Time, and time again

Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month, and today I spent some time on poets.org, following links from their Poetry 101 page, looking at their list of poets who have defined the poetic landscape, hungrily pouring input into the cavernous gap of my ignorance. Later, while I was scrubbing the tub, I thought of two sentences: “It was so old, I was surprised to find it true;” and, “It was so true, I was surprised to find it old.”  They reflected a feeling I got while reading the poems - that our sense of literary time is different from our sense of current time, though both are real in their ways.  As a child, I mourned my lack of the landscape of stories, wishing to trade my suburban environment for the woods, the meadows, the villages that I found in books. Now these things are even further from current experience, but they seem to live on in our language of imagery.

Story Time

One part of life moves through the surface day

the texting, facebook, groceries, price of gas

Another part moves half submerged

through caves and pools of leavings from the past

This memory, this story, this impression

from which we make our maps, decide our goals

was formed before today’s brash supercession

erased the landmarks, swept away the trails

The little house, the woods, the town - all gone

The farm, the friendly neighbors, wilderness

The landscapes we imagine can’t be found

within this GPS’d and fractured place

But still we walk these paths, in stories, dreams

Within our inner world their presence gleams.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 31, 2011

The Hope of Close Encounters

Today I went with my friend Carolyn to meet a group from the Street Youth Ministries at her alpaca farm.  Shortly after we arrived, we all went out with carrots to greet the alpaca.  Their caretaker told us that the alpaca were skittish today, because a strong wind had been blowing.  He thought it affected them by roaring in their ears.  In any case, they seemed more reluctant than usual to approach us.  But eventually, some of them did.

Street youth meet Alpaca

They walk within the frames they have created

to hold their fragile sense of who they are

They point and laugh, but show appreciation

for this strange group that watches from afar

who twitch as one, and turn, alert, to scan them

and take in every move they make, all ready

to bolt, or maybe come a little closer

if something should entice them to approach

Each eager hand holds out a carrot

Each one holds out a gift in hope

The stakes almost to high for them to bear it

Alpaca-skittish, each may let it drop:

Will any of these clear-eyed wild ones see

my worthy soul inside and come to me?

©Wendy Mulhern
March 30, 2011

Held in Love

Today I wanted to write a poem about a wonderful feeling that comes to me sometimes, in early morning prayer or just in sudden moments, a feeling of being suspended in Love.  It’s about feeling completely cared for - not weightless but with every part of me supported and nothing strained.  And with ‘every part of me’ including everything I love, all those I care about.  Maybe the poem does better than these words.

Held in Love

Everything I am, and all I’ve tended -

my loves, my children, all their early flights

my own delayed attempts to shine my light

are held forever safe in Love suspended.

I never felt this free; though I pretended

my intellect could take me to a height

where I could chart a course and judge it right,

my dreams still squirmed unsure, over-extended.

But now I feel Love’s grasp on us so sure

each one established in our perfect sphere

all our connections elegant and pure

we never need be anywhere but here.

All that Love ordains for us endures

Love carries us, Love’s way is always clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2011

A bit of frivolity

It was an active day today, and at the end of it, I chose to watch a show with my family instead of writing a poem.  In the interests of togetherness, frivolity is sometimes appropriate.  So in the frivolous mode I set by my actions this evening, I will share my most recent verse about pulling ivy:

The Yard Waste Truck Comes Early Tomorrow Morning

I raked the ground so I could see

where roots and shoots protruded

so all the ivy finally

could truly be uprooted

It isn’t done, the roots remain

their network branches deep

They’ve had some years to make their claim

within the yard waste heap

Year upon year of heaped neglect

I strive to overcome

No more than what one would expect

in maintenance of a home

A basic fact I somehow never grasped

Till tangled up in all I had let lapse.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2011

Another dance sonnet

I wrote two poems today - well, maybe one of them would be called a verse.  The verse is about pulling ivy (again - yard waste is collected every other week).  The poem is another one about the dance that we often go to on Friday nights.  I wanted to try an Italian form sonnet; the rhyme scheme is more demanding than the Shakespearean style I have used most often.

The constraints of the sonnet are: line length and rhythm (iambic pentameter); number of lines (14); rhyme scheme (Italian: abbaabba for the eight, with the following six related to each other - I’ve seen cdfcdf or, as I did here, cdcdcd).  Plus there’s an intent for the first eight lines to present a scenario and the finishing six to comment and conclude.

I like to let the rhythm vary a bit from the iambic.  I don’t like to turn a sentence inside out for a rhyme.  I don’t say something that’s not true for the sake of a rhyme.  Those are my added constraints.

I find that writing within constraints is interesting.  It sometimes helps bring out the meaning more clearly than writing without them.

I’ll share the sonnet tonight:

Ode to the dance

Stepping softly in between the shafts of sound

the trancing hum of chords reverberating

weft and warp in fabric of relating

threads of touch remembered and rewound

In dancing eyes fresh lines of light are found

a joyful glee of friends appreciating

the playful moves, the games of their creating

the sudden bursts of energy unbound

As music, words, and movement thus are one

so are we one in the reverberation

that still remains when all the music’s done

and we have voiced our final incantation

The web of our connection lightly spun

reprised thus in a quiet exaltation.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2011

Bouncing back

On March 23rd, I noted in my journal that my poems always tended to be optimistic - that even if they started low, they would bounce up at the end like one of those weighted punch clowns.  I decided that that wasn’t a problem as long as optimism wasn’t one of my constraints - if they were doing that on their own without my forcing them in that direction.  Then, the very next day, I wrote a poem that didn’t bounce up at the end.  What was interesting to me was that I did - bounce up, I mean.  I felt absolutely exhilarated after posting that poem, and did, all day yesterday, as well.  My sense was that the joy came from the success of the poem at capturing a somewhat elusive feeling and thought pattern so exactly.

So I failed to write a poem yesterday.  I realized that perhaps I had to reset the bar, and not try to capture anything particularly profound (after all, I hadn’t tried to before, even when I felt I succeeded).  

Having done so, and turning honestly once again to what’s at hand, I came upon a topic that my husband and I have both been thinking about, in our different ways, of late.  The wondering why we do what we do, the shifting of thought towards a different sphere:

Moving On

In weary sameness once again you slide your tray

past each seductive offering in the display

of nothing that could satisfy the gap within

your plate still empty as you reach the end

So is this why we choose to die - we lack

the bright desire to keep us coming back?

We could go on, but wonder what’s the use

(the reasons, glorious before, now seem obtuse)

Or is there more than what is offered here

a way to focus thought between the things

to listen with a more celestial ear

for strains beyond what the commercials sing?

 - Seek substance in a different kind of sphere

and find the joy that strong connection brings.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 26, 2011

Doing the Math

This poem reflects a feeling that came upon me today several times, and though I managed to beat it back, it insisted on being what I tell about.

I had a bad time with math in high school, but I loved certain parts of it - the beautiful curves and the notion of them being generated from equations.  I would grasp the concepts but fall down in the execution of problems.  The same story may play itself out in other aspects of my life.

Story Problem

Here is a place of feeling lonely

a point of discontinuity

a no man’s land between the asymptotes

X marks the degenerate set

no bounding parabolic curve for me,

 - ever upward, ever steeper -

no perfect circle, no elegant ellipse

no connection to the conic section

Here is a place of feeling lonely

a point of discontinuity

no connection to logic or reality

or the events of the day

Can I fall, thus

down along the asymptotes

ever approaching

never fully touched?

©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2011