Wise words from Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. She was fully connected to the nature around her and was from a very young age. When I read her words, they pierce my mind and heart with their clarity and wisdom. We don't have time to waste in our lives, and yet so many of us do. We waste time on social media, we waste time watching one tv show after another. There is nothing inherently wrong with either social media or tv. It's when we devote hours of our day to them when we could be doing something else, something that might bring us closer to the people around us or to the spiritual or to the natural world. She writes about getting started on belonging to the world, but for her, that world was mostly the natural world. I am also so inclined. There is so much to discover in the natural world, and I've written a lot about that since I became the caretaker of an allotment garden in 2016. I know that one cannot live life as a hermit or hide oneself away, but we have to respect the individual choices that people make about how to live their lives. We cannot force introverts to be extroverts, or extroverts to be introverts. We cannot force those who love urban living to love rural living, and vice versa. And so on. We are where we are for a reason, and we can make the most of each day that is given us in that environment, no matter how difficult. We each have to find our own way of belonging to the world and use our god-given talents to join the world. That will be a different road for each person. The important thing is that one contributes to the world in his or her own unique way. 

Mary Oliver writes: 

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.

Bless the eyes and the listening ears.

Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.

Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.

Or not.

I am speaking from the fortunate platform

of many years,

none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?

Do you need a little darkness to get you going?

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,

and remind you of Keats,

so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,

he had a lifetime. 

~Mary Oliver

(from her book: Blue Horses)

(She mentions John Keats (1795-1821), who was an English Romantic poet who died of tuberculosis when he was only twenty-five years old. A reminder that we don't always know if we have a lifetime or not to achieve our dreams and visions. As I am fond of saying--If not now, when? There is no time like the present to start doing. As the Nike ad says--Just do it). 

A good poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

PITY THE NATION

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (After Khalil Gibran) 2007

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

copyright Lawrence Ferlingetti

Souls that are lit (I love this imagery)

Those of you who read my blog know that I am a poetry lover. I appreciate poetry in all formats--rhymed, unrhymed, haiku, song lyrics, experimental--the list is endless. As long as the emotions expressed are pure, that's all that matters to me. And there is something about poetry that brings out pure, raw emotion, in a way that no other form of writing quite manages to do, in my humble opinion. 

This poem by Clarissa Pinkola Estés provides food for thought in an increasingly crazy world. I love the imagery--souls that are lit can light other souls that are struggling. Beautiful and kind thoughts......

You Were Made For This

Ours is not the task of fixing the 
entire world all at once, but of 
stretching out to mend the part 
of the world that is within our 
reach.

 
Any small, calm thing that one 
soul can do to help another soul, 
to assist some portion of this 
poor suffering world, will help 
immensely. 

It is not given to us to know 
which acts or by whom, will cause 
the critical mass to tip toward an 
enduring good. 

What is needed for dramatic 
change is an accumulation of 
acts, adding, adding to, adding 
more, continuing. 

We know that it does not take 
everyone on Earth to bring 
justice and peace, but only a 
small, determined group who will 
not give up during the first, 
second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and 
powerful actions you can do to 
intervene in a stormy world is 
to stand up and show your soul. 
Soul on deck shines like gold in 
dark times. The light of the soul 
throws sparks, can send up 
flares, builds signal fires, causes 
proper matters to catch fire. 

To display the lantern of soul in 
shadowy times like these, to be 
fierce and to show mercy toward 
others; both are acts of immense 
bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from 
other souls who are fully lit and 
willing to show it. If you would 
help to calm the tumult, this is 
one of the strongest things you 
can do.

There will always be times when 
you feel discouraged. I too have 
felt despair many times in my life, 
but I do not keep a chair for it. 
I will not entertain it. It is not 
allowed to eat from my plate.
In that spirit, I hope you will 
write this on your wall: 
"When a great ship is in 
harbor and moored, 
it is safe, 
there can be no doubt. 
But that is not what 
great ships are built for."

🌊 Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Four beautiful poems by Mary Oliver

How did I not discover Mary Oliver sooner? Well, no matter. I have discovered her now and am immersing myself in the beauty of her poetry. Most of what she writes about resonates with me. The last poem I've included here, Hum, is about bees, and for those of you who follow my blog postings about my garden, you know that I too have written about the bees, those marvelous little creatures that keep it all going. 

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

------------------------------------------------

Song for Autumn

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

--------------------------------------------------

Lead

Here is a story

to break your heart.

Are you willing?

This winter

the loons came to our harbor

and died, one by one,

of nothing we could see.

A friend told me

of one on the shore

that lifted its head and opened

the elegant beak and cried out

in the long, sweet savoring of its life

which, if you have heard it,

you know is a sacred thing.,

and for which, if you have not heard it,

you had better hurry to where

they still sing.

And, believe me, tell no one

just where that is.

The next morning

this loon, speckled

and iridescent and with a plan

to fly home

to some hidden lake,

was dead on the shore.

I tell you this

to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open and never close again

to the rest of the world.

-------------------------------------------------

Hum

What is this dark hum among the roses?

The bees have gone simple, sipping,

that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?

They’re small creatures and they are

filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not

moan in happiness? The little

worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.

Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand

that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven’t you?—

stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings

a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,

then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,

should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.

I think there isn’t anything in this world I don’t

admire. If there is, I don’t know what it is. I

haven’t met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,

and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and

read books, I have to

take them off and bend close to study and

understand what is happening. It’s not hard, it’s in fact

as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,

it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee

nuzzling like that into the blouse

of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course

the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over

all of us.

Wendell Berry's The Peace of Wild Things

I found this the other day online and it resonated with me. Wendell Berry is a well-known American poet who is a firm believer in the importance of man's connection to the land via small-scale farming, and who lives that belief. You can read more about him online here: Wendell Berry - Wikipedia

I loved this poem and wanted to share it with you. 

The poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

This is a beautiful poem by William Butler Yeats, one of my favorite poets. Yeats spent his childhood summers in County Sligo in northwest Ireland, and Innisfree is an uninhabited island in Lough Gill in County Sligo. The poem gives me peace just upon reading it, especially the last line, where Yeats talks about his heart's core hearing the lake water lapping. I understand that intuitively.


The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Black Cherries--a poem by W.S. Merwin

I often find myself thinking about how human beings are an odd mixture of so many different interests and influences. I know I fit that description. I can go from listening to hard rock one day, to reading and finding meaning in a poem that touches me with its simplicity the next day. The fact that we can move from one sphere to another freely, is what makes us human. I am glad for the incongruities and illogical behavior I see in myself, because I find it helps me relate to others (who are much the same).

In that vein, moving on from yesterday's post about a rock song that I really like, here is a poem that I found this morning in a New York Times obituary for the poet W.S. Merwin (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/obituaries/w-s-merwin-dead-poet-laureate.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR0hJX5PK6Zmj_gY_mBuKHfBPLAS3yhWUXMtyKvd2F9l9fhG1HZnYJVmFfI). I haven't read much of his poetry, but that can be remedied. This poem is entitled Black Cherries, and it is a beautiful poem.


BLACK CHERRIES

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day’s colors in the day’s shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

 by W.S. Merwin

Cemetery Road--my new poetry collection

I recently published my fifth collection of poetry, entitled Cemetery Road. It was written following my brother's death in 2015. As the book description reads:

How do we deal with the death of a loved one? These poems were written following the untimely death of the author's brother, and touch on our ever-present awareness of mortality as well as on our feelings of loss and grief in connection with death. They also touch on the losses that all of us experience as we age, be they letting go of our past or of our identities in society, and the grief attached to both.

It is available on Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/y4ww8xh4

A beautiful poem by Edgar Albert Guest--Faith

Apropos my last post, that there are no strangers when I travel, I found this beautiful poem online that sums up my feelings about the world when I travel, especially the line That strangers are friends that we some day may meet. Enjoy.......


Faith
by Edgar Albert Guest

I believe in the world and its bigness and splendor:
That most of the hearts beating round us are tender;
That days are but footsteps and years are but miles
That lead us to beauty and singing and smiles:
That roses that blossom and toilers that plod
Are filled with the glorious spirit of God.

I believe in the purpose of everything living:
That taking is but the forerunner of giving;
That strangers are friends that we some day may meet;
And not all the bitter can equal the sweet;
That creeds are but colors, and no man has said
That God loves the yellow rose more than the red.

I believe in the path that to-day I am treading,
That I shall come safe through the dangers I'm dreading;
That even the scoffer shall turn from his ways
And some day be won back to trust and to praise;
That the leaf on the tree and the thing we call Man
Are sharing alike in His infinite plan.

I believe that all things that are living and breathing
Some richness of beauty to earth are bequeathing;
That all that goes out of this world leaves behind
Some duty accomplished for mortals to find;
That the humblest of creatures our praise is deserving,
For it, with the wisest, the Master is serving.

Traveling through Ireland and Yeats country

My husband and I traveled through Ireland this summer, starting in Dublin and working our way west. We started our trip by taking the overnight ferry from Oslo to Kiel, Germany, and then spent the following day driving through Germany to Rotterdam, Holland, where we boarded the overnight ferry to Hull, England. Once in England, we drove from Hull to Holyhead in north Wales, where we got the afternoon ferry to Dublin. We stayed two nights in Dublin, living at the Sandymount Hotel, in the Sandymount area of Dublin that is quite close to the ferry ports. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats (a favorite poet of mine) was born in this area of Dublin, a happy fact that I was not aware of when I booked the hotel. But that is the nature of my travel planning; I happily discover things that I was not aware of and they become an important part of the overall nature of the trip. We did the standard tourist-type things in Dublin--visiting the Temple Bar district to eat Irish food at one of the pubs there, and listening to some live music which I love. There is so much live music at each of the pubs in this area, as well as many street musicians. Lively and fun. We also took the Guinness Brewery tour, which I had done once before, but which my husband wanted to do. We also visited the Christ Church Cathedral, with its crypts in the cellar containing a number of treasures from medieval times.

From Dublin, we traveled west to Galway, but stopped along the way to visit the small town of Banagher, in the county Offaly. From there we drove through the town of Birr, through pleasant Irish countryside, and then on to Adare in County Clare, where my mother's relatives were from. Adare was recently voted as one of the prettiest towns in Ireland, and I can understand why. On our approach into the town, we passed an old castle and an abby, a golf course, and many green parks and open spaces. The town itself was filled with pubs, shops and small bistros; quite charming. The day we were there was 'Market Fair' day, and I ended up buying a lovely green wool cape that was knitted by one of the local craftswomen in the village. We ate lunch at a small bistro, and I had a salad with warm goat cheese and strawberries--just excellent. After Adare, we drove on to Galway, a city on the west coast of Ireland. My husband's colleague had highly recommended it, and we were not disappointed. It was a lovely quaint city. We stayed at the Nox Hotel, and spent the evening walking around. I took pictures at the local cemetery with gravesites marked by the tall Celtic crosses--a quite striking sight. We ate dinner at one of the city pubs, where I had a hamburger that was just so good, as was the beer. We ended up watching one of the World Cup soccer matches, and it was fun to experience that in a pub setting. We then walked around the city, along the harbor and into the city's Latin Quarter, with many street musicians and young people milling about. It was a warm and nice evening. The weather was sunny and warm for most of our trip; it was only when we were driving in Germany on our way home that we experienced pelting rain for some hours.  

After our stay in Galway, we drove north on our way to Sligo, stopping to visit the Knock Shrine in the town of Knock. This is an internationally-known Catholic shrine where in 1879, a group of townspeople saw apparitions of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and Saint John the Evangelist. It was a peaceful place in a lovely setting, and I’m glad we stopped to visit there.

Our arrival in Sligo brought us into William Butler Yeats country. When I was fifteen years old, I was introduced to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats by my high school English literature teacher, who was Irish-born himself (from Banagher). Yeats was his favorite poet, and he soon became mine as well. Yeats imparted a sense of the Celtic influences and the magic of Irish culture, in a romantic way that appealed to me at that time. All these years later, it still appeals to me, and now I see the true genius of his talent even more clearly. I also understand his importance to Irish culture, literature, and even politics (more by association with his circle of friends). But it is the man who interests me. This was a man who bore an unrequited love for a woman named Maud Gonne; he asked her to marry him seven times, and she refused him each time, but they did remain friends throughout his life. She is considered by many to be his muse. His romantic longings are reflected in some of his early poems. She married the political activist John MacBride (Irish republican) who was executed by the British for his participation in the 1916 Irish Easter Rising in Dublin. Yeats eventually married a woman named George Hyde-Lees, considerably younger than him, who bore him two children, and who was also a great supporter of his writing. She is buried together with him in Drumcliff Cemetery in Sligo, Ireland. We arrived in Sligo in the early afternoon, and stayed at a hotel very close to the center of town. The Garavogue River runs through Sligo, and the river banks are dotted with one charming pub or restaurant after another. Again there was live music at many of them, which is one of the many things I love about Ireland. Sligo and the surrounding area were Yeats (and his family's) favorite places in Ireland, as I found out from the guide at the Yeats Memorial Building who told us the story of his life. Their mother was from Sligo, and they spent their childhood summers there, with fond memories of their stays there. Yeats is buried in Sligo, at the Drumcliff Cemetery surrounding St. Columba church, a ten-minute drive north of the town. From the cemetery, you can view the Benbulbin rock formation; you can also see it from Sligo as well. We visited Yeats' gravesite—plain and simple, no fuss surrounding it, probably as Yeats wanted. His epitaph reads 'Cast a cold eye on life, death, Horseman, pass by'. At the end of his life, Yeats had found the objective eye he had perhaps sought. Or even if he had not longed for objectivity, he had attained a certain amount of it after a long life. He was no longer the romantic poet and man of his youth. We become more objective as we grow older, at the same time as our romantic longings become a treasured part of our past. 

We drove from Sligo to Monaghan along the scenic route, a narrow winding road that led us past several lakes and through idyllic countryside. Ireland is dotted with small farms and houses, but all of them are on roads that lead to main roads, even if they have what appear to be rural locations. You can be certain that you will eventually meet a main road even if you think that you are lost in the middle of nowhere. Once we got to Monaghan, the search began for the Castle Leslie Estate in Glaslough, County Monaghan. My husband had seen a culinary program on the National Geographic or Discovery channel that included the Castle Leslie, and his interest (and mine) were piqued. So I checked it out on google, and sure enough, you could book an overnight stay as well as your wedding reception if so inclined (this is where Paul McCartney and Heather Mills got married and had their wedding reception, as we discovered). The Leslie family own the 1000 acres that make up the property, and have renovated the 'castle' so that it can house paying guests. I had booked the 'Green Room', which had been the room of Sir John Leslie, as we later found out. This room overlooked the lake on the property and had a fairly complete view of the surroundings. Before dinner, we took a walk around half of the lake, meeting horseback riders as we ambled. After dinner, we had coffee in the garden with the fountain, and then walked down to the lake's edge to look at the lake and the boathouse. Fishing is allowed, so boat rental is not a problem as long as you know how to operate the rowboats. There were a lot of pike in the lake, some quite large as we saw from the photos of one man who had caught a few of them. It’s hard to describe how lovely this place really is; you have to experience it. It is definitely a place to stay for couples who want to get away from the stresses of the modern world and relax, if only for a few days. There are no TVs in any of the rooms, and the entire place has a calming effect upon the soul—no stress, no worries, no hustle and bustle. Just peace and serenity.

The following day, we drove back to Dublin and spent the afternoon relaxing, before we found another charming pub where we ate shepherd’s pie and drank a few beers. The food in most of the pubs is very good, from shepherd’s pie to beef stew (with Guinness beer in it) to hamburgers. I love it all. It reminds me of some of the food I ate growing up, since my mother made shepherd’s pie and excellent beef stews.

We then made the trip home, taking the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, and then driving to Frederikshavn in Denmark (instead of to Kiel), so that we could get the day ferry to Oslo. The trip went as planned, with no hitches, and it was a good to know that there still exist car ferries that will take you to England and Ireland from mainland Europe. It’s also possible to drive through the Eurotunnel (the Channel tunnel) from France to England, which we did a few years ago. It’s nice to have your own car with you, as we’ve discovered, rather than renting one, which of course can also be an option if you want to drive around Europe as we enjoy doing. Perhaps in a few years, we will be traveling through Europe in an RV; it’s something we’re talking about. But for now, it’s good to be traveling the way we do; we learn as we go, and tackle new challenges and experiences as well. Some photos will follow in my next posts.......

Some words of wisdom from Piet Hein

Piet Hein was a Danish mathematician, inventor, designer, and poet who was born in Copenhagen in 1905. He died at the age of 90. We were recently at a flow cytometry conference in Copenhagen, and written on one of the walls of our hotel room was one of Hein's short poems, entitled:

Det må vi efterligne (Kulturkritisk)

Kultur er evnen
til at leve livet,
så ny og ægte
livsform leves frem.
Den evne var
de store gamle givet
av hvilken grund
vi efterligner dem.


My translation from Danish into English; I hope that I have gotten the gist of the poem:

We must imitate (culture critical)

Culture is the ability
to live life,
so that new and genuine
life forms are created.
That ability was
the gift of the great old ones
and is the reason
we imitate them.
----------------------------------------------

A new poem--Photo of you in a Manhattan café

This is a new poem that I wrote on the second anniversary of my brother's death. It is part of a new volume of poems that I am working on, in addition to my book about Tarrytown that I hope to be finished with this year. 

-----------------------------------------------

Photo of you in a Manhattan café  

And on this day, the second anniversary

Of your untimely death

A long-buried photo of you surfaced

Causing me to catch my breath

We had met for lunch in some downtown Manhattan café

That you frequented—eager to share with me your find

Proud that you were working there in that melee

Of New Yorkers milling about with their own kind

The contours of your face, your photogenic smile

Your youth that emanates from a decade ago

Your furtive smile, the one that could beguile

And persuade the most stubborn of us so

Your hidden secrets that remained unearthed

You did not give them willingly away

And those of us who tried to probe and came away

Unenlightened frustrated rather gone astray

If walls could talk, and photos likewise

Perhaps you would still walk upon this earth

And smile your stealthy smile for all to know

That happiness was yours, there was no dearth

copyright 2017 All rights reserved

Paula M. De Angelis 

The poem Funeral Blues, by WH Auden

A good friend sent me this poem recently because he had been watching the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and this is the poem that is recited during the funeral service in that film. He also knows that I like Auden's poetry, as did my father. There have been so many artists and musicians who have died recently, but today is also the one-year anniversary of my brother's death. I know there are others reading this who will understand the feelings expressed in this poem. 

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A poem by Joy Davidman

Waltzing Mouse               

Impaled I was when I was born,

Caught upon time’s nether horn,

Murdered through and through with birth,                                                                

Cankered with corrupted earth …

Slick between my fingers run

Sands of time from sun to sun,

Grains of hunger and delight,

Diapered with dark and bright;

Kisses and confusions pass

Dribbling through the fat hourglass ….

And I skip from minute to minute

Each one with me buried in it,

And I see my bridges burn

Gold behind me as I turn,

And I see my painful track

Blotted out behind my back

Till I die as I was born,

Slain upon time’s other horn.

-----------------

written by Joy Davidman

A beautiful poem by Wallace Stevens

Apropos my previous post--a visitor outside my office window that just happened to be a lovely blackbird--I am posting one of my favorite poems about blackbirds, by Wallace Stevens. I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I do. 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

The Amazing Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the American author and poet, who was married to Charles Lindbergh, the famous American aviator. Their life together is the stuff of legend—traveling in their own small plane around the world, the kidnapping and murder of their infant son, living in Europe to escape the subsequent media circus, their celebrity status in the USA—all detailed in the individual biographies written about each of them.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh dreamed of and attained a successful literary career in the course of her long life; she lived to be 94 years old and was a poet and author of a number of books. She also learned to fly and accompanied her famous husband on many of his flights as his co-pilot. She was likely unaware of his extramarital affairs with several German women that resulted in a number of children. If she did know, she took her secret with her in death, and coped in life in the way that she knew best--she pursued her writing. This is what she wrote about writing: 

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil……. I am convinced that you must write as if no one were ever going to see it. Write it all, as personally and specifically as you can, as deeply and honestly as you can. … In fact, I think it is the only true way to reach the universal, through the knot-hole of the personal. So do, do go ahead and write it as it boils up: the hot lava from the unconscious. Don’t stop to observe, criticize, or be ‘ironic.’ Just write it, like a letter, without rereading. Later, one can decide what to do.”

--From "Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986", by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2012, Pantheon) 

But it is her wonderful book--Gift from the Sea (published in 1955)--that captured me with its wisdom, inspiration and simplicity. I first read it when I was seventeen and it made a huge impression on me. She wrote about women’s lives and responsibilities and how they often conflicted with the desire to lead an independent life and to pursue a literary career. She wrote the following:

“To be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass: husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider's web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need, and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living. How desirable and how distant is the ideal of the contemplative, artist, or saint -- the inner inviolable core, the single eye.

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls -- woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.

What is the answer? There is no easy answer, no complete answer. I have only clues, shells from the sea. The bare beauty of the channeled whelk tells me that one answer, and perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions. But how? Total retirement is not possible, I cannot shed my responsibilities. I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island. I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be. The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it. I must find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life. I can at least practice for these two weeks the simplification of outward life, as a beginning”.

-- From ''Gift From the Sea''  (1955, Pantheon)

Another great poem

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

A lovely poem by Walt Whitman

I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

A poem by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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Another hope for the new year--that I choose and take the 'road less traveled' far more often. Whenever I have done so in the past, it always led to good things. So here's to new roads, unknown roads, roads of mystery and roads of joy. Happy New Year!