Poetry 180: The Orange Scarf
So, being encouraged and inspired by Mama Monk I’m posting a piece that I recently enjoyed in my latest endeavor and resolution
to write and read more poetry, starting with Billy Collins’ compilation of Poetry 180.
Suzanne Cleary’s “Acting”
I most remember the class where we lie
on our backs, on the cold floor, eyes closed, listening
to a story set in tall grasses, a land of flash floods.
Ten babies slept in a wagon as a stream risen from nothing
trampled like white horses towards them.
We heard the horses, pulling their terrible silence.
Then he asked us to open our eyes. Our teacher
took from his pocket an orange square, dropped it:
this had wrapped one of the babies.
This was found after the water receded.
I remember the woman with red hair
kneeling before the scarf, afraid to touch it,
our teacher telling her she could stop
by saying OK, Good.
I remember the boy named Michael, who
once told me he loved me. Michael
approached with tiny steps, heel to toe,
as if he were measuring land,
and, all at once, he fell
on the scarf. It could have been funny,
loud, clumsy. Another context, another moment,
it would have been ridiculous.
Head down, he held the scarf to his eyes.
My turn, I didn’t move. I stared
at the orange scarf, but not as long
as I’d have liked to, for this was a class
and there were others in line for their grief.
I touched it, lightly, with one hand,
folded it into a square, a smaller square, smaller.
What is lived in a life?
Our teacher making up that story
as he watched us lie on the dusty floor,
our rising, one by one,
to play with loss, to practice,
what is lived, to live? What was that desire
to move through ourselves to the orange
cotton, agreed upon, passed
from one to another?
***
I love the music and colors of this piece. It’s sensual – compelling and appealing to all the senses actually. There’s something sacred here – sacramental – about each sharing and touching the orange square. They each have a story sparked by the first and made tangible by the scarf that connects them to each other.
All of it moves towards the question “What is lived in a life?” Is it emotion? Is it action? Is it memory? Is it story? Is it connection?
I love the color orange. It’s the citrus that wards off illness in winter, lilies or gerbera daisies of spring, the campfires of summer, and the pumpkins and leaves of autumn. It evokes live-liness, warmth, an energy that is delicious and makes me hungry simultaneously.
January Synchroblog: Hope
This month’s Synchroblog is in conjunction with Provoketive Magazine.
***
I’m writing this fairly late on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I’ve been feeling like I wanted to write about Rev. King’s life and ministry, more intentionally this time than I have in past years, and I’m not totally sure why. I wonder if it has to do with the babies. Everything has to do with the twins, D and A, these days, now that they are growing up at the speed of light with all their crawling around and manipulating me with their cute, pout-y faces. They’re 10 months old. Old. And I know there’s still so much more to come with them.
I digress, but only slightly. I worry about them. I wonder what it will be like for them in elementary school, the horrible season of middle school, and the much-too-adult-like world of high school – if they will be judged or bullied, ignored or peer pressured because they look different. Not quite white. Not quite Korean. Granted, I know this will probably happen, and not simply because of their race, but because of their genders, or whatever their choices, even their faith (whatever it is in the future). But, for those who don’t have to deal with the question of race being an equation in people’s assumptions and expectations of you…they don’t get it. They don’t get that this question plagues you, haunts you, burdens you, and just sometimes makes you feel less certain about not only your ability, but about your humanity…
Read the rest at Provoketive.
[Photo from Etsy]
Below is a list of all the posts and participants in this month’s synchroblog:
The Trouble With Hope: John Ptacek
Hope = Possibility x Imagination: Wayne Rumsby
Little Reminders: Mike Victorino
Where Is My Hope: Jonathan Brink
Hope for Hypocrites: Jeremy Myers
Now These Three Remain: Sonny Lemmons
Perplexed, But Still Hopeful: Carol Kuniholm
A Hope that Lives: Amy Mitchell
Generations Come and Generations Go: Adam Gonnerman
Demystifying Hope: Glenn Hager
God in the Dark: On Hope: Renee Ronika Klug
Keeping Hope Alive: Maurice Broaddus
Are We Afraid to Hope?: Christine Sine
On Wobbly Wheels, Split Churches and Fear: Laura Droege
Hope is Held Between Us: Ellen Haroutunian
Hope: In the Hands of the Creatively Maladjusted: Mihee Kim-Kort
Paradox, Hope and Revival: City Safari
Good Theology Saves: Reverend Robyn
Linear: Never Was, Never Will Be: Kathy Escobar
Caroline for Congress: Hope for the Future: Wendy McCaig
Coffee and Chaos: The New Morning
Mornings start out with a groan. Well, actually it’s usually a screech and/or squeal coming from the twins’ room. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, and then, elbow Andy in the back, and push myself out of bed.
When I open the door to their room, they are both standing clutching the rails to the cribs and start jumping up and down. Laughing for a moment, and then a puckering-up cry, like somehow they (meaning, A) know how that face has the power to coerce me to do anything. And suddenly, I’m awake and laughing. I scoop both of them up, or if Andy is there, he picks up D and we dance around for a bit, and we carefully stumble our way downstairs fighting off grog. They are screeching and squealing in our ears at each other.
The rest of the morning is a blur. Back in the day we used to be able to leisurely get on our laptops to read papers and blogs, let Ellis out, make breakfast and coffee, watch the morning news, etc. Granted, I do put on Good Morning America for at least a half hour, and Andy usually manages to get the coffee started for us, but the rest of the time is refereeing the babies as they struggle over territorial dominance, and a monopoly of the stacking cups and cars.
This morning, Andy went out to get bagels for us (a treat), and I sat at the breakfast bar inhaling it and chasing it with coffee (I sit on a stool because with the babies the higher you can be out of their reach the more productive your brief moment). Andy was hunched over at his laptop and eating his bagel, too when both babies realized he was easily in reach. They crawled over and pulled on his legs, standing, both howling and puckering up for his attention. He gave in.
One at a time he helped the babies walk across the floor with his back bent over impossibly and uncomfortably (it seems unnatural to walk that way) as they held onto his index fingers giggling with pleasure at this miraculous feat called putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other. Sort of. And I just watched in awe. And thankfulness. Our mornings, though routine-less, noisy as all-get-out, chaotic - an understatement – are full and lovely. Our mornings have coffee and breakfast once in a while, and a few precious moments of reading, and a caffeine jolt of love from the babies. And I love taking long swigs of that love.
We’ve lately had jazz music playing in the backgrounds, and that feels appropriate – the improvisation of notes and melodies seems fitting to our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants mornings. Plus, it gets A going, she loves dancing and shaking her little boo-tay.
Yeah, mornings are good. Damn good.
