Through a Glass, Darkly

every motion and joint of your body.

We have been trying this new thing where we take Atticus into church with us. It’s been successful as far as church services with a two-year-old go. He is suddenly able to sit with us and play quietly for part of the time, and he likes the music. Plus, he gets to take communion and I am super into that.

But, you know, having him there means that we are distracted in the permanent way of parents, ears attuned to his noises. This is troublesome if you think, like I used to, that worship is more about stillness than about motion. This is a season of our lives that is about exploring the outside world rather than examining ourselves, and parenthood has been about motion almost from the very beginning. I had twinges in my belly at 16 weeks and the predictions that he was going to be an active boy came true. We rocked him to sleep (and became those people who rock themselves without knowing it). He preferred to run from his very first steps, which, of course, means that we are still running after him. He plows his grocery cart into the wall and smashes his trucks into one another. I stuff diapers and Mike makes dinner and we wipe Atticus’s nose. There is less stillness in our lives than there used to be.

One of the things that resonated with me from the very beginning of motherhood, before I could even feel those first kicks, was part of the preface of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

I am not totally present in church when I am there with Atticus, but I think the act of being there is enough for now. We are making space for our church community to be a priority; even if I don’t hear every word of the sermon, I am learning from the people around me how to make my very flesh a great poem. Yesterday I watched another parent make all those familiar movements – soothing and wiping and caressing. You could never mistake that for inattention.

Published:

4/29/2013 –

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a poem for sunday.

“Happiness” by Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Published:

4/28/2013 –

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Poetry

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the higher arithmetic.

Kathleen Norris read this poem last summer at the Glen – David Dwyer was her husband and she wrote about his death in Acedia and Me.

I think fans of Madeleine L’Engle will particularly like this poem.

“The Higher Arithmetic” by David Dwyer

In heaven, I do not know that there are angels,
but I know there are numbers there, and light.

(Arithmetic and heaven are both uncountably
full of light). Inaccessible cardinals, there,
will lord it over mere infinities;
the naturals will dance among the reals . . .
Apart from numbers, how little we know.

There is no largest prime. The Halting Problem
is formally undecidable. Every subset
of a well-ordered set is well-ordered itself. And so on . . .

Such things are true, even easy to prove.
Are there uncountably more, unknowably other
true things about the world?

I had to go away. A woman I love
(and this is true, too,) put an icon
of an archangel into the glove-compartment
of my car. I haven’t looked, but I know it is there,
as I know there is no largest prime.

Raphael,

she said. His numberless wings cloak all of us
poor travelers who do not know, but are not lost.
The angel, she said, of happy meeting, after all.

Published:

4/25/2013 –

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Poetry

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the practice of the presence (of me).

“homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Middle school is the worst. Puberty is kind to very few of us, which is why you won’t find pictures of me at age 12 on display.

Even before the loose limbs and the big teeth, I struggled to inhabit my body. Was I awkward because I didn’t play sports, or did I not play sports because I was awkward? No one knows for sure, but I can’t throw a ball, never really learned how to swim, don’t know how to dance. If you need a couch-sitter, I’m your woman. Otherwise, you should probably look somewhere else.

I anticipated a lot of sitting with my feet up while I was pregnant, but it turns out that pregnancy is all about physicality. We say that pregnant women glow, but I didn’t expect the ways that everything changed about simply being me. It was different to dress myself, to go to the bathroom. My hair and my fingers grew thicker. I had to ice my feet and my belly became bigger and more unrecognizable every day. It wasn’t over after giving birth, either: there was the nursing and the healing and the waking to attend to his needs. Let’s not talk about the hormones.

My body is a little more lived-in these days. It turns out that growing a person and feeding him makes things a little different, and I don’t just mean physically. I inhabit my body a little bit more, am more present in its boundaries. I have more respect for its strength. Jogging and yoga are still quite enough to push my limits from time to time—no zumba here. But in a surprising turn of events, I am learning to enjoy the physicality of play. Atticus wrestles with me, rides airplane on my feet, and gives me boom hugs. I hide in the bathroom and jump out as he giggles. We do our silly dances together.

The girl who had to be told to go outside is finally learning the discipline of play. Oh, sure, I played as a kid—with my Barbies, or Legos, or on a swing. But Atticus is teaching me how to play hard, with abandon. With this practice comes a new sense of being present in my own skin. I have to admit that I like it.

Published:

4/24/2013 –

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dearly beloved.

“The Wedding in the Courthouse” by Kathleen Norris

I don’t like weddings
When you live here
Long enough
All the spindly legged girls
Grow up like weeds
To be mowed down: matrons
At twenty-five, all edges taken off.
When the music starts
They’re led down the aisle
In their white dresses
And we celebrate sentiment
And money.

There’s only one wedding
I’d go to again
I happened to be on an errand
At the county courthouse
And Lucille came running:
“Will you be a witness?
We need two,
And the girls can’t leave their desks.”

They’d shown up
That morning, no family or friends.
Not kids: he looked about thirty
And she just a little younger.
They couldn’t stop smiling.
She might have been pregnant,
But you couldn’t tell.
It might have been the denim jumper
She was wearing.

I can picture Lucille
Chain-smoking: surprised
And pleased
To interrupt routine.
And the Deputy Sheriff,
A young man, blushing,
Loaded gun in his holster,
Arms hanging loose:
He looked at his shoes.
But it’s the words
I remember most. It was as if
I was hearing them for the first time.
Lucille put out a cigarette
And began: “Dearly beloved,”
And we were.

Published:

4/23/2013 –

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Poetry

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it’s okay to be afraid.

“Release” by Adelaide Crapsey

With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.

Fourteen years ago, Mike and I went, as usual, to a friend’s dorm room for our regularly scheduled Tuesday night TV watching. But instead of teenagers with big words and romantic triangles, there were images of a school surrounded by police. Columbine.

The high school I graduated from was nothing like Columbine, much smaller and more rural. But that did not keep me from being afraid. The talk (much of which turned out to be wrong) of jocks and outcasts, the fact that students were shot in the library, the familiarity of the idea of a school–these things had me panicked. I had seen scary things in the news before, but this one hit so close to home that I sat in my college classes and calculated the fastest way out, fear in the pit of my stomach if someone walked by the open door of the classroom. I prayed and sang out loud any time I had to drive home in the dark. I worried about my brother, who was still in high school, and the bomb threats his school began receiving. I felt silly, because of course I didn’t know anyone there. Of course I wasn’t directly affected. But the world was suddenly an evil place and I was not sure how to fight the darkness.

Eventually the fear receded and I was able to function again, but I felt twinges of that same panic last week when the news was relentlessly bad. I was afraid to go to work on Friday because the anniversaries of Columbine and Oklahoma City and Virginia Tech loomed large over an already dark and heavy week. And I felt shame for feeling that way, safe in my North Carolina home.

What helped me last week was not when people dismissed my fears, but when people affirmed them. The world is a scary place sometimes. I’m edgy, too. It’s understandable that you are scared. This has been a tough week. Those were the things that cut through the fear and the shame and made me brave. I say these same words to Atticus all the time: it’s okay to be afraid. But it was nice to have someone say them to me.

Published:

4/22/2013 –

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the peace of wild things.

I almost posted this poem on Friday, but I opted for William Carlos Williams instead. Today our pastor read it during his sermon, so it seems I should post it after all.

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Published:

4/21/2013 –

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peace.

“Peace on Earth” by William Carlos Williams

The Archer is wake!
The Swan is flying!
Gold against blue
An Arrow is lying.
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Bears are abroad!
The Eagle is screaming!
Gold against blue
Their eyes are gleaming!
Sleep!
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is listening!
Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

Published:

4/19/2013 –

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Poetry

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to be alive.

I saved this poem for Poem in Your Pocket Day so I could tell you all about it, but the day was long and my time is short so I will have to save it for another day. This is the poem I carried today. The news in the world has been bad, and it has been hard to hear the music, but I believe it is there.

Published:

4/18/2013 –

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window.

A short poem today, because it is late and I am tired. Tomorrow is poem in your pocket day! Don’t forget to carry a poem with you to share.

“Window” by Carl Sandburg

Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.

Published:

4/17/2013 –

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Poetry

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the long goodbye.

If stress reveals who we are, then I am a completely awkward middle school student. Difficult news renders me unable to move, words frozen on my tongue. After my dad died, I thought I had learned which things were helpful to say; in my head, I am a paragon of grace and kindness when called upon to support others in the face of adversity. In reality I fear I act more like the Tin Man before he got his oil.

I was not prepared for how I would feel when my dad died. Is that the most obvious sentence ever written? Of course none of us are ever ready for the horrors of illness and the permanence of death. I like road maps and lists and I wanted someone to tell me what to do, where to go, how I should be feeling. I didn’t want to have to make any decisions. I was overwhelmed and I failed to say and do many things, some of which I regret very deeply. Part of grieving is accepting these things as they are. Part of my continuing grief is that I don’t seem to be able to overcome these inadequacies.

Over the weekend I read a gorgeous, haunting book about grief by Meghan O’Rourke called The Long Goodbye. In it, she tells the story of her mother’s death and weaves in different resources on grief and grieving from poets and playwrights and experts in the field. She puts words to many things I thought and felt. Perhaps it would have helped me to have such a beautiful balance of research and experience in my hands, something to guide me. This is a book that should be tucked in a basket for a friend along with other comforts: a warm blanket, a bottle of wine, a box of chocolate. It made me feel less alone.

I emailed Meghan and thanked her for her words. I told her about my dad, and that I wished I had had her book to read a few years ago. She graciously emailed me back, saying that she was sorry about my dad and thanking me for writing her. I realized upon reading her response that I hadn’t offered my own condolences to her, and my insides seized up. Awkward again, of course.

—

Meghan O’Rourke also has two books of poetry. Here is one of her poems as part of my poem-a-day National Poetry Month extravaganza. I highly recommend her book The Long Goodbye (which I purchased with my own money upon fortuitously finding it at the local used bookstore).

“Once” by Meghan O’Rourke

A girl ate ices
in the red summer. Bees
buzzed among the hydrangea,

heavy as plums.
Summer widened
its lens.

You would not believe
how happy she was;
her mother pulled her

through the pool till her hair
went soft. Below,
cracks spread in the vinyl

where her mother’s long legs
scissored; above, wet faces
in the sun smiled.

At dusk, lamps were lit,
Vs of geese swept past,
fresh sheets shivered

on the laundry line,
and as the nights grew crisp
our souls unfolded.

Then winter arrived.
The parents bent over the daughter
tucked in her bed….

Creaking from the cold,
the black walnut’s roots
swelled beneath the snow.

When spring came, the home
had tilted into the tree’s
long, crooked shadow. Nothing

was the same again.

Published:

4/16/2013 –

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Books
Poetry

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it can console.

We are lucky to get two NPR stations, one from Chapel Hill and one from Winston-Salem. On the way home, one was reporting the terrible news from Boston and one was sharing poetry. I opted for the poetry. As the program said, “Can poetry end injustice? Perhaps not. But can it make us see it? Yes. And it can console.”

Here is the poem that Candide Jones read at the end of that segment. Though it was pre-scheduled, it struck me as perfect for today.

“Try To Praise The Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

To fight the darkness and remind you to look for the helpers, I also offer you this picture of a boy wearing a cape and chasing butterflies in a field.

Published:

4/15/2013 –

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Poetry

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give praise.

“A List of Praises” by Anne Porter

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.

Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.

Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter is over.

Give praise with mockingbirds, day’s nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing in the crepe myrtle
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets in southern towns.

Give praise with the rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and her ducklings
As they paddle their way downstream
In the red-gold morning
On Restiguche, their cold river,
Salmon river,
Wilderness river.

Give praise with the whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the cities,
Far even from the towns,
With piercing innocence
He sings in the spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes
And four notes only.

Give praise with water,
With storms of rain and thunder
And the small rains that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating ocean roar
That fills the seaside villages,
And the clear brooks that travel down the mountains

And with this poem, a leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in that other country.

Published:

4/14/2013 –

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Poetry

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saturday haiku.

In lieu of a “real” poem, I offer you this haiku that I wrote to describe my Saturday evening.

curly-headed boy
how did he get so stubborn?
oh, he’s just like me

Published:

4/13/2013 –

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Poetry

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now we are three.

“A Short Testament” by Anne Porter

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.

When Atticus was born, I said that we were a family of three, and it’s true enough that there were three people in the house. But there was also our grumpy bunny, who was ever-so-creatively named Big Bunny (after these excellent videos which you should watch if you haven’t). I don’t talk much about her because there are only so many things you can say about a bunny, even a big one. She loved crunchy things like tortilla chips and carrots. She liked music and lounging. She was not a snuggler. She seemed to disdain everything around her, as if she was the Dowager Countess. She especially disdained Atticus, who acted just as you would expect a small child to act with a rabbit. He tried to ride her, threw his toys in her cage to share with her, and took delight in giving her things from our refrigerator. Yesterday, he stood (naked) (don’t ask) by her cage and yelled at her, “HI BIG BUNNY! BIG BUNNY! BIG BUNNY!” I feel fairly certain that she was rolling her eyes internally.

Big Bunny has been in decline over the past year, and the past few weeks especially. This morning she passed away quietly. She is buried in the back of our yard by the fence, under the tree that’s marking spring with the most beautiful purple buds. She was my special bunny friend and I will miss her.

(One of my favorite pictures of my two children interacting.)

Published:

4/12/2013 –

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Poetry

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this moment.

“This Moment” by Eavan Boland

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

Published:

4/11/2013 –

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Poetry

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spring song.

“spring song” by Lucille Clifton

the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible

Published:

4/10/2013 –

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Poetry

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restlessness wins out.

The past two days, Atticus and I have gone to the park. He climbs as high as he can and beams down at me. He slides down, more carefully than you would expect. He demands that I extinguish the life of any and all bugs that come near him. He throws dirt, sand, mulch.

And still he likes to swing, calling higher, higher! Higher, Mama! He is too big for the baby swing but too much of a daredevil for a regular one. Swinging only lasts a minute or two because restlessness always wins out.

I read this poem to him on Sunday, just like my mom used to read it to me.

“The Swing” by Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside–

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown–
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

Published:

4/9/2013 –

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Poetry

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in love’s name.

“The Gift” by Louise Glück

Lord. You may not recognize me
speaking for someone else.
I have a son. He is
so little, so ignorant.
He likes to stand
at the screen door, calling
oggie, oggie, entering
language, and sometimes
a dog will stop and come up
the walk, perhaps
accidentally. May he believe
this is not an accident?
At the screen
welcoming each beast
in love’s name, Your emissary.

—

I found this poem in Lit by Mary Karr, which I liked but also found troubling for a lot of reasons, most especially because of how much she was drinking when her son was tiny. And also because the book made me want a drink and I wasn’t totally sure how I felt about that.

At one point in the story, Mary Karr is told by her therapist that she needs to realize that she doesn’t have to always entertain her son. I have already learned this lesson, perhaps a bit too well, but that comment ties in to one of the things I dreaded about becoming a parent, the idea that our lives would become an endless stream of monster truck rallies and jump ‘n’ funs (jumps ‘n’ fun?). I had the impression that I would have to mediate all of life’s experiences for Atticus and it sounded boring.

Why do we as adults believe this kind of thing? Do all of your childhood memories revolve around your parents? Mine don’t. I remember my mom reading Arthur’s Halloween and watching The A-Team with my dad, but I also remember hours spent exploring the creek in our neighborhood and that ferocious bike crash I had at the bottom of our hill. My parents did not organize every activity.

As a parent myself, I have learned the fun of taking Atticus to the zoo and following him around the children’s museum, and I have learned the fun of listening from the next room as he tells himself an elaborate story about the trucks on the coffee table. (As I write this, he is playing in the bathtub, enthralled with a squirt bottle.) I don’t particularly like reading the same fire truck book for the 100th day in a row, but I enjoy most of my time with Atticus like I enjoy most of my time with Mike and the rest of my family.

This was a radical realization, but I am not sure why it blindsided me. We talk about kids as if they are a job or a herd of cats to be managed. We talk less about the fun of watching them make connections and discover new things. When Atticus picks up on a joke and turns it around on me, it’s basically like heaven right there in the room.

The poem above comes at a place in the story where Mary, a skeptic, is trying to embrace the idea of childlike faith for her son and for her own recovery. I recognize in the poem and in that section of the book a desire for open-heartedness. It is not healthy for us to control all of the things Atticus experiences, but it is good to be reminded that we are growing together.

Published:

4/8/2013 –

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our prayer of thanks.

“Our Prayer of Thanks” by Carl Sandburg

For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and
bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white
arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles
on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war
days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are
forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and
the system; and so for the break of the game and
the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.

Published:

4/7/2013 –

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Poetry

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