My thoughts like wild birds
Flinging themselves at the blue
skyscrapers’ windows

Ducks

Behind bare cottonwoods
Winging upland like memory
from open creek ice

(rewrite from August 3 haiku)

Sitting Wire

mourning doves sitting
wire, bright sky, tails as vanes pointing
in the wind, sighing

Blackpoll

Once, I rescued a frail creature
from the neighbor’s goliath
tabby: Not fully black,
but black-and-white pied, the bird—
a minuscule finch or black-
poll—fluttered against the paws.

I trapped the cat’s nape,
lifted the bird as if she were a cherished
wish, coaxed her to flee.
Woozy, she wobbled
to the trees, flitting and resting
at heart-level till she again
found her height.

A samaritan’s reward is her rescuee’s
health… I didn’t grudge the tabby
either, his natural drive. But next day,
arriving home from work,
three small pied birds, kinswomen,
no doubt, of the first,
attended on my front steps.
They rose in unison at my greeting,
wove three quick circles around me
in avian pageant, and shyly fled.

11/3/10 haiku

The flock of geese

I think I have always known that when you cross rivers things change. When I was young in the Twin Cities, and crossed the still-narrow and willow-strong Mississippi from one city to the other many times, sometimes many times per day, my life was rootless. My father left and visited occasionally, the five of us kids changed rooms now and then, acquired and lost rodents, reptiles, fish and friends. Staying for overnights or weekends at grandmothers' houses, we always knew we were guests and would be going home, and back at home, we never felt comforted, but that we would have to go somewhere else to enjoy closeness, and we often crossed rivers and culverts on our way from one house to another. But our lives were precarious, we would have to pack and leave. So many crossings, so many changes. I scarcely knew on which side of the river I belonged, and I wished for the waters to bring me to a new world, a new place.

Many years later, I was crossing a different river eight months pregnant with twins and I felt something change. I was not surprised. I was riding the city bus that autumn afternoon to a healing session at a bookstore. The November trees were bare and stretched up toward a mottled grey sky. As the bus crossed the Alewife Brook, I glanced out the window. A flock of geese was passing overhead, a precarious necklace that an unseen hand seemed to be shaking, trying to dislodge goose-shaped beads. At the same instant, several small hands and feet drew a path across the outer reaches of their atmosphere, the inner surface of my belly.

Those two simultaneous lines of movement undid something in my psyche, and brought me to an awareness of multiple levels of movement, of comings and goings. The geese flew, the bus's drive shaft rotated on its axis, the bus churned forward across the bridge, the tiny hands and feet described their intimate arc, and the river below us flowed in its dirty concrete channel to a salty harbor six or eight miles away—the combination of all these quickenings at once turned in me a cosmic machine, like the gears and orbits you see in a silent movie town-square clockworks--ancient, ponderous, plodding; the movements rendered in me a state of consciousness that I can only describe as other, and knowing.

In my mind, the children and birds changed places, and the birds were then drawing their wingtips across my belly from the inside. My children in that instant were flying with their companions south for the winter, and I knew the pregnancy at once to be a sad one, with partings and goodbyes.

I don't remember the healing session in the bookstore that day, but I remember the wingtips of my small birds as the geese flew overhead, the sadness, the workings of the cosmic. I have often tried to capture the story of the two birds, to write them into their own children's tale, of knowing and adventure and foresight. Two birds on an adventure, one flies up, one flies down. Two birds who are jolly companions. Two birds who get into mishaps together. But nothing can take me away from the fact that these birds are babies, and one of them takes his leave, crosses that great river to the other side. It has taken me eighteen years to be able to write this story.

Okay … the one time I went to the peak of “Eagle Mountain” in Minnesota, was on a weekend getaway with my sister. My son was young enough to miss me for the weekend, so it must have been about 8 years ago. Laura and I were actually heading to Sleeping Giant park in Ontario, so the trip to the top of Eagle was a spur along the way. We headed straight up the gravel road from near Grand Marais, and got there in record time (when my sister is in a hurry, she’s in a hurry). I think we sprinted up that boulder- and windfall-strewn trail to the little curlicue in the trail that marks the steeper part of the climb. I had an elevation map at the time, and we tracked each 100 feet. As we rounded one of the turns, there was dense forestation in a few places and the trickle of water, and staccato of mossy bogs dripping from one level to another of the rising trail. It reminded me, mood-wise, of the Peter Weir film, “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” which was one of my faves in college. In the film, some young boarding school girls in Australia go for an outing at Ayers rock. During the outing they get a little audacious and misty and swoony, as young girls do. A few of them break away from the group to go up this little rock pass, and they simply disappear off the face of the earth—a true mystery. I look for that feeling sometimes when climbing or hiking up high, that swoony, otherworldly feel, as if you could simply disappear into the landscape, into a hidden dimension. And that’s what it felt like hiking with my sister on the Eagle Mountain trail, in a few places. I think there was even some mist near the top. But also, I was running and panting to keep up with my hyper sister. At the top was a giant granite boulder with a plaque on it. We took the photo op and got a few pictures. Then sprinted down again, and made it to Sleeping Giant by nightfall. The end.

Except we had only made the journey for me, because I’d made the trip and tried to make the climb a few years previous to that, and I really wanted to complete the peak. I had joined a hiking club when I first moved to Minnesota, and went on this “winter camping” trip with two folks, and the guy had said he would bring all the gear for winter camping. I learned a lot from him—mainly how unprepared I was and how great fleece is for warmth and how crazy but okay it is to sleep in a freezing van with two people you barely know and four giant dogs. He had his skijoring dogs with him, and they needed a lot of attention, including walking. If you ever want to know how it feels to be a piece of Gruyere when it’s run over a grater, all you need to do is walk a few sled dogs on an icy trail strewn with boulders the size and shape of skewed living room furniture. But there was a wonderful, dreamy display of northern lights that night, blues and greens all cirrus-y. And I completed the peak a few years later.

Colder nights
And darker--just a curtain
Of warmth in wood smoke.

A friend's niece recently got her first period, and the friend was looking for menarche stories. this is:

My First One—

I noticed it when we were driving home from Grandma’s house, a trip that took about 45 minutes. Five kids in the car and mom driving. It just felt wetter between my legs than usual. I was almost 15, had been sure that I was going to be the freak that it never happened to, sure that it would be a lifelong embarrassment.

I didn’t tell my mom. I didn’t want her to know. But she always had tampons, so I stole the tampons from the box on her dresser, shook up the box so she wouldn’t notice a few were missing. She had bought me a giant box of poofy kotex 2 or 3 years previously, and a couple of those white stretchy belts to clip them on with. Ewww. We put them on the upper shelf of my closet. Then she never talked to me about it again. I never talked much to my mom about anything.

We had had the usual uncomfortable presentations in school—the school nurse showed a movie to all the girls at our school in 5th grade, and then again in 6th grade. Mrs. Milford the nurse was very frank about things, standing in front of us in her crisp white nurse’s uniform and 1950’s style bob haircut (this was 1972, the era of longhairs, bellbottoms and love beads). But she didn’t have a very wide base of experience. And the movies were silly and lame.

So in the summer after 9th grade, I finally got my period on that car trip. I knew instantly what it was. So I stole Pursettes tampons from my mom that week, and for a week a month later, and pretty much thought I’d never have to have that discussion with her.

Fast forward to late September. We had moved to the Boston area with my new stepdad who was practically a stranger to us. Then my mom flew back home to Minnesota for a couple of weeks to complete her job back there. So my stepdad Charles was doing all the shopping and cooking and parenting for that month. He was a Greek lawyer, about 5 foot 4 and hairy. I was a sassy, embarrassed Nordic Minnesota teen, already 5 foot 7.

When I got my period again, I somehow wrangled to be with Charles, this stepdad I barely knew, on the next grocery shopping trip. He kept asking me about apples and hamburger and milk, and meanwhile, I was scoping out the aisle with the tampons, walked up and down it a few times, pacing, pretending to look for something else. But then, finally, as we were about to go, I grabbed the tampon box off the shelf, and put it in the grocery basket. I thought Charles had barely noticed—and I wouldn’t have to deal with it.

The next night my mom called me on the phone long distance from Minnesota.

But sometimes
births are silent
and still the stars obey

Another type of post:

I've decided to try, besides doing Haiku as a writing exercise, to try doing list poems on occasion. The idea I have now is to do an "ecstasy of the day," and see how far I can get with it. There is just so much to write about, when you set your mind to observation and memory. For yesterday, 8/8/2010, the ecstasy of the day was rhythm. And I only just got started:

Ecstasy of the Day 8/8/10
Rhythm
-the rapid trill of the cicada, coming at uncertain intervals
-spoke clusters and alternating leaves and branches of weeds in the rock garden
-footfalls on the gravel bed, trudging, stopping, trudging, stopping, the movement of the small stones.
-Lurid beeps of a teenager's video game
-thrumming baritone of air conditioners outside
-the rattle of rubber tires on pavement down the block
-the calls of birds, their meanings to each other
-our daily awakenings and sleeps
-our own language, the buzzing, gymnastic throatiness of it.
-the intervals between trees in the forest, the asynchronous peeling of paint on old furniture
-the stretching of moving muscles and firing nerves, the impulses in my brain.
-the pattern of raindrops spotting the windshield and stippling the puddles. The rhythm of my car's wipers, turn signal, swaying keychain, all on different periods.
-my own tires on the pavement seams, other cars' tires.
-My mind making choices, addressing fears, coming home to ecstasy.
-Losing things, then finding them again, like my courage, my dignity, my second favorite kitchen knife that fell under the dish drain for two months. The game of hide and seek that the universe plays with us.
-the sound of waistbands and hems and zippers hitting the fins in the dryer as it tumbles.
-The whistling tea kettle whose cry rises as an uncertain spiral rather than a steady blast.
-the fact of washing dishes another day. The clatter as dishes drop upon their fellows in the cupboard.

Sometimes a love poem
Is not its opposite, but
An infinity.

Haiku Diem:

On facebook, there's this page called Haiku Diem, where somebody is posting a Haiku per day. Inspiring, and not too intimidating, in terms of volume, to post a 5-7-5 syllable verse based on a day's observations or experience. Perfect bite-sized piece of writing. I'm taking up the habit. Here's today's:

Doves sit as wire knots--
Staccato signpost up there,
Tails directing breeze.

Barb picked up the phone, her voice a little sleepy, and asked if she could call me back after taking a minute to walk Jay back to his room. I said, yes, if she didn’t mind, could she please call me back (I was bristling and could barely restrain my annoyance. How could she put me off yet again?) I got a glass of water and waited a minute or so for the phone to ring back.

By the time I picked up the line again, something—angels of mercy, the hand of the Creator, or even the old man with the sickle himself—something had touched me. My hands, head and heart felt like a flutter as of feathers, and all my vituperation dissolved and floated upward like a mist, and I was engaged unknowingly in one of life’s sacred and true rituals.

On Route 60 bumping through Belmont, Barb drove the car like a swerving drunk, trying to hit every rainwater puddle at the side of the road. She and seven-year-old Jay cheered maniacally at each one. “Rooster tails,” she explained, almost as an aside, as water arc-ed up and out from the puddles, feathering the air. She and Jay cheered again, woo-hoo, the roadway entertainment an intimate joke that they shared. I envied them this zany closeness, and of course started plotting how I was going to create a similar madcap rapport with Zeke.
I made a few rooster tails while driving with him that week, but at five he was already canny and languid about the artifices of adult society. “Stop it mom,” Zeke said, with almost adolescent condescension, as I swerved and cheered. “You’re only doing that because Barb does, and it’s kind of dangerous.”

Illuminations

(this is an excerpt from a poem I drafted over a month ago. Good way to round out the month of June--with writing to spare--):

The river was slate
that October day.
Sodden leaf clumps
clung to water's edge
before slipping heavy and
unremarked
toward the bay.
You asked me something and I--
having cautiously thought of it before--
agreed. You took my hand,
I remember, and we crossed
a sand-colored bridge, drizzle
like sparse pinpricks on our faces
in the cold and grey. I remember
the white walls of your
narrow walkup, your minuscule
room, the clean air
as the rain slowed, how things
brightened like peeled and sectioned
oranges.