Dear Dane:
We’ve had an opportunity to review “Creator,” “Canada Geese,” and “Villanelle,” which you submitted via e-mail on 4 July. Your poems engendered a great deal of discussion, and while I regret that none seems quite right for CICADA, I would like to pass on our feedback. You are a poet who sends shivers down my spine.
“Creator” is a poem of striking originality that seems to start out with a parent teaching a child how to weed, but it gradually becomes clear that the garden is the Garden of Eden, which changes the meaning of that simple beginning. Marianne Carus, our editor-in-chief, agrees. “There are some brilliant lines here,” she says.
“The pain of separation” comes through so clearly in the following lines:
I couldn’t keep my hands
from shaking when I lifted South America out of Africa’s
arms and carried her across the water,
while she sobbed into my shoulder.
While that image is a truly moving one, Marianne wondered who created the landmass that was there before it split into South America and Africa. Wouldn’t it have been the Creator? If so, why pluck South America from its mother’s arms and carry it across the ocean?
Then, who or what does the Creator wish to hold one more time: South America, the tide, the moon?
The single rhyme in the poem jarred us a bit:
I think of
The day I drew the line
Between ocean and sky,
Watching as the raindrops kissed them goodbye.
Could you just delete the last line?
Stanza 6 begins “You were an accident,” and I love this conception imagery! In the last line, however, I think “awhile” sounds wordy and would suggest that it read “an unspoken invitation to play. So I did.”
Three lines down “would be able to hold” sounds wordy, too. Why not “would hold”?
Finally, from a formatting standpoint, we wished the lines had looked more even on the page; some are short and are some are very long.
Now, this is probably more picking apart than you ever want a group of editors to do again!
Despite our comments, “Creator” is a gorgeous poem, Dane, and if you’d ever like us to con-sider a revision on spec, we’d be more than happy to see it again. As one of our editors said, “It definitely offers a lot of provocative, moving ideas about God and creation that would wow a teenager.”
In “Canada Geese” the line “Tar and feather our sidewalks” is soooo perfect! Other editors commented on “wrapping myself in feathers” and “listening for five months’ worth of Florida gossip / and hurricane stories.” But the last line leaves us hanging. Do you need another stanza to provide closure? While the poem reveals a good conversational voice, it’s our feeling that teens might not find this as appealing as older readers. Your poem has a mature tone to it with lines such as “I am a mountain lake woman / the welcome committee.” Have you submitted “Canada Geese” to an adult literary journal?
For “Villanelle,” I had the impression you’re trying too hard to fit the words to the villanelle form, and as a result, the rhymes occasionally seem forced. You’ve also got the close repetition of “just” and “just” in lines 5 and 6. At the end we didn’t understand why the speaker says “As for tears, I promise him none.” Is it because her father’s death would not be beautiful? Yet she is singing Mozart arias, which are definitely “beautiful things.” This poem also struck a chord with us, and if you ever rework it, we’d be happy to see it again as well.
Thanks so much for your interest in **********, Dane. I hope you’ll continue to keep us in mind with your poetry. We don’t usually get to have such lively discussions!
10/29/2008
New Jersey 14, or How I'm Keeping Busy
Following on the heels of her highly acclaimed performances at Congregation B'nai Israel and the Salt Lake City Indie Arts circuit, H******* native Dane Kuttler is bringing her one-woman traveling poetry circus to the H******* Public Library.
As a member of the spoken word and poetry slam community, Kuttler believes that the physical performance of a poem is just as important as its content, thereby ensuring an engaging and entertaining show. Come witness exciting feats of poetry, including political soapboxing, smashing sestinas, and love poems that will bring you to your feet.
Kuttler, an award-winning and recently published poet, believes that poetry belongs in the hands, ears and guts of every living person, and brings that energy to her performance. While she loves children, she requests that you leave any under 13 at home, as her work is probably over their heads. However, her favorite audiences are teenagers, English teachers, soccer dads and moose hunters.
Her (free!) one-hour show will include time for poems, discussion and a question-and-answer session. Monday, December 1, 7:30pm, H****** Public Library.
As a member of the spoken word and poetry slam community, Kuttler believes that the physical performance of a poem is just as important as its content, thereby ensuring an engaging and entertaining show. Come witness exciting feats of poetry, including political soapboxing, smashing sestinas, and love poems that will bring you to your feet.
Kuttler, an award-winning and recently published poet, believes that poetry belongs in the hands, ears and guts of every living person, and brings that energy to her performance. While she loves children, she requests that you leave any under 13 at home, as her work is probably over their heads. However, her favorite audiences are teenagers, English teachers, soccer dads and moose hunters.
Her (free!) one-hour show will include time for poems, discussion and a question-and-answer session. Monday, December 1, 7:30pm, H****** Public Library.
New Jersey 13, or A Song. Because I Never Do This
This song is the Iron Horse, the Performing Arts Center of Easthampton, the Calvin, that arboretum on Long Island. It's the beginning of so many concerts, the grins shared across the seats, around the table, sung along with unabashedly in anticipation of the concert to come. This song I've been searching for.
10/28/2008
New Jersey 12, or Poem Draft
audience
it's 2am,
exactly fourteen minutes before inspiration descends
on my eyelids and my fingertips.
i write a lot of poems blind,
exhaustion protecting these drafts from critique until morning.
i am at home. by which i mean
i am not paying to live here.
there are political cartoons from 2003
on my walls, which are yellow,
a color i stopped liking in eighth grade.
i am home. by which i mean
at 2am, my mother is my only audience.
sometimes, i read to her,
a child still inclined to show off
the handprints she has pressed into plaster
and painted green.
efforts made beautiful
only by a mother’s affection.
my mother
has begun to hate my poems.
i have put her mother's eroding body,
my sister's barbed teeth,
and my sex life
on stages in front of audiences absent of her.
andrea admits
she's never invited her parents to a single poetry show.
jonida confesses
her mother has never seen her work in English.
sonya believes
in the memory of her mother’s crossed, unyielding arms.
we, poets,
slice the available skin
from our mothers’ necks,
stretch it like drums to beat in the silences of her pulse.
how cruel of me,
to show my mother her own jugular
and expect her applause.
it's 2am,
exactly fourteen minutes before inspiration descends
on my eyelids and my fingertips.
i write a lot of poems blind,
exhaustion protecting these drafts from critique until morning.
i am at home. by which i mean
i am not paying to live here.
there are political cartoons from 2003
on my walls, which are yellow,
a color i stopped liking in eighth grade.
i am home. by which i mean
at 2am, my mother is my only audience.
sometimes, i read to her,
a child still inclined to show off
the handprints she has pressed into plaster
and painted green.
efforts made beautiful
only by a mother’s affection.
my mother
has begun to hate my poems.
i have put her mother's eroding body,
my sister's barbed teeth,
and my sex life
on stages in front of audiences absent of her.
andrea admits
she's never invited her parents to a single poetry show.
jonida confesses
her mother has never seen her work in English.
sonya believes
in the memory of her mother’s crossed, unyielding arms.
we, poets,
slice the available skin
from our mothers’ necks,
stretch it like drums to beat in the silences of her pulse.
how cruel of me,
to show my mother her own jugular
and expect her applause.
10/25/2008
New Jersey 11, or My First Pantoum
Since learning about them, I have admired pantoums and their authors a whole lot. First of all, the name - pantoum - sounds simultaneously myseterious and serious and whimsical, like an incantation or an onomatopoeia. Pantoum, pantoum. It sounds like jumping on a trampoline, or leaping and landing heavily.
Secondly, a good pantoum is incredibly difficult to write. Wikipedia explains the form:
It is a woven form, deeply connected and reliant on both the intuition and intelligence of the author to produce. Writing this nearly drove me crazy. I have produced exactly one poem, and it is at least partially terrible. For an example of a good pantoum, check out Donald Justice's 'Pantoum of the Great Depression'. Then come back here and check out my quite awful, but first-ever complete:
Pantoum for Hana, Who Taught Holocaust
I imagine we share nightmares
about train tracks and gray fields,
shouts from faces we cannot see.
When do you wake up?
Your stories of train tracks and gray fields
left my bones shaking.
I wished I could wake up.
I cupped my ears for protection.
You built us a history of bones, shaking
our memories like rattles to get our attention.
I cupped my ears for protection.
Sometimes, it was too much.
We responded to the memories like rattles. They got our attention.
after class, we sometimes spoke in whispers.
sometimes, it was too much
to hear another voice.
After class, we sometimes spoke in whispers
as though we’d been collective witness to a nightmare.
Needing to hear another voice,
we begged one another for distraction.
After witnessing your nightmares,
we didn’t feel like children.
We begged one another for distraction,
not wanting to face adulthood.
Of course we didn’t feel like children,
and that was your intent.
Who ever wants to face adulthood?
Your task was to prepare us.
But was it your intent
that I be left with nightmares?
Was your task was to prepare me
for dreams of shouts from faces I cannot see?
Further note: I have been trying to write a poem about this woman for over a year now. I have tried to write a poem of reverence, of absolute love and caring for this teacher who taught me for six years how to read Hebrew aloud and make it sound like prayer, and who gave me reoccurring nightmares that began while I was taking her seventh-grade Holocaust class. This poem is neither reverent nor particularly loving. It's angry. I never knew I harbored this anger at her. It took one of the world's most frustrating forms to unlock that which was keeping me from writing that beautiful, loving, reverent poem to her. Perhaps now I will find what I need to write that poem. But I'm glad this is finally out.
Secondly, a good pantoum is incredibly difficult to write. Wikipedia explains the form:
The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.
It is a woven form, deeply connected and reliant on both the intuition and intelligence of the author to produce. Writing this nearly drove me crazy. I have produced exactly one poem, and it is at least partially terrible. For an example of a good pantoum, check out Donald Justice's 'Pantoum of the Great Depression'. Then come back here and check out my quite awful, but first-ever complete:
Pantoum for Hana, Who Taught Holocaust
I imagine we share nightmares
about train tracks and gray fields,
shouts from faces we cannot see.
When do you wake up?
Your stories of train tracks and gray fields
left my bones shaking.
I wished I could wake up.
I cupped my ears for protection.
You built us a history of bones, shaking
our memories like rattles to get our attention.
I cupped my ears for protection.
Sometimes, it was too much.
We responded to the memories like rattles. They got our attention.
after class, we sometimes spoke in whispers.
sometimes, it was too much
to hear another voice.
After class, we sometimes spoke in whispers
as though we’d been collective witness to a nightmare.
Needing to hear another voice,
we begged one another for distraction.
After witnessing your nightmares,
we didn’t feel like children.
We begged one another for distraction,
not wanting to face adulthood.
Of course we didn’t feel like children,
and that was your intent.
Who ever wants to face adulthood?
Your task was to prepare us.
But was it your intent
that I be left with nightmares?
Was your task was to prepare me
for dreams of shouts from faces I cannot see?
Further note: I have been trying to write a poem about this woman for over a year now. I have tried to write a poem of reverence, of absolute love and caring for this teacher who taught me for six years how to read Hebrew aloud and make it sound like prayer, and who gave me reoccurring nightmares that began while I was taking her seventh-grade Holocaust class. This poem is neither reverent nor particularly loving. It's angry. I never knew I harbored this anger at her. It took one of the world's most frustrating forms to unlock that which was keeping me from writing that beautiful, loving, reverent poem to her. Perhaps now I will find what I need to write that poem. But I'm glad this is finally out.
10/13/2008
New Jersey 10, or Poem Draft II
I'm on a train through North Dakota,
staring mesmerized out the window at the 26th
continuous mile of soybean fields,
watching the slow-rising sun sweep shadows from the leaves,
to reveal bright, pungent green.
I want to wave to the houses,
their porch lights and rusted cars,
and at the locals, who do not look like me.
The train stops in places like Devil's Lake,
towns guarded by rusting water towers and farmers.
A leather-faced man in flannel and dungarees
hugs a kid with a guitar strapped to his back,
watches as we pull away like he's willing himself not to chase
us. I find the kid two cars down.
He says his name is Daniel and he mostly plays country
but he hears that won't fly in the city we're headed to.
Maybe he'll try writing his own, or something. He's never heard
of a traveling poetry circus either, but he says,
"I think you're brave, a girl like you alone out here."
We talk about how we've both left the girls we love without any promise
to return but we can't stay and they can't follow,
so we're gonna have to hold ourselves through this winter.
He says,
"Do you mind if I sleep on your shoulder? It took me two hours
to catch the 5am train and well, you seem sweet."
I say,
"Sure, honey,"
kiss the top of his crew cut like I've known him for years,
feel him settle against my unwashed, rumpled body.
I keep an eye on the soybeans.
They are as unfamiliar as my kindness.
The morning feels like a welcome to a state I’ve never been.
staring mesmerized out the window at the 26th
continuous mile of soybean fields,
watching the slow-rising sun sweep shadows from the leaves,
to reveal bright, pungent green.
I want to wave to the houses,
their porch lights and rusted cars,
and at the locals, who do not look like me.
The train stops in places like Devil's Lake,
towns guarded by rusting water towers and farmers.
A leather-faced man in flannel and dungarees
hugs a kid with a guitar strapped to his back,
watches as we pull away like he's willing himself not to chase
us. I find the kid two cars down.
He says his name is Daniel and he mostly plays country
but he hears that won't fly in the city we're headed to.
Maybe he'll try writing his own, or something. He's never heard
of a traveling poetry circus either, but he says,
"I think you're brave, a girl like you alone out here."
We talk about how we've both left the girls we love without any promise
to return but we can't stay and they can't follow,
so we're gonna have to hold ourselves through this winter.
He says,
"Do you mind if I sleep on your shoulder? It took me two hours
to catch the 5am train and well, you seem sweet."
I say,
"Sure, honey,"
kiss the top of his crew cut like I've known him for years,
feel him settle against my unwashed, rumpled body.
I keep an eye on the soybeans.
They are as unfamiliar as my kindness.
The morning feels like a welcome to a state I’ve never been.
10/10/2008
New Jersey 9, or Yom Kippur
It's odd. Fasting was easier than ever this year. The services were shorter. I slept in between them, so I wasn't bored or too focused on being hungry. I delved further into the liturgy and found new meaning in the texts. I made up new harmonies, and got to belt them out (sometimes to the cantor's amusement). I enjoyed singing all my favorite High Holy Day tunes, and hearing the rabbi and the cantor harmonize with each other. I even had a 14 year old boy next to me who asked me questions about the prayers, and we "did some learning" as the Jews say. He was such a great kid, so patient and hungry and interested in understanding, exploring.
But I don't feel the same sense of peace that I usually feel at the end of Yom Kippur, and I think I know why. The rabbi cut out a lot of the personal, silent Amidot (meditations) to make shorter services, and skipped to the out-loud Amidah, which is a repetition of what you've already done silently. I don't agree with this practice, despite the fact that the only other way to shorten services is to skip out-loud prayers. I'm not sure I agree with shortening already-shortened services, to be honest.
Usually, I can't focus during the first several silent Amidot. I look around the room, I fidget, my brain jumps from topic to topic, I mentally gossip about the other congregants, then chastise myself for being petty...usually this happens until about an hour and a half into the service (usually the 3rd Amidah or so) and finally, my brain begins to slow down and focus. Only then do I finally get to the big questions of Yom Kippur: What wrongs have I done this year? What good can I do next year? From whom have I not yet asked forgiveness? To whom have I not granted forgiveness? For what am I thankful? Did I believe in G-d this year? How have I changed? etc etc etc.
But this year, there were no chances to slow down and meditate. Instead, we rushed from song to song, cracking the whip to meet our deadlines. And at the time, I didn't mind. I wanted to eat as much as everyone else did. I was grateful for the cuts.
But here I am, finally full, but without much peace. I don't feel spiritually ready to begin this year. I could take some time on my own to do that kind of meditation. I probably will, by journaling, or some other way. But I'm disappointed, because when we set aside entire days for prayer and reflection as a community, doesn't it make sense to actually do the thing completely? What's the point, otherwise? To show up and have our heads counted?
But I don't feel the same sense of peace that I usually feel at the end of Yom Kippur, and I think I know why. The rabbi cut out a lot of the personal, silent Amidot (meditations) to make shorter services, and skipped to the out-loud Amidah, which is a repetition of what you've already done silently. I don't agree with this practice, despite the fact that the only other way to shorten services is to skip out-loud prayers. I'm not sure I agree with shortening already-shortened services, to be honest.
Usually, I can't focus during the first several silent Amidot. I look around the room, I fidget, my brain jumps from topic to topic, I mentally gossip about the other congregants, then chastise myself for being petty...usually this happens until about an hour and a half into the service (usually the 3rd Amidah or so) and finally, my brain begins to slow down and focus. Only then do I finally get to the big questions of Yom Kippur: What wrongs have I done this year? What good can I do next year? From whom have I not yet asked forgiveness? To whom have I not granted forgiveness? For what am I thankful? Did I believe in G-d this year? How have I changed? etc etc etc.
But this year, there were no chances to slow down and meditate. Instead, we rushed from song to song, cracking the whip to meet our deadlines. And at the time, I didn't mind. I wanted to eat as much as everyone else did. I was grateful for the cuts.
But here I am, finally full, but without much peace. I don't feel spiritually ready to begin this year. I could take some time on my own to do that kind of meditation. I probably will, by journaling, or some other way. But I'm disappointed, because when we set aside entire days for prayer and reflection as a community, doesn't it make sense to actually do the thing completely? What's the point, otherwise? To show up and have our heads counted?
10/09/2008
New Jersey 8, or Poem
Before the Phoenix Rose
In response to Esme's comment that "We're going to run out of water, one day."
1
That night, the power went out.
The dark brought our neighbors
into the street like worms after a storm.
By then, the fire was so close
we could dance in the living room
without tripping; we stood,
back pressed to chest, and watched
the trees we once climbed.
You said it was worse than
watching your mother die,
and I led you to bed.
Sweat fell like the rain that wouldn’t,
our bodies slick, and wetter
than the rivers had been in months.
We were an oasis of brackish water,
alone and drenched. I licked salt from your ear.
2
The sirens cried into the light.
The fires turned to permanent shadows.
Steam rose from dead tree trunks.
Live coals seethed under thin layers of blackened bark.
I let the steam peel back the layers
of my hands, and watched it condense.
I held my palms out to children and urged them to drink.
Please, I said, there’s more where this came from.
3
The sunrise was weak against the fire,
colors of crabgrass and jaundice
evaporating against the red-orange-gray-black.
You said destruction will always win more viewers than creation.
The sun crawled behind the moon.
From her view, the world
looked like a jack-o-lantern.
4
On the third day,
they began to dilute what was left of the water
with earth. I mixed mud with my feet in large fields,
and the plows came through every hour, leaving
rows of packed dust beneath us. We guarded our spit
and licked our lips with tongues like cats.
5
A woman’s nursing child fought his way out of her arms
towards the rumors of cactus fruit and safe drinking pools.
When my falls began to outnumber my steps,
I lay in the dust and dreamed
of salt falling from your eyes.
In my dream, I told you I didn’t love you anymore
so you would cry. When I tried to lick the tears,
my tongue shriveled
and I woke up thirstier than yesterday.
In response to Esme's comment that "We're going to run out of water, one day."
1
That night, the power went out.
The dark brought our neighbors
into the street like worms after a storm.
By then, the fire was so close
we could dance in the living room
without tripping; we stood,
back pressed to chest, and watched
the trees we once climbed.
You said it was worse than
watching your mother die,
and I led you to bed.
Sweat fell like the rain that wouldn’t,
our bodies slick, and wetter
than the rivers had been in months.
We were an oasis of brackish water,
alone and drenched. I licked salt from your ear.
2
The sirens cried into the light.
The fires turned to permanent shadows.
Steam rose from dead tree trunks.
Live coals seethed under thin layers of blackened bark.
I let the steam peel back the layers
of my hands, and watched it condense.
I held my palms out to children and urged them to drink.
Please, I said, there’s more where this came from.
3
The sunrise was weak against the fire,
colors of crabgrass and jaundice
evaporating against the red-orange-gray-black.
You said destruction will always win more viewers than creation.
The sun crawled behind the moon.
From her view, the world
looked like a jack-o-lantern.
4
On the third day,
they began to dilute what was left of the water
with earth. I mixed mud with my feet in large fields,
and the plows came through every hour, leaving
rows of packed dust beneath us. We guarded our spit
and licked our lips with tongues like cats.
5
A woman’s nursing child fought his way out of her arms
towards the rumors of cactus fruit and safe drinking pools.
When my falls began to outnumber my steps,
I lay in the dust and dreamed
of salt falling from your eyes.
In my dream, I told you I didn’t love you anymore
so you would cry. When I tried to lick the tears,
my tongue shriveled
and I woke up thirstier than yesterday.
10/05/2008
New Jersey 7, or How I Spent My Weekend
My parents and I moved house this weekend. Not the house we live in – our vacation house in the Adirondacks. We’ve had a place on a (very) small lake for the last nine years. I grew to love it, having first hated the fact that it was meant to replace our vacations in the northern woods of Canada, where we stayed in my great-uncle’s cabin. That place had no electricity, and was where I learned to strike a match, drive a boat, light a fire, start a pump and talk to trees. It was where I learned to tell edible berries from poisonous ones, to find my way on a path by moonlight, and where I saw my first shooting stars. I considered the house in New York to be a piss-poor second choice – it had internet, for crying out loud! It had heat! And neighbors!
The things we spoiled brats learn to live with.
My parents started searching for property elsewhere in the Adirondacks over two years ago. The lake was too small, full of noisy weekenders with their gas-dumping jet skis (as opposed to us, less noisy weekenders, with only one gas-dumping speedboat). The view my parents loved when they bought the house is now a view of newly developed lots. Still beautiful, but slowly replacing trees with three-car garages and satellite dishes.
A small part of me always suspected my parents too, felt guilty about how soft they’d gone, how mainstream. I am probably wrong about this. My parents like comfort. I like my comfort with a side of guilt about environmental damage and compromising my values.
The place they found and bought was 24 acres of land on a four-mile lake, twenty minutes to the nearest town, forty to a real grocery store. No cell phones. No internet. One rotary phone with a foot-long cord. They saw it as the place to build their dream vacation home, complete with a dock spectacular view, and more accessible space for my grandparents, who have difficulty with the uneven ground and steep stairs of the old place. There’s been talk of my parents retiring to said dream house, if they ever get to retire.
But currently, the only thing the land holds is a ramshackle cabin that looks like one puzzle made from five different sets of pieces. When my parents bought the place, it didn’t just look funny. The plumbing was screwed up. There was a mice infestation. The walls were literally paper-thin – in some places, they’d forgotten to actually fill in the walls, and just left support beams covered in paper. Both the floor and ceiling were covered in multiple layers of carpet.
My parents and sister spent the next two years fixing up the “mouse house” while I finished college and made excuses about why I couldn’t help. By the time I saw it on a brief visit last fall, it looked almost habitable. My parents stayed in it for a couple of weeks while renting out the old house for the summer, and proclaimed it pretty good.
This weekend, the other house finally got sold, and we packed it out, and moved a good bunch of it here.
There’s too much furniture everywhere, but we found out that the woodstove does a lovely job heating the house. The current view from the screened-in porch is a kaleidoscope of foliage.
Today, my father and I walked down to the water’s edge to pull the canoe and rowboat up for winter storage. On our way, we passed under some trees at odd angles. My father pointed up. Two tall, strong evergreens, their branches out like arms, were supporting a third tree, much weaker, which had fallen across the path. The effect was somewhat fort-like, although we didn’t have to duck to get through them.
And I thought: this is what we do. We hold out our arms and bear the weight of the ones who are falling. Because when it’s your path, your cluster, your trees, your family, there isn’t much else you want to do than hold them and whisper songs about how soft the ground will feel when it’s finally time to let go.
This place, this dream house, this plan – this is how my parents are building arms to reach and hold with. And the earth is full of rocks, but there’s grass growing in between them, and the leaves are converging to make a softer ground, a place where generations upon generations can grow like saplings and fall with their roots intact, supported by others’ open arms.
The things we spoiled brats learn to live with.
My parents started searching for property elsewhere in the Adirondacks over two years ago. The lake was too small, full of noisy weekenders with their gas-dumping jet skis (as opposed to us, less noisy weekenders, with only one gas-dumping speedboat). The view my parents loved when they bought the house is now a view of newly developed lots. Still beautiful, but slowly replacing trees with three-car garages and satellite dishes.
A small part of me always suspected my parents too, felt guilty about how soft they’d gone, how mainstream. I am probably wrong about this. My parents like comfort. I like my comfort with a side of guilt about environmental damage and compromising my values.
The place they found and bought was 24 acres of land on a four-mile lake, twenty minutes to the nearest town, forty to a real grocery store. No cell phones. No internet. One rotary phone with a foot-long cord. They saw it as the place to build their dream vacation home, complete with a dock spectacular view, and more accessible space for my grandparents, who have difficulty with the uneven ground and steep stairs of the old place. There’s been talk of my parents retiring to said dream house, if they ever get to retire.
But currently, the only thing the land holds is a ramshackle cabin that looks like one puzzle made from five different sets of pieces. When my parents bought the place, it didn’t just look funny. The plumbing was screwed up. There was a mice infestation. The walls were literally paper-thin – in some places, they’d forgotten to actually fill in the walls, and just left support beams covered in paper. Both the floor and ceiling were covered in multiple layers of carpet.
My parents and sister spent the next two years fixing up the “mouse house” while I finished college and made excuses about why I couldn’t help. By the time I saw it on a brief visit last fall, it looked almost habitable. My parents stayed in it for a couple of weeks while renting out the old house for the summer, and proclaimed it pretty good.
This weekend, the other house finally got sold, and we packed it out, and moved a good bunch of it here.
There’s too much furniture everywhere, but we found out that the woodstove does a lovely job heating the house. The current view from the screened-in porch is a kaleidoscope of foliage.
Today, my father and I walked down to the water’s edge to pull the canoe and rowboat up for winter storage. On our way, we passed under some trees at odd angles. My father pointed up. Two tall, strong evergreens, their branches out like arms, were supporting a third tree, much weaker, which had fallen across the path. The effect was somewhat fort-like, although we didn’t have to duck to get through them.
And I thought: this is what we do. We hold out our arms and bear the weight of the ones who are falling. Because when it’s your path, your cluster, your trees, your family, there isn’t much else you want to do than hold them and whisper songs about how soft the ground will feel when it’s finally time to let go.
This place, this dream house, this plan – this is how my parents are building arms to reach and hold with. And the earth is full of rocks, but there’s grass growing in between them, and the leaves are converging to make a softer ground, a place where generations upon generations can grow like saplings and fall with their roots intact, supported by others’ open arms.
10/02/2008
Jersey 6. A Snapshot
A deer hops over the fence
(which is now a foot higher than it was last year)
into the back yard. A doe, not too old
or too hungry, by the look of her.
She does not look through the windows.
There are a few flowers left.
My mother says to the guests:
well, there you have it.
I told you we live in suburbia,
but we also live in a zoo!
The kids press their soft,
dry noses to the windows,
their laughter evaporating
from the glass.
Yes,
she says, quietly.
and the price for admission
is that we feed them our gardens.
More giggles and orange juice.
I wonder to whom
I have fed my gardens.
To whom I have given love and patience
without being asked or thanked,
and felt richer for it.
(which is now a foot higher than it was last year)
into the back yard. A doe, not too old
or too hungry, by the look of her.
She does not look through the windows.
There are a few flowers left.
My mother says to the guests:
well, there you have it.
I told you we live in suburbia,
but we also live in a zoo!
The kids press their soft,
dry noses to the windows,
their laughter evaporating
from the glass.
Yes,
she says, quietly.
and the price for admission
is that we feed them our gardens.
More giggles and orange juice.
I wonder to whom
I have fed my gardens.
To whom I have given love and patience
without being asked or thanked,
and felt richer for it.
10/01/2008
Jersey 5, or A Gut Yor
A snippet of Rosh Hashana at my [parent's] house:
Right now, the men are in the living room, talking shop and loosening their ties a little while the women changed their clothes as soon as they walked in the door from synagogue and are now running about the kitchen in jeans, trying to get everything on the table before the rest of the family arrives. Today's meal is more colorful than yesterday's - a salad of soft cheese, watermelon, mint and basil. Spanikopita. Lox and bagels, the soft pink like a baby blanket. I realize, in a moment of forgetful panic, that none of it is vegan. Then I realize there aren't any vegans in my family.
Right now, the men are in the living room, talking shop and loosening their ties a little while the women changed their clothes as soon as they walked in the door from synagogue and are now running about the kitchen in jeans, trying to get everything on the table before the rest of the family arrives. Today's meal is more colorful than yesterday's - a salad of soft cheese, watermelon, mint and basil. Spanikopita. Lox and bagels, the soft pink like a baby blanket. I realize, in a moment of forgetful panic, that none of it is vegan. Then I realize there aren't any vegans in my family.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)