Garbage Day Angels

Tomorrow is garbage day in Lindenhurst. Every Monday I hear the diesel engine, the grind of brakes stopping at every house, the clangs of trash cans and recycling bins emptying into the dumpster. Sometimes I notice the guys hopping out to deal with the bins, but usually I don’t. I’ve got children and brand new trash to deal with inside the house.

That’s right–I often forget to notice people, especially the predictable servants of our neighborhoods who clean up after us, deliver our mail, and plow our streets. What a miracle, really, that we’re all made in God’s image yet have the opportunity to move in and out of each other’s lives so freely, that we can pray for strangers, encourage them with the simplest of gestures, and capture them eternally in a poem.

Eamon Grennan’s poem, “Wing Road,” made me think about trash day a bit differently this week:

Wing Road

Amazing, how the young man who empties
the dustbin ascends the truck as it moves
away from him, rises up like an angel
in a china-blue check shirt and lilac
woollen cap, dirty work-gloves, rowanberry
red bandanna flapping at his throat. He plants
one foot above the mudguard, locks his
left hand to steel bar stemming
from the dumper’s loud mouth and is borne
away, light as a cat, red leg dangling,
the dazzled air snatching at that black-
bearded face. He breaks into a smile, leans
wide and takes the morning to his puffed
chest, right arm stretched far out, a checkered
china-blue wing gliding between blurred earth
and heaven, a messenger under the locust trees
that stand in silent panic at his passage. But
his mission is not among the trees: he has
flanked both sunlit rims of Wing Road
with empty dustbins, each lying on its side,
its battered lid fallen beside it, each
letting noonlight scour its emptiness
to shining. Carried off in a sudden cloud
of diesel smoke, in a woeful crying out
of brakes and gears, a roaring of monstrous
mechanical appetite, he has left this unlikely
radiance straggled behind him, where the crows,
covening in branches, will flash and haggle.,

Read Full Post »

A New Year of Poetry

I’m not big on New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not against resolutions; I just don’t usually make them in December. Forever a student and a teacher, I think in terms of the school year, setting goals in the late summer and diving in to the new me on the day Lydia’s bus pulls up.

One New Year’s tradition I do have, however, is writing in my journal for an hour or two on New Year’s Eve, reflecting on the past year. The tradition started in 2005, when I was so thankful to God that I had made it through that tough year that I wrote pages and pages of grateful reflections. But I am not a journal person: this is the one day I endeavor to crack the notebook.

Reflecting on my life shall come later tonight. Now I want to think about how my poetry is going to look in 2010.

On a practical level, I have already started sending poems to my friend Marci at the end of each week. She sends them, too, and the “pressure,” however so small, to have something done and somewhat readable helps me focus. Once I subtract weeks for winter break, spring break, and our annual three-week vacation, we’re looking at 46 weeks. That’s a lot of poetry–almost a whole collection’s worth. I’m excited to think about all these poems in utero, waiting to be born in 2010.

On the less practical, and much more important level, I want to be changed by poetry this year. Once I asked a former professor of mine about the whole point of it all. We are living in a culture that does not read poetry all that much. More and more poets are graduating with MFAs, and we’re all competing with each other to get books published that mostly other poets will read. Why do we do this? Or more importantly, why should we do this?

Her response: “I am not so idealistic these days to think that poetry can change the world. But I do believe the process of writing it can transform the poet.”

In this blog, I’ve been writing about the relationship between poetry and faith. I believe the Holy Spirit can work through artists to speak to other people. But this year I want to listen to the Spirit’s voice as I write. Where does my imagination travel as I begin to write? What do I envision, and why? Why do I return to the same images again and again (stars, wind, insects)? What are these poems trying to tell me about myself, about the world, about God?

If I listen well, I won’t get an answer. I’ll get caught even deeper in the mystery.

Read Full Post »

What They Can Do

Lately I’ve been challenging myself to reframe the way I see parenting. I’ve been trying to control my kids less and learn more about who they are. Amazing how my giving up some control has actually helped our household find more sanity and harmony.

Anyway, the following poem by Paul Willis, along with a recent local kids’ production of A Christmas Carol (I can’t help it–gets me every time), has helped rekindle my wonder toward my own children.

But before the poem, some of you may remember my posting from a few weeks back about how tough it is to write good joyful poems. Well, right now I’m reading a whole slew of them in Paul Willis’ new book, Rosing From the Dead. It’s an excellent read just out from WordFarm press. Put it on your Christmas list!



What He Can Do

after Elizabeth Holmes

Bounce a flat basketball between his legs

without looking.  Dive through a breaking wave.

Find anything on the Internet in six seconds.

Batter a drum till the walls shake.

Sag his jeans to the lowest

inch possible.  Refuse to sing.

Polish his cymbals until they shine

with his own reflection.  Call out the note

of the vacuum cleaner—a middle C.

Skate off a curb with both hands

deep in his pockets.  Sleep till noon.

Hold a dog the way a dog wants to be held.

Read Full Post »

Who the Meek Are Not

I think Mary Karr may be my favorite poet writing about matters of Christian faith today. In fact, reading this poem gives me that breathless “Oh, I wish I wrote that” feeling. Such a stunning and truthful piece. This poem does not preach or moralize but sears my mind with an image that spurs me toward spiritual understanding and growth. This is what I want to do in my work!

Who The Meek Are Not

by Mary Karr

…..

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice-paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don’t get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread
that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who—
at his master’s voice—seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.

Read Full Post »

The Thing You Must Remember

I read this poem with a student the other night. She had no assignments with her for our tutoring appointment, so I pulled this out of my bag of tricks. It ended up being serendipitous.

I’ve read this poem many times before, but this is the first time I saw it as a spiritual metaphor. I believe this is ultimately a poem of joy.

The Thing You Must Remember

by Maggie Anderson

The thing you must remember is how, as a child,

you worked hours in the art room, the teacher’s

hands over yours, molding the little clay dog.

You must remember how nothing mattered

but the imagined dog’s fur, the shape of his ears

and his paws. The gray clay felt dangerous,

your small hands were pressing what you couldn’t say

with your limited words. When the dog’s back

stiffened, then cracked into white shards

in the kiln, you learned how the beautiful

suffers from too much attention, how clumsy

a single vision can grow, and fragile

with trying too hard. The thing you must

remember is the art teacher’s capable

hands: large, rough and grainy,

over yours, holding on.

Read Full Post »