We have seven types of scorpions in the Bay Area. Woodies (Uroctonus mordax) have the biggest claws.
Today was one of those days when a rare black swallowtail butterfly decided to cross my path, and flit in front of my car bearing down at 40 miles an hour. Nothing to be done, I saw it flutter to the road and I thought of how not only did I strike down a rare butterfly, I killed the only pollinator of an even rarer plant, the pipevine plant. Both, indelible images from the landscape of my childhood. The carrion-scented pipevine, or Dutchman’s pipe, with its heart-shaped leaves, is the only foodsource of the butterfly, the butterfly, its only pollinator. Their age-old dance is a deep symbiosis that I cannot even begin to fathom.
When I went to pick up my friend for his appointment, another black swallowtail fluttered overhead. I felt that for a moment, that maybe I was forgiven. I drove slowly along the road looking for the one I had struck down, thinking I could at least photograph it in death. A memento mori. But it was gone, like the shadow of a leaf in the wind. California pipevine swallowtails are melanistic, and in the right light, their sooty wings are fringed with indigo jewels. In many cultures a black butterfly is a symbol of transition, renewal, or rebirth.
To ameliorate that sense of loss, call it unnamed grief, having an hour to kill, I hiked up the fireroad to the ridge above Terra Linda while my friend was in the hospital getting a procedure done. Lately, I’ve been keeping the doldrums at bay with routine and projects. It sneaks in when the pattern is broken. An old friend, Katelin died, and from that, there is no recovery. I walked along the ridge line, gazed back at the iconic shape of Mount Tam, and then north to the broad expanse of Loma Alta Ridge, Sleepy Hollow below me. I dawdled, and took photos of wildflowers and rock outcroppings of Franciscan strata, ribbon chert, and stray blueschist knockers.
It wasn’t until when I was leaving, that unexpected stop after what you think is your final stop—I doubled back to see the place where an old house once stood on the ridgeline. Near where the front door might’ve stood, a liminal boundary to the east, there were two clumps of white freesias in the grass, that heavenly narcotic scent taking me back to another time, another place, when life was not as painful. Someone once said, let grief come in, and then let it go out again. I have not seen the ocean for over a year. Cease, surcease.
Still feeling blue, I headed back north to prepare for a Sierra Poetry Festival poetry reading for the California Fire & Water anthology reading with Molly Fisk. I joined a little late because I stopped off at Hick’s Valley to feed the Dolcini horses some apples, it was a necessary stop, if only for their soothing animal kindness, and gentle presence, as they snuffed and whuffled, and begged me to itch that one unattainable spot high on their necks for just a little bit longer.
We breathed in each other’s breath in greeting. Theirs smelled of spring grass, and summer lawns. Mine, of coffee. Their soft eyes, like the deep lakes of the wings of those butterflies, held no judgement, no expectation, other than that of animal companionship. They crowded in, glad for the distraction. Sometimes I forget that deep connection with horses. The unexpected stop made me a little late for the reading, but was necessary for peace of mind.
Some 50 of us poets were electronically joined at the hip via Zoom. We read for the children, we read for the planet we read for the jetstream—that it might find its way back home; we prepare for what is to come. This year, the fire season will arrive too soon and already the hills are losing their greenery. As I listened to the poems, I was lifted out of the doldrums. After the reading, the blues slammed back in, wanting its due—that pound of flesh. But there are indigo skies on the horizon. It is all part of the dance.
There is always tomorrow for the reboot.
Weave and Mend
Old woman is watching, watching over you
In the darkness of the storm, she is watching
She is weaving, mending, gathering the colors
She is watching over you.
Chorus:
So, weave and mend
Weave and mend
Gather the fragments safe
And win the sacred circle,
Sisters, weave and mend,
Weave and mend,
Oh women, weave and mend
Old woman is weaving, gathering the threads
Her bones become the loom she is weaving,
She is watching, weaving, gathering the colors
She is watching over you.
Chorus:
For years I’ve been watching, waiting for old woman
Feeling lost and so alone, I’ve been watching.
Now I find her weaving, gathe ring the colors
Now I find her in myself.
And another version on the Black Brothers Band webpage.
(It took me a while (a year and a half) but I finally got around to recording the song for Carol Hoorn, replete with a cat who was concerned about me. Link.) |
| Two trilliums. yes, there was a third. Green Hill Rd., Sebastopol. |
They talked of their community work, and how their anthologies came into being—a reaction to what was happening to our state (of mind). Diversity. They read selected poems from their anthologies. Lucille talks about bio-regions and fire ecology, she reads a poem about about the evolution of redwood seed cones, and a ladybug poem from Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California.
I think: Ladybugs fly hundreds of miles to mate and congregate in my grandmother’s old bedroom, why that place, who knows? Every year they come, and cover the walls. A living mosaic flickering like fire. My childhood room. We haven’t the heart to fix the windows. Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, and your children do roam. Oh, the pheromones of home.
Ruth Nolan talks about the drought and her experiences being a firefighter during the 1980s. She lives in a cabin in the Mojave desert. I keep thinking of fire, fire is always on my mind, but then I am born under a fire sign. Mend and weave. Fill the word basket with fire words. A song fragment is stuck in my head. Old Woman, Weave and Mend. In the darkness of the storm she is watching. Gathering the fragments. This becomes my backdrop. My ear worm.
Molly Fisk reads selections from California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. She talks about the program, and how CPITS poets taught residencies to kids about how to deal with climate crisis. She shares that she came to poetry via personal crisis. How, through that experience, teaching poetry became her life’s work. She asks us, how can poetry help people to heal? An old woman is weaving, her bones become the loom.
I think: The fire season came early this year, it’s a drought year, too soon. Too soon. Poetry is the language of emotion. It is the perfect vehicle to understanding the problem. It is the way to heal. She says, if you can’t understand something or you can’t put it into words, put it into the third person and then write about what didn’t happen.
I think: Poems are like baskets holding the past. Poets see things differently, we have acutely honed observation skills, we are the watchers. This is why I like to watch murder mysteries. Honing my skills. Looking for clues, the divine mystery. We are gathering the fragments. The old woman, she is weaving the sacred circle, gathering in the colors, she is watching over you. Oh, sisters, weave and mend.
We are spreading the word, we are saving all we can save. It turns out everything burns—asphalt becomes a molten river. I remember how last year, during the wildfire, we were under evacuation alert mode, how the ghost leaves drifted across the valley, and fell, glowing like fireflies on the wind. Leaves drifting like snowflakes, like feather down. Such hot kisses. A torch song. On warm days, the attic still remembers the acrid odor of wildfire smoke. A constant reminder of the past, and what is to come. Oh women, weave and mend.
Can poetry change the world? Its narrative is where things begin. Jamie FitzGerald says, We need to change the narrative. How do we go about teaching in a time of crisis? Working with landpaths and creating eco-poetry. Call it passing the baton of social awareness to the next generation. Oh, Sisters, weave and mend.
Jamie said, During the Covid crisis, the penny dropped, the disparate pieces of climate change became a puzzle, the picture came into focus. How do we name it, this thing called climate change, without distancing from it? Oh, women weave and mend.
Molly says type up lines from poems and put them under windshield wipers at night when no one is looking. I like the idea of guerilla poetry for April Poetry Month. The tapestry we weave with our words. Grandmother Spider. The song, what does it want? So insistent.
We talk about Carolyn Forché’s latest book, Against Forgetting, the role of the poet. This is how we bring about change. Bearing witness. Never forget.
And finally the song’s earworm message is revealed. I look it up. The Elderwomen of Nanaimo, a place lately on my mind. Songs and poems work in funny ways, an undercurrent below the conscious level of the psyche. The elders are speaking to me through the song:
For years I’ve been watching, waiting for Old Woman,
From Robert Lee Brewer: Here we are with the first day of the 2021 April Poem-A-Day Challenge! Each day, I'll provide a poetry prompt and a poem to get things started. You can secretly poem along at home, or you can share your poem in the comments below. Catalogue here.
The 2021 PAD line up Last year, someone on Facebook suggested I start the daily prompting and poeming earlier than usual, since so many people were self-quarantining and social distancing at the moment in the United States and elsewhere around the world. And it was a great call. (That was me! —MH)
The minus PaD countdown began March 22. -10. Begin a poem with Let’s. -9. Write a cause and effect poem. -8. Write a fantasy poem. -7. Take a song title, change a word, make the new title the title of your poem, and write your poem. -6. Write an invention poem.-5. write a MacGuffin poem. A MacGuffin is an object (living or nonliving) necessary for the plot but has no greater value to the story. A good example is The Maltese Falcon. -4. Write a universal poem, a universal truth, experience, or a film from Universal Pictures. -3. Write a "spirit of the stairs" poem. that moment when you come up with all the things you should've said AFTER the moment has passed. Hence, you're on the stairs. -2. Take the phrase "Almost (blank)," replace it with a new word or phrase, make it the title of your poem. -1. Write a warm up poem. It could be related to sports, before a baseball game or track race. Or it could be about a computer warming up, the weather, or even a relationship.
Day 1. For today's prompt, write an introduction poem. Introduce yourself, introduce a friend, or introduce a stranger. If you don't wish to introduce yourself, consider writing a persona poem (a poem in which you write from someone else's point of view like Emily Dickinson or a bumblebee). Of course, you could also introduce a problem, solution, or just a situation. Have fun with it! Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
Allow me to introduce myself,
