The life of a teacher never ends and report cards are due tomorrow for all 450 ish of my students, so my time has been maxed out today. I always promise myself to transcribe my old school pencil grades into the electronic gradebook earlier than the week grades are due, but alas, I cannot seem to learn my own lesson.
So here I sit, tired, wanting sleep so badly, fighting off a virus on some sort, and desperately wanting to keep up my writing streak for NaPoWriMo. The poem below is one I have written and revised earlier, but it satisfies me to publish it today for you to enjoy.
Today’s prompt was a good one. Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists will make of us? What about what someone from an alien civilization will make of us?
NaPoWriMo today challenged me to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist. The object or site of study could be anything from a “World’s Best Grandpa” coffee mug to a Pizza Hut, from a Pokemon poster to a cellphone.
I chose instead an object from the past with deep significance. It misses the prompt perhaps, but it doesn’t miss my heart.
grandma's table
the magic of the mahogany table, relating not so much to the nature of the grain, running like streaking waves of darkness toward the light, but to the explosion of connection, gathering strength to weather whatever lay ahead. wondering if the jagged crack near to the one end, weakened any hope for repair. when great grandma sat there three months before her passing, when she complained of not hearing the words, should we have known? when she bowed her head with focused chewing and wanted her black coffee light with cream, should we have pulled her back to earth, resisting the angel of death hovering nearby. or is death the true wonder of all mysteries, pointing toward the light, always toward the light, moving?
He came into the world with ink stains on his fingers— an artist with ancient visions, reborn and reconnected— a hero, a maker, a sage.
He sees the world as a blank canvas his pen and paper the mode and medium for his wisdom.
He seems to know the end is different from the beginning— that transformation is a journey of sky and earth, of water and fire. His fingers find the framework
for setting things right, for sensing the needs, for seeing peace to fruition. Joy keeps him grounded; compassion owns his soul.
Many have tried to claim him, but you cannot tame tenderness. He does not dally in the dimness of dusk but delights in the dawn.
Sometimes I catch myself staring at his ink stained fingers and remembering the sugar sand of Emerald Coast beaches, the shape of shells carved
by the singular focus of the sea. He pays attention to all of it— the dazzle of daffodil, the modulation of melody, the whisper of willows in wind.
What right have I to lay claim on any part of his spirit? What right have I to harness the wind?
Photo Credit: Marcus Ganahl who made this image available for free on Unsplash
The final prompt of NaPoWriMo was a challenge to write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. If you’ve never heard of one before, join the club. I hadn’t either.
Here is an example from John Ashbery: “The Dong with the Luminous Nose,” and here it is again, fully annotated to show where every line originated. A cento might seem like a complex undertaking – and one that requires you to have umpteen poetry books at your fingertips for reference – but according to the folks at NaPoWriMo, I didn’t have to write a long one.
In spite of “tips” to help me “jump-start the process”, this was a considerable bigger undertaking than I originally thought.
Because my friend lost her daughter (and my Lizi’s best friend) on this date, I often write a poem dedicated to her on the last day of NaPoWriMo. This poem is in memory of Jacy Lynn Dettloff and in honor of my friends, Susan, Steve, and Mick Dettloff who lost their beloved daughter and sister 21 years ago today.
This year (in August) Jacy would have been 30 years old. I know this because she and my son Aaron were born just a few days apart.
The grief tears at my heart as well.
Grief In Four Parts
1.
The River
Grief is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
then maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you
into June, when the roses blow.
The air around you fills with butterflies.
I do not know how to hold all the beauty and sorrow of my life.
The morning air is all awash with angels,
and are we supposed to believe she can suddenly talk angel?
2.
The Desert
Little petal of my heart,
I didn’t know where I was going.
I was always leaving, I was
desolate and lone.
3.
The Night
If but I could have wrapped you in myself
I would I might forget that I am I--
a smile of joy, since I was born.
Things change on the morning of the birthday—
the hope is in wakening to this your last dream.
The shadows of you are around me;
the evening shadow has sunk
gleaming. So I can
come walking into this big silence.
4.
Hope
A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent;
she's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Dare the deliberately happy to butterfly the gnarled roots of life—
Grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheek—
“Hope” is the thing with feathers.
--A Cento poem by cjpjordan
Grief in Four Parts (Annotated)
Grief is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
Barbara Crooker, “Grief”
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Grief”
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
Matthew Dickman, “Grief”
then maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you
into June, when the roses blow.
Gottfried Benn, “Last Spring”
The air around you fills with butterflies--
Katherine Garrison Chapin, “Butterflies”
I do not know how to hold all the beauty and sorrow of my life.
Cynthia Zarin, “Flowers”
The morning air is all awash with angels
Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”
and are we supposed to believe she can suddenly talk angel?
Mary Sybist, “Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle”
Little petal of my heart!
Hilda Conkllng, “A Little Girl's Songs”
I didn’t know where I was going
Robert Vandermolen, “Flowers”
I was always leaving, I was
Jean Nordhaus, “I Was Always Leaving”
Desolate and lone
Carl Sandburg, “Lost”
If but I could have wrapped you in myself
D.H. Lawrence, “Grief”
I would I might forget that I am I--
George Santayana, “I would I might Forget that I am I”
a smile of joy, since I was born.
Emily Bronte, “I Am the Only Being Whose Doom”
Things change on the morning of the birthday
The hope is in wakening to this your last dream
Theodore Holmes, “In Becoming of Age”
The shadows of you are around me
Kathryn Soniat, “Daughter”
the evening shadow has sunk
D.H. Lawrence, “Daughter Of the great Man”
gleaming. So I can
Jennifer Richter, “My Daughter Brings Home Bones”
come walking into this big silence
Josephine Miles, “Dream”
A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent;
James Lenfestey, “Daughter”
she's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Carmen Gimenez Smith, “The Daughter”
Dare the deliberately happy to butterfly the gnarled roots of life—
Amy King, “Butterfly the Gnarled”
Grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheek—
Henry Timrod, “Sonnet: Grief Dies”
“Hope” is the thing with feathers.
Emily Dickinson, ““Hope” is the thing with feathers”
A significant factor in the origin of bees and my relationship with them is the nonstop hum of fear immured within me by the bonnie buzzing of their wee wings. Mama always said Grandma made me afraid because she was afraid, and so I learned to be afraid. She and Daddy said I was overreacting, repeating what I saw. Just stop, they said, as if fear was a faucet I could control with strength of will. But when I found myself grown and at last alone with the bees, instead of running, all I could do was stop and wonder at the nonstop hum of life itself.
Thank you and shoutout to Tamas Pap for making this photo available for free on Unsplash. This photo isn’t exactly the way that Carmen looked, but she had a similar coloring. She was really a sweet girl.
The daily prompt was different today. It was a prompt developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asked us to think about dogs you have known, seen, or heard about, and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you.
I made Trace do it with me because I think it’s always good to write. Also, this prompt was so specific and timed that even those who don’t love writing (is that even a thing?!) could do it. I’d love to read your dog writings.
Don’t be off put by the time. You can half the time and get just as good a result. In fact, this is what I did with Trace. Here is your chance to experience NaPoWriMo for yourself and to do something more than scrolling on your phone.
Here are the instructions:
Set up a a 5-10-minute timer and briefly list as many dogs as you can think of. These can be childhood pets and just dogs you came across one day and never saw again. List as many dogs as you can, but try to get to at least ten.
Underline the one dog you're not surprised to see in the list—the obvious dog (because the dog was your first pet, or a family favorite, or one you just saw right before you began the exercise).
Circle the dog that surprised you--the one you didn't remember until you began the exercise.
Set up a 10-15-minute timer and write, to begin with, about that dog. Don't stop writing. Tell where you were, what you were doing.
Write about the dog but also around the dog. What else was going on? Let the writing take you where it wants to take you.
I hope you give it a try. Mine is below, and I post it with a Trigger Warning.
A Tragic Tale in Three Parts
I. The Prologue
Sometimes the ones we love the most get hurt the worst by our own foolishness.
Carmen was such a pretty girl. Caramel colored little pup—Vizsla-like(no wonder I loved her) We all loved her, even mom, and she never loved any dog after our perfect Pepper passed. But Carmen wasn’t our dog, she was yours, and I think you loved her most of all.
II. The Story
The night was dark and rainy (Don’t most tragedies begin here?) The street was mostly deserted.
Most would say being downtown Detroit at 2 am in a souped up car on deserted streets is foolishness, pure and simple. Every one knows the underworld comes alive at 2 am.
The gall and puffed up pride it takes to believe you’ll be fine where others weren’t is enough to blind or to get you blinded or to get you blindsided.
You never saw them coming.
How could you not see them coming?
When you saw the car with darkened windows pull up behind you, what did you think?
Hit the gas! Drive away!
But, no.
Six guys got out and you thought you would be ok. How could you?
III. The Epilogue
In the end, your face was unrecognizable, but Carmen, Poor Carmen— She paid with her life.
Thank you 🙌 And a shoutout to Kristina Flour who graciously allowed this photo to be used through Unsplash.
Today’s prompt is based on Robert Hass’s remarkable prose poem, “A Story About the Body.” The idea is to write my own prose poem that, whatever title I choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image. Here is my attempt.
For me, holding things in has been a way of life. The natural outcome of this internal action has been the external result of packing on the pounds.
I was never allowed to talk about anything negative, especially any sort of family issues in front of anyone else. And I learned that habit young.
Only recently have I learned to express myself in healthy ways, holding others accountable for their words and actions. Only recently have I been able to consistently begin to shed the weight of those secrets, and along with it, has come actual weight loss.
Fifty-two pounds, to be exact.
There is no more holding of secrets, and I don’t plan to pass this on to the next generation. It can stop with me.
Holding Secrets
“Sssh. Hush hush. Don’t say that. It’s taboo.” Only the perfect blush of color is allowed in our flawless family tree. No embolus of evil, no skeletons here. No binges of beer or illegitimate broods. No family feuds. “Sssh. Hush hush. Don’t say that. It’s taboo.” And so my story begins: I'm not allowed to show disappointment or speak pain into the air. “Surely it wasn’t quite that way. Anyway,it all happened yesterday.” I must move on. Get over it. Suck it in. Suck it up. So I suck up everything I can find until my body swells with the excess weight. My feet slow, my spirits droop, and even in my sluggish state, I hear her voice, “But don’t you dare spit it out.” So I shut my mouth—I suck it up like a Hoover vacuum, like the vortex of a tornado, like a slurpee through a straw, and all I'm left with is one colossal brain-freeze.
Today is my Little Wonder’s crossover birthday. The one where we enter into the teen years.
I blinked.
That’s all.
And here we are.
Little Wonder you continue to amaze and astound me with your keen emotional intelligence and quick wit.
I could only dream of being as brave and genuine as you are at your age. Please never change. You are perfect the way you are.
Thirteen Years
Time goes by like whip cream on hot chocolate melting one into another until the blend is all that is Left my soul at your doorstep the moment I heard your heart Beat a steady rhythm your small quick pace syncing into my slower one And now I want it all to slow down
I want you to slow down
I want the years to
S l o w
d o w n
Not to stop all together But to slow just long enough to prolong the precious Time we have left together.
Musings on the International Day of Peace and the first weeks of school:
Here I am teaching in-person for the first time in a year and a half. It seems funny to even use the words “in-person”; I mean, how else do you teach?
But now many of us understand words Ike virtual learning, zoom calls, and home office from firsthand experience. This past year and half we learned the value of hunkering down and staying home to “be safe” and the sheer joy of being able to gather together with friends and family. We found peace and made peace and offered peace where none was given.
We saw conflict, felt tension, and recoiled from verbal combat every time we opened a social media app.
But just like teaching, living in peace with one another is less about relaying information or our point of view and more about building relationships. It’s less about building fences and more about building bridges.
So with these thoughts in mind, I taught the students the song “With Just One Small Voice” this week, and we talked about what it means to use your voice together with others to speak out for or against something. I asked the students what things they would speak out about if given the chance.
A fifth grader said he would speak out against homelessness, another said they would raise awareness about hunger, a third grader said she would want to use her voice to encourage others to clean up the environment, and a second grader raised her hand and shared her heart for the plight of Haitian immigrants so passionately and articulately, I thought I had been transported to middle school.
These are the future peacemakers and bridge builders of our world. These are the thinkers and change makers.
And I get to work with them every day.
I will bind myself willingly to this kind of work–to peacemaking and restoration and love because I believe this is what will ultimately change the world. Respect, cooperation, listening with empathy, being willing to change your mind: these are the heart of hope for our future.
And so with this fullness of hope in my heart, I pray that peace finds its way to you wherever you are and in whatever you do.
We are what the world is becoming, so with one small but collective voice let’s sing so our voice is heard.
Poetry, Ponderings and Possibilities 