Up With The Crows

Outrage Fatigue

9/11/2020

When I listen to my thoughts, I often hear songs. Lately, though, I’ve been hearing words: muted, numb.

Someone on the news notes that many are suffering from outrage fatigue. I wonder if we aren’t angry enough. I wonder what will happen if the anger boils over. In our most recent staff meeting, we discussed the efforts at play to destroy our election process. This is muted language for the destruction of democracy.

In graduate school the standing advice was to avoid writing poems about current events. Emotions will flare and become too sentimental. This is language meant to numb one from processing the present.

Today I wrote a poem about a smoke covered sun and a bluebird who took peanuts from a woman’s palm. This is language for what we give and what we take.

I’m tired. I’m outraged. I won't succumb to inaction.

Aren't you anxious for bluer skies?

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When Webs Fail

8/26/2020

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Webs appear overnight--sometimes they’re elaborate and other times a worried zag of silk. I don’t stare too long at what has been captured because I wouldn’t know how to interfere in a positive way. And aren’t we supposed to just observe?

Instead, I search out the right light to spot the details.

I suppose these days I’m questioning if we are the web or the catch--will our nation shine in gossamer tones as Whitman described or wither to memories of what could have been.

And why are change makers the spiders/opilionids in this scenario? Feared, misunderstood, avoided, smashed under angry feet?

When I was little and terrified of daddy long legs, my babysitter let one walk into her palm. She told me it tickled. Then she pulled its legs off one by one as if it were a dandelion.

“You see, Jessie,” she said, “We are so much more powerful than they are.”

For years I believed that her method of instruction was not the best approach to impart that particular lesson. But I am almost a half-century old and I experience sadness for that daddy long leg almost daily. I recall its detached center when I hit a fog of panic and seek a shoe or a broom. Almost every time its image lifts the fog. I back away.

Who am I to hurt something just trying to exist?

So many wishes are bound to the ending of cruelty. This is what I think to myself as I snap pictures. I say aloud to the empty webs, will this country further unravel, drift away until it is becomes entangled, irrevocably snagged?

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Barriers/Light

8/19/2020

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For most of this month, I’ve been rising early to participate in a poem-of-the-day workshop with poets from Argentina, Canada and around the United States. Lisa Richter, a beautiful and brilliant poet based in Toronto created the workshop as a way to generate work. Together, we read and/or listen to the featured poem-of-the-day from the Academy of American Poets.

Then we dive into discussion about the poem’s shape, devices, intent, delivery, and a host of any number of things that catch our individual attention. After our discussion, we mute our virtual videos and microphones and write for 20 minutes.

In two weeks, I’ve generated more work than in the past two years. Granted, some things have been going on--a new job, a move to California, a pandemic. Still, it's important to acknowledge how a community created at a distance has become a community based in the heart--meaningful in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

Writing is an isolated art--that’s the standard thinking. And, certainly, when the work is happening, it must arise from the self. What a joy, though, to be plugged into a community of poets and writers who love and practice poetry and writing.

The energy created from a collaborative space like this is different than that of an academic workshop. Maybe it’s just blocking 20 minutes for uninterrupted pen-to-paper or fingers-to-keys that I’ve been missing, but I think it’s more than that. We find our way together through the words of others and then our own.

I’ve missed this process. To my delight, I feel better both physically and mentally than I have in quite some time. My hero understood what I am now more deeply comprehending:

What you don’t do can be a destructive force. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

So, what is the thing that creates a negative space when you don’t do it? I’d love to hear from you!

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What We Miss

8/17/2020

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Since the pandemic, the backyard has become our theater. Now playing: swallows, dapper phoebes, scrub jays, crows, ravens, and for the double encore, Coopers Hawk followed by Anna's Hummingbird. Occasionally, we'll spot a misguided seagull flying away from the ocean. It's not that birds are a substitute for crowds, family or friends. But there is something reassuring in how they rise with the sun, and go about their daily routines as the rest of us navigate forced distances. Yesterday, in quick succession, we identified a canyon wren and as it flew from its perch two monarch butterflies filled the space. So beautiful, it was almost ridiculous. Two months or so after we relocated from Arizona, I was up with the crows. Coffee was brewing and while waiting, I found myself staring at the point where our yard meets Conejo Canyon. There was a thick strip of coastal fog beginning to lift.

Just as I was about to get on with it, a coyote approached the iron fence. I think I gasped. My family was sleeping and I recall wishing someone had been awake to see this moment--simultaneously wild and domestic. That feeling quickly passed and I began to treasure that the moment was mine. The coyote and I stared at one another for a full minute at least. Fog began to dissipate and he slowly turned to continue his journey, taking the stillness in our connection with him. I wondered what I might miss after I left for work. Now I'm beginning to know.

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Up with the Crows

Outrage Fatigue

When Webs Fail

Barriers/Light

What We Miss