Sweet mercy fell down
in bright ribbons and I was going.
I crossed the weedy, wet and crotchety field,
where none browse but deer. Halfway across
and the rainbow had fled two fields further.
I didn’t care.
I went and stood there.
Nothing had changed.

But I now knew one small, new thing. The wind
cracked the clouds open like a knife
and the sun spilled. Trees still teetered
and shook. I could see the rainbow,
two fields away—
as bright as it had been up close.

You know who you are

I often put on short little shows at home, nights, solely for the benefit of my cats. (And, maybe, the spiders?) Well, tonight, I played a little known Hip tune, "Get Back Again," and I dedicated it to you. Not for what the song says, but for what the song is.

I have loved you badly, but I have loved you. That's what's left when all's said and done. I put it in my pocket, and I keep walking along.

I suck at this

This should be no surprise to the two, maybe three of you who check this site periodically, wondering if I've come up with anything new. Well, I have, I just haven't bothered to type it up and post it. I at times get real excited about this online venture, the possibilities for conversations, etc, but when it comes down to it, I just hate sitting at the computer, and so it doesn't get done. Plus there is guilt. Let me tell you a story, a short one: two years ago, I was unemployed and had a ton of time on my hands. Someone I know who works in a retirement home mentioned that there was a nice old French lady there, Mme Thiebaut, who seldom got visitors and who would love to have someone come visit her and speak French with her. So I went, every week. I read to her, I wheeled her around in her chair, took her outside--it was September, beautiful out, and I found out she hadn't been out of doors for over a month. I enjoyed my visits with her, and so did she. Then Christmas came, I went home for a month. I meant to go back, I really did. But then I missed the first week, then another, then... I never did go back. Chiefly, because I felt guilty that I hadn't gone back right away and couldn't face the explanation, even when I was pretty sure an explanation wouldn't really be necessary. That's kinda how I feel about this blog.

To the two or three of you out there, let me say this: I wish I were a better person. Or, that I liked computers more, so that I wouldn't mind being on here, typing away like this. But if I were a better person, I wouldn't care whether or not I liked computers, I would just be dedicated and faithful--so.

What I've come to realize is that typing on a keyboard, looking at a screen and posting online is diametrically opposite to the way I work, to what I want to work on, to what I think about, to what I am, so that there is a great reconciliation work that needs to be done before I can embrace this truly.

I clued in a while ago that, if I didn't write about not writing, I would only write half as much as I do. Which is a circuitous way of thinking and a little dizzying but it's fun, you should try it. Anyway, I've now carried this particular neurosis into the blog world: the self-examining, self-loathing, inadequate blogger syndrome. Somenone (Augustine?) said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. I say, the over-examined life isn't much of a life.

Well that's enough of that. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Lord, have mercy.

To attempt to make amends I will write another post right now.