Our Heart Wanders by Jack Gilbert

OUR HEART WANDERS

Jack Gilbert

 

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.

Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.

But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down

but the angel flies up again taking us with her.

The summer mornings begin inch by inch

while we sleep, and walk with us later

as long-legged beauty through

the dirty streets. It is no surprise

that danger and suffering surround us.

What astonishes is the singing.

We know the horses are there in the dark

meadow because we can smell them,

can hear them breathing.

Our spirit persists like a man struggling

through the frozen valley

who suddenly smells flowers

and realizes the snow is melting

out of sight on top of the mountain,

knows that spring has begun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Baker Swept By, Edward Hirsch

I love this poem by Edward Hirsch

A Baker Swept By

You were already

losing your eyesight

last winter in Rome

when you paused in the doorway

at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning

and a baker swept by

on a shiny bicycle

waving a cap and singin

under his breath,

you didn’t know bakers wore

white aprons dusted with flour

and floated around the city like angels

on a freshly baked day,

you weren’t sure why

morning halted

up and down the street

as you stood in the doorway

and a baker winged by

on a weekend morning

so new and pristine

that you looked into the sky

and for one undiminished instant

of misplaced time

you saw brightness,

brightness everywhere,

before a shadow crossed

the rooftops

and it was blotted out.

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Solace in Nature#1

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When I first moved to Amery five years ago I woke to strange noises on early spring mornings. After two years when out on a walk I discovered their source. Sandhill cranes make a guttural barking sound when flying and at other times. They nest at the school down the block. Yesterday I heard my first of the year. Today when I heard it, I look up to find it soaring above my head. This is what will keep me sane right now.

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You have to love being inside of what you write

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Every morning after I turn on the computer, I look out at the sun just coming up over the apartment building across the street. I tell myself, you are writing for yourself, you love being inside the world you are writing in, nothing else matters. It’s the only way to counteract the little voices asking me why I do this, every day, despite the multitudes of rejections that fly in from everywhere. It’s because It’s what I do.

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Dancing Shadows

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February 25, 2020

Waiting somewhere in the idling truck, a parking lot, just sitting, not doing anything at all, not looking at my phone or filing my nails, or listening to the radio, just sitting, waiting. I notice on the wall of the building, a nondescript blank beige stucco wall, shadows moving. It is cold and windy, the American flag above the building billows at full length, straight out, showing the full force of high-knot winds. Against the building the shadows dance. They are the shadows of trees except that in February the branches are bare and have their own peculiar shadows, traces and lines, intricate patterns. These lively shadows on the wall are not bare branches and I turn to find their source, but all I see are tall leafless cottonwoods, still as night. Yet there they are, the puppet-like shadows, of what I’m not sure but they draw me in, as though into another reality and “I” disappear. For only a few moments. I enter into the dance of the shadows, leave the truck, the parking lot, my husband, my world, behind. Empty. Part of a whole I don’t understand. An extraordinary moment in an otherwise unextraordinary day. My husband leaves the paint store and rejoins me waiting in the truck, sets his paint on the back seat, and we go on with the mundane tasks of shopping and eating and talking that make up the little moments of our lives, leaving the shadows behind to continue dancing whether I see them or see only the memory of them. Later in the day, I will recall the shadows, and reenter that state of emptiness, that otherworldly dance. It is a peaceful place to be.

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My mother says there is a creature under her bed

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My mother says there is a creature under her bed. The first time she heard it the sound came from the bathroom. When she went to look, the creature’s head was poking out of the drain in the tub, the eyes glowing. Later that night when she was in bed, it showed up lying on the edge of her curved mahogany headboard. Staring at her. Again the eyes glowing. The first time she mentioned it, my heart stopped. I believed I was losing her, finally, at 98. Then she said it was a salamander. In southern Mississippi, I thought, that’s possible, so I started to breathe normally.

Last night however, when I spoke with her, the creature had changed. Now it was under the bed. She heard it sneeze.

What kind of creature could it be? It’s not clear, whether mammal or reptile, one does not imagine a sneezy salamander so then it becomes something with fur, rodent-like, I imagine, possum-like, or something from an Ursula Le Guin story.

I imagine my mother sitting in her room 1300 miles away, listening for the creature. I know she is safe where she is, physically safe, but there is no way to protect her from the wanderings of her mind. Those that may frighten her. Perhaps she is simply annoyed by the creature, or frustrated because no one else seems to see or hear it.

I tell my son who is 18, and he laughs, and I suppose it is funny, in a way. The next morning after I talk to her, while emptying the dishwasher, I hit my head on the corner cabinet, wham. It was quite painful and I started crying. I felt like a little child, crying from a fall or a bump on the head, and all I could think about as I allowed the tears to come, was how sad I felt that my mother believes there is a creature under her bed.

My oldest son says today, maybe she does she something that we can’t see. Something from another dimension. Another world. Babies and the very old are closer to their Source than we are, so, maybe he’s right. I just hope she isn’t scared.