At the End of the Party

Years ago I hosted a party at my home, and as the sun set and our wine glasses emptied and filled again,  the subject turned to politics. Most of my guests were fellow academics with whom I sympathized politically. What bothered me in thinking afterward of the conversation was the condescending certainty with which some of my colleagues pronounced their ideas as if those who differed from them politically were outside their circle of understanding,  It's a danger we all face: to see the opposition as Other, beyond reason, unknowable, scary. When politicians speak of their opposition as "traitors," "evil," "unpatriotic," reducing everything to an either/or scenario, an "us vs. them" situation, my hackles rise just as they did that evening among people with whom I had much in common. And I think of a poem I wrote after that party. I first titled it "At the End of the Party," but later changed it to "The End of Politics." I'm not sure which title fits best.

The End of Politics

At the end of the party the chuck-will's-widow calls

from the edge of the wood

and over the sibilants of patio murmur

a barred owl hoots out its prey.

These are the certainties, like the changing of seasons

or the winter caw of the crow,

or the haunting melody of the white-throated sparrow

in a forest of tag alder and pine.

Listen, I want to say to the others,

the things that matter are these:

a glass of wine at the end of a day,

friendships that stand against time,

and the hand of a child curled trustingly in yours

like the beating heart of a fawn

waiting in the copse while its mother breathes deeply

the breeze from the zoysia lawn.

The words you speak now

you will certainly betray

in a moment you cannot foresee,

of passion or anger or sudden indifference

with the dark smell of blood on your hands.

Ideas are not certain; they are bathed in a light

of neither sun nor stars nor moon,

but of the flickering flames of lived experience

illuminating the walls of a cave.

Another glass of wine? A cigarette, perhaps?

A kiss on your shoulder or lips?

What will you remember in the dawn of some morning

between sleep and rising

and the onsetting dullness of day?

The words you have spoken with such sincerity

or the sharp scent of rosemary crushed 

between finger and thumb?

--Anita

Living Haiku

Discouraged by the extreme rhetoric of mainstream Republicans as well as those I know who are on the far right, I haven't been writing much on my blog lately. Other bloggers address the ridiculous claims of the far-right better than I do, and I don't just want to repeat what I read. Also, I have returned to Facebook, having deleted the "friend" who had the most vile posts about Barack Obama and refusing to admit any new "friends" who admit to far-right views. I have enough of those friends already, family members who compare Barack Obama to Hugo Chavez, who think Obama is some kind of far-leftist and who claim they want the government totally out of their lives (no Medicare or Medicaid, no public schools, etc.), yet who had nothing to say when the Bush Administration increased presidential power, suspended habeas corpus for terrorist suspects (even American citizens), and provided unprecedented power to the NSA to eavesdrop on American citizens.

To maintain my peace of mind, I've decided to write at least one haiku every day that emerges from something I experienced or observed during the day. This is what I post to my Facebook status. Several years ago, I studied haiku in conjunction with teaching world literature classes at a university in Georgia and as a consequence, also, of having read and thoroughly enjoyed the travel sketches of Japan's most famous haiku poet: Matsuo Basho. I've been amazed by how writing haiku has influenced my perspective. Committed to writing one haiku a day, of condensing a mood or image or experience into seventeen syllables (I'm sticking to that traditional syllabic limitation although I don't believe it's a requirement), I pay more attention to small details, especially details of nature. As R. H. Blyth writes in his classic book on haiku,

Haiku is concerned with the ordinary, the everyday. It has nothing to do with exceptional things, evenings of extraordinary magnificence and splendour. It turns inwards, toward the infinitely small and subtle, not to the vast and sublime.

To pay attention and to recognize the significance of these subtle details of life twenty-four hours a day is "the Way of Haiku," says Blyth. Well, I can't claim to be totally awake to the "real nature of things" all day long, but I am paying more attention. And so, when I first saw a caterpillar on the parsley in my Victory Garden, I began looking closer and found several other caterpillars in various instar stages, the stages between molts--of the beautiful black swallowtail butterfly.

There on the parsley
a black swallowtail larva
becoming itself.

And then I began looking closer at other plants and discovered orange and black caterpillars--again, different instars--of Gulf Fritillaries, eating the leaves of the passion vine on our mailbox. Being aware and open to the small details of nature puts into perspective the pettiness of politics and the unreasonableness of those who demonize others with views (or ethnicity or lifestyle) different from their own.

Poetry and Luck

When I was a child in Texas, my family lived in an old wooden house on land my ancestors had owned and that my father had cleared of brush and trees. In our yard were patches of clover in which I and my sisters and brother would often find four-leaf clovers. We would press the clovers between pages of books and then glue them to cardstock to make bookmarks or tape them to letters we sent to cousins. I'll bet we've never felt so lucky since. Today while walking from the compost bin where I had deposited potato peelings, I glanced down and saw a four-leaf clover at my feet. Of course, I plucked it, and it's now pressed flat inside the back cover of Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale. Looking at this picture I took of my four-leaf clover, I remembered a poem that I wrote years ago. I never have been satisfied with any version, but I've done a bit of tinkering with it this evening, and it captures some of my feeling about that




Early Luck

At the concrete steps of our childhood home
each spring through summer we would find
clover of the most unusual kind,
four-leaved, even five or six-leaved.
We soon grew confident of our treasure,
just minutes needed to bring to hand
a lucky token grown on demand,
it seemed, to our then more trusting minds.
We could hardly pass a leafy patch
without stopping to search, to count
the leaves whose numbers seemed to surmount
all odds, all natural probabilities.
We plucked our luck, then pressed it flat,
its green life turning brittle, dull as a dollar bill.
With steady fingers and cut-and-paste skill
of children, we fastened our fortune to paper.
Like prayers to St. Jude our letters were mailed,
those splayed-out specimens of luck bestowing grace
on all correspondents who touched that holy space
where we had glued the simple optimism
we never quite lost, though pressed hard by sorrows
and dulled by time. I learned luck rarely follows
one's wish, one's desire. But I still pause when I pass
a patch of dark clover in a lawn of grass.

Anita D-G

At about the same time I put away what I thought would be the final, disappointing version of that poem, I took up writing haiku. Oh, like most people, I had written haiku as literary exercises in high school. But now, years later, I had discovered the works of Matsuo Basho, a Japanese master of haiku, and I sought to capture in three lines suspended moments of daily experience. At first I tried to write one haiku every day; that goal diminished to one haiku a week. Finally, I thought I would write enough haiku in a year to fill a favorite pottery jar. I wrote each haiku on a small square of post-it paper, rolled up the paper, tied it with ribbon, and dropped it in the jar. At the end of the year, I planned to host a party, invite friends, drink some wine, smoke some cigars, and read the haiku by candlelight. The party never transpired, the pottery jar never quite filled, but this evening, I've one more haiku to add. If only there were a few cigar-smoking friends still around.....

Hydrangeas, old jar,
the years are long between us--
your face blooms fresh here.

Final Bit of Poetry for Poetry Month

For the past few years, I've written poems and created handmade valentines for a few friends every year for Valentine's day. These are my "occasional poems," and I don't attempt to have them published. Here I'll record a sonnet I wrote in 2004, which I mailed with a handmade valentine. Here's to Poetry Month (also, the month of the Full Pink Moon, the Egg Moon, The Full Fish Moon, the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, Sugar Maker Moon, Frog Moon, Moon of the Big Leaves...).

A Sonnet to Craft

Why take the time to make a simple thing,
transforming trash to something more worthwhile,
a decorated box to hold a ring,
a sheet of paper folded in the style
of origami, shaped into a crane,
a symbol of long life, good fortune, peace,
or send a love note high upon a plane
of paper worked with angles, edge, and crease?
For logic tells us craft may be a waste
of time spent better in some other art
aligned with higher standards, finer taste,
as Jesus said to Mary, "that good part."
But what is labeled low, of less amount,
Needs only love to turn to great account.

Anita D-G

Poetry for Poetry Month

For me--as for many people, I'm sure--when the world gets to be too much, I turn to art and craft, to gardening, to everyday pleasures, to remind me of the joys of life. So today, to celebrate Poetry Month before the month is quite over, I'm posting a poem that was rejected in a submission to Atlanta Review. (The editor chose another, titled "Paradise," which was published in the Fall-Winter 2008 edition of the journal.)

Bird Watching

Here in the understory of the sky,
a neighbor’s leaf-blower whines at winter’s mess,
swooshing last year’s wardrobe into discarded piles
while red buds and Bradford pears strut
the street’s runways, their bright couture
radiant on leafless, anorexic branches.
Two blue birds scout a suburban yard,
a cardinal sings endlessly of its success,
the limits of its domesticity.
Persephone the cat dozes in a flowerpot,
her belly cooled by damp soil, black fur
absorbing heat; perhaps she dreams of dark
tunnels, soporific rivers, the furtive sounds of fear,
the smell of death.

High above a robin’s panicked “tut-tut-tut-tut-tut,”
the drum of a downy, a nuthatch’s nasal “he-uh, he-uh,”
the tight new leaf buds of sweetgum,
the drawn-out whinge of jet engines mark
a flight pattern of planes leaving Atlanta,
underbellies flashing silver or blue,
or—sharp eye—an elusive red tail, the flightless borne
on rigid wings, a seasonless migration.
Minutes apart, the bright birds trail sound--
crescendo, sforzato, decrescendo, rest.
In the brief silence a lullaby rises,
the mourning dove’s song, pianissimo, such a small
measure, bracketed by the tinnitus of machines,
calling us back to earth.

Anita

Happy Valentine's Day 2009

Predators: An Essay, a Moral Story, a Poem

We live in a leafy neighborhood in a fairly enlightened city in the metro Atlanta area. By "enlightened" I mean that the city, with the support of most of its citizens, has instituted practices that indicate a care for the environment and a desire for a quality of life that promotes community: a recycling program that includes composting leaves, clippings and tree limbs for free distribution to anyone who wants to fill up her truck-bed with compost; and community activities such as art festivals, downtown music, Community Supported Agriculture, a community garden, etc.

And the city has a leash law that includes not only dogs, but cats, too. Any pet must be collared and restricted to one's own property or on a leash if off the property. This law caused us the most problems when we moved to our leafy neighborhood, for while our dog stayed behind in Texas, we brought with us three cats, cats that were used to going in and out of our house and over fences in more lawless Belton, Texas.

The two female cats seemed fairly content to stay in our fenced-in back yard here in metro Atlanta. But Pluto, the male cat, was not so sanguine about his diminished domain. First, he lost the collar we put on him when he had his shots updated. Then he started going right over the privacy fence.

Some of our neighbors are more militant than others about encountering wandering cats. One neighbor keeps a trap in her yard, a humane trap, but a trap that has caught other neighborhood cats that ended up in the pound until their owners showed up to pay the hefty fine. We know this because neighbors whose cats disappeared told us as soon as we moved in to beware the cat trap across the street. I know this because the first community forum I attended, the cat trap was the topic of discussion. A local policeman was brought in to remind us of the law: Pets must be restricted to one's property or leashed.

Now, I'm a woman of peace, so I did what I could to keep the cats contained. I failed. Spring came. Birds were singing and nesting. A couple of neighbors began worrying about the black cat eyeing their bird baths or casing the bushes in their yards in the early morning hours. E-mails were sent on the neighborhood listserv describing the nurturing antics of the parent birds and the criminal cats that threatened the lives of baby birds.

How was I to keep the peace and keep Pluto out of neighbors' yards? Tom and I finally came up with a workable plan for our own little cat Alcatraz. It was a simple plan, really: chicken wire. We stapled chicken wire all along the top of the privacy fence in our back yard, about two feet of chicken wire that flops over and prevents the cats climbing to the top of the fence. At a distance, the chicken wire is barely visible. Up close, well. . . . it works. Or rather, it worked after Tom plugged up all the other holes Pluto found to escape the back yard.

Now the neighborhood birds are safe from our cats (except for, of course, the birds that seem determined to nest in the trees in our back yard--but they seem a scrappy lot).

But this morning, as Tom, Mary-Margaret, and I sat in our back yard, I wondered if our neighbors realize that--with hardly a cat on the streets--their bushes and bird baths are still not predator-free. Ten to fifteen squirrels played chase in the sweet gums and water oaks above us. A rattled robin came fiercely down a limb of a sweet gum toward the squirrels. All around us this morning we could hear birds defending their nests. Oh, yes, squirrels eat birds. We've seen a video that proves it. An ornithologist Tom knows focused a camera on the nest of an endangered bird in Texas (a golden-cheeked warbler or black-capped vireo--we can't remember which one) and caught quite a murderous sequence on tape. The video of a squirrel eating the baby birds in their nest is really compelling; local school children who were shown the video in a nature workshop were very impressed.

Or what about the red-shouldered hawk that haunts these trees? Or the crows that also will eat baby birds of other species, given the chance? Do our neighbors think mockingbirds chase crows because the mockingbirds are ill-tempered?

Cats, I know, are hell on songbirds, but, really, feral cats in the countryside do the most damage. Removing one predator in an urban setting will not much impact the songbird population. Or so says Dr. Kevin J. McGowan, in defense of crows.

And now, our daughter's story:
One afternoon in late winter, our daughter was walking home from school. When she was less than a block from the house, she noticed a little striped ground squirrel being chased by a cat. The ground squirrel had obviously been trying to evade the cat for a while and was losing energy. It would be captured any moment. So our daughter scared off the cat with a loud "shushing" sound and some swift hand movements. The cat ran off. The little ground squirrel took a thankful breath. And then, from a limb in a large tree in one of our neighbors' front yards where this life-saving mission was taking place, a hawk swooped down and picked up the ground squirrel. Open-mouthed and speechless, daughter watched the hawk fly away with its prey in its claws.

And Anita's poem:

The Darkness that Haunts their Dreams

Flat on its back, beak bitter
and still, feathers lank and close,
a sparrow lies under the ironing board
like a drunk in a stupor--
But even a drunk has breath,
heavy, malodorous, humid
exchange of air for air.
Not this bird
placed with such poignant domesticity,
a gift from Pluto,
cat of the underbrush,
pre-dawn shadow among shadows,
connoisseur of bird baths and dodgy bird dives,
cartographer of neighborhoods.
Scofflaw, he stalks where city laws
forbid the unleashed.
Neighbors mourn the feathers they find,
curse the cat and plot revenge.
What do they know?
The darkness that haunts their dreams
has other forms.
It sits with watchful eyes,
it glides with silent wings.
It preens in the sycamore at the edge of their lawns,
perfectly at home,
perfectly at ease,
perfectly prepared for darkness or dawn.

When all else fails...

This Life

Now I sip this wine as red as the sky this morning
maroon, almost, just above the pines on these last
ridges of the Appalachians, where Georgia clay
soon gives way to the sand of ancient seas.
It's fall, and the maple trees are yellow,
so brilliant in the early sun against the longleaf green.
I wanted to take you out in that bright day,
along some ridge where I would park and point
to you the green horizon, the possibilities from which
I choose to fashion this calm life.

Did I say calm? Appearances are deceiving.
The steady way in which I learn the landscape,
the history of each place I've lived, the flora--
see the wild ginger there? tear that heart-
shaped leaf and sniff its clove-like scent--
is but a palliative for the vertigo of change.
But what I cannot place in some still center of earth or sky
is now subsumed by will into this smaller canvas.

poem by Anita D-G

Propeller trillium

Bird's Foot Violet

Photos by Tom G at Fort Mountain State Park, Georgia (April 2008)

Happy Valentine's Day

In Season

An Occasional Poem for Valentine's Day, 2008

Signs of love are everywhere,
symbols that beckon, more
than what they are—
shiny foil on chocolate hearts
like treasure long sought,
the glitter that attracts,
the sweetness that rewards.
Red and pink entwined, such
a fashion no-no,
become a yes of hearts,
lips, kisses, candy favors
that shorthand I LUV U.
And so you say you do,
if at no other time than this—
the season of valentines.

Anita

Sufficient (A poem)

I.
Up Winnona Drive leaves sashay with color,
belting out hallelujahs to fall.
Summer’s faded green whirls orange and gold,
maroon warms the cool blue sky.
Bursts of periwinkle blazon the asters
that long stood dull and quiet against the garden fence.
Acorns blanket sidewalks, crushed piles that slip
beneath the feet of unwary walkers.
Caught in this kaleidoscope I catch
my breath and balance:
The pattern shifts again.

II.
Last night’s rain was not enough
to fill the lake for Atlanta’s millions
though the governor prayed for storm.
“Drought,” he said, “is God’s way
of getting our attention.” Then who’s listening?
Not the neighbor whose sprinkler still flails in the dead
of night, nor the man whose lone
water use could serve sixty homes,
nor the governor, who blames on God our own long-term cupidity—
Nor even the heavens, it seems, whose fourteen-hundredths
of an inch flipped off the hope
for an undeserved deus ex machina.

III.
But today the trees are washed and dressed,
transfigured in pagan glory.

Anita, 6 Generations blogger