Year's End

Appetite

Pale gold and crumbling with crust 

mottled dark, almost bronze,

pieces of honeycomb lie on a plate.

Flecked with the pale paper

of hive, their hexagonal cells

leak into the deepening pool

of amber. On your lips,

against palate, tooth and tongue,

the viscous sugar squeezes

from its chambers, sears sweetness

into your throat until you chew

pulp and wax from a blue city

of bees. Between your teeth

is the blown flower and the flower's

seed. Passport pages stamped

and turning. Death's officious hum.

Both the candle and its anther

of flame. Your own yellow hunger.

Never say you can't take

this world into your mouth.

 

By Paulann Petersen        

 

Source: Poetry (July 2001).

California's Feather River

Bobelaine Audubon Sanctuary

A walk in a wildlife sanctuary alongside the Feather River just north of Sacramento yielded bird life and views. We saw a Great Blue Heron, raptors floating overhead in a clear winter sky, Turkey Vultures circling, and smaller birdlife in the brush and shrubs. California Oaks and stands of white barked trees reflected the sunlight. The air was dry and along the path there were deer and coyote tracks in the sandy loam. This 430 acre area is a small remnant of the riparian forests that once existed for miles on either side of the rivers in the Great Central Valley of California.   







Each Day

Morning Blessing

Every day look on the world with wide and grateful eyes.

Every day allow yourself to be touched with delight. 

Let go of what is harsh and harmful.

Remember each day's good.

Speak carefully and with kindness always.

Celebrate the particular mystery and intent of each day.

Offer your unique gifts. The world needs them.

Manifest the peace that is possible every day.

Love with awareness, wholeheartedly.

Each day bow and bless,

Forgive and love,

Surrender and praise.

Based on a reading by Mary Harrington

Pears

"Through All That Happens"  

Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

As you unfold as an artist, just keep on, quietly and earnestly, growing through all that happens to you. You cannot disrupt this process more violently than by looking outside yourself for answers that may only be found by attending to your innermost feeling.

Yesterday, eleven years after Donna's death...

Yesterday, eleven years after Donna's death from breast cancer, 

I reread my journal from Jan. 5, 2001: 

Northrup Cancer Center. The Chemo Lounge. In the waiting room. The fear palpable. The smell of heavy perfume over sweat. In the lounge, they can't get the needle into Donna's port. The needle bends as the nurse inserts it into her chest. A second nurse tries. Has difficulty. A third nurse holds the port against Donna's chest. They feel the skin, try to feel the opening, tell whether or not it's flipped beneath her skin. Donna is frightened, but trapped in this treatment. Finally, the needle enters the opening beneath her skin and into her port, the subclavian vein accessed. They begin the Solumedral drip (a steroid to prevent the severe flu-like reaction caused by Aridia), then they begin the Aridia. I leave for a haircut. When I return about 40 minutes later, nine chemo lounge chairs are filled with cancer patients in various stages of their disease. A few men, mostly women; the very old down to early middle age. Donna hands me a note. It says: "The African American woman who's so beautiful had a scary reaction to Solumedral. She couldn't breathe and she had horrible back pain. Just terribly scary. Two doctors and all the nurses. Just too much fragility. I'm too fragile for this." The sun pours into the south facing window. It is a salubrious January day. On the Cherry trees along the city streets blossoms have opened. Inside the chemo lounge patients are hooked to drip bags on metal stands leading to open veins in their bodies. They read, listen to music from headphones, chat with one another. Words like "Taxol," "drugs," "Your nurse is ---", "Are you all right now?" float on the air. Clear plastic tubes lead from drip bags. A woman with a scarf covering her bald head brings the nurses a plate of cookies as she arrives.They thank her and make jokes. One nurse goes from one patient to another checking their drip, another  holds a syringe of something and slowly pushes as the chemical is released into someone's vein. Time passes slowly. People watch each other. Donna offers the recovering African American woman an orange slice. The woman has oxygen tubes in her nose. Looks pale and dozes. Boxes hold syringes, plastic disposable gloves, tubing, tape, brown ace bandages. These are the pioneers on the cancer frontier. When Donna has finished her treatment, we leave, until the next time. The next treatment, the next scan, the next report, the next test.

"The great sensitivity of watercolours is primarily due to the immediacy and spontaneity the medium allows the artist, since the actual technique is of the very simplest order." Watercolor: History and Technique. by Walter Koschatzky (McGraw-Hill 1970) I am enjoying this book, although it is disappointing that not one female artist is mentioned, though it covers 500 years of history!

Chickadee, dee, dee

Went looking for the stolen ash tray in morning light.

Ended up gardening,

Up to my elbows in ignorance.

In the company of dandelions, lost dreams,

And the shimmering beauty of a new day.

Sauvie Island Gift

Not this bird, but listen. In the woods we hear the sound, a hollow knocking high above. Startled by us on the path below, a remarkable creature takes flight and lands on a treeside nearby. A shaft of sunlight penetrates the crested head and oh, such delight. Dryocopus pileatus, the largest woodpecker in North America! His ruby crest illumined, his face marked by a black stripe on a white background, the long feathered body, a strong dark beak. Minutes later we witness the flap and flight glide as the Pileated woodpecker circles and is gone. A Sauvie Island gift.

Holding Family

We carry the past in us. It informs our moving forward.

How can it be otherwise?

A line of garments moving out over the yard on a pulley line.

A backyard with two Modesto Ash trees and a sidewalk leading to a garage.

How is it I can’t see the future I will become?

The smell of wet clothes in a woven wicker basket on a flawless summer day.

A Maytag wringer washer on a back porch by the door to the stoop.

Mother’s hands, fishing for garments, one by one.

Load after load. The hot water, the clothes soaking wet.

Clothes pins, a small hand making them known.

 Pressing each one open with 8 year old fingers,

I add Pajamas, underwear, T-shirts, skirts, blouses, Levis, and towels.

Swaying along into the yard the line squeaks and sags,

Holding a family.

Sue

March 5, 2012

Not the graphite self-portrait, but rather...

Old stairs1. Photo by Donna Pollach

A California Visit

A walk on the Berkeley pier with my friend JAC offered this view of San Francisco's skyline on cloudy, cool day.  Painting with new friends in a watercolor class in Sacramento, taught by Kathy Lemke-Waste, provided an opportunity to paint a little differently than usual. The topic: Bugs and Butterflies. 
Thanks to California's commuter trains, traveling from the valley to the bay area was a breeze!

Food for Thought

"Through our speech and our silence, we diminish or enhance the other person, and we narrow or expand the possibilities between us. How we use our voice determines the quality of our relationships, who we are in the world, and what the world can be and might become."
Harriet Lerner (p. 96)   A Unified Theory of Happiness   by Andrea F. Polard Psy D.

Art and Travel Slideshow

Special thanks to my nephew Lou for collaborating with me on this project.  

Check it out!

It's a planting day!

Dancing and singing,

Blessing the return of the light,

Into the moist, dark earth I drop  sweet peas.

The Songbird

In a delicate woodland singing is heard.

I'm calling you back.

I'm calling you back.
I.
The train along the tracks. There out the window a dream is passing.
You had been my home. Sustenance.
When you returned to go through old boxes of memories,
I watched from another room.
It was you there with me. Kisses.
"It's all right to go on," you said.
"What was the hospital like?" I asked.
You couldn't remember,
Just stood near the rack of old clothes and the box of  photographs.

Outside the window, darkness.
The rhythmic sound of tracks, a heartbeat.
Heading home.
The mist rising.

II.
She stood in the middle of the room on the worn linoleum floor,
Yellow with age now.
Round she turned,
Her hair grey.
What was this place?
How had she got here?

Outside the kitchen window the yard.
Darkness gathered and fear took her.
It shook and rattled. It dove down deep.
Interior recesses. Into the cave of her small body.
It lodged there. Cowering against a black back wall.
Refused to budge. Hunkering down it shivered.
In its tiny fist a small hard perfectly round rock.

III.
Spring coming.
All the losses stacked up and dissolved in a mist,
Everything blown open,
The wind crossed over,
The window opened,
Circled round joy.

Pure, recognizable, ancient, old as the world itself.
Both places, all things.
A bird took up its song, started out in the yard to sing.
She crossed the floor to the window and stood looking out.
Something in her unraveled.
The sky alive all blue.

Opening the back porch door, she went out into the garden,
In her apron pocket, seeds.
She turned the moist earth, opened a small dark space,
And dropped a seed, perfectly round, into place.

On the silver sea.

The crab boats were plying the waters of the silver sea which had thrown off its cloak of grey for us.

Fire Tufted Barbet

Having Taught

 

 My heart has been stained by the colors of children,

 their light and listening ways potent with becoming. 

Caught in the bright dark fluid fiber of time.

The North Coast

Teaching Life

      I have been struggling with loss for months…dropped into this place by a powerful emotional response to the end of my working life as an educator. When I was nineteen, I got a summer job as a teacher, working in the Headstart Program with children of the Mexican migrant population whose parents worked locally and in the fields of the farming community where I grew up. I completed my coursework, and began the difficult task of actually learning to teach, creating the balance between compassion and power, absorbing the curriculum, figuring out how to create interesting lessons which addressed the intelligence and experience of each child, working to help children feel empowered in their relationships with one another, creating relationships with the parents of my students, accepting the politics and struggles of the institution, whether private or public…renewing my energies each summer, and bringing my whole self to the work, year after year. When I left St. Stephen Catholic School in 1984, where I had spent 6 years teaching, I was hired at Duniway Elementary School and spent 28 years teaching there. Although I have been “retired” for a few years, I continued to work one day a week, as a teacher in first grade or as a literacy specialist. This kept me connected to the school and community of which I had been a part; the faculty, the children, the buildings, the grounds, the path to and from the neighborhood and school. Returning year after year, cultivating and refining the myriad skills relevant to classroom life. This fall the connection ended.

I was not aware of the depth of my identification—how fulfilled by the sense of dedication, nurtured by the responsibility and deep sense of purpose…the honor of making, what has felt like, such a simple, meaningful contribution…helping children learn and grow.  I certainly did not expect the waves of loss. Now I turn toward the challenge and opportunity of reinventing self. Great joy and possibility!

Flight

The walk out past Abbott's Lagoon to the ocean's edge takes a while. There's green pastureland, a herd of Black Angus cattle, and a handful of deer grazing at a safe distance. We cross a small bridge and  to our right the lagoon takes shape and widens. Shore birds fish patiently along the marshy edge and diving ducks bobble on the surface; coots and scoters. As we crest the dune that separates the lagoon from the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of sea gulls lift from the beach and fill the sky, wings flashing white and turning. It is as if the foam itself,  scattering as the waves crest, has lifted off and taken to the sky.

Point Reyes National Seashore

One of California's wonders, this triangular area of land slips north along the San Andreas faultline, inches at a time...Tomales Bay to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. On the day we visited Abbott's Lagoon, the sea rolled in...pure, perfect waves cresting and falling like liquid jade, capped with white foam caught and carried by the wind.
On the lagoon edged by sand dunes and cliffs we saw a great egret, black scoters, a blue heron, coots bobbing along the edge. Gulls gathered on the beach, lifting and landing; a thought expressing itself.