In Like a Lion

The storm of this past Monday (nicknamed by our local news people as Megastorm Monday) was a real nor'easter, and we got hit with some bluster. It brought us all a snow day, which we all enjoyed so much that Ada told me that night, "I hate to put this great snow day to bed." My thoughts exactly. Above is a shot of Esme contemplating walking into a snowdrift...


While we were watching the reports of the storm's approach, I told Ada that it looked like March was roaring in like a lion. She was puzzled and then delighted as I explained the old saying to her. She looked up and me with a big smile and concluded, "Well, Mommy, then March will end like a lamb. And it will be spring."

I love watching her discover the old nuggets of expression people have been using for years. Call them trite, but many of them give a sage order to the progression of life. Even if I don't embrace the social values embedded in a few of these gems, I admire how effectively they convey those beliefs.

My mom has a wealth of these, and they come to her (as most of these do) by way of a grandmother. Here are a few of my favorites:

"Rain before seven, sun before eleven." My August birthday is at the height of thunderstorm season, and as I child I would chant this to myself if I woke early to a rain shower.

"Whistling girls and cackling hens, both will come to no good ends." My grandma would say this to me, conspiratorially, as something that her mother said to her. But my grandma and I were kindred spirits, and superb whistlers, if I do say so myself. She was so amazing that before she got dentures, she could whistle two tones simultaneously. Ah! I still aspire to such a grand thing!

"An apple doesn't fall far from the tree." An oldie, and one everyone knows--but not as true as we imagine, which explains some people I know...
Wild apples, the kind grown from seed and not grafted, are notoriously heterogeneous. This means the seed that grows from a fallen apple is likely as not to be absolutely different from the tree on which it grew. It may not fall far, but chances are it will be something altogether other from its parent tree. Incidentally, this is why wild apples are so persistent. Consider for yourself how this might apply to the ways you differ from your parent tree...


What are some of the expressions that have been repeated in your family? Now's the time to delurk! Really, I'd love to hear them...how I love your stories!

Lines in my head, part 2 of a series

More lines to inspire, to haunt. These glow like embers in my mind.


"You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me."
from "The Cinnamon Peeler," Michael Ondaatje, from The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems


"The word spills from my tongue, not scientific: Genes,
folksy and proud, like they’re crops grown on family land."
from The Storialist
"Monday, October 6th, On the Street, Mr. Pinguet, Paris."

"The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls."
from "To Be of Use," by Marge Piercy, from Circles on the Water

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying."
from "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," Robert Herrick

"The sea is so beautiful,
she is so young and old.
I look at her and
I see the beauty
of the light of music."
from "You are Everything," REM, from the album Green

And, to serve a different sort of gluttony:

"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry."
from "Eating Poetry," Mark Strand in Selected Poems

Tuesday Treasure: A Gift of a Poem

In keeping with my Tuesday treasure hunts, I'm going to show you another treasure I found this week.  But unlike most of my "hunts," I didn't look for this one.  Rather, it found me.  I've been walking on air all week because of it.

My friend Irene at wordloversunite gave me this poem on Sunday.   I literally swooned with delight at it.   It shimmers and glitters and thrills--a real treasure.   Allow me to hold it up for you to admire:  

Simplicity 8953

- for Kirie

The pattern promises to make a princess

so I gather together tulle, organza,

duchess satin and dupioni silk

to spin a girl’s dream: flouncy slip

beneath shimmering skirt, puffy sleeves,

bodice edged with beaded rosette trim.

I don’t warn her about the clock

or tell her how glass slippers sometimes shatter.

I stay up till dawn, add a tuck

so that it fits just right

and later as she prances and twirls

I vow to hold her close

should white steeds dissolve into skittering mice,

the royal coach to a rotting pumpkin,

the prince lost in moonlight, then

caught dancing with someone else.

- Irene Latham

You can read more of Irene's work on her blog, http://wordloversunite.blogspot.com/, and in her book, What Came Before .  I am so honored that she would be inspired to write something so lovely for me.   I treasure it.   Thank you, Irene!!

Lines that haunt me, part 1 of a series

Halloween is over, but I've got hauntings on my mind. 

I'm not haunted by ghosts, though.  I'm haunted by words.   Coming from songs, poems, mentors, supporters, and the occasional enemy, certain phrases linger in my mind and visit me at unexpected times.  Sometimes they are malicious, but more often they are welcome friends.   Inciting me to action, rebuking my insecurities, reminding me of time's quick clock, these lines have a great influence on me.   If one were to look at all the lines that run on a loop through my thoughts, one might even be able to do a little head-shrinking on me.  

I was talking about this with a friend the other day, and she confessed to having a particular verse stuck in her head, too.  I imagine we all have sayings that rattle around in our minds, and I'm inviting you to share yours as well.   

Because I seem to have a little collection of these, I'm going to start a series of posts on this theme.  Here are a few of the lines currently coming to call on me lately.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

from "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." Dylan Thomas

"Because the  Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast, and ah! bright wings."

from "God's Grandeur," Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me."

from "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," T.S. Eliot

"I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

and that necessary."

from "Variations on the Word Sleep," Margaret Atwood

"And as for the me that was then, well,

she 

is lost at the bottom of the oily lake,

waiting

(for now)

for a tide."

from "Doppelganger" 

"It's so easy to laugh; it's so easy to hate.

It takes strength to be gentle and kind."

from "I Know It's Over," The Smiths

"We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow."

from "The Waking," Theodore Roethke

"Keep going, Kirie.  Keep going."  Alan Friedman, a mentor, and author of Hermaphrodeity

"Here is little faith and the turn of the wheel.

Here is the promise to unmask mountains

and see woodlight and this tender portion

of hands gathering love and dreams."

from "Liberation," Dana Thu

"....And yet sometimes

The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty

Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear

Water, cold so cold! you cup your hands

And gulp from them the dailiness of life."

from "Well Water," Randall Jarrell.

Okay, now it's your turn.  What lines haunt you?