In a Wildflower

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
(William Blake)

These first four lines are likely the most recognized of William Blake’s much longer rhyming treatise on nature’s lessons and need for protection alongside human nature’s frailties and inescapable tethering to creation. It’s from the poem, “Auguries of Innocence.”  To me, it has always been the colossal urging to pay attention to the details. It’s so easy to miss the longevity of a single moment.

Little Drummer Boy and Bug have taken to bringing me “prizes” in the form of wildflowers (and sometimes grass, sticks or the occasional lizard) found around our lawn. They are quickly coming to realize that mommies always love flowers. This knowledge has something to do with the squeals I offer them in return every time.

They each presented half of this bunch to me last week and were eager to see the blossoms find a home in my “flower glass.” They seemed satisfied with this spice jar repurposed to showcase their treasure. And a treasure it is. It’s been way too long since I’ve buried my face in a mound of clover blossoms to enjoy their sweet and tender fragrance — it is summertime’s rite of passage in Mississippi. Last Wednesday, I was all too eager to poke my nose into the center of this bouquet at the insistence of the boys. “It smells!” they said with renewed discovery. It was a discovery for me as well. I had almost forgotten that these ever-present reminders of the grass’ need for mowing actually have a scent. How often I miss the sacred place found in something simple like a collection of white tiny-petaled “weeds.” How often I breeze past the pursuit of these treasures by pudgy, dirt-stained fingers just to get inside the door at the end of the day. How often I fail to embrace and really soak up the infinity of that moment as these prizes move from their sweaty palms to mine.

Yes, I’d like to get back in touch with that little girl who didn’t mind burying her head in a field of clover. In the mean time, although it wasn’t quite the same as lying facedown in the field of green shapes, to bury my head in each of their little bodies in a thank you embrace was most definitely heaven.

My Yellow Bowl is Green

This weekly installment from the American Life in Poetry Project dropped into my inBox yesterday. It was a busy day after a busy weekend after a busy week before. My emotions were stretched and frayed from the stuff of life. I was having a hard time concentrating and a hard time catching up. I was immersed in that unique loneliness of my own thoughts. That quality of my brain that bars any intrusions. That part that keeps me focused internally and resists exposure. Then I saw this email. It stopped me. It stilled me. It enticed me to “bathe in the light” of this woman’s attention, as Mr. Kooser described.

I have this light pouring like water, only mine floods the dining room or a pink and green bedroom. I have this rug, only mine is the brick of the front porch or the glean of the hardwood floors. I have this yellow bowl, only mine is green and filled with lemons and Granny Smiths. I have this song. I’m singing it bent over the faces of my own babies. These easy words and descriptions jarred me from that internal immersion, that loneliness that comes from being bound by thought. They directed my attention around me to the mundane activity there. To the simple giving and living. Like you, perhaps, I spend much of my life in the silence of constant motion, of a thousand activities and conversations and concerns robbing stillness. But, here in this newly recognized place, the loneliness of hardship and disappointment and busyness and thought is misshapen. Now, it’s only quiet. And, quiet is ok.

[I'm continually astounded by the power of words, whether composed in verse or in paragraphs. Poetry, in particular, possesses the ability to speak into our common experience and pull from it a varied meaning. April is National Poetry Month. In these last few days of celebration, reacquaint yourself with American poets and their amazing clarity. The American Life in Poetry project is a great place to start.]

American Life in Poetry: Column 266
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.

The Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,

and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

One of Everybody

What is it about those we sometimes deem the “lesser” individuals of society that usually makes them the most indiscriminate? I’ve had this installment from the American Life in Poetry project sitting in my mailbox for a while. It is one of my favorites of Mr. Kooser’s selections.

The homeless, the “crazy,” the children… they so often tend to see past the outward appearances or trapping s of status and find a commonality in being a person. I see it in my own children. We went to the local McDonald’s playland yesterday for lunch, and I noticed how easily the children play together even though they don’t know one another. They never notice the color of the other’s skin or the type of clothes they are wearing. They wave at strangers. They always watch out for Baby Girl, even though (at 19 months) she slows down the climbing and sliding process. They always ask “are you ok,” when someone falls down.

I’ve noticed that when we suddenly “arrive” at the station in life we feel we deserve with the requisite education, religion, possessions, network or reputation in tow, sometimes we forget those simple commonalities, the simple discipline of indiscrimination. It’s easy to see how the equal opportunity gathering of signatures was so memorable to the poet. She immortalized the open-hearted decision that all signatures were welcome and valued the same. She took pride in including hers among the thousands. It’s a much-needed reminder that “I am one of everybody.”

American Life in Poetry: Column 243
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes. Here is an example of one like that, by Marie Sheppard Williams, who lives in Minneapolis.

Everybody

I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Monday Music

This piece from the American Life in Poetry series crossed my Inbox at just the right time today. I had high hopes for the weekend, but found my worst enemy right there in the mirror. I spent the two days scurrying and worrying about this, disgruntled and complaining about that.  I feel I missed the opportunity to really wade in to what matters–to the lights of my life, to the joys of my life, to what inspires the best of my creativity. Today I’m listening to my own gifts’ example. Today I’m hearing the music anew. Today is a day to drink in deeply.

American Life in Poetry: Column 239
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.

Bach in the DC Subway

As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

S is for Soft

Soft is the smooth touch
of my baby girl’s cheek
against mine, her skin
aglow in unfettered smiles
barely touched by the world.
the brush of eyelashes hovering
over a cloudless blue.

Soft is her sweet breath
against my nose, deepening
my inhale. in and out,
the gentle fluttering
of one thousand hopes and dreams
between her heart
and mine.

Soft is the whisper
of her sleepy fingers
against my shoulder,
the plump and eager toes
too worn with the day.
the patter of steps and moments
as they tiptoe away.

Happy 1st Birthday, Baby Girl! Your softness has forever melted my heart.