It’s been a long while since I’ve published any of my poetry. It’s been a long time since I’ve written any poetry.
Early last spring I ran across a request for submissions from the Ballard Street Poetry Journal, and I took a chance and submitted one, which was published in the current Summer 2010 issue.
I find the poetry in many journals rather inaccessible, either for reasons of language or subject. But I loved all of the poems in the Ballard Street Poetry Journal. Here’s mine, which appears on Page 21:
The Gravity of Gardens
They gave me a garden the size of a grave,
so I filled it with raucous reminders of sense:
riots of marigold, lavender, sage
rosemary, basil dianthus, rue.
And waving madly above them all
spears of brazen Jerusalem artichoke
that perplexing garden gypsy
that blossoms and burrows,
grows up to nine feet tall, and
in the harsh summer storm
dances her defiance
to the grim arrogance
of gravity.
It’s somewhere in the mid 1940s and I am somewhere around 7 years old. It’s somewhere on a summer-crowded Long Island beach, onto which a caravan of my relatives descend every weekend.
Under the striped beach umbrella on a sand-dusted threadbare blanket, I lie on my side, my face buried in the mown-hay smell of a sweetgrass coolie hat. I am lulled by the soughing surf, the surround of soft talkings, the salt-stung breeze, and the brain-sticking smells of sun lotion, sweat, and sweetgrass. I want the moment to last forever.
It is a hot yesterday, and I am sitting in the dappled shade at a pond where we take my grandson to play. I close my eyes and conjure the senses of childhood from the splashes and chatters that drift my way across the busy sand. And I yearn for the smell of a sweetgrass coolie hat.
I am a year older than Wonder Woman, and she was my favorite comic book character beginning on the day I first walked into Mr. Wellman’s candy store and discovered her on the shelves.
But today’s comic publisher is going to turn her into something she was never meant to be, and I, personally resent the insulting “updating.”
My Wonder Woman had a past, a “backstory” worthy of her mythic and iconic stature. From here:
From her inception, Wonder Woman was not out to just stop criminals, but to reform them. On a small island off Paradise Island was Transformation Island, a rehabilitation complex created by the Amazons to house and reform criminals.
Armed with her bulletproof bracelets, magic lasso, and her amazonian training, Princess Diana was the archetype of the perfect woman from the mind of her creator, William Moulton Marston. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong, but still possessed a soft side. At that time, her powers came from ‘Amazon Concentration,’ not as a gift from the gods.
Wonder Woman’s magic lasso was supposedly forged from the Magic Girdle of Aphrodite, which Queen Hippolyta (Wonder Woman’s) mother was bequeathed by the Goddess. Hephastateus borrowed the belt, removed links from it, and that is where the magic lasso came from. It was unbreakable, infinitely stretchable, and could make all who are encircled in it tell the truth.
I first become interested in Greek and Roman mythology because of that original Wonder Woman story.
I google their names, the people I knew in my past — poets, painters, psychologists who kept my psyche stirred, my shadows swirling through radiant darkness; dancers who swept me across ballrooms and turned my nights starry, my limbs light and fair. Do they ever google me and remember?
On Mother’s Day for the past several years, I have reposted the following message to my two, now grown, offspring. I wouldn’t be a mother without them, after all, and I wish I had been a better one, after all.
Some women take to mothering naturally. I had to work at it. And so I wasn’t the best mother in the world. I would have worked outside the home whether I had become a single mom or not. And because I did, mine were latchkey kids, with my daughter, beginning at age 12, taking care of her younger brother, age 5, after school. I left them some evenings to go out on dates. Oh, I did cook them healthy meals, and even cookies sometimes. I made their Halloween costumes and went to all parent events at their schools. My daughter took ballet lessons, belonged to 4H (but I got kicked out as Assistant Leader because I wouldn’t salute the flag during the Vietnam War). I made my son a Dr. Who scarf and took him to Dr. Who fan events. I bought him lots of comic books, invited friends over to play, and taught him how to throw a ball.
But most of all, I think/hope I did for them what my mother was never able to do for me, — give them the freedom and encouragement to become who they wanted to be — to explore, make mistakes, and search for their bliss. I think/hope that I always let them know that, as far as I was concerned, I loved them just the way they were/are.
Not having had that affirmation from my mother still affects my relationship with her. I hope that my doing that right for them neutralizes all the wrong things I did as they were growing up.
So, you two (now adult) kids, here’s to you both. You keep me thinking, you keep me informed, you keep me honest, and, in many ways, you keep me vital. I’m so glad that I’m your mother.
So, in memory of those not-always-good ol’ days that you two somehow managed to survive with style, here you are, playing “air guitar and drums” — enjoying each other’s company sometime in the late 70s and bringing so much delight into my life.
The book, which contains free verse and reprints of prayers and bits of prose, features lots of Corita’s collage art, which contains lots of cut-up words from ads and headlines, sometimes reconfigured, sometimes not.
The description above is from a post on the site from which I won the book — Killing the Buddha. It’s a site that I find always stimulating.
I never win anything. I mean it. I think that this is the first thing I every won. Well, I came in second in a Swing Dance contest once. Even got a trophy. Usually I don’t even make an effort to enter any kind of contest. Never play the lottery. Because I never win anything.
But this time I did. And I did because I remember the 60s. I didn’t remember Sister Corita, who created the book, published in 1967. But I did remember the Berrigan Brothers, and I remembered that Daniel Berrigan was a Jesuit.
I recently read online somewhere (can’t find it again) that the story was that Daniel Berrigan kept a photo of Sister Corita in his shower with a note that said “no one should shower alone.”
Thinking of Berrigan, I am remembering another activist ex-priest who was a good friend at one point in my life. He has grown immensely as an artist in those past 25 years, although he was good even back then. His paintings, as he is, are larger than life. I just love his new stuff.
I have been fortunate in my life to have had some closeness with some truly unique men, who have inspired me and moved on and left me with the kinds of memories that will keep me smiling someday as I retire to a rocking chair in the sun.
(And I’ve been just as fortunate to continue to have a group of close women friends whose constancy and candor, humor and heart, help to keep me smiling — well, most of the time.)
So, now I wait for my prize, a book by a creative woman, to arrive.
My grandson is wearing a “Haley’s Comet” t-shirt that was my son’s back in 1985.
There was a time when I intended to make my son a quilt out of the images from his old t-shirts, and I saved a bunch of them in a box that has accompanied me on moves since the late 70s. These days, my grandson also wears a 30-years old t-shirt from the original Star Trek movie.
My 70th birthday is today. My Face Book profile photo today is one from the 70s as a reminder of the fleetingness of time and body image.
I am here trying to take care of my 94 year old mother , but I am feeling like the sciatica inflicted 70 year old that I am.
And I’m pissed because my laptop wont connect to the net even tho the wifi sig is coming in strong. So I’m doing this late at nite on my iphone because it’s my only time my hands are free of my mother’s ferocious grasp.
Let me tell you, those 70s were a hell of a lot more fun than this one.
But it’s my birthday so I’ll bitch if I want to. Hell, my first birthday card is my jury duty notice.
I am watching the evolution of the third generation of our family’s non-believers. He’s 7 years old now, asking questions like “if everyone has a mother, than shouldn’t the first mother have had a mother.” And so he learns about evolution.
He doesn’t ask about god or the first Christmas. He knows the stories. The various creation stories. The various winter celebration stories. He knows that different people believe different things when it comes to all things “god.”
He’s never been to an actual church service, although he might when my 94 year old Catholic mother finally passes away. He understands death as the final human event, and he participated in our ritual when we sent his grandfather’s ashes into the sea. He understands the power of ritual, apart from its religious associations.
What causes him to wonder, to experience awe, are the questions of science. What makes him feel secure are the roots of family. What sparks his creativity is the vitality of this planet’s various mythologies.
I brought up two compassionate, ethical, moral children (now adults) without a belief in in god. If they feel the awesomeness of the divine around them, it is through the natural world and their connection to it. And through their example and teaching, my grandson is sensing that divine as well.
Some people find comfort in faith. That’s OK. It’s just not us.
But we do find comfort in some cultural traditions. Christmas, for example.
It’s Christmas Eve.
For dinner tonight, we will have beet barszcz and three different kinds of pierogi. My daughter has kept part of the family’s Polish food tradition.
We will open family presents tonight in front of the lit Christmas tree, and Santa will come when we are all asleep and fill our stockings. For us it’s a cultural thing, not a religious. After all, stories of virgin births are a part of almost every cultural mythology.
We will set a place for the absent member of our family, way out in Portland, Oregon, who, we hope, will enjoy the box of gifts we sent out to him.
On Christmas Day, we will go to my son-in-law’s family to continue the feast.
Christmas, Xmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Solstice. We celebrate our family and hope for a future in which we all will thrive.
I’m not sure how I found that site — probably just surfing around, looking for something to think about, care about. Not that there isn’t plenty out there: homeless, bankruptcy, greed, war, fraud, despair. Oh, yes, plenty to think about and care about. Too much, as a matter of fact. Too much for my tired brain, tired heart.
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him is one of my favorite non-fiction books. Maybe by only favorite non-fiction book. So, it’s not surprising that when I ran across the Killing the Buddha website, I was intrigued.
I used to have an altar of sorts — that’s when I had room for a surface to put it on. Now I have a wall
that includes a witch’s broom, my old power stick, a quilted shield especially designed and constructed for me by my good quilter friend, my new walking stick, Acuaba, and a photoshopped picture of “witches at tea” using the faces of my women friends. As powerful and meaningful as any shelved altar, I would think.
My shelves themselves are stacked with books, craft patterns, and assorted other things of significance. For example:
You might notice the Tarot deck, the icons, the empty box from my 3G iphone, a mini cast iron cauldron. What you don’t see in the shelves below are my collections of beads and jewelry findings that I’m trying to find time to play with/work on.
As I hurry along to get ready for Christmas (yes, I do still call it Christmas; why not?), I think about the cocoon in which I have wrapped myself during this time of world wide insanity to escape from the fundamentalists, the radical atheists, the war mongers and warring sufferers, indeed, the sufferers of all kinds.
I surround myself with resident family and Bully Hill Seasons wine and Chocolate Mint kisses, with quilting dreams and knitting crafts, with escapist suspense novels on ipod and paper, with the snores of my old and much loved cat.
I wish there were, indeed, little altars everywhere like mine — eclectic and inclusive and affirming.
I wish there were an altar somewhere on which if could feel prayers for my suffering mother would be answered.
