found mission
from a letter mailed 21 July 1992:
I want to teach people
without having a lesson plan & rows of desks.
I want to be outside
& get dirty
& write
& smell salt air
& help the environment.
Tag: Erie
weeping cherry
After I wrote this I found a photographer who was willing to take a picture of the weeping cherry tree, but it had already dropped its blooms. Maybe next year… Thanks to Rozanne Lee Anderson-Moreland for the photos.
weeping cherry
the most thoughtful gift
I’ve ever been given
she was a First Communion miracle
planted just for me
8 years old
our heights about matched
we grew up together
her hot pink flowers lit up the spring
and one year when she was little
robins nested in the heart of her crown
I never named her
five years later we grew apart
divorce took me to a smaller home
without a tree to call my own
but I still visited
still had a claim on that piece of earth
now, with my father gone,
the house and tree
willed to his wife,
she’s another thing I could lose any day
if I could have anything from that home place
I’d take a photo of her now
in marvellous bloom
higher than the house
also perpetual permission to trespass
to lay my bones down
on Walnut Creek shale
whenever it calls
Where I’m From
This poem uses a format George Ella Lyon has invited others to borrow to tell the story of where they are from.
Where I’m From
I am from newsprint
from Deep Woods Off! and Coppertone
three Rust Belt houses
moving up and down the social ladder
(the smell of the neighbor’s
lily-of-the-valley in the spring)
I am from creek shale and grapevine
twined into forts and swings
I’m from homemade applesauce
and too much booze
from Thomas Francis Browns
and William Joseph Schaafs
I’m from the secret-keepers
and the never-satisfieds
from the optimism of Good morning, morning glory!
and the poverty of That’s from hunger
I’m from Lenten incense, shamrock Trinities
I’m from Erie and Éire
from lake perch and cinnakuka
from the shot-up tail
of the Luck of the Irish B-17
that spared by German grandfather
and humid summers at the Shore
when Grandy showed me Saturn’s rings
the long wood shelves above my dad’s childhood desk
held the spiral-bound scrapbooks
with my grandfather’s cases and speeches
yellowed and tearing
charisma my father would never match
I am from immigrant industry
all of us broken
and heartsick for land
Bill’s Lorica
While my dad was dying I felt I needed the strength of a lorica to protect me emotionally. I intended to write it before I went to see him in the hospital in Minnesota, but somehow I didn’t get to it. On the flight home, I started to write a lorica, but it ended up being for him, not me. I wrote one draft and started copying out a second, and then we were on the ground. I put it aside and rediscovered it today. St. Patrick used his lorica to transform into a deer to avoid attack.
Bill’s Lorica
in the sparkling northwoods blue-green
today we gather
warmth of the longtime sun
to make a blanket for your bones
thick purple-brown twining grape vines
to knit a secret room of shade
a closed space without fear
to lie a long body down
to let go the burden of being upright
here in the crushed green
of fiddlehead and jewelweed
trilliums silently go crimson
binding our carmine blood
and this bit of wood
in the still pulpit, jack sits,
a silent preacher with nothing left to judge
only to witness you rest
accepting hard scars that will turn to moss
your angular bones to be rounded with time
we bring the pull of purple magnetite
the charged ions/counterbalance
positive/negative canceled/reconciled
we gather the echo in the steep shale walls
leaves written with pressure in time’s patient book
shut now
we call on the grosbeak’s brilliant rose-petal stained breast
his love sung not said
we call upon the restless waves
smoothing the past
readying the sunset canvas
curving to calm in a still quiet bay
and up here in the buoyant cumulus fields
today we weave all these ragged fragments together
a last quilt of protection
you pull to your chin
then you split down the middle
and turn to deer
as the jester’s gavel drops
on the hours of needing
to be more
Many Birds
As some of you know, I am doing a Big Year: a competition or personal challenge to see the most species of birds within a certain region in one year. It is customary to start on January 1st, but since that would not encompass all of our trip I started July 8th. In this case my region is the world. I am aiming to see 1,000 species of birds and to do that I need to maintain an average of 2.7 additional species per day. Currently my average is 5.46 and I have seen 71 species of birds in 12 days, 2 of them being my first ever. Here are some photos of some of those 71 species.
turning the knob, finding it locked
turning the knob, finding it locked
the tension, resistance surprises
jiggle the handle
no release
you’re not welcome
on the warm side of the door
into the earth
into the earth
today I bury
Mary & Will’s son
Patrick’s brother
my father
back to the earth
I give
the man who called me Hon
whose chest rumbled
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
in my ear every year
I bury snores that shook the house
and the click of the La-Z-Boy footrest
snapping into place
into the open ground
I put the smell of Scotch
and the crack of ice
the scent of Marlboros
and aftershave
I bury our single game of backgammon
and our many King’s Quests
here in the loam
I place Sundays
of Canadian bacon and eggs
glass Pepsi bottles
and the crossword
I bury a rough cheek
and a black fur fedora
with a jaunty red feather
old galoshes and new Buicks
under the turf
among the roots
I lower
our disappointment
yours and mine
at being who we are
today my heart heaps
soothing Walnut Creek clay
to bury the weight of trying
to ask the right questions
now I put the memory
of holding your hand
trying to undo loneliness
deep into the soil
today I bury
Ma’s grandson
Bill
my only Dad
trimming
trimming
my father
tall and lanky
briefly looking the Irishman
he was (but never mentioned):
white forearms
with dark, feathery hairs
languid fingers built for piano
an army flattop
and a shiny class ring
poised
over a friend who’s praying
Bill will clip his thicket of hair
faster than a parent can drive
my dad’s short-sleeved Henley’s
just like the one
I stole from my mother’s drawer
to bridge the gap
between the ‘60’s and me.
he’s focused and bemused
but there’s something off-putting
in those intense Goyaesque hands
that I noted on the hospital bed
and his cheekbones honed by hunger
today a man I never met
gifted me a revelation:
our parents had lives
we know nothing about
plus there’s still an awkward teenager
in every one of us
