Let there be snapping turtles!
(Born on the first day of Autumn, 2016, South Pond.)
No Virgins
There were 20 minutes when no one was there.
Not on the beach.
Not in the water.
Not across the pond.
I strip down in an instant
and dive into the September waters
without compassion
and daringly continue out
toward our town
center–
the altar of summer.
I lift myself onto the dock
and lie there
under the sun,
one middle-aged breast
deflating to each side.
No virgin offering
to this lasting day of summer.
And before I hear a car door slam
or the crunch of a stick underfoot,
I slip off the dock
and make my way back through the cool water to the shore.
I wrap myself in a towel,
and stand at the water’s edge
to let the sun kiss my face,
in communion with the stillness
of water
of Everything.
Just then, a head appears,
out of the soft ripples I left behind.
It’s the one we’ve watched grow from a chick on his mother’s back
to being left behind by the mating pair to come of age on his own.
The loon and I regard one another,
and then he dives under the water again,
and I sit down with a book.
Russ and Andi appear
in their beach chairs
behind me
in the grass.
And together
we hold the silence
of the eternal moment…
of this summer day
Until we’re startled by a flock of geese
who lift from the banks
and swoop across our view,
and circle the pond
and rise over the mountains
Heading south.
~
Vacation, 2:30 am
What about all those times when any kind of bed would have been a welcome relief:
…that night on the park bench in Pamplona
…the bucket seat on the ferry crossing from Ireland
…the overcrowded train car from Milano to Switzerland
But I had slept at least some on each of those nights without the pressure points of this deck-of-cards body; and there had been nights, like this one, with a bed, even at 20, when I couldn’t sleep…
… the Shrimp Diablo
…that night in Nice
…the mornings after cheating
And now the second margarita instead of supper at Happy Hour.
There are children
Without beds
With aching stomachs.
There are the ill and the aged and the terrorized.
Who am I to claim deprivation?
What of nursing mothers, teething toddlers, and the dying–and those tending them.
I should have had some dinner.
I should have skipped the indulgence of a second cocktail.
Should I have stayed home?
Never left the comfort of my bed?
Instead of writing now, at 2:30 am, with a view of the lighthouse, on a island across Saco Bay?
~
Sometimes I can’t bear the pain that lies ahead
So exquisite is the joy I’ve known.
~
I began writing at 18 to feel less alone.
I began offering my work at 36 so that others might feel less alone.
~
I am lying awake on a tiny strip of land beside the sea.
Who are these people in the passing cars and where are they going at 3:30 am?
~
I’ll close with a poem for all those who are still awake.
The Sleepless Ones
What if all the people
who could not sleep
at two or three or four
in the morning
left their houses
and went to the parks
what if hundreds, thousands,
millions
went in their solitude
like a stream
and each told their story
what if there were
old women
fearful if they slept
they would die
and young women
unable to conceive
and husbands
having affairs
and children
fearful of failing
and fathers
worried about paying bills
and men
having business troubles
and women unlucky in love
and those that were in physical
pain
and those who were guilty
what if they all left their houses
like a stream
and the moon
illuminated their way and
they came, each one
to tell their stories
would these be the more troubled
of humanity
or would these be
the more passionate of this world
or those who need to create to live
or would these be
the lonely
ones
and I ask you
if they all came to the parks
at night
and told their stories
would the sun on rising
be more radiant and
again I ask you
would they embrace
~ Lawrence Tirnauer
(note: I first heard this poem read by author Dani Shapiro in her workshop, The Stories We Carry.)
30 Days without Facebook
Observing desire
without acting on it
enlarges our freedom
to choose
how
we live.
~Tara Brach
We came to Vermont for the clean air, the heightened perspective, the depth of thought and consciousness.
We gave up cable long before we arrived.
Once here, in a town without a traffic light, we learned to live with even less distraction. To embrace silence. Early nights. Slow reads. Pillow talk. Sleep.
Then came the internet.
The web expanded our horizons, enriched our conversations, increased our opportunity, and fractured our attention.
The single screen in the den was replaced by individual screens, of all sizes, in each pair of hands, in every room, at every hour, on workdays and weekends and holidays.
Family time, once incidental, now needed to be scheduled and rescheduled and relinquished in favor of independent pleasures. Moments passing and glancing at each others screens. Morning spaciousness obsolete. Bedtimes later. Pillow talk extinct. Books ornamental.
It’s come to this. To know. That my attention. Has rarely been singular.
In a weekend retreat with Tara Brach at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, I make a discovery. Once singularly focused on nothing but my breath, I am overcome. By anxiety.
Soon after, I realize. It’s time.
The first 24 hours are agonizing. The next 48 touch and go. An entire week disrupted by unrequited desire.
Gradually, Facebook fades to the background. Cravings pass like those for sugar following a post-holiday detox.
But in the absence of posting and notifications, something else arises:
Fear.
Day after day.
Night after night.
Death. Decay. Disaster.
I stay. I notice. I breathe. I take my supplements.
(I drink a little.)
The weeks pass and I begin to notice something else arising, anew:
Stillness.
Exquisite stillness.
Like a seedling in May. Or an early morning in June. Or the cool grass under my feet. Or the hush of days end. Or the call of the hermit thrush from deep in the woods. Or the sound of rain on our metal roof.
Attention and intention aligned once again.
At the end of the month, I come upon this Rumi quote in Tara’s book, True Refuge:
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
I feel the invitation; but I don’t know how to RSVP.
I’m already intoxicated by all there is to share and receive.
And yet, I also sense a subtle shift.
An awareness.
A pause.
A breath.
And the freedom that accompanies the in between.
The Month of May
May 29
The world conspired to keep me awake. The warm air. The intoxicating sounds. The sky. Especially the sky! First Mars. Then all those constellations whose shapes & names I never bothered to learn. Then something else. A first for the season! So soon? Maybe it was a plane. A falling star. A UFO. I got up three times. After midnight. To be sure.
Fireflies!
~
My guys strut around in the Rockin Rose towels I bought for spring, Makes my feminist heart sing.
May 27
Here’s to black fly bites & ant infestations.
Without which we’d drown in the intoxication of May.
~
I suppose I was 17 and she was not quite 2. We dove under the sea together and the salt water soaked her long lashes and made the gift of her in my arms under the warm sun almost unbearable.
“You have such pretty eyes, Bon Bon,” I said.
After which, she looked at me, just as earnestly, with the sand kissing the fine hairs of my face, and said,
“You have two eyes too, Kel Kel!”
~
One year ago today. Bernie announced his campaign. On the waterfront. In Burlington, Vermont.
May 26
both boys back in the house
~
At 52, I’ve become such a risk taker. In relationship. First with a friend. Then a sister.
Exposing where I’ve been hurt instead of tucking it inside. To fester.
After I share, I listen and respond to the ways I’ve presented a similar challenge. To them.
I am so brave. And vulnerable.
We all are.
~
May 24
after 10 days away, i love re-integrating back home
under the cover
of rain…
May 22
Another day, another graduate!
Cousins
May 21, 2016
Am I pretty?
52, and I still want
to know. Daddy,
do you think so?
May 20
Medicine enters the next generation…
Nephew Corey (my sister Robin’s oldest and the first of our next gen) JUST graduated from Medical School.
Continuing on the path of his father (ER doc), grandfather (Surgeon) & grandmother (Nurse), great-grandfather (Surgeon), great-great grandfather (Physician) & great-great grandmother (Nurse), and his great-great-great grandfather (Health Officer.)
May 19
The island in May. Empty of commerce. Pulsing in preparation. Landscapers. Dune-shapers. Painters. Stockers. Deliverers. A shoulder season like September, but intemperate & gusty with an unwelcome chill. A desire for baring, not covering. Skin. Aching for swimsuits, not sweatshirts. The anxious cheer of Open for Business. Eager staff training & being trained. Busboys seeking anything upon which to apply clean rags. Everyone practicing on pretend customers, like me, before the real ones arrive, in throngs, in season, with the height of the summer sun…
~
Happy 26th Anniversary of our Marriage, Casey
the “backdrop to women’s oppression for centuries”
(I wouldn’t want to live inside this institution with anyone else.)
May 18
Though I was born here, and lived here from time to time throughout my life, it is the returning that I most appreciate. And in this, I have been well received, both by the sea, and by those who have welcomed me and my family over a lifetime. First grandparents, then parents and in-laws, aunts & uncles, siblings, cousins, friends, friends of siblings, parents of friends–each providing spare bedrooms, empty apartments, entire homes–so that I might know, and always remember, that I belong.
May 16
The pre-patriarchal goddess, Hera, returned for a ritual bath to the Spring of Kanathus every year to renew her Virginity–the quality of belonging to herself.
~Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
~
In my bag, I have packed, just about 700 pages
My own
Ready for gentle eyes
May 14
This Vermont Life 